Why is only limited aid getting to Palestinians inside Gaza?

JERUSALEM (AP) — The United States said Tuesday it wouldn't punish Israel over the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. But it urged Israel to increase the flow of aid into the besieged territory.

The White House last month gave Israel 30 days to improve conditions or risk losing military support. As the deadline expired, leading international aid groups said that Israel had fallen far short, with the humanitarian situation in Gaza the worst it has been since the war erupted.

Late Tuesday, the U.S. State Department said that Israel has made limited progress and that it wouldn't take any punitive action against its close ally. However, it called for more steps.

“We are not giving Israel a pass,” said Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman. “We want to see the totality of the humanitarian situation improve.”

After 13 months of war, aid groups accuse the Israeli military of hindering and even blocking shipments in Gaza. Almost the entire population of around 2.3 million Palestinians is relying on international aid for survival, and food security experts and rights groups caution that famine may already be underway in hard-hit north Gaza.

“It’s really frustrating because by almost every objective metric, all agencies say that the humanitarian situation has gotten worse in that time frame that the U.S. has specified,” Aseel Baidoun, a senior manager of the aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians, said on Wednesday. “Even though we have provided all the evidence that there is a risk of famine ... still the U.S. miraculously finds Israel not violating the humanitarian aid law.”

Israel, which controls all crossings...