Tag: Palestine

One month on, Israel’s deadliest Gaza war set to intensify

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Israel’s deadliest ever war in Gaza, sparked by the October 7 Hamas attacks, entered its second month on November 7 as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed there would be no ceasefire until the militant group releases its 240 hostages.

Mr. Netanyahu also said Israel would assume “overall security” in Gaza after the war ends, while allowing for possible “tactical pauses” before then to free captives and deliver aid to the besieged territory of 2.4 million people.

The Gaza death toll has soared above 10,000, mostly civilians, said the Hamas-run health ministry, as UN rights chief Volker Turk decried a month of “carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair.”

In pictures | One month of Israel-Hamas war

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Israel has vowed to destroy the Islamist militants over their unprecedented attack which claimed 1,400 lives in Israel, including entire families slain inside their homes and young people killed at a music festival, according to Israeli officials.

Orit Meir’s 21-year-old son Almog was at the festival near Gaza and apart from a brief Hamas-posted video of hostages showing him since then — the family has had no updates.

“Our life became a nightmare but this nightmare is our reality,” she told reporters at an event in Athens focused on bringing the hostages home.

Since the attack, Israel has relentlessly hammered targets in Gaza with more than 12,000 air and artillery strikes and sent in ground forces that have effectively cut the strip in half, with soldiers and tanks tightening the encirclement of Gaza City.


Also Read | Endless woes: On the Israel-Hamas conflict and Palestine

The Israeli army said that in the latest battles its “troops secured a military stronghold belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation in the northern Gaza Strip. Anti-tank missiles and launchers, weapons and various intelligence materials were located in the compound by the troops.”

The suffering in Gaza has been immense, with entire city blocks levelled and bodies in white shrouds piling up outside hospitals where surgeons have had to operate on bloodied floors by the light of their phones.

“These are massacres,” said one bereaved Gaza resident, Mahmud Meshmesh, in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, looking at the devastation of yet another strike that left bodies buried under rubble and debris.

“They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants — women and children.”

House-to-house battles

Israel has air-dropped leaflets and sent text messages ordering Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to head south, but a US official said Saturday at least 350,000 civilians remained in the worst-hit areas.

Military analysts warned of weeks of gruelling house-to-house fighting ahead in Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005 and where it launched its last land incursion in 2014.

“Hamas has had 15 years to prepare a dense ‘defence in depth’ that integrates subterranean, ground-level and above-ground fortifications,” said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute think tank.

The operation is hugely complicated for Israel because of the hostages, including very young children and frail elderly people, who are believed to be held inside a tunnel network spanning hundreds of kilometres.

Israel’s top ally, the United States, has backed it in its war on Hamas but also urged restraint and facilitated some aid deliveries and the flight of several hundred refugees with second passports through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

Fresh departures from Gaza were announced Tuesday, with Romania saying 103 of its citizens and their family members have received permission to leave via Rafah.

‘Little pauses’

Mr. Netanyahu, speaking to ABC News on Monday, stressed that the war would continue until Israel had restored overall control of Gaza.

“Israel will, for an indefinite period,… have the overall security responsibility,” he said. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.”

He stressed that “there will be no ceasefire — general ceasefire — in Gaza, without the release of our hostages.


Also Read | Original sin: on the attack on Israel and the occupation of Palestine

“As far as tactical, little pauses — an hour here, an hour there — we’ve had them before.

“I suppose we’ll check the circumstances in order to enable goods — humanitarian goods — to come in or our hostages, individual hostages, to leave,” he added.

Israeli troops stationed near the Gaza border told AFP they felt proud to protect their country but also nervous as the war intensifies.

Stationed near Gaza, a 20-year-old soldier who could not be identified said he was “a bit scared to go” into Gaza because “you don’t know if you can come back alive”.

Around 30 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the offensive, the latest on Monday, according to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing Israeli sources.

