CAIRO — Egypt and Jordan harshly criticized Israel over its actions in Gaza at a summit on Saturday, a sign that the two Western allies that made peace with Israel decades ago are losing patience with its two-week-old war against Hamas.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who hosted the summit, again rejected any talk of driving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula and warned against the “liquidation of the Palestinian cause.” Jordan’s King Abdullah II called Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza “a war crime.”
The speeches reflected growing anger in the region, even among those with close ties to Israel who have often worked as mediators, as the war sparked by a massive Hamas attack enters a third week with casualties mounting and no end in sight.
Egypt is especially concerned about a massive influx of Palestinians crossing into its territory, something that it fears would, among other things, severely undermine hopes for a Palestinian state. Vague remarks by some Israeli politicians and military officials suggesting people leave Gaza have alarmed Israel’s neighbors, as have Israeli orders for Palestinian civilians to evacuate to the south, toward Egypt.
In his opening remarks, el-Sissi said Egypt vehemently rejected “the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai.”
“I want to state it clearly and unequivocally to the world that the liquidation of the Palestinian cause without a just solution is beyond the realm of possibility, and in any case, it will never happen at the expense of Egypt, absolutely not,” he said.
Jordan’s king delivered the same message, expressing his “unequivocal rejection” of any displacement of Palestinians. Jordan already hosts the largest number of displaced Palestinians from previous Mideast wars.
“This is a war crime according to international law, and a red line for all of us,” he told the summit.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority, a government exercising semi-autonomous control in the occupied West Bank, called for Israel to stop “its barbaric aggression” in Gaza. He also warned against attempts to push Palestinians out of the coastal territory.
“We will not leave, we will not leave, we will not leave, and we will remain in our land,” he told the summit.
Israel says it is determined to destroy Gaza’s Hamas rulers but has said little about its endgame.
On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan in which airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas before a period of lower intensity mop-up operations. Then, a new “security regime” would be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said.
He did not say who would run Gaza after Hamas.
Meanwhile, Israel has ordered more than half of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate from north to south within the territory it has completely sealed off, effectively pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians toward the Egyptian border.
Amos Gilad, a former Israeli defense official, said Israel’s ambiguity on the matter is endangering crucial ties with Egypt. “I think a peace treaty with Egypt is highly important, highly crucial for the national security of Israel and Egypt and the whole structure of peace in the world,” he said.
Gilad said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to speak directly with the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, and say publicly that Palestinians will not be entering their countries.
Two senior Egyptian officials said relations with Israel have reached a boiling point.
They said Egypt has conveyed its frustration over Israeli comments about displacement to the United States, which brokered Camp David Accords in the 1970s. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Egypt worries that a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Sinai, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the peace treaty.
Arab countries also fear a repeat of the mass exodus of Palestinians from what is now Israel before and during the 1948 war surrounding its creation, when some 700,000 fled or were driven out, an event Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Those refugees and their descendants, who now number nearly 6 million, were never allowed to return.
At Saturday’s gathering, the anger extended beyond the fears of mass displacement.
Both leaders condemned Israel’s air campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 4,300 Palestinians, including many civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza. Israel says it is only striking Hamas targets and is abiding by international law.
The war was sparked by a wide-ranging Hamas incursion into southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which over 1,400 people were killed, the vast majority of them civilians.
Abdullah, who is among the closest Western allies in the region, accused Israel of “collective punishment of a besieged and helpless people.”
“It is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. It is a war crime,” he said.
He went on to accuse the international community of ignoring Palestinian suffering, saying it had sent a “loud and clear message” to the Arab world that “Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones.”
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Associated Press writer Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed.
The first trucks carrying aid entered Gaza on Saturday, but international leaders have warned that much more is needed to combat the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in the enclave that holds more than 2 million people.
The admission of trucks comes two weeks after Israel launched a complete siege of the enclave in response to deadly attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas.
The trucks entered through the Rafah crossing, the only entry point to Gaza not controlled by Israel, as seen by CNN’s team on the Palestinian side of the border. The crossing closed quickly after the 20 trucks went through.
The Egyptian trucks unloaded the humanitarian aid and returned to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, according to a CNN stringer on the ground.
People on the Egyptian side of the border – where aid organizations had waited for days to be given the green light – were jubilant as the crossing opened, celebrating with ululations and chants.
According to Egyptian authorities at the Rafah crossing, 13 trucks were carrying medicine and medical supplies, five were carrying food and two trucks had water.
European commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, called it an “important first step that will alleviate the suffering of innocent people.”
While these supplies are desperately needed, aid workers said they are a fraction of what’s required for the 2.2 million people crammed into Gaza under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.
Martin Griffiths, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said the delivery followed “days of deep and intense negotiations,” adding that the humanitarian situation in Gaza “has reached catastrophic levels.”
Conditions have grown more dire each day, with hospitals on the verge of collapse and Gazans fast running out of food, water and other critical supplies amid near-constant bombardment by Israel.
UNICEF said it managed to send more than 44,000 bottles of water with the convoy, which the agency said amounts to a day’s water supply for only 22,000 people.
The lack of food is also a serious concern, with the World Food Programme’s (WFP) executive director Cindy McCain telling CNN that starvation is “rampant” in Gaza.
World Health Organization (WHO) director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that “the needs are far higher” than the aid people in Gaza have received.
The WHO said it is working with the Egyptian and Palestine Red Crescent societies to ensure the safe passage of supplies to health facilities, adding shortages have left hospitals in Gaza at “breaking point.”
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said the aid convoy “constitutes only 3% of the daily health and humanitarian needs that used to enter the Gaza Strip before the aggression.”
From Ramallah, in occupied West Bank, head of the Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouti said Gaza needs “7,000 trucks of immediate aid,” adding, “20 trucks will not really change much.”
A lack of fuel is also a concern. Wael Abu Mohsen, head of communications for the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, told Saudi state media Al Hadath TV Saturday that fuel was not delivered, “despite fuel supplies running dangerously low at hospitals and schools in Gaza.”
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari confirmed that none of the trucks were carrying fuel.
Injured Palestinian child describes moment missile landed near him
The arrival of aid comes as world leaders gathered in Cairo, Egypt, for the Cairo Peace Summit on Saturday.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi initiated the peace summit on Gaza in a bid to de-escalate the situation and protect civilians in the enclave. Representatives from 34 countries, including the Middle East, Africa and Europe, and the UN are in attendance, according to organizers. Israel was absent from the summit.
After aid is delivered to Gaza, efforts should be focused on brokering a truce and ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Sisi said.
Then, negotiations should resume for a peace process leading to a “two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state that lives side by side with Israel on the basis of international legitimacy,” Sisi added.
But one political scientist played down hopes of a breakthrough. Dalia Dassa Kaye, a senior fellow from the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, told CNN: “I doubt we are going to see very immediate concrete results,” adding “it is clear the Egyptians and others in the region feel a need to show some kind of diplomatic horizon.”
In pictures: The deadly clashes in Israel and Gaza
Every day the civilian deaths in Gaza mount, fueling anger in the Middle East and beyond.
The enclave, which was already under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt for the past 17 years, became further isolated after the latest war broke out and Israel declared a complete siege.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that about 1.4 million people had been displaced in Gaza – more than 60% of the entire strip’s population.
More than 544,000 people are staying at UN-designated emergency shelters “in increasingly dire conditions,” with many at risk of infectious disease due to unsafe water, the OCHA added in a statement.
On Friday, two American hostages were released from Gaza, the first since Hamas’ October 7 attacks – but their freedom also deepened questions about the fate of other hostages should Israeli troops go into the enclave. The IDF said Saturday that it believes 210 people are being held hostage in Gaza.
Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, handed over the hostages at the border on Friday, with Judith Tai Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie Raanan now on their way to be reunited with loved ones.
For their family, the release marked the end of a nightmare that began on October 7 when Hamas members carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, killing more than 1,400 people and abducting scores back to Gaza.
So far at least 4,385 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, including hundreds of women and children – even as Israel claims it is only targeting Hamas locations.
“We are ready to start this incredible journey of healing and trauma relief for her,” said Ben Raanan, Natalie’s brother.
But, he pointed out, the nightmare continues for countless others.
“There are families all over in Gaza and in Israel that are experiencing a loss that I can’t even imagine,” he said.
Many of those Israeli families attended a ceremony in Tel Aviv on Friday, where a Shabbat dinner table was laid with 200 empty place settings to represent the hostages. Shabbat, a holy day of rest and reflection each week, is often a time when Jewish families gather for meals and prayer.
A Hamas spokesperson claimed on Friday that the two US hostages had been released “for humanitarian reasons” and to “prove to the American people and the world” that claims made by the United States government “are false and baseless.”
And while the release has been welcomed by world leaders, including those in the United States, United Kingdom and France, those in Israel have voiced skepticism about Hamas’ motivations and have promised to continue their blistering counterattack.
Palestinian prime minister: Blind support of Israel is a license for killing
“Two of our hostages are home. We will not ease the effort to bring back all abductees and those missing. Simultaneously, we keep fighting until a victory is reached,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement on social media on Friday.
Maj. Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told CNN on Friday it was an “absurd” attempt by Hamas to “gain more world favor by playing that humanitarian card.”
Others have suggested the release could be an attempt by Hamas to buy time, as speculation swirls of a potential ground incursion by Israeli forces, who have massed by the border and warned Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza.
Israeli officials have not publicly shared details about their plans, besides saying the goal is to eliminate Hamas and its infrastructure, much of which consists of heavily reinforced tunnels underground the densely populated cities.
“Hamas is really under great pressure, and it is trying every trick in the book, and they will try many more as we go along, to stop the Israeli maneuver into the Gaza Strip,” said Rami Igra, former division chief of the hostages and MIA unit with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.
“They are trying to postpone this. They are trying to ease the pressure on them, and they will use anything they can in order to get a ceasefire,” he added.
The US and its allies have not tried to discourage this kind of ground assault – but they have urged Israel to be strategic and clear about its goals in the case of an incursion, warning against a prolonged occupation and emphasizing civilian safety, US and Western officials told CNN.
BLAINE, Minn. — In blue ink on a scrap of white paper that sits on his desk, Jehad Adwan scribbles the names and ages of his wife’s relatives.
Next to five names, he writes “killed” or simply, “K.” Beside another five, he marks “injured” or “I.”
With every news report, social media post and conversation with a relative, he’s keeping track — from his suburban Minneapolis home — of the toll the Israel-Hamas war is taking on his family, and his wife’s family, in Gaza.
“What is preoccupying my brain, my everything, is just the fear of what’s going to happen next,” he said in an interview.
The family’s plight reflects the far reach of the war for Palestinian and Israeli families around the world.
For Adwan, even the hospital bombing that killed hundreds in Gaza had a personal connection. It was the place where he trained to become a nurse before moving to the U.S. and becoming a nursing professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Adwan and his wife, Fatma Abumousa, found out Sunday that five of her relatives were killed, and another five were injured, after a bomb hit her family’s multigenerational home in Khan Younis, a southern city and decades-old refugee camp in Gaza.
Abumousa said she first saw on the instant messaging app Telegram — in channels that Gaza journalists have been posting to — that her hometown was hit, then that it was her neighborhood. Finally, she saw her family’s address.
“She woke me up. She was very upset and distraught. Very scared and crying,” said Adwan, 54, while helping Abumousa, 41, translate from Arabic to English.
Abumousa confirmed with surviving family in Gaza that three of her nephews — ages 6, 7 and 18 — were killed and have been buried, along with her sister-in-law, 42, and cousin, 40.
“Little by little, through the morning, we learned all the details,” Adwan said.
Hmaid, the 18-year-old nephew, was a “brilliant student” who loved calligraphy and building computers, Adwan said. The family had hoped he could study engineering in Germany.
Yusuf and Abdelrahman, the 6- and 7-year-olds, loved going to school and spending time with family. Hiba, their mother and Abumousa’s sister-in-law, was an architect and novelist.
And Hani, Abumousa’s cousin, had just moved from northern Gaza to the southern city to avoid danger after Israel ordered about 1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate.
“Unfortunately, that didn’t help him,” Adwan said.
Among the five injured were Abumousa’s other nieces and nephews, and the sister of her sister-in-law. Some have injuries to their backs, legs and shoulders from shrapnel, Adwan said. Another is in a coma.
Abumousa said through tears that she wants to stop losing people. She had planned to visit her parents in Gaza this month so they could meet her nearly 2-year-old son, Yaman. But now, she said, everything has changed.
Adwan said he wishes media reports would humanize Palestinians as much as they humanize Israelis.
“The Israeli side is being covered excessively. Their stories are told, their names are mentioned, their hobbies are listed,” Adwan said. “We are not just numbers,” he said of Palestinians.
