By Al-Fassel | 2023-12-08

The city of al-Arish, provincial capital of Egypt's North Sinai province, has become "the new humanitarian hub for getting the humanitarian pipeline into Gaza," USAID director Samantha Power said following a recent visit.

As such, it plays a critical role and needs to be expanded, Power said during a series of interviews after a Tuesday (December 5) visit, where she pledged more than $21 million in new humanitarian assistance on behalf of USAID.

During the Israel-Hamas war, "Egypt emerged as a vital regional actor, an essential mediator, and a key access point for humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

"Looking forward, Egypt's role is likely to grow," CSIS said, as Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry traveled to Washington on Thursday to meet with government officials and take part in an event with CSIS.

"As the world seeks to move beyond the immediate conflict, Egypt will be a vital conduit for reconstruction assistance and is likely to be a key guarantor of whatever political arrangement emerges in Gaza," CSIS said.

"Egypt has built a kind of humanitarian hub over the last month to ensure that the maximum amount of humanitarian supplies get into Gaza," Power said during a Wednesday interview with Sky News Arabia.

"Most of the population in Gaza is entirely dependent, right now, on humanitarian aid," she said.

"So I visited the hub in al-Arish to look at what we can do together to support the Egyptians, and to support our humanitarian partners, to get far more food, medicine, shelter, psychosocial support in to people who are suffering so much inside Gaza."

This effort requires cooperation, she said, "not only from the Egyptians, who are housing all of these supplies, but also from Israel, being prepared to allow humanitarians to move more freely after inspection into Gaza."

To maintain and increase the flow of international aid crossing into Gaza via the Rafah crossing, "this hub in Egypt needs to be expanded," Power said.

'Everything in our power'

"Donors, countries that have resources, need to be providing, actually, more humanitarian aid, more money," Power said, calling on "every country to do more."

"And then on the Israeli side, there needs to be much faster inspection. The trucks need to be able to move much more quickly into Gaza. And the security of the people who are providing this assistance needs to be guaranteed."

In a Wednesday interview with CNBC, Power noted that commercial traffic needs access to Gaza as well as humanitarian aid traffic so that commerce can resume as part of a longer-term solution to the crisis.

"But also we need to accelerate the flow-in" of aid, she said. "I saw hundreds of trucks near the Rafah crossing yesterday, each of those trucks has in it blankets, medicines, things that are vitally needed."

"Those trucks need to be in Gaza and not in Egypt, but there's a big backlog," she said. "And so that's what USAID is doing -- is working with Israelis, the Egyptians and others to accelerate."

Speaking Tuesday at al-Arish airport, Power stressed that "the United States is now doing everything in our power to advance that progress."

But this will require three things, she said: protecting Palestinian civilians, continuing the scale up of life-saving humanitarian aid and increasing "the resources, the money, the supplies that we are providing for innocent civilians."

"Since the beginning of the conflict, President [Joe] Biden and officials across his administration have been working to clear diplomatic hurdles, to navigate complex logistics, and to work through issues that pop up daily to get as much aid as possible into Gaza," Power said.

"It will be imperative for Israel to reopen access to commercial goods, to expand the humanitarian community's response and restore basic services -- particularly additional water and fuel supply," she said.

"We are very, very eager to see another pause in place so that more humanitarian aid can flow so that more hostages can be released. And the United States is working actively for that," Power said.

"The challenge right now is that many of the Hamas leaders who are behind murder and kidnapping of Israelis are still at large. And so again, a humanitarian pause is vital, but it's also vital that Hamas not be able to do again what it did on October 7."

On November 28, the United States sent three military aircraft carrying more than 27 tons of United Nations (UN) supplies to Egypt during a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas.

This aid is in addition to more than 500,000 pounds of US food assistance delivered the previous week.

'Promising signs' of aid access

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths on Thursday said he saw promising signs that a major crossing from Israel into Gaza might be opened soon to allow in aid, AFP reported.

The Kerem Shalom checkpoint was responsible for 60% of goods getting into Gaza before October 7 and the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Griffiths said that in recent days there had been signs that Israel and Egypt have become much more open to the idea of gradually reopening Kerem Shalom.

The crossing sits on the triple border of Israel, Gaza and Egypt.

"We're still negotiating, and with some promising signs at the moment" that access through Kerem Shalom would soon be possible, Griffiths said.

But Israel later told AFP that it would allow only aid truck inspections there, before directing supplies towards the Rafah crossing, between Egypt and Gaza.

"We will allow a security check of humanitarian aid trucks at the Kerem Shalom crossing, but not trucks crossing to Gaza," said a spokesman for the Israeli defense ministry body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, COGAT.

Griffiths added that there also were discussions on the possibility of driving aid to Gaza from Jordan, via the Allenby Bridge crossing into the West Bank.

A representative in Jordan was "already lining up the potential deliveries of aid by land... from Jordan over the Allenby Bridge, straight to Kerem Shalom," he said.