DOZENS died when an airstrike hit a UN-run school used as a shelter in Gaza yesterday, witnesses said.
Survivor Ahmed Radwan called scenes at al-Fakhoura in the Jabalia refugee camp “horrifying”.
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An airstrike hit a UN run school in the Gaza Strip with dozens feared dead, witnesses said yesterdayCredit: EPA
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Israeli top brass said they were investigating footage of the aftermath appearing to show casualtiesCredit: Getty
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One survivor called scenes at al-Fakhoura in the Jabalia refugee camp ‘horrifying’Credit: Getty
He added: “Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help.”
Israeli top brass said they were investigating footage of the aftermath appearing to show casualties.
Their spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner said: “I can’t confirm this incident is IDF. We’re looking into it.”
The Israeli military had warned Jabalia residents to leave.
It said troops were in the area “with the aim of hitting terrorists”.
The UN’s Philippe Lazzarini said: “Receiving horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UN school sheltering thousands of displaced.
“Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer.”
Meanwhile, Israel yesterday expanded its war on terror after urging residents in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis to evacuate.
Troops opened a humanitarian corridor and paused military action.
It followed an overnight blitz as IDF troops entered the “next phase” of their fight with Hamas, whose October 7 terror raid killed 1,400.
An airstrike on a residential block killed at least 26, medics said.
And patients and staff at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital joined the exodus, leaving behind a skeleton crew to care for 120 people too ill to travel.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Patients, staff and displaced people departed Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, health officials said, leaving behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move. The exodus came the day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.
Dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone of northern Gaza. It caused massive destruction in the camp’s Fakhoura school, said Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.
“The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help,” Radwan said by phone. Associated Press’ photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.
The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, had no immediate comment on the strike and said only that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area “with the aim of hitting terrorists.” It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize harm to civilians.
“Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip. These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer,” Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.
Attacks also continued in southern Gaza. An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.
On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospital’s director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route. The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.
But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.
After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that some 120 patients remained who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying to care for them.
It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gaza’s hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.
Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.
Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals, while others stopped functioning because of dwindling supplies and loss of electricity.
More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.
After the war, “there’ll be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. We’re not going to be seen as the enemy,” Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told a conference in Bahrain organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “How could anybody talk about the future of Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left once this aggression ends?”
Gaza’s main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.
Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the agency for Palestinian refugees, said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived , meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed Friday to allow in that amount for the U.N.’s use. It is also allowing another 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep the telecommunications systems running.
The U.N. has warned that Gaza’s 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement. It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.
Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program.
In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers — including families of more than 50 hostages — were arriving on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas. Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue them.
Israel has signaled plans to expand its offensive south, where most of Gaza’s population is now sheltering, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israel’s calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of its ground offensive.
People continued to move south. Some recovered bodies of strangers along the way. “I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed,” said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move. The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets. “Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction.”
Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.
The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Patients, staff and displaced people departed Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, health officials said, leaving behind only Israeli forces and a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move. The exodus came the day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications outage that forced the United Nations to shut down critical aid deliveries.
Dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone of northern Gaza. It caused massive destruction in the camp’s Fakhoura school, said Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.
“The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help,” Radwan said by phone. Associated Press’ photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.
The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, had no immediate comment on the strike and said only that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area “with the aim of hitting terrorists.” It rarely comments on individual strikes, saying only that it targets Hamas while trying to minimize harm to civilians.
“Receiving horrifying images & footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip. These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer,” Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter.
Attacks also continued in southern Gaza. An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.
On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospital’s director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route. The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.
But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.
After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that some 120 patients remained who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying to care for them.
It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gaza’s hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Organization.
Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centers and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.
Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals, while others stopped functioning because of dwindling supplies and loss of electricity.
More than 11,500 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but more than two-thirds of those killed were women and children; Israel says it has killed thousands of militants.
After the war, “there’ll be no Arab troops going to Gaza. None. We’re not going to be seen as the enemy,” Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told a conference in Bahrain organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “How could anybody talk about the future of Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left once this aggression ends?”
Gaza’s main power plant shut down early in the war, and Israel has cut off electricity. That makes fuel necessary to power the generators needed to run the telecommunications network, water treatment plants, sanitation facilities, hospitals and other critical infrastructure.
Juliette Touma, spokeswoman for the agency for Palestinian refugees, said 120,000 liters (31,700 gallons) of fuel arrived , meant to last for two days, after Israel agreed Friday to allow in that amount for the U.N.’s use. It is also allowing another 10,000 liters (2,642 gallons) to keep the telecommunications systems running.
The U.N. has warned that Gaza’s 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement. It was not immediately clear when UNRWA would resume the delivery of aid that was put on hold Friday.
Gaza has received only 10% of its required food supplies each day in shipments from Egypt, according to the U.N., and the water system shutdown has left most of the population drinking contaminated water, causing an outbreak of disease. Dehydration and malnutrition are growing, with nearly all residents in need of food, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program.
In Jerusalem, thousands of marchers — including families of more than 50 hostages — were arriving on the last leg of a five-day trek from Tel Aviv calling on the government to do more to rescue some 240 hostages held by Hamas. Many are furious with the government for refusing to tell them more about what is being done to rescue them.
Israel has signaled plans to expand its offensive south, where most of Gaza’s population is now sheltering, including hundreds of thousands of people who heeded Israel’s calls to evacuate Gaza City and the north ahead of its ground offensive.
People continued to move south. Some recovered bodies of strangers along the way. “I found these young men inside the car. The car was destroyed,” said Moemen Abu Erban, one man on the move. The bodies had been placed on a horse cart and covered with blankets. “Frankly, it is a difficult thing. There is complete destruction.”
Elsewhere, the Israeli military said its aircraft struck what it described as a hideout for militants in the urban refugee camp of Balata in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said five Palestinians were killed.
The deaths raised to 212 the number of Palestinians killed in West Bank violence since the war began, making it the deadliest period in the territory since the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The first planeload of Palestinian children wounded in the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip reached the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, part of a pledged relief effort by the country to aid 1,000 children.
The group of 15 people, including children and their family members, made it across the Gaza Strip’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday. They then took a flight from the Egyptian city of El-Arish to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.
Young children lay asleep on their moms’ laps as the plane finally landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport. Some of the seats of the plane were removed to make room for the most critically wounded children, who needed to lie on stretchers.
Some of the young had bandaged arms and legs. Others sat quietly next to their parents or relatives. Some traveled alone. The mood was somber and quiet inside the plane. Many of the mothers said they were exhausted.
Twelve-year-old Amr Jandieh, his eyes welling up with tears, said he traveled to the Emirates alone.
“My dad, uncle, and I were talking on the street,” Jandieh said. “My uncle was killed. My dad was injured … all of a sudden a missile hit and I lost consciousness. I woke up and found myself in the hospital.”
Mohammed Abu Tabikh, 14, was one of the more seriously wounded children on the plane. He suffered injuries to his neck and spine when a car he was traveling in was hit in a strike.
“When I got injured, I felt shock. And then I stopped moving,” he quietly said before being brought carefully out of the plane.
Nabila Mahmoud traveled from the Gaza Strip with her 17-year-old daughter Rawan, who suffered a broken pelvis. Mahmoud said their house was hit by a direct missile and 13 of her family members were killed.
The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. The militant group also abducted some 240 men, women and children.
Israel’s ongoing retaliatory military strikes on Gaza has so far killed more than 11,400 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble.
The UAE — a federation of seven emirates on the Arabian Peninsula also home to Dubai — has diplomatic relations with Israel following a 2020 recognition deal.
KYIV, Ukraine — When Tymofii Postoiuk and his friends set up an online fundraising effort for Ukraine, donations poured in from around the globe, helping to purchase essential equipment for Ukrainian armed forces.
As the fighting with Russia wore on and war fatigue set in, the donations slowed down, but money continued to come in steadily. Then the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7.
With the start of another major conflict, social media networks including X, formerly known as Twitter, were flooded with news from the Middle East. “Our fundraising posts and updates simply get lost in between those tweets,” Postoiuk said.
The result has been a broad shift in the world’s attention away from Ukraine to the fighting in Gaza — a trend that worries many Ukrainians. They fear that a combination of global fatigue, competing political agendas and limited resources will result in less aid for their military, hurting the country’s ability to sustain its confrontation with Russia.
“The longer we talk about our war, the less interest it holds for people,” said 21-year-old Ivan Mahuriak, who lives in Lviv in western Ukraine. Like many other Ukrainians, he feels as if the world stopped paying attention to the war in Ukraine even before the Hamas attack on Israel.
The fatigue, he said, arises from the fact that dynamics on the ground are significantly less than in 2022, when Ukrainian armed forces managed to completely or partially push Russians out of several regions.
“In some places, the front line is still. But that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening,” he said. His brother, two cousins, several colleagues and friends are in the Ukrainian military and continue to fight Russian troops.
This year’s much-touted counteroffensive, which took off in June, has progressed at a much slower pace, with Ukrainian troops struggling to dislodge Russians who are entrenched in captured territory. Additional U.S. funding for Ukraine is jeopardized by political fights in Washington, where the new war consumes attention at the highest levels.
Divisions over Ukraine have also emerged in the European Union, which says it cannot provide all the munitions it promised. EU summits and other high-level global meetings now tend to focus on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
United States President Joe Biden has made a point of linking U.S. support for Israel and Ukraine, saying both are vital for national security. Biden’s secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, paid an official visit to Ukraine on Nov. 8 to show that the U.S. commitment has not wavered.
