middle-east
Netanyahu rejects growing international calls for a cease-fire in Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Saturday against growing international calls for a cease-fire, saying Israel’s battle to crush Gaza’s ruling Hamas militants will continue with “full force.”
A cease-fire would be possible only if all 239 hostages held by militants in Gaza are released, Netanyahu said in a televised address.
The Israeli leader also insisted that after the war, now entering its sixth week, Gaza would be demilitarized and Israel would retain security control there. Asked what he meant by security control, Netanyahu said Israeli forces must be able to enter Gaza freely to hunt down militants.
He also rejected the idea that the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers autonomous areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would at some stage control Gaza. Both positions run counter to post-war scenarios floated by Israel’s closest ally, the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the U.S. opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and envisions a unified Palestinian government in both Gaza and the West Bank at some stage as a step toward Palestinian statehood.
For now, Netanyahu said, “the war against (Hamas) is advancing with full force, and it has one goal, to win. There is no alternative to victory.”
Pressure was growing on Israel after frantic doctors at Gaza’s largest hospital said the last generator had run out of fuel, causing the death of a premature baby, another child in an incubator and four other patients. Thousands of war-wounded, medical staff and displaced civilians were caught in the fighting.
In recent days, fighting near Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza has intensified and supplies have run out. The Israeli military has alleged, without providing evidence, that Hamas has established command posts in and underneath hospitals, using civilians as human shields. Medical staff at Shifa have denied such claims and accused Israel of harming civilians with indiscriminate attacks.
Shifa hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said the facility lost power Saturday.
“Medical devices stopped. Patients, especially those in intensive care, started to die,” he said by phone, with gunfire and explosions in the background. He said Israeli troops were “shooting at anyone outside or inside the hospital” and prevented movement between buildings.
Israel’s military confirmed clashes outside the hospital, but Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari denied Shifa was under siege. He said troops will assist Sunday in moving babies treated there and said “we are speaking directly and regularly” with hospital staff.
Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told broadcaster Channel 12 that as Israel aims to crush Hamas, taking control of the hospitals would be key but require “a lot of tactical creativity,” without hurting patients, other civilians and Israeli hostages.
Six patients died at Shifa after the generator shut down, including the two children, spokesmen with the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
Read: Israel must stop killing babies and women in Gaza: Macron tells BBC
The “unbearably desperate situation” at Shifa must stop now, the International Committee of the Red Cross director general, Robert Mardini, said on social media. U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths posted that “there can be no justification for acts of war in health care facilities."
Elsewhere, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli tanks were 20 meters (65 feet) from al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, causing “a state of extreme panic and fear” among the 14,000 displaced people sheltering there.
Israel’s military released footage which it said showed tanks operating in Gaza. The images showed shattered buildings, some on fire, and destroyed streets empty of anyone but troops.
A 57-nation gathering of Muslim and Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia called in their communique for an end to the war in Gaza and the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid. They also called on the International Court of Justice, a U.N. organ, to open an investigation into Israel’s attacks, saying the war “cannot be called self-defense and cannot be justified under any means.”
Netanyahu has said the responsibility for any harm to civilians lies with Hamas, which denied it was preventing people in Gaza City from fleeing.
The spokesman of the Hamas military wing said militants were ambushing Israeli troops and vowed that Israel will face a long battle. The Qassam Brigades spokesman, who goes by Abu Obaida, acknowledged in audio aired on Al-Jazeera that the fight is disproportionate “but it is terrifying the strongest force in the region.”
Israel’s military has said soldiers have encountered hundreds of Hamas fighters in underground facilities, schools, mosques and clinics during the fighting. Israel has said a key goal of the war is to crush Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for 16 years.
Following Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which at least 1,200 people were killed, Israel’s allies have defended the country’s right to protect itself. But now into the second month of war, there are growing differences over how Israel should conduct its fight.
Read: ‘From the river to the sea': Why these 6 words spark fury and passion over the Israel-Hamas war
The U.S. has pushed for temporary pauses that would allow for wider distribution of badly needed aid to civilians in the besieged territory where conditions are increasingly dire. However, Israel has only agreed to brief daily periods during which civilians can flee the area of ground combat in northern Gaza and head south on foot along the territory’s main north-south artery.
Since these evacuation windows were first announced a week ago, more than 150,000 civilians have fled the north, according to U.N. monitors. On Saturday, the military announced a new evacuation window, saying civilians could use the central road and a coastal road.
A stream of people fled southward on the main road, some on donkey-drawn carts. One man pushed two children in a wheelbarrow.
“Where to go, and what do they want from us?” said Yehia al-Kafarnah, one fleeing resident.
Palestinian civilians and rights advocates have pushed back against Israel’s portrayal of the southern evacuation zones as “relatively safe.” They note that Israeli bombardment has continued across Gaza, including airstrikes in the south that Israel says target Hamas leaders but that have also killed women and children.
Demonstrations and outrage continued. Police said 300,000 Palestinian supporters marched peacefully in London, the largest such event there since the war started. Right-wing counterprotesters clashed with police.
FEAR GROWS INSIDE SHIFA
“Shelling and explosions never stopped,” said Islam Mattar, one of thousands sheltering at Shifa. “Children here are terrified from the constant sound of explosions.”
The Health Ministry told Al Jazeera there were still 1,500 patients at Shifa, along with 1,500 medical personnel and between 15,000 and 20,000 people seeking shelter.
