Middle East Crisis: U.S. Criticizes Israel for Failure to Protect Civilians in Gaza Conflict (2024)

The U.S. criticizes Israel for failure to protect civilians in the Gaza conflict.

But it added that “the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions” as to whether the Israel Defense Forces are making sufficient use of those tools.

Even so, the report — which seemed at odds with itself in places — said the United States had no hard proof of Israeli violations. It noted the difficulty of collecting reliable information from Gaza, Hamas’s tactic of operating in civilian areas and the fact that “Israel has not shared complete information to verify” whether U.S. weapons have been used in specific incidents alleged to have involved human rights law violations.

The report, mandated by President Biden, also makes a distinction between the general possibility that Israel has violated the law and any conclusions about specific incidents that would prove it. It deems that assurances Israel provided in March that it would use U.S. arms consistent with international law are “credible and reliable,” and thus allow the continued flow of U.S. military aid.

The conclusions are unrelated to Mr. Biden’s recent decision to delay the delivery to Israel of 3,500 bombs and his review of other weapons shipments. The president has said those actions were in response to Israel’s stated plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The report said its findings were hampered in part by the challenges of collecting reliable information from the war zone and the way Hamas operates in densely populated areas. It also stressed that Israel has begun pursuing possible accountability for suspected violations of the law, a key component in the U.S. assessment about whether to provide military aid to allies accused of human rights violations.

Israel has opened criminal investigations into the conduct of its military in Gaza, the report said, and the Israel Defense Forces “are examining hundreds of incidents” that may involve wartime misconduct.

The report also did not find that Israel had intentionally obstructed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

While it concluded that both “action and inaction by Israel” had slowed the flow of aid into Gaza, which is desperately short of necessities like food and medicine, it said that “we do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance” into the territory.

Such a finding would have triggered a U.S. law barring military aid to countries that block such assistance.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer now with International Crisis Group, said the report “bends over backwards” to avoid concluding that Israel violated any laws, a finding that would place major new pressure on Mr. Biden to restrict arms to the country.

Mr. Finucane, a critic of Israel’s military operations, said that the report was “more forthcoming” than he had expected, but that he still found it “watered down” and heavily “lawyered.”

The findings further angered a vocal minority of Democrats in Congress who have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. They argue that Israel has indiscriminately killed civilians with American arms and intentionally hindered U.S.-supplied humanitarian aid.

Either would violate U.S. laws governing arms transfers to foreign militaries, as well as international humanitarian law, which is largely based on the Geneva Conventions.

The report did not define the meaning of its other criteria for Israel’s actions, “established best practices for mitigating civilian harm,” though it cited Defense Department guidelines on the subject released last year, which include some measures “not required by the law of war.”

“If this conduct complies with international standards, then God help us all,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, told reporters after the report’s release. “They don’t want to have to take any action to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for what’s happening,” he added, referring to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Critics of Mr. Biden’s continuation of most military support to Israel had hoped that he would use the report as a justification for further restricting arms deliveries to the country. The United States provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid, and Congress last month approved an additional $14 billion in emergency funding.

Mr. Biden ordered the report with a national security memorandum known as NSM-20. It requires all recipients of U.S. military aid engaged in conflict to provide the United States with written assurances that they will comply with international law and not hinder the delivery of humanitarian aid provided by or supported by the U.S. government.

The report called on the secretary of state and the defense secretary to assess “any credible reports or allegations” that American weapons might have been used in violation of international law.

Since the president’s memorandum was issued, an independent task force formed in response issued a lengthy report citing dozens of examples of likely Israeli legal violations. That report found what it called Israel’s “systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law,” including “attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians” in densely populated areas.

In a statement following the State Department report, the task force called the U.S. document “at best incomplete, and at worst intentionally misleading in defense of acts and behaviors that likely violate international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.”

“Once again, the Biden Administration has stared the facts in the face — and then pulled the curtains shut,” said the task force’s members, who include Josh Paul, a former State Department official who in October resigned in protest over U.S. military support for Israel.

The State Department report showed clear sympathy for Israel’s military challenge, repeating past statements by the Biden administration that Israel has a “right to defend itself” in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. It also noted that military experts call Gaza “as difficult a battlespace as any military has faced in modern warfare.”

“Because Hamas uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes and civilians as human shields, it is often difficult to determine facts on the ground in an active war zone of this nature and the presence of legitimate military targets across Gaza,” it said.