“The fact that I am here is one way to demonstrate that, in addition to the great concern and attention that we have toward what is going on in the Middle East, we have as much attention, focus and commitment as we have ever had right here to Ukraine,” he said, standing outside of St. Michael’s Church in Kyiv.
But many Ukrainians are worried.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the fatigue earlier in November. “Yes. A lot of people, of course, in the world are tired,” he said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The war in the Middle East also presents an opportunity to Russian President Vladimir Putin by taking the spotlight off Ukraine.
“Of course, Russia is very happy with this war,” Zelenskyy added.
Millions of Ukrainians are burdened by the realization that the war Russia initiated in their country won’t end any time soon.
“No matter how frightening it may sound, I am preparing myself for the fact that this war will last my entire life,” said Zoya Krasovska, a 34-year-old resident of Lviv, who says her greatest fear is that allies will divert resources to other conflicts.
“It’s akin to receiving a diagnosis of an incurable illness, where you don’t stop living because of it, but you live with the awareness that it is with you forever,” Krasovska said.
Unlike 2022, when morale was high despite power outages, disrupted water service and blackouts, this year Ukrainians face the frustration of the slow counteroffensive and shortages of sophisticated weapons. Domestic politics have become a greater focus.
Postoiuk, a Netherlands-based development manager for the Way to Ukraine fund, said the team expected a decline in donations, but not to this extent. Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, it takes at least twice as long to raise enough money to buy a car for the army — usually $8,000 to $14,000.
Through their work, they have collected nearly $147,000 — money that supported 13 brigades and provided vehicles that included 15 pickups, three SUVs, an ambulance and a drone.
For the first time in the history of the fund, donations from within Ukraine have exceeded those from abroad, he said.
Ukraine’s “war for independence is simply not on the agenda anymore, at least for now,” he said.
Ivan Bezdudnyi, a 26-year-old from Kyiv, is consumed by the war in his country. For the past two years, he has been involved in documenting Russian war crimes. Little has changed for him personally since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East.
He does not worry that diminishing interest will affect Ukraine’s war for long.
“When the wave of interest in Israel and Hamas subsides, and I tend to think it won’t last long … the level of attention we had will remain,” he said. “Maybe not as high as in February or March of last year, but probably higher than it is now.”
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Associated Press writers Lori Hinnant in Paris and Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
LOS ANGELES — California authorities said Friday they have not ruled out that a hate crime was committed in the death of a pro-Israel demonstrator following a confrontation with a college professor, whose lawyer says video footage will clear his client.
Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said his office charged Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, 50, with involuntary manslaughter and battery in the death of Paul Kessler, 69, after reviewing over 600 pieces of evidence and interviewing more than 60 witnesses.
“We were not pre-committed to any specific outcome or even criminal culpability, and we never treated the fact that criminal charges would be a forgone conclusion,” he said.
Alnaji pleaded not guilty Friday to the charges, each of which is accompanied by a special allegation that he personally inflicted great bodily injury, which means he could be eligible for prison if convicted.
The two men got into a physical altercation Nov. 5 during protests over the Israel-Hamas war, and Kessler fell back and hit his head on the ground, which caused the fatal injuries, authorities have said. He died the next day.
Kessler was among pro-Israel demonstrators who showed up at an event that started as a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Thousand Oaks, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles.
Alnaji’s lawyer, Ron Bamieh, said his client did not cause Kessler to fall and was several feet away from him when that happened. He said that before the fall, Kessler was yelling profanities at Alnaji and shoving his phone in his face. Alnaji may have struck at the phone with a megaphone and unintentionally hit Kessler in the face, Bamieh said.
Alnaji then walked away from Kessler, who fell moments later, Bamieh said, adding that video footage shows that.
“Why he fell, I don’t know,” Bamieh said. “I just know my client didn’t push him down. When I saw the video, I felt that my client is going to be fine. He’s not even close to him.”
Bamieh said his concern is the case is being influenced by “more passions than logic.”
Authorities have said Kessler had non-fatal injuries to the left side of his face, but they have not specified what caused them or the fall.
They gave no details Friday as to what took place before the fall.
“In filing these charges we relied on new physical and forensic evidence as well as findings regarding the injuries to the left side of Paul Kessler’s face,” Nasarenko said.
“We were able to take video as well as digital footage, put it together and establish a clear sequence of events leading up to the confrontation,” he said. “These new pieces of evidence, as well as the technology that we utilized, has permitted our office to file these criminal charges.”
Nasarenko said investigators are working to determine whether the altercation was “accompanied by specific statements or words that demonstrate an antipathy, a hatred, towards a specific group.” He added: “We don’t have that at this point.”
Authorities said Alnaji stayed when Kessler was injured and told deputies he had called 911. Before his arrest he had been briefly detained for questioning and his home was searched.
Alnaji, a professor of computer science at Moorpark College, has raised money for orphans and safe water wells in the Middle East and believes the war in Gaza is unjust and that the killing of innocent people cannot be justified on either side of the war, his lawyer said.
“He is a man of peace, who abhors violence, and believes in the truth of persuasive arguments and education, never violence,” his lawyer said in a statement.
The district attorney said he met with Kessler’s family and that they wanted privacy. He said Kessler had worked in medical sales for decades, taught sales and marketing at colleges and was a pilot. He leaves behind his wife of 43 years and a son.
The district attorney thanked local Muslim and Jewish leaders for not inflaming the situation with tensions rising across the country over the war.
“Throughout the last 12 days, the community of Muslim and Jewish leaders have shown restraint,” he said. “Their comments have been measured. The respect for the criminal process has become well known. They trusted in law enforcement to arrive at this point.”
Progressive Jews calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war are shutting down U.S. train stations, highways, and government buildings. Their rallying cries: “Not in our name,” “never again for anyone” and “ceasefire now.”
Their calls for a ceasefire align with 66% of U.S. voters, who say they “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” with the idea, according to a poll conducted between Oct. 18-19 from Data for Progress, a progressive think tank and polling firm.
The relationship between America’s Jewish population and Israel has long been complicated. While almost half say caring about Israel is “essential” to what being Jewish means, 16% say it is “not important” to their Jewish identity, according to a 2021 Pew survey, and the rest fall somewhere in-between, considering it “important, but not essential.”
Other polling supports the finding that the population’s views on Israel differ widely. A Jewish Federations of North America survey released on Nov. 9 indicated widespread support for military aid to Israel; 87% of Jewish Americans were in favor. But other polls reflect intense criticism of the Israeli government. A 2021 Jewish Electorate Institute poll found that one-quarter of Jewish American voters agreed with the statement that “Israel is an apartheid state.” Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, which have spearheaded many recent civil disobedience actions in the U.S., are not new. But in the last several weeks, the conflict in the Middle East has put divisions within the American Jewish community into stark relief.
In the time since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, per the city’s health ministry. More than two-thirds of the region’s hospitals have closed because of damage from airstrikes or are running out of fuel, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Philippe Lazzarini, said that by the end of Wednesday Nov. 15, more than two-thirds of Gaza’s population would not have access to clean water. “Our entire operation is now on the verge of collapse,” he says.
Activists from Jewish Voice for Peace activists occupy the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty on November 6, 2023 in New York City. Stephanie Keith—Getty Images
More than 2 million people live in Gaza, half of whom are children, and face the spread of disease and malnutrition as Israel continues its blockade. In recent years, international human rights groups have referred to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians over the decades as apartheid and consider Gaza to be an open-air prison. Many pro-Palestinian protesters argue the high civilian death toll is a sign of a disproportionate response towards an occupied territory. (While Israel formally pulled out of the Gaza strip in 2005, the U.N. considers the strip to be under occupation because of Israel’s control of land, air, and sea access.)
After Jewish protesters occupied the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt spoke out on X, taking issue with challenges to Israel’s right to defend itself after Hamas’ surprise attack; the U.S. government and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist group. The protesters, Greenblatt wrote, were “radical far-left groups [that] don’t represent the Jewish community” and instead represent the “ugly core” of anti-Zionism: antisemitism.
The ADL has condemned Jewish Voice for Peace’s leaders for arguing that Israel was the “root cause” of the violence on Oct. 7 and said in a statement that their “most inflammatory ideas can help give rise to antisemitism.” Jewish Voice For Peace accuses the ADL of fueling Islamophobia, securing impunity for the Israeli government, and conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Many pro-Palestinian supporters, including some Jewish Americans, describe themselves as anti-Zionist.
“It’s totally reprehensible to conflate those speaking out for Palestinian rights with the very real existence of antisemitism,” says Morgan Bassichis, a Jewish artist who organized a group of artists and writers to get arrested at the Grand Central protest and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. “Essential to my Judaism is a deep belief that Palestinians should be free,” they say.
At a Nov. 1 fundraiser in Minneapolis, U.S. President Joe Biden—who is pushing to supply Israel with an additional $14 billion in military aid—was confronted by a protesting rabbi. “Mr. President, you care about Jewish people. As a rabbi, I need you to call for a cease-fire right now,” said Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg. She later wrote in a CNN op-ed that Israel’s pause for a few hours each day to allow Gazans to flee to the South has done little to help. On Monday, Palestinian Representative Rashida Tlaib, along with fellow Democratic Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, joined some rabbis in calling for a ceasefire outside the U.S. Capitol.
