Pause, or cease-fire?
The distinction is crucial to the crisis in Israel and Gaza. But world leaders keep getting confused by it.
During a visit to Washington last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada was asked whether he supported a cease-fire — a phrase generally understood to mean a stop to the fighting that can last for months or even years.
Israel and many Western governments oppose a cease-fire, saying that a long-term break in Israel’s offensive against Hamas would simply give the Palestinian terror group time to refortify and rearm.
The United States and several other nations, including members of the Group of 7 in a joint statement on Wednesday, are instead urging Israel’s government to agree to much shorter “pauses.” Such pauses are widely defined as breaks in the fighting of perhaps hours or days for specific humanitarian missions like aid delivery into blockaded Gaza and the potential release of hostages held by Hamas.
In a video that circulated widely online, Mr. Trudeau seemed momentarily unsure of which one he supported. “We need to see a cease — we need to see a humanitarian pause so we can flow — we need ceasing of the levels of violence that we’re seeing,” Mr. Trudeau said.
The distinction may seem minor to some, but not to Israel’s government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that “calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism.” But he has recently suggested an openness to brief “tactical pauses.”
Experts say neither term is defined under international law.
“The key difference relates to the purpose of the suspension — whether it is to allow a specific humanitarian activity to be conducted without risk of harm from the active fighting, or whether it is a generalized suspension of hostilities,” Emanuela-Chiara Gillard, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, wrote in an essay on the subject this week.
“Suspensions of hostilities for specific humanitarian purposes tend to be limited in scope — in terms of duration and location. Although they pause the fighting, this tends to be a brief and localized interruption,” Ms. Gillard noted. They typically involve a highly specific agreement between the warring parties about matters like the precise time windows and routes granted to aid convoys or refugees.
By contrast, she added, cease-fires unrelated to specific humanitarian goals “can affect the achievement of the strategic military objectives of the hostilities.”
“The use of inconsistent and/or ambiguous terminology has contributed to the confusion,” she noted.
That confusion has even seemed to ensnare President Biden.
Confronted at a campaign event last week by a heckler demanding that he support a cease-fire, Mr. Biden momentarily suggested that he agreed with her position.
“I’m the guy that convinced Bibi to call for a cease-fire to let the prisoners out,” the president said, referring to Mr. Netanyahu. But Mr. Netanyahu adamantly opposes any cease-fire, nor has that been U.S. policy at any point.
Mr. Biden said earlier at the event that he favored a “pause” in the fighting, saying that it “means give time to get the prisoners out” — in another apparent reference to the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, several of whom are believed to be Americans.
As a political matter, many Democrats facing pressure from liberal activists angry over the civilian toll of Israel’s offensive have embraced the idea of a “pause.” That position allows them to show sympathy for the Palestinians of Gaza without angering hawkish pro-Israel voters.
But that middle ground can also be awkward. Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, had been slammed by some longtime progressive allies for backing a pause but not a cease-fire.
“I don’t know how you could have a cease-fire, permanent cease-fire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel,” Mr. Sanders told CNN on Nov. 5.
“Biggest political disappointment of our generation,” Briahna Joy Gray, who was the national press secretary for Mr. Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, retorted on X.
Amid the general confusion, the Biden administration has made its position clear in recent days: Pauses good, cease-fire bad.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken brought that message during a visit to Israel late last week. Speaking to reporters in Amman, Jordan, Mr. Blinken ruled out U.S. support for a cease-fire, which he said “would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7.”
But Mr. Blinken endorsed the idea of briefer “pauses.”
“We believe pauses can be a critical mechanism for protecting civilians, for getting aid in, for getting foreign nationals out, while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective: defeat Hamas,” Mr. Blinken added.
He said he “spoke in depth with Israeli leaders about how, when, and where such arrangements could be implemented, and what needs to be done to make them possible.”
Mr. Blinken — or whoever runs his official account on X — has himself tripped up on terminology. On Oct. 9, a post appeared on Mr. Blinken’s account saying that, in a call with Turkey’s foreign minister, he had “encouraged” Turkey’s advocacy for a cease-fire. The post was quickly deleted, and a State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, called it “unfortunately worded.”
Shortly after Mr. Blinken left Israel, Mr. Netanyahu had appeared to rebuff any talk of stopping Israel’s military offensive. “I made clear that we are continuing full force and that Israel refuses a temporary cease-fire, which does not include the release of our hostages,” the Israeli leader said of his meeting with the U.S. secretary of state.
But in an interview with ABC News aired on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to soften his position, saying that Israel was open to “tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there.” A senior Israel official echoed that sentiment in a briefing on Tuesday, saying that his government was considering localized pauses in specific areas to allow for increased humanitarian aid flows.
The official added that Israel would only agree to pauses that did not affect the momentum of its military operation, and that pauses were not required for aid trucks to enter southern Gaza from Egypt.
During an interview with CNN on Tuesday, an Israeli military spokesman said his country was already implementing pauses to allow Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, where the heaviest fighting is occurring.
The spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, said that for the past four days Israel had allowed for “windows” between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. “where the Palestinians are informed ahead of time by us that we are gong to hold our fire” to allow civilians to evacuate from northern Gaza “to the relative safety of the south.”
But aid groups say far more is required, including a major increase in the number of trucks allowed to cross into Gaza from Egypt to deliver humanitarian supplies like food, water and medicine to an increasingly desperate population.
Adding to the confusion, some organizations have adopted a hybrid phrase that seems to combine “cease-fire” and “humanitarian pause.”
The leaders of several major United Nations bodies and the International Rescue Committee have supported what they call a “humanitarian cease-fire” to import aid, evacuate the sick and wounded, and secure the release of hostages.
The International Rescue Committee said in a statement on Nov. 5 that such a halt in the fighting must last for a minimum of five days, saying that “stopping for a few hours will not allow anything substantive to be achieved.”
As for the terminology involved, the statement said: “The words are less important than the substance.”
