Status: 10.11.2023, 09:53 a.m.
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Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on November 9, 2023 (symbolic image). © Xinhua/Imago
Israel agrees to daily humanitarian ceasefires, according to U.S. sources. They are to be valid for four hours each in the north of the Palestinian territory.
Washington, D.C. – Israel has agreed to daily "tactical, localized pauses" in its offensive against Hamas to allow the distribution of humanitarian aid and the further evacuation of civilians as its troops move toward the center of Gaza City, Israeli and U.S. officials said Thursday.
The breaks, which are announced three hours in advance, will be declared each day for four hours in a different area or neighborhood to provide medical supplies and food to those in need, and to allow those who want to leave the fierce fighting in the northern Gaza Strip to head to the south, according to a senior Israeli official. Israel has also agreed to provide security along at least one of the two main north-south highways for several hours a day to allow evacuations.
Israel Introduces Daily Ceasefires in Gaza Strip
Since Sunday, tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them on foot and many with their hands raised as they walked past Israeli military vehicles and soldiers, have made their way south in a mass exodus. A senior Biden administration official estimated that about 250,000 civilians remain in the northern Gaza Strip, where Israeli troops are advancing block by block in street battles against Hamas militants, driving them out of the underground tunnels with airstrikes.
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The announcement was the result of weeks of efforts by the Biden administration to persuade Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza. At a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv last Friday, Netanyahu agreed in principle to the pauses, but a number of U.S. officials — including Biden himself — urged him to commit.
Israeli forces have occasionally paused their ground strikes in the north and airstrikes throughout the Gaza Strip, but U.S. officials said Thursday's agreement was an attempt to formalize and expand them — and make the commitment public so that Israelis have more pressure to comply.
The agreement came about when CIA Director William J. Burns met in Doha with his Israeli counterpart, Mossad chief David Barnea, and top officials from the Qatar government, which has brokered indirect talks between the US and Israel and Hamas over the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip.
Joe Biden, who was aboard Air Force One en route to Illinois, told reporters that he had discussed with Netanyahu the possibility of a three-day pause in hostilities to allow the release of 239 hostages, including 10 American citizens, who had been kidnapped during the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7. in which 1,400 people died. Hamas had previously asked for a five-day pause to release non-military hostages.
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Ceasefire contingent on release of hostages
There were no public signs of progress in the Doha talks on the hostages, which included a meeting between Burns and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, according to several U.S. and foreign officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss developments in humanitarian aid, the Gaza exit corridors and the hostages. Israel has stated that it will not agree to a ceasefire until all hostages have been released. Biden also said he did not believe there should be a formal ceasefire until Hamas was defeated.
For Biden, the agreement with Israel on daily, localized pauses in the offensive is a small sign of progress in a widening regional crisis in which the United States is trying to reaffirm its unconditional support for Israel's right to defend itself against Hamas with widespread and growing international criticism of the way in which it has been able to defend itself. how Israel exercises this right.
According to the Gaza Strip's health authorities, more than 10,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the past month, mostly by Israeli airstrikes. Israel's self-described "siege" of the enclave has left the remaining population in a catastrophic humanitarian situation, with food and medical supplies dwindling and no electricity, according to the United Nations and the United States.
Asked if he was "frustrated" that Netanyahu had not responded "more" to Biden's demands, the president replied: "It's taking a little longer than I had hoped." Biden confirmed that he had asked for a three-day break, saying, "In some cases, I have even asked for an even longer break."
In order for more humanitarian aid to be distributed, "a pause is more than just a few hours, in our view," the senior Biden administration official said. "A pause has a duration of a day, a few days, long enough to transport significant amounts of humanitarian goods that would otherwise not be possible and to bring more foreign nationals out of the Gaza Strip.
Biden has been under both domestic and international pressure to show that the United States has some leverage over Israel, although Netanyahu has not made it easy for him.
