Middle East Crisis: Polio Vaccinations in Gaza Are Beating Goals, W.H.O. Says

While Israeli airstrikes continued in other parts of Gaza, Israel agreed to pauses in the fighting in specific areas to allow the vaccination drive to proceed, and “until now they work,” Dr. Peeperkorn said.

Health teams will next take the effort to southern Gaza, where the W.H.O. estimates that it needs to reach 340,000 children before going to the north to inoculate some 150,000 more.

The W.H.O. and its partner agencies in Gaza say they need to reach 90 percent of children under 10 to avert the spread of polio. Gazans are experiencing an explosion of infectious diseases in the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions created by the war and the destruction of Gaza’s health care infrastructure.

Medical Aid for Palestinians, an aid group supporting the effort, said in a statement on Tuesday that the main challenges of the campaign included ensuring safe access for medical workers and keeping the vaccines refrigerated in the face of electricity outages and fuel shortages, as well as the consequences of damage to sanitation and health care infrastructure.

The success of the vaccination campaign relies heavily on the staggered pauses in fighting in different regions of the Gaza Strip, which both Hamas and Israel agreed to and which they appear to be respecting. The pauses are intended to allow families and aid workers to safely reach vaccination sites between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Mohammed Abu Hajar, a 41-year-old driver who has been sheltering in central Gaza, where the campaign kicked off, said he took his two children to get vaccinated because “a child getting sick could lead to death,” given the collapsed health care system and a severe lack of medical supplies. “There is no other option,” he said.

But the vaccination campaign brought with it another blessing for Mr. Abu Hajar: the temporary pause in fighting, during which he said he had been able to “move around comfortably and feel some reassurance” that there would not be strikes.

Mazen Abdulwaha, a displaced father of seven, said he had been worried about his children ever since he first heard that the virus had been detected in Gaza’s wastewater, because they “live in camps where wastewater follows us everywhere.” He took his three youngest children to get vaccinated as soon as the campaign began.

Like others in central Gaza, Mr. Abdulwaha, 36, said his family was “trying to take advantage” of the pauses in fighting during the four days of the campaign in that area, but he remained cautious because he did not trust Israeli forces to adhere to them. “We had to bear this risk to vaccinate our children and protect them from diseases,” he said.

But for some, the humanitarian pauses offered little relief after more than 10 months of a brutal war.

“A calm of five to six hours means nothing,” said Mohammed al-Sapti, a 32-year-old who is sheltering in Nuseirat in central Gaza. “There is no such thing as temporary safety as long as we are living under siege, exhaustion and torture,” he added.

Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Ameera Harouda from Doha, Qatar.

Israeli soldiers withdrew from Tulkarm last week after two days of fighting, even as a raid continued in the city of Jenin to the north. But on Monday evening, Israeli forces began again deploying throughout Tulkarm in large numbers, said Ma’mun Abu al-Heija, a resident of Nur Shams, a neighborhood on the city’s outskirts.

On Tuesday, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by Israeli gunfire in Kafr Dan, just outside Jenin, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said in a statement. The circumstances were not immediately clear and the Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.

Israeli troops typically use less force in operations in the West Bank than they do in Gaza, much of which has been destroyed in Israel’s nearly 11-month-long war against Hamas. But these raids have been unusually destructive, residents and Palestinian officials in the West Bank said.

Israeli bulldozers have torn up main roads — in what military officials say is an effort to unearth improvised explosives planted by militants — along with water pipes and electrical cables. Many Palestinians in Jenin have spent days without electricity or running water, according to the local governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub.

Some residents of Jenin have begun to flee, fearing for their lives. Omar Obeid, 62, said he had left the city over the weekend with his children and many of his neighbors, walking through streets torn up by Israeli forces. They had been trapped at home for days without running water or electricity, he said.

“We tried to take a path that would avoid the army, but we still were risking our lives,” he said in a phone interview.

Eventually, he said, they reached a relative’s home in nearby Yabad and took shelter. Intermittent gunfire and explosions are distant but still audible, he said.

Israeli officials have described the raids as necessary to combat rising Palestinian militancy, particularly a spate of attempted bombings, over the past few weeks. The return of the tactic has revived difficult memories for Israelis, whose national psyche was scarred by dozens of Palestinian suicide attacks in the early 2000s that left hundreds of civilians dead.

Over the weekend, two cars rigged with explosives burst into flames during attacks in the southern West Bank. Israeli forces killed the two assailants, who Hamas said were members of its armed wing. And on Monday, Israel’s police said sappers had disarmed a car bomb near the Israeli settlement of Ateret in the central West Bank.

In mid-August, Hamas and its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a bombing in Tel Aviv that wounded one person and killed the assailant. The armed groups claimed it was a suicide bombing.

How many hostages are still in Gaza?

More than 60 living hostages, and the bodies of about 35 others taken captive on Oct. 7 but believed to be dead, are still in Gaza, according to the Israeli authorities.

In all, about 250 people were abducted on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials, who include in that number 37 people who were murdered in the initial attack and whose bodies were taken back to Gaza. Those taken were mainly civilians but also included military and security personnel. They were men, women and children, Israeli citizens as well as people who were citizens of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Mexico, Thailand and other countries.

How many hostages are Americans?

In all, 12 people with U.S. citizenship were abducted to Gaza on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli government. Two of them, Judith Raanan and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, were freed on Oct. 20 after pressure on Hamas by the United States and Qatar. Two others were released during a cease-fire in November.

One of the hostages, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, a dual Israeli American citizen, was among the six who were found dead in Gaza over the weekend. He had been taken from a music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The American Jewish Committee, an advocacy organization for Jewish people around the world, on Saturday listed four American citizens who were still being held alive in Gaza. They are Edan Alexander, 20; Sagui Dekel-Chen, 35; Omer Neutra, 22; and Keith Siegel, 64. Three others are presumed dead: Itay Chen, 19; Gadi Haggai, 73; and Judi Weinstein Haggai, 70.

How many hostages have been freed?

Since Oct. 7, 117 people have been released, according to the Israeli authorities. More than 100 were freed during a one-week cease-fire at the end of November in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli detention.

In addition, eight people have been freed during Israeli military operations. Last week, a Bedouin Arab citizen of Israel was rescued after Israeli commandos found him alone in a tunnel in southern Gaza.

In the most high-profile hostage rescue, in June, soldiers and special operations police rescued four hostages from buildings in the town of Nuseirat, in central Gaza. Scores of Palestinians, including women and children, were killed during that operation, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

In December, Israeli forces mistakenly killed three hostages who had escaped from their captors and were attempting to approach them. The army said the shooting violated its rules of engagement.

What are the conditions like for those still in captivity?

Hostages who have returned from captivity in Gaza have shed some light on where they were held and what the conditions were like. Some were held in hospitals, others in apartments, a mosque and even a destroyed supermarket. Hamas has also been known to hold hostages underground in a network of tunnels. The Israeli military said on Sunday that the bodies of the six slain hostages were found in a tunnel.

Many hostages who have left Gaza have described being moved repeatedly during their captivity, under heavily armed guard. They reported being subjected to physical and psychological abuse.

Andrey Kozlov, 27, a Russian Israeli, provided a detailed account of his time in captivity after he was rescued by the Israeli military in June. He described being held in six locations in the first two months and being moved to an apartment in mid-December. In some places, he and the hostages he was held with had only a pail for a toilet, and food was scarce.

After the rescue of Mr. Kozlov and three other captives, Dr. Itai Pessach, the head of a medical team for returning hostages, said they were malnourished. “They were all abused, punished and tortured physically and psychologically in many ways,” he said.

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.