Blinken renews push for humanitarian pause

US officials say headway is being made, but hostages remain central issue for Israel’

Antony Blinken departs Amman on Sunday. Picture: AFP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken used his meetings with Middle East leaders to make a fresh push for a humanitarian pause in the Israel-Hamas war as the Israeli military said it would reopen a temporary corridor on Sunday to provide northern Gazans safe passage to the south.

The Israel Defense Forces said it allowed traffic on Salah al-Din Road, a major north-south thoroughfare in the strip, for three hours on Saturday, and promised to do so again for four hours on Sunday, although residents said the route was unsafe.

Also, the IDF said Hamas militants fired on Israeli soldiers sent to secure the route in an effort to prevent the movement of Gazans southward. But the IDF urged civilians to take the route while it was open.

“If you care about yourself and your loved ones, head south according to our instructions,” an IDF spokesman posted in Arabic on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Rest assured that Hamas leaders are already taking care to protect themselves.” The corridor’s brief opening on Saturday came as Blinken met with several regional leaders in Israel and Jordan, part of a Middle East tour that began Friday. Blinken’s latest trip to the region -- his second since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas -- comes as the Biden administration steps up pressure on Israel’s government to exert restraint in its bombing campaign in Gaza. The escalating humanitarian catastrophe and soaring civilian death toll there have sparked global outcries -- including by some in President Biden’s party -- for a cease-fire.

On Saturday, speaking alongside his Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts, Blinken stressed that while the U.S. sees the benefit in a humanitarian pause, the administration agreed with Israel’s government that Hamas must be completely defeated before a cease-fire, so as not to give Hamas militants an opportunity to regroup.

On Friday, following his meetings with Blinken, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls for a cease-fire so long as Hamas continues to hold hostages.

U.S. diplomatic officials travelling in the Middle East on Saturday say headway has been made on pushing Israel toward a humanitarian pause, but there was still work to be done. A senior U.S. official said pressuring Hamas to release hostages is a central issue in talks with Israel, which could be tied to a longer-term ceasefire. There are an estimated 240 hostages being held and the logistics required to get them all out would require time, the official said.

“It would take a very significant pause in the conflict, in the fighting, to be able to do this, it is something that is under very serious and active discussion,” the official said.

A crowd of tens of thousands gathered near the White House on Saturday to demand a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, stepping up pressure on Biden for his support of Israel. Biden, who is spending the weekend at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., was asked if he was making progress on a humanitarian pause and responded by saying, “Yes,” and offering a thumbs-up.

Blinken also used his meetings Saturday with the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to coordinate efforts to get aid into Gaza -- and foreigners and wounded civilians out -- through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Blinken’s visit to the region will include a stop in Turkey, which recalled its ambassador to Israel for consultations Saturday -- citing Israel’s refusal to heed calls for a cease-fire and the continuous flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

No foreign nationals or injured Palestinians made it through the Rafah crossing on Saturday amid demands by the Hamas-run government for Israeli guarantees that ambulances from the Palestinian enclave can reach the border safely, Egyptian officials said. More than 350 foreign nationals of the roughly 7,000 in Gaza were able to cross on Friday.

Officials in Washington said the release last month of American hostages, Judith Raanan and her daughter Natalie, required a brief pause that is now seen as proof of a concept for the talks.

According to senior Egyptian officials briefed on the negotiations, Hamas is insisting that it will only release foreign civilian hostages in exchange for deliveries of fuel, aid and a short cease-fire, as well as the release of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. The militant group has also said some soldiers could be exchanged if nearly 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel are released, and only once a cease-fire is established, the officials said.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is becoming increasingly dire, with food, fuel and medicine shortages and a ballooning death toll that includes thousands of children. The Israeli military has carried out a bombing campaign in Gaza that it says targets militants and their infrastructure, but the air strikes have also killed thousands of civilians and forced two-thirds of the enclave’s more than two million people to flee their homes.

The Israeli military has urged civilians to move to the south as their ground invasion and bombing campaign have mostly concentrated on northern Gaza. But there is broad concern that nowhere in the Gaza Strip is safe. A United Nations official warned that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency -- the largest humanitarian assistance organization in Gaza that shelters 600,000 displaced people and distributes aid and supplies -- “is practically out of business.” Over 50 U.N. facilities have been affected by shelling, including five that were directly hit, killing dozens of displaced people.

On Saturday, the Israeli military said ground troops conducted an overnight raid in the southern Gaza Strip, a sign of a spreading battlefront. The Israeli military said it killed several militants in the raid.

Israel provided limited information about the corridor it opened for three hours on Saturday afternoon to allow civilians in northern Gaza escape to the south. Several residents in Gaza said the corridor was unsafe, with witnesses saying streets were lined with corpses and burning cars amid Israeli shelling near the Salah al-Din Road.

Ehab Sobaih said he went to get some belongings from his house in the north and make his way south, but found the road closed and damaged. “We went there from the information on the news -- that there is a pause in firing. What pause? They want to kill us.” U.S. diplomatic officials declined to comment on whether the Biden administration had sought the temporary corridor. The Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment when asked whether the temporary corridor amounted to the kind of humanitarian pause the U.S. has asked for and whether it was devised before or after Blinken’s visit to Israel on Friday.

Suha Ma’ayeh, Jared Malsin, Gordon Lubold, Summer Said, Anas Baba, Anat Peled , Alan Cullison and Ken Thomas contributed to this article.

The Wall Street Journal