UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. World Health Organization said Thursday it has reached an agreement with Israel for limited pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children after a baby contracted the first confirmed case in 25 years in the Palestinian territory.
Described as “humanitarian pauses” that will last three days in different areas of the war-ravaged territory, the vaccination campaign will start Sunday in central Gaza, said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO's representative in the Palestinian territories.
That will be followed by another three-day pause in southern Gaza and then another in northern Gaza, he said, noting that the pauses will last eight or nine hours each day. He thinks that health workers — more than 2,000 will take part among U.N. agencies and the Gaza's Health Ministry — might need additional days to complete the vaccinations.
Peeperkorn told reporters via video conference that they aim to vaccinate 640,000 children under 10 and that the campaign has been coordinated with Israeli authorities.
“We need this humanitarian pause," he said. “And that has been very clear. We have an agreement on that, so we expect that all parties will stick to that.”
These humanitarian pauses are not a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that mediators U.S., Egypt and Qatar have long been seeking, including in talks that are ongoing this week.
Hamas is “ready to cooperate with international organizations to secure this campaign,” according to a statement from Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau.
An Israeli official said before the plan was announced that there was expected to be some sort of tactical pause to allow vaccinations to take place. The official had spoken on condition of anonymity before the plan was finalized.
Israel didn’t immediately comment Thursday on the vaccination campaign. The Israeli army has previously announced limited pauses in limited areas to allow international humanitarian operations.
WHO said health workers need to vaccinate at least 90% of children in Gaza to stop the transmission of polio.
“I’m not going to say this is the ideal way forward. But this is a workable way forward,” Peeperkorn said of the humanitarian pauses. Later he added, “It will happen and should happen because we have an agreement.”
The campaign comes after 10-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their waste. The baby boy was not vaccinated because he was born just before Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel and Israel launched a retaliatory offensive on Gaza.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
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AP writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed.
Edith M. Lederer, The Associated Press