Even so, it singled out numerous specific incidents where Israel’s military had killed civilians or aid workers, the latter of which it called a “specific area of concern.”

Those episodes include the killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers in April. The report noted that Israel has dismissed officers and reprimanded commanders involved in that attack, which Israel has called “a grave mistake,” and is considering prosecutions.

Other episodes it cited included airstrikes on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 on the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp, which reportedly killed dozens of civilians, including children. It noted Israel’s claim that it had targeted a senior Hamas commander and underground Hamas facilities at the site, and that its munitions had “led to the collapse of tunnels and the buildings and infrastructure above them.”

And while the report did not find that Israel had intentionally hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid, it listed several examples of ways in which its government had “a negative effect” on aid distribution. They included “extensive bureaucratic delays” and what it called the active involvement of some senior Israeli officials in protests or attacks on aid convoys.

The report was delivered to Congress two days after the deadline set by Mr. Biden’s February memorandum, arriving late on a Friday afternoon — the time of choice for government officials hoping to minimize an announcement’s public impact. Earlier that day, a White House spokesman, John F. Kirby, denied that the delay had any “nefarious” motive.

The U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution in support of Palestinian statehood.

But the resolution does not mean a Palestinian state will be recognized and admitted to the United Nations as a full member anytime soon. The Assembly can only grant full membership with the approval of the Security Council, and, if history is a guide, the United States would almost inevitably wield its veto power to kill such a measure, as it did in April.

Even though a majority in the General Assembly have long supported Palestinian statehood, the resolution was the first time the body had voted on the issue of full membership. The resolution declares that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations” under its charter rules and recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter with a favorable outcome.

The resolution was prepared by the United Arab Emirates, the current chair of the U.N. Arab Group, and sponsored by 70 countries. The United States voted no, along with Hungary, Argentina, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia and Nauru.

“The vast majority of countries in this hall are fully aware of the legitimacy of the Palestinian bid and the justness of their cause, which faces fierce attempts to suppress it and render it meaningless today,” said the U.A.E. ambassador, Mohamed Abushahab, as he introduced the resolution on behalf of the Arab Group.

Though largely symbolic, the resolution does provide Palestinians with new diplomatic privileges. Palestinians can now sit among member states in alphabetical order; they can speak at General Assembly meetings on any topic instead of being limited to Palestinian affairs; they can submit proposals and amendments; and they can participate at U.N. conferences and international meetings organized by the Assembly and other United Nations entities.

The 193-member General Assembly took up the issue of Palestinian membership after the United States in April vetoed a resolution before the Security Council that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state. While a majority of council members supported the move, the United States said recognition of Palestinian statehood should be achieved through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Frustration with the United States has been brewing for months among many senior U.N. officials and diplomats, including from allies such as France, because Washington has repeatedly blocked cease-fire resolutions at the Security Council and has staunchly supported Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, even as civilian suffering has mounted.

“The U.S. is resigned to having another bad day at the U.N.,” said Richard Gowan, an expert on the U.N. for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization. But he added that the resolution “gives the Palestinians a boost without creating a breakdown over whether they are or are not now U.N. members.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., told the Assembly ahead of the vote that Palestinians’ right to full membership at the U.N. and statehood “are not up for negotiations, they are our inherent rights as Palestinians.” He added that a vote against Palestinian statehood was a vote against the two-state solution.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, a sharp critic of the U.N., said voting for a Palestinian state would be inviting “a state of terror” in its midst and rewarding “terrorists” who killed Jewish civilians with privileges and called member states endorsing it “Jew haters.”

Robert A. Wood, a U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that while the U.S. supported a two-state solution as the only means for sustainable peace, “it remains the U.S. view that unilateral measures at the U.N. and on the ground will not advance this goal.”

Mr. Wood said that if the Assembly referred the issue back to the Council, it would have the same outcome again with the U.S. blocking the move.

The Palestinians are currently recognized by the U.N. as a nonmember observer state, a status granted to them in 2012 by the General Assembly. They do not have the right to vote on General Assembly resolutions or nominate any candidates to U.N. agencies.

France, a close U.S. ally and one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, has supported the Palestinian bid for statehood breaking away from United States’ stance at the U.N. both at the Council and the Assembly vote. “The time has come for the United Nations to take action with a view to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the basis of the two-state solution,” said Nicolas de Rivière, France’s ambassador to the U.N., in his address on Friday.