The U.S. leverage, "if you want to use that term, is the fact that Israel understands at the highest level" that despite the strong support of the United States to end the threat of Hamas, and Israel's absolute right to do so, "you can't just do it in a kinetic way. There must be a strong humanitarian aid component" that "visibly improves the very, very difficult situation in Gaza," the official said.
War in Israel: Political and Public Divisions in the U.S.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Israeli government denied that there was any food shortage in the Gaza Strip. This is in contrast to the daily descriptions of despair in the enclave by the United Nations and other international organizations, as well as the United States and many other countries. "The situation is intolerable. To continue it would be a farce," the head of United Nations humanitarian aid, Martin Griffiths, said on Thursday at a summit on the Gaza crisis hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.
Also on Thursday, David Satterfield, whom Biden appointed as his special envoy for humanitarian affairs in the Middle East shortly after the Hamas attack, told reporters that even if progress was made, the real need for food and medical supplies remained.
"I would like to note here that two and a half, three weeks ago, we started from scratch" in terms of truckloads of humanitarian aid that were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip as Egypt, Israel and Hamas haggled over the terms. "We've increased the amount of aid to about 100 trucks a day," Satterfield said. "We are aware that even 150 trucks a day are only the bare minimum of humanitarian aid for survival. Beyond that, much more is needed."
The difficult negotiations and the arduous process, in which both Egypt and Israel have to check every name on the exit lists, have also delayed the departure of thousands of foreign nationals from the Gaza Strip to Egypt. Progress was slowed last weekend when Hamas closed the Gaza side of the gate and demanded that more injured civilians be allowed to leave first. It was reopened on Monday, only to be closed again on Wednesday on the Egyptian side after an aid convoy and its escort came under fire from the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip.
U.S. officials estimated that about 450 of the roughly 1,000 people on a U.S. State Department list of U.S. citizens and their eligible family members had left the Gaza Strip, but pointed out that the numbers could be inaccurate because some of them do not report to American consular officials before leaving the crossing.
The rising number of civilians in Gaza and the Biden administration's support for the Israeli offensive have led to sharp political and public divisions in the United States. Massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations took place in major cities, and Jewish Americans reacted with fear and anger to what they perceive as anti-Semitism. While a relatively small number of Democratic lawmakers have called on Biden to take a stronger stand on behalf of the Palestinians vis-à-vis Israel, others in both parties have accused Biden of not being supportive enough.
Republicans call for the destruction of Hamas
All five Republican presidential candidates made little or no mention of the humanitarian crisis during Wednesday night's televised debate, calling instead for the destruction of Hamas. "Finish the job once and for all with these butchers," said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who would tell Netanyahu.
In recent weeks, the government has deliberately paid more attention to deprivation in the Gaza Strip, both publicly and, according to officials, in private conversations at all levels of the Israeli government. After rejecting the call for humanitarian pauses in the first weeks of the Israeli offensive, it has now spoken out in favor of this concept.
However, even as US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby welcomed Israel's approval of the daily breaks, praised Biden's intervention with Netanyahu and told reporters it was a "significant step" that "we want to see continue for as long as necessary," the prime minister's spokesman in Israel initially refused to confirm that there had been an agreement at all.
Asked for details, spokesman Elyon Levy said only that Israel would continue to allow a "window" for evacuations from the northern to southern Gaza Strip along a certain corridor. He declined to elaborate on the details announced by Kirby, and it was only later in the day that they were confirmed by Israeli officials at the insistence of the United States.
About the author
Karen DeYoung is co-editor and senior national security correspondent at The Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she served as bureau chief in Latin America and London, as well as a correspondent for the White House, U.S. foreign policy, and intelligence agencies.
Michael Birnbaum in New Delhi, John Hudson and Shane Harris contributed to this report.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article has been automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English by the "Washingtonpost.com" on November 10, 2023 - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to the readers of IPPEN. MEDIA portals.