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Israel’s prime minister managed to secure a truce with Hamas with the backing of the far-right coalition partners he needs to stay in power, but several cabinet members expressed their displeasure at giving the Palestinian group too many concessions.

The agreement between Israel and Hamas reached early on Wednesday, with mediation from Qatar, includes a multi-day truce and the release of 50 hostages being held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians jailed by Israel, among other measures.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet approved the truce, hardline members such as Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir reiterated opposition even after it was announced.

“Hamas wanted this time-out more than anything else,” Ben-Gvir posted on X, and said the pause would give the group time to resupply and reformulate itself, the dpa news agency reported.

Ben-Gvir also said on Wednesday that Israel was repeating the mistakes of the past, referring to a 2011 deal when more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners were freed in return for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held by Hamas for five years.

After one cabinet member said it was important to send a message of unity, Israeli outlet Ynet reported that Ben-Gvir responded: “But we’re not united. This decision will cause us great harm for generations.”

Questions from lawmakers were answered by members of Israel’s military and intelligence establishment, who sought to allay concerns that a pause in the fighting could stunt Israeli momentum after more than a month of relentless strikes on Gaza.

President Isaac Herzog acknowledged that the “reservations are understandable, painful, and difficult,” but added in a statement that given the circumstances he backed the government to move forward with the deal.

“This is a moral and ethical duty that correctly expresses the Jewish and Israeli value of securing the freedom of those held captive, with the hope that it will be the first step in returning all the hostages home,” Herzog said.

Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, which Israeli authorities say killed 1,200 people, and kidnapped about 240 people. The deadly assault has shaken Israeli society and divided opinions over the right path forward.

Representatives of the Religious Zionist party, led by right-wing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, voted in favour of the truce after expressing scepticism.

In a social media post, Settlements and National Missions Minister Orit Strock said that she had voted for the proposal “even though I really didn’t plan to” after “detailed reviews, [and] questions answered thoroughly”.

Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas, but has faced growing scrutiny over actions in Gaza that critics have said constitute indiscriminate punishment of the besieged enclave’s population.

Netanyahu has made clear that the agreement does not mean the war will stop, and vowed that the Israeli military will press on after the pause in fighting.

Israel has cut off access to food, fuel, and electricity for Gaza’s more than 2.3 million residents and wiped out entire neighbourhoods in an assault that Palestinian authorities say has killed more than 14,000 people, with more than 5,600 of them children.

As conditions in Gaza reach breaking point, pressure had built for a pause in the fighting to allow humanitarian assistance into the beleaguered Gaza Strip.

Some Israelis, including those who lost loved ones or continue to await their return after being kidnapped during the attack, also called on the government to prioritise the return of the hostages.

“People were not abducted abroad. They were abducted here, in Israel, from their beds,” said Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem, a member of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. “A huge failure took place here. Therefore, we must bring them back.”

Israel’s high court on Wednesday rejected a petition by the Almagor Terror Victims Association that said the deal would pose a threat to the country’s security, according to Israeli media reports.

The petition argued that releasing some captives, but not all, violated the right to equality, according to The Times of Israel. It had called for a delay in the agreement’s implementation until the government could prove that the truce did not endanger the lives of Israelis.

A 24-hour period in which the Israeli public could register legal objections to the government-approved deal had started on Tuesday night.

Reports that children’s hospitals in Beijing, Liaoning and other cities are ‘overwhelmed with sick children’.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has asked Beijing for more information on an outbreak of mysterious pneumonia in northern China that appears mostly to be affecting children.

The WHO made “an official request for detailed information on an increase in respiratory illnesses and reported clusters of pneumonia in children,”  the United Nations health agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

China has been experiencing an increase in cases of influenza-like illnesses compared with the same period in the previous three years when strict measures were in force as part of its zero-COVID strategy.

That policy was abruptly abandoned in December 2022.

The WHO noted that China’s National Health Commission told a press conference earlier this month that there had been an increase in the incidence of respiratory diseases, attributing them to the lifting of COVID-19 measures and the spread not only of COVID-19 but pathogens such as influenza, mycoplasma pneumoniae (a common bacterial infection which typically affects younger children), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Earlier this week, ProMED, an online medical community that raised questions in late 2019 about an unknown illness circulating in Wuhan that later became COVID-19, noted a growing number of media reports of clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia among children in northern China.

FTV News, a Taiwanese media outlet, reported that children’s hospitals in Beijing, Liaoning and other places in the north were “overwhelmed with sick children” and parents were questioning whether the authorities were “covering up an epidemic”.