Above all else, Adwan said he wants others to know this: “The Palestinian people want, demand and deserve freedom and equal human rights, like everyone in the world. Period.”
Praying for the best and preparing for the worst, he tucks away the family’s list.
On Friday afternoon, five days after learning of the bombing that killed Abumousa’s relatives, Adwan said in a message to The Associated Press that 18 people — including nephews, nieces and neighbors — are thought to have been injured from the same bombing. “We learn more every day,” he said.
He hasn’t added their names to the list yet.
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Trisha Ahmed is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened on Saturday to let a trickle of desperately needed aid into the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time since Israel sealed it off in the wake of Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago.
Just 20 trucks were allowed in, an amount that aid workers said was insufficient to address the unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza. More than 200 trucks carrying roughly 3,000 tons of aid have been positioned near the crossing for days.
Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have fled their homes, are rationing food and drinking dirty water. Hospitals say they are running low on medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide power blackout. Israel is still launching waves of airstrikes across Gaza that have destroyed entire neighborhoods, as Palestinian militants fire rocket barrages into Israel.
The opening came after more than a week of high-level diplomacy by various mediators, including visits to the region by U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Israel had insisted that nothing would enter Gaza until Hamas released all of the captives from its attack, and the Palestinian side of the crossing had been shut down by Israeli airstrikes.
“The situation is catastrophic in Gaza,” the head of the U.N.’s World Food Program, Cindy McCain, told The Associated Press. “We need many, many, many more trucks and a continual flow of aid,” she said, adding that some 400 trucks were entering Gaza daily before the war.
The Hamas-run government in Gaza also said the limited convoy “will not be able to change the humanitarian catastrophe,” calling for a secure corridor operating around the clock.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said “the humanitarian situation in Gaza is under control.” He said the aid would be delivered only to southern Gaza, where the army has ordered people to relocate, adding that no fuel would enter the territory.
Guterres meanwhile gave voice to growing international concern over civilians in Gaza, telling a summit in Cairo that Hamas’ “reprehensible assault” on Israel two weeks ago “can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
The opening came hours after Hamas released an American woman and her teenage daughter, the first of captives to be freed after the militant group’s Oct. 7 incursion into Israel. It was not immediately clear if there was any connection between the two. Israel says Hamas is still holding at least 210 captives.
Hamas released Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie, on Friday for what it said were humanitarian reasons in an agreement with Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation that has often served as a Mideast mediator.
The two had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate Jewish holidays, the family said. They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting at least 210 others.
Hamas said it was working with Egypt, Qatar and other mediators “to close the case” of hostages if security circumstances permit.
There are growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says would be aimed at rooting out Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years. Israel said Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the small but densely populated Palestinian territory.
Israel has also traded fire along its northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, raising concerns about a second front opening up. The Israeli military said Saturday it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent rocket launches and attacks with anti-tank missiles.
“Hezbollah has decided to participate in the fighting, and we are exacting a heavy price for this,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to the border.
Israel issued a travel warning on Saturday, ordering its citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan — which made peace with it decades ago — and to avoid travel to a number of Arab and Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, which forged diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have erupted across the region.
An Israeli ground assault would likely to lead to a dramatic escalation in casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion. Palestinian militants have continued to launch rockets at Israel — more than 6,900 since Oct. 7, according to the military.
More than 4,300 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. That includes the disputed toll from a hospital explosion earlier this week. The ministry says another 1,400 are believed to have been buried under rubble, alive or dead.
The Hamas-run Housing Ministry said at least 30% of all homes in Gaza have been destroyed or heavily damaged in the war. That figure does not include the destruction of entire neighborhoods, which the U.N. refugee agency now describes as “inaccessible mounds of rubble.”
Hosting a summit on Saturday, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi called for ensuring aid to Gaza, negotiating a cease-fire and resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which last broke down more than a decade ago. He also said the conflict would never be resolved “at the expense of Egypt,” referring to fears Israel may try to push Gaza’s population into the Sinai Peninsula.
King Abdullah II of Jordan told the summit that Israel’s air campaign and siege of Gaza was “a war crime” and slammed the international community’s response.
“Anywhere else, attacking civilian infrastructure and deliberately starving an entire population of food, water, electricity, and basic necessities would be condemned,” he said. Apparently, he added, “human rights have boundaries. They stop at borders, they stop at races, they stop at religions.”
Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate from north to south within the sealed-off coastal enclave. But Israel has continued to bomb areas in southern Gaza where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and some appear to be going back to the north because of bombings and difficult living conditions in the south.
An Associated Press reporter on the Palestinian side of Rafah saw the 20 trucks heading north to Deir al-Balah, a quiet farming town where many evacuees from the north have sought shelter. Hundreds of foreign passport holders at Rafah hoping to escape the conflict were not allowed to leave.
The trucks were carrying 44,000 bottles of drinking water from the U.N.’s children agency — enough for 22,000 people for a single day, it said. “This first, limited water will save lives, but the needs are immediate and immense,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
The World Health Organization said four of the 20 trucks that crossed through Rafah on Saturday were carrying medical supplies, including essential supplies for 300,000 people for three months, trauma medicine and supplies for 1,200 people and 235 portable trauma bags for first responders.
The World Food Program said it has another 930 metric tons of emergency food waiting to be brought in through Rafah. It said it needs to replenish its “rapidly diminishing supplies” as it expands food assistance from 520,000 people to 1.1 million in the next two months.
NEW YORK — Starbucks accused a union representing thousands of its baristas of damaging the brand and endangering co-workers with a pro-Palestinian tweet. The CEO of a prominent tech conference is facing boycotts after he publicly suggested Israel was committing war crimes. Company bosses have vowed never to hire members of a university’s student groups that condemned Israel.
Meanwhile, Islamic rights advocates say much of the corporate response has minimized the suffering in Gaza, where thousands have died in Israeli airstrikes, and created an atmosphere of fear for workers who want to express support for Palestinians. Jewish groups have criticized tepid responses or slow reactions to the Oct. 7 Hamas rampage that killed 1,400 people in Israel and triggered the latest war.
The fallout from the Israel-Hamas war has spilled into workplaces everywhere, as top leaders of prominent companies weigh in with their views while workers complain their voices are not being heard. People from all ranks have been called out for speaking too forcefully — or not forcefully enough — making it nearly impossible to come up with a unifying message when passions run deep on all sides.
Many U.S. corporations have strong ties with Israel, particularly among tech and financial firms that have operations and employees in the country.
Executives at J.P Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs, Google and Meta were among dozens who swiftly condemned the Hamas attacks and expressed solidarity with the Israeli people in public statements, social media posts or even corporate earning calls. Many pledged millions of dollars in humanitarian aid and detailed efforts to safeguard employees in Israel.
Some chief executives poured out their personal anguish.
In a LinkedIn post and a letter to employees, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said he has been constantly on the phones with friends and relatives in Israel and expressed his horror at hearing of “civilians of all ages targeted and killed in cold blood, hostages taken and tortured.” He implored employees to check on each other and said Pfizer launched a humanitarian relief campaign.
“It is not enough to condemn these actions — we ourselves must take action,” Bourla wrote.
Backlash against opposing views has been swift, including responses to a tweet from Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave suggesting Israel was committing war crimes.
“I’ll never attend/sponsor/speak at any of your events again,” former Facebook executive David Marcus stated on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Faced with a growing boycott to next month’s Web Summit, a prominent European gathering of thousands of tech leaders, Cosgrave released a long message denouncing the Hamas attacks and apologizing for the timing of his tweet while defending his overall views on the conflict. But companies continued withdrawing from the conference, including German tech conglomerate Siemens and U.S. chipmaker Intel.
Jonathan Neman, CEO of restaurant chain Sweetgreen, was among several company leaders who vowed never to hire Harvard students who belonged to groups that cosigned a statement blaming Israel for the violence.
The international law firm Winston & Strawn rescinded a job offer to a New York University student who wrote a message in the Student Bar Association bulletin saying Israel was entirely to blame for the bloodshed.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic civil rights group, denounced the backlash against the students and statements from U.S. corporate leaders that “lack any meaningful display of sympathy toward Palestinian civilians.”
Those reactions combined, the organization said, are leaving “Palestinians and those in support of Palestinian human rights isolated at their place of work and fearful of possible consequences” for discussing how the conflict has affected them.
Isra Abuhasna, a data scientist in the Chicago area, was among several professionals who expressed similar thoughts on social media, saying in a LinkedIn post that she was “risking her entire career” by expressing her views on the conflict.
Abuhasna, a Palestinian American who has worked for a real estate firm and other companies but recently took a break to stay home with her two young children, said she fears her posts will make it difficult to find a new position. But she said her parents raised her to be proud and vocal about the Palestinian cause.
“It’s my identity,” Abuhasna said. “What good am I in my job if I compromise my own morals and ethics?”
One of the biggest disputes erupted at Starbucks after Starbucks Workers United, a union representing 9,000 workers at more than 360 U.S. stores, tweeted “Solidarity with Palestine” two days after the Hamas attack. The tweet was taken down within 40 minutes, but the company said it led to more than 1,000 complaints, acts of vandalism and angry confrontations in its stores.
Starbucks filed a lawsuit to stop Starbucks Workers United from using its name and a similar logo. Workers United, the parent union of Starbucks Workers United, responded with its own lawsuit saying Starbucks defamed the union by implying it supports terrorism. It wants to continue using the company name.
Starbucks Workers United tweeted a longer message on Friday denouncing Israel’s “occupation” and “threats of genocide Palestinians face” while also condemning antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Angela Berg, founder of workplace consultancy firm Perelaks, said companies with strong opinions about the war should express them, but “the critical thing is that they acknowledge the existence of the experience of the other side.” Those trying to stay on the sidelines, Berg said, need to explain their reasons to employees.
As the humanitarian catastrophe deepened in Gaza, more company leaders addressed the situation, including Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, who said the company was splitting a $3 million donation between the Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency services and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
But companies that have kept a low profile have gotten pushback.
Allison Grinberg-Funes, who is Jewish, wrote in a LinkedIn post that she was disappointed by the failure of her colleagues to reach out immediately after the Hamas attacks.
While they eventually reached out, Grinberg-Funes said in an interview with The Associated Press that she remains disappointed her employer, Liberty Mutual, didn’t publicly condemn the attacks.
The Boston-based content designer for the insurance company said the silence is part of a wider “lack of support” for the Jewish community that she and her friends have observed in the workplace.
“We want to know that our lives matter as much as the other employees that have been shown support,” said Grinberg-Funes, 33, who has family and friends in Israel.
Liberty Mutual did not respond to a request for comment.
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Associated Press Business Writer Dee-Ann Durbin contributed to this story.
SIX Chinese warships have been deployed to the Middle East as tensions boil over Israel, reports claim.
China‘s 44th naval escort task force has been involved in routine operations in the area, and spent several days on a visit to Oman last week.
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China deployed six warships, which have been operating in the Middle East amid tensions in IsraelCredit: AFP
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for a two-state solution to the Israel-Hamas warCredit: Reuters
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The country’s 44th naval escort task force spent several days on a visit to OmanCredit: Alamy
The task force – from the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theatre – left Muscat for an unspecified location on Saturday after taking part in a joint exercise with the Omani navy.
It includes the Zibo, a Type 052D guided-missile destroyer, the frigate Jingzhou and the integrated supply ship Qiandaohu – all stationed in the Middle East at a time of heightened tensions.
During the visit, Chinese commanders met Omani military officials and visited military institutions, while sailors from both countries toured each other’s shops.
They also organised a basketball game, according to state news agency Xinhua.
The PLA task force has been involved in escort missions for shipping since arriving in the Gulf of Aden north of Somalia six months ago.
But it handed over its mission to the 45th escort task force earlier this month.
The new convoy, from the PLA’s Northern Theatre command, includes a Type 052 destroyer Urumqi, the frigate Linyi and a supply ship Dongpinghu.
On Thursday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said a two-state solution to establish an independent Palestine is the “fundamental way out” of the Israel-Hamas war.
“The top priority now is a ceasefire as soon as possible, to avoid the conflict from expanding or even spiraling out of control and causing a serious humanitarian crisis,” Xi was quoted as saying by China’s state-broadcaster CCTV.
The American military is increasing its firepower in the region, looking to prevent Iran and other Iran-backed groups from getting involved in the conflict.
The US empire of steel includes a network of bases in the Middle East with 2,000 troops, 2,400 Marines, and 13 warships now on alert.
A few A-10 Warthog and F-15E attack planes arrived in the region last week, with more advanced military aircraft expected to join.
The Pentagon is also rushing air defences and munitions to Israel, as well as an aircraft carrier monster fleet to the eastern Mediterranean, Reuters reports.
