Shani Sasson, a spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories and liaises with international organisations, said the move was meant to help clear a backlog of more than 1000 trucks that had already been inspected by Israel and were waiting on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing.
“We are asking the aid organisations to come and pick up the aid and distribute it,” Sasson said. “It’s up to them.”
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 ceasefire with Hamas, which includes an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Officials said Hamas had demanded some unworkable changes to the proposal that was backed by the Biden administration and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.
The “tactical pause” also comes as Israel awaits another international report expected this month regarding food insecurity in Gaza. A previous report in March warned that half the population of Gaza was facing “catastrophic” food insecurity and imminent famine.
Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant also have the threat of arrest, on accusations of war crimes, from the International Criminal Court in The Hague hanging over them. They have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
Israel has portrayed Rafah as a last bastion of Hamas’ organised 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.
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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.
About 1200 people were killed in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7 that prompted the war, and more than 300 Israeli soldiers have since been killed in combat.
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.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 this weekend, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and now centrist politician who quit the emergency wartime government last week along with his party leader, Benny Gantz, accused Netanyahu of putting his political needs before those of national security.
Eisenkot said that the influence of one of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security, was a constant presence over the discussions in the war cabinet, even though Ben-Gvir was not a member of that decision-making body.
Ben-Gvir and the far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have openly criticised the military leadership during the war and have also vowed to bring down Netanyahu’s government if he agrees to a ceasefire deal before Hamas is fully destroyed – a goal that many experts say is unattainable.
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Predictably, 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 on it “must not continue in his position”.
Ben-Gvir did not specify who he meant.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.