Manywithin Israel, including some family members of hostages, have also protested their own country’s response to the Hamas attack. For example,Maoz Inon, whose parents were kidnapped by Hamas, started a protest outside the Israeli parliament building and called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to resign and end the war.
Rosalind Petchesky, a Jewish feminist scholar, was the oldest person arrested at the Oct. 27 Grand Central protest in New York City. Hundreds packed the train station; police arrested about 400 people. She organized a group of more than 30 Jewish seniors to join. “I’m 81 years old. I’m now older than the state of Israel,” she says. “I’ve been doing this work for a long time, but I’ve never seen a moment like this one and I’m horrified at…the hideous war mongering of our government and the Israeli government…and what we consider to be an out-and-out genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
Demonstrators with Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago protest President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 14, 2017. Scott Olson—Getty Images
For Petchesky, getting arrested isn’t an act of courage, but of commitment. “I’m retired. I don’t have to show up at a job tomorrow,” she says. “People like me who are in a situation of privilege have a responsibility to put our bodies on the line. I don’t think there’s any great nobility in being arrested, but it is a kind of symbolic act that says ‘I stand for these values.’”
Petchesky has friends in Israel and Gaza. She says she worries that a Palestinian journalist she knows and his family won’t survive; she has also had tough conversations with a former graduate student of hers, an Israeli Jew who is critical of Israel’s government but upset about Jewish Voice For Peace’s lack of slogans centered on hostages. “She said ‘what about us? Aren’t we people, too?’” Petchesky says. “I have been trying to answer her as honestly as I can, and trying to convince her that saying ‘stop the bombing, ceasefire now,’ is an expression of support for the hostages because otherwise I’m convinced they’re going to die.”
New York Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim and vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, was arrested alongside Petchesky. Mamdani argues that recent civil disobedience shows that many Jewish Americans don’t believe their participation in such protests is in conflict with their Judaism. “When anyone tries to sell you a monolith, they are selling you fiction,” he says. “There is no one group of people that believe one thing.”
Irena Klepfisz, an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor and poet who was born in the Warsaw Ghetto, wanted to be at the New York protests but couldn’t because she is immunocompromised. “I’m very moved by it,” she says, about the two civil disobedience acts. “I don’t know how killing more Palestinians in Gaza is going to do anything.”
Kelpfiz formed the Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation more than three decades ago. “The war marked me,” she says. “I didn’t have a father, I didn’t have grandparents, I didn’t have family…I grew up with that. I know what that can do to people. That’s what’s happened to children of those killed in Hamas’ attack and Israel’s airstrikes.”
For Bassichis, the artist, Grand Central’s protest “felt like a glimmer of hope, in a time of such profound despair.”
A DAD said he “broke down” after finding out his wife and two young daughters had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists through a video.
Yoni Asher watched in horror as harrowing footage showed his beloved family being abducted from Israel on a truck by gun-wielding brutes.
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Doron can be seen clutching Aviv in the back of the trailerCredit: Yoni Asher
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Little Raz, in the pink dress, was also kidnappedCredit: Yoni Asher
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Yoni said is he using every waking minute to try to find his beloved familyCredit: Yoni Asher
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The devastated dad has blasted Hamas for taking his innocent young childrenCredit: Yoni Asher
The dad-of-two, who lives 20km from Tel Aviv, said his wife Doron and daughters Raz, four, and Aviv, two, were visiting his mother-in-law in the kibbutz Nir Oz when terroristsstormed over the border.
Yoni told how his wife called him in a panic to say they could hear rockets and more disturbingly gunshots get closer by the minute.
She told her worried husband they were locked in a safe room – but moments later Hamas gunmen broke in and took Doron’s 79-year-old stepdad.
But Yoni’s worst fears then set in as he frantically tried to call his wife again but failed repeatedly to get through.
More on the Israel-Hamas war
He spent the next few hours making “hundreds” of phone calls and appealing to the media for help.
Yoni then came across chilling footage showing his wife and children on the back of a truck with other hostages destined for Gaza.
He told The Sun: “It was something that I never thought I would witness in my life.
“I just broke down.”
Yoni said more than a month on from the horror October 7 massacre that saw over 1,200 slaughtered and dozens captured, the video remains the only evidence he has that they’re still alive.
He added: “This is the only hope I can hold onto.”
Yoni is now working around the clock to get them back and find out what he can.
He said: “We are just a regular family and my two young baby girls, they are only interested in playing, in running and dancing, and wearing dresses and going to their friends.
“In what world those young, beautiful, sweet girls are related in any way to be prisoners of war? Who takes little babies to be a prisoner of war?
“How much time can you hold them in captivity. Until when will they survive?
“I want to tell them that I love them. I miss them. I’m sorry. And please hold on.
“I am doing everything that I can to get you back home and please stay strong, and I do everything I can to get you home safe and soon, I swear.”
Israeli troops have moved into Gaza in a bid to rescue hostages – who are feared to be being held in Hamas’ mysterious 331-mile underground tunnel network.
After Hamas terrorists unleashed their vile attack, Israel vowed to crush the group and has bombarded Gaza with strikes and sent ground troops in.
It has left Palestinian civilians fleeing for their lives as Israel attempts to destroy Hamas.
Families living in Gaza have been caught in the brutal crossfire, with regular accusations that the terrorists are attempting to use them as “human shields”.
Much of the northern part of the strip has been turned into a devastated warzone – with ruined buildings, dwindling supplies and horrific suffering for Gaza’s people.
The Red Cross estimates that some 1.5 million civilians have been forced to flee south amid the Israeli onslaught from land, air and sea.
Figures for the death toll remain unverified – but Hamas’ health officials claim more than 11,000 civilians, including more than 4,500 children have been killed.
Israel disputes these figures – and US President Joe Biden said he had “no confidence” in them.
But Benjamin Netanyahu admitted Israel has “not been successful” in reducing civilian casualties.
He said the deaths, however, must be blamed on Hamas – not Israel.
And as the horror continues there have been growing calls for a humanitarian ceasefire to stop the bloodshed.
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Yoni said he ‘broke down’ when he saw the video of the kidnapCredit: Yoni Asher
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His wife and daughters were taken with several others from kibbutz Nir Oz
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Yoni said his daughters are only interested in ‘playing, in running and dancing’Credit: Yoni Asher
In a striking comparison – demonstrating the herculean task facing Israeli troops – it is now even bigger than the London Underground.
Massive stockpiles of fuel light the tunnels – as Gazans above ground struggle with barely enough electricity to power their hospitals – whilst ventilation systems provide oxygen.
To win the war and destroy Hamas, the IDF will at some stage have to enter its concrete underground base.
One former defence official said: “They have turned huge swathes of the Strip into legitimate military targets.
“These sons of b**ches have intentionally put their tunnels under houses, mosques and hospitals to maximise civilian casualties.
Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu threw a political grenade at U.S. diplomacy during a recent press conference. Its explosion threatened to sabotage American efforts to put together a three-way, win-win, post-Gaza war regional architecture. First, the U.S. plan would relieve Israel of the need to govern Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians with no exit in sight. Second, it would offer Palestinians a credible political horizon and thereby prevent the West Bank from sliding into a Gaza-like crisis, while prepping the Palestinian Authority (PA) for controlling Gaza in the future. Third, it was to consolidate a powerful, U.S.-led regional coalition to check Iran’s and its proxies’ regional meddling, with revived talk of Israeli-Saudi normalization included.
President Biden, the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House, who enjoys more credit with the Israeli public than any predecessor, is yet to tell the reckless Netanyahu “enough is enough.”
The farthest he has gone in that direction came when he was asked whether he had been frustrated with Netanyahu’s belated acceptance of limited humanitarian pauses, long sought by the U.S. In typical understatement, Biden responded, “It’s taken a little longer than I had hoped.”
Frustration seems to have characterized American efforts to persuade Jerusalem to consider the context, not just the military dimensions, of the Gaza operation.
Similarly, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s Middle East shuttle diplomacy and Amman meeting with Arab foreign ministers the previous week ended in disappointment. Intended to get them to agree on the contours of a Gaza ‘morning after’ strategy, his interlocutors refused to engage.
Like Blinken, they view a future reinvigorated Palestinian Authority as the likely and desired long-term solution for the Gaza Strip, none was willing to discuss the “missing link”—the one-to-two-year period between the likely gradual IDF exit from Gaza and the equally phased PA take-over. Those Arab states refused to discuss such matters as who governs, polices, and provides security in Gaza; who reinvents the PA and preps it so that it is able to govern the Strip and what its rejuvenation entails; who coordinates, oversees and, yes, funds it all. Their refusal to discuss—let alone commit to contribute to—a day-after strategy had little to do with Blinken’s formidable diplomatic skill, nor even with Gaza. It was largely about Jerusalem, or more precisely, the Netanyahu government.
It appears that Blinken’s Arab interlocutors saw no point in discussing their role in saving Israel from its Gaza dilemma absent a clear message from Jerusalem concerning its contribution to the enormous post-war Gaza stabilization, reconstruction, and governance effort. That contribution, they reportedly insisted, must involve a complete change in Israel’s West Bank policy (settler violence and settlement expansion included), attitude toward the PA (including releasing all its funds), restoring and preserving the status quo on Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, and, most importantly, a credible political horizon for the Palestinians.
Some in Washington give him the credit that he just doesn’t get it. That he doesn’t understand the importance of preparing now—and adjusting the conduct of the war to—Israel’s desired morning after. Others know him better. They know that he understands it better than most, as do Minister of Defense Yoav Galant and former IDF chiefs Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who are now members of the war cabinet.
