BERLIN, November 12. /TASS/. German Chancellor has said he does not support the idea of an immediate ceasefire or a lengthy humanitarian pause in the Gaza Strip as it will give time to Hamas to summon up strength.

"I don’t think that some demands for an immediate ceasefire or a lengthy pause, which is actually the same, are right because is the long run it will mean that Israel will have to give Hamas time to recover and obtain new missile to launch them again. This cannot be accepted," he said in an interview with the Heilbronner Stimme newspaper.

According to Scholz, only short humanitarian pauses "can have sense" to deliver assistance to the Gaza Strip and evacuate citizens of other countries and the wounded from there, and to release hostages.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.