The US State Department said Israel has made some good but limited progress in increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza and will not limit arms transfers to Israel as it threatened a month ago if the situation does not improve, even as all aid groups working in the stricken territory say conditions are worse than at any time in the 13-month-old war.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters that the progress made so far should be built upon and continued but that “we, at this time, have not assessed that the Israelis are in violation of U.S. law.”

Recipients of military assistance are required (under US law) to comply with international humanitarian law and not to impede the provision of such assistance.

“We are not giving Israel a pass,” Patel said, adding that the steps Israel has taken have not yet made a significant enough difference. “We want to see an improvement in the overall humanitarian situation, and we believe that some of these steps will allow for the conditions to continue to move forward.”

The decision by Washington, Israel’s biggest ally and primary enabler of its war of annihilation against the besieged people of Gaza, not to punish Israel comes despite international aid groups saying that Israel has failed to meet US demands for greater humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip. Hunger experts have warned that the north may already be facing famine.

Last month (13/10) in a letter to the Israeli government from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the Biden administration set a Tuesday (12/11) deadline for Israel to “step up” more food and other emergency aid to the Palestinian territories or risk the possibility of military support being cut as Israel launches attacks against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In response to a question from the Jerusalem correspondent on October 14th about the danger of giving Israel more than four weeks to double its pressure on the besieged, hungry Palestinians, the official spokesman for the US State Department, Matthew Miller, said that the main goal is to “facilitate the entry of aid into northern Gaza” and that the US administration realizes that the process of entering and distributing aid is a difficult process, and that this time (10/13-11/12) is sufficient for Israel to allow the entry of sufficient aid.

Miller confirmed to the Jerusalem correspondent last Thursday, a week before the deadline, that Israel is still obstructing aid, and that the administration is standing by its pledge to impose sanctions on Israel, including stopping the supply of weapons, if Israel continues to obstruct aid.

According to aid groups and UN officials, Israel has largely failed to comply with the three main demands in the US letter, which included increasing humanitarian aid through the Strip, resuming commercial truck traffic, and ending the isolation of the north. The humanitarian groups say these policies have pushed the Palestinian enclave to the brink of mass starvation.

The obstacles to aid distribution became clear this week, as the United Nations said it could not deliver most of the aid allowed due to unrest and restrictions by Israeli forces on the ground.

In the south, hundreds of trucks loaded with aid stand on the Gaza side of the border, their cargo rotting, because the UN says it cannot reach them to distribute aid — again because of the threat of chaos, theft and Israeli military restrictions.

Israel claims to have opened a new crossing in central Gaza, outside the town of Deir al-Balah, to let aid in. It has also announced a small expansion of its coastal humanitarian zone, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced and are living in tent camps. It has also brought electricity to the desalination plant in Deir al-Balah.

Israel’s new foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, appeared to downplay the deadline, telling reporters on Monday that he was confident the issue would be “resolved.” The Biden administration may have less leverage after Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, won the presidential election.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest aide, Ron Dermer, in Washington on Monday about the steps Israel has taken and stressed "the importance of ensuring that these changes lead to a real improvement in the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza," the State Department said Tuesday.

President Joe Biden also met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House on Tuesday, but they did not publicly discuss the aid issue. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States recognizes the gravity of the circumstances and will continue to discuss with Israel what additional steps it needs to take.

Eight international groups said in a report that Israel had also taken actions that "significantly worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza. ... This situation is in a more serious state today than it was a month ago."

The report listed 19 measures to comply with the US demands, saying Israel had failed to fully comply with 15 of them and had only partially complied with four. The letter was signed by ANERA, CARE, MedGlobal, Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Refugees International, and Save the Children.

In the October 13 letter (from Blinken and Austin), the United States gave Israel 30 days to, among other things, allow a minimum of 350 truckloads of goods into Gaza each day; open a fifth crossing; allow people in coastal camps to move inland before winter; and ensure access for aid groups to northern Gaza. It also called on Israel to halt legislation that would hamper the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA.

Aid levels remain far below US standards. Access to northern Gaza remains restricted, and Israel has moved forward with its laws against UNRWA.

Israel launched a major offensive last month in the north, claiming that Hamas fighters had regrouped. The operation killed hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children, and displaced tens of thousands.

It is noteworthy that Israel did not allow the entry of food and medicine during the month of October and the first days of November, as tens of thousands of civilians remained despite evacuation orders.

Last week, Israel allowed only 11 trucks to go to Beit Hanoun, one of the hardest-hit towns in the north. But the World Food Programme said troops at a checkpoint forced its trucks to unload their cargo before reaching shelters.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli military body responsible for humanitarian aid to Gaza, said Tuesday that it had authorized a new delivery of food and water to Beit Hanoun a day earlier. The World Food Program said that while it had tried to send 14 trucks, only three reached the town “due to delays in obtaining movement permits and crowds along the route.” It said that when it tried to deliver the rest on Tuesday, Israel refused permission.

Aid to Gaza dropped completely in October, with only 34,000 tons of food entering, a third of what entered the previous month, according to Israeli data.

UN agencies say far less is reaching them because of Israeli restrictions, fighting and lawlessness that make it difficult to collect and distribute aid on the Gaza side.

In October, an average of 57 trucks entered Gaza daily, and 75 daily so far in November, according to official Israeli figures. The United Nations says it has received only 39 trucks daily since the beginning of October.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said 900 trucks loaded with aid were still waiting without being collected on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south.

The Israeli war on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, while more than 9,000 remain under the rubble, and injured more than 100,000, most of them women and children. More than 70% of Gaza has been destroyed, according to UN estimates. About 90% of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and hundreds of thousands are crammed into miserable tent camps, with little food, water or sanitation facilities.