Thousands have fled Shifa and other hospitals that have come under attack, but physicians said it's impossible for everyone to get out.
Read more: Thousands who were sheltering at Gaza City’s hospitals flee as Israel-Hamas war closes in
“We cannot evacuate ourselves and (leave) these people inside," a Doctors Without Borders surgeon at Shifa, Mohammed Obeid, was quoted as saying by the organization.
CASUALTIES RISE
More than 11,070 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people have been reported missing and are thought to be possibly trapped or dead under the rubble.
At least 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mainly in the initial Hamas attack, Israeli officials say. The military on Saturday confirmed the deaths of five reserve soldiers; 46 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.
Nearly 240 people abducted by Hamas from Israel remain captive.
About 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have traded fire repeatedly.
“Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into a possible war," Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said after meeting with soldiers stationed along the border.
‘From the river to the sea': Why these 6 words spark fury and passion over the Israel-Hamas war
The Jordan River is a winding, 200-plus-mile run on the eastern flank of Israel and the occupied West Bank. The sea is the glittering Mediterranean to its west.
But a phrase about the space in between, "from the river to the sea," has become a battle cry with new power to roil Jews and pro-Palestinian activists in the aftermath of Hamas' deadly rampage across southern Israel Oct. 7 and Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," pro-Palestinian activists from London to Rome and Washington chanted in the volatile aftermath of Israel's bloodiest day. Adopting or defending it can be costly for public figures, such as U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was censured by the House on Tuesday.
But like so much of the Mideast conflict, what the phrase means depends on who is telling the story — and which audience is hearing it.
Fights in bread lines, despair in shelters: War threatens to unravel Gaza's close-knit society
Many Palestinian activists say it's a call for peace and equality after 75 years of Israeli statehood and decades-long, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians. Jews hear a clear demand for Israel's destruction.
This much is clear: Hamas fighters killed at least 1,200 people in Israel, mainly in the initial Hamas attack, and 41 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began, Israeli officials say. The Foreign Ministry had previously estimated the civilian death toll at 1,400, and gave no reason Friday for the revision.
Hamas also hauled around 240 people back to Gaza as hostages in the worst violence against Jews since the Holocaust.
Thousands who were sheltering at Gaza City’s hospitals flee as Israel-Hamas war closes in
Israel responded with heavy bombardment of Gaza and a ground offensive, that has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The death toll is certain to rise. The result is the deadliest round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in decades.
In the raw afterburn of the Hamas attacks, the chant seems to put everyone on edge.
SLOGAN ADOPTED BY HAMAS
"From the river to the sea" echoes through pro-Palestinian rallies across campuses and cities, adopted by some as a call for a single state on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
By 2012, it was clear that Hamas had claimed the slogan in its drive to claim land spanning Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Civilians flee north Gaza or shelter at a hospital as Israel and Hamas battle in the city
"Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north," Khaled Mashaal, the group's former leader, said that year in a speech in Gaza celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas. "There will be no concession on any inch of the land."
The phrase also has roots in the Hamas charter.
The story behind the phrase is much larger, and reaches across the decades.
In the months before and during the 1948 war, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from what is now Israel. Many expected to return. Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 war. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, and in 2007, Hamas claimed the tiny strip from the Palestinian Authority after a violent coup.
WHAT JEWS SAY THEY HEAR
Even the shorthand, "from the river to the sea," echoes through pro-Palestinian protests, crackles across social media and is available on a variety of merchandise, from sweatshirts to candles.
Ask Jewish people in London what's so chilled them about the current spike in antisemitism, and many will cite what seems like the ubiquity of the slogan. It is a sign, they suggest, that there's much to fear.
"Have no doubt that Hamas is cheering those 'from the river to the sea' chants, because a Palestine between the river to the sea leaves not a single inch for Israel," read an open letter signed by 30 Jewish news outlets around the world and released on Wednesday.
And in the wake of Hamas' killing of civilians on Oct. 7, they're not buying that the chant is merely anti-Israel. Backed by groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, they say it's inherently anti-Jewish.
"No one can now say that in the eyes of Hamas, a hatred of Israel does not mean a hatred of all Jews," said London resident Sarah Nachshen. "The slogans and placards and chants calling for the eradication of Israel and, indeed, all Jews have clearly shown this."
WHAT PALESTINIAN ACTIVISTS SAY
Tlaib, D-Mich., who has family in the West Bank and is Congress' only Palestinian-American, posted a video Nov. 3 that featured protesters chanting the slogan.
No stranger to criticism over her rhetoric on the U.S.-Israel relationship, Tlaib defended the slogan.
"From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate," Tlaib tweeted, cautioning that conflating anti-Israel sentiment with antisemitism "silence(s) diverse voices speaking up for human rights."
Tweeted Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program and a senior Fellow at Arab Center Washington: "There isn't a square inch of the land between the river and the sea where Palestinians have freedom, justice and equality, and it has never been more important to emphasize this than right now."
A TWO-STATE SOLUTION
Most of the international community supports a two-state solution, which calls for the partition of the land. To many, though, decades of Israeli settlement expansion have made the reality of a two-state solution impossible.
Right-wing Israelis have blurred the lines between Israel and the West Bank, where half a million people now live in settlements. Many in the Israeli government support the annexation of the West Bank, and official government maps often make no mention of the "green line" boundary between the two.
