Israel has announced a daily “tactical pause in military activity” in three areas of Gaza to enable more aid to reach people, amid growing international outrage over starvation in the territory.
The Israeli military said the move would “refute the false claim of deliberate starvation in the Gaza Strip.”
The pause – which will also see the military open up corridors to facilitate aid delivery by the UN and other agencies – has come too late for dozens of Palestinians, with officials in Gaza reporting more deaths from malnutrition and among people desperately trying to get aid from convoys and distribution sites.
And while the “tactical pause” has been welcomed by UN agencies, there are questions over whether it will be enough after months in which far too little aid has reached Gaza. Here’s what we know.
There’s long been a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In nearly two years of war that followed the Hamas attacks of October 7, the vast majority of the population of Gaza has been displaced multiple times. Tens of thousands are living in the streets or makeshift tents. As Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed, access to water and power has become more difficult.
Above all, the delivery of humanitarian food aid has been interrupted by the fighting, by difficulties in distributing aid and by restrictions ordered by the Israel military.
Before the conflict, some 3,000 aid and commercial trucks would enter Gaza every week. Afterwards, numbers have plummeted.
During a ceasefire at the beginning of this year, an average of several hundred trucks crossed daily. But that didn’t last.
The situation dramatically worsened in early March, when Israel imposed a complete blockade on Gaza in an effort to force Hamas to release the hostages it still held.
Hunger was already widespread in Gaza and in the following months only grew. Bakeries and community kitchens closed, and prices in markets soared well beyond what most Gazans could afford. The United Nations warned that malnutrition was on the rise while nearly 6,000 aid trucks sat at the border.
At the end of May the blockade was partially lifted, and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – a private venture backed by the US and Israel – opened food distribution sites in southern Gaza. But the UN and others have criticized the GHF for violating basic humanitarian principles and for not being able to meet Gazans needs. GHF says it have distributed more than 90 million meals and blamed the UN for not coordinating with them.
More than 1,000 people have been killed since May in desperate efforts to obtain food for their families, the UN says, almost all of them by the Israeli military.
In May, the UN reported that the entire population was facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with 500,000 people facing starvation and more than 70,000 children set to require treatment for acute malnutrition.
To date, 133 people have died of malnutrition in Gaza since the conflict began, Palestinian health officials say, nearly 90 of them children. The majority of those deaths have occurred since March.
Images of children dying of acute malnutrition have provoked global outrage, with the United Kingdom, France and Germany saying last week that the crisis was “man-made and avoidable.”
The tactical pauses announced by the Israeli military cover three areas along the Mediterranean coast – Al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah, and part of Gaza City – much of which were already supposed to be safe areas where the population could flee. The Israeli military published a map showing the areas where the pause would take effect but marked the rest of the Strip in red as a “dangerous combat zone.”
The pause began Sunday and will last ten hours, from 10am to 8pm local time. It will continue every day “until further notice,” the military said.
An important aspect of the Israeli announcement is that designated “secure routes” will be established from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. local time, to enable UN and humanitarian organization convoys to safely distribute food and medicine. Hundreds of trucks have been looted in recent months, often by desperate people but sometimes by criminal gangs, and getting aid safely to warehouses in Gaza will be a major challenge.
Israel carried out an airdrop of aid into Gaza on Saturday night, having previously announced it would permit foreign countries to carry out operations. Jordan and the UAE carried out one on Sunday.
But airdrops are regarded by aid agencies as expensive, inefficient and sometimes dangerous. UNICEF spokesman Joe English told CNN Sunday: “We do airdrops in places around the world but it works where there are remote communities in big, wide open spaces. That’s not the case in the Gaza Strip.”
The IDF said it had also connected the power line from Israel to the desalination plant in Gaza, which would supply about 20,000 cubic meters of water per day – 10 times the current amount.
Trucks have begun to roll towards Gaza, including convoys from Egypt and Jordan. But the volume of aid needed is huge.
Thousands of trucks are ready to enter Gaza with food and medical supplies, but the main crossing point at Kerem Shalom is already choked with truckloads of aid waiting to be distributed. There are only two crossing points into Gaza – Kerem Shalom and Zikim in the north.
UN agencies have said that security and a lack of permissions from the Israeli military frequently hold up distribution.
The UNICEF spokesman told CNN that the agency “cannot work miracles” with last-minute windows for getting aid into Gaza, because malnourished children require sustained care.
The World Food Programme welcomed the Israeli announcement, saying it has enough food in – or on its way to – the region to feed the entire population of 2.1 million people for almost three months. It said it had received assurances that quicker clearances would be granted by Israel to allow for a surge in food assistance.
The decision to enable aid to flow has already sparked dissent within the Israeli government coalition.
The far-right National Security minister Itamar Ben Gvir said he had not been consulted and the “only way to win the war and bring back the hostages is to completely stop the ‘humanitarian’ aid, conquer the entire strip, and encourage voluntary migration.”
The Hostages Families Forum said the tactical pauses should be part of a broader agreement to secure the return of the hostages. “This is what the failure of the partial deals strategy looks like,” it said, demanding the government reach “a comprehensive agreement to release all the kidnapped and end the fighting.”
