US to continue military support for Israel as '30-day deadline' for aid expires
The United States is to maintain the supply of lethal military aid to Israel despite the regime’s genocide that has claimed the lives of at least 43,700 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The US State Department affirmed on Tuesday that the country does not plan to dial down the weapons flow to the Israeli military despite massive global outcry.
US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters that he did not have any changes to the US policy on the issue to announce.
The US is seeking to retain the lethal aid, despite the regime ignoring a so-called "30-day deadline" issued by Washington for Tel Aviv to increase aid flow into the war-hit Palestinian territory.
The country’s retention of the military aid comes as it had presumably warned the regime that it would revisit the support in case Tel Aviv failed to meet the purported deadline.
By doing so, the United States would be trampling on its own laws that forbid it from providing military aid to the parties committing “gross violations of human rights.”
The US, which would provide the regime with more than $3 billion in military aid on an annual basis, has sent it $17.9 billion in weapons support since last October when the regime began bringing Gaza under a genocidal war.
As much as 70 percent of the fatalities of the brutal military onslaught comprise women and children, with minors between the ages of five and nine forming the majority of the victims, the United Nations has announced. The war has also wounded more than 103,400 others.
Also on Tuesday, Ilze Brands Kehris, the UN assistant secretary general for human rights, called on all states providing weapons to the regime to reassess those arrangements.
He also warned that there was “constant and continued interference with the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance, which has fallen to some of the lowest levels in a year.”
The world body’s Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Joyce Msuya, meanwhile, has condemned the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, describing Israeli violations against Palestinians as “acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes.”
She denounced the regime for its intensified indiscriminate attacks on northern Gaza, where Israeli aggression has either damaged or destroyed “more than 70 percent of civilian housing.”
In a related development, eight international aid agencies, including Save the Children and Refugees International, wrote a statement, regretting that the regime had not only failed to meet the criteria that would indicate enhancement of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, “but concurrently took actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza.”
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