A few hours before the start of the polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip, the news of the discovery of several bodies in the war zone caused an outcry in Israel. At first it was unclear whether these were the bodies of Israeli hostages, but participants in protest rallies intensified their criticism of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Netanyahu has abandoned the hostages. Starting tomorrow, the country will shake, the public is called upon to prepare,” Israeli media quoted representatives of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip as saying.
Meanwhile, the vaccination of hundreds of thousands of children against the polio virus, which causes polio, was to begin early in the morning in the Gaza Strip. To this end, there will be temporary and localized breaks in the fighting in the sealed-off coastal area.
Sharp criticism of Netanyahu
Israel’s army called on the public not to spread rumors about the bodies found. “At this time, troops are still deployed in the area and are conducting a process to recover and identify the bodies, which will take several hours,” the military said on social media on Saturday evening.
According to the Times of Israel, Israeli opposition leader Jair Lapid accused Netanyahu of focusing on insignificant issues while “our sons and daughters are being abandoned and dying in captivity.” Thousands of people demonstrated in Tel Aviv and other places in Israel that evening for an agreement to release those kidnapped by the Islamist Hamas.
WHO urges safe polio vaccination process
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the polio vaccination campaign will continue in the south of the sealed-off coastal strip after three or possibly more days before moving to the north of Gaza. Clinics, doctor’s offices and mobile teams are said to be immunizing hundreds of thousands of children against the virus within a few days. The goal is to reach more than 90 percent of children under the age of ten.
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The first doses of vaccine were administered on Saturday at a press conference of the Hamas-controlled health authority in the Gaza Strip. The WHO called for the safe implementation of the mass vaccination planned for today. All parties to the conflict must make this possible, demanded WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Platform X. The WHO had previously announced that all sides had made “provisional commitments to so-called area-specific humanitarian pauses” – meaning limited ceasefires.
Netanyahu’s office: Ceasefire is not a general ceasefire
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office stressed in the evening that reports of a general ceasefire to carry out the vaccinations were false. “Israel will only allow a humanitarian corridor through which the vaccination staff can pass; in addition, designated security areas will be set up in which the vaccines will be administered during certain hours,” it said in a statement.
Recently, the first case of polio in 25 years was reported in the Gaza Strip. Since the beginning of the war following the Hamas terrorist attack on the Israeli border area on October 7 last year, many babies and children in the Gaza Strip have not been able to be vaccinated. The poor hygienic conditions in the severely devastated coastal strip, where hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people are forced to stay in cramped conditions and clean water is scarce, could contribute to the rapid spread of the infectious disease, according to the WHO.
The forum of relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas demanded in a letter to the WHO that the abducted children in the Gaza Strip should also be vaccinated.
Efforts to reach Gaza agreement stall
Almost 2,200 volunteers have been trained to administer polio vaccinations in the war zone. In recent weeks, 1.26 million doses of polio vaccine have been delivered there, and 400,000 more are due to arrive shortly. Around 640,000 children under the age of 10 are to be vaccinated, with two doses each, four weeks apart.
Meanwhile, efforts to achieve a permanent ceasefire for the entire Palestinian territory are at a standstill. Hopes for a breakthrough in the mediation talks between Israel and Hamas in Cairo between the USA, Egypt and Qatar have so far remained unfulfilled.
The main point of contention is the question of how long Israeli troops can remain stationed in the Gaza Strip, particularly in the Philadelphia Corridor on the southern border with Egypt. Israel’s security cabinet recently decided to maintain control of the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Critics – including Defense Minister Joav Galant – fear that maintaining control could prevent the hostages from being released, as Hamas will not agree to Israeli control of the Philadelphia Corridor.
“Netanyahu and his cabinet partners have decided to torpedo the ceasefire agreement for the Philadelphia Corridor, thereby knowingly condemning the hostages to death,” said a statement read out by the relatives of the kidnapped people that evening. The mother of one of the hostages described Netanyahu’s insistence on control of the corridor as a “crime against the people, against the State of Israel and against Zionism.” “Netanyahu is not Mr. Security, but Mr. Death,” she said.
Since the war began almost eleven months ago, the number of Palestinians killed in the coastal strip has risen to more than 40,600, according to Gaza authorities. The number does not distinguish between fighters and civilians and is difficult to verify.
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