They all realize that discussing the morning after exposes the need for Israel to change course on the Palestinian issue. Since Netanyahu’s annexationist, messianic coalition partners would not hear of it, advancing such measures is a sure trigger for a coalition crisis. Although these reckless partners are replaceable with no need for new elections, and wartime certainly justifies such emergency measures, what’s at stake is not only his coalition structure, but something far more important for Netanyahu: his legal predicament. Unlike those far-right coalition partners, those replacing them would not provide him with an exit—legislated or otherwise—before his trial for corruption charges runs its course and a verdict is reached.
On the West Bank too, ignoring warnings from his security establishment and an increasingly agitated Washington, Netanyahu prioritizes his coalition over national security. His allowing reckless efforts that choke the PA financially, Jewish terrorism in the West Bank, and settlement expansion to continue might well lead to the PA becoming one of the victims of this war. Whether that is due to Palestinian leadership’s fatigue, a popular uprising, or the continued loss of control over important swaths of West Bank territory, a chaotic West Bank sliding in the direction of a Gaza-like crisis is a real possibility. Were it to materialize, the outcome for Israel might involve no exit strategy from Gaza, governing the lives of well over five million Palestinians, and a possible fallout affecting peaceful relations with Arab neighbors, near and far. If that happens, the entire new US regional architecture would lay in ruins.
To avert this eventuality, it seems that the time has come for Washington to use all venues— Defense Secretary Austin to Galant, Blinken to Israel’s war cabinet, and Biden to Bibi—to deliver a clear message:
“Look, we are with you all the way. We will deter all the bad guys around. And you are a sovereign country. So Gaza is your call. But note these two things:
First, you can’t ask us to shield you from an internationally imposed premature ceasefire while your ministers shoot their mouths on nuking Gaza or forcing its population on Egypt, while your finance minister chokes the PA financially, while your violent settlers go wild, and while you argue to death every humanitarian truck and every ten minutes of a humanitarian pause.
Second, no one in the neighborhood and beyond is willing to consider relieving you of the burden of Gaza once the morning after arrives, unless you change policy on the West Bank and vis-à-vis the PA, accept that the PA is part of the long-term solution to Gaza, and agree now to a two-state peace process later.
So, no pressure, friends. It’s totally up to you: change course and allow a regional-international solution, or handle Gaza on your own. Though your decisions affect our national security as well, nonetheless, it’s not the U.S. that will be stuck in Gaza for decades.”
As the Israel-Hamas war rages in Gaza, there’s a bitter battle for public opinion flaring in the United States, with angry rallies on many college campuses and disruptive protests at prominent venues in several major cities.
Among the catalysts are Palestinian and Jewish-led groups that have been active for years in opposing Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and who now demand a cease-fire in Gaza. They have clashed with pro-Israel groups in the past, and are again now.
The groups have roots in a movement known as BDS, which calls for the boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel.
That campaign generated heated rhetoric long before Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel launched its counteroffensive. Advocates wrote op-eds for campus newspapers with appeals to protect Palestinian human rights, often accusing Israel of colonialism and racism.
Now groups involved in those earlier efforts are playing a key role protesting the latest fighting, with actions on campuses and beyond. Protests have led to disruptions on Capitol Hill, at a major train station in Chicago and New York City’s Grand Central Station.
They also helped organize a demonstration Wednesday night outside Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington which led to clashes between police and protesters.
Who are the groups involved?
Jewish Voice for Peace, founded in 1996, describes itself as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world.”
“We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle, guided by a vision of justice, equality, and dignity for all people,” the group says on its website.
It claims more than 300,000 supporters, has 1 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, and maintains chapters on many U.S. college campuses. Its Columbia University chapter was suspended Friday for allegedly violating university policies on holding campus events.
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Chicago-based Rabbi Brant Rosen, co-founder of JVP’s Rabbinical Council, said he grieved for fellow Jews who were killed, yet maintained solidarity with Palestinians.
The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group that frequently speaks out against antisemitism and extremism, assails JVP as “a radical anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activist group that advocates for the boycott of Israel and eradication of Zionism.”
In its 2021 federal tax returns, JVP reported revenue of nearly $2.9 million; it says the vast bulk of its income is from individual contributions.
IfNotNow was founded during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, when more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed as Israeli forces launched airstrikes and a ground invasion in response to rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel.
“Young Jews angered by the overwhelmingly hawkish response of American Jewish institutions came together under the banner of IfNotNow,” the group says on its website. Its stated goal: “Organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis.”
In the early days of the current Israel-Hamas war, IfNotNow condemned the killings of civilians on both sides, while reiterating its criticisms of Israeli policy.
“We cannot and will not say today’s actions by Palestinian militants are unprovoked,” the group said on Oct. 7. “The strangling siege on Gaza is a provocation. Settlers terrorizing entire Palestinian villages, soldiers raiding and demolishing Palestinian homes. … These are the provocations of the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history.”
Eva Borgwardt, IfNotNow’s political director, said the group organized prayer services in some cities for Jews who wanted to mourn both Jews and Palestinians killed in the conflict.
The Anti-Defamation League has accused IfNotNow of “extreme” criticism of the Israeli government and “divisive rhetoric, some of which may be offensive to members of the mainstream Jewish community.”
IfNotNow claims tens of thousands of members and supporters. According to tax forms, its total revenue in 2021 was just under $397,000.
Students for Justice in Palestine has been on U.S. campuses for decades, with frequent protests calling for the liberation of Palestinians and boycotts against Israel.
The loosely connected network says it has more than 200 chapters across the United States and Canada. On its website it says its mission is “to empower, unify, and support student organizers as they push forward demands for Palestinian liberation & self-determination on their campuses.” Last month, it joined calls for a national student walkout on college campuses.
The Anti-Defamation League accuses it of anti-Israel propaganda “laced with inflammatory and at times combative rhetoric.”
Increasingly it has run afoul of college administrators, including at Brandeis University, a secular college founded by the American Jewish community in 1948. Brandeis President Ron Liebowitz issued a statement last week saying the university no longer recognized the group’s chapter because of its support for Hamas and “call for the violent elimination of Israel and the Jewish people.”
In a statement after Hamas attacked Israel, the group said it was a “moral imperative” to support the resilience of the Palestinian people who “have endured 75 years of oppression, displacement, and the denial of their basic rights,” and said that includes “armed resistance.”
The Brandeis move came after Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration took the extraordinary step of ordering state universities to ban the group, saying it illegally backs Hamas militants who attacked Israel.
Multiple offshoots also are involved in protests.
American Muslims for Palestine, which has coordinated protest activities over the years with IfNotNow, organized a “die-in” over the weekend in downtown Toledo, Ohio.
Last month, the Virginia Attorney General’s office announced an investigation into the group over allegations it used funds raised for “impermissible purposes under state law, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations.”
At Brown University this month, 20 students with the group BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now were arrested after refusing to leave a campus building during a sit-in. The group posted on X that they were calling on the university to promote an “immediate cease-fire and a lasting peace” as well as the divestment of its endowment from companies that “enable war crimes in Gaza.”
Even groups like UNICEF and Amnesty International have faced scrutiny. In Scottsdale, Arizona, a presentation by a high school student group about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza prompted state public education chief Tom Horne to urge schools to kick the two international groups off campus. Local school officials said student groups represent all views and are working to tamp down the furor.
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Crary reported from New York. Anita Snow contributed from Phoenix.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces dropped leaflets warning Palestinians to flee parts of southern Gaza, residents said Thursday, signaling a possible expansion of operations to areas where hundreds of thousands of people who heeded earlier evacuation orders are crowded into U.N.-run shelters and family homes.
Meanwhile, soldiers continued searching Shifa Hospital in the north, in a raid that began early Wednesday but has yet to uncover evidence of the central Hamas command center that Israel has said is concealed beneath the complex. Hamas and staff at the hospital, Gaza’s largest, deny the allegations.
Broadening the offensive to the south — where Israel already carries out daily air raids — threatens to worsen an already severe humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory. Over 1.5 million people have been internally displaced in Gaza, with most having fled to the south, where food, water and electricity are increasingly scarce.
The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by a wide-ranging Hamas attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which the militants killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and captured some 240 men, women and children. Israel responded with a weekslong air campaign and a ground invasion of northern Gaza, vowing to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.
More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, with most believed to be buried under the rubble. The official count does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.
On Thursday, gunmen shot and wounded four people at a checkpoint on the main road linking Jerusalem to Israeli settlements in the southern part of the occupied West Bank. Police said three attackers were killed and a search for others was underway.
Israeli troops on Wednesday stormed into Gaza’s largest hospital, searching for traces of Hamas inside and beneath the facility, where newborns and hundreds of other patients have suffered for days without electricity and other basic necessities.
Troops were searching the underground levels of the hospital on Thursday and detained technicians responsible for running its equipment, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said in a statement.
After encircling Shifa for days, Israel faced pressure to prove its claim that Hamas was using the patients, staff and civilians sheltering there to provide cover for its fighters. The allegation is part of Israel’s broader accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields.
The military released video from inside Shifa showed three duffel bags it said it found hidden around an MRI lab, each containing an assault rifle, grenades and Hamas uniforms, as well as a closet that contained a number of assault rifles without ammunition clips. The Associated Press could not independently verify the Israeli claims that the weapons were found inside the hospital.
