Israel is ready for a humanitarian pause but rejects calls for a ceasefire
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects a ceasefire in Gaza as long as Hamas holds Israeli hostages, but is open to a humanitarian pause.
In a crucial breakthrough for global efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, Israel has agreed to a four-hour daily pause in fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, the White House said Thursday.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Israelis had committed to giving at least three hours’ notice of each four-hour window starting Thursday. Israel also opened a second corridor for civilians to flee areas hit by Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas after the brutal attack on border communities on October 7, connecting a coastal road to the country’s main north-south highway territory, he said.
However, Portal reported that there was still no sign of an end to the fighting or confirmation of such plans from Israel as of Thursday evening.
There have been repeated lulls in fighting for days as tens of thousands of civilians flee the northern Gaza Strip to the south. The United States and several other nations have called on Israel to allow more time for safe passage and the safe flow of humanitarian aid to the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Kirby also said the breaks could help release at least some of the roughly 240 hostages, including several Americans, held by Hamas and other militants since the war began. President Joe Biden told reporters he had asked the Israelis for a “pause longer than three days” in talks to release the hostages.
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Developments:
∎ Palestinian Islamic Jihad released a video on Thursday of two hostages – an elderly woman and a young boy – and said it was ready to release them if its conditions were met. The militant group said it was holding at least 30 hostages.
∎ An Israeli warplane killed Ibrahim Abu-Maghsib, the head of Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit, the Israeli military said. Maghsib directed and carried out numerous anti-tank missile launches against Israeli civilians and soldiers, the military said.
∎ Deputy Secretary of State Barbara Leaf told a House panel that the number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, which the Health Ministry said topped 10,800 on Thursday, could be even higher. It’s “very possible,” she said.
∎ An estimated 250,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and Lebanon, where there were clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters.
∎ Western and Arab officials met in Paris on Thursday to discuss ways to provide more aid to civilians in Gaza. The talks come a day after the Group of Seven democracies called for unhindered supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel as well as humanitarian pauses in fighting.
Israeli officials said last week they had divided the Gaza Strip in half, and the stark reality of what that means is becoming increasingly clear for Palestinians still in the north.
David Satterfield, the U.N. humanitarian envoy, said conditions in southern and central Gaza had improved as the influx of aid trucks increased recently to an average of about 100 a day. But there is no sign that aid is reaching the north, where much of Israel’s bombing is concentrated. Israel has called on Palestinians to move to safe zones in the south, and tens of thousands are now doing so every day.
Satterfield also said Thursday that the international community had provided fuel to restart water desalination plants in the south and that two pipelines delivering clean drinking water from Israel to the south were back in operation.
“We see in the coming days the possibility of meeting the minimum requirements of the population in the south,” he said.
The North, where hundreds of thousands still live, does not receive these benefits, although Satterfield said arrangements are being made to move wounded people south.
At least 13 people were killed in an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian health authorities said. This brings the number of Palestinians who have died in clashes with Israeli forces or settlers in the enclave since the start of the war to over 170.
The attack, which included a drone strike, left at least 10 militants dead and more than 20 Palestinians arrested, according to the Israeli military. Hamas said nine of its fighters died.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said one of its medics was injured when Israeli forces targeting an ambulance shot him in the back.
The Palestinian Authority is ready to govern the Gaza Strip after the war if the United States commits to a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a top Palestine Liberation Organization official told the New York Times. Hussein al-Sheikh, the PLO’s secretary general, said he told Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week that the Palestinian Authority was seeking a comprehensive political agreement that would include the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Al-Sheikh said Palestinian leaders believe the Biden administration has the ability to force Israel to comply.
U.S. officials say the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, must play a central role in Gaza following the destruction of Hamas. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007.
Al-Sheikh warned that without a comprehensive US initiative after the war, Gaza would be “fertile ground for radicalism”.
Negotiators were moving closer to a possible agreement on a three-day ceasefire in return for the release of about a dozen hostages held by Hamas, two Egyptian officials, a U.N. official and a Western diplomat told the Associated Press. The deal would also allow fuel to be imported into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the war began.
The militants are believed to be holding about 240 hostages, most of them Israelis. They were seized on October 7 as militants crossed the Gaza border and rampaged through Israeli communities, killing 1,400 people and wounding thousands more. This sparked an Israeli push to dismantle Hamas, with the resulting attacks blamed for more than 10,800 Palestinian deaths, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israeli attacks rocked Gaza City on Thursday as ground troops clashed with Hamas militants near a hospital where Israelis said Palestinian civilians were being used as “human shields.” They exploited hospitals, ambulances, clinics, mosques and schools to attack militants and to hide weapons. Israeli forces approached Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, where tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians are reportedly taking refuge along with patients.
A militant captured by Israel reportedly said that ambulances were used to transport “important people” such as Hamas commanders because “the Jews don’t attack ambulances,” according to a Times of Israel translation.
“Most senior Hamas political and military officials are hiding in the hospitals, especially Shifa Hospital,” the Israeli military said in a statement. “This is another example of how the terrorist organization Hamas exploits civilian infrastructure and uses civilians as human shields.”
The arrest of six prominent Palestinian leaders on their way to an anti-war demonstration in Israel has led to accusations that the Israeli government is trying to suppress dissent.
Among those arrested were three former MPs: Mohammed Barakeh, Hanin Zoabi and Sami Abou Shahadeh.
The Adalah organization, which advocates for Palestinian rights in Israel, said Barakeh was illegally arrested after being pursued by police. Barakeh said the group he led had planned a protest with fewer than 50 participants and did not need permission.
His detention, Adalah said, was an example of a policy “aimed at silencing all dissent and suppressing the freedom of protest of Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
With around 20% of Israel’s 9.7 million inhabitants, Arabs represent the country’s largest minority.
Police said in a statement that the protest in the northern city of Nazareth “could incite and harm the well-being of the public.” Police recently banned anti-war protests.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz marked the 85th anniversary of the Nazi-fueled Kristallnacht riots that left more than 100 Jews dead by vowing on Thursday to protect German Jews from a “shameful” rise in anti-Semitism. During “Kristallnacht,” which later became known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” numerous synagogues were burned down, hundreds of Jewish businesses were destroyed, and houses were looted.
Germany, like many other countries, has experienced an increase in anti-Semitic violence since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Scholz attended a memorial service at Berlin’s Beth Zion Synagogue, which was attacked in a failed arson attack last month. Germany’s “never again” promise after World War II means the country must protect Jewish institutions and communities, he said.
“100 years ago this evening the Hitler Putsch began in Munich,” Scholz wrote on social media. “Our lesson: We must protect and defend our democracy against anyone who seeks to undermine it. This applies to each and every one of us and especially these days.”
Contribution: The Associated Press