The Assembly session, which was expected to flow over to Monday because of the long list of speakers, was not without moments of performative drama.

Mr. Erdan, Israel’s ambassador, held up the picture of Hamas’s military leader, Yahya Sinwar, considered the architect of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, with the word “President,” and then a transparent shredder, inserting a piece of paper inside it, and said the member states were “shredding the U.N. charter.”

Mr. Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador, at the end of his speech raised his fist in the air, visibly chocking back tears, and said “Free Palestine.” The Assembly broke into applause.

The White House defends voting ‘no’ on a U.N. resolution supporting Palestinian statehood.

John F. Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said President Biden remained “fully and firmly committed” to a Palestinian state, but the U.N. resolution was not the way to establish it.

“We continue to believe in the power and promise of a two-state solution, and an independent state for the Palestinian people,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. “We also believe that the best way to do that is through direct negotiations with the parties and not through a vote of the U.N. of this kind.”

Friday’s vote comes as the ties between the United States and Israel, its closest ally in the Middle East, are tested over the war in Gaza. More than 34,000 people have died in Gaza, including both combatants and civilians, and the director of the World Food Program has said that parts of the Gaza Strip are experiencing a “full-blown famine.”

The United States is the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, and Mr. Biden is hoping to use that leverage to get Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to forgo a long-threatened invasion of Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than one million Palestinians have taken refuge.

Mr. Biden has halted a shipment of bombs to Israel and said he would withhold artillery as well if Israel moved forward in Rafah. But the Israelis maintain they need to go into Rafah to finish destroying Hamas, which killed 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack it led on Israel.

The U.N. resolution does not establish a Palestinian state, but it does recognize Palestine to qualify for full-member status at the United Nations. Its membership will need to be approved by the U.N. Security Council, which includes the United States.

The United States has repeatedly wielded its veto power on the council to block U.N. resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The U.N. General Assembly took up Friday’s resolution after the United States vetoed in April a resolution that came before the Security Council that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state, which is considered a “nonmember observer state.”

The resolution that passed on Friday would extend to Palestinians new privileges, such as sitting among member states in alphabetical order, speaking at meetings on any topic instead of being limited to Palestinian affairs, and submitting proposals and amendments.

The resolution was prepared by the United Arab Emirates, the current chair of the U.N. Arab Group, and sponsored by 70 countries. It declares that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations” under its charter rules and recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter with a favorable outcome.”

The resolution’s adoption prompted rousing applause.

Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.

Here is what we know about where aid can enter Gaza.

The entry of aid into Gaza has been heavily restricted by Israel since the war started, creating what aid experts say is a human-made hunger crisis. Humanitarians warn that the crisis will worsen without the fuel necessary for bakeries and hospitals to operate.

Here is a look at the major routes for aid into Gaza and their status.

Kerem Shalom

Israel shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing after a Hamas attack on Sunday killed four of its soldiers in the area.

On Wednesday, Israel said it had reopened the crossing, but the United Nations and others disputed that claim because no trucks were being allowed through. On Friday afternoon, Israel allowed at least 157,000 liters of fuel to enter, according to Scott Anderson, a senior official at UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinians. But no humanitarian aid, which includes food and medical supplies, has entered since Sunday, he said.

Egypt, which plays an important role in facilitating aid collection and delivery, has complicated matters by resisting sending trucks to Kerem Shalom, according to several Western and Israeli officials; American and Israeli officials believe that Egypt is putting pressure on Israel to curb its invasion of Rafah.

The Kerem Shalom crossing has been a major artery for aid into Gaza since it opened in December and is where most aid trucks now enter. Before Israel’s incursion into Rafah, an average of 185 trucks entered Kerem Shalom daily last week, peaking at 270 trucks last Friday, according to United Nations data. Aid groups have said for months that at least 300 trucks are needed daily to prevent further malnutrition and worsening hunger.

Rafah

The Rafah crossing remains closed.

The crossing has been an important gate for injured and sick people to leave the enclave to receive medical treatment abroad. The Gazan Health Ministry has said that dozens of people with illnesses such as breast cancer and lymphoma have been unable to leave Gaza since Sunday.

Erez

The Erez crossing at Gaza’s northern border is open, but limited aid is trickling through, according to data from COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees aid delivery in Gaza, and an UNRWA official. It is the only border crossing in the north and was only opened last month after pressure from President Biden.

