Middle East Crisis: Israel Agrees to Staggered Pauses in Fighting to Allow for Polio Vaccination, U.N. Says

“I think this is a way forward.,” Mr. Peeperkorn said. “I’m not going to say this is the ideal way forward, but this is a workable way forward. Not doing anything would be really bad. We have to stop this transmission in Gaza, and we have to avoid the transmission outside Gaza.”

Two Israeli officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to communicate with the media, confirmed the government had agreed to pauses in fighting for several hours at a time in specific areas where the vaccines will be distributed. The rollout of the vaccine distribution will be staggered, starting with the central region of Gaza before transitioning to other parts of the territory, one of the officials said.

Mr. Peeperkorn said that based on W.H.O.’s experience with similar campaigns elsewhere the three days might not be enough to achieve adequate vaccination. He said it was it “critical” that 90 percent of Gaza’s children be immunized “to stop the outbreak.”

Israel has made it clear that this is not the first step to a cease-fire and that fighting will not be halted across the Gaza Strip, rather that there will be limited pauses in certain locations to allow for the vaccinations.

“This is not a cease-fire,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement on Wednesday night in response to news reports saying there was an agreement on pauses. The statement emphasized the limited nature of the agreement.

Israel has been under intense pressure from world heath authorities to address the emergence of polio in Gaza since the virus was found in wastewater in July. After the first case of the disease in the area in 25 years was confirmed earlier this month, the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, called for a temporary two-week truce for vaccinations.

The W.H.O. has secured 1.26 million doses of vaccines from Indonesia to protect recipients from poliovirus type-2, which arrived in Gaza this week, days after the W.H.O. announced that a 10-month-old boy was diagnosed with that strain of the disease in Gaza.

Type 2 polio was eradicated in most parts of the world in the 1990s, but aid officials have said that the severely unsanitary conditions in Gaza during Israel’s 10-month war against Hamas, combined with deteriorating health services, have created an environment in which even rare diseases can spread.

The vast majority of children in Gaza — as many as 95 percent — have been vaccinated for two other kinds of polio that are part of routine immunizations around the world, officials said.

More than 2,100 health and community outreach workers are expected to help administer the doses at several hundred sites across Gaza, which consist of a drop or two of vaccine taken orally. The vaccine must be followed up with a booster four weeks later, and Mr. Peeperkorn said the agreement announced on Thursday cleared the path for that to happen as well. “We expect that all parties will stick to that,” he said.

He also left open the possibility that the pause that starts on Sunday in central Gaza could be extended by a day or so if needed. And there will be no ordered evacuations by Israel during the pauses, which Mr. Peeperkorn defined as lasting from early morning until mid-afternoon and safe enough for children and the families, as well as health workers, to move around without fear of casualties.

Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxermancontributed reporting.

Israel has been fighting on three fronts since fending off the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault mounted from Gaza. In addition to the full-fledged war in Gaza, there are lower-level but escalating conflicts with militant groups in the West Bank, and across the border of Lebanon with Hezbollah.

In the West Bank, where about 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, more than 600 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, both by the Israeli military and by extremist Jewish settlers, according to the United Nations.

Residents of Tulkarm and the surrounding area on Thursday described another difficult day of hunkering down indoors, with internet and telephone services down, many friends and family members unreachable and the streets watched over by Israeli snipers perched on rooftops.

Israeli bulldozers ripped up roads to unearth improvised explosive devices, and troops searched people’s homes, residents said. The Israeli military has said it raids homes to search for suspects and weapons, or to use them as lookout points.

The Israeli military has sent hundreds of troops, backed by drones, into the cities of Tulkarm and Jenin, and surrounding areas, in what officials described as an operation targeting militant strongholds. Israeli officials have told the United States that the operation was likely to last at least through Friday, a senior U.S. official said. It was not clear whether the United States received advance warning of the operation.

Explosions were heard on Thursday in Jenin, where Israeli troops were operating in the eastern part of the city, Wafa reported. The Palestinian Red Crescent said that it had lost contact with the emergency medical services there.

Mohammad Al-Sayed, a member of the Jenin city council, said that most communications there were down and that movement on the street was being prevented. “The situation is very dangerous, everyone is afraid,” he said.

Riyad Awad, the head of the city council in Tulkarm, said that parts of the city — and all of Nur Shams — were without water and sewage service.

The circumstances of the deaths in Tulkarm on Thursday morning were not completely clear, with differing accounts that The New York Times could not independently verify.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said Mr. Jaber and four other militants were exchanging fire with the Israeli military from within a mosque and near a mosque before they were killed.

