The United States announced Thursday that Israel has agreed to allow daily four-hour breaks in attacks on Gaza. This agreement, announced by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, coincides with talks that Israel, the United States and Qatar are holding in Doha, the capital of this Gulf state. These negotiations have, for now, failed to achieve their goal of freeing some of the more than 240 hostages captured by Hamas on October 7. With this agreement on humanitarian pauses, Israel is – partially – giving in to international pressure, even if there is no official ceasefire. The aim is to allow humanitarian access and allow residents of the Palestinian enclave to move south to escape bombings.
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“The fighting continues and without the release of our hostages there will be no ceasefire. Israel is allowing safe transit corridors from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south, as 50,000 Gazans did yesterday (Wednesday), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office clarified in a statement. Both Israel and its key ally believe a ceasefire would give Hamas breathing room. For this reason, US President Joe Biden, similar to Netanyahu, recognized that there is “no possibility” for a cessation of hostilities in the short term.
According to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave, the agreement – if fulfilled – would represent the first reprieve from a month of Israeli bombings that have killed more than 10,800 people in Gaza. The White House, which announced the initiative, called the decision “a step in the right direction.” But Biden himself acknowledged that the Israeli concession falls short of his demands, namely a pause of more than three days to allow the release of hostages held by Hamas.
It was “a particularly serious mistake” to accept these brackets without releasing all the abductees, criticized the Minister of National Security, the Ultra Itamar Ben-Gvir, on the social network X (formerly Twitter). These breaks will be announced three hours before the start. For the transfer of people, according to the House of Representatives, Israel will allow two humanitarian corridors between the north and south of the Gaza Strip, one on the coast and another that has already been operating for a few hours inland in recent days. White. While the pauses are in effect, Israeli forces will not conduct any operations in Gaza, Kirby said. “We want these pauses to remain in place for as long as humanitarian assistance is needed,” the US spokesman added.
The high-level meeting in the Qatari capital came after local government mediators met with Hamas representatives on Wednesday, Portal reports. A delegation from the Islamist movement led by Ismail Haniya and Khaled Mashal traveled to Cairo. Egypt continues not to accept the departure of refugees from the Gaza Strip, apart from a few citizens with dual passports and a few dozen wounded. They do this through the Rafah border crossing, the only one that does not border Israel and which is also crucial to resolving the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as it allows the arrival of aid. According to Portal, 695 foreigners and a dozen injured people left the Gaza Strip during Thursday.
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The heads of the Mossad, David Barnea, and the CIA, William Burns, as well as Israeli and American foreign spy agencies met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al Thani to advance the terms of the pact. Before the White House’s announcement, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog tried to contain the possible optimism that the information revealed by various sources might generate. “There is no real proposal from Hamas on this issue,” he told American broadcaster NBC.
Biden is applying pressure
The announcement comes after a series of intensive diplomatic contacts and negotiations between the United States and Israel, involving President Biden himself. The White House tenant had admitted that he had specifically asked for the green light for these relief measures in his last known direct conversation with Netanyahu last Monday. Washington’s official line is optimistic. “It is an excellent step that will, among other things, help reduce the number of civilian casualties,” Kirby described it, also emphasizing American pressure to withdraw this gesture from Israel.
“The breaks arise after the President’s personal contact with the Prime Minister and various other levels within the government. This, of course, includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has just completed another tour of the region, and discussions that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has had with his counterparts. Also Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. “It is undeniable that these decisions are the result of this government’s enormous commitment to ensuring that humanitarian aid arrives and people can leave safely,” the senior official stressed.
But the deferrals to which Israel has agreed fall far short of what Biden had in mind. The President himself acknowledged this in brief statements to the press that accompanied him on a trip to the state of Illinois. He noted that he had asked Netanyahu for “an extended break of three days.” Neither he nor the White House said what duration he had in mind. For the first time since the crisis began, Biden hinted at some irritation with the allied country’s prime minister. Asked if he was frustrated in his negotiations with Netanyahu, he indicated that the pause announcement “took longer than I expected.”
In a thread on But Israel also has “an obligation to distinguish between terrorists and civilians and to strictly adhere to international law.”
Biden hailed the pauses as “a step in the right direction” and stressed: “You have my word: I will continue to defend the safety of civilians and focus on increasing aid to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza.”
For weeks, I have been speaking with Israeli leaders about the importance of humanitarian pauses in fighting to bring civilians to safety, support the release of hostages, and increase the flow of food, water and medicine to Gaza.
Here’s the latest on these conversations:
–President Biden (@POTUS) November 9, 2023
Israeli military spokesmen emphasized that only “tactical pauses” would be made at certain locations and times in the Gaza Strip to allow the displaced population to escape the bombings if they were not considered targets of the attacks wool.
Qatar, host country to some Hamas leaders, has been a necessary pivot for possible de-escalation since the conflict began. Through their mediation, four Israeli women who were kidnapped by the fundamentalist militia on October 7th have already been released. On that day, the darkest in the country’s 75-year history and the trigger for the current war, hundreds of armed militiamen from Gaza entered Israeli territory and killed about 1,400 people. The military response on land, sea and air resulted in the deaths of more than 10,800 Gazans, as well as 39 members of the invading forces. Among those who lost their lives in the Mediterranean enclave are 99 employees of the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Although Israel assures that it has no plans to remain in Gaza after the war, there are images intended to symbolize the future of the conflict. Members of his army bragged about the conquest of the Gaza Strip in a ceremony on the Palestinian enclave’s beach that included raising the flag.
Meanwhile, the occupied West Bank and the border with Lebanon continue to be a source of violence with the constant exchange of projectiles between Israel and the Shiite guerrilla Hezbollah. In the West Bank city of Jenin alone, fifteen Palestinians were killed this Thursday in an Israeli military operation that also included air and ground operations.
Also this Thursday, a drone crashed into a school in the Israeli city of Eilat on the Red Sea coast before a missile heading for the same area was intercepted by Israeli anti-aircraft systems. The Houthi rebels had claimed previous such attacks from Yemen last month.
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