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U.S. aid supplies destined for desperate Gaza residents sit untouched on a war-zone beach amid a long-running dispute between the U.N. and Israel over whether aid workers tasked with distributing the supplies can carry protective gear, radios and other sensitive equipment, according to several officials familiar with the situation and documents obtained by ABC News.

Israel, which strictly controls all goods entering Gaza, has refused to allow aid workers to import sophisticated protective equipment – mainly out of concern that the equipment could end up with Hamas.

The dispute reached a climax this week after UN officials threatened to halt humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza unless their demands for security equipment were met. This led to high-level private meetings in Washington this week between UN officials and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who traveled to the United States for face-to-face meetings at the Pentagon and the White House.

The UN needs “effective and reliable security protocols and equipment to control this risk throughout the Gaza Strip,” Muhannad Hadi, a senior UN official, wrote in a June 17 letter to the Israel Defense Forces.

An Israeli defense official said Gallant was personally pushing to resolve the issue and restart humanitarian assistance. In a statement, Gallant said the dialogue was ongoing “to further consider the needs on the ground and see what can be improved.”

“As I have stressed since the beginning of the war, we are waging a war against Hamas, not against the civilian population of Gaza,” Gallant said in a statement. “My policy as Secretary of Defense is to fully support humanitarian efforts and to fully cooperate with the international community to improve the situation in Gaza, and in particular in Mawasi (a town on Gaza’s southern coast) and the rest of the humanitarian zone.”

The disagreement between the UN and Israel has significantly complicated the US’s extensive efforts to get humanitarian aid to Gaza – a priority for President Joe Biden, who has been sharply criticized by his party for his extensive support for Israeli military operations in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Biden ordered the construction of a pier by the U.S. military this spring, hoping that an established maritime corridor could facilitate the transport of humanitarian supplies and supplement aid brought in through land crossings. But the pier was unlikely to have a significant impact on the worsening hunger crisis, as high seas forced it to close several times in the six weeks it was in operation.

The Pentagon announced Friday that the pier would be taken offline again on Friday as discussions continue about whether it should be reinstalled at all.

A more pressing issue than the pier’s current operational capacity, however, is distribution. Much of the 19 million pounds of aid already delivered through the pier is backed up after the United Nations World Food Programme – the sole agency tasked with distributing the aid – temporarily halted distribution following a hostage rescue operation on June 8 by Israeli forces that came dangerously close to the pier.

An official said there is an agreement on the table for the WFP to clear the aid piled up on the beach as a one-off measure, but further distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza is on hold until both sides reach a consensus.

In the June 17 letter, obtained by ABC News, the UN Security Council’s Hadi said the aid agency needed certain things before it could resume aid, including a “functioning mechanism for operational coordination with the Israeli army” that would allow “direct contact” between aid workers and Israeli army brigades.

The letter also demanded that relief workers be allowed to carry armored vehicles, spare parts, 100 sets of personal protective equipment, and sophisticated communications equipment such as satellite internet terminals and electronic SIM cards so that workers could connect to a private 4G mobile network.

“Access to this equipment will be strictly limited to individuals actively employed by United Nations national/international organizations operating in Gaza. Strict security measures will be in place to protect the system from any potential improper use and to ensure compliance with the authorities’ licensing requirements,” Hadi wrote to Israeli Major General Ghassan Alian, who attended meetings with UN officials in Washington this week to discuss the matter.

Several U.S. officials said they considered the demands reasonable and supported Israel’s permission to allow these goods into the Gaza Strip.

The UN declined to comment on the details of the letter because it was not publicly available.

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, said security conditions in the Gaza Strip were the subject of an “ongoing discussion” with Israel.

“We’re just trying to have the basic tools that will enable us to conduct an operation in a war zone,” he told ABC News.

ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Jordana Miller and Dana Savir contributed to this report.