Hamas and Gaza health officials deny militants operate in Shifa — a hospital that employs some 1,500 people and has more than 500 beds. The Palestinians and rights groups accuse Israel of recklessly endangering civilians.
Munir al-Boursh, a senior official with Gaza’s Health Ministry inside the hospital, said troops ransacked the basement and other buildings. Troops questioned and face-screened patients, staff and people sheltering in the facility, he said.
The military said its troops killed four militants outside the hospital at the start of the operation, but through days of fighting there were no reports of militants firing from inside Shifa. There were also no reports of any fighting within the hospital after Israeli troops entered.
The military said it was carrying out a “precise and targeted operation” in a specific area of the hospital, and that its soldiers were accompanied by medical teams bringing in incubators and other supplies.
At one point, tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment were sheltering at Shifa, but most left in recent days as the fighting drew closer.
The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday. There was no immediate word on the condition of another 36 babies, who the ministry said earlier were at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators.
The leaflets, dropped in areas east of the southern town of Khan Younis, warned civilians to evacuate the area and saying anyone in the vicinity of militants or their positions “is putting his life in danger.” Similar leaflets were dropped over northern Gaza for weeks ahead of the ground invasion.
Two local reporters who live east of Khan Younis confirmed seeing the leaflets. Others shared images of the leaflets on social media. The military declined to comment.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday the ground operation will eventually “include both the north and south. We will strike Hamas wherever it is.”
The military says it has largely consolidated its control of the north, including seizing and demolishing government buildings. Video released by the army Thursday showed soldiers moving between heavily damaged buildings through holes blown in their walls.
On Thursday, the military said it had blown up a residence belonging to Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader based abroad. It was unclear if anyone was inside the building.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have already crowded into the territory’s south, where a worsening fuel shortage threatens to paralyze the delivery of humanitarian services and shut down mobile phone and internet service.
Conditions in southern Gaza have been deteriorating as bombardment continues to level buildings. Residents say bread is scarce and supermarket shelves are bare. Families cook on wood fires for lack of fuel. Central electricity and running water have been out for weeks across Gaza.
Israel allowed a small amount of fuel to enter Gaza for on Wednesday, for the first time since the war began, so that the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which is providing basic services to hundreds of thousands of people, could continue bringing limited supplies of aid through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
The fuel cannot be used for hospitals or to desalinate water, and covers less than 10% of what the agency needs to sustain “lifesaving activities,” said Thomas White, the agency’s Gaza director.
The Palestinian telecom company Paltel, meanwhile, said it expected services to halt later Wednesday because of the lack of fuel or electricity. Gaza has experienced three previous mass communication outages since the ground invasion.
If Israeli troops move south, it is not clear where Gaza’s population can flee, as Egypt refuses to allow a mass transfer onto its soil.
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Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel and Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
This may be a once-in-a-century opportunity for peace. True, things have never looked this bad, and odds are they will be getting worse. But this savage war also exposes the conflict’s darkest secret: its vicious cycle of humiliation, resentment and revenge is driven by power-famished fanatics treating people, including their own, as dispensable “things.” What perpetuates the conflict is thinking about it as an Israeli-Palestinian. Instead, we should see it as a war against zealots on both sides, a war which Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, can only win if they wage it together. We must transform the conflict to resolve it.
By now, both Israelis and Palestinians are so vastly disillusioned with the vain vows of their self-serving leaders—their destructive hubris is so painfully plain in sight—that there may be a rare willingness on both sides to brave a breakthrough.
Now is the time to oust the radicals, to create a grand coalition of moderate forces in the region, and outline Principles for Peace. We’ve been through the worst nightmare; it’s time we dare pursue the dream. If we don’t, we may regret it for generations.
Hamas epitomizes selfish zealotry on the Palestinian side. Its leaders, some of whom bask in huge wealth, could care less about their 2.4 million subjects, half of whom live in extreme poverty. They have bigger plans. As Hamas Leader Khaled Mash’al recently confirmed, once Hamas is done with Israel, which “is even weaker than the spider’s web… We will march further and enforce the Shari’a of Muhammad… On this Earth.” And on this, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad explained, they are blameless: “Israel must be annihilated… We are the victim of occupation. Period. Nobody can blame us for anything we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000—everything we do is justified.”
Netanyahu personifies narcissistic leadership on the Israeli side. Ever since his rise to power on the coattails of Hamas’s suicide bombings of 1994-96, Netanyahu has repeatedly pledged to crush Hamas, while effectively aiding its hold on power against the more moderate Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu himself readily explained: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state must support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. That’s part of our strategy…” Building his whole career on divide-and-rule strategies vis-à-vis everyone around, including Israelis, Netanyahu, like his cronies and like Hamas leaders, will never leave of his own volition.
Since the early 1990s, Hamas and Netanyahu have benefitted each other, politically, ideologically, financially. Their tacit alliance has undermined peace efforts, providing an “access of evil” to both Israel and Palestine. To them, humans are dispensable, people are puppets in their appetite for power.
Hamas is not a partner for peace, nor is Netanyahu’s government, but Palestinians and Israelis are. We should call for a Free Palestine—from Hamas, first, and then, to independence. The “rush to radicalism” must end. To defeat the zealots on both sides, we must help both peoples—Palestinians and Israelis—hope for peace.
Perhaps President Biden should give his Seven Points speech—only half of Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen—not to end a world war but to prevent one. If this seems like an alarmist stretch, recall Oct 7. It felt unreal; most of us, Israelis, could not believe what we were seeing, the realization required a leap of imagination we were not prepared for. We should learn our lesson: imagine the nightmare before it happens, lest it does. We should recall the Russian-Iranian axis, the growing Chinese appetite, the Temple Mount detonator—and imagine waking up to a nuclear mushroom cloud, all in order to prevent it from transpiring. It requires another leap of imagination—not to despair, but to hope. We should dare to dream of a better day that is within reach, and we need not wait for the twilight of the Gaza War to take this leap.
Biden’s Seven could chart a hopeful tomorrow, with a demilitarized, democratic Palestine, supported by Marshall Plan-like efforts, with a larger Gaza Strip liberated from Hamas, alongside assurances and funding from key international and regional actors. Fear may motivate leaders and nations to do the right thing, but only hope can make them pursue it against (almost) all odds.
And despite difficult odds, there is hope, for there is widespread realization, the likes of which I had not seen before, among both peoples, about the need to end it, once and for all, one way or another.
Peace is possible. This is not a utopia. Moderate Arab leaders, many desperate to see Hamas crushed, must help. Importantly, fighting the Hamas-Netanyahu “access of evil” requires the lesser evil. Marwan Barghouti exemplifies the latter. Imprisoned for murder, Barghouti is vastly popular among Palestinians, and if he is willing to help lead peace, Israel should consider his release.
Finally, the missing piece for peace is popular legitimacy, which can pull the rug out from under the zealots’ feet. Polls indicate majorities, on both sides, prefer coexistence to war and opting for a two-state solution. A daring move would be to officially poll both peoples. Having a double referendum among Israelis and Palestinians is perhaps the most promising way to promote peace.
As hopeless as the current predicament appears to be, it is not. With the right end in clear sight, we can put an end to the carnage. Let us recall: It is precisely because the 1973 Yom Kippur War wreaked so much misery that it demonstrated to each of us, viscerally, our common human fragility. It evinced to people on both sides the price of hubris, and of giving up on hoping for peace. Four years later, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem; the following year, peace was made.
Peace is our common mission, ensuring protection and prosperity to all.
Organizations that seek the annihilation of Jews or the destruction of Israel, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, and akin Jewish organizations targeting Arabs, will not be tolerated, their funding will be cut, and their operations, political or military, banned.
Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have the right of self-determination, realized in the sovereign states of Israel and Palestine, respectively.
Accordingly, alongside Israel, the State of Palestine, democratic and demilitarized, shall be established and recognized pending the 2024 Israeli-Palestinian plebiscite, and in accordance with U.N. resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative.
We affirm the legitimacy and territorial integrity of all the region’s countries, including Israel. Territorial changes, including the exchange of land to increase the area of the Gaza Strip, are to be agreed upon.
All Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners who pledge to peace shall be released.
Peace treaties shall be signed between Israel and Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia.
Annex: The Peoples-for-Peace Plebiscite
The Israeli-Palestinian referendum shall be held in 2024 by all Israelis and Palestinians eligible to vote, requiring a regular majority. They will be asked to vote Yes or No on the following:
We, the peoples, taking responsibility for our past mistakes and for the future of our children, choose hope over despair, amity over violence, and thereby undertake this historic leap to peace.
We, Israelis and Palestinians, aspire to coexistence in dignity, liberty, and security, and thus affirm our rejection of violence and our mutual commitment to the right of self-determination of the Jewish people in the State of Israel, and of the Palestinian people in the State of Palestine. Towards that goal:
The state of Palestine shall be established along the 4 June 1967 borders, allowing for territorial swaps by agreement and in equal value, taking into account security, demography and geography. Palestine will be demilitarized for fifty years.
Jews and Palestinians in their diasporas may gain citizenship in their respective nation-state: Jews in Israel, Palestinians in Palestine.
Both Israel and Palestine will be democratic countries, upholding human and civil rights to all, including Arabs in Israel and Jews in Palestine.
