Israel says it will reduce fighting in southern Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Ben Ben-Gvir During the Fourth Israeli-Salt War: Israel’s View of the Gaza Regime and Security in the Middle East
The military announced on Sunday a Humanitarian Pause in a social media post, and Mr. Ben-Gvir immediately attacked it as a crazy and delusional approach, and added that the evil person who decided on it must not continue in his job.
A far-right finance minister and a far-right man have threatened to bring down the Netanyahu government if he agrees to a cease-fire deal with Hamas.
Mr. Eisenkot said that Mr. Ben-Gvir was always present in the war cabinet even though he is not a member.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 this weekend, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and now a centrist politician who quit the emergency wartime government along with his party leader, Benny Gantz, last week, accused Mr. Netanyahu of putting his political needs before those of national security.
More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war so far, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Israelis are increasingly questioning where the war goes from here and when it will end. The cost for both sides is rising all the time. At least 10 Israeli soldiers were killed in combat this weekend and an 11th died of wounds sustained days earlier.
Israel has portrayed Rafah as a last bastion of Hamas’s organized battalions and the military operation there as the final 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.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague hangs over Netanyahu and Gallant with the threat of arrest on war crimes accusations. They were accused of using starvation as a weapon.
An anonymous government official on Sunday said that Mr. Netanyahu found the humanitarian pause unacceptable when he heard about it. The prime minister was later assured, the statement added, that there was no change in the military’s plans regarding the fighting in Rafah, the southern Gaza city near the corridor that has been the focus of recent operations.
The military’s move coincided with the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha and uncertainty over the fate of an Israeli proposal for a cease-fire with Hamas, which includes an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. The proposal was endorsed by the UN Security Council and backed by the Biden administration.
More than 1,000 trucks have been waiting on the Gazan side for months because they were not inspected by Israel, meaning the move was meant to clear up that mess.
The Israeli Military Plan for a Mid-Area Gaza Relief Corridor Was Not Revealed by Prime Minister Amos Harel
Harel said that he has a mask on every time. “For the Americans, he needs to show he is doing more to get aid in. He can say he doesn’t know, and then go for plausible deniability.
“It’s classic Bibi,” said Amos Harel, the military affairs analyst for the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. He said the military commanders did not update him on the exact timing of the change, but like other experts, he was not surprised at all.
The new policy surrounding the humanitarian corridor — where the military said it would pause fighting from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. daily — went into effect on Saturday, according to military officials. Mr Netanyahu said he did not know about the plans until Sunday morning.
The odd arrangement of messaging became stranger after the government said that Netanyahu only heard about the military plan from news reports.
The Israeli military said on Monday that it had paused operations during daylight hours in parts of southern Gaza, as a new policy announced a day earlier appeared to take hold amid cautious hopes that it would allow more aid to reach residents of the beleaguered territory.
The policy applies only to a seven-mile stretch of road in southern Gaza, and not to areas in central Gaza to which hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled since the Rafah invasion began.
Though aid groups had stockpiled food and other supplies before the Israeli push into Rafah, six weeks of fighting there have prompted concerns about hunger in southern Gaza, even as fears of a famine ebbed in the territory’s north.
Israel regularly says that there are no limits on the amount of aid it allows to enter Gaza and blames disorganized aid groups — as well as theft by Hamas — for the failure to move food from Israeli to Palestinian control.
According to the spokesman of the branch of the Israeli defense ministry that coordinates with aid groups, they think the main problem is logistical.
Scott Anderson, deputy Gaza director for UNRWA, the main UN agency for Palestinians, said that before Rafah, there was always free access to Kerem Shalom. He said that the area is difficult to reach because of frequent gunfire and blasts, as well as three times recently when aid trucks came within 100 yards of fighting.
Mr. Anderson wanted to be able to come and go, and the trucks to come and go, without having to coordinate with the I.D.F.
The Fate of Rafah — a warning for the next generation of Hamas fighters in the coming era of war
The military claimed on Monday that it had killed more than 500 enemy fighters in the city of Rafah, which resulted in a reduction in the capacity of two Hamas battalions. The remaining two battalions were operating at a “medium level,” the military said.
We flooded the place with ready-to- eat food. We need to keep moving forward, but this progress needs to be sustained.
