The announcement comes as national security spokesman Jake Sullivan visits the region amid growing international isolation.
Israeli authorities announced the temporary reopening of the Karem Abu Salem crossing with Gaza, called Kerem Shalom by Israel, acquiescing to US calls to allow more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip as fighting continues.
In a statement Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the country’s cabinet approved the “temporary” measure, which U.S. officials hailed as a positive step.
“The cabinet decision determines that only humanitarian aid arriving from Egypt will be transferred to the Gaza Strip in this way,” the statement said.
For the past two months, the Rafah crossing with Egypt has been the only point of entry into the Gaza Strip, where a trickle of aid has done little to resolve a humanitarian crisis caused by an Israeli attack that killed more than 18,000 people and displaced 80 people. percent of all residents.
As Israel’s campaign in Gaza continues, the United Nations and other world bodies have warned of serious shortages of food, clean water and medicine.
U.N. agencies say that as the bombing continues, it has become impossible to distribute aid outside Rafah, where the population has reached around one million and hundreds of thousands of displaced people are coming. regions further north.
The decision comes a day after White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Israeli officials to discuss the timing and style of Israeli military operations in Gaza, as Israel and its U.S. ally endure a growing international pressure to end the fighting.
“This is an important concession,” the Israelis would say, “because from the start of this war, Israel declared that there would be no more contact, no more ties between Gaza and Israel, whereas now they must open the passage of Kerem Shalom. for goods under US pressure so that Israel can fulfill its agreement to (let in) 200 aid trucks per day,” Tel Aviv Tribune’s Bernard Smith reported from Tel Aviv.
“And as an indication, before the war started, there were 500 trucks a day going to Gaza, when there was much less need for emergency aid. »
“President (Joe) Biden raised this issue in recent phone calls with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and it was an important topic of discussion during my visit to Israel over the past two days,” Sullivan said in a statement. statement Friday, calling the opening a “significant step.”
Sullivan also met Friday with President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, to discuss the future of the Palestinian Authority and the growing violence against Palestinians from Israeli settlers.
The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that Abbas told Sullivan that the United States must “intervene to force Israel to end its aggression against our people in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem.”
The United States has suggested that the PA could take control of the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the war between Israel and Hamas, but Abbas and the PA are very unpopular among the Palestinian population because of their policy of coordination security with Israel.
Many Palestinians see this policy as a form of complicity with the Israeli occupation.
Reporting from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, Tel Aviv Tribune correspondent Charles Stratford also noted that many Palestinians have little confidence in the words of US officials.
“You talk to any Palestinian on the ground here and there is absolutely no confidence in any kind of rhetoric, any kind of statement, that comes from the American administration, whether it’s Jake Sullivan or Joe Biden. There is a very deep distrust,” Stratford said.