Middle East Crisis: Israeli Daytime Pause in Combat Appears to Take Hold in Gaza (2024)

The daily pause applies to part of southern Gaza, but not to some of the places most in need.

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.

When Israel invaded Rafah in early May, the move led to the closure of the lone supply route between Egypt and Gaza, at Rafah, and it hindered aid groups’ ability to distribute food and other aid delivered from Israel and bound for southern and central Gaza.

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.

With those stockpiles dwindling, “maybe for a couple of weeks they’ll have enough food, but if we cannot have access and sustain that, then that’s going to be a big problem,” said Carl Skau, the deputy director of the World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations that distributes food in Gaza. Food supplies in southern Gaza were “more stabilized a month ago, but we are really concerned now,” said Mr. Skau, who visited Gaza last week.

The closure of the Rafah border and fighting around it have forced aid groups and commercial vendors to route more of their convoys through Israel, where trucks enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing point. Once the food is inside Gaza, humanitarian organizations transfer it to their own vehicles and distribute it. Those groups say that Israel does too little to ensure the safety of those delivering aid, citing attacks on aid convoys and workers, including Israeli airstrikes.

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.

“We think their main problem is logistical, and they’re not doing enough to overcome those logistical problems,” said Shimon Freedman, a spokesman for COGAT, the branch of the Israeli defense ministry that coordinates with aid groups.

But prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have accused Israeli leaders of restricting aid delivery, seeking their arrest on charges including the use of starvation as a weapon of war. And aid groups said the fighting near the Kerem Shalom crossing made it even harder for aid groups to collect the food from the border and then distribute it onward through Gaza.

“Before Rafah, we had free access to Kerem Shalom basically all day, every day,” said Scott Anderson, the deputy Gaza director for UNRWA, the lead United Nations agency for Palestinians. “Now we still have access, it’s just a little more nuanced and difficult to get there,” he added, citing frequent gunfire and explosions in areas traversed by aid trucks, including three times recently when convoys recently came within roughly 100 yards of fighting.

“What we had asked for was windows to access Kerem Shalom without having to coordinate so closely with the I.D.F. — to be able to come and go, and the trucks to come and go, with more freedom,” said Mr. Anderson, using the initials of the Israel Defense Forces.

That led to the new Israeli policy of avoiding combat in daylight hours.

The military said on Monday that it had killed more than 500 combatants in Rafah, severely reducing the capacity of two of Hamas’s four battalions in the city. The remaining two battalions were operating at a “medium level,” the military said.

Though humanitarian groups welcomed the pause, they said that far more still needed to be done.

Israeli strikes have damaged supply routes in Gaza, hindering the passage of convoys, and crowds of desperate Gazans often intercept trucks in search of food. Cash shortages have prevented many civilians from buying food brought into Gaza by commercial convoys.

And as summer approaches, there is a rising need for more clean drinking water, Mr. Anderson said.

In recent weeks, Israel has allowed aid groups far greater access to northern Gaza, where fears of famine were once highest, opening up more access points to the north. But aid groups say that sanitation and health care are still highly inadequate in northern Gaza, even if food supplies have improved.

“We were driving through rivers of sewage everywhere,” said Mr. Skau, the W.F.P. official.

“We really flooded the place with ready-to-eat food commodities,” he added. “But this progress needs to be sustained and frankly we need to diversify.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

Israeli protesters mass in Jerusalem to call for elections after the war cabinet is dissolved.

The protest outside the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, highlighted the competing pressures the Israeli prime minister is under from conflicting elements of Israeli society.

Last week, two relatively moderate members resigned from the emergency war cabinet Mr. Netanyahu formed in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel, citing differences over the conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza. Far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition called on him to appoint them to the war cabinet, but on Sunday, according to Israeli officials, the prime minister communicated to ministers at a wider cabinet meeting that he was dissolving the body instead.

In the crowd in front of the Knesset on Monday was Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in Parliament, video posted on social media showed. Some of the marchers carried a banner stating that they were “leading the nation to the day after,” a reference to the end of the war in Gaza.

