JERUSALEM – The first shipment of fuel arrived in Gaza on Friday after Israel’s war cabinet gave in to diplomatic pressure to allow diesel back into the war-torn Palestinian territory, where aid programs have been halted due to critical shortages.

As fighting rages for six weeks between Israel and the Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations has warned that hospitals, drinking water and sewage facilities are grinding to a halt as fuel reserves run out.

Tzachi Hanegbi, national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel’s War Cabinet agreed to “provide two tankers of fuel per day” after a “special request” from Washington.

Hanegbi said the fuel would be used to “operate the sewage and water systems of UNRWA,” the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

“We made this decision to prevent the spread of epidemics. We don’t need epidemics that harm civilians or our fighters. If there are epidemics, the fighting will stop,” he said.

Late Friday, a Palestinian border official said the first shipment of 17,000 liters of fuel arrived through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

The official said it was “for the telecommunications company” Paltel to ease a Gaza-wide communications blackout after the company ran out of fuel on Thursday.

A senior US official said Washington had put great pressure on Israel to ease its fuel blockade and avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

Under the deal, about 70,000 liters would enter the country every day, the U.S. official said, but U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Friday the territory needed 200,000 liters a day.

500 trucks

According to Israel, Israel stopped all fuel deliveries to Gaza after October 7, when Hamas militants stormed across the border and killed 1,200 people – mostly civilians.

In retaliation, Israel launched bombings and a ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where the Islamist movement said 12,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed.

This week Israel allowed a first delivery for UNRWA’s vans, but the agency said the drivers did not have enough fuel to reach the border and refill their tanks.

Elad Goren, spokesman for COGAT, the Israel Defense Ministry’s agency responsible for Palestinian civil affairs, accused Hamas of “exaggerating fuel shortages, especially in hospitals.”

Earlier this week, UNRWA said 70 percent of Gaza’s 2.4 million people no longer had access to clean water in southern Gaza, where raw sewage began flowing into the streets because pumps were turned off.

UNRWA’s Gaza director, Thomas White, said aid operations were being “deprived of resources to help people in need.”

But Goren said Israel would not restrict aid deliveries. “We get a list from the United Nations. We don’t limit the number. If they give us a list of 500 trucks tomorrow, 500 trucks will run,” he said.