ProMED said more definitive information on the “concerning illness” was needed.

Noting that it was unclear whether the outbreak in northern China and the overall increase in respiratory infections previously reported by Chinese authorities were linked, the WHO said it had asked Beijing for more detailed information on the situation.

“WHO requested additional epidemiologic and clinical information, as well as laboratory results from these reported clusters among children, through the International Health Regulations mechanism,” the statement said.

“We have also requested further information about recent trends in the circulation of known pathogens including influenza, SARS-CoV-2, RSV and mycoplasma pneumoniae, and the current burden on health care systems. WHO is also in contact with clinicians and scientists through our existing technical partnerships and networks in China.”

Writing on social media platform X, Dr Krutika Kuppalli, who is part of the WHO’s emergency programme, noted the illness “could be anything” and that many countries had outbreaks of respiratory illness after lifting lockdowns. “We need more information about symptoms, epidemiology and what has been tested,” she added.

The WHO urged people in China to take steps to reduce their risk of contracting a respiratory infection including updating vaccinations, maintaining a distance from other people, wearing masks when necessary and staying at home when sick. Testing was also important, it said.

The first cases of what turned out to be COVID-19 were reported as unexplained pneumonia in late 2019 with the first death from the disease in January 2020 the same month that China shared publicly the genetic sequence of COVID-19.

“Deeply concerned” by the rapid spread and severity of the virus as well as by “the alarming levels of inaction“, the WHO declared a pandemic in March 2020.

A WHO team finally visited Wuhan to investigate the outbreak in early 2021, but the origins of the virus remain unclear.

On November 6 in the city of Tapachula in Mexico’s Chiapas state, just down the road from the border with Guatemala, a young woman lay face down on the pavement in front of one of the offices of COMAR, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance. Generally speaking, “refugee assistance” means stymying the northward movement of desperate refugees at the behest of the United States.

I happened to be passing by the COMAR office on my way to the municipal cemetery of Tapachula, where earlier in the year I had visited a mass grave containing the unidentified remains of refugees who had perished in the city. As the policeman stationed in front of the office was busy staring into space, I stopped to ask bystanders what had befallen the prostrate woman.

“She suffers from high blood pressure,” was the response from Yessica, a Honduran woman holding a visibly ill infant in her arms as four other children ran in circles around her. Yessica had arrived in Tapachula 10 days earlier after travelling with her kids from the Honduran town of Tela through Guatemala, where, she said, they had been robbed of everything they had. They were now sleeping on the street trying to figure out how to proceed north in the face of “refugee assistance”.

In explaining why she had fled Honduras, Yessica cited a motive commonly invoked by refugees from the country: its spectacular levels of violence, which became even more so following the 2009 US-backed coup d’état when homicides and femicides surged. Yessica had another uniquely dreadful reason for needing to get to the US, however, which was that her son was buried there.

The son had been living with his father in Kansas City, Missouri, where he had died, apparently by drowning, in 2022, at the age of 13. If she could not cry at the grave of her son, Yessica told me, she would never be able to come to grips with his death and move forward. As she spoke to me, two of her daughters inspected my bracelets, and the infant in her arms sucked on the barrel of a small grey plastic gun.

The prostrate woman didn’t budge, but Yessica had committed to keeping an eye on her for the time being.

In addition to helping make Honduras a difficult place to stay alive in, the US was now forcing Yessica to risk her own life and those of her remaining children as she navigated a militarised border regime – all in the hopes of properly grieving her son and moving on with life.

As if death weren’t bad enough already, borders can just make it all worse.

Shortly before I left for Tapachula from my pseudo-base in the village of Zipolite in the neighbouring state of Oaxaca, the son of a humble electrician in the village died in California at the age of 36. The repatriation of the body was a lengthy bureaucratic nightmare that came with a price tag of $11,000, the father told me – i.e. more money than some Mexicans earn in three years. When the body finally arrived, traditional candles were prohibited at the wake due to the family’s concern about the effects of added heat on a long-dead corpse.

Then, of course, there are the countless folks who die trying to cross borders. The Sonoran Desert on the US-Mexico border has become a graveyard for desperate refugees and migrants as has the hostile stretch of jungle known as the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama – itself a veritable extension of the US border.

In Tapachula, I spoke with a 10-member Venezuelan family who had recently traversed the Darien Gap and reported seeing bodies, including of children and pregnant women. One of the family members commented matter-of-factly: “I can say that we have all stepped on dead people.”

Farther afield, the Mediterranean Sea serves as a maritime graveyard for refugees trying to reach a continent whose citizens are largely free to cross borders as they please. As of September, more than 2,500 people had already died or gone missing this year while pursuing the Mediterranean route to Europe.