COGAT said on its website that 36 aid trucks and one fuel truck passed through the Erez crossing on Thursday. Mr. Anderson said UNRWA sent 67 trucks through the Erez crossing on Wednesday and that nothing has passed through since. A reason for the discrepancy between the numbers and days was not immediately clear.

Sending more aid to northern Gaza would be crucial to prevent further malnutrition-related deaths in the area. In March, health experts projected that northern Gaza would soon face a famine, and, on Saturday, Cindy McCain, the executive director of the World Food Program, said that parts of Gaza were already in one. As of mid-April, Gazan health officials said that at least 28 children younger than 12 had died from malnutrition in hospitals and perhaps dozens more outside medical centers.

By sea

Since Gaza has no international pier of its own — Israel has for years prevented the construction of one — the U.S. military said in March that it would build a temporary pier to get aid in by sea, part of what it said was a multipronged effort to deliver humanitarian assistance to the enclave.

The Pentagon said on Thursday that the floating pier and the causeway had been completed but that bad weather and sea conditions had prevented their installation. They remain at the Israeli port of Ashdod.

An American cargo ship, called the Sagamore, departed from Cyprus on Thursday, the Pentagon said, and ship tracking websites show the ship positioned at Ashdod. The Sagamore is carrying more than 170 metric tons of nutrition bars, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, but cannot be unloaded and distributed in Gaza until the pier is installed. It is unclear when that might be, as the Pentagon said the installation would be dependent on security and weather conditions.

Airdrops

COGAT said on Thursday that 117 packages were airdropped in northern Gaza that day. Airdrop operations only began in March to try to prevent a greater humanitarian disaster as hunger grew in the Palestinian territory. COGAT said 99 airdrop operations by nine donating countries, including the United States and Jordan, had been completed since March.

But airdrops have been criticized by aid experts as perhaps the most inefficient way to deliver aid into Gaza, and in some cases, deadly. Airdropped aid packages in March fell on several Palestinians in Gaza City, killing five and wounding several others, according to Gazan health officials. In another case, a dozen Palestinians drowned while trying to retrieve packages that had been intentionally dropped over the water to prevent further deaths if its parachutes failed to deploy.

South Africa again asks the U.N.’s top court to act against Israel in Gaza

South Africa’s latest move is part of a case the country filed in December in which it accused Israel of genocide. Since then, the court has ordered Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and ordered the delivery of more humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the face of growing starvation in areas. But the court has not ordered Israel to stop its military campaign against Hamas.

Israel has strongly denied South Africa’s accusations and said that it had gone to great lengths to admit deliveries of food and fuel into Gaza and to lessen harm to civilians. It has also said that its war in Gaza was necessary to defend itself against the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas and other armed groups that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to the capture of about 250 others.

Friday’s request is the fourth time that South Africa has asked the U.N. court for temporary injunctions. The filings noted that conditions had deteriorated significantly for civilians sheltering in Gaza.

“Rafah is the last population center in Gaza that has not been substantially destroyed by Israel and as such the last refuge for Palestinians in Gaza,” South Africa stated.

The court has not indicated when it will respond to the South African request, but its rules require that it must give priority to petitions for emergency orders. The 15-judge court has no means of enforcing its orders.

The main case, dealing with the question of genocide, is not expected to start until next year.

Cease-fire talks hit snag, in part, on how many hostages would be released in a first phase, officials say.

Hamas is still demanding that Israel abide by a permanent cease-fire and completely withdraw from Gaza as part of any truce, said Mousa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas’s political leadership. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said Israel cannot end the war as long as Hamas’s rule in Gaza remains intact. On Friday, Hamas declared that Israel’s rejection of a framework that Qatar and Egypt had proposed, and Hamas had approved, had “brought matters back to square one.”

Mr. Abu Marzouk added that another obstacle in the talks is how many living hostages held in Gaza would be released during the first phase of a multistage cease-fire. His account was confirmed by an Israeli official and another official briefed on the negotiation. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic negotiations.

Palestinian armed groups still hold approximately 132 hostages in Gaza, the vast majority of them seized during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli authorities. But Israel says it has also determined that at least 36 of them are dead.

