SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Israeli strikes in Gaza continue despite its military pulling back troops under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that took effect last week. Today, an attack killed a Palestinian family of 11, including seven children and three women. Israel also committed under the ceasefire to dramatically increase the amount of aid it allows in. Aid groups say that isn't happening. NPR's Jane Arraf joins us now. Jane, thanks for being with us.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: What's happened in this attack, and what's happening with the ceasefire?
ARRAF: Well, Gaza Civil Defense authorities say this was one of the many families returning to inspect the ruins of their home in Gaza City when Israeli forces fired a tank round at their minibus. The Israeli military said that the family was behind the yellow line where its troops are positioned and that they fired on it because they were an imminent threat. That yellow line, Scott, is visible on the map, we have to note, but not so much to families on the ground. And the ceasefire itself, it's still holding overall, but Israel still controls more than 50% of Gaza territory. It says it plans to mark that yellow line with a physical barrier.
SIMON: Israel also pledged to allow 600 aid trucks per day into Gaza. Has that happened?
ARRAF: It hasn't. The U.N. says that 600 is the bare minimum to keep people from starving, to provide shelter and repair infrastructure in what is a totally devastated territory. Israel is still keeping shut one of those main border crossings, Rafah, which is Egypt's border crossing with Gaza. And that's where many hundreds of trucks have been waiting for months to be allowed in. It has been allowing aid through two other crossings. But there, it's a bit of a numbers game because Israel refers to all trucks as aid trucks.
So just to give you an example, two days ago, the figures show 950 trucks entered Gaza. But a Trump administration official shed some light on that. It appears that only about 10% of that figure were U.N. or international aid organizations, and most of the rest were commercial imports. Those are imports from Israel, by the way.
SIMON: And the United Nations has urged Israel to allow the aid organization with which it partners to continue to send aid into Gaza. Help us understand that.
ARRAF: Yeah. That's a huge issue which hasn't received a lot of attention. The U.N. doesn't need to be registered, but international nongovernmental organizations, INGOs, do. And Israel this year said it would shut down aid groups that didn't reregister under the new criteria, so it's begun that process. This criteria has a committee that determines whether the organizations have delegitimized Israel through statements or anything else. Here's Ivan Karakashian, the communications manager at the Norwegian Refugee Council in Jerusalem.
IVAN KARAKASHIAN: We quickly realized that this wasn't - the intent behind the process wasn't to facilitate the reregistration of INGOs, of humanitarian INGOs, but rather to find a way to deregister us - right? - and to remove our ability to operate within the occupied Palestinian territory.
ARRAF: He says his organization is in the process of trying to reregister, and that also applies to some of the biggest U.S. aid groups. If they don't, if they can't, that means they're shut down.
SIMON: Jane, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, was the biggest provider of aid in Gaza for decades before Israel banned staff and shipments there. Is that expected to change?
ARRAF: Israel hasn't given any indication it's lifting that ban. It had claimed - without evidence - that hundreds of UNRWA staff are Hamas. And the U.S. also cut funding to UNRWA. Some of that funding, but not all of it, was made up by other countries. I spoke with UNRWA's head of external relations, Tamara Alrifai, and here's what she had to say.
TAMARA ALRIFAI: We still are trying to work our way back into discussions with the U.S. You know how they say it takes a village? It takes an international community to want the situation in Gaza, in the occupied Palestinian territory and in the region to be stable.
ARRAF: UNRWA has been banned by Israel from sending in supplies since March. It has warehouses in Egypt and here in Jordan full of food that UNRWA says could feed the entire population of Gaza for three months.
SIMON: NPR's Jane Arraf. Thanks so much.
ARRAF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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