Holy Day Holiday as Israel Presses Pause

GAZA STRIP: Shellshocked Gaza residents experienced their first day of relative calm in months after Israel’s military said it would pause fighting daily around a southern route to facilitate aid flows, following UN warnings of famine in the Palestinian territory.

“Compared with the previous days, today, the first day of Eid al-Adha, is considered near calm and the calm has prevailed across all of Gaza,” Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the civil defence agency in Hamas-ruled Gaza, said on Sunday, local time.

He said the exceptions included “some targeting” in Gaza City’s Shujaiya and Zeitun areas, as well as Israeli ­artillery fire in Rafah in southern Gaza.

Children were among the wounded and killed from a strike on Bureij refugee camp.

Israel announced a scheduled 11-hour daily pause in the fighting along a declared humanitarian route extending until Rafah’s European Hos­pital, which is about 10km from the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

The military stressed in a statement there was “no cessation of hostilities in the southern Gaza Strip”, and said one soldier died on Sunday during fighting in the territory’s south.

The announcement of a “local, tactical pause of military activity” during daylight hours in an area of Rafah came a day after eight Israeli soldiers were killed in a blast near the far-southern city and three more troops died elsewhere.

“Since this morning, we have felt a sudden calm with no gunfire or bombings … It’s strange,” said Haitham al-Ghura, 30, from Gaza City.

The UN welcomed the Israeli move, although Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, “this has yet to translate into more aid reaching people in need”.

He called for “further concrete measures by Israel to address longstanding issues” on aid needs.

Gazans “urgently need food, water, sanitation, shelter, and healthcare, with many living near piles of solid waste, heightening health risks,” Mr Laerke said.

“We need to be able to deliver aid safely throughout Gaza,” he added.

Israel has long defended its efforts to let aid into Gaza, including via its Kerem Shalom border near Rafah, blaming militants for looting supplies and humanitarian workers for failing to distribute them to civilians.

The pause “for humanitarian purposes will take place from 8am until 7pm every day until further notice along the road that leads from the Kerem Shalom crossing to the Salah al-Din road and then northwards,” an Israeli military statement said.

But the pause enraged two Israeli far-right cabinet members who have threatened to bring down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he ends the war.

Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich believe aid deliveries delay Israel’s ­victory.

Mr Ben-Gvir said “whoever made this decision” was “evil” and “a fool”, while Mr Smotrich said humanitarian aid helped keep Hamas in power and risked putting “the achievements of the war down the drain”.

The pause announcement came as Muslims marked Eid al-Adha, or the feast of the ­sacrifice, at the end of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Authorities from multiple countries said at least 22 people had died during the pilgrimage, many of them from “extreme heat”.

Jordan’s foreign ministry said 14 Jordanian pilgrims had died “after suffering sun stroke” and that 17 others were “missing”.

Around 1.8 million Muslims took the pilgrimage to Mecca this year, with temperatures reaching up to 46C.