Jerusalem is dear to both peoples and to the three Abrahamic religions. Acting on their behalf, Israel and Palestine will jointly administer the Holy Basin as a condominium (shared sovereignty). Outside the Old City, Israel will have its capital and sovereignty in the Jewish neighborhoods, Palestine in the Palestinian neighborhoods.
Both peoples affirm this peace as the end of all their mutual claims and grievances.
We call upon the leaders of both peoples to negotiate, without delay, a detailed agreement based on these principles, and invite all to join this brave effort. We call upon all the countries of the region to renounce violence, to recognize Israel and Palestine, and to establish with them full diplomatic, economic and cultural relations.
A WOUNDED Palestinian man looked close to tears as he stood in a hospital and raged that Hamas were “hiding among us”.
The elderly man condemned the terror group for positioning itself in and beneath Gaza’s hospitals – as Israel has long claimed is the case.
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A wounded Palestinian man raged that Hamas were ‘hiding among the people’Credit: Memri/Jazeera
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The man said Hamas could ‘go to hell and hide there’Credit: Memri/Jazeera
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An injured Palestinian woman reacts as she stands in the emergency room of the al-Aqsa Hospital on WednesdayCredit: AFP
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Israel claims a Hamas stronghold lies beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, al-ShifaCredit: AFP
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Smoky footage from inside al-Shifa Hospital shows medics assessing the damage after an Israeli raidCredit: Reuters
In an interview with Qatar-run news channel Al-Jazeera at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the Strip’s Deir el-Balah, the wounded man told the reporter: “What is happening is a crime!
“Why is the resistance [Hamas] hiding among us? Why don’t they go to hell and hide there?”
The interviewer then seemed to cut the man off mid-sentence, turning to speak directly to the camera.
As he walked away from the conversation, the wounded man appeared to kick the floor and raise his arms in exasperation.
Read more on the Hamas war
Hamas is reported to have used multiple hospitals in Gaza for military purposes, with its terrorists supposedly firing at IDF troops from within the al-Aqsa hospital.
Israel Defence Forces ground troops are currently carrying out a “precise and targeted” raid inside Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, where Israel claims Hamas has placed its command centre and is using patients as human shields.
New footage of the “operation” at al-Shifa has come to light which shows Israeli soldiers storming the complex’s surgical and emergency buildings.
Through smoke, and with the only light coming from the person holding the camera, men dressed in regular clothing can be seen pushing other wounded civilians through the hospital halls on medical stretcher beds.
An entire corridor is lined with stretcher beds, on which people lay ostensibly unconscious.
Children with masks roam the halls and rooms appear almost completely destroyed.
The raid comes after the United States declared it had a “variety of intelligence” which suggested Hamas is using the hospital to run terrorist operations.
National security council spokesman for the White House John Kirby said: “We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command and control mode.”
He added the facility is probably being used to store weapons, stating: “That is a war crime.”
Hamas “strongly condemned and rejected” the claims made by the US and accused Biden of giving Israel the “green light” to attack the hospital.
A witness told the BBC they saw tanks and hundreds of commandos advance on the medical facility.
The IDF said the operation was a “military necessity” to root out Hamas and revealed this morning it was still engaging in gun battles with the militants and had discovered weapons inside the hospital.
It said: “Before entering the hospital our forces were confronted by explosive devices and terrorist squads, fighting ensued in which terrorists were killed.”
At least five terrorists died in the battle, according to Israeli media.
Harrowing photographs of newborn babies wrapped in makeshift blankets and lying side by side in beds inside al-Shifa Hospital sparked outrage across the world as Israeli troops surrounded the facility.
The World Health Organisation previously warned the hospital was becoming a “cemetery” as dead bodies pile up inside and outside.
Gaza’s health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qidra, who is inside the hospital compound, said about 100 bodies were decomposing and there was no way to get them out.
He told Reuters: “We are planning to bury them today in a mass grave inside the al-Shifa medical complex.
“It is going to be very dangerous as we don’t have any cover or protection from the ICRC [International Red Cross] but we have no other options – the corpses of the martyrs began to decompose.
“The men are digging right now as we speak.”
Hamas claims 40 patients have died in recent days, including three premature babies whose incubators lost power and crashed during Israel’s raid.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — The Israeli military entered Gaza’s largest hospital early Wednesday, conducting what it called a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area” of the facility, which has been the site of a standoff with the militant group.
The army surrounded the facility as part of its ground offensive against Hamas. Israeli authorities claim the militants conceal military operations in the facility. But with hundreds of patients and medical personnel inside, Israeli authorities have refrained from entering.
In recent weeks, Israeli defense forces have “publicly warned time and again that Hamas’ continued military use of the Shifa Hospital jeopardizes its protected status under international law,” the military said.
“Yesterday, the IDF conveyed to the relevant authorities in Gaza once again that all military activities within the hospital must cease within 12 hours. Unfortunately, it did not.”
Hamas has denied the Israeli accusations that it uses the hospital for cover.
Military officials gave no further details but said they were taking steps to avoid harm to civilians.
The operation unfolded after the military seized broader control of northern Gaza on Tuesday, including capturing the territory’s legislature building and its police headquarters, in gains that carried high symbolic value in the country’s quest to crush the ruling Hamas militant group.
Meanwhile, Israeli defense officials said they have agreed to allow fuel shipments into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian operations. It was the first time that Israel has allowed fuel into the besieged territory since the Hamas militant group’s bloody cross-border invasion on Oct. 7.
Inside some of the captured buildings, soldiers held up the Israeli flag and military flags in celebration. In a nationally televised news conference, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas had “lost control” of northern Gaza and that Israel made significant gains in Gaza City.
But asked about the time frame for the war, Gallant said: “We’re talking about long months, not a day or two.”
One Israeli commander in Gaza, identified only as Lt. Col. Gilad, said in a video that his forces near Shifa Hospital had seized government buildings, schools and residential buildings where they found weapons and eliminated fighters.
The army said it had captured the legislature, the Hamas police headquarters and a compound housing Hamas’ military intelligence headquarters. The buildings are powerful symbols, but their strategic value was unclear. Hamas fighters are believed to be positioned in underground bunkers.
For days, the Israeli army has encircled Shifa Hospital, the facility it says Hamas hides in, and beneath, to use civilians as shields for its main command base. Hospital staff and Hamas deny the claim.
Hundreds of patients, staff and displaced people were trapped inside, with supplies dwindling and no electricity to run incubators and other lifesaving equipment. After days without refrigeration, morgue staff on Tuesday dug a mass grave in the yard for more than 120 bodies, officials said.
Patients and medics are pictured at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Nov. 10, 2023.AFP/Getty Images
Elsewhere, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Tuesday it had evacuated patients, doctors and displaced families from another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds.
Israel has vowed to end Hamas rule in Gaza after the militants’ Oct. 7 attack into Israel in which they killed some 1,200 people and took roughly 240 hostages. The Israeli government has acknowledged it doesn’t know what it will do with the territory after Hamas’ defeat.
The onslaught — one of the most intense bombardments so far this century — has been disastrous for Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians.
More than 11,200 people, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah. About 2,700 people have been reported missing. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.
Almost the entire population of Gaza has squeezed into the southern two-thirds of the tiny territory, where conditions have been deteriorating even as bombardment there continues. About 200,000 fled the north in recent days, the U.N. said Tuesday, though tens of thousands are believed to remain.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Tuesday that its fuel storage facility in Gaza is empty and that it will soon end relief operations, including bringing limited supplies of food and medicine in from Egypt for more than 600,000 people sheltering in schools and other facilities in the south.
“Without fuel, the humanitarian operation in Gaza is coming to an end. Many more people will suffer and will likely die,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA. Israel has repeatedly rejected allowing fuel into Gaza, saying it will be diverted by Hamas for military use.
Plight of hospitals
Fighting has raged for days around Shifa Hospital, a complex several city blocks across at the center of Gaza City that has now “turned into a cemetery,” its director said in a statement.
The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday. Another 36 babies are at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators, according to the ministry.
The Israeli military said it started an effort to transfer incubators to Shifa. But they would be useless without electricity, said Christian Lindmeier, a World Health Organization spokesman.
The Health Ministry has proposed evacuating the hospital with the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross and transferring the patients to hospitals in Egypt, but has not received any response, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said.
While Israel says it is willing to allow staff and patients to evacuate, some Palestinians who have made it out say Israeli forces have fired at evacuees.
Israel says its claims of a Hamas command center in and beneath Shifa are based on intelligence, but it has not provided visual evidence to support them. Denying the claims, the Gaza Health Ministry says it has invited international organizations to investigate the facility.
The evacuation at the Al-Quds Hospital followed “more than 10 days of siege, during which medical and humanitarian supplies were prevented from reaching the hospital,” Palestinian Red Crescent officials said.
In a post on X, they blamed the Israeli army for bombarding the hospital and firing at those inside.
The White House’s national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said the U.S. has unspecified intelligence that Hamas and another Palestinian militants use Shifa and other hospitals and tunnels underneath them to support military operations and hold hostages.
The intelligence is based on multiple sources, and the U.S. independently collected the information, a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Kirby said the U.S. doesn’t support airstrikes on hospitals and does not want to see “a firefight in a hospital where innocent people” are trying to get care.
March for hostages
Hamas released a video late Monday showing one of the hostages, 19-year-old Noa Marciano, before and after she was killed in what Hamas said was an Israeli strike. The military later declared her a fallen soldier, without identifying a cause of death.
