US urges 'pauses' in Gaza fighting as Israeli forces besiege Gaza City

AFP | Tel Aviv                                                   

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Top US diplomat Antony Blinken met Israeli leaders yesterday to call for more to be done to protect Palestinian civilians during the war to destroy Hamas. After meeting Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken said he had discussed the idea of "humanitarian pauses" to secure the release of hostages and to allow aid to be distributed to Gaza's beleaguered population.

"We believe that each of these efforts would be facilitated by humanitarian pauses, by arrangements on the ground that increase security for civilians and permit the more effective and sustained delivery of humanitarian assistance," Blinken told journalists. And he reiterated Washington's long-standing support for the eventual recognition of a Palestinian state: "Two states for two peoples. Again, that is the only way to ensure lasting security for a Jewish and democratic Israel."

Netanyahu, however, warned that there could be no "temporary truce" in Gaza unless Hamas releases the estimated 241 Israeli and foreign hostages it took during its October 7 attacks. Both Israel and the United States have previously ruled out a blanket ceasefire, which they say would allow Hamas to regroup and resupply, but US President Joe Biden has backed "temporary, localised" pauses.

Israel, meanwhile, began expelling thousands of Palestinian workers back to Gaza, despite ongoing fighting and air strikes that have killed thousands of civilians in the territory. Israeli forces have urged Gazans to head south from Gaza City towards the southern end of the territory to escape the worst of the fighting, but the Hamas-run health ministry said that 14 fleeing Palestinians, including women and children, had been killed making this journey.

Witnesses said the strike hit Gaza's coastal road, which the Israeli military has previously told civilians to take to travel south. In Geneva, the United Nations launched an emergency aid appeal seeking $1.2 billion to help some 2.7 million people facing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The leader of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, also made a speech -- in his case blaming the United States for the conflict -- as he broke with weeks of silence amid concerns of a broader regional conflagration.

"America is entirely responsible for the ongoing war on Gaza and its people, and Israel is simply a tool of execution," he said in a televised broadcast, accusing Washington of impeding "a ceasefire and the end of the aggression."

Nasrallah warned Israel against attacking Lebanon and said the possibility of "total war is realistic". In Washington, a National Security Council spokesperson said Hezbollah "should not try to take advantage of the ongoing conflict".

If the war expanded to include Lebanon, the spokesperson said, "the likely devastation for Lebanon and its people would be unimaginable and is avoidable". Ahead of Blinken's arrival, Israel's military said it had "completed the encirclement" of Gaza's largest city -- signalling a new phase in the nearly month-long conflict.

Fighting was triggered by Hamas's bloody raids on October 7, which Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 9,227 people have died in Israeli bombardments, mostly women and children.

After the Hamas assault, Israeli forces moved to re-establish security on the border, trapping thousands of Palestinian workers inside Israel. On Friday, officials began to force them back into Gaza, AFP journalists at the Karem Abu Salem crossing saw. "Thousands of workers who were blocked in Israel since October 7 have been brought back," the head of Gaza's crossings authority, Hisham Adwan, told AFP.