An Israeli police statement said that the police had helped facilitate the rally near the Knesset, and no arrests were immediately reported there.

However, confrontations appear to have been more intense when some protesters broke off to march to Mr. Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem, breaching a police roadblock. Anti-government activists have regularly gathered there throughout the war.

The activists chanted, “You are the chief, you are to blame” in front of the prime minister’s residence. Photographs showed some of them gathered around an open fire. Water cannons were fired, and at least nine people were arrested. The Israeli police said in a statement that some of the protesters had attacked officers, slightly injuring some of them.

The Israel Police said it would “continue to allow legal freedom of expression and protest but will not allow violations of public order and riots,” noting the fire.

The protests this week by anti-government activists are not connected to Saturday night rallies held weekly in Tel-Aviv and organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents the relatives of hostages held in Gaza. That group held a separate conference in Sderot on Monday on their efforts to bring the hostages home.

The anti-government activists are planning another protest in front of the Knesset on Tuesday.

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Netanyahu disbands his war cabinet, a widely expected move after two major resignations.

The Israeli official suggested that Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to disband the body — which was communicated to ministers at a wider cabinet meeting on Sunday — was largely symbolic given that Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot had already resigned.

Since their departures, discussions about the war have been driven by Mr. Netanyahu in conjunction with his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and close advisers, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Dissolving the war cabinet formalizes that process. It may also defuse calls from Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners who might have hoped to fill the places of Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot.

According to Mr. Eisenkot, the influence of one of those far-right leaders, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, had long loomed over the war cabinet’s discussions. After Mr. Gantz resigned, Mr. Ben-Gvir immediately demanded to join the group, writing on X that it was “about time to take brave decisions, achieve true deterrence, and bring true safety to the residents of the south, north, and all of Israel.”

Israeli news outlets reported on Monday that Mr. Netanyahu’s move to disband the war cabinet was a direct response to that demand.

For now, major decisions about the war in Gaza — like whether to agree to a cease-fire with Hamas — will still be put to a separate and broader security cabinet. That group includes Mr. Ben-Gvir and another far-right member, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister. Both have argued strongly that Israel’s military offensive in Gaza must continue until Hamas is destroyed.

The smaller war cabinet was charged with overseeing the fighting in Gaza. Having members like Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot, former military chiefs of staff from the centrist opposition to Mr. Netanyahu’s government, lent an aura of consensus and legitimacy internationally as Israel grew increasingly isolated over its handling of the war.

“Netanyahu was hearing from very serious perspectives,” said Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and analyst who worked as an aide to Mr. Netanyahu in the 1990s, citing the military careers of Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot. “Now he’s lost it. What he has now is more of an echo chamber.”

Israeli news outlets reported that Mr. Netanyahu is now expected to rely on advisers like Ron Dermer, a seasoned confidant of the prime minister and former ambassador to the United States who served as a nonvoting member of the war cabinet.

But it’s important to remember that Mr. Netanyahu was nevertheless always in the driver’s seat, Mr. Barak added.

Dissolving the war cabinet “centralizes his power and solidifies it and makes it much more difficult for any mutiny,” he said.

The war cabinet is gone. Who’s left in Netanyahu’s inner circle?

But the two former generals resigned last week, and Mr. Netanyahu has not said whether he will reconstitute the war cabinet. His group of close advisers now lacks the political breadth and military experience the war cabinet had, and the stature of Mr. Gantz, one of Mr. Netanyahu’s chief political rivals.

Here is a look at who he is likely to turn to:

Yoav Gallant: Mr. Gallant, the defense minister and a former general, had been in the war cabinet. He is a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party but has occasionally broken with the prime minister. Last year, amid mass protests against a government plan to overhaul the judiciary, Mr. Gallant said the plan threatened national security, with many reservists vowing to refuse service if the plan became law. Mr. Netanyahu fired him, then reinstated him two weeks later. This year, Mr. Gallant has pushed for a specific plan for governing postwar Gaza, something the Israeli leader has resisted doing.