But there is no limit to the ways borders not only cause but also complicate the most human phenomenon of death. When my Lebanese-Palestinian friend’s grandmother, a native of the Gaza Strip, passed away a few years ago in Jordan, the family naturally wanted her buried at home in Gaza. According to the state of Israel, my friend said, such an undertaking would have required an Israeli-performed autopsy to determine whether a dead 90-year-old Palestinian constituted a security threat. The family abandoned the plan.

Meanwhile, back in Tapachula, the mass grave of unidentified bodies remains untouched in the far back corner of the municipal cemetery. When I revisited the cemetery after my encounter with Yessica, the graveyard keepers informed me that no new remains had been added to the mass grave – which does not mean that refugees are no longer dying unidentified in Tapachula but rather that they are being interred elsewhere in the city.

It is unlikely that the family members of those buried in this desolate patch of earth near the Mexican-Guatemalan border will ever know the fates of their loved ones. Yessica, on the other hand, is determined to attain cross-border closure – or to die trying.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Washington, DC – The agreement between Israel and Hamas to pause the fighting in Gaza and release dozens of captives highlights the power of diplomacy and creates an opening to end the violence, advocates in the United States say.

But they stress that the truce is not sufficient, with many pledging to continue pressuring the administration of US President Joe Biden to pursue a long-term ceasefire.

“This is an important break in the fighting. It’s important that these families are reunified,” said Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at the advocacy group Friends Committee on National Legislation.

“But it’s not enough. We have to continue building momentum to reach a permanent ceasefire, a return of all the hostages, unfettered aid access and a solution for peace for Israelis and Palestinians.”

The deal will see Hamas release 50 women and children held in Gaza, and Israel free 150 Palestinian women and children from its prisons. The exchange will be accompanied by a four-day pause in the fighting and an increased delivery of humanitarian aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.

The agreement, which was approved by the Israeli government late on Tuesday, is expected to go into effect on Friday. It will mark the first stop in the fighting since the war broke out.

Biden welcomes deal

Israel has pledged to continue its military campaign after the pause. But El-Tayyab stressed that “more war” is not the answer, and that there is no military solution to the crisis.

“The question is: Will we fall back to where we were for the past six weeks, with indiscriminate bombing and civilians dying and the hostages being held?” he told Al Jazeera.

“Or are we going to take a step forward towards more negotiations, an extended truce, to get everybody home and finally resolve some of the underlying issues that are creating the cycles of violence, which include the systemic oppression of Palestinians?”

President Biden welcomed the deal and thanked Qatar and Egypt for helping to broker it. He also applauded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement on Wednesday.

“I appreciate the commitment that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government have made in supporting an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure the provision of additional humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinian families in Gaza,” Biden said. He did not comment on the future of the conflict.

The Biden administration has been calling for “humanitarian pauses” in the war while firmly rejecting demands for a ceasefire, at least until Israel achieves its stated goal of eliminating Hamas.

A truce or a pause is a temporary halt of fighting for an agreed-upon period of time — in this case, four days. A ceasefire is an indefinite end to hostilities that often comes with a negotiated agreement between the warring parties.

Nancy Okail, president of the Center for International Policy, a US-based think tank, called the truce a “step in the right direction”.

She said the pause could be used to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza, push for a lasting ceasefire and ensure the safety of humanitarian workers, medics and journalists.

“This would be important not just for the immediate objective of helping secure the release of the hostages but also to save lives and stop the bloodshed,” Okail told Al Jazeera.

‘Allow the truth to come out’

More than 14,500 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive in response to the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis.

Hamas also took more than 200 people captive from Israel. Thousands of Palestinians are in Israeli jails, including hundreds of children, many of whom are held in so-called administrative detention without formal charges.

The scale of the violence in Gaza has prompted many scholars and United Nations experts to warn of the risk of genocide.

The Israeli army has forcibly displaced most of the population in the north of the territory — more than one million residents — raising concerns about the possible ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, especially if they are not allowed to return to their homes.

Okail said the halt in violence should extend to the West Bank, where more than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since October 7.

If the fighting resumes, Okail also explained that she would like to see the US take a firm stance against any war crimes, including the use of collective punishment, civilian hostages and indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas.

“The Biden administration should also draw a clear red line around the use of US-supplied arms and make clear that there will be consequences if those weapons are not used in accordance with international law,” Okail added.

The White House and Pentagon have repeatedly said that they would not draw any “red lines” to restrict the Israeli operation in Gaza and how American arms are used.

