Huge pressure on Israel brings daily operational pauses in war

Benjamin Netanyahu has been under the most extraordinary diplomatic pressure to allow for humanitarian pauses in the war in Gaza to enable Palestinian families to seek safety and get the food and water and medicine they desperately need. At the same time he has been under pressure from the Israeli military to give them the freedom to pursue the battle with Hamas relentlessly and without pauses of any kind. All army generals want that, to prosecute a war without political interference. But the US has been instrumental in persuading Netanyahu to offer a compromise, a four-hour operational pause each day. It's a good outcome for the sake of the Palestinian people, but it's also a reflection of the intense focus around the world on the bitterness and anger that has once again erupted in this part of the planet. It is a terrible conclusion to have to make but I cannot see Israel living in harmony alongside an independent Palestinian state in the near or even far future. Not for decades, especially after the slaughter committed by Hamas on October 7th that set this war off.