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00:00 Certainly looks that way. And you're right to say it was tense for a variety of reasons,
00:04 not least because Joe Biden feels that this has gone on long enough now. He's under political
00:09 pressure at home in the US. His own supporters are calling him to do more. And that's clearly
00:16 what he did in that conversation, much shorter than the usual conversations between the two men,
00:21 less than 30 minutes, apparently. But he had a big message to pass on. You know, he wanted specific,
00:26 concrete, measurable steps to be taken, and he wanted them to be taken in the immediate days
00:33 ahead. And already it seems that Israel has got the message, although the proof of the pudding
00:39 will be in the eating, as they say. But at the moment, as you said in the report, Israel has
00:45 decided to open the port of Ashdod, which is about 40 kilometers to the north of the Gaza Strip,
00:52 to humanitarian aid coming in by sea. And also to open, this is really important,
00:57 the Erez crossing in the north. It was for a long time the only way the Palestinians could get in
01:05 and out of the Gaza Strip. So it's a big crossing. And if the Israelis facilitate trucks going in and
01:13 out through Erez, that should make a big difference to the amount of aid getting in.
01:18 The other crossing is down in the south, Kerem Shalom, which is making itself more available
01:26 than it has been until now to Jordanian lorries coming across Israel to get into the Gaza Strip.
01:34 Those are three steps which, if applied immediately, could make a significant difference
01:40 to what is happening on the ground. It doesn't do anything, however, of course, about the fact
01:44 that World Central Kitchen, which is the biggest operator after UNRWA, the United Nations Palestinian
01:50 Refugee Organization in the Gaza Strip, has stopped operating at the moment because
01:55 its operatives, because its workers were killed. Yeah, so concrete steps, it appears like they
02:01 could make a big difference, but still the situation is so dire in Gaza that it seems
02:06 like there can't be enough aid to get into the Strip, can there?
02:12 I think that's absolutely right. If you look at the average for the number of trucks getting
02:17 into the Gaza Strip in March, it was 159 per day. It may sound like a reasonable amount,
02:24 but if you bear in mind that before the war started, around 450 to 500 trucks were going
02:31 into Gaza, and the situation then was nothing like what it is today. The Strip has been turned
02:39 into rubble. People have no food. We're talking about imminent famine, famine indeed in some
02:45 places already, according to the U.S. State Department. So the amount of aid that is needed
02:50 is colossal, and the amount that's getting in is far from colossal. So although it's good that
02:57 the Israelis have decided to move on the Erez Crossing and Ashdod and Kerem Shalom, they also
03:03 have to take steps to make sure that they facilitate the transfer of trucks from Israeli
03:10 territory and Egyptian territory into the Gaza Strip. At the moment, they've put in so many
03:16 administrative barriers into getting across, so many checks into getting across, that the queues
03:22 are enormous. I think that's one of the things that the Americans in particular will be pressing