World leaders and humanitarian groups said on Friday that Israel must show concrete results after it reacted to growing pressure from the United States by announcing it would open more aid routes into the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has warned that a famine is looming.
At a news conference in Brussels on Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken welcomed the new aid routes, calling them “positive developments,” but said that the United States was watching to see if Israel would make it a priority to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. One measure of Israel’s commitment, he said, will be “the number of trucks that are actually getting in on a sustained basis.”
“The real test is results, and that’s what we’re looking to see in the coming days and the coming weeks,” he said, adding, “Really, the proof is in the results.”
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, called on Israel to open the new aid routes “quickly.”
“No more excuses,” she wrote on social media.
Israel said early Friday that it had agreed to open the Erez crossing to allow aid into northern Gaza, where hunger is particularly severe; to use the Israeli port of Ashdod to direct more aid into the enclave; and to significantly increase deliveries from Jordan.
