The ceasefire is obviously still a long way off. But in the last few hours, a limited truce agreement for Gaza has finally been reached. The agreement specifically concerns “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza, which will be identified in order to carry out polio vaccinations. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported this in the evening, speaking to UN journalists. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territories, announced that the Israeli authorities have granted a “humanitarian pause” that will last for three days, for several hours a day. The aim is to allow the start of the childhood polio vaccination campaign on Sunday, September 1: more than 640,000 minors throughout the Gaza Strip will have to be vaccinated. The launch will take place in the central part of Gaza.
The emergency
The information site al Arabi al Jadeed He had anticipated in recent hours that Hamas would have in turn accepted the humanitarian truce plan to make way for vaccination. That's not all: the spokesman for the Palestinian fundamentalist group, Jihad Taha, added in an interview that he urged all parties to continue with the temporary truce initiative. And that Israel should not be allowed to “evade or procrastinate and implement alternatives by specifying the places where to start the vaccination process and not committing to any humanitarian truce.” The alarm was sounded after the WHO announced that a 10-month-old baby had been paralyzed by type 2 poliovirus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
The negotiations
The possibility of a humanitarian truce was discussed last week between Egypt and the United States, and would be independent of any agreement between Israel and Hamas. Nevertheless, the United States today expressed for the umpteenth time its relative optimism regarding negotiations for a broader agreement on the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of the hostages. “The Gaza ceasefire negotiators are discussing the details of how to implement the agreement, which means that we have brought the discussions to a point where we are getting to the heart of the problem, and that is a positive sign of progress,” White House security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
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