Another carrier is also set to be sent to the region in the coming days.
The United States has also told some 2,000 troops to be ready to deploy within 24 hours if notified – instead of the usual 96 hours – and could include units that provide assistance like medical aid if needed, a US official said on Monday.
Washington says the moves are meant as a deterrent, not a provocation.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened on Saturday to let a trickle of desperately needed aid into the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time since Israel sealed it off in the wake of Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago.
Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have fled their homes, are rationing food and drinking dirty water. Hospitals say they are running low on medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide power blackout. Israel is still launching waves of airstrikes across Gaza as Palestinian militants fire rocket barrages into Israel.
The opening came after more than a week of high-level diplomacy by various mediators, including visits to the region by U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Israel had insisted that nothing would enter Gaza until some 200 people captured by Hamas were freed, and the Palestinian side of the crossing had been shut down by Israeli airstrikes.
Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera news, which is close to security agencies, said just 20 trucks had crossed into Gaza on Saturday, out of more than 200 trucks carrying roughly 3,000 tons of aid that have been positioned near the crossing for days. Hundreds of foreign passport holders also waited to cross from Gaza to Egypt to escape the conflict.
The U.N. said life-saving supplies would be delivered to the Palestinian Red Crescent medical service. But Cindy McCain, the head of the U.N.’s World Food Program, said the aid was insufficient. “The situation is catastrophic in Gaza,” she said. “We need many, many, many more trucks and a continual flow of aid.”
The Hamas-run government in Gaza also said the limited convoy “will not be able to change the humanitarian catastrophe,” calling for a secure corridor operating around the clock.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said “the humanitarian situation in Gaza is under control.” He said the aid would be delivered only to southern Gaza, where the army has ordered people to relocate, adding that no fuel would enter the territory.
The opening came hours after Hamas released an American woman and her teenage daughter, the first captives to be freed after the militant group’s Oct. 7 incursion into Israel. It was not immediately clear if there was any connection between the two.
Hamas released Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie, on Friday for what it said were humanitarian reasons in an agreement with Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation that has often served as a Mideast mediator.
The two had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate Jewish holidays, the family said. They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting at least 210 others.
Hamas said it was working with Egypt, Qatar and other mediators “to close the case” of hostages if security circumstances permit.
Intense airstrikes were reported across Gaza overnight and into Saturday. The Hamas-run Health Ministry said 345 people were killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours, and that seven hospitals are out of service after being damaged in strikes or running out of fuel.
The Hamas-run Housing Ministry said at least 30% of all homes in Gaza have been destroyed or heavily damaged in the war. That figure does not include the destruction of entire neighborhoods, which the U.N. refugee agency now describes as “inaccessible mounds of rubble.”
There are growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says would be aimed at rooting out Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years. Israel said Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the small but densely populated Palestinian territory.
Israel has also traded fire along its northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, raising concerns about a second front opening up. The Israeli military said Saturday it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent rocket launches and attacks with anti-tank missiles.
Israel issued a travel warning on Saturday, ordering its citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan — which made peace with it decades ago — and to avoid travel to a number of Arab and Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, which forged diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have erupted across the region.
A potential Israeli ground assault is likely to lead to a dramatic escalation in casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion. Palestinian militants have continued to launch unrelenting rocket attacks into Israel — more than 6,900 projectiles since Oct. 7, according to Israel.
More than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry run by Hamas. That includes a disputed number of people who died in a hospital explosion earlier this week. The ministry says another 1,400 are believed to have been buried under rubble, alive or dead.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Friday laid out a three-stage plan, beginning with Israeli airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — that would aim to root out Hamas. Next would come a lower intensity fight to defeat remaining pockets. Then a new “security regime” would be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said.
He did not say who Israel expected to run Gaza if Hamas is toppled or what the new security regime would entail.
Israel occupied Gaza from 1967 until 2005, when it pulled up settlements and withdrew soldiers. Two years later, Hamas took over. Some Israelis blame the withdrawal from Gaza for the five wars and countless smaller exchanges of fire since then.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi proposed a very different scenario on Saturday as he hosted a summit to discuss the war. He called for ensuring aid to Gaza, negotiating a cease-fire and resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which last broke down more than a decade ago.
He also said the conflict would never be resolved “at the expense of Egypt,” referring to fears Israel may try to push Gaza’s population into the Sinai Peninsula.
Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate from north to south within the sealed-off enclave on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. But Israel has continued to bomb areas in southern Gaza where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and some appear to be going back to the north because of bombings and difficult living conditions in the south.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the opening of Rafah, calling it “an important first step that will alleviate the suffering of innocent people.”
The World Health Organization said four of the 20 trucks that crossed through Rafah on Saturday were carrying medical supplies, including medicines for the treatment of chronic diseases for 1,500 people, essential supplies for 300,000 people for three months, trauma medicine and supplies for 1,200 people and 235 portable trauma bags for first responders.
The World Food Program said it has another 930 metric tons of emergency food waiting to be brought in through Rafah. It said it needs to replenish its “rapidly diminishing supplies” as it expands food assistance from 520,000 people to 1.1 million in the next two months.
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Magdy reported from Cairo and Krauss from Jerusalem. Associated Press journalists Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden says he thinks Hamas was motivated to attack Israel in part by a desire to stop that country from normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia
ByAAMER MADHANI Associated Press
October 20, 2023, 8:25 PM
President Joe Biden answers a questions as he boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Friday, Oct. 20, 2023, to travel to Rehoboth Beach, Del. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Friday he thought Hamas was motivated to attack Israel in part by a desire to stop that country from normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia.
“One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel … they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” Biden said at a fundraising event. The U.S. president indicated that he thinks Hamas militants launched a deadly assault on Oct. 7 because, “Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognize Israel” and were near being able to formally do so.
Jerusalem and Riyadh had been steadily inching closer to normalization, with Biden working to help bring the two countries together, announcing plans in September at the Group of 20 summit in India to partner on a shipping corridor.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Biden on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September and told him, “I think that under your leadership, Mr. President, we can forge a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia.”
The Saudis had been insisting on protections and expanded rights for Palestinian interests as part of any broader agreement with Israel. An agreement would have been a feat of diplomacy that could have enabled broader recognition of Israel by other Arab and Muslim-majority nations that have largely opposed Israel since its creation 75 years ago in territory where Palestinians have long resided.
But talks were interrupted after Hamas militants stormed from the blockaded Gaza Strip where Palestinians live into nearby Israeli towns.
The Oct. 7 attack coincided with a major Jewish holiday. It led to retaliatory airstrikes by Israel that have left the world on edge with the U.S. trying to keep the war from widening, as 1,400 Israelis and 4,137 Palestinians have been killed. Hamas also captured more than 200 people as hostages after the initial assault.
For years, Israel assiduously avoided an all-out military confrontation with Hamas, estimating that it was safer to have a contained Palestinian power controlling Gaza than no power at all. To that end, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the nation’s security establishment sought to limit the threat posed by the group via periodic strikes in a cycle that became so routine the Israelis simply called it “mowing the grass.”
Now, in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas that killed more than 1,500 people and upended that strategy, Israel is looking to tear Hamas out of Gaza root and branch in what most expect will be a long and bloody ground invasion. Over the last week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have called up more than 300,000 reservists, amassed troops along the border, launched an air campaign, and conducted localized raids that have killed at least three Hamas leaders. On Thursday, Netanyahu met with troops in southern Israel. “At the end of this,” says Mark Regev, a former senior adviser to Netanyahu, Hamas’ “military machine will be dismantled and its political structure will be smashed.”
Israel’s declaration of total war against Hamas is understandable after the worst slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. Israel’s leaders reason that if Hamas is not defeated decisively, the message to hostile powers in the Middle East will be that terror tactics work. But war breeds chaos and chaos breeds unforeseen consequences. The hard question now being quietly raised by officials in Israel, the region, and the U.S. is: After Hamas, then what?
The Israelis have yet to articulate a vision or strategy for what a post-Hamas Gaza would look like. “It’s too early to talk about this as far as we’re concerned,” a senior Israeli official tells TIME. “The focus is on fighting and winning the war right now. What happens the day after, in any case, will take quite a while.”
But by creating a power vacuum in Gaza, Israel risks unleashing a wave of instability and disorder that could have far-reaching impact. Radicalized Palestinians could launch a sustained, asymmetric war against IDF troops in Gaza and civilians in Israel. Outside militant groups could use post-war chaos in Gaza to recruit and grow. Regional powers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia could isolate Israel amid the upheaval while enemies like Syria and Iran could be emboldened to ignite new proxy attacks. “The time to be thinking about the day after is not when you get there,” says Dennis Ross, a former Mideast peace negotiator who served in multiple U.S. administrations. “It’s before you get there.”
Amid the scenes of destruction unfolding in Gaza, it is not hard to imagine what the day after a declared Israeli victory could look like. The streets of Gaza City, Jabalia, and Khan Younis reduced to rubble. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed in the Israeli campaign. Even more Palestinians displaced from their homes and suffering a human catastrophe that few in the west can contemplate.
What comes next?
Perhaps out of that grim reality Israel could strike an accommodation with the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority to take control over the Gaza Strip in cooperation with the Israeli military to ensure Hamas can never create a military wing again. But that scenario is unlikely. The Palestinian Authority is unpopular in the West Bank, where corruption and dysfunction have fueled anger and dissatisfaction. It has a lousy track record in Gaza where it ruled briefly from 2005 to 2007 before being ousted by Hamas in elections. It would hardly help the Palestinian Authority to ride into Gaza on the backs of Israeli tanks.
Then there is the possibility that Hamas could return to Gaza as soon as Israeli tanks pull out. No matter the result of the coming Israeli war, it’s far from clear that the population in Gaza would be willing to move on from Hamas, which is more than a political party or a military wing. It’s a social movement, spawned in the late 1980s as the Palestinian branch of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. “The only attractive movement right now is Hamas,” says Ghaith al-Omari, a former PA official now at the Washington Institute. “You can destroy all of its physical infrastructure, but it’s very hard to destroy the idea.”
Even worse for Israel, from a security standpoint, would be that Gaza becomes so volatile it would be impossible for a single ruling entity to take hold. That could create a vacuum that leads to pockets of territorial rule by extremist forces, whether it be ISIS or one of its affiliates based in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, another Islamist or Salafi Jihadist movement, or a new iteration of Hamas, either in name or in spirit. “What are the environments in which extremists thrive?” says Khaled Elgindy, a former Palestinian Authority negotiator. “Power vacuums.” The new Gaza, in other words, could generate even more Islamist extremism.
Those unpleasant scenarios leave another painful possibility: that Israel may feel the need to stay in Gaza for years. Israel ruled over the coastal enclave from 1967 until 2005 and going back in for a sustained occupation would require the ongoing presence of IDF troops in Gaza, who would be vulnerable to ambushes. It would foment more Palestinian resentment toward Israel, spawning a new generation of combatants. It would risk triggering wider regional instability and potentially drawing America into a war. And it would trap Israel in a profound moral and military crisis. Any hope for the eventual resurrection of the U.S.-brokered Israeli-Saudi Arabia normalization agreement would be foreclosed. The deal would likely go from dead to dead and buried. Little surprise President Joe Biden has already warned Israel against reoccupation.
The lack of realistic scenarios is starting to produce unrealistic ones. Some Americans and Israelis are floating the idea of an international trusteeship that would govern the Gaza Strip on an interim basis until a permanent solution is reached, a kind of return to the “mandate” system that predated the creation of Israel. The United Nations would serve as a steward to direct a massive infusion of cash for humanitarian relief and rebuilding the battered Gaza cities flattened from uncountable rounds of artillery. After a period of physical reconstruction, the peace-keeping force would oversee elections in which Palestinians could choose their new leaders. But while the idea sounds good on paper, few people think it’s possible. “This is fantasy,” says Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American historian and former PLO peace negotiator in the 1990s. “These people are living in an alternative reality.”
That Israel hasn’t articulated an endgame worries those with even a cursory sense of recent history in the Middle East. One need look no further than the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. “There is the fear of a slippery slope,” al-Omari says. “You break it, you own it.” That’s why longtime diplomats argue that military might alone is unlikely to solve Israel’s problems in Gaza. It will also need statecraft. “You can’t treat the use of force as an end in itself,” says Ross. “There has to be a focus on what is the political result of this.”
Unfortunately, few see hope for a positive outcome from a sustained victory by Israel over Hamas. “We don’t have better and bad scenarios, or better and bad options,” says Avi Isaacharoff, a veteran Israeli journalist and Middle East analyst who co-created the series Fauda. “What we’re facing is somewhere in between the bad, the worse, and the worst.”
JERUSALEM — Gaza has long been a powder keg, and it exploded after Hamas fighters stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7 and began killing and abducting people.