And the original platform of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party, Likud, published a version of the slogan, saying that between the sea and the Jordan River, "there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
THE RISK OF THE SLOGAN
Using the phrase for public figures can be costly. Tlaib's censure is a punishment one step short of expulsion from the House.
Last month, Vienna police banned a pro-Palestinian demonstration, citing the fact that the phrase "from the river to the sea" was mentioned in invitations and characterizing it as a call to violence.
And in Britain, the Labour party issued a temporary punishment to a member of Parliament, Andy McDonald, for using the phrase during a rally at which he called for a stop to bombardment.
"We won't rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis & Palestinians, between the river & the sea can live in peaceful liberty," he tweeted.
Then he explained: "These words should not be construed in any other way than they were intended, namely as a heart felt plea for an end to killings in Israel, Gaza, and the occupied West Bank, and for all peoples in the region to live in freedom without the threat of violence."
Fights in bread lines, despair in shelters: War threatens to unravel Gaza's close-knit society
Fistfights break out in bread lines. Residents wait hours for a gallon of brackish water that makes them sick. Scabies, diarrhea and respiratory infections rip through overcrowded shelters. And some families have to choose who eats.
"My kids are crying because they are hungry and tired and can't use the bathroom," said Suzan Wahidi, an aid worker and mother of five at a U.N. shelter in the central town of Deir al-Balah, where hundreds of people share a single toilet. "I have nothing for them."
With the Israel-Hamas war in its second month and more than 10,000 people killed in Gaza, trapped civilians are struggling to survive without electricity or running water. Palestinians who managed to flee Israel's ground invasion in northern Gaza now encounter scarcity of food and medicine in the south, and there is no end in sight to the war sparked by Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack.
Thousands who were sheltering at Gaza City’s hospitals flee as Israel-Hamas war closes in
Over half a million displaced people have crammed into hospitals and U.N. schools-turned-shelters in the south. The schools — overcrowded, strewn with trash, swarmed by flies — have become a breeding ground for infectious diseases.
Since the start of the war, several hundred trucks of aid have entered Gaza through the southern Rafah crossing, but aid organizations say that's a drop in the ocean of need. For most people, each day has become a drudging cycle of searching for bread and water and waiting in lines.
The sense of desperation has strained Gaza's close-knit society, which has endured decades of conflict, four wars with Israel and a 16-year blockade since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces.
Some Palestinians have even vented their anger against Hamas, shouting insults at officials or beating up policemen in scenes unimaginable just a month ago, witnesses say.
Western and Arab officials are gathering in Paris to find ways to provide aid to civilians in Gaza
"Everywhere you go, you see tension in the eyes of people," said Yousef Hammash, an aid worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council in the southern town of Khan Younis. "You can tell they are at a breaking point."
Supermarket shelves are nearly empty. Bakeries have shut down because of lack of flour and fuel for the ovens. Gaza's farmland is mostly inaccessible, and there's little in produce markets beyond onions and oranges. Families cook lentils over small fires in the streets.
"You hear children crying in the night for sweets and hot food," said Ahmad Kanj, 28, a photographer at a shelter in the southern town of Rafah. "I can't sleep."
Many people say they've gone weeks without meat, eggs or milk and now live on one meal a day.
"There is a real threat of malnutrition and people starving," said Alia Zaki, spokesperson for the U.N.'s World Food Program. What aid workers call "food insecurity" is the new baseline for Gaza's 2.3 million people, she said.
Famed Gazan dishes like jazar ahmar — juicy red carrots stuffed with ground lamb and rice — are a distant memory, replaced by dates and packaged biscuits. Even those are hard to find.
Each day families send their most assertive relative off before dawn to one of the few bakeries still functioning. Some take knives and sticks — they say they must prepare to defend themselves if attacked, with riots sporadically breaking out in bread and water lines.
"I send my sons to the bakeries and eight hours later, they've come back with bruises and sometimes not even bread," said 59-year-old Etaf Jamala, who fled Gaza City for the southern town of Deir al-Balah, where she sleeps in the packed halls of a hospital with 15 family members.
Civilians flee north Gaza or shelter at a hospital as Israel and Hamas battle in the city
One woman told The Associated Press that her nephew, a 27-year-old father of five in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya in northern Gaza, was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife after being accused of cutting the line for water. He needed dozens of stitches, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The violence has jarred the tiny territory, where family names are linked to community status and even small indiscretions can be magnified in the public eye.
"The social fabric for which Gaza was known is fraying due to the anxiety and uncertainty and loss," said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
Israel cut off water to Gaza shortly after the Hamas attack, saying its complete siege would be lifted only after the militants released the roughly 240 hostages they captured. Israel has since turned on pipelines to the center and south, but there's no fuel to pump or process the water. The taps run dry.
Those who can't find or afford bottled water rely on salty, unfiltered well water, which doctors say causes diarrhea and serious gastrointestinal infections.
"I cannot recognize my own son," said Fadi Ihjazi. The 3-year-old has lost 5 kilograms (11 pounds) in just two weeks, she said, and has been diagnosed with a chronic intestinal infection.
"Before the war he had the sweetest baby face," Ihjazi said, but now his lips are chapped, his face yellowish, his eyes sunken.
