Israel agrees to ‘humanitarian pauses’ in Gaza for polio vaccinations, WHO says

The World Health Organization said Thursday that Israel has agreed to successive “humanitarian pauses” in military operations in Gaza, beginning Sunday, to allow more than 640,000 children there to be given oral polio vaccinations amid an outbreak of the virus.

The pauses, from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., will last for at least three days in three separate zones, beginning in central Gaza and then moving to the south and the north, according to Rik Peeperkorn, who heads WHO operations in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. A second dose for those receiving the vaccine will be administered four weeks later, he said, speaking from Gaza at a virtual briefing for reporters at the United Nations in New York on Thursday.

“Due to insecurity, damage to roads and infrastructure, and dislocation,” Peeperkorn said, “the three days might not be enough” to reach a hoped-for coverage rate of 90 percent. “It has been agreed that where needed” the pauses will be “expanded by one day per zone.” Approvals, he said, have been given by COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for administering civilian policies within the occupied territories.

“Without humanitarian pauses,” he said, distribution of the vaccine in an “already complex environment will not be possible.”

More than 280 humanitarian aid workers, according to the United Nations, have been killed since the war in Gaza began in October with an incursion by Hamas militants into southern Israel that killed about 1,200 and saw 250 taken hostage. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed during the last 10 months of Israeli military operations in Gaza, according to local health authorities, which do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

On Tuesday, at least 10 bullets were fired into a World Food Program vehicle just “meters” away from an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint in central Gaza, an attack the United Nations blamed on the IDF. Although no one was injured, WFP, which said the convoy’s route had been previously “deconflicted” with the Israeli military, subsequently suspended its movements in Gaza.

The WFP “hopes to resume when safety and security guarantees” are in place, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, told reporters Thursday. While Israel has not commented publicly on the incident, Dujarric said U.N. officials on the ground have met with government officials there to seek explanations and assurances that WHO humanitarian workers will be allowed safe passage.

At the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, U.S. Representative Robert Wood said the Biden administration was “deeply alarmed” at the shooting. “Israel has said it is investigating” the incident, he said, “which their initial review said was the result of a communication error between IDF units.”

The administration, Wood said, has urged Israel “to immediately rectify the issues within their system that allowed this to happen. ... Israel must not only take ownership for its mistakes, but also take concrete actions to ensure the IDF does not fire on U.N. personnel again.”

Wood also referred, without details, to a previously unknown recent incident “in which the IDF fired toward a UNICEF vehicle,” a reference, according to U.N. officials, to a shooting that took place Sunday.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry released a statement late Thursday saying that it had “coordinated a large-scale operation with @WHO and @UNICEF to vaccinate children in the Gaza Strip against polio,” although the government had earlier denied any “humanitarian pauses” were involved.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that it had agreed to “the allocation of certain places in the Gaza Strip” for unstated purposes but had not acceded to “humanitarian pauses to administer polio vaccines.” The wording appeared designed to avoid indicating Israel had approved even a partial, temporary truce in the absence of a cease-fire deal opposed by some members of Netanyahu’s coalition.

A COGAT statement said that “supplies for the logistic operation of the polio vaccination campaign” were included in aid trucks that entered Gaza on Wednesday.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said in a statement that the militant group “welcomed the U.N. request for a humanitarian pause to implement the vaccination campaign. And we have asked the international community to oblige its obligations in the international law as an occupying force.”

Israel’s apparent acquiescence to the plan came after urging by Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a visit there last week. Blinken emphasized that without the vaccinations, the poliovirus now spreading in Gaza could expand throughout the region, including to Israel itself, a senior State Department official said.

“The conversation that the secretary had” with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials “was that we cannot have a polio outbreak. Whatever we have to do, this [vaccination campaign] has to happen,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the State Department.

While the official said the administration remains hopeful that a broader cease-fire can still be negotiated between Hamas and Israel, an agreement has remained elusive in ongoing talks being mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

Peeperkorn said that the WHO and partner organizations, including UNICEF, the U.N. children’s organization, and UNRWA, the main U.N. assistance organization in Gaza, have established 392 fixed sites throughout Gaza where families can bring their children to receive the vaccine. An additional 295 mobile teams will travel to those unable to reach the sites.

“A humanitarian pause means that during the hours of the campaign - from 6 a.m. to 2 or 3 p.m. ... families should be able to bring their children” to the sites and “be able to move around. Almost 2½ thousand health-care workers will be able to move around as well” beginning Sunday in the central zone, Peeperkorn said.

Because of Israeli bombardment, most of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been forced to relocate multiple times during the course of the war into ever-smaller areas with little shelter or access to sufficient food, water or medical care. Israeli strikes have continued, often with little warning, throughout most areas of the seaside enclave.

The level of childhood vaccination has traditionally been extremely high in Gaza, and no polio cases were reported for the past quarter-century. But health care has been extremely disrupted since the start of the war, and the virus has been discovered in wastewater. Last week, the first case of the virus was confirmed in a 10-month-old child. The infant “was born during wartime and never vaccinated,” WHO Deputy Director Michael Ryan told the Security Council on Thursday.

Polio vaccines are usually given in several doses, beginning in infancy and with boosters through childhood, with an uptake rate of at least 90 percent within a given population necessary to prevent the spread of the virus.