Israel’s decision to implement daily “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza has triggered a familiar and unsettling cycle in Israeli public discourse. Each time the military allows even a modest respite for the besieged strip, fierce domestic backlash follows.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir described the decision as a “spit in the face of our soldiers” and a “surrender to Hamas’s deceitful campaign”.
Eylon Levy, a social media personality and former spokesman in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote on X: “Let’s be clear what just happened here. International pressure on Israel encouraged Hamas to reject a ceasefire and get a ‘humanitarian pause’ instead – without giving up a single hostage.”
Regardless, the plan appears to be in place and Israel’s military said on Sunday that the pauses will be in effect daily in Al Mawasi, Deir Al Balah, and Gaza city, from 10am (0700 GMT) to 8pm (1700 GMT) until further notice. UN agencies, including UNRWA, are expected to monitor food distribution.
In the lead-up to the announcement, many in Israel deflected blame for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, pointing fingers at the UN or Hamas. This persistent refusal to acknowledge the depth of suffering in Gaza has drawn criticism, even from former supporters of Israel abroad. Meanwhile, some critics within the country have begun labelling the siege itself as a military failure.
For the first time, however, a mainstream Israeli news channel broke rank. After many months of not showing the suffering of Gazan civilians, Channel 12 this week aired a report that showed crowds of desperate people scrambling for food at aid distribution sites. A Hebrew-speaking contributor spoke about calling Gazans who told him of “nothing going into their mouths for entire days”.
Israeli commentator Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said he could not “even begin to explain how big” the report was. “For years, Channel 12 and mainstream Israeli news would cover Palestinian suffering occasionally. Then after October 7, they just stopped. No one wanted to see it. That played a massive role in the dehumanisation of Palestinians and facilitation of genocide,” he wrote in a post on X.
In the days since, a growing number of Israelis, many of them staunch defenders and not from its activist left wing, made similar arguments.
Commentator Haviv Rettig Gur, who had rejected international warnings of catastrophic hunger in Gaza, acknowledged on a recent podcast: “We are very close to real, actual, desperate hunger in Gaza … It's hard to convince Israelis of that because literally everything said to them for 22 months on this topic has been a fiction … We need to wake them up.”
Fears about Gaza’s humanitarian situation entering mainstream Israeli discourse is a major development for a country in which 64.5 per cent of the public has so far been “not concerned” about it, according to a poll by a major think tank in May. In the same month, another poll found that 82 per cent of respondents supported the expulsion of Palestinians from the strip.
It remains to be seen whether this willingness to acknowledge Palestinian civilian suffering will last. Polling shows that Israelis have been against the war for some time, but the vast majority of the opposition is based on concern for hostages in the strip, the safety of soldiers and anger that Mr Netanyahu is continuing the campaign for his political survival.
How Israeli society and politics react to the daily “pauses” ahead will give important signs.