She is the first hostage confirmed to have died in captivity. Four were released by Hamas and a fifth was rescued by Israeli forces.
Families and supporters of the around 240 people being held hostage by Hamas started a protest march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The plight of the hostages has dominated public discourse since the Oct. 7 attack, with solidarity protests held across the country. The marchers, who expect to reach Jerusalem on Saturday, say the government must do more to bring home their loved-ones.
“Where are you?” Shelly Shem Tov, whose son, Omer, 21, is among the captives, called out to Netanyahu.
“We have no strength anymore. We have no strength. Bring back our children and our families home.”
Battle in Gaza City
Independent accounts of the fighting in Gaza City have been nearly impossible to gather, as communications to the north have largely collapsed.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces have completed the takeover of Shati refugee camp, a densely built district bordering Gaza City’s center, and are moving about freely in the city as a whole.
Videos released by the Israeli military show troops moving through the city, firing into buildings. Bulldozers push down structures as tanks roll through streets surrounded by partially collapsed towers.
The videos portray a battle where troops are rooting out pockets of Hamas fighters and tearing down buildings they find them in, while gradually dismantling the group’s tunnel network.
Israel says it has killed several thousand fighters, including important mid-level commanders, while 46 of its own soldiers have been killed in Gaza. In recent days Hamas rocket fire into Israel — constant throughout the war — has waned, though two people were wounded Tuesday in a rocket attack on Tel Aviv. Details of the Israeli account and the extent of Hamas losses could not be independently confirmed.
—Jeffery and Keath reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel in Jerusalem, Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip; and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.
ISRAEL last night launched a “precise” attack on a Hamas base in the al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The IDF are carrying out a “precise and targeted” attack within a “specified area” of the largest hospital in Gaza.
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The US claims it has its own evidence that Hamas are using al Shifa Hospital, pictured, to run its terrorist operationsCredit: Reuters
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A White House spokesperson added the hospital, pictured above on November 10, is probably also being used to store weaponsCredit: AFP
The IDF has called on all members of the militant group inside the hospital to immediately surrender.
The IDF said in a statement: “In recent weeks, the IDF has publicly warned time and again that Hamas’ continued military use of the hospital jeopardises its protected status under international law, and enabled ample time to stop this unlawful abuse of the hospital.
“Yesterday, the IDF conveyed to the relevant authorities in Gaza once again that all military activities within the hospital must cease within 12 hours.
“Unfortunately, they did not.
“The IDF has also facilitated wide-scale evacuations of the hospital and maintained regular dialogue with hospital authorities.
“We call upon all Hamas terrorists present in the hospital to surrender.”
It comes after the United States said it has its own evidence that Hamas are using al Shifa Hospital in Gaza to run terrorist operations.
The White House‘s national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said: “We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command and control mode.”
He added the facility is also probably being used to store weapons.
When asked about evidence to support the claim, Kirby said it “comes from a variety of intelligence sourcing” but could not be more specific.
But the spokesperson added the alleged actions by Hamas do not lessen Israel‘s responsibility to protect civilians.
“We do not support striking a hospital from the air,” Kirby said.
“Hospitals and patients must be protected.”
The US claims were “strongly condemned and rejected” by Hamas.
The terrorist group said the White House is repeating the “lies” propagated by Israel, Sky News reports.
“These statements give a green light to the Israeli occupation to commit further brutal massacres targeting hospitals, with the goal of destroying Gaza’s healthcare system and displacing Palestinians,” they said.
Troops said they found many weapons in the hospital basement, including explosive belts, grenades, weapons and RPG missiles.
In a video published by the IDF, the forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said: “This is a kind of gear used for a major fight.”
Pointing to each item laid out on the floor, he explained: “These are explosives, these are vests with explosives [in them] for a terrorist to explode on [Israeli] forces among hospitals, among patients.”
A motorcycle with gunshot marks was also found, which according to Israeli military officials, was used by Hamas terrorists in the October 7 massacre.
In addition, troops claim they have found signs indicating that hostages were held in the room as they found a chair with women’s clothes and a rope.
The IDF claimed they uncovered an operational tunnel shaft, which leads from the hospital to the home of a senior naval commander located just a few yards away.
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Men walk as patients rest at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 10Credit: AFP
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Babies in the intensive care unit at Al Shifa have been transferred from incubators to a single bed after the hospital ran out of fuel
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Footage shared by the IDF allegedly shows Hamas fighters attacking them outside the Al Quds hospital in Gaza
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Israeli soldiers are attempting to eliminate Hamas terrorists they believe are using hospital patients as human shields
JERUSALEM — Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born Israeli activist who devoted her life to seeking peace with the Palestinians, was confirmed killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel.
For 38 days, Silver, who had moved to Israel in the 1970s and made her home in Kibbutz Be’eri, was believed to be among the nearly 240 hostages held in the Gaza Strip. But identification of some of the most badly burned remains has gone slowly, and her family was notified of her death on Monday.
Silver was a dominant figure in several groups that promoted peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as a prominent Israeli human rights group. She also volunteered with a group that drove Gaza cancer patients to Israeli hospitals for medical care.
“On the one hand, she was small and fragile. Very sensitive,” her son Yonatan Zeigen told Israel Radio on Tuesday. “On the other hand, she was a force of nature. She had a giant spirit. She was very assertive. She had very strong core beliefs about the world and life.”
Zeigen said he texted with his mother during the attack. The exchanges started out lighthearted, with Silver maintaining her sense of humor, he said. Suddenly, he said, there was a dramatic downturn when she understood the end had come, and militants stormed her house.
“Her heart would have been broken” by the events of Oct. 7 and its aftermath, Zeigen said. “She worked all her life, you know, to steer us off this course. And in the end, it blew up in her face.”
At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas attacks on Israel while more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in the Israeli war in Gaza, now in its 39th day.
“We went through three horrific wars in the space of six years,” Silver said in a 2017 interview with The Associated Press. “At the end of the third one, I said: ‘No more. We each have to do whatever we can to stop the next war. And it’s possible. We must reach a diplomatic agreement.’”
Zeigen said he has now taken on his mother’s baton.
“I feel like I’m in a relay race,” he said. “She has passed something on to me now. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I think we can’t turn the clock back now. We have to create something new now, something in the direction of what she worked for.”
UNITED NATIONS — China, Iran and a multitude of Arab nations condemned an Israeli minister’s statement that a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was an option in the Israel-Hamas war, calling it a threat to the world.
At Monday’s long-planned opening of a United Nations conference whose goal is to establish a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, many ambassadors expressed condemnations and criticisms of comments by Israel’s Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu, who later called his remarks in a radio interview Sunday “metaphorical.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly disavowed the comments and suspended him from cabinet meetings.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its nuclear capability. It is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, and a former employee at its nuclear reactor served 18 years in Israeli prison for leaking details and pictures of Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal program to a British newspaper in 1986.
China’s deputy U.N. ambassador Geng Shuang said Beijing was “shocked,” calling the statements “extremely irresponsible and disturbing” and should be universally condemned.
He urged Israeli officials to retract the statement and become a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament, as a non-nuclear weapon state “as soon as possible.”
Geng said China is ready to join other countries “to inject new impetus” to establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Mideast, saying there is greater urgency because of the situation in the current region.
U.N. disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu, who opened Monday’s fourth conference, didn’t mention Israel. But she said: “Any threat to use nuclear weapons is inadmissible.”
Nakamitsu reiterated the “urgency … of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction,” stressing that “cool heads and diplomatic efforts” must prevail to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, based on a two-state solution.
Oman’s U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Al-Hassan, speaking on behalf of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council which includes Saudi Arabia, said the threat to use nuclear weapons in Gaza “reaffirms the extremes and brutality of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people” and their “disregard for innocent life.” He called on the U.N Security Council and the IAEA to take decisive action on the matter.
Lebanon’s Charge d’Affaires Hadi Hachem also condemned the Israeli heritage minister’s comments, stressing that “this self-acknowledgment of having nuclear weapons and the threat of using them by its officials, poses a serious threat to both regional and international peace and security.”
He urged Israel to stop “such rhetoric or posturing” and join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state.
Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Iravani told the conference the nuclear threats directed toward Palestinians by high-ranking Israeli officials highlight Israel’s “pride” in having these weapons in its hands.
“The secrecy surrounding Israel’s nuclear capabilities poses a significant threat to regional stability,” he said. “In these critical times, the imperative to establish such a zone in the Middle East has never been more urgent.”
Israel did not speak Monday but Netanyahu has said his country’s biggest threat remains the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran, and it is prepared to prevent that from happening.
Efforts to create a nuclear-weapon-free zone date back to the 1960s and include a call by parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1995 and a 1998 General Assembly resolution asking countries to contribute to establishing it. The first U.N. conference aimed at creating a zone was held in November 2019.
Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA and other U.N. organizations based in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, told delegates Monday that given the new escalation of violence in the Middle East, a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region “is more pertinent than ever.”
But he said Moscow is “extremely uncomfortable” that along with the two other sponsors of the 1995 resolution – the United States and the United Kingdom – the promise to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Mideast has not been met after almost 30 years. And for more than 20 years, “there’s been almost no progress whatsoever,” he said.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Battles between Israel and Hamas around hospitals forced thousands of Palestinians to flee from some of the last perceived safe places in northern Gaza, stranding critically wounded patients, newborns and their caregivers with dwindling supplies and no electricity, health officials said Monday.
