How France is trying to achieve a humanitarian pause in the Gaza Strip

An international conference on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip was held in Paris on November 9. 80 countries and 30 NGOs, chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron, were looking for an opportunity to achieve a pause in hostilities to deliver humanitarian supplies. Israel, whose military operation has already resulted in 10,569 casualties in the Gaza Strip since October 7, was not present at the conference.

Macron, opening the conference, said that a humanitarian pause in the sector should be declared “as soon as possible,” but that a ceasefire must also be worked on. “Civilians must be protected. This is necessary and is not discussed,” the French leader said. According to Reuters, in addition to humanitarian pauses in Paris, a “sea corridor” for delivering humanitarian aid to the enclave was also discussed. This option was publicly discussed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on November 6 in a meeting with Cyprus President Nicos Christodoulides.

Participants in the Paris conference included Arab countries, the Palestinian Authority and all G20 countries except Russia. As official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova told Vedomosti, the lack of an invitation to the Russian delegation “is due to the hypocrisy of those who care about people in words [в секторе Газа]” “If they cared, they wouldn’t engage in political intrigue,” she said. At the same time, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was invited to the previous summit on the situation in the Gaza Strip in October in Cairo. There was no Israel in Cairo.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths compared the situation in the Gaza Strip to a forest fire that could spread throughout the region. He stressed that the UN cannot support the displacement of Palestinians into the so-called “safe zones” in the southern part of the enclave, where the Israeli army ordered them to go back in October, intensively bombarding the enclave’s largest city, Gaza. The UN estimates the assistance needs for the population of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank at $1.2 billion until the end of 2023. He called the blockade of the Gaza Strip “collective punishment.” The Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Philippe Lazzarini, called for the opening of all checkpoints on the border of the Gaza Strip, and called the amount of assistance received through the only intermittently operating Rafah checkpoint inadequate.

According to AFP, Macron spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on October 7 and intends to do so again after the meeting in Paris. The day before the conference, US President Joe Biden directly asked Netanyahu for humanitarian pauses. As US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby explained on November 9, the pauses will affect only certain sections of the front and will be “limited in time.” Netanyahu, after meeting with Blinken in an interview with ABC News on November 7, allowed such pauses, but only as “targeted” ones, and outlined their duration at about an hour. Kirby could not confirm information about negotiations on a three-day pause, which Hamas requested on November 8 in exchange for 12 hostages. According to Axios and AFP, Biden agrees to such a pause, but Netanyahu allegedly insists on the return of all hostages.

According to Pavel Timofeev, head of the department of European political studies at IMEMO RAS, the Paris Conference is more an initiative of Macron personally than Paris fulfilling the will of the Americans. The event fits into traditional French Middle East policy since the 1960s, the expert says: Macron himself organized similar conferences to reconcile the warring parties in Libya during his first term. “France is trying to recall its role as a negotiator in the region. But in the current conditions, Paris is unlikely to be able to impose any decisions on Israel; France needs the support of the entire political potential of its partners in the EU and beyond,” Timofeev believes. He explained the absence of Israel among the conference participants by the French fears of a negative response against the backdrop of the bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Lyudmila Samarskaya, a researcher at the Center for Middle East Studies at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that Israel is now not ready to participate in such conferences because it has other priorities and fears that the suspension of hostilities will be used against it. Reaching an agreement on humanitarian pauses, Samarskaya believes, is possible. “But in this case, the key issue for Israel will be the release of at least part of the hostages; without this, any – even temporary – suspension of hostilities is unlikely,” the expert says.

According to Kirill Semenov, an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council, Israel will sooner or later have to take a humanitarian pause in order to save its image from the label of “genocide.” “Whether it will look like his initiative or whether he will pretend that he will “make concessions” to external actors does not matter. But Israel will be forced to act this way not by international calls, but by the very dynamics and logic of its military operation,” concludes Semenov.