Israel receives $3.8bn in US aid annually. Biden is seeking more than $14bn in additional assistance for Israel this year.

Leading rights groups like Amnesty International, however, have accused Israel of imposing apartheid on Palestinians. But the appeals for Biden to rein in Israeli abuses appear to be going unheard.

Politico reported late on Tuesday that the Biden administration is concerned that the pause “would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel”.

Against that backdrop, El-Tayyab called for independent observers to assess the carnage of Gaza.

“We need to allow the truth to come out. If the truth leads the public to say: This is a war we don’t want to be a part of, then we have to let the chips fall where they may,” he told Al Jazeera.

‘No backbone whatsoever’

Rights advocates have also expressed fear that renewed bombing after the truce might target southern Gaza, which has become more densely populated since the start of the war, as families flee bombings and other attacks.

But Biden’s support for Israel is not expected to waver after the pause.

​​Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, said Biden’s green light for the war is one of the main reasons the Israeli campaign “has gone on for this unspeakably long period”.

“My reading of the Netanyahu government is that they’re incorrigible, that nothing would stand in their way if they want to start back up the destruction,” Cole told Al Jazeera.

“And then President Biden has shown himself to have no backbone whatsoever when trying to stand up to Netanyahu.”

Cole noted that Netanyahu has been under pressure from the captives’ families to accept the deal, despite opposition from his far-right political allies. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for instance, called the agreement “immoral”.

Despite the push in some right-wing circles for the relentless bombing to continue, Israel does not appear close to destroying Hamas. The Palestinian group continues to fight Israeli troops in northern Gaza, killing dozens of soldiers since the ground invasion began.

Hamas’s top political and military leadership remains intact as well.

It’s not clear how and if Israel can eliminate Hamas militarily and what would come after the group if it were destroyed. Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007.

That’s why many progressive activists in the US are urging a political solution to end the violence — one that goes beyond the current deal.

Usamah Andrabi, communications director at Justice Democrats, a progressive group, called for the US to end its unconditional support for the Israeli government that “continues to openly tell us its plans to annihilate and displace the Palestinian people”.

Andrabi said the pause is a temporary but necessary reprieve from the “incessant bombing and destruction by the Israeli government”, which will allow for the release of captives.

“But we cannot let up on our demands for a permanent ceasefire,” Andrabi told Al Jazeera.

Sandra Tamari, the executive director of Adalah Justice Project, an advocacy group, echoed Andrabi’s comments. She said the halt is simply a “pause of genocide”.

“How can we settle for a pause to that kind of violence? We have to continue to push the US government to call for a complete ceasefire,” Tamari told Al Jazeera.

South Korea had already withdrawn from parts of the deal after Pyongyang launched a spy satellite on Tuesday.

North Korea has said it will move more troops and military equipment to the border with South Korea, and will no longer be bound by a 2018 joint military accord after Seoul suspended parts of the agreement in response to Pyongyang’s launch of a military spy satellite.

North Korea will “never be bound” by the agreement, state media reported on Thursday, citing the Defence Ministry.

The Comprehensive Military Agreement was signed at a 2018 summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and former South Korean President Moon Jae-in as part of an attempt to reduce tensions on the peninsula and build trust between the two countries.

Seoul withdrew from parts of the deal on Wednesday after Pyongyang said it had successfully launched the Malligyong-1 into orbit, following failures in May and August.

“We will immediately restore all military measures that have been halted according to the North-South military agreement,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“We will withdraw the military steps taken to prevent military tension and conflict in all spheres including ground, sea and air, and deploy more powerful armed forces and new-type military hardware in the region along the Military Demarcation Line,” it continued.

South Korea must “pay dearly for their irresponsible and grave political and military provocations that have pushed the present situation to an uncontrollable phase,” North Korea said.

State media reported on Wednesday that Kim had already been able to review imagery sent back by the satellite of the United States’s military bases in the Pacific island of Guam.

Kim has made the successful development of reconnaissance satellites a priority of his military modernisation programme, arguing the equipment would improve North Korea’s ability to monitor its neighbour and deal with alleged threats from South Korea and the US.

The Malligyong-1 was launched late on Tuesday night, hours after Pyongyang had notified Japan of its intention to launch a satellite between November 22 and December 1.

Such launches are banned under UN Security Council sanctions designed to curb nuclear-armed North Korea’s ballistic missile programme, and it was swiftly condemned by South Korea, Japan, the US and the United Nations.

On Wednesday afternoon, in response to the launch, South Korea resumed surveillance operations on its northern border in a partial suspension of the 2018 deal.