The Israeli military said it had paused military activity in parts of Gaza on Sunday to allow in international aid amid global outrage over the severe hunger faced by Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
The decision was a sharp reversal by Israel and followed growing international pressure over the dire conditions in Gaza, where nearly one in three people has not been eating for days on end, according to the United Nations World Food Program.
Aid agencies and many countries, including some of Israel’s traditional allies, say Israel is responsible for the desperate situation after first blocking and then restricting aid deliveries to Gaza for months.
Six Palestinians died of malnutrition-related causes over the past day, including two children, adding to a toll of more than 50 deaths in the past month, according to the Gaza health ministry. Doctors, nurses and medics tasked with caring for Gazans are themselves increasingly struggling to eat, and baby formula is in short supply.
Israel has blamed the United Nations and its partners, accusing them of failing to bring hundreds of truckloads of aid through Gaza’s border crossings. The United Nations says that while some aid is allowed in, Israel has throw up a maze of bureaucratic obstacles and frequently rejects requests to coordinate deliveries, in addition to other challenges.
Israeli officials had also argued for months that Hamas was diverting humanitarian aid. But Israeli military officials later said that they had no proof that Hamas was systematically stealing U.N. relief supplies.
Israeli forces will pause operations in at least three parts of Gaza from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. to allow aid to flow in, the military said in a statement. They will also designate permanent routes for U.N. convoys to reach Gazans, it added.
But it was unclear whether the change in Israeli policy would ease the widespread hunger.
Israel has announced similar tactical pauses in the past with mixed results. Aid groups welcomed the ability to bring food into Gaza without fear of Israeli bombardment, but they said a cease-fire was likely the only way to end the crisis.
“Together, we hope these measures will allow for a surge in urgently needed food assistance to reach hungry people without further delays,” the World Food Program said in a statement.
But aid experts also say other moves backed by Israel, like dropping aid into Gaza from the air, would be far from sufficient. The Israeli military said it had airdropped aid into the enclave overnight, but foreign countries stopped doing so last year after attempted deliveries killed several people and landed in Israel by mistake.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, called airdrops a “distraction,” writing on social media that airdrops were “expensive, inefficient & can even kill starving civilians.”
In March, Israel blockaded the Gaza Strip for nearly three months, barring the entry of almost all food, fuel and medicine. It relented at the end of May after Israeli military officials privately warned that the enclave was at risk of widespread starvation.
But instead of relying on the previous U.N.-coordinated process to deliver aid, Israel instead overhauled the whole system, creating a handful of aid sites operated by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Under the new system, armed American security contractors patrolled a handful of Israeli-backed aid sites in southern and central Gaza, forcing Palestinians to walk miles through Israeli military lines in hopes of finding food.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed near the sites after Israeli soldiers opened fire on crowds, according to Gaza health officials and the Israeli military, which described their actions as “warning shots” to disperse Palestinians who say they had posed a threat.
Attempts by the United Nations and other aid agencies to deliver food have also led to tragic scenes as hundreds of desperate Palestinians rushed to seize whatever they could from trucks entering the territory. In at least one instance, the Israeli military opened fire on crowds seeking to get aid, killing dozens, according to Gaza health officials.
Almost 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas, including thousands of children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Those figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages to the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s allies initially backed the country’s military counterattack in Gaza. But as the fighting has continued and the Palestinian death toll has skyrocketed, some have slowly shifted their stance to call for an end to the war.
President Trump has said the war in Gaza must come to an end. But, at least publicly, he has avoided putting substantial pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to immediately stop the fighting.
Last week, Israel and the United States withdrew their negotiators from cease-fire talks with Hamas in Doha, Qatar after accusing the group of intransigence. Hamas officials said that they had made concessions in their latest counterproposal.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
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