In his State of the Union address, Biden urged Israel to “do its part” to increase aid to Gaza.

Aid groups and international organizations have sounded the alarm about the catastrophic levels of hunger and near-famine affecting Gaza’s 2.2 million residents, five months after Israel began its war in Gaza. The number of aid convoys entering the area has remained well below pre-war levels and humanitarian organizations say much more aid is needed to meet staggering needs across the enclave.

Hopes for an imminent deal to pause the fighting are dim after Hamas negotiators left talks in Cairo on Thursday without a breakthrough. The same day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue Israel’s ground offensive, including pushing into Rafah, in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Gazans have sought shelter from bombing and fighting.

Human rights experts have called on Israel’s main arms suppliers, the United States and Germany, to halt military aid. Last month, the Senate approved a foreign aid package that included $14.1 billion requested by the Biden administration for military aid to support Israel’s war with Hamas. The same package set aside $10 billion for humanitarian aid to civilians in conflict zones around the world, including Gaza.

Officials said U.S. plans to deliver aid to Gazans by sea would require hundreds or thousands of U.S. troops on ships just off the coast and would take 30 to 60 days to implement. The extraordinary undertaking is a sign that the Biden administration’s pleas to Israeli leaders to reduce human suffering in Gaza have had no effect. The United States has already conducted airdrops of aid, a move that some observers criticized as expensive, inaccurate and insufficient compared to the need.

Mr Biden also said Israeli authorities would announce the opening of a third border crossing into northern Gaza, where food and aid shortages have been particularly extreme. Two border crossings are open at the southern end of the strip, but the flow of aid is limited, and humanitarian groups are struggling to navigate security risks in a landscape of ruins to get supplies to the north, where hundreds of thousands of people still reside.

In his speech, the president, addressing Israeli leaders directly, said: “Humanitarian assistance should not be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”

Progressive lawmakers and activists tried to use the State of the Union opportunity to criticize Mr. Biden’s decisions on the war in Gaza. A representative from Missouri invited as a guest a Palestinian graduate student who said she had lost 35 family members. Activists staged a protest outside the White House demanding an end to US military aid to Israel.