Israel had initially demanded that Hamas release 40 hostages in the first phase of a cease-fire, including old captives, ill people and women, both civilians and soldiers. Male Israeli soldiers, seen by Hamas as higher-value captives, would be released in the second phase of the truce.

A recent Israeli proposal made a concession, reducing the number of living hostages Israel was demanding to 33 during the first tranche, according to the officials familiar with the talks.

On Monday, Hamas told negotiators it did not have enough living hostages for the first phase of agreement and said the 33 turned over would include both living hostages and the bodies of those who had died in captivity, two U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

But during this week’s meetings in Egypt — mediated in part by William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director — the Israeli negotiating team said that Hamas must release 33 living hostages during the first phase, said Mr. Abu Marzouk, the senior Hamas official, and one of the officials briefed on the talks. If the group could not muster that number, Israel demanded they release some captive Israeli male soldiers as well, said Mr. Abu Marzouk.

On Friday, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said both Israel and Hamas needed to “show flexibility” in the talks so as to “reach an agreement for a truce that would put an end to the humanitarian tragedy.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

People leaving Rafah describe yet another fearful flight from Israeli assaults.

Hamas had announced that it had accepted a cease-fire proposal from Qatar and Egypt, leaving many Gazans thinking that a truce was imminent. Their joy was short-lived; it soon became clear that Hamas was not talking about the same proposal endorsed days earlier by Israel, which said the two sides remained far apart.

Instead, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets in eastern Rafah telling people to flee and move to what Israel called a humanitarian zone to the north, as the Israeli military bombarded the area. Gazan health officials say that dozens have been killed since Israel’s incursion into parts of Rafah this week.

“We thought that day a cease-fire was possible,” said Ms. al-Wakeel, 48, who helped the aid group World Central Kitchen prepare hot meals.

She and her family had been sheltering near the Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, in an area battered by Israeli airstrikes and ground combat. The director of the hospital, Dr. Marwan al-Hams, said on Monday that it had received the bodies of 26 people killed by Israeli fire, and treated 50 who were wounded. The hospital was evacuated the next day.

So rather than return home, on Tuesday night Ms. al-Wakeel, her husband, her 11 children and other relatives found a semi-truck that would take them and their belongings, including suitcases of clothes, pots and pans and tents, for 2,500 shekels — about $670 — in search of another place to stay.

They left Rafah around midnight and made their way north along with hundreds of tuk-tuks, trucks, cars and donkey-carts full of other displaced families and their possessions.

“It was a scary night, the truck was moving slowly because of the heavy load on it,” she said.

Once out of Rafah, they made frequent stops at schools and other buildings, desperately looking for any empty place for them to shelter. But every place was full.

Others couldn’t find a place, either, and Ms. al-Wakeel saw many people sleeping by the side of the road next to whatever belongings they had fled with.

At a U.N. school in Deir El-Balah, a young man suggested they stay in an empty concrete building — with no windows — that belonged to the Hamas-led government’s ministry of social development.

“It looked like a dangerous place,” she said, adding that they had been told that a woman and her daughter had previously been killed in one of the building’s rooms by an Israeli missile.

But they were too afraid to continue roaming around in the darkness, and decided to spend the night there and look for a safer place come morning.

“I feel so sad and disappointed for what happened to Rafah as it was stable for us there,” she said. “We have spent so much time having to arrange new places for ourselves again and we feel depressed and so exhausted from repeating the same suffering.”

Saeda al-Nemnem, 42, had given birth to twins less than a month before Israel dropped the leaflets over where they were sheltering in Rafah, ordering them to leave. Her family, also displaced from Gaza City, dispatched a relative to look for a truck that could ferry them north, despite the intense Israeli airstrikes at the time.

The relative, Mohammed al-Jojo, was killed by an Israeli strike on the tractor he was riding, she said.

He “was killed when he was getting us out of that area to a safer place,” she said. “I feel I caused his death.”

Despite the dangers in getting on the road, staying where they were in Rafah was no safer.

Along the terrifying journey to the city of Khan Younis, where she and her family of eight found shelter in a room attached to Al Aqsa University’s main building, they could hear what seemed like explosions from Israeli bombs, missiles and artillery, she said.

“My children’s heartbeats were so high that I could feel them,” she said. It was the heaviest bombardment she had ever heard, she said, “so close and so terrifying for me and my children.”

More than 100,000 have fled Rafah, the U.N. says, as Israeli bombardment intensifies.