More than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians — were killed in the Hamas attack, and the Israeli army says about 200 hostages were taken into Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. Nearly half Gaza’s population — the vast majority of whom are already refugees — have been displaced.
Israel has imposed a complete siege on Gaza, preventing the entrance of food, water and fuel — a move that has created a catastrophic humanitarian situation. As the Israeli military gears up for a ground invasion and pledges to topple Hamas, the futures of Gaza and its 2.3 million Palestinians look uncertain.
Here’s a look at the history of the Gaza Strip:
Before the war surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948, present-day Gaza was part of the large swath of the Middle East under British colonial rule. After Israel defeated the coalition of Arab states, the Egyptian army was left in control of a small strip of land wedged between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.
During the war, some 700,000 Palestinians either fled or were forced from their homes in what is now Israel — a mass uprooting that they call the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Tens of thousands of Palestinians flocked to the strip.
Under Egyptian military control, Palestinian refugees in Gaza were stuck, homeless and stateless. Egypt didn’t consider them to be citizens and Israel wouldn’t let them return to their homes. Many were supported by UNWRA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which has a heavy presence in Gaza to this day. Meanwhile, some young Palestinians became “fedayeen” — insurgency fighters who conducted raids into Israel.
Israel seized control of Gaza from Egypt during the 1967 Mideast war, when it also captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem — areas that remain under Israeli control. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers semi-autonomous areas of the occupied West Bank, seeks all three areas for a hoped-for future state.
Israel built more than 20 Jewish settlements in Gaza during this period. It also signed a peace treaty with Egypt at Camp David — a pact negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi referenced this 40-year old treaty Wednesday when he declined to permit Palestinian refugees from Gaza into Egypt, saying the potential entrance of militants into Egypt would threaten longstanding peace between Israel and Egypt.
The first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation erupted in Gaza in December 1987, kicking off more than five years of sustained protests and bloody violence. It was also during this time that the Islamic militant group Hamas was established in Gaza.
For a time, promising peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders made the future of Gaza look somewhat hopeful.
Following the Oslo accords — a set of agreements between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat that laid the groundwork for a two-state solution — control of Gaza was handed to the fledgling Palestinian Authority.
But the optimism was short lived. A series of Palestinian suicide attacks by Hamas militants, the 1995 assassination of Rabin by a Jewish ultranationalist opposed to his peacemaking and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister the following year all hindered U.S.-led peace efforts. Another peace push collapsed in late 2000 with the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising.
As the uprising fizzled in 2005, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, uprooting all of Israel’s troops and roughly 9,000 settlers in a move that bitterly divided Israel.
Just months after Israel’s withdrawal, Hamas won parliamentary elections over Fatah, the long-dominant Palestinian political party. The following year, after months of infighting, Hamas violently seized control of Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.
Israel and Egypt imposed a crippling blockade on the territory, monitoring the flow of goods and people in and out. For nearly two decades, the closure has crippled the local economy, sent unemployment skyrocketing, and emboldened militancy in the region, which is one of the most densely populated places on the planet.
Through four wars and countless smaller battles with Israel that devastated Gaza, Hamas has only grown more powerful. In each subsequent conflict, Hamas has had more rockets that have traveled farther. The group has displayed a growing array of weapons. Its top leaders have survived, and cease-fires have been secured. In the meantime, it has built a government, including a police force, ministries and border terminals equipped with metal detectors and passport control.
Since the Oct. 7 attack, Israel has stated its goal is to crush Hamas. This will be no easy task given the group’s deep base of support. But even if Israel does realize its goal, it has said little about what it hopes will come next.
On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel hopes to relinquish control of Gaza and establish a “new security regime.” He did not elaborate.
Experts have cautioned that defeating militancy is not possible — even if Israel manages to topple Hamas, militants could well fill the power vacuum.
Friday, two American hostages were released in Gaza Mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan were held hostage for two weeks by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Diplomacy by the U.S., Israeli, and Qatari governments acting as negotiators brought about the release.
“It’s a chess move,” former special agent Department of State senior advisor Ron Holloway said. “That’s what it is in a game of multi-dimensional chess with an infinite board.”
Working in diplomatic security services Holloway said this release is just a start to a longer process ahead.
“This is an opening of a negotiation,” Holloway said.
President Biden celebrated Friday’s release in a statement saying he is overjoyed that they will soon be reunited with their family.
State Department Secretary Antony Blinken said the fate of the 10 Americans and other hostages is still unknown.
“Some of them are being held hostage by Hamas along with 200 other hostages,” Blinken said.
Israel confirmed that of the more than 200 hostages, the majority are still alive and in Gaza.
Still, a lot is unknown about the future of the other hostages, but Holloway feels the release of two Americans is a positive sign.
“It’s a good move,” Holloway said. “It’s a game of inches like football. We inched a little closer to peace today. But there is still a big board and a lot of pieces to move around before the game finally comes to an end.”
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Hamas on Friday freed an American woman and her teenage daughter it had held hostage in Gaza, Israel said, the first such release from among the roughly 200 people the militant group abducted during its Oct. 7 rampage in Israel.
The two Americans, Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie, were out of the Gaza Strip and in the hands of the Israeli military, an army spokesman said. Hamas said it released them for humanitarian reasons in an agreement with the Qatari government.
The release comes amid growing expectations of an expected ground offensive that Israel says is aimed at rooting out Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip. Israel said Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the tiny territory, home to some 2.3 million people.
Israeli soldiers escort U.S. citizens Judith and Natalie Raanan after their release by Hamas on Oct. 20, 2023.Ziv Koren—Polaris
As the Israeli military punished Gaza with airstrikes, authorities inched closer to bringing aid to desperate families and hospitals. Muslims around the world protested in solidarity with Palestinians.
Judith and Natalie Ranaan had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays, the family said. They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, on Oct. 7 — Simchat Torah, a festive Jewish holiday – when Hamas and other militants stormed out of the territory into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting 203 others.
The family heard nothing from them since the attack and were later told by U.S. and Israeli officials that they were being held in Gaza, Natalie’s brother Ben said.
Relatives of other captives welcomed the release and appealed for the others to be freed.
“We call on world leaders and the international community to exert their full power in order to act for the release of all the hostages and missing,’’ the statement said.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion that shattered Israelis sense of security.
The Health Ministry run by Hamas says more than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began. That includes a disputed number of people who died in a hospital explosion earlier this week.
Israel bombed areas in southern Gaza where Palestinians had been told to seek safety while it tries to destroy Hamas two weeks ago. Fighting between Israel and militants in neighboring Lebanon also raged, prompting evacuations of Lebanese and Israeli border towns as fears of a widening conflict grew.
Speaking to lawmakers about Israel’s long-term plans for Gaza, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan that seemed to suggest that Israel did not intend to reoccupy the territory it left in 2005.
First, Israeli airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas. Next will come a lower intensity fight to defeat remaining pockets of resistance. And, finally, a new “security regime” will be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Gallant said.
Gallant did not say who Israel expected to run Gaza if Hamas is toppled or what the new security regime would entail.
Israel occupied Gaza from 1967 until 2005, when it pulled up settlements and withdrew soldiers. Two years later, Hamas took over. Some Israelis blame the withdrawal from Gaza for the sporadic violence that has persisted since then.
The humanitarian crisis worsened for Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians, as workers along its border with Egypt repaired the border crossing in a first step to bring aid to Palestinians running out of fuel, food, water and medicine.
Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate the northern part of the sealed-off enclave on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called areas in southern Gaza “safe zones” earlier this week, Israeli military spokesman Nir Dinar said Friday: “There are no safe zones.”
U.N. officials said that with the bombings across all of Gaza, some Palestinians who had fled the north appeared to be going back.
“The strikes, coupled with extremely difficult living conditions in the south, appear to have pushed some to return to the north, despite the continuing heavy bombing there,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office, said.
Generators in Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, were operating at the lowest setting to conserve fuel while providing power to vital departments such as intensive care, hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said. Others worked in darkness.
“I don’t know how long (the fuel) will last. Every day we evaluate the situation,” he said.
The lack of medical supplies and water are making it difficult to treat the mass of victims from the Israeli strikes, he said.
The deal to get aid into Gaza through the territory’s only entry point not controlled by Israel remained fragile. Israel said the supplies could only go to civilians and that it would “thwart” any diversions by Hamas. It was unclear if fuel for the hospital generators would be allowed to enter.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had received a threat from the Israeli military to bomb Al-Quds Hospital and has demanded the hospital’s immediate evacuation. The Gaza City hospital has more than 400 patients and thousands who of displaced civilians who sought refuge on its grounds, it said.
Work continued Friday to repair the road at the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza that had been damaged in airstrikes. Trucks unloaded gravel, and bulldozers and other equipment was used to fill in large craters.
A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a rapidly changing situation said aid had been delayed because of ongoing road repairs, and that it was expected to move across the border Saturday. More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tons of aid were positioned near the crossing.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited the crossing Friday and appealed for the quick movement of aid into Gaza, calling it “the difference between life and death.”
Israel has evacuated its own communities near Gaza and Lebanon, putting residents up in hotels elsewhere in the country. The Defense Ministry announced evacuation plans Friday for Kiryat Shmona, a town of more than 20,000 residents near the Lebanese border. Three Israelis including a 5-year-old girl were wounded in a rocket attack there Thursday, according to Israeli health services.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, which has a massive arsenal of long-range rockets, has traded fire with Israel along the borderon a near-daily basis and hinted it might join the war if Israel seeks to annihilate Hamas. Iran supports both armed groups.
Palestinians in Gaza reported heavy airstrikes in Khan Younis, a town in the territory’s south, and ambulances carrying men, women and children streamed into the local Nasser Hospital.
Late Thursday, an Israeli airstrike hit a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City housing displaced Palestinians. The military said it had targeted a Hamas command center nearby, causing damage to a church wall. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said 16 Palestinian Christians were killed.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchy of Jerusalem condemned the attack and said it would “not abandon its religious and humanitarian duty” to provide assistance.
Palestinian militants have launched unrelenting rocket attacks into Israel — more than 6,900 since Oct. 7, according to Israel — and tensions have flared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israel has targeted militants in raids across the occupied territory. On Friday, two Palestinian teenagers were killed in clashes in the West Bank, where more than 80 Palestinians have been killed over the past two weeks.
An unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment estimated casualties in an explosion at a Gaza City hospital this week on the “low end” of 100 to 300 deaths. It said intelligence officials were still assessing the evidence and the casualty estimate may evolve.
The report echoed earlier assessments by U.S. officials that the massive blast at the al-Ahli hospital was not caused by an Israeli airstrike, as Hamas has reported. Israel has presented video, audio and other evidence it says proves the blast was caused by a rocket misfired by Palestinian militants.
The AP has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.
But for all the attention being paid to Gaza in the last two weeks, it remains difficult to hear the voices of Palestinians living there. Israeli authorities have cut off fuel and electricity to the enclave, making it difficult for residents to keep their devices charged, let alone reach the outside world. While many international journalists are based in Israel, there is a very limited foreign media presence in Gaza. What reporting does come out of the Strip is largely from Gaza-based Palestinian reporters such as Noor Harazeen, who are simultaneously covering and living the story. “I try to be as professional as possible, just so no one can say that because I am a Palestinian journalist, I am taking the Palestinian side, and spreading lies,” she says. “I try as much as I can to hold my tears back, but in some cases, I can’t do that.”
The picture is a grim one. To live in Gaza today means not only facing airstrikes, thousands of which have been carried out on Gaza over the past 13 days, but also the threat of malnutrition and inability to access medical care, as Gaza hospitals reach a breaking point. “The health system had 2,500 beds when the war started, and now it has 12,500 wounded,” says Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian doctor currently working in Gaza. He notes that the health system was already “on its knees” as a result of a 16-year blockade, enforced by Israel and Egypt, that has severely curtailed the movement of goods and people in and out of the Strip, half of whose 2 million residents are children.
Despite the Israeli military’s order late on Oct. 12 for the 1.1 million Palestinians residing in northern Gaza to flee south—a mass evacuation that the United Nations dubbed “impossible” without devastating humanitarian consequences—there are no safe havens in Gaza. As hundreds of thousands have fled to southern cities such as Khan Younis and Rafah, Israeli airstrikes have followed.
That all of this is happening in full sight of the world makes many Palestinians in Gaza feel alone—even betrayed. “If you tell any Palestinian ‘Tell your story now,’ even myself, they will say, ‘Just shut up, no one cares,’” says Ghada Ageel, a visiting Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, whose extended family remains in Gaza. “We have been sending the stories. The problem is not with the story. The problem is with Western media and Western politicians that opted to remain silent.”
