The Israeli military announced it will stop daily daytime fighting until further notice along an aid route in southern Gaza
The Israeli army announced this Sunday that it would carry out a ‘tactical pause’ in its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip to allow aid to pass through. The Israeli armed forces warned that the pauses will take place every day until further notice in the Rafah area from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.local time.
‘Tactical pause’ aims to allow aid trucks to reach nearby Kerem Shalom border crossingcontrolled by Israel and the main entry point for aid, and move safely to the Salah a-Din highway, the main north-south highway, to distribute supplies to other areas of Gaza, the army reported. This temporary cessation of fighting is being coordinated with the UN and international aid agencies.
The border crossing has been bottlenecked since Israeli ground troops moved into Rafah in early May.
The UN has repeatedly reported that Gaza is suffering a humanitarian crisis, with widespread hunger and hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine.
Israel has come under increasing pressure to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
From May 6 to June 6, the UN received an average of 68 trucks of aid a day, according to figures from the UN humanitarian office, known as OCHA. This figure is down from the 168 trucks a day received in April and is well below the 500 trucks a day that aid groups say are needed.
Humanitarian needs have only increased, as More than a million Palestinians have gathered in southern and central Gaza.
FORCES, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza, says there are no restrictions on the entry of trucks and that more than 8,600, both aid and commercial, entered Gaza from all crossings from May 2 to June 13, an average of 201 a day. But much of that aid has accumulated at crossings and has not reached its final destination.
UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of helping Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, has published that less than a third of Gaza’s health centers are operational and that more than 50,000 children need treatment for acute malnutrition. Israel has blamed the UN for not allowing aid to flow to Gaza, while the UN denies this accusation: Claims that fighting between Israel and Hamas often makes it too dangerous for UN trucks inside Gaza to travel to Kerem Shalom, which is right next to the border with Israel. Additionally, according to the UN, the pace of deliveries has slowed because the Israeli military must authorize drivers to travel to the site, a system that Israel says was designed for the safety of drivers. Due to the lack of security, in some cases, aid trucks have been looted by crowds while traveling on Gaza roads.
The new provision aims to reduce the need to coordinate deliveries by providing an uninterrupted 11-hour window each day for trucks to enter and exit the crossing. It remains unclear whether the military would provide security to protect aid trucks as they travel on the road.