Ron Dermer: One of Mr. Netanyahu’s closest advisers, Mr. Dermer is a former Israeli ambassador to Washington who had been a nonvoting “observer” member of the war cabinet. He currently serves as Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, and he worked on Israel’s attempts to normalize ties with Saudi Arabia and to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Tzachi Hanegbi: Mr. Hanegbi is Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser, and Israeli news media reports said that he was likely to be part of a limited group of officials making sensitive decisions about the war. Last month, Mr. Hanegbi said that he expected military operations in Gaza to continue through at least the end of the year.

Aryeh Deri: Israeli news media also said that Mr. Deri, the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party and a close ally of the prime minister, would be part of that limited group. Mr. Deri is a contentious figure: Last year, months before the war began, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that he was not fit to serve as a senior minister in Mr. Netanyahu’s government because he had been convicted of tax fraud.

Two prominent right-wing politicians with hawkish views on the war, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, would not be part of the smaller group advising Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, has demanded to be included in the war cabinet, and analysts said that Mr. Netanyahu dissolved it in part to prevent that from happening. Both Mr. Ben-Gvir and Mr. Smotrich remain, however, part of a broader security cabinet that makes some decisions about the war.

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The U.S. Treasury imposes sanctions to cut off weapons to the Houthis in Yemen.

The sanctions were placed on two individuals and five entities that have facilitated weapons procurement for the Houthis, as well as an individual, a company and a vessel that have helped with commodities shipments, “the sale of which provides an important funding stream to the Houthis that aids in their weapons procurement,” the Treasury statement said.

Several of the designated entities are based in China or procure materials for weapons from companies in China, according to the Treasury.

The U.S. action comes as the Houthis have recently stepped up attacks on the ships. The U.S. Navy has responded with retaliatory military actions.

The U.S. Central Command said in a post on social media on Monday evening that it had, in the past 24 hours, destroyed four Houthi radars and one maritime drone in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and destroyed an aerial drone over the Red Sea. On Sunday, the Navy said it had airlifted the crew from a Greek merchant vessel that was attacked in the Red Sea last week. The U.S. military launched airstrikes on Thursday that destroyed three anti-ship cruise missile launchers in Houthi-controlled Yemen, according to the Central Command.

Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said on Monday that since mid-November, the Houthis, had launched about 190 attacks on ships sailing through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, a crucial shipping route through which 12 percent of world trade passes. The Houthis, the de facto government in northern Yemen, have built their ideology around opposition to Israel and the United States, seeing themselves as part of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance,” along with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Their leaders often draw parallels between the American-made bombs used to pummel their forces in Yemen and the arms sent to Israel that are used in Gaza.

“The Houthis’ continued, indiscriminate, and reckless attacks against unarmed commercial vessels are made possible by their access to key components necessary for the production of their missiles” and drones, Mr. Nelson said.

The Treasury’s statement accused the Houthis of “killing innocent civilians, causing severe damage to commercial ships, and threatening global freedom of navigation.”

Amid the devastation, Gaza is the world’s deadliest place for aid workers, the U.N. says.

Aid groups have said that most of the dangers come from Israeli bombardment and airstrikes, which have devastated Gaza over eight months of war, killing more than 37,000 Gazans, according to local health authorities. Israel launched its retaliatory campaign in Gaza after the Hamas-led assault in southern Israel killed about 1,200 people and abducted about 240, according to Israeli officials.

The peril faced by humanitarian workers in Gaza has interrupted or obstructed the distribution of desperately needed aid in a place where, aid groups have warned, hundreds of thousands of people are facing famine conditions.

It was unclear how many aid workers have been killed by Israel’s offensive while delivering humanitarian aid, though at least some of the 193 UNRWA employees were, said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA’s acting public information officer for Gaza.

“Airstrikes or bombardment never stop,” Ms. Hamdan said. She added: “In order for humanitarian response to be effective, stable conditions are needed.”