Still, many Palestinians are keen to share their experiences—if not to save their lives, then to at least to prove that they mattered. “I hope that we’ll stay alive, not because I want life, but because I want to tell our stories, the stories of our people,” says 21-year-old Tala Herzallah, a student in Gaza.
You can read Herzallah’s and other Palestinians’ stories from Gaza below. They have been edited for length and clarity.
—Yasmeen Serhan
Read More:
Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, 54
Abu-Sittah is a plastic surgeon based in London who arrived in Gaza the morning of Monday, Oct. 9 to volunteer with Médecins Sans Frontières. He spoke to TIME on Oct. 19.
I’m currently at Shifa Hospital in the burns unit. I literally work all day in the operating room, and at night, I sleep on one of the [stretchers]. Shifa Hospital itself, which is Gaza’s largest hospital, has turned into a camp for the internally displaced with tens of thousands of families in every compound of the hospital, in the corridors, on the stairwells.
The day before yesterday, I had been asked by colleagues at al-Ahli hospital to help out. So I took an ambulance and I was operating there till 5:30 p.m. when I realized I was going to have to stay over because it wasn’t safe to travel at night, and so that I could continue operating into the night.
An operating room in Shifa Hospital, where Dr. Abu-Sittah has been treating scores of patients.
Later on that evening, there was a loud screech followed by the explosion. When I went out of the operating room to see what had happened, I could see the courtyard of the hospital was on fire. The ambulances were on fire. The cars were on fire. And the palm trees were on fire. The courtyard, which had been lit up by the fire, was just full of bodies and bits of bodies.
After the explosion, the wounded started coming in and I went to the emergency department. There were scenes of absolute pandemonium. Dead bodies everywhere, people screaming, people with amputations. My first case was a 5-year-old girl whose mother had been killed along with her sister, and who had this massive wound in her right arm—the whole of the right arm. These wounds are extremely contaminated. There’s dirt and gravel and pieces of glass and metal in the wound that have to be cleaned. The dead tissue needs to be removed.
And then we carried on operating until 12:30 a.m. in the night. I tended to a guy with an amputation just through his thigh. I used his belt as a tourniquet and I resuscitated him. Then I went to another guy who had shrapnel in his neck and had hit a blood vessel and was squirting blood out.
I was still quite shaken up yesterday. But by midday, I decided that the only way was just to get back to work.
Yesterday, the orthopedic surgeons at Shifa said they had no more external fixators. Things are just falling apart. The hospital probably has twice the number of wounded patients that it has capacity for. Yesterday, they ran out of wards and corridors for mattresses to keep the wounded on. The water pressure reaching the hospital is now so low they can’t operate the central sterilization machine. We’ve reverted to using Cidex, which is a chemical disinfectant.
The health system in Gaza had 2,500 beds when the war started, and now it has 12,500 wounded. But it had already been on its knees as a result of the 16-year siege imposed on it.
I’m feeling extremely pessimistic. This is going to be a long, drawn-out war, and we’re just at the beginning of it.
—As told to Astha Rajvanshi
Afaf Alnajjar, 21
Afaf Alnajjar is a Palestinian student.
Alnajjar is a Palestinian student studying English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza in Gaza City. She fled to Khan Younis in the south with her family and spoke to TIME on Oct. 18.
I’m a new bride-to-be. I just got engaged a week before the attack. My engagement party was supposed to be this past Thursday, the day before we had to evacuate from the hotel. I had everything prepared. And then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, everything is shattered.
On Oct. 7, my family woke up to the sounds of rockets. We decided to go to a hotel that was supposed to be safe because it had something called “U.N. clearance.” We stayed in the hotel for four or five days. Then the situation got extremely bad. Entire neighborhoods around the hotel were wiped out and completely destroyed by airstrikes. Doors fell, some of the windows shattered, the ceilings also fell, aside from the water and the electricity and food shortages. There were about 350 people in the hotel, all crammed in one place because the staff told us to go to the lower floors of the hotel to be safer, but obviously we weren’t safe.
We were told to move to the south of the Gaza Strip. It took three hours to find a taxi that was willing to go to Khan Younis. We knew that we could potentially be targeted by an airstrike. On the same day that we evacuated, more than 70 people were killed in an airstrike that targeted the street for evacuation, which was marked safe by the Israeli forces. Thankfully we were able to get here in one piece.
We haven’t had any water in the house since Friday night. We haven’t had any electricity. We use car batteries to have the internet on and we have to take our phones and charge them in nearby shops or in our neighbors’ homes who have solar energy.
The attacks on Gaza are always brutal. However, this time is much, much worse. We’re talking about entire families being wiped out—and when I say entire families, I’m not talking about a family of four or five. I’m talking about a family of 40-plus people.
I have to sleep every single night with the thought that I might wake up under rubble, if I ever wake up. My mom has to sit my 11-year-old brother down and tell him how to deal with the situation if he finds himself under the rubble.
I see the support and love of millions of people around the world. However, people who are in positions of power are not doing anything to stop this. Everyone goes around and says “we condemn the things that are happening.” We’ve already condemned enough. It’s time to stop this. They’re talking about aid coming into the Gaza Strip. What’s the point of aid if people are still going to continue dying?
I’ve reached a point where I can’t dream of anything but war and destruction. I’ve started hearing voices, I’ve started seeing things. It feels like we’re just waiting for our turn. It seems like we’re dead, but our death is pending. It’s on pause until an airstrike comes and attacks us.
—As told to Yasmeen Serhan
Nihal Alami, 33
Nihal Alami is a translator born in Gaza city.
Alami is translator at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. She spoke to TIME on Oct. 18.
I was born in Gaza City and have grown up under an Israeli blockade depriving us of all our basic human rights. What I want the world to know is that things in Gaza did not start on Oct. 7 and it is not a war against Hamas. Israel has collectively punished us for 16 years. If Israel is actually launching a war against Hamas, then why does it close all crossings and deny entry of humanitarian aid and other basic supplies to the civilian population?
On Friday, I evacuated to Khan Younis in southern Gaza with my family. We are now with 20 other people in one apartment. There were many nearby bombings in the so-called “safe area” in the south.
We have no water, fuel, internet, or electricity. We evacuated after receiving a call to evacuate our house at dawn. So we went to my uncle’s house. There were very heavy airstrikes in my area in Gaza City. My neighborhood has been wiped out by the warplanes. Israel is still bombing civilian areas all over Gaza City.
My husband lost his shop, our source of income, after Israeli warplanes bombed a commercial building, al-Watan, in Gaza City in the very first days of the wars. We are running out of all necessities. We consume too little to survive.
In Gaza you do not plan, the Israeli occupation plans everything for you. Our hopes are to stay alive, to not lose any of my beloved ones, and to go back to my home in Gaza City.
We feel disappointed by the world’s inaction and silence toward the Israeli crimes against us, starting from closing the border crossings and banning entry of humanitarian aid convoys. We are very frightened, feeling that death is very near and fearing the unknown.
—As told to Astha Rajvanshi
Noor Harazeen, 33
Noor Harazeen, a Palestinian journalist.
Harazeen is a Palestinian journalist, and was among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled to southern Gaza following Israel’s evacuation order. She spoke to TIME on Oct. 17.
On Saturday at 6:30 a.m., we started hearing the rockets being fired from Gaza. And we were shocked, and we’re still shocked now. We’re used to Israel starting the wars. But once we saw the news we realized this is going to take more time.
I was raised in Dubai and I came back to my homeland in Gaza in 2006. I live in central Gaza City in al-Rimal neighborhood, which has been evacuated. I am now in Deir al-Balah in southern Gaza. But actually there are bombings here too. So they evacuate us for our safety but there are bombings in the places they told us to evacuate to.
My journey getting to southern Gaza after the evacuation order was actually easier than others. I was lucky enough to have a taxi to transport me. I had money to pay and rent a place in southern Gaza. It was hard on me to evacuate, especially with my kids and trying to gather as much as I can but I was actually lucky looking at the other people. When I was in the car I saw people taking that route on their feet with their children and they were taking blankets and food. It was such a sad thing to see. I felt that I was such a lucky person.
Harazeen’s husband and two kids.
We also have other challenges. There is no wifi. There is no electricity. There is no fuel. I’ve been staying here in Shuhada’a Al Aqsahospital in Deir al-Balah taking shelter for four days now. I can’t move around because there are airstrikes everywhere.
The biggest challenge, as a Gazan journalist, is to stay calm and try to hold back my tears. I try to be as professional as possible so no one can say that because I am a Palestinian journalist I am taking the Palestinian side and spreading lies. But in some cases, I can’t do that. Two days ago, Israeli warplanes targeted two buildings in Deir Al-Balah at the same time. People died. Many of them were children and I saw things that I have never, ever seen before. Some of the children reminded me of my kids. I have two kids, they are twins and they are both 5 years old. They don’t fully understand what is going on. They think we are taking a trip or something. But they are strong. So this is why it became really emotional for me.
—As told to Anna Gordon
Rawan Hassan, 23
Hassan is an English language teacher in Rafah who is running out of drinking water. She spoke to TIME on Oct. 17.
It is so difficult in Gaza. You can’t sleep at night. You can’t eat what you need. You can’t drink clean water. Many children died. We have many martyrs but no one cares. No one cares. Where is the humanity? Where is the humanity for these children?
I think the food situation is OK for me, but for others, no. We have a limited amount of water. In two days, we will finish all the water.
All the time the children are crying. They live with fear. I hope that the international community will stand with us. I have many friends in America, the U.K., and Canada. I have been trying to tell my friends there about what is happening because it is my duty to support my community and my people.
We have to be strong in front of our children. I just pretend everything is OK. I have my niece and nephew. They are so young. I pray for Allah all the time. I think the people who feel the war the most are the children.
Today, our neighbors’ home was bombed by the Israelis. You have to feel nothing. You have to be strong and not let anything destroy you. You are still alive.
Unfortunately, today in Gaza children are being killed by the Israeli occupation. Where are their rights? This is the question. They should have the right to pray, travel, study. They don’t have any of these rights.
—As told to Anna Gordon
Tala Herzallah, 21
Tala Herzallah is a university student in Gaza and English teacher.
Herzallah is a student at the Islamic University in Gaza and an English instructor at a language center in Gaza City. She spoke to TIME on Oct. 17.
My university is now completely destroyed. My workplace is completely destroyed. And now I’m stuck in the middle of Gaza City with my brother, his wife, his children, my mother, and my father.
No words can describe the situation that we are living in right now. There is blood everywhere. Bad news everywhere. We are just counting our days, let me not say days, but minutes, till death. Because each minute we may die, we may be killed. I lost my cousin and her children. I lost my friend. I’m losing my beloveds.
Herzallah’s cousin’s kids, from left: Kinda, 6, Jameel, 4, and Huda, 8.
“Are you safe?” It’s now a ridiculous question because actually there’s no safety in Gaza. Nowhere, literally nowhere, is safe. They told people to go to the south and they bombed the south. They told people to leave the north and they bombed the north.
Everything is scarce. Water is an obstacle. Electricity is an obstacle. Gas, food, supplies. If we want bread, my brother and father have to get in line for maybe one hour or more. The bakery might open one day and close the next. We’re running out of everything.
Even if we are now alive, even if Gazans are alive, we are dead inside. No one can laugh, no one can sing, no one can talk. We don’t have the ability or the energy to do anything in our lives. We’re just waiting to die.
We don’t have a Plan B. We just don’t want to lose more people, more houses, more markets. I hope that we’ll stay alive, not because I want life, but because I want to tell our stories. The stories of our people. People have to know more about Palestinian history, and our suffering. We have been suffering since 1948. All we want to do is defend ourselves and our land.
—As told to Astha Rajvanshi
Yara Eid, 23
Eid is a Palestinian journalist based in the U.K.
Eid is a Palestinian journalist who grew up in Gaza but has been living in the United Kingdom for the past seven years. She spoke to TIME on Oct. 18.
Two days ago, I got the news that my uncle’s house was bombed. My uncle, my aunt, and all of their children and their grandchildren are all gone. I lost 14 members of my family in one airstrike.
Yesterday, I got the news that my aunt’s house was bombed. I still don’t know how many members I lost from my aunt’s family. It could be 15, or it could be more. I lost my cousin who was only two years older than me. She was a dentist. She was going to Egypt this month to get married. She was so excited for her wedding. She was so excited for her new life. And they killed her and her family. The whole neighborhood there was completely bombed and everyone was under the rubble.
Eid’s cousin’s children are shown from left: Zeina, 2, Hala, 8, Menna, 6, Layan, 3, and Lara, 9. Hala is the only survivor.