Many of them have already been displaced multiple times by Israel’s war in Gaza over the past seven months.

“Around 110,000 people have now fled Rafah looking for safety,” the main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, known as UNRWA, posted online on Friday. “But nowhere is safe in the #GazaStrip & living conditions are atrocious.” On Thursday, a U.N. official said that 79,000 people had left since Israel issued its evacuation order.

“The only hope is an immediate #Ceasefire,” UNRWA said.

Israel seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in what it called a “limited operation,” and intense fighting has continued on the eastern edge of the city since. The Israeli military said on Friday that its aircraft had struck Hamas members and rocket-launching sites at several locations in the Rafah area over the past day, while Hamas said its forces had fired mortars on Israeli troops east of the city.

The Israeli security cabinet agreed on Thursday night to expand the operation in Rafah, two officials said, but it was not clear what that would mean in practical terms.

Fighting continues in other areas of Gaza, and on Friday, the Israeli military said four of its soldiers were killed and two were seriously injured by an explosive device near Gaza City, in the northern part of the territory. Israeli forces seized the north months ago but have been unable to control it completely, repeatedly battling militants there.

In an apparent sign of the militants’ staying power, Hamas took responsibility for a rocket attack, the first one since December that was launched from Gaza and triggered air-raid sirens in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. Rockets were fired at Israel from both Rafah and central Gaza, according to the Israeli military. There were no reports of injuries or serious damage.

Israel has designated what it calls a safe zone for Gazans fleeing Rafah, including Al-Mawasi, a coastal section of Gaza it has advised people to go to for months. But the United Nations has said it is neither safe nor equipped to receive them.

On Friday, UNICEF’s senior emergency coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young, said from Rafah that in his 30 years working on large-scale humanitarian emergencies “I’ve never been involved in a situation as devastating, complex or erratic as this.”

“Yesterday, I walked around Al-Mawasi,” Mr. Young said. “The roads to Mawasi are jammed — many hundreds of trucks, buses, cars and donkey carts loaded with people and possessions.”

“People I speak with tell me they are exhausted, terrified and know life in Al-Mawasi will, again, impossibly, be harder,” he said. “Families lack proper sanitation facilities, drinking water and shelter.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

Actions by Israel and Egypt are restricting Gaza aid routes.

Israel shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing after a Hamas rocket attack nearby killed four Israeli soldiers last Sunday. The next day, Israeli forces seized and closed the Gaza side of the other crossing, at Rafah on the Egyptian border, as part of what they have described as a limited military operation against Hamas, and raised the Israeli flag over the crossing.

Although Israel has reopened Kerem Shalom and some fuel has gone into Gaza from there, humanitarian aid like food and medicines has not been allowed through the crossing since last Sunday, according to Scott Anderson, a senior official at UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Gaza.

One reason is that Egypt, where most of the aid for Gaza is collected and loaded, is resisting sending trucks toward Kerem Shalom, according to two U.S. officials and another Western official who are involved in the aid operation, as well as two Israeli officials. The American and Israeli officials believe that Egypt is trying to put pressure on Israel to pull back from the Rafah operation.

Another official familiar with the negotiations said U.S. officials — including William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, who was in Cairo this week for Gaza cease-fire talks — have been trying to persuade Egypt to dispatch the trucks. But Egypt has rebuffed the pressure, saying it will not allow aid to flow to Kerem Shalom while Israel has closed the Rafah crossing, and casting the situation as a matter of sovereignty, a United Nations official said.

All the officials spoke on condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the aid talks and the cease-fire negotiations. A spokesman for Egypt’s government declined to comment.

Egypt plays a vital role in the Gaza relief effort. Much of the international aid bound for Gaza is collected in the Egyptian city of El Arish, about 30 miles from the Gaza border, where it is loaded onto trucks and sent to the Israeli border for inspections before being allowed into Gaza.

Egypt has grown increasingly nervous about Israel’s Rafah operation, in part over deep-seated fears it will push Palestinian refugees onto Egyptian soil — an outcome Egypt views as a national security threat. Israel’s presence on the Egypt-Gaza border, a border Egypt is supposed to control, has also drawn heavy domestic criticism.

Egyptian concerns are not the only factor complicating the use of Kerem Shalom. The Western official said that Israeli military activity and fighting near Kerem Shalom have partly destroyed the roads, making it extremely difficult for aid trucks to navigate into Gaza.