The International Crisis Group, a think tank, said in early May that the Aid Worker Security Database — an open source for tracking attacks on aid workers globally — had documented 234 deaths stemming from 308 incidents targeting aid workers in Gaza. That is the most incidents recorded in a single conflict year since 1997, the group said.

But beyond Israel’s bombardment, the crisis group said, the rate of aid worker deaths in Gaza also stemmed from an ineffectual system to ensure the safe movement of aid workers by communicating and coordinating with the Israeli military.

Questions to COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that implements government policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, regarding the system, known as deconfliction, were not immediately returned.

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician whose work with aid groups has taken her to many conflict zones, spent two weeks in late March volunteering at Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir El Balah for Medical Aid for Palestine, mostly treating airstrike victims. She said deconfliction involved notifying warring parties that aid workers were coming in and where they were going, so that the warring sides could avoid targeting them.

In Gaza, she said, the deconfliction process was “a farce” and aid workers have been struck when there were no military targets nearby.

“Nothing compares to what I experienced in Gaza, the drone and the actual bombing was constant, so you always felt like there was a possibility that you or the building you were in could be hit at any moment,” Dr. Haj-Hassan said.

She added: “We don’t have any safety guarantees.”

In April seven World Central Kitchen workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike, even after the aid group said it had coordinated the movements of its convoy with the Israeli military.

The military later said in a statement that the “grave mistake” stemmed from a string of errors, including “a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making and an attack contrary to the Standard Operating Procedures.”

Israel’s own account of the strike raised questions about the military’s ability to identify civilians and its procedures for protecting them, as well as whether it has been complying with international law, legal experts told The New York Times after the strike.

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A Biden adviser visits Israel as the military warns of a ‘wider escalation’ with Hezbollah.

In a post on social media late Sunday night, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said: “Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation — one that could have devastating consequences for Lebanon and the entire region.”

His comments echoed a threat that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made earlier this month, days after Hezbollah launched a barrage of rockets and exploding drones from Lebanon into northern Israel.

“Whoever thinks he can hurt us and we will respond by sitting on our hands is making a big mistake,” Mr. Netanyahu said, according to his government, while visiting soldiers and firefighters in northern Israel. “We are prepared for very intense action in the north.”

Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah is intertwined with its battle against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel and Hezbollah have fired back and forth in the months since the Oct. 7 assault on Israel by Hamas, another Iran-backed group, set off the war in Gaza. More than 150,000 people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have been displaced by the fighting there.

Hezbollah’s attacks have gradually intensified, with the group using larger and more sophisticated weapons to strike more often and deeper beyond the border. Both sides have refrained from engaging in full-blown war, but the tension has increased in the past week.

Last Tuesday, an Israeli strike targeted and killed Taleb Abdallah, one of Hezbollah’s senior commanders, prompting the group to step up its own attacks the next day.

Two days later, the Israeli military said that its fighter jets had struck “Hezbollah military structures” overnight in Lebanese border villages. Then Hezbollah launched what Israeli officials called the most serious rocket and drone assault in more than eight months of hostilities, a barrage that lasted into the evening.

The United States, France and other mediators have sought for months to curb the exchanges of fire.

President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Thursday that his country and the United States had agreed in principle to establish a trilateral group with Israel to “make progress” on a French proposal to end the violence. But Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, rejected that effort the next day, saying that France had adopted “hostile policies” toward Israel.

Sailors attacked by the Houthis and rescued by the U.S. Navy recount their ordeal.

“We were all scared,” the captain, Christian Domrique, said on Monday in Manila, where he and the crew members, all of whom are from the Philippines, were brought after the U.S. Navy airlifted them from the stricken vessel. “It was the first time for all of us to experience that.”

It was one of the more dramatic episodes in recent months in the Red Sea, where the Houthi militia in Yemen has stepped up missile and drone attacks against ships in what it says is a campaign to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza.

Twenty-one sailors including the captain were rescued from the Tutor; one crew member, who was in the engine room at the time of the collision, is still missing, according to Mr. Domrique and Philippine government officials.

