IDF announces humanitarian steps for Gaza, including ‘tactical pauses’

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday morning announced a series of humanitarian measures aimed at refuting “the false claim of deliberate starvation” in Gaza, including “tactical pauses” in the war on Hamas.

While emphasizing that “combat operations have not ceased” across the Strip, the IDF said pauses in military activities would be instituted in Al-Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City “every day until further notice.”

The decision to cease fighting in those areas between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. was coordinated with United Nations officials and other international organizations “following discussions regarding the matter,” it stated.

Humanitarian corridors will be established to enable the movement of U.N. convoys delivering food and medicine to Gazans. The secure aid routes will remain in place permanently between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m.

The IDF added that it was prepared to expand the scale of its humanitarian response in the coastal enclave “as required.”

“What we are doing now is resupplying Hamas. It’s horrible,” Likud lawmaker Amit Halevi told JNS on Sunday. “Nobody should be supplying this neo-Nazi organization. We may not need to cut off aid entirely, but we must impose an effective siege on specific areas of the Gaza Strip.”

Halevi said this would mean relocating all civilians situated north of the Netzarim Corridor to the south, where humanitarian aid would be allowed in, while placing the northern area under total siege.

“That’s the way to fight guerrilla forces in urban areas,” he said. “This is how you wage war. Afterward, we can apply the same strategy to the south and center of Gaza, clearing area after area until we take full control. The only solution—the key to victory—is taking over the Gaza Strip and assuming full responsibility.”

Halevi added, “To defeat the enemy, we need an effective siege—square by square, space by space—and the operation will take much less time.”

(The Netzarim Corridor, located just south of Gaza City, splits the Gaza Strip down the middle.)

In its first-ever airdrop into Gaza on Saturday night, the Israeli Air Force delivered seven pallets of aid—including flour, sugar and canned food—in coordination with international organizations.

The IDF also confirmed that, “in line with a decision by the political echelon,” Israel had reconnected the Kela power line to Gaza’s seawater desalination plant, four months after cutting off electricity to the Strip.

“This is expected to supply approximately 20,000 cubic meters of water per day, up from the 2,000 cubic meters supplied until now, to serve about 900,000 residents in the area,” according to Israel’s military.

Likud Knesset member Moshe Passal told JNS on Sunday that it was in Israel’s best interest to ensure Gazan civilians have access to adequate food supplies.

“Those who say stop the aid mean [stop supplying] Hamas,” he said. “The population needs to be separated from Hamas. Otherwise, this war will never end.

“The population needs to be moved to another place, eliminate Hamas, and then maybe there will be hope for something else,” added Passal.

In a separate project, Israeli approved a UAE-led initiative to build a water pipeline from a desalination facility in Egypt to the Al-Mawasi area along Gaza’s coastline, Jerusalem’s Defense Ministry revealed.

The pipeline is expected to serve approximately 600,000 residents in the area and will operate independently of the Jewish state’s infrastructure.

On Sunday, Emirati representatives began bringing equipment into the Strip from Egypt through the Kerem Shalom Crossing with southern Gaza. Construction is expected to begin in the coming days and will continue for several weeks, according to Sunday’s statement.

The IDF noted that over the past week alone, more than 250 aid trucks had been unloaded, which it said joined “hundreds of trucks waiting at the crossings to be collected by the U.N. and international organizations.

“Additionally, approximately 600 trucks have been distributed by the U.N. and international organizations,” it said. “The IDF, through COGAT, will continue coordinating with international organizations to collect the contents of hundreds of trucks that have not yet been collected.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed the decision to expand the humanitarian efforts in the Strip in a statement on Sunday morning.

The head of state called on the United Nations and international NGOs “to do their part and ensure that aid reaches those in need without delay—as Israel has demanded for some time.

“It is unacceptable that aid delivered to Gaza remains undistributed or is hijacked by Hamas, even as they falsely accuse Israel of blocking it. The world must stand firm against terror—and work relentlessly to bring all our hostages home immediately,” according to Herzog.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has opposed humanitarian aid to Gaza as long as Hamas refuses to release the hostages, slammed the move as a surrender to the terrorist group.

“I was informed by a source in the Prime Minister’s Office that during Shabbat, a security consultation took place without me (the official claim: ‘so as not to desecrate Shabbat'—despite them knowing full well that as the national security minister, I am available on Shabbat for any important event or security consultation), during which it was decided to increase the amounts of ‘humanitarian’ aid entering Gaza,” he said.

“I told the source from the PMO that this amounts to surrendering to Hamas’s false campaign, which endangers IDF soldiers, and that this surrender is all the more serious given that the prime minister said on Friday that we are considering alternative ways to free the hostages.

“It turns out that the ‘alternative way’ is to surrender to Hamas and its false campaigns, and to increase humanitarian aid that reaches them [the terrorists] directly,” the minister stated. “This path brings us further from the hostages’ return and, more importantly, from total victory.”

Tzvika Foghel, a member of Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party, told JNS on Sunday that the world has quickly forgotten that many Gazan “civilians” participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attack.

“At the sight of the massacre and the kidnappings, hundreds of thousands of Gazans celebrated during those first days of an Israeli-Jewish disaster,” he said.

“The only humanitarian aid that should reach the residents of Gaza is voluntary emigration,” he added.

Israel and the United States in May installed a new organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to handle food aid deliveries so that it directly reaches Palestinians civilians and bypasses Hamas terrorists.

On Friday, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit released extensive footage showing the hundreds of trucks on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom Crossing waiting to be picked up by the United Nations.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee shared photos on X of the aid waiting to be distributed, saying that there is “enough food to feed all of Gaza but it sits rotting! U.N. is a tool of Hamas! U.S.-based [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] is actually delivering food FOR FREE and SAFELY. U.N. food is either looted by Hamas or rots in the sun!”

Likud MK Tally Gotliv told JNS on Sunday that “the world hates Jews more than it hates Hamas—which murdered, raped, abused and kidnapped our people.

“We have no reason to expect sympathy or legitimacy from the world. It will not happen. It is our duty to defeat Hamas and, in the process, bring back our hostages,” she said.

“Our fighters are battling fiercely in Gaza, taking into account the locations of the captives and risking their lives,” she continued. “Once again, I call on the prime minister to impose a heavy siege on Gaza and cut off electricity and internet access.

“If they want to eat and drink, they are welcome to return our hostages,” Gotliv said. “This is the only way. And to all the liars—the enemy’s helpers—who echo the falsehood about hunger in Gaza: Hamas is using you, and using us all, and will not return even a single hostage!

“Let our fighters win,” she said. “I don’t care what the world says.”