With fighting continuing, the area is also considered unsafe for aid workers, according to one of the U.S. officials and the U.N. official, who said that a U.N. contractor near Kerem Shalom was shot at by Israeli forces on Wednesday.

An Israeli military spokesman, Maj. Nir Dinar, declined to comment on the incident, but blamed Hamas for preventing aid from entering. While Kerem Shalom was accepting aid deliveries, he said, it had been closed in previous days only after Hamas fired on the crossing three times this week, killing Israeli soldiers.

“Israel is doing everything to enable” aid to enter, Major Dinar said.

On Friday, the Israeli authorities permitted at least 157,000 liters of fuel to enter southern Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, said Mr. Anderson, the UNRWA official. Gaza’s power grid stopped functioning early in the war, leaving hospitals, bakeries, shelters and other essential facilities dependent on generators for electricity, but this week they were in growing danger of running out of fuel.

While aid deliveries rose in April and the first days of May, before the Rafah operation, aid groups said Israel was not allowing nearly enough into Gaza to stave off famine or the collapse of the health care and sanitation systems. Now that tens of thousands more civilians are fleeing Rafah to areas with little infrastructure set up to care for them and Gazan hospitals are running low on fuel, the United Nations and aid groups say the situation has become far more dire.

Julian E. Barnes, Gaya Gupta and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

Here’s why Rafah and Gaza’s southern border are strategically important in the war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly said that his government sees it as critical to seize control of a buffer strip along the southern edge of Gaza, from Israel’s border to the Mediterranean, known in Israel as the Philadelphi Corridor.

Here is a look at why Rafah has taken on outsize political significance in the war:

Why is Rafah important?

In essence, because of geography. Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza in the north in late October and, since then, has expanded its campaign southward, fighting a series of battles to dismantle the main battalions of the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades.

Military experts and Israeli officials say that the last remaining battalions are in Rafah, along with Hamas’s military leaders. In addition, Israeli officials say that most of the remaining hostages taken on Oct. 7, more than 100 people, are being held in tunnels under Rafah.

For months, Mr. Netanyahu has said his government wants to eradicate Hamas entirely, making Rafah the logical next destination in its military campaign. But Rafah, a city of around 170,000 before the war, has swollen to more than one million as Gazans driven from their homes in other parts of the enclave have taken shelter there.

Conditions there are catastrophic, with inadequate shelter, sanitation, medical care, food and fuel.

Rafah is also the base for international humanitarian work in Gaza, and it is the funnel through which most aid flows.

Hamas rocket fire from Rafah killed four Israeli soldiers on Sunday, after which Israel sent ground forces to seize the border crossing at Rafah and close it. It also closed the primary aid crossing into Israel, which has since been reopened, though the supplies passing through there are limited.

Why does the border matter to Hamas and Gaza?

At least 12 tunnels wide enough to carry trucks have been constructed under the buffer strip in recent decades, according to Ahron Bregman, a political scientist and expert in Middle East security issues at King’s College in London, who is a former Israeli military officer. The tunnels act as a conduit for commercial imports into Gaza, which are important for Gazans, given Israel’s partial blockade of the territory since 2007, and for the Egyptian and Palestinian business leaders who control the trade.

But the cross-border tunnels are also important for Hamas and have allowed it to smuggle weapons, money, building materials and personnel into Gaza over the years, Mr. Bregman said.

“This is the way they can get in and out without asking the Israelis,” Mr. Bregman said. “This is the only outlet for Hamas at the moment.” He said that unless the tunnels were blocked, Hamas could rebuild its military capacity after the war.

What is Egypt’s interest in the Rafah border?

During other regional conflicts, Egypt has opened its borders to refugees. But the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi fears that, given the chance, large numbers of Palestinian civilians would rush across the border under military pressure from Israel.

Even if they initially only intended to stay for the duration of the war, the Egyptian government is concerned that their stay could become prolonged and that they could be a destabilizing political force in Egypt and a burden on its economy. The government also sees Hamas as an enemy and opposes giving it a foothold in Egypt. Hamas began as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that was strongly linked to the government Mr. el-Sisi overthrew in 2013, and that his government has suppressed.

Egypt has warned Israel to avoid doing anything that could force Gazans across the border or threaten a landmark peace agreement signed by the two countries in 1979.

Egypt has stationed border guards along the Gaza border for decades, but it reinforced that presence after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel.