The announcement came seemingly out of nowhere on Sunday when it was first published through the Israeli military’s English and Arabic channels: the army would “pause” its fighting during the day along a major humanitarian aid corridor in the southern Gaza until further notice.
Amid some immediate confusion about the scope of the pause, a clarification quickly followed, this time in Hebrew and apparently for internal consumption. The change does not mean a cessation of fighting in the southern Gaza Strip, the statement said, adding that the campaign in the southernmost city of Rafah continues. Military officials said the daily pauses were intended solely to facilitate increased distribution of food aid in Gaza, where international organizations have issued dire warnings about famine.
The strange choreography of the messages became even stranger when the government suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only learned of the military plan through press reports and signaled his disapproval.
But analysts said it was likely that the prime minister was not only aware of the plan but also of the messaging rollout, with each announcement tailored to different audiences. The turbulent statements appeared to reflect the competing pressures Netanyahu faces as he juggles the demands of the Biden administration and elsewhere around the world with those of his own hardline government. His far-right coalition partners oppose any concessions in Gaza and he depends on their support to remain in power.
The new policy around the humanitarian corridor, where the military said it would suspend fighting from 8am to 7pm daily, went into effect on Saturday, according to military officials. But Netanyahu suggested that he did not learn of the plans until Sunday morning.
“It’s classic Bibi,” said Amos Harel, a military affairs analyst for the leftist newspaper Haaretz, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. Like other experts, he said it was unlikely that the announcement would have come as a complete surprise to him, even if military commanders did not inform him of the exact timing of what they called a tactical change.
“He has a mask for every occasion,” Harel said in an interview. “For the Americans, you need to show that you are doing more to get aid to them. For the Israeli public you can say ‘I didn’t know that’ and opt for plausible deniability.”
A statement issued Sunday by an unnamed government official, whose name and title could not be published, per protocol, said that when Netanyahu learned of the humanitarian pause, he found it unacceptable. The prime minister was later assured, the statement added, that there were no changes to military plans regarding the fighting in Rafah, the southern Gaza city near the corridor that has been the focus of recent operations.
Shani Sasson, a spokesperson for Cogat, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories and liaises with international organizations, said the move was aimed at helping clear a backlog of more than 1,000 trucks that had already been inspected by Israel and were waiting. on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing.
“We ask aid organizations to come collect aid and distribute it,” Sasson said. “It’s up to them.”
The military measure coincided with the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha and uncertainty over the fate of an Israeli ceasefire proposal with Hamas, which includes an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. The officials said Hamas had demanded some unworkable changes to the proposal that was endorsed by the Biden administration and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.
The “tactical pause” also comes as Israel awaits another international report due this month on food insecurity in Gaza. An earlier report from March warned that half of Gaza’s population faced “catastrophic” food insecurity and imminent famine.
Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, also face the threat of being arrested, charged with war crimes, by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. They have been accused of using hunger as a weapon of war.
Israel has presented Rafah as the last stronghold of organized Hamas battalions and the military operation there as the last major step in the war. The military has now gained control of the corridor along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, long a main conduit for weapons smuggling into the territory.
Israelis are increasingly wondering where the war is headed from now on and when it will end. The cost to both parties increases all the time. At least 10 Israeli soldiers died in combat this weekend and 11 died from wounds suffered days earlier.
Around 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7 that sparked the war, and in total, more than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat since then.
So far, more than 37,000 Palestinians have died in the war, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 this weekend, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and now a centrist politician who last week resigned from the wartime emergency government along with his party leader Benny Gantz, accused Netanyahu of of putting their political needs before their political needs. those of national security.
Eisenkot said the influence of one of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security, was a constant presence in discussions in the war cabinet, even though Ben-Gvir is is not a member of that decision-making body.
Ben-Gvir and far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have been openly critical of the military leadership during the war and have also vowed to overthrow Netanyahu’s government if it agrees to a ceasefire deal before Hamas is completely destroyed. – a goal that many experts say is unattainable.
Unsurprisingly, Ben-Gvir was quick on Sunday to attack the military’s announcement of the humanitarian pause in a social media post, denouncing it as a “crazy and delusional approach” and adding that “the evil fool who decided to do it” “he must not continue in his position.”
Ben-Gvir did not specify who he was referring to.
Gabby Sobelman contributed with reports.