With Israeli forces fighting in the center of Gaza City, the territory’s main city, both sides have seized on the plight of hospitals as a symbol of the larger war, now in its sixth week. The fighting was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack into Israel, whose response has led to thousands of deaths — and much destruction — across Gaza.
Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its fighters. On Monday, the military released footage of a children’s hospital that its forces moved into over the weekend, showing weapons it said it found inside, as well as rooms in the basement where it believes the militants were holding some of the around 240 hostages they abducted during the initial attack.
“Hamas uses hospitals as an instrument of war,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the army’s chief spokesperson, standing in a room of the Rantisi Children’s Hospital decorated with a colorful children’s drawing of a tree. Explosive vests, grenades and RPGs were displayed on the floor.
Meanwhile, gunfire and explosions raged Monday around Gaza City’s main hospital, Shifa, which has been encircled by Israeli troops for days. Tens of thousands of people have fled the hospital in the past few days and headed to the southern Gaza Strip, including large numbers of displaced people who had taken shelter there, as well as patients who could move.
For Palestinians, Shifa evokes the suffering of civilians. For weeks, staff members running low on supplies have performed surgery there on war-wounded patients, including children, without anesthesia. After the weekend’s mass exodus, about 650 patients and 500 staff remain in the hospital, which can no longer function, along with around 2,500 displaced Palestinians sheltering inside with little food or water.
After power for Shifa’s incubators went out days ago, the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza on Monday released a photo it says shows about a dozen premature babies wrapped in blankets together on a bed to keep them at a proper temperature. Otherwise, “they immediately die,” said the Health Ministry’s director general, Medhat Abbas, who added that four of the babies had been delivered by cesarean section after their mothers died.
The Israeli military says Hamas has set up its main command center in and beneath the Shifa compound, though it has provided little evidence. Both Hamas and Shifa Hospital staff deny the Israeli allegations.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday that Shifa “must be protected.”
“It is my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action,” Biden said in the Oval Office.
Early Tuesday, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had started an effort to transfer incubators from Israel to Shifa. It wasn’t clear if the incubators had been delivered or how they will be powered.
International law gives hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose those protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Still, there must be plenty of warning to allow evacuation of staff and patients, and if harm to civilians from an attack is disproportionate to the military objective, it is illegal under international law. In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan said the attacker must meet a high burden of proof to show that a hospital has lost its protections.
The Red Cross was attempting Monday to evacuate some 6,000 patients, staff and displaced people from another hospital, Al-Quds, after it shut down for lack of fuel, but the Red Cross said its convoy had to turn back because of shelling and fighting. On Monday, Israel released a video showing what it said was a militant with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher entering Al-Quds Hospital. An Israeli tank was stationed nearby.
At Shifa Hospital, the Health Ministry said 32 patients, including three babies, have died since its emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday. It said 36 babies, as well as other patients, are at risk of dying because life-saving equipment cannot function.
Goudat Samy al-Madhoun, a health care worker, said he was among around 50 patients, staff and displaced people who made it out of Shifa and to the south Monday, including a woman who had been receiving kidney dialysis. He said those remaining in the hospital were mainly eating dates.
Al-Madhoun said Israeli forces fired on the group several times, wounding one man who had to be left behind. The dialysis patient’s son was detained at an Israeli checkpoint on the road south, he said.
The military said it placed 300 liters (79 gallons) of fuel several blocks from Shifa, but Hamas militants prevented staff from reaching it. The Health Ministry disputed that, saying Israel refused its request that the Red Crescent bring them the fuel rather than staff venturing out for it. The fuel would have provided less than an hour of electricity, it said.
The U.S. has pushed for temporary pauses to allow wider distribution of badly needed aid. Israel has agreed only to daily windows during which civilians can flee northern Gaza along two main roads. It continues to strike what it says are militant targets across the territory, often killing women and children.
The Israeli military has urged Palestinians to flee south on foot through what it calls safe corridors. But its stated goal of separating civilians from Hamas militants has come at a heavy cost: More than two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes.
Those who make it south face a host of other difficulties. U.N.-run shelters are overflowing, and the lack of fuel has paralyzed water treatment systems, leaving taps dry and sending sewage into the streets. Israel has barred the import of fuel for generators.
As of last Friday, more than 11,000 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.
Health officials have not updated the toll, citing the difficulty of collecting information.
At least 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed in the initial Hamas attack. Palestinian militants are holding nearly 240 hostages seized in the raid, including children, women, men and older adults. The military says 44 soldiers have been killed in ground operations in Gaza.
About 250,000 Israelis have evacuated from communities near Gaza, where Palestinian militants still fire barrages of rockets, and along the northern border, where Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group repeatedly trade fire, including on Monday.
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Jeffery reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel in Jerusalem, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
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Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol slammed the purported illicit arms deal between North Korea and Russia, saying he’ll emphasize its far-reaching security implications and discuss international response during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco this week.
In written responses to questions from The Associated Press ahead of the APEC meeting, Yoon also said that North Korean provocations will invite immediate retaliation by South Korean and U.S. forces. There are concerns that North Korea might miscalculate and make a move against the South while the world is focused on the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
“An effective way to prevent North Korea from miscalculating is to demonstrate our robust deterrence capabilities and determination towards North Korea based on the solid (South Korea) -U.S. joint defense posture,” Yoon said.
“North Korea’s provocations will not only fail to achieve its intended goal but also result in immediate and strong retaliation from (South Korea)-U.S. alliance,” he said.
There are concerns that Russia’s protracted war on Ukraine and the raging conflict between Israel and Hamas are adding to complexities and uncertainties over the security situation on the Korean Peninsula.
Some experts say North Korea’s reported pursuit of sophisticated Russian weapons technologies in return for its supply of conventional arms for Russia’s war in Ukraine could help the North modernize its nuclear-capable missiles targeting South Korea and the U.S. The experts also worry that Washington’s preoccupation with Ukraine and Israel might prompt North Korea to conclude that the U.S. security posture on the Korean Peninsula has weakened and launch surprise attacks or other provocations against South Korea.
Since taking office in May last year, Yoon, a conservative, has made a reinforced military partnership with the U.S. the center of his foreign policy in response to North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats. Since his inauguration, Yoon said that North Korea has test-launched a total of 87 ballistic missiles.
Despite this, many foreign analysts assess North Korea still doesn’t possess functioning nuclear-tipped missiles. But they say that Russian support could help North Korea overcome the last remaining technological hurdles to acquire such weapons.
Both North Korea and Russia have dismissed as groundless the speculated weapons transfer deal, which would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban any arms trade to and from North Korea.
“These two countries’ military cooperation … not only poses a serious threat to the security of the Korean Peninsula, Northeast Asia and Europe but also undermines the universal rules-based international order,” Yoon said.
At meetings with many world leaders during the 21-member APEC meeting, Yoon said he’ll underscore such diverse security threats posed by the “illegal” North Korean-Russian cooperation and discuss ways to strengthen cooperation.
One area where North Korea is believed to be receiving Russian technological assistance is a spy satellite launch program. After two consecutive failures to put its first military spy satellite into orbit in recent months, North Korea vowed to make a third launch attempt in October. But it didn’t follow through. South Korean officials suspect it that was likely because North Korea has begun receiving Russian help.
Yoon said the main objective of North Korea’s spy satellite launch, which involves a rocket, is to advance its nuclear delivery vehicle. He cited U.N. bans on any satellite launches by North Korea, because the world body views them as cover for testing its long-range missile technology. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un previously said he needed a spaced-based surveillance system to better monitor South Korean and U.S. activities and enhance the attack capability of his nuclear missiles.
“If North Korea succeeds in launching the military reconnaissance satellite, it would signify that North Korea’s ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) capabilities have been taken to a higher level,” Yoon said. “Therefore, we will have to come up with reinforced countermeasures.”
Yoon said the recent Seoul visits by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin serve as an opportunity to demonstrate the strength of the South Korea-U.S. alliance. Observers say such back-to-back visits by top U.S. officials suggest the U.S. security commitment remains strong despite the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Blinken told reporters in Seoul last week that he and his South Korean counterpart, Park Jin, discussed unspecified further actions the two countries can take with others to put more pressures on Russia not to transfer military technology to North Korea. Austin said Monday that the U.S. deterrence commitment to South Korea remains ironclad and includes a full range of America’s nuclear, conventional and missile defense capabilities.
“By building upon the ironclad (South Korea)-U.S. alliance, the Korean government is acquiring overwhelming response capabilities and a retaliation posture to establish a strong security stance,” Yoon said.
Yoon said that current global challenges — arising from the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas conflict, the climate crisis and high inflation – offer an opportunity for APEC to demonstrate its leadership again by spearheading efforts to overcome crises and to spur innovation through regional cooperation.
“I will urge the member economies to work together in the spirit of stronger solidarity and cooperation to advance trade and investment liberalization, innovation and digitalization as well as inclusive and sustainable growth,” he said.
Yoon said the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have left energy security vulnerable. He said the global economy is becoming further fragmented by the weaponization of economic resources, and that supply chain risks pose the biggest obstacle to regional economic development.
“The Asia-Pacific region must endeavor to become a free space where people, money and data as well as goods and services flow without disruption,” Yoon said.
He also stressed the need to establish new norms for digital ethics that match the era of hyper digitalization.
“Since digital technology knows no borders and has connectivity and immediacy, it is necessary to establish universal norms that can be applied to everyone in the international community,” he said.
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Follow AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific
