The UN World Health Organization has announced that there will be limited pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children after a baby contracted the first confirmed case in 25 years in the Palestinian territory.
Described as “humanitarian pauses” that will last three days in different areas of the war-ravaged territory, the vaccination campaign will start on Sunday in central Gaza, said Rik Peeperkorn, World Health Organization representative in the Palestinian territories.
That will be followed by another three-day pause in southern Gaza and then another in northern Gaza. He thinks they might need additional days to complete the vaccinations. Peeperkorn said that they aim to vaccinate 640,000 children under 10 and that the campaign has been coordinated with Israeli authorities. “I’m not going to say this is the ideal way forward. But this is a workable way forward,” Peeperkorn said of the humanitarian pauses on Thursday.
Later he added, “It will happen and should happen because we have an agreement.” These humanitarian pauses are not a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that mediators US, Egypt and Qatar have long been seeking, including in talks that are ongoing this week.
An Israeli official said there is expected to be some sort of tactical pause to allow vaccinations to take place. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been finalised. The Israeli army has previously announced limited pauses in limited areas to allow international humanitarian operations.
Separately, the Israeli military has called in reinforcements as it escalated its assault on the occupied West Bank for a second day. At least 18 people have been killed since the start of the operation in the north of the territory, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Thursday.
Eight people were killed in the Jenin governorate, six in Tulkarem and four in Tubas, while dozens more have been injured. At least 20 Palestinians, including children, have so far been imprisoned by Israeli forces, according to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, who warned on Thursday that the number could rise as the raids continue.
In Tulkarem’s Nur Shams refugee camp, the Israeli military claimed on Thursday that it had killed five Palestinian fighters who were hiding in a mosque. Among them was the commander of the Tulkarem Battalion, Mohamed Jaber, also known as Abu Shuja’a, it said. The military said Abu Shuja’a had directed the shooting and killing of an Israeli man in Qalqilya in June. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group confirmed the death of Abu Shuja’a and the other fighters, saying in a statement that they were killed “after a heroic battle against the soldiers of the [Israeli] occupation”.
Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the PIJ, later said that it targeted an Israeli infantry force in Tulkarem with an explosive device and a “hail of bullets” in response to the killing of Abu Shuja’a. The Jenin Battalion of the group also claimed a similar attack later on Thursday. Wafa reported that Israeli troops burned down several homes and inflicted “extensive destruction” on civilian infrastructure in the Nur Shams camp.
