The U.S. military’s coordination center in southern Israel will oversee the delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip instead of Israel, sources familiar with the matter told The Washington Post on Friday.
The sources added that Israel remains “part of the conversation,” but final decisions will ultimately be made by the United States. They said the aid operation will shift from the IDF’s COGAT unit (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).
The report described people familiar with the U.S. center’s first weeks of operations in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat as “chaotic and indecisive.”
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They also noted that transferring oversight to U.S. hands will leave Israel in a “secondary role” in determining how and what humanitarian relief can enter Gaza. Since the cease-fire began, aid delivery has improved, though Israel has acted to limit it. Additional sources familiar with the Kiryat Gat center described its operations as disorganized.
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U.S. soldiers at the Kiryat Gat compound, in October. The facility is a foreign intelligence base on Israeli soil tasked with monitoring IDF activity in the Gaza Strip. Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
U.S. soldiers at the Kiryat Gat compound, in October. The facility is a foreign intelligence base on Israeli soil tasked with monitoring IDF activity in the Gaza Strip. Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
At the same time, The New York Times reported, citing a U.S. official and seven diplomatic sources, that the United States is pressing the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would enshrine U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza cease-fire deal in international law.
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According to the sources, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, told diplomats from Security Council member states that the alternative to broadly adopting the Trump plan is a return to war between Israel and Hamas.
The report added that Waltz held private meetings this week with representatives from Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom on the Security Council, as well as with members of the Palestinian delegation to the UN.
According to a U.S. source, his meeting with the Palestinian delegation signals that the Palestinian Authority is not being excluded from implementing the cease-fire agreement.