Mr. Domrique, who spoke on behalf of the crew members at a news conference arranged by the Philippine government, said that all of them had stayed on the bridge of the ship after the attack while he contacted the shipowner, the Philippine government and the U.S. Navy, which has been patrolling the waters to deter Houthi attacks. He also warned nearby ships to avoid their location.

“Requesting immediate assistance. We were hit by a bomb,” Mr. Domrique says into the radio, according to another video posted on Facebook.

About four hours after the collision, at around 1 p.m., he said their immobile ship was rocked by another explosion — this time, from a Houthi missile.

“We did not know what to do,” Mr. Domrique said. “We were being attacked both by water and air. We just relied on prayers.”

The crew members moved downstairs to a passageway and camped there amid a scattering of water bottles, bags, extension cords and phone chargers. Some sailors slept on stairs.

“We are hiding now in the alleyway in the middle of the ship because we don’t know where the bombs will fall,” John Flores, the ship’s chief engineer, said in a series of text messages to his wife, who later posted them on Facebook.

The crew managed to find oil to power a small generator that provided light, a power supply and internet access. But Mr. Flores began to fear they would be attacked again, texting his wife that their ship had been drifting for 10 hours waiting for rescuers.

“Please remember that I love you and the kids very much,” he wrote. “Always take care there. I miss you all so much.”

Finally, U.S. Navy helicopters arrived and airlifted the crew members from the ship, bringing them to a Navy cruiser, the U.S.S. Philippine Sea. The U.S. service members, including many Filipino Americans, greeted them warmly, Mr. Domrique said, singing karaoke songs and bringing them food. They were taken to Bahrain before they flew to Manila.

Arriving at the airport, the crew members were seen smiling, though none spoke to reporters. After the news conference, Mr. Domrique hugged his wife, the relief apparent on their faces.

“We are all traumatized,” he said at the news conference, fighting back tears.

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Netanyahu says he didn’t know about Israel’s plans to reduce fighting in southern Gaza. Analysts are skeptical.

The strange choreography of the messaging became stranger still when the government suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only learned of the military’s plan from news reports and signaled his disapproval.

But analysts said it was likely that the prime minister was aware of the plan and that each announcement was tailored to different audiences. The whipsaw statements appeared to reflect the competing pressures facing Mr. Netanyahu, as he juggles demands from the Biden administration and elsewhere around the globe with those of his own hawkish government. His far-right coalition partners oppose any concessions in Gaza, and he relies on their support to stay in power.

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. But Mr. Netanyahu insinuated that he did not learn of the plans until Sunday morning.

“It’s classic Bibi,” said Amos Harel, the military affairs analyst for the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. Like other experts, he said the announcement was unlikely to have been a complete surprise to him, even if the military commanders did not update him on the exact timing of what they called a tactical change.

“He has a mask for every occasion,” Mr. Harel said in an interview. “For the Americans, he needs to show he is doing more to get aid in. For the Israeli audience he can say ‘I didn’t know’ and go for plausible deniability.”

A statement issued on Sunday by an anonymous government official, whose name and office could not be publicized, as per protocol, said that when Mr. Netanyahu learned about the humanitarian pause, he found it unacceptable. 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.

Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for Cogat, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories and that liaises with international organizations, said the move was meant to help clear a backlog of more than 1,000 trucks that had already been inspected by Israel and were waiting on the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom crossing.

“We are asking the aid organizations to come and pick up the aid and distribute it,” Ms. 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 cease-fire 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.

Mr. Netanyahu and his defense 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’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.

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 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that prompted the war and in all, 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 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.

Mr. Eisenkot said that the influence of one of Mr. 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 Mr. Ben-Gvir is not a member of that decision-making body.

Mr. Ben-Gvir and the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have openly criticized the military leadership during the war and have also vowed to bring down Mr. Netanyahu’s government if he agrees to a cease-fire deal before Hamas is fully destroyed — a goal that many experts say is unattainable.

Predictably, Mr. 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.”

Mr. Ben-Gvir did not specify who he meant.

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.