Israel is rejecting calls for respite in Gaza as its closest allies in the West have coalesced around the idea of 'humanitarian pauses', or temporary stops to the bombardment.
Smoke rises from nearby Israeli strikes as seen from a tent camp sheltering displaced Palestinians, as the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 26, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu MustafaOct 27 - Israel is rejecting calls for respite in Gaza as its closest allies in the West have coalesced around the idea of "humanitarian pauses", or temporary stops to the bombardment.
The chorus of appeals for a pause followed days of intense diplomacy at U.N. headquarters in New York and in Brussels, and was a compromise between those, such as Spain, who wanted to push Israel to call a ceasefire, and those who say Israel's right to self defence was foremost. "I welcome the growing global consensus for a humanitarian pause in the conflict. I repeat my call for a humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the delivery of life-saving supplies at the scale needed," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement on Friday.
An average of 12 trucks a day have entered Gaza in recent days, down from 500 a day prior to the conflict, GuterresIsrael says any respite from fighting benefits Hamas, which it is determined to destroy, and which it says diverts aid such water, fuel, food and medicine to its fighters. Emanuela-Chiara Gillard, senior fellow at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, said agreement on the language did not mean implementation of a pause was imminent.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called a humanitarian pause "a temporary and local agreement to stop the fighting long enough to do some discrete task."
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