Israel Denies US Claims It Agreed to Four-Hour ‘Humanitarian Pauses’ in Gaza Assault

Israel has said it aims to completely destroy Hamas, a Palestinian militant group that has vowed to destroy the Zionist Israeli state and which won elections in Gaza in 2006. However, the group has gained credibility among Palestinians in recent years as the Palestinian Authority has been unable to halt Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement on Thursday disputing claims from the White House that there would be daily four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in the assault on the Gaza Strip to allow for refugees to flee and essential goods to enter the territory.

The refutation was carried by Israeli media on Thursday, which also quoted a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told reporters the IDF only plans “tactical, local pauses for humanitarian aid, which are limited in time and area,” explaining that the policy is “not a shift,” but a “tactical pause for the movement from a specific area [to the] south.”

Earlier Thursday, John Kirby, the spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, told reporters in Washington that Israel had agreed to give daily four-hour windows of time, as well as a three-hour advance, in which it would halt its attacks in northern Gaza.

"We've been told by the Israelis that there will be no military operations in these areas over the duration of the pause and that this process is starting today,” Kirby said.

Ceasefire or Pause?

Kirby’s claim came after the Biden administration had been lobbying Jerusalem for several days to allow humanitarian pauses of up to 48 hours to permit refugees to flee from the war zone and for food, water, medicine, and other basic goods to enter the territory.

Asked about such a pause in an interview with US media on Monday, Netanyahu didn’t dismiss the idea, but offered “an hour here, an hour there … in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages to leave.”

"There'll be no ceasefire, general ceasefire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages," Netanyahu said.

Demonstrations around the globe demanding a ceasefire have reached a fever pitch, with 300,000 rallying in Washington, DC, over the weekend for what is the largest-ever pro-Palestine protest in US history to date. Even larger rallies occurred in global cities like London, Jakarta, and Tokyo.

Biden has notably ignored those demands and explicitly opposed a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, saying the Palestinian militant group must be ousted from power in Gaza and destroyed as an organization. The US, UK, and EU have adamantly defended Israel’s “right to defend itself” in the wake of the October 7 attacks, in which militants from Gaza broke through the border fence and attacked several nearby Israeli towns, killing some 1,400 Israelis.

Casualties ‘Even Higher’ Than Reported

The “complete siege” of Gaza implemented by the IDF the following day has included cutting off Gaza from the outside world, creating acute shortages in basic necessities, alongside an intense bombing campaign and a ground invasion.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health on Thursday, 10,569 people have been killed in Gaza, including 4,324 children, by the Israeli bombardment. Thousands more are missing and tens of thousands have been injured. In addition, more than 120 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank over the last month as Israeli settlers, armed with rifles sent by the United States, have mounted attacks on Palestinian villages across the IDF-governed territory.

Biden has openly questioned the veracity of the Gaza Health Ministry’s statistics, but on Wednesday, Barbara Leaf, the US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, said the number may actually be “higher than is being cited.”

“In this period of conflict and conditions of war, it is very difficult for any of us to assess what the rate of casualties are,” she told a congressional committee. “We think they’re very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited.”

Netanyahu’s office also said on Thursday that there could be no pause in the fighting until Hamas releases all of the more than 200 hostages it captured during the October 7 border raids.

Hamas has repeatedly offered to release its hostages in exchange for a ceasefire, and on Thursday, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza, said it was ready to release two hostages, an old woman and a young girl, on "humanitarian grounds,” provided “certain conditions” are met concerning the security of the Palestinian people.