My mom is a U.N. employee and she has lost so many of her colleagues. She was in the north, not with the rest of my family, and now she has evacuated alone to the south near the Rafah border crossing. I haven’t been able to talk to her. She doesn’t have access to the internet at all. Sometimes her phone works and sometimes doesn’t. One day, I couldn’t reach her for more than 17 hours and I didn’t know if she was alive or not.
With my other family members, I’ve tried to call them since the first day. I haven’t been able to hear their voices. The only thing I’m doing is reporting, and I’m trying so hard to not hear the news of my family members being killed on the news.
I will never be able to live with the images I’ve seen. I’m having nightmares every single day. I’m unable to sleep because of what my people are going through. These are civilians. These are my family.
The only thing I want is to be with my family. I cannot explain how guilty I feel every single minute that I’m in the U.K. and my family is there. I’ve never felt this amount of pain and loss and grief. It would have been easier for me if I was on the ground with my family, witnessing what they were witnessing.
—As told to Astha Rajvanshi
Karim Abualroos, 27
Abualroos is a Palestinian writer, researcher, and human rights activist who lives in Belgium and lost relatives in Gaza to Israeli airstrikes. He spoke to TIME on Oct. 18.
Gaza has a big place in my heart. I was born in Gaza and studied there. I left Gaza as many young people do looking for a new life. I live in Belgium now with my wife Maisa Mansour, who is also a writer, and our son Ghasan.
The rest of my family though is still in Gaza under bombardment, where there is no safe place.
Israel killed my sister Hadeel Abu Alroos, a public school teacher, her husband Basil Khayyat, a public roads engineer, her daughters Eileen and Celine, and her sons Muhammad and Mahmoud. They were safe in their home. Israel bombed their home without warning and without guilt. Since hearing the news of their death, I checked the videos I have of my sister’s daughters. In all the videos, my nieces were dancing. They loved dancing.
Karim Abualroos’s sister Hadeel Abu Alroos (top-left) and Hadeel’s husband Basil Khayyat (top-right), daughters Eileen and Celine, and sons Muhammad (bottom-right) and Mahmoud (bottom-left) were bombed and killed in their home.
I did not expect it to be this horrific. I started following the news on television because of my inability to communicate with my family in Gaza to check on them due to the lack of the Internet and mobile reception. This fear and anxiety for those I love—my friends, my family, my colleagues—and all Gazans is the first feeling that comes to me.
The current situation in Gaza is terrifying and frightening. The people of Gaza do not deserve this. My sister and her daughters and sons did not deserve to be killed in this way that insults human dignity. They loved life, dreamed of traveling, and dreamed of being like the children of the world.
—As told to Astha Rajvanshi
Ghada Ageel, 52
Ghada Ageel is a professor currently in Canada.
Ageel is a visiting Professor at the University of Alberta has been unable to reach her family in Gaza and fears for the worst. She spoke to TIME on Oct. 15.
My family is in the Gaza Strip. Only me, my husband, and two children are here in Canada. My brothers, my sisters, my neighbors, my friends, my aunts—everyone is there. I haven’t been able to communicate with them over the past three days. A friend in Britain called me today and he said he got through to one of my brothers. And he said that they are OK. You don’t know if the next morning will bring you atrocity. You don’t know.
My cousin Hebba Abu Shammala was killed Thursday morning with her two kids. Hebba is a fourth-generation Palestinian refugee. She just got married four years ago. They lived in Khan Younis refugee camp in a very modest home. She called her mother Halima two days before and told her to come to her home. She also said “if we die, we die together.” She was laughing and her mom said “no, no, you should come and stay with us.” But Hebba thought it was going to be safer because it’s not a border area. It’s not next to any government buildings that might be a target. There’s no safe place in Gaza now.
Ghada Ageel’s cousin Hebba Abu Shammala (center) and her children Musab (left), 3, and Minnah, 1, were killed on Oct. 12.
They are telling people to move from the north to the south, and now the south is under attack. Already today, probably five homes I know well have been bombed. And I am just going crazy because my sister is in the north, and we lost contact with her. I know that she left. But where did she go? We don’t know.
I have a brother who’s a doctor at the main hospital in Khan Younis refugee camp. I don’t know if he’s alive, if he’s dead, how he’s doing. As I speak now, I don’t know the fate of my sister in Gaza. I don’t know whether she made it or not. My sister is one of 2.3 million people under attack. Hebba, myself, my sister—our homes are in what is now Israel. We’re refugees, and we have a right to return to our ancestral home. Maybe not today. But this is an inalienable right for everyone. Palestinians included.
Look at the photo of Hebba. There are hundreds, actually thousands, like Hebba now. I assure you there are thousands more, under the rubble.
—As told to Karl Vick
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Yasmeen Serhan, Astha Rajvanshi, Anna Gordon and Karl Vick
As my 2½-year-old daughter colors Halloween pumpkins, my cousin’s son in Gaza draws a self-portrait underneath a sky of metal, his little stick figure body standing below a rain of Israeli missiles.
Here in Brooklyn, I’m stuck in an anxious loop, asking myself how I could comfort and distract my girls if we were in the Gaza Strip, like so many mothers who are sheltering with their young children, living amidst horrific bombing and displacement. As a writer, I turn to storytelling to make sense of darkness and confusion. If my family was enduring the onslaught, what stories could I possibly tell to soothe my toddler, Lila, who defiantly colors her pumpkins blue or green because she doesn’t like the color orange?
Lila is obsessed with volcanoes. Every night, I tell her a different version of the same story: how a volcano and her animal friends set out to make an ice jacket to keep the volcano cool so she won’t erupt. It takes them weeks to collect enough ice from glaciers to sew the jacket. The surrealism never fails to keep my daughter intrigued and excited; could it possibly entertain the 1.2 million children living in Gaza and the West Bank?
In the first week alone, Israel dropped an estimated 6,000 bombs on a trapped population, decimating entire neighborhoods and killing over 3,000 men, women, and children so far. The number is only going to become higher.
My father, born in Gaza, was 9 years old during the Nakba, the Palestinian “catastrophe” when Israel was created in 1948. He was a child survivor of war; were he still alive, he’d be witness to yet another war and more death. Already, we’ve lost over 40 members of my extended family, 17 of them on Oct. 13 while huddled into one apartment in Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip. The youngest, a boy named Yamen, was only three weeks old. Yamen’s mother, an engineer, was breastfeeding him when the house was bombed by an Israeli warplane. “We found Yamen on her chest suckling milk,” my cousin Ahmed told me, our conversation riddled with the sound of whistling airstrikes. Yamen’s father survived but stopped speaking.
I hear the fatigue in my cousin’s voice. Everyone is tired and wants this catastrophe to be over. They want space to mourn and grieve without the fear of being killed in another airstrike. My grieving, on the other hand, looks different. I force myself to eat so that my own baby, Aya, has enough breastmilk and doesn’t go hungry. Too distracted to cook, I choose what leftovers to piece together for dinner while my cousins are putting their children to sleep with empty stomachs every night. How do you tell a hungry child there is no food?
Our family chat on WhatsApp is flooded with images of our dead cousins. The picture of Yamen haunts me as I hold Aya, who is not yet three months old and is crying to be fed. How do mothers breastfeed their babies if they aren’t eating? The guilt sits with me as I feed Aya. My stomach turns when I swaddle her; it reminds me of the images I can’t unsee of babies wrapped in tight body bags.
Every morning, I call Ahmed to make sure they are still alive. Sometimes he turns his camera on, passing his phone around to all of our cousins. The women look exhausted. I see children climbing on top of rubble, laughing like my daughter does when she climbs up the slide at our local park. I speak to Yamen’s father, offering my condolences. Somehow, he still smiles. Outside, the men are trying to rig a solar panel on top of a water truck to pump out water. A little boy eats stale bread. They’re running out of food and water, and an Israeli airstrike hit a bakery in Nuseirat, a Gaza refugee camp, one of the last lifelines of sustenance. Other bakeries have been forced to shut down due to lack of water and electricity.
On Oct. 14, the Israeli military warned 1.1 million civilians in the northern half of the Gaza to evacuate in advance of an anticipated ground invasion. Still, many Palestinians in the north refuse to leave, including many of my cousins. Most roads are destroyed, and the cars have run out of fuel since Israel cut off fuel, food, water, and electricity to Gaza. And where would they stay if they made it alive? Gaza is already one of the most densely populated strips of land on earth. “How can we flee and leave (our family) under the rubble?” Ahmed says. He believes that some relatives buried under their demolished home may still be alive, but there are no excavators to dig them out. How could he abandon them? “If we die, at least it will be with dignity in our home in Jabalya,” he tells me.
The United Nations. has reported that 25% of homes in Gaza have been destroyed. In Brooklyn, my home is safe. My daughter colors as I once again explain Halloween and ask what costume she wants. She wants to be a volcano covered in lava. Meanwhile, the U.N. has warned that Gaza faces a risk of an infectious disease outbreak amid a lack of water and sewage contamination. How beautiful would it be if the children in Gaza could play dress up and forget everything for just one day? I sew red and orange fabrics for my daughter’s volcano costume, feeling guilty for the privileges I have.
What story could keep my girls distracted from hunger, thirst, and exhaustion when the Israeli blockade created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that grows more dire by the minute? Lila knows that eventually the volcano will erupt. She pretends that the room is covered in lava and that she burns her hand. I think of the survivors whose scars will never fade. As I write this, 20 aid trucks filled with medical supplies, food and fuel, are waiting for permission to enter. This is what an apartheid state looks like: even in a humanitarian catastrophe, the Israeli military is above the law.
I call Ahmed. Lila is home from preschool with a fever and Aya is fresh from her morning bath. It’s raining in Gaza. Ahmed says they spent the day collecting rainwater to drink in all the cups and bowls they could find. He charges his phone with car batteries. “The children are shaking and terrified,” he says, not mentioning how it’s been over ten days since anyone showered. It will be a long time before Ahmed’s children will see the inside of a classroom.
My husband encourages me to keep focusing on the story I would tell my girls. For 16-year-olds in Gaza, this is their fifth war. For the over 1,200 children who have already been killed, it’s their final one.
Palestinians are resilient, yes, but we’re human. The trauma that Palestinians in Gaza endure is repetitive and ongoing, yet we must rally our friends and neighbors to show us compassion and empathy. With the uptick of hate crimes against Palestinian, as well as other Muslim-Americans, my husband worries over the implications of my daughter’s Halloween costume. That the metaphor of a little Palestinian girl dressed as a volcano might offend people. We’re exhausted from reminding the world that we’re human.
I realize my husband urging me to write stories for my children is less about how I would keep them distracted, and more about distracting me from the horrors that my family, and all Palestinians in Gaza, are living through. But I continue anyway to imagine the stories that mothers could tell their children to ease their pain and suffering. The preoccupation only lasts for a few minutes, though, before new messages come through on my family WhatsApp, notifying us of another cousin’s death.
An employee with the Illinois comptroller’s office has been fired after she posted antisemitic comments on social media during an exchange about the latest Israel-Hamas war
ByThe Associated Press
October 20, 2023, 12:51 PM
FILE – The Illinois State Capitol is seen Tuesday, June 19, 2012 Springfield, Ill. An employee with the Illinois comptroller’s office has been fired after she posted antisemitic comments on social media during an exchange about the latest Hamas-Israel war. A spokesman for Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza said in a statement Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023, that the employee was “immediately fired” after she admitted to some of the posts. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
The Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — An employee with the Illinois comptroller’s office has been fired after she posted vulgar antisemitic comments on social media during an exchange about the latest Israel-Hamas war.
A spokesperson for Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza said in a statement Thursday that the employee was “immediately fired” after she admitted to some of the posts.
“Comptroller Mendoza has zero tolerance for anti-semitism or hate speech,” Mendoza spokesperson Abdon Pallasch said in the statement, which does not name the employee.
The vulgar comments were part of an Instagram exchange of insults with another user, who then publicly posted the exchange on their account, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Pallasch said in Thursday’s statement that the exchange was posted midday Thursday and also posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Social media postings identified the employee as Sarah Chowdhury, who worked as a legal counsel for the comptroller’s office.
Chowdhury, reached by phone Thursday by the Chicago Tribune, told the newspaper she was “extremely” sorry for the “inappropriate and reprehensible” comments and apologized to the person with whom she had the heated exchange, as well as anyone who read her comments.
Chowdhury said she was distraught over the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and grew frustrated by the way the conflict was being covered by the media and discussed through social media platforms.
“I don’t know what came over me. I was in a state of panic,” Chowdhury said. “Antisemitism has no place anywhere.”
She said she has also resigned as head of the South Asian Bar Association of Chicago, which posted a statement saying its president, who is not named in the statement, was fired as soon as the group learned of her statements.
