Israel agrees to brief pause in Gaza for polio vaccinations, official says

Israel has agreed to a temporary pause of some military operations in the Gaza Strip to enable a polio vaccination campaign there, a senior State Department official said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel had not agreed to “pauses in the fighting in order to administer polio vaccines,” but rather “the allocation of certain places in the Gaza Strip” for unstated purposes, an arrangement it said had been approved by the security cabinet. The wording appeared designed to avoid indicating it had approved a humanitarian pause in the fighting in the absence of a cease-fire deal opposed by some members of Netanyahu’s coalition.