Israel ‘Agrees’ to 4-Hour Humanitarian ‘Pauses’ It Was Already Doing Anyway

Israel reportedly “agreed” to unilateral, daily four-hour pauses in the fight against Hamas in Gaza for “humanitarian” reasons, though it was already pausing on its own and providing an evacuation corridor for Palestinian civilians from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily.

The Associated Press reported:

Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its assault on Hamas in northern Gaza, the White House said Thursday, as President Joe Biden pressed Israelis for a multi-day stoppage in the fighting in a bid to release hostages held by the militant group.

…

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that a daily humanitarian pause would be announced Thursday and that the Israelis had committed to announcing each four-hour window at least three hours in advance every day. Israel, he said, also was opening a second corridor for civilians to flee the areas that are the current focus of its military campaign against Hamas, with a coastal road joining the territory’s main north-south highway.

But as Breitbart News reported this week, Israel has had such pauses since Sunday:

Palestinian civilians continue to evacuate from the northern Gaza Strip to the south, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has opened a daily corridor for several hours, allowing safe passage for those who want to flee the fighting against Hamas.

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The IDF told reporters earlier this week that Israel had dropped millions of leaflets and made tens of thousands of personal phone calls to residents of northern Gaza urging them to leave. Israel has launched a ground operation in the area aimed at destroying the Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the region of the Gaza Strip that is closest geographically to major Israeli population centers.

When the IDF first tried to establish an evacuation corridor along the Salah-al-Din Road several days ago, Hamas attacked it.

Now, however, the corridor is open for several hours a day, and on Monday, thousands of Palestinian civilians made use of it.

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, appeared Thursday alongside a poster of the more than 200 hostages still held by Hamas and declared that Israel would stop fighting unless the hostages were freed.

He said:

I will repeat this again tonight – there will be no ceasefire without the return of hostages. We will take any action necessary for this.

Right now, there are [Israeli] children in the Gaza Strip. Some of them saw their own parents die in front of their eyes. Savages have kidnapped them and are holding them hostage. We will not stop fighting until we bring our children home. As a father, I wish to ask the whole world – what kind of father would stop searching for his children? I see these children as my own. I will not stop fighting and I will not stop searching for them, until I reach them.

President Joe Biden is pushing for an even longer pause, for three days, the AP reported. It is unclear what benefit that would provide, especially as Israel presses its advantage against Hamas — except the political advantage of appeasing Arab- and Muslim-American voters in Michigan, a key “swing state” that Biden needs to win next November in his quest to be reelected.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.