Shortages of food, fuel and electricity in Gaza “are going to kill many, many people,” a senior aid official warned Friday, as Israel’s siege and bombardment of the enclave approached the two-week mark, while life-saving aid was again stuck in Egypt for another day.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said Friday that seven hospitals and 21 primary care health centers had been rendered “out of service,” and 64 medical staff have been killed, as Israel continues its airstrikes on Gaza.
“It is absolutely life or death at this point,” Avril Benoit, executive director for Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), told CNN.
Among those trapped in Gaza are the hostages captured by Hamas during its brutal terror attack on October 7. In an update Friday the Israel Defense Forces said the majority of the hostages are alive. It said the number of missing is between 100-200, and more than 20 of the hostages are under the age of 18.
Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have rallied troops ahead of a potential ground incursion. The IDF has mobilized more than 300,000 reservists as it seeks to “destroy” Hamas and prevent it from launching further attacks on Israeli soil.
In a speech from the Oval Office Thursday, US President Joe Biden reiterated his government’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas, casting it as vital to America’s national security. But he cautioned the Israeli government not to be “blinded by rage” and drew a clear distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people, calling for civilians in Gaza to be protected.
Any Israeli ground incursion will come amid a growing chorus of outrage across the Arab world, where mass anti-Israel protests have broken out earlier in the week and on Friday in support of 2.2 million Palestinians who remain trapped in Gaza.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the Middle East had entered “a moment of profound crisis… unlike any the region has seen in decades.”
Israeli leaders on Friday ordered the evacuation of some 23,000 residents living near the border with Lebanon, amid sustained crossfire with the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told CNN that the IDF had bolstered its forces along the northern border and was prepared for a “broader conflict.”
Around 200 trucks carrying vital aid destined for Gaza remain stuck in Egypt, despite a frantic diplomatic effort to open the Rafah crossing. Negotiations continued through Thursday as workers filled dangerous road craters from Israeli bombing to allow up to 20 trucks to pass in an initial delivery.
Video released Friday by the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights showed “repair work and paving the road between the Egyptian and Palestinian sides” at the Rafah crossing. Egyptian authorities worked to remove cement blocks at the entrance to the crossing in preparation for its opening, several drivers at the crossing told CNN.
But the possible initial passage of 20 trucks would be far lower than usual. “We need to build up to the 100 trucks a day that used to be the case of the aid program going into Gaza,” UN relief chief Martin Griffiths said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“We need to be able to have the assurance that we can go in at scale everyday – deliberately, repetitively and reliably,” Griffiths said.
Guterres traveled to the Rafah crossing on Friday as part of the UN’s efforts to help aid reach Gaza.
“Behind these walls, we have two million people that are suffering enormously. So, these trucks are not just trucks, they are a lifeline. They are the difference between life and death,” Guterres said at a press conference held on the Egyptian side of the border.
A CNN team on the ground attended the press conference and witnessed a protest by several hundred demonstrators break out after Guterres finished his speech. Guterres was then forced to leave the Rafah gate earlier than planned as the protest began to get out of control.
As well as the trucks, a plane carrying World Health Organization supplies for Gaza landed in Egypt’s Al Arish airport Friday morning, the WHO regional office wrote on X. It said the package included “surgical supplies and instruments for 1000 medical operations, water tanks and tents.”
But how much difference the initial deliveries will be able to make for the more than 2 million people living in Gaza is unclear. A group of UN independent experts accused Israel of committing “crimes against humanity” in its current campaign.
“The complete siege of Gaza coupled with unfeasible evacuation orders and forcible population transfers, is a violation of international humanitarian and criminal law. It is also unspeakably cruel,” the UN Human Rights Office said Thursday in a press release.
Doctors Without Borders said Thursday Gaza’s main medical facility, the Al-Shifa Hospital, only had enough fuel to last 24 hours.
“Without electricity many patients will die,” said Guillemette Thomas, the group’s medical coordinator for Palestine, based in Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinians are using Al-Shifa hospital as a safe haven from constant bombing, he added.
Many supermarkets have no more food to sell, and everyday tasks have become grueling for residents who queue for hours for food and water under the roar of airstrikes.
“There is no life now… It’s just trying to survive. That’s it,” a Palestinian man living in Gaza, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNN.
The population of southern Gaza has swelled in recent days after the Israeli military told around 1 million residents to leave northern Gaza ahead of the expected Israeli ground incursion.
Israel’s sustained assault on Gaza follows Hamas’ murderous rampage on October 7 that killed an estimated 1,400 people in Israel, mostly civilians, in what has been described as the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
In the days since, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 4,100 people in Gaza, including hundreds of women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas.
The violence has spread beyond Gaza: The ministry said at least 81 people had been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7. Israel also arrested more than 60 suspected Hamas operatives in the West Bank early Thursday.
Among those detained during raids was Hamas spokesperson Hassan Yousef, Israeli authorities confirmed Friday. Yousef is a leading Palestinian political figure serving as the official Hamas spokesperson in the West Bank and holding a seat on the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Meanwhile, Israel appears set to launch its ground offensive into Gaza. Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told troops gathered not far from the Gaza Strip on Thursday that they will “soon see” the enclave “from the inside.”
Early Friday morning, CNN’s Nic Robertson witnessed increased military activity along Israel’s border with Gaza. Several illumination flares were seen floating down in the distance while red tracer rounds were accompanied by the sound of heavy machine gun fire. CNN could not verify what the night-time military activity was.
Any Israeli incursion will further inflame the outrage that has spread across much of the Arab world. Huge protests broke out in several Middle Eastern countries this week after an explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital in southern Gaza, which Hamas officials said was caused by an Israeli airstrike that had killed 500 people.
Thousands of protesters shouting anti-Israel slogans gathered in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Tunisia. Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq issued statements condemning Israel and accusing its military of bombing the hospital.
But Israel has since presented evidence that it said shows the blast was caused by a misfire by militant group Islamic Jihad. US President Joe Biden backed Israel’s explanation, citing US intelligence.
“Israel Probably Did Not Bomb Gaza Strip Hospital: We judge that Israel was not responsible for an explosion that killed hundreds of civilians yesterday [17 October] at the Al Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip,” read an unclassified intelligence assessment obtained by CNN. The assessment also estimated the number of deaths was at the “low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum.”
But the subsequent revelations have done little to quell the rage across the Middle East.
“Everybody here believes that Israel is responsible for it,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told CNN Wednesday. “The Israeli army is saying it’s not but… try and find anybody who’s going to believe it in this part of the world.”
Fresh protests began Friday, with thousands taking to the streets in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and the West Bank after Islamic Friday prayers.
The protests began in the wake of a separate explosion at Gaza’s oldest church. St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in central Gaza City said its compound was hit by an Israeli airstrike Thursday night.
Video from the ground in Gaza City showed the damage at the site of the church and its surrounding area. The main impact of the strike heavily damaged a building next to the church compound. One church building was partially collapsed by the airstrike, according to CNN’s analysis of the video.
The footage from the ground also shows people working to search through rubble for any bodies. At one point, a group can be seen dragging a body wrapped in a blanket out of the rubble and through a small crowd, as many pull out their cameras and phones to record the moment. Other people can be seen grieving and crying.
Earlier Friday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that 17 people were killed in the Israeli strike on the church on Thursday night. CNN cannot independently confirm the number of casualties. A Hamas statement about the incident mentioned “a number of casualties” but did say how many.
The IDF has said it will have more information on the strike, but it did not respond to CNN questions on when that information would be available. The IDF on Friday acknowledged that “a wall of a church in the area was damaged” as a result of an IDF strike.
TYRE, Lebanon — More than 4,200 people have been displaced from villages in south Lebanon by clashes on the border with Israel, and local officials said Friday that they are ill-prepared for the much larger exodus that would ensue if the the limited conflict escalates to an all-out war.
Some 1,500 of the displaced are staying in three schools in the coastal city of Tyre, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the border.
As children ran through the courtyard and women hung out clothes to dry on chairs at one of those schools on Friday, Mortada Mhanna, head of the disaster management unit of the municipalities in the Tyre area, said hundreds of newly displaced people are arriving each day.
Some move on to stay with relatives or rent apartments, but others have no place to go besides the makeshift shelter, while Lebanon’s cash-strapped government has few resources to offer.
“We can make the decision to open a new school (as a shelter), but if the resources are not secured, we’ll have a problem,” Mhanna said. He appealed to international organizations to “give us enough supplies that if the situation evolves, we can at least give people a mattress to sleep on and a blanket.”
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and allied Palestinian groups in Lebanon have launched daily missile strikes on northern Israel since the outbreak of the latest Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, while Israel has responded by shelling border areas in south Lebanon. To date, the clashes have killed at least 22 people in Lebanon, four of them civilians.
Sporadic skirmishes continued Friday while a number of airlines canceled flights to Beirut. Countries including the United States, Saudi Arabia and Germany have warned their citizens to leave Lebanon.
For many of the displaced, the current tensions bring back memories of the brutal one-month war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, during which Israeli bombing leveled large swathes of the villages in south Lebanon and in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The tactic of overwhelming force to strike civilian infrastructure as a measure of military deterrence was dubbed the “Dahiyeh Doctrine,” named after the area south of the capital that was targeted.
Should another full-blown war erupt between Hezbollah and Israel, “even the city of Tyre will no longer be safe … because all of the south was subject to bombing” in 2006, Mhanna said.
Among the school’s temporary residents is Mustafa Tahini, whose house in the border town of Aita al Shaab was destroyed in 2006, along with most of the village.
Back then, aid flowed into Lebanon from Qatar and other countries for reconstruction, but this time, Tahini said, “God knows if someone will come to help us.”
“I am not a political analyst. I hope things will calm down, but the things you see in the news aren’t reassuring,” said Tahini, whose wife and children are staying with relatives in Beirut while he remains closer to home. Still, he said, he is mentally prepared for another war. “We’ve been through it before.”
Sixty-two-year old Nasmieh Srour from the town of Duhaira has been staying in the school with her husband and two daughters for a week, along with many of the village’s residents. Like Tahini, she was displaced in 2006; she is also stoic about the prospects of a wider conflict.
“Maybe it will get bigger, maybe it will calm down – there’s no way to know,” Srour said.
Should the displacement become protracted, said Edouard Beigbeder the representative in Lebanon of UNICEF, the U.N. agency for children, said education will be one of the main casualties.
Already 52 of the 300 schools in south Lebanon are closed due to the hostilities, leaving more than 8,000 children out of education in addition to those enrolled in the schools that are now being used as shelters, he said. A wider conflict would also threaten key infrastructure including electric supplies and, by extension, water supplies.
“In any escalation,” Beigbeder said, “it is the most vulnerable and the children who are (left) in dire situation.”
A US Navy warship fired what are believed to be America’s first shots in defence of Israel – downing missiles fired by Iran-backed forces in Yemen.
US officials said the USS Carney, operating in the Red Sea, intercepted drones and missiles launched by the Houthi rebels potentially towards targets in Israel.
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The Middle East is on the brink of an all-out warCredit: EPA
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The US Navy destroyer USS Carney intercepted drones and missiles in the Red SeaCredit: Reuters
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The missiles were fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebelsCredit: AP:Associated Press
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Israel has amassed tanks and soldiers near the Gaza border ahead of an invasionCredit: EPA
It comes as a huge Israeli invasion force was rumbling towards besieged Gaza today – as chilling signs emerged of the eruption of a catastrophic regional war.
Dozens of rockets were fired into northern Israel overnight from Hezbollah terror forces in Lebanon.
And more rockets were fired at military bases hosting US forces in Iraqand Russian-backed Syria after President Joe Biden voiced rock-solid support for Israel.
The Pentagon’s spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said: “We cannot say for certain what these missiles and drones were targeting, but they were launched from Yemen heading north along the Red Sea, potentially towards targets in Israel.
He added that information is “still being processed” and the attack may “be ongoing”.
“Our defensive response was one that we would have taken for any similar threat in the region where we’re able to do so against our interest personnel and our partners.”
Another US official said it did not appear that the warship was the target.
The Pentagon said US troops have been repeatedly attacked in Iraq and Syria since the conflict in Israel broke out.
Earlier this week, drones and rockets were launched at several military bases in Iraq – and a drone attack in Syria resulted in “minor injuries.”
“While I’m not going to forecast any potential responses to these attacks, I will say that we will take all necessary actions to defend US and coalition forces against any threat,” Brig Ryder added.
Palestinians in the south were urged to seek shelter while an Israeli town near the border with Lebanon started to evacuate.
Airstrikes were reported in in Khan Younis as ambulances were carrying men, women and children streamed into the town’s Nasser Hospital.
The Israeli military said it had struck more than 100 targets across Gaza linked to the territory’s Hamas rulers, including a tunnel and arms depots.
The country’s defence chief Yoav Gallant vowed last night that troops they will soon see Gaza “from the inside.”
