US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that "far too many" Palestinians have died and more needs to be done to save lives and channel aid as Israel pursues a punishing offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
His comments came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed under US pressure to open up daily humanitarian pauses, while vowing no let-up of Israel’s offensive until Gaza is “demilitarised, deradicalised and rebuilt”.
In London, Rishi Sunak's spokeswoman told reporters: “We've consistently called for humanitarian pauses to allow aid in and hostages out, and welcome the announcement of four-hour pauses … as a first step.”
Mr Blinken said in New Delhi that Washington "appreciates" Israeli steps to minimise civilian casualties but that was not enough, with "far too many" Palestinians still being killed.
The Israeli leader’s offer of a daily four-hour window stopped short of President Joe Biden’s demand for a three-day cessation, in a bid to negotiate the release of nearly 240 hostages held by the Palestinian terror group.
The president said there was “no possibility” of a formal ceasefire at the moment, and said it had “taken a little longer” than he hoped for Israel to agree to the humanitarian pauses.
Mr Biden’s National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Israel was also opening a second corridor for civilians to flee the areas around Gaza City that are the current focus of its military campaign against Hamas.
Mr Kirby told reporters that the pauses could be useful for “getting all 239 hostages back with their families, to include the less than 10 Americans that we know are being held. So if we can get all the hostages out, that’s a nice finite goal”.
He added: “Humanitarian pauses can be useful in the transfer process.”
The armed wing of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad in Gaza said it was prepared to release two Israeli hostages, an elderly woman and a teenage boy, for humanitarian and medical reasons.
Hannah Katzir, 77, and Yigil Yaakov, 13, appeared in videos produced by their captors addressing their families and appealing to Mr Netanyahu for their release.
Israeli strikes hit near several hospitals in Gaza City early on Friday, according to Palestinian officials. Israel accuses Hamas fighters of hiding in hospitals and using the Shifa Hospital complex as its main command centre, which the militant group and hospital staff deny.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk accused both sides of war crimes, starting with the “atrocious attacks” by Hamas against civilians inside Israel on October 7 that left 1,400 people dead.
“But it is clear that enduring peace and security cannot be delivered by the exercise of fury and pain against people who have no responsibility for the crimes that were committed,” he said, with the death toll in Gaza now said to exceed 10,000.
Mr Netanyahu told Fox News: “The fighting continues against the Hamas enemy, the Hamas terrorists, but in specific locations for a given period, a few hours here, a few hours there, we want to facilitate a safe passage of civilians away from the zone of fighting. And we’re doing that.”
The prime minister made clear that Israel had no intention of occupying Gaza, after his suggestions that it might do so provoked strong White House opposition. But the narrow strip will be radically different after the conflict, he said, insisting: “What we have to see is Gaza demilitarised, deradicalised and rebuilt.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, dismissed the Israeli pauses as “cynical and cruel”. Rather than a full ceasefire, they were just enough “to let people breathe and remember what is the sound of life without bombing, before starting bombing them again”, she said.
Mr Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly have this week been pursuing intensive regional diplomacy to contain the war. But Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned Israel’s actions in Gaza meant that “expansion of the scope of the war has become inevitable”.