At shelters, the lack of water makes it hard to maintain even basic hygiene, said Dr. Ali al-Uhisi, who treats patients at one in Deir al-Balah. Lice and chicken pox have spread, he said, and on Wednesday morning alone he treated four cases of meningitis. This week, he's also seen 20 cases of the liver infection hepatitis A.
"What worries me is that I know I'm seeing a fraction of the total number of cases at the shelter," he said.
For most ailments, there is no treatment — zinc tablets and oral rehydration salts vanished the first week of the war. Frustrated patients have assaulted doctors, said Al-Uhisi, who described being beaten this week by a patient who needed a syringe.
Sadeia Abu Harbeid, 44, said she missed a chemotherapy treatment for her breast cancer during the second week of the war and can't find painkillers. Without regular treatments, she says, her chances of survival are dim.
She hardly eats, choosing to give most of the little food she has to her 2-year-old. "This existence is a humiliation," she said.
Across Gaza, rare scenes of dissent are playing out. Some Palestinians are openly challenging the authority of Hamas, which long has ruled the enclave with an iron fist. Four Palestinians across Gaza spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals about what they've seen.
A man who was told off by a Hamas officer for cutting the bread line took a chair and smashed it over his head, according to an aid worker in line. In another area, angry crowds hurled stones at Hamas police who cut in front of a water line and beat them with their fists until they scattered, according to a journalist there.
Over the past few night in Gaza City, Hamas rockets streaming overhead toward Israel have prompted outbursts of rage from a U.N. shelter. In the middle of the night, hundreds of people have shouted insults against Hamas and cried out that they wanted the war to end, according to a 28-year-old sleeping in a tent there with his family.
And during a televised press conference Tuesday, a young man with a dazed expression and bandaged wrist pushed his way through the crowd, disrupting a speech by Iyad Bozum, spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
"May God hold you to account, Hamas!" the man yelled, shaking his wounded hand.
Gaza's future remains uncertain as Israeli tanks rumble down the ghostly streets of Gaza City with the goal of toppling Hamas. Palestinians say it will never be the same.
"The Gaza I know is just a memory now," said 16-year-old Jehad Ghandour, who fled to Rafah. "There are no places or anything I know left."
Civilians flee north Gaza or shelter at a hospital as Israel and Hamas battle in the city
Crowds of Palestinian families stretching as far as the eye could see walked out of Gaza City and surrounding areas toward the south Thursday to escape Israeli airstrikes and ground troops battling Hamas militants in dense urban neighborhoods. Others joined tens of thousands taking shelter at the city's biggest hospital, not far from the fighting.
Gaza's largest city is the focus of Israel's campaign to crush Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 incursion — and the Israeli military says Hamas' main command center is located in and under the Shifa Hospital complex. The militant group and hospital staff deny that claim, saying the military is creating a pretext to strike it.
Also read: Western and Arab officials are gathering in Paris to find ways to provide aid to civilians in Gaza
Growing numbers of people have been living in and around the hospital complex, hoping it will be safer than their homes or United Nations shelters in the north, several of which have been hit repeatedly. Israeli troops were around 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the hospital, according to its director.
The accelerating exodus to the south came as Israel agreed to a four-hour humanitarian pause each day and to open a second route for people to flee the north, the White House said.
Asked about the agreement in a Fox News interview that aired Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied that "the fighting continues against the Hamas enemy, the Hamas terrorists, but in specific locations for a given period, a few hours here, a few hours there, we want to facilitate a safe passage of civilians away from the zone of fighting. And we're doing that."
Meanwhile, Western and Arab officials gathered Thursday in Paris to discuss ways of providing more aid to civilians in Gaza.
Separately, mediators worked on a possible deal for a three-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of around a dozen hostages held by Hamas, according to two Egyptian officials, a United Nations official and a Western diplomat.
BATTLES NEAR SHIFA HOSPITAL
Israeli ground forces battled near Gaza's largest hospital, Shifa. Conditions for tens of thousands of people sheltering there have become "catastrophic," said Wafaa Abu Hajjaj, a Palestinian journalist at the hospital.
She, as well as several people who left the hospital to go south, said families are sleeping in hospital rooms, emergency rooms, surgical theaters and the maternity ward, or on the streets outside. Daily food distributions helped a tiny number for a time, but there has been no bread for the past four days, they said. Water is scarce and usually polluted, and few people can bathe.
Also read: Israeli military tour of northern Gaza reveals ravaged buildings, toppled trees, former weapons lab
Still more families are arriving, believing it is safer than fleeing to the south, where airstrikes also continue — though some have started to leave because of nearby missile strikes and the sound of clashes between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters, Abu Hajajj said.
The hospital has been overwhelmed with daily waves of wounded from airstrikes, while medical supplies have been running low and electricity shut off in many wards. The U.N. delivered two truckloads of supplies Wednesday night, the second delivery since the war began — enough to last a few hours, the director said.
"The conditions here are disastrous in every sense of the word," hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We're short on medicine and equipment, and the doctors and nurses are exhausted. … We're unable to do much for the patients."
International journalists who entered the north on a tour led by the Israeli military on Wednesday saw heavily damaged buildings, fields of rubble and toppled trees along the Mediterranean shoreline.
Also read: Destroying civilian housing and infrastructure is an international crime, warns UN expert
More than two-thirds of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began, with hundreds of thousands heeding Israeli orders to flee to the southern part of the enclave.
But the conditions there are also dire. Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets in the south, often crushing homes with families inside.
Aid deliveries into Gaza from Egypt have reached an average of 100 trucks a day, U.S. humanitarian envoy for the war David Satterfield said Thursday. Relief workers say that is still far below what is needed.
A QUICKENING EXODUS
The exodus from Gaza City and surrounding areas in the north has picked up in recent days. The U.N. said 50,000 people fled south on Gaza's main highway Wednesday.
Similar-sized crowds streamed out on Thursday, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene as they arrived out of the northern zone. Shots rang out in the distance and smoke rose from blocks away as families made their way on foot with only what they could carry. Others rode on horse-drawn carts.
"I'm carrying my house on my back," said Kamal Nsew, a 28-year-old, pointing to the possessions tied to his body. He had been walking three hours, he said. "We've been expelled, we've been put through a catastrophe. I don't know where my people are and don't know what is coming for us."
His use of the Arabic word "nakba," — which literally means "catastrophe" — is a reference to the expulsion or flight of about 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war around Israel's creation. More than half of Gaza's residents are refugees from that war, or their descendants.
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry, which has urged Palestinians to stay in their homes, has told news outlets not to circulate footage of people fleeing.
A month of relentless bombardment in Gaza since the Hamas attack has killed more than 10,800 Palestinians — nearly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. More than 2,300 others are believed to have been buried by strikes that in some cases have demolished entire city blocks.
Israeli officials say thousands of Palestinian militants have been killed, and blame civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing it of operating in residential areas and using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Hamas has denied this. Gaza's Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its casualty reports.
More than 1,400 people have died in Israel since the start of the war, most of them civilians killed by Hamas militants during their initial incursion. Israel says 32 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.
Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel, and some 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have traded fire repeatedly.
A drone exploded in the yard of a house in Israel's Red Sea city of Eilat, causing no injuries, and a long-range surface-to-surface missile — whose source was under investigation — was intercepted before entering Israeli airspace, the military said. Yemen's Houthi rebels said they fired a batch of missiles at Israel on Thursday, including toward Eilat — at least the fifth time the Iranian-backed force has tried to strike Israel.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces carried out their most intense raid in decades, storming the city of Jenin before dawn, sparking battles with Palestinian fighters that lasted into the afternoon and included an Israeli drone strike. At least 13 Palestinians were killed in the fighting, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, and Hamas acknowledged nine of them as its fighters. The Israeli military put the number of militants killed at 10.
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A 5.2-magnitude earthquake jolted Jordan-Syria region at 0232 GMT on Thursday, the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences said.
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The epicenter, with a depth of 10.0 km, was initially determined to be at 36.53 degrees north latitude and 36.30 degrees east longitude.
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Destroying civilian housing and infrastructure is an international crime, warns UN expert
The world must act now to end the horrifying and massive attacks against civilian housing and infrastructure in Gaza, which comes at a tremendous cost to human life, a UN expert said on Wednesday.
“Carrying out hostilities with the knowledge that they will systematically destroy and damage civilian housing and infrastructure, rendering an entire city – such as Gaza city - uninhabitable for civilians is a war crime,” said Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.
Israel-Hamas war: Why India’s Congress is facing backlash over ‘support for Palestine’
The expert said systematic or widespread bombardment of housing, civilian objects and infrastructure are strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law, criminal law and human rights law.
“Such acts amount to war crimes and when directed against a civilian population, they also amount to crimes against humanity,” Rajagopal said.
In a recent report to the UN General Assembly, Rajagopal used the term “domicide” to refer to such systematic or widespread attacks on housing and civilian infrastructure that causes death and suffering.
In that report, the expert pointed out that domicide had been committed in a number of conflict affected countries in various regions of the world. “It is now being committed in Gaza, and the world continues to watch helplessly while core international human and humanitarian law norms are brazenly breached,” he said.
Attacks by Israel on targets within Gaza have destroyed or damaged 45 percent of all housing units in the Gaza strip, internally displaced about 1.5 million people and killed over 10,000 people, including over 80 UN staff.
Over 25,000 people have been wounded in the airstrikes. Sixty-seven percent of all fatalities are reportedly children or women. More than 2,300 people – among them 1300 children are reported missing, most of them likely trapped under the rubble.
International humanitarian law is based on the distinction between civilian and military objects, the expert said.
“Apartment buildings are not military objects. Hospitals and ambulances are not military objects. Refugee camps are not military objects. Schools are not military objects. Churches or mosques are not military objects. Water and electricity infrastructure for civilians are not military objects,” Rajagopal said.
“Civilian housing in Israel is also not a military object - launching indiscriminate rocket attacks on them from Gaza or elsewhere is a war crime,” he warned.
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Even when civilian housing may be used by combatants to take shelter, as alleged in the attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp, launching attacks on entire apartment blocks is prohibited if they will lead to disproportionate damage, death and displacement of a large number of civilians, the UN expert warned.
“No asserted right of self-defence under international law can cover such attacks,” he said. “This is particularly the case when the right of self-defence is asserted in the context of an occupation.”
Ordering the evacuation of more than 1 million people from northern Gaza into southern Gaza, knowing that it will be impossible to provide adequate housing and humanitarian aid, while maintaining a blockade, cutting off water, food, fuel and medicine and repeatedly attacking evacuation routes and “safe zones” were a cruel and blatant violation of international humanitarian law, Rajagopal said. “These actions by Israel constitute international crimes.”
