On Thursday, the White House announced that Israel had agreed to daily four-hour pauses in fighting in northern Gaza to allow people to flee hostilities and for humanitarian aid to enter.
Yet within hours, the Israeli bombing campaign targeted Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, and Israeli tanks surrounded four other hospitals in the northern part of the besieged enclave.
With more than 11,000 Palestinians killed and more than 27,000 injured, al-Shifa Hospital has received only two shipments of vital supplies since the conflict escalated. The facility is hanging by a thread, and many other facilities are closed due to fighting and the Israeli siege of Gaza following Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7.
Meanwhile, Gaza is running out of water, many of its hospitals and other facilities are running out of fuel, and the humanitarian crisis is worsening.
Although the pauses might have offered hope that hospitals could have been restocked and other critical facilities supplied, the attacks of the past 24 hours raise questions about Israel’s intentions and those of the United States, the statement said. declared many experts. Breaks are also insufficient, they said.
The United States and Israel have made it clear that there will be no ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Unilateral move
Emanuela-Chiara Gillard, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at the University of Oxford and a research associate at Chatham House, welcomed the announcement of the humanitarian pause, but said that it had gaping gaps.
“I think any announcement of a temporary suspension of hostilities is positive given the situation on the ground and the needs,” Gillard told Al Jazeera. “Immediately, what is clearly necessary is a temporary suspension of activities, to allow humanitarian actors to transit safely, to allow people to (receive) this humanitarian aid. »
“The problem is that this is a unilateral pause rather than an agreed one between Israel, Hamas and the other parties,” she added.
This raises the question of whether Hamas and other factions will respect the pause, as the Palestinian group has not committed to anything, Gillard said.
A third-party mediator should facilitate agreement on breaks that would be respected by both parties, she added.
Gillard also said that Israel’s communication of the details of the breaks is of paramount importance, otherwise civilians who use them could land in danger.
“Breaks are not a solution”
Other analysts have said a humanitarian pause falls short of what is needed and that Israel must cease hostilities completely.
“Pauses are not a solution,” Abdel Hamid Siyam, a professor of political science and Middle East studies at Rutgers University, told Al Jazeera, saying what was needed instead was a “cease.” fire so that humanitarian aid can arrive without interruption and foreigners can leave.” the country, and perhaps negotiations can take place.”
Siyam said Israel’s past directives have failed to protect civilians.
“If it’s just a break to allow people to move from north to south, it hasn’t worked in the past and it won’t work in the future,” he said. “In four hours, people can’t come. They don’t have a car, they don’t have fuel. It will not work. »
He added that a ceasefire could, however, be considered soon.
“There is now increasing pressure on Israel to open up to a real ceasefire, a real truce of one, two or three days. I think it will happen in the next few days,” Siyam said.
Protecting Biden’s interests
Meanwhile, the United States has its own interests in pushing its ally to pause, said Sami Hamdi, managing director of International Interest, a political risk firm focused on the Middle East.
“The pause is designed to be a means by which the United States can continue to support Israel’s efforts to ethnically cleanse the northern part of Gaza, but also be able to reframe and present that support to public opinion world angry as being ‘humanitarian'” Hamdi told Al Jazeera.
US President Joe Biden has come under pressure domestically, with resignations from his State Department and a letter from more than 500 former campaign staff protesting his refusal to call for a ceasefire.
What will particularly worry him, Hamdi said, are polls suggesting he is now trailing former US President Donald Trump in several battleground states.
Growing public pressure could also soon make the current US position of rejecting a ceasefire untenable, and Biden will be forced to intervene to stop the Israeli offensive, he said. he declares.
The delay in announcing the pause also reflects growing tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv.
“Tel Aviv fears that the US push for a humanitarian pause is a ploy by which Biden hopes to lull Netanyahu into ceasefire talks, and has insisted on demanding assurances that this is not the case “, said Hamdi.
And Palestinians will be no better off with this pause, he said, being forced to choose between giving up their land to Israeli settlers or staying and dying.
For some organizations on the ground, it is too early to say whether the humanitarian pause will be useful.
“We will see when – and if – this is implemented and then we can comment,” Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s communications director, told Al Jazeera.
“We continue to call for a genuine humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip for the protection of civilians wherever they are, inside the Gaza Strip and elsewhere, in the interest of civilians and humanity,” she added.