In its statement, Islamic Jihad said Mr. Jaber had been killed after a “heroic confrontation” with Israeli forces. Its local branch in Tulkarm said in a separate statement that after Mr. Jaber had been killed, its fighters detonated an explosive device and shot at Israeli forces, causing “direct injuries.”

Faisal Salameh, a municipal official in Tulkarm, said that Mr. Jaber and the others had been killed in a strike around 5 a.m. while hiding in a home next to a mosque. He said Israeli forces took Mr. Jabr’s body, along with two other bodies, and detained a man whose leg had been broken.

In addition to his role with Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, Mr. Jaber also led a loose collective of militants in the part of Tulkarm that originated as a refugee camp. The Israeli military accused him of being involved in “numerous terror attacks,” including the murder of an Israeli civilian in June.

Mr. Jaber — whose nom de guerre, Abu Shujaa, means Father of the Brave — gained a kind of cult status in April, when the Israeli military said it had killed him during a raid on Tulkarm. Three days later, he emerged alive at the funeral of others killed during that raid, to joyous shouts from residents.

Gheith Shawesh, a 17-year-old resident of the Nur Shams neighborhood near Tulkarm, lamented Mr. Jaber’s death, saying that people across the West Bank were “angry and sad” about his killing.

He called the raid the “most aggressive” there in years. He said that Israeli forces were blowing off the doors of homes and searching them, rounding up suspects and holding them in seized shops, and cutting up the tarps that hang over some alleyways, concealing militants from Israeli drones.

Rami Nazzal and Adam Rasgon in Jerusalem and Eric Schmitt in Washington contributed reporting.

I recently met a local commander of these young militants, Muhammad Jaber, 25, in one of those dusty, shattered alleyways. One of Israel’s most wanted men, he and other fighters like him say they have switched allegiances from the relatively moderate Fatah faction, which dominates the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to more radical groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Asked what lesson he had taken from the war in Gaza, Mr. Jaber paused for a moment to think.

“Patience,” he said. “And strength. And courage.”

Mr. Jaber, widely known by his nom de guerre, Abu Shujaa, meaning Father of the Brave, commands the local branch of Islamic Jihad, which dominates the Tulkarm camp. He also leads a collective of all the militant factions in that area, including the Aqsa Martyrs Brigade there, which is known as the Khatiba. He switched from Fatah, he said, because it was Islamic Jihad and Hamas who were taking the fight to Israel to end the occupation and create Palestine by force of arms.

Mr. Jaber gained a kind of cult status in the spring when the Israeli military announced that it had killed him during a raid on the Tulkarm camp. Three days later, he emerged alive at the funeral of other Palestinians killed during that same raid, to joyous shouts from camp residents.

We met in an alley with streets stripped to sand by Israeli bulldozers, before ducking into a storefront to avoid being sighted by drones. Thin and bearded, wearing a black Hugo Boss T-shirt and a Sig Sauer pistol on his hip, Mr. Jaber was watched by six bodyguards. Some were armed with M16 and M4 rifles with full magazines and optical sights.

“This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of W.F.P.’s team in Gaza,” Cindy McCain, the agency’s executive director, said in the statement, which was released Wednesday.

She demanded that Israeli officials take immediate action to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers delivering aid in Gaza and to improve the system by which aid agencies coordinate their movements with Israeli forces. “The current de-confliction system is failing, and this cannot go on any longer,” Ms. McCain said.

The Israeli military said in a statement on Wednesday that the incident was “under review” and that “Israel is committed to improve coordination and security with humanitarian organizations to ensure the effective delivery of aid within the Gaza Strip.”

Earlier this week, the agency’s main operating hub in Deir al Balah, in the central part of the territory, had to relocate after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for the area. Last week, amid ongoing Israeli military operations, five W.F.P. community kitchens were evacuated and the agency lost access to the only aid warehouse that it was still operating in central Gaza, the statement said.

The pause in aid deliveries comes at a perilous time for humanitarian efforts and the Palestinians in Gaza who depend on them. As Israel’s military offensive nears its 11th month, nearly half a million people in Gaza face starvation, experts have warned.

In April, an Israeli drone strike killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen aid group. The organization resumed its work after a brief pause and said in June it had delivered more than 50 million meals in Gaza since the war began.

Israeli military officials have said the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy was a “grave mistake” and cited a series of failures, including a breakdown in communication and violations of the military’s operating procedures.

Adding to the humanitarian concerns, a 10-month old child was diagnosed with polio this month, the first confirmed case of the disease in Gaza in a quarter-century. UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, is hoping to start a campaign to vaccinate children in Gaza as early as this weekend, and has asked Israel to pause military operations to allow it to take place.