The call for a ceasefire in the recent UN General Assembly resolution must be followed by concrete measures to leverage parties to the conflict to abide by it, the Special Rapporteur said.
“The international community must consider the precedent set in the 1970s when measures to end apartheid in South Africa were taken by the General Assembly by unseating the South African delegation owing to widespread and systematic violations of human rights, which are inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter,” he said.
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“There can be no peace without justice,” Rajagopal said, urging the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged international crimes in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territory without delay or bias, and hold those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and apartheid, accountable. “All State parties to the Rome Statute must support efforts by the Court,” he said.
Growing numbers of Palestinians flee on foot as Israel says its troops are battling inside Gaza City
Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing south on foot with only what they can carry after running out of food and water in the north, a U.N. agency said Wednesday, as Israel said its troops were battling Hamas militants deep inside Gaza City.
Over 70% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have already fled their homes, but the growing numbers making their way south point to an increasingly desperate situation in and around Gaza's largest city, which has come under heavy Israeli bombardment.
The war triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 assault inside Israel has entered a second month, with an increasingly dire humanitarian situation inside the besieged Palestinian enclave and no end in sight.
Israel has said its war to end Hamas' rule and crush its military capabilities will be long and difficult, and that it will maintain some form of control over the coastal enclave indefinitely. Support for the war remains strong inside Israel, where the focus has been on the plight of the more than 240 hostages held by Hamas and other militant groups.
Read: Israel fights Hamas deep in Gaza City and foresees control of enclave’s security after war
About 15,000 people fled northern Gaza on Tuesday, triple the number that left Monday, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. They are using Gaza's main north-south highway during a daily four-hour window announced by Israel.
Those fleeing include children, the elderly and people with disabilities, and most walked with minimal belongings, the U.N. agency said. Some say they had to cross Israeli checkpoints, where they saw people being arrested, while others held their hands in the air and raised white flags while passing Israeli tanks.
Residents reported loud explosions overnight into Wednesday across Gaza City and in its Shati refugee camp, which houses Palestinian families who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its establishment.
“The bombings were heavy and close,” said Mohamed Abed, who lives in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. He said residents panicked when they heard the news late Tuesday that Israeli ground forces were fighting deep inside the city.
The Israeli military said it killed one of Hamas' leading developers of rockets and other weapons, without saying where he was killed. Hamas has denied that Israeli troops have made any significant gains or entered Gaza City. It was not possible to independently confirm battlefield claims from either side.
Read: UN Security Council fails to agree on Israel-Hamas war as Gaza death toll passes 10,000
Israel is focusing its operations on Gaza City, which was home to some 650,000 people before the war and where the military says Hamas has its central command and a vast labyrinth of tunnels. Hundreds of thousands have heeded Israeli orders to flee the north in recent weeks, even though Israel also routinely strikes what it says are militant targets in the south, often killing civilians.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians remain in the north, many sheltering at hospitals or U.N. schools. The north has been without running water for weeks, and the U.N. agency said the last functioning bakeries shut down on Tuesday for lack of fuel, water and flour. Hospitals running low on supplies are performing surgeries — including amputations — without anesthesia, it said.
Majed Haroun, who lives in Gaza City, said women and children go door to door asking for food, while those in shelters rely on local donations. “They should allow aid for those children,” he said.
The situation is little better in the south, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are packed into U.N.-run schools and other facilities. At one packed shelter, 600 people must share a single toilet, according to the U.N. office.
A month of relentless bombardment in Gaza since the Hamas attack has killed more than 10,300 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose figures have largely held up under scrutiny after previous wars. More than 2,300 are believed to have been buried by strikes that in some cases have demolished entire city blocks.
In the Oct. 7 incursion, Hamas militants killed over 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and captured 242, including men, women, children and older adults. Israel says 30 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began, and Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel on a daily basis.
The death toll on both sides is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Israeli officials say thousands of Palestinian militants have been killed, and blame civilian deaths on Hamas because it operates in residential areas. Gaza's Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that Israel would maintain “overall security responsibility” in Gaza for an “indefinite period” after defeating Hamas.
Israel's main ally, the United States, is opposed to any reoccupation of the territory, from which Israel removed soldiers and settlers in 2005.
The U.S. has suggested that a revitalized Palestinian Authority could govern Gaza. But the internationally recognized PA, whose forces were driven out of Gaza by Hamas 16 years ago, says it would only do so as part of a solution to the conflict that creates a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem — territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war.
Israel's government was staunchly opposed to Palestinian statehood even before the Oct. 7 attack. Along with Egypt, it has maintained a crippling blockade on Gaza since Hamas seized power in 2007.
Hundreds of trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid is far short of mounting needs. Egypt’s Rafah crossing has also opened to allow hundreds of foreign passport holders and medical patients to leave Gaza.
Read: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib accuses Biden of supporting genocide in Gaza, says colleagues more focused on silencing her
The war has stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the war began, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles with Israeli forces during arrest raids.
Some 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities along the borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib accuses Biden of supporting genocide in Gaza, says colleagues more focused on silencing her
Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American member of Congress, has released a video in which she has accused US President Joe Biden of allowing genocide in Gaza.
The White House and some Democrats reacted sharply to that, reports BBC.
Tlaib declines to visit West Bank, citing Israeli conditions
Republicans in the House have introduced two separate measures to censure her amid criticism of her remarks from both parties.