He told the soldiers: “There is no forgiveness for this thing. Only total annihilation of Hamas organisation, terror infrastructures, everything that has to do with terrorists and whoever sent them.
“It will take a week, it will take a month, it will take two months, until we eliminate them.
Israel has evacuated its own communities near Gaza and Lebanon, putting residents up in hotels elsewhere in the country.
The Defense Ministry announced evacuation plans Friday for Kiryat Shmona, a town of more than 20,000 residents near the Lebanese border.
The Israeli military has been given the “green light” to move into Gaza whenever it’s ready.
IDF spokesman Lt. Colonel Jonathan Conricus told CNN: “The reserves are ready, equipped, mission-oriented, and standing by for the next stage of our operations.
“But at this time, of course, we will not advertise when, where, and how we will advance or do or enhance our military activities.”
Israeli authorities say at least 1,400 people have died in Israel, while another 3,785 people have died in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
A British dad whose wife and daughters were murdered by Hamas terrorists in a horrifying ambush said he’s not interested in revenge.
Rabbi Leo Dee’s family were travelling to the Sea of Galilee for a holiday in April when his wife, Lucy, 48, and two daughters, Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, were shot dead.
Israel was bombarding Gaza and evacuating a sizable town near the Lebanese border in the latest sign of a potential ground invasion of Gaza that could trigger regional turmoil. Palestinians in Gaza reported heavy airstrikes in Khan Younis in the south, where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and ambulances streamed into Gaza’s second-largest hospital, already overflowing with patients and people seeking shelter.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has ordered ground troops to prepare to see Gaza “from the inside,” hinting at a ground offensive aimed at crushing Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers. Aid shipments badly needed in Gaza are positioned to enter through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt.
The war that was in its 14th day Friday is the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday that 3,785 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 12,500 wounded.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly in the initial attack Oct. 7 when Hamas militants stormed into Israel. In addition, 203 people were believed captured by Hamas during the incursion and taken into Gaza, the Israeli military has said.
Currently:
1. Biden meets with European leaders to assure them the U.S. can deliver wartime aid to Ukraine and Israel.
2. In Nir Oz, a quarter of the residents are dead or missing after the Hamas attack
3. The current crisis in the Middle East has the potential to disrupt global oil supplies and push prices higher.
4. Egypt and other Arab countries typically don’t want to take in Palestinian refugees.
Here’s what’s happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
BANGKOK — The bodies of eight Thai nationals who were killed in the Hamas attack on southern Israel arrived at a Bangkok airport Friday as repatriation efforts continued for thousands of Thai workers.
Ahead of the first repatriation of the Thai dead, Thai and Israeli officials laid wreaths at a small memorial ceremony on Thursday at Tel Aviv’s airport. Thailand’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said Thursday that 30 Thais are feared dead, while 16 are reportedly injured and 17 are believed to have been abducted.
About 30,000 Thai workers are in Israel, mostly agricultural laborers, and about 5,000 were working in the area attacked. Two evacuation flights on Friday brought more than 500 Thais back to the country, with more flights set to arrive daily. Officials say more than 8,000 of the Thais remaining in Israel have expressed their wish to return home.
President Joe Biden referenced the killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois to deliver a forceful denunciation of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Biden brought up the case of Wadea Al-Fayoume during a televised nighttime address from the Oval Office. Authorities say the boy, who was Muslim, was stabbed 26 times Saturday by his landlord in response to escalating rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war. Wadea’s mother was critically wounded.
Biden said it’s difficult to “stand by and stand silent when this happens,” adding that “we must without equivocation denounce” antisemitism and Islamophobia.
The White House said that after the speech, Biden and his wife, Jill, spoke with Wadea’s father and uncle to offer condolences along with prayers for his mother’s recovery.
President Joe Biden is urging support for additional U.S. aid for Ukraine and Israel, saying in a televised address from the Oval Office that “American leadership is what holds the world together.”
Biden spoke hours after returning to Washington from an urgent visit to Israel to show U.S. support in the wake of a deadly attack by Hamas on Oct. 7. Some 1,400 civilians were killed and roughly 200 others, including Americans, were taken to Gaza as hostages. Israel has responded with airstrikes, and 3,785 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The U.S. president argued that Israel needs help to defend itself from Hamas. He also said the U.S. must help Ukraine stop the advances of Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep other “would-be aggressors” from trying to take over other countries.
Biden said he will send lawmakers an “urgent budget request” Friday to fund U.S. national security needs. He called the request, said to carry a price tag of about $100 billion, a “smart investment” that will pay dividends for decades to come.
Douglas Emhoff, the husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, met in Washington with Natalie Sanandaji, a 28-year-old American survivor of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
Sanandaji recounted the attack on a music festival, where some 260 people were killed, a White House official said.
Emhoff, who is Jewish and has been outspoken about and against antisemitism, spoke to Sanandaji about President Joe Biden and Harris’ support for Israel, providing humanitarian aid to civilians and the administration’s work to combat hate of all kinds, the official said.
BEIRUT — An explosion struck a Greek Orthodox church housing displaced Palestinians late Thursday, resulting in deaths and dozens of wounded.
Mohammed Abu Selmia, director general of Shifa Hospital, said dozens were hurt at the Church of Saint Porphyrios but could not give a precise death toll because bodies were still under the rubble.
Palestinian authorities blamed the blast on an Israeli airstrike, a claim that could not be independently verified.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchy of Jerusalem issued a statement condemning the attack and said it would “not abandon its religious and humanitarian duty” to provide assistance.
A survivor told Qatar’s Al Jazeera Arabic television that there was no warning from the Israeli military beforehand.
In Athens, Greece’s Foreign Ministry expressed “deep sorrow over the loss of lives caused by a strike on a building adjacent to the monastery of Saint Porphyrios in Gaza.” The ministry’s statement said civilians must be protected and religious institutions safeguarded by all sides.
Named after the Bishop of Gaza from 395 to 420, St. Porphyrios is located in the al-Zaytun section of Gaza’s Old City. Its thick limestone walls house an elaborate interior of gilded icons and ceiling paintings.
It became a mosque in the 7th century before a new church was built in the 12th century during the Crusades.
JERUSALEM — Nearly 30 of some 200 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are children, the Israeli military said.
More than 10 are over the age of 60, it said in a statement.
Authorities have no information about the location of more than 100 missing Israelis, it added.
WASHINGTON — An unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment delivered to Congress estimates casualties in an explosion at a Gaza City hospital on the “low end” of 100 to 300 deaths.
That death toll “still reflects a staggering loss of life,” U.S. intelligence officials said in the findings, which were seen by The Associated Press. Officials were still assessing the evidence, and the estimate may evolve.
The explosion at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital on Tuesday left body parts strewn on the hospital grounds, where crowds of Palestinians had clustered in hopes of escaping Israeli airstrikes.
Officials in Hamas-ruled Gaza quickly said an Israeli airstrike had hit the hospital. Israel denied it was involved. The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.
President Joe Biden and other U.S. officials already have said that U.S. intelligence officials believed the explosion was not caused by an Israeli airstrike. Thursday’s findings echoed that.
The U.S. assessment noted “only light structural damage” to the hospital itself was evident, with no impact crater visible.
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This version has corrected that Israel said Thursday the number of suspected captives is 203, not 206.
WASHINGTON — Fifty years after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the current crisis in the Middle East has the potential to disrupt global oil supplies and push prices higher. But don’t expect a repeat of the catastrophic price hikes and long lines at the gasoline pump, experts say.
The Israel-Hamas war is “definitely not good news” for oil markets already stretched by cutbacks in oil production from Saudi Arabia and Russia and expected stronger demand from China, the head of the International Energy Agency said.
Markets will remain volatile, and the conflict could push oil prices higher, “which is definitely bad news for inflation,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the Paris-based IEA, told The Associated Press. Developing countries that import oil and other fuels would be the most affected by higher prices, he said.
International benchmark Brent crude traded above $91 a barrel on Thursday, up from $85 per barrel on Oct. 6, the day before Hamas attacked Israel, killing hundreds of civilians. Israel immediately launched airstrikes on Gaza, destroying entire neighborhoods and killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the days that have followed.
Fluctuations since the attack pushed oil prices as high as $96.
The price of oil depends on how much of it is getting used and how much is available. The latter is under threat because of the Hamas-Israel war, even though the Gaza Strip is not home to major crude production.
One worry is that the fighting could lead to complications with Iran, home of some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Its crude production has been constrained by international sanctions, but oil is still flowing to China and other countries.
“In order to get a sustained move (in prices), we really would need to see a supply disruption,” said Andrew Lipow, president at Lipow Oil Associates, a Houston-based consultant.
Any damage to Iranian oil infrastructure from a military strike by Israel could send prices jumping globally. Even without that, a shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz that lies south of Iran could also shake the oil market because so much of the world’s supplies goes through the waterway.
Until something like that happens, “the oil market is going to be like everyone else, monitoring the events in the Middle East,” Lipow said.
One reason 1970s-style gas lines are unlikely: U.S. oil production is at an all-time high. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, an arm of the Energy Department, reported that American oil production in the first week of October hit 13.2 million barrels per day, passing the previous record set in 2020 by 100,000 barrels. Weekly domestic oil production has doubled from the first week in October 2012 to now.
“The energy crisis of 1973 taught us many things, but in my mind, the most critical is that American energy strength is a tremendous source of security, prosperity and freedom around the world,” said Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. oil industry’s top lobbying group.
In a speech Wednesday marking the 50th anniversary of the 1973 oil embargo, Sommers said current U.S. production contrasts sharply with “America’s weakened position during the Arab oil embargo.” He urged U.S. policymakers to heed what he called the lessons of 1973.
“We cannot squander our strategic advantage and retreat on energy leadership,” said Sommers, who has repeatedly criticized President Joe Biden’s policies restricting restricting new oil leases as part of Biden’s efforts to slow global climate change.
“With an unstable world, war in Europe, war in the Middle East, and energy demand outstripping supply, energy security is on the line,” Sommers said in a speech at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank.
“American oil and gas are needed now more than ever,” Sommers said. “Let’s take to heart the lessons we learned from 1973 and avoid sowing the seeds of the next energy crisis.”
For now, the crisis isn’t a repeat of 1973. Arab countries aren’t attacking Israel in unison, and OPEC+ nations have not moved to restrict supplies or boost prices beyond a few extra dollars.
There are several wild cards in the energy market. One is the supply of Iranian oil. Eager to avoid a spike in gasoline prices and inflation, the U.S. has quietly tolerated some exports of Iranian oil to destinations such as China instead of going all in on sanctions aimed at Iran’s nuclear program.
If Iran, which has warned Israel not to undertake a ground offensive, escalates the Gaza conflict — including a possible attack by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon supported by Iran — that might change the U.S. stance. “If the U.S. were then also to enforce the oil sanctions against Iran more strictly again, the oil market would tighten noticeably,” say commodities analysts at Commerzbank.
Lawmakers from both parties have urged Biden to block Iranian oil sales, seeking to dry up one of the regime’s key sources of funding.
Another wild card is how Saudi Arabia would respond if Iranian oil is restricted. Oil analysts say that while the Saudis may welcome recent oil price hikes, they don’t want a massive price spike that would fuel inflation, higher central bank interest rates and possible recession in oil-consuming countries that ultimately would limit or even kill off demand for oil.
A third unknown is whether more oil will reach the market from Venezuela. The U.S. agreed Wednesday to temporarily suspend some sanctions on the country’s oil, gas and gold sectors after Venezuela’s government and a faction of its opposition formally agreed to work together on election reforms.
Venezuelan production could increase in 2024. In the next six months, however, production could ramp up by some 200,000 barrels a day, a relative drop in the ocean, according to Sofia Guidi Di Sante, senior oil market analyst at Rystad Energy.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, slammed the U.S. action as a “gimmick” that appeases a brutal regime in Venezuela.
“Joe Biden’s energy policies put America last,” Barrasso said, citing the Democratic president’s decisions to kill the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline and sell off significant portions of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, taking it to its lowest level since the 1980s. The Energy Department said Thursday it will seek offers to start refilling the oil reserve in December, with monthly solicitations expected through May 2024.
“He eased sanctions on Iran, which funds terrorism across the Middle East. Now with Israel under attack, Biden is desperate for anything to mask the consequences of his reckless policies,” Barrasso said. “America should never beg for oil from socialist dictators or terrorists.”
The Treasury Department says it has targeted nearly 1,000 individuals and entities connected to terrorism and terrorist financing by the Iranian regime and its proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups in the region.
“We will continue to take action as appropriate to counter Iran’s destabilizing activity in the region and around the world,” Treasury said in a statement.
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McHugh reported from Frankfurt, Germany. Choe reported from New York.