Tlaib stated that her colleagues were "more focused on silencing me than they are on saving lives".
A month into war, Netanyahu says Israel will have an 'overall security' role in Gaza indefinitely
Tlaib, a Democrat, addressed Biden directly in a video shared to social media on Friday, calling for a cease-fire.
It included videos of Biden expressing his support for Israel, as well as footage of those killed and wounded in Gaza and pro-Palestinian marches around the United States.
Civilians fleeing northern Gaza's combat zone report a terrifying journey on foot past Israeli tanks
"Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people," titles at the end of the video read. "The American people won't forget."
People in the video are also shouting the phrase "from the river to the sea," which advocates for Palestinian rule of all area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel.
According to Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the phrase is a call to destroy the state of Israel.
Some pro-Palestinian activists argue that the majority of those singing it are asking for an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza, rather than the destruction of Israel itself, the BBC report added.
Tlaib is one of just three Muslim legislators in US Congress. She has long enraged party officials and pro-Israel organisations with her unwavering condemnation of Israel.
The slogan is "an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate," she said defending her latest remarks.
However, the remark has sparked outrage from all quarters, even Democratic friends in her home state.
A month into war, Netanyahu says Israel will have an 'overall security' role in Gaza indefinitely
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will have “overall security responsibility” in Gaza for an indefinite period after its war with Hamas, the clearest indication yet that Israel plans to maintain control over the coastal enclave that is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians.
In an interview with ABC News that aired late Monday, Netanyahu expressed openness to “little pauses” in the fighting to facilitate the release of some of the more than 240 captives seized by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack into Israel, which triggered the war exactly one month ago.
But he ruled out any general cease-fire without the release of all the hostages, and the White House said there was no agreement with United States President Joe Biden's call for a broader humanitarian pause after a phone call between the leaders on Monday.
Read: Israeli forces cut off north Gaza as Palestinian death toll from monthlong war passes 10,000
Israeli troops have been battling Palestinian militants inside Gaza for over a week, and have succeeded in cutting the territory in half and encircling Gaza City.
The war has come at a staggering cost. Airstrikes have leveled entire city blocks across the territory, and around 70% of the population has fled their homes, with many heeding Israeli orders to head to the southern part of the besieged territory, which is also being bombed. Food, medicine, fuel and water are running low, and United Nations-run schools-turned-shelters are overflowing.
The Palestinian death toll has surpassed 10,000, the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said Monday, including over 4,100 children. More than 2,300 people are missing and believed to be buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, the ministry said. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, and Israel says it has killed thousands of fighters.
About 1,400 people in Israel have died, mostly civilians killed in the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war. Israel has vowed to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.
Israel is focused on Gaza City, which before the war was home to some 650,000 people — about equal to the population of Washington, D.C. Israel says Hamas has extensive militant infrastructure in the city, including a vast tunnel network, and accuses it of using civilians as human shields.
Several hundred thousand people are believed to remain in the north in the assault’s path. The military says a one-way corridor for residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas to flee south remains available. But many are afraid to use the route, part of which is held by Israeli troops.
Residents in northern Gaza reported heavy battles overnight into Tuesday morning in the outskirts of Gaza City. The Shati refugee camp, a built-up district housing refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants, has been heavily bombarded from the air and sea over the past two days, residents said.
Marwan Abdullah, who is among thousands of people sheltering at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, said they heard constant explosions overnight as ambulances brought dead and wounded in from the Shati camp. “We couldn’t sleep. Things get worse day by day,” he said.
Read: Jordan airdrops medical supplies to Gaza hospital
A strike early Monday hit the roof of Shifa Hospital, killing a number of displaced people sheltering on its top floor and destroying solar panels, said Mohamed Zaqout, general manager of all hospitals in Gaza. The panels have been helping keep power on in the facility, which has been reduced to using one generator because of lack of fuel.
In southern Gaza, where Palestinians have been told to seek refuge, an Israeli airstrike destroyed several homes early Tuesday in the town of Khan Younis. First responders pulled five bodies — including three dead children — from the rubble, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.
The war has also stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the war began, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles with Israeli forces during arrest raids.
Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community and considers the entire city its capital. It has built settlements across the occupied West Bank that are now home to over 500,000 Jewish settlers.
Israeli officials have said little about their plans for a post-Hamas Gaza, while indicating they don't want to reoccupy the territory. Israel withdrew its troops and more than 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 but maintained control over the territory's airspace, coastline, population registry and all but one of its border crossings.
Hamas seized power from forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas two years later, confining his Palestinian Authority to parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Since then, Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza to varying degrees. Israel says the blockade is needed to keep Hamas from rearming, while the Palestinians and rights groups see it as a form of collective punishment.
Read: Blinken meets Palestinian leader in West Bank, stepping up Mideast diplomacy as Gaza war escalates
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who wrapped up a dayslong trip to the region on Monday, has suggested a revitalized Palestinian Authority could govern Gaza. But Abbas has said it would only do so as part of a solution to the conflict that establishes a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. Israel's government is strongly opposed to Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu told ABC News that Gaza should be governed by “those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas," without elaborating.
“I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility, because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” he said.
The military says 30 Israeli troops have been killed since the ground offensive began over a week ago. Hamas and other militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, disrupting daily life even as most are intercepted or fall in open areas. Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated from communities near the volatile borders with Gaza and Lebanon.
Hundreds of trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid is far short of mounting needs. Egypt's Rafah Crossing has also opened to allow hundreds of foreign passport holders and medical patients to leave Gaza.
Israeli forces cut off north Gaza as Palestinian death toll from monthlong war passes 10,000
Israeli forces severed northern Gaza from the rest of the besieged territory and pounded it with intense airstrikes overnight into Monday, setting the stage for an expected push into the dense confines of Gaza City and an even bloodier phase of the month-old war.
Already, the Palestinian death toll passed 10,000, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday. The ministry does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. Some 1,400 Israelis have died, mostly civilians killed in the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war.
The figures mark a grim milestone in what has quickly become the deadliest round of Israeli-Palestinian violence since Israel's establishment 75 years ago, with no end in sight as Israel vows to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.
Jordan airdrops medical supplies to Gaza hospital
Casualties are only likely to rise as the war turns to close urban combat. Troops are expected to enter Gaza City soon, Israeli media reported, and Palestinian militants who have had years to prepare are likely to fight street by street, launching ambushes from a vast network of tunnels.
"We're closing in on them," said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman. "We've completed our encirclement, separating Hamas strongholds in the north from the south."
The military said it struck 450 targets overnight and ground troops took over a Hamas compound. A one-way corridor for residents to flee south remains available for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remain in Gaza City and other parts of the north, according to the military.
Some 1.5 million Palestinians, or around 70% of Gaza's population, have fled their homes since the war began. Food, medicine, fuel and water are running low, and U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters are beyond capacity. Many people are sleeping on the streets outside.
Mobile phone and internet service went down overnight, the third territory-wide outage since the start of the war, but was gradually restored on Monday. Aid workers say the outages make it even harder for civilians to seek safety or call ambulances.
Israel has so far rejected U.S. suggestions for a pause in fighting to facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries and the release of some of the estimated 240 hostages seized by Hamas in its raid. Israel has also dismissed calls for a broader cease-fire from increasingly alarmed Arab countries — including Jordan and Egypt, which made peace with it decades ago.
After days of intense diplomacy around the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up his tour of the region on Monday, saying efforts to secure a humanitarian pause, negotiate the release of hostages and plan for a post-Hamas Gaza were still "a work in progress" without pointing to any concrete achievements.
Israeli warplanes hit refugee camps in Gaza while UN agencies call siege an 'outrage'
The war has also stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. In another sign of growing unrest, a Palestinian man stabbed and wounded two members of Israel's paramilitary Border Police in east Jerusalem before being shot dead, according to police and an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with Gaza and the West Bank, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community and considers the entire city its capital.
In northern Gaza, a Jordanian military cargo plane air-dropped medical aid to a field hospital, King Abdullah II said early Monday. It appeared to be the first such airdrop of the war, raising the possibility of another avenue for aid delivery besides Egypt's Rafah crossing, which has so far been the only entry point.
Over 450 trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid that has come through the Rafah crossing is insufficient to meet mounting needs in the territory, which is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians.
The crossing was closed on Saturday and Sunday because of a dispute among Israel, Egypt and Hamas. But it reopened Monday for the evacuation of patients and foreign passport holders, according to Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority.
Northern Gaza is facing a severe water shortage, as there is no fuel to pump from municipal wells and Israel shut off the region's main line. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs said seven water facilities across Gaza were struck over the last two days and sustained "major damage," raising the risk of sewage flooding. Israel has restored two water pipelines in central and southern Gaza, the U.N. said.
Protest marches from US to Berlin call for immediate halt to Israeli bombing of Gaza
Some 800,000 people have heeded Israeli military orders to flee to southern Gaza. Some 2,000 people, many carrying only what they could hold in their arms, walked down Gaza's main north-south highway on Sunday. "The children saw tanks for the first time. Oh world, have mercy on us," said one Palestinian man, who declined to give his name.
But Israeli bombardments have continued across the territory, and strikes in central and southern Gaza — the purported safe zone — killed dozens of people on Sunday. Israel blames civilian casualties on Hamas, accusing the militants of operating in residential neighborhoods.
After another strike Monday, in the southern town of Khan Younis, men dug through the rubble with sledgehammers and their bare hands. A young boy caked in dust screamed as he was rolled onto a stretcher and carried away. At least two people were killed, according to an AP reporter at the scene.
Earlier Monday, Palestinians held a mass funeral for 66 people outside a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. The bodies were wrapped in white sheets on the ground outside the hospital morgue. A man with bandages wrapped around his head placed his hand on a child's body and wept.
The Health Ministry said that 10,022 people have been killed in Gaza, including over 4,100 children and 2,600 women.
Meanwhile, four civilians were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in south Lebanon late Sunday, including three children, a local civil defense official and state-run media reported. The Israeli military said it was reviewing the strike, after initially saying it had struck Hezbollah targets following anti-tank fire that killed an Israeli civilian. Hezbollah said it fired Grad rockets into Israel in response.
In the overnight strikes in Gaza, the Israeli military said it had killed a senior Hamas militant, identified as Jamal Mussa, who had allegedly carried out a shooting attack against Israeli soldiers in Gaza in 1993.
It said 30 Israeli troops have been killed since the ground offensive began over a week ago. Hamas and other militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, disrupting daily life even as most are intercepted or fall in open areas. Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated from communities near the volatile borders with Gaza and Lebanon.