Protests around the world

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after a Middle East tour of crisis diplomacy, arrived in Japan on Tuesday for a meeting of G7 foreign ministers set to seek a common line on Gaza as calls mount for a ceasefire.

As the war rages on, Mr. Blinken has also discussed options for who will control Gaza after fighting ends.

In a visit to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, he suggested the Palestinian Authority under president Mahmud Abbas should retake control.

Mr. Abbas said the PA could return to power in Gaza in the future only if a “comprehensive political solution” is found for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hamas said it would never accept a puppet government in Gaza, and the senior Hamas official in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, vowed that “no force on Earth could annihilate” it.

Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protest have been held around the world, with demonstrators voicing revulsion at the spiralling human suffering in Gaza.

In one of the latest demonstrations, hundreds of US Jewish activists peacefully occupied New York’s Statue of Liberty to demand a ceasefire.

One of them, photographer Nan Goldin, said that “as long as the people of Gaza are screaming, we need to yell louder, no matter who attempts to silence us”.

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Israel-Hamas war: Palestinian leader Abbas decries Gaza ‘genocide’ as Israel says no cease-fire

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The latest developments from the Israel-Hamas war.

Internet and telephone lines cut again in Gaza – telecoms company

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Telephone and internet lines in the Gaza Strip were cut on Sunday evening by Israel, for the third time since the start of the war on 7 October, the Palestinian operator Paltel has announced.

“We regret to announce the complete shutdown of communications and internet services in Gaza after the Israeli side disconnected the servers,” Paltel said in a statement.

Netanyahyu reiterates no cease-fire until hostage freed

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Ramon Air Force base in southern Israel on Sunday and reiterated his opposition to a cease-fire in Gaza.

Addressing pilots, Netanyahu said, “There will be no cease-fire without the return of our hostages.”

“We say this to both our enemies and our friends. We will continue until we beat them,” he added.

Weapons cache found in Gaza, Israeli troops claim

The Israeli military has said that it discovered an extensive stash of weapons in a home in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip as it searched the area. It claims rifles, grenades, explosives, suicide drones and missiles in the residence were found. Officials say they brought some of the weapons back to Israel to inspect them. The military said that forces had also destroyed a nearby explosives lab.

Relatives of Scotland’s First Minister return home from Gaza

Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf says his in-laws have returned home after being allowed to leave the Gaza Strip. The parents of his wife, Nadia El-Nakla, were visiting relatives when the conflict erupted on 7 October, trapping them in Gaza.

Elizabeth and Maged El-Nakla were among about 100 British nationals permitted to pass through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt on Friday. They have had to leave behind Maged El-Nakla’s mother, son and grandchildren.

“We are, of course, elated. But my father-in-law said, ‘My heart is broken in two,’” Yousaf said on X, formerly Twitter. “He then broke down telling me how hard it was saying goodbye to them.”

Yousaf has regularly shared updates on his in-laws’ plight including that they had to drink sea water. He said his brother-in-law is a doctor treating the wounded in Gaza.

The past four weeks had been “a living nightmare for our family,” Yousaf said on Friday. He said he and wife will continue to call for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict.

“Although we feel a sense of deep personal relief, we are heartbroken at the continued suffering of the people of Gaza,” the couple said in a statement on Friday.

Turkey: police disperse pro-Palestinian demonstration near  military base

Turkish police have dispersed a pro-Palestinian rally organised in front of the Incirlik military base housing American forces with tear gas.

The move came just a few hours before the planned arrival in Ankara of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The demonstration, in front of the air base, was organised by the Turkish NGO Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH). In 2010, it chartered a flotilla to try to reach Gaza under Israeli blockade, leading to an Israeli raid which left ten people dead.

There have been reports of police intervening when the crowd began moving towards the base after holding a peaceful rally in Incirlik.

Images posted on social media show several hundred people waving Palestinian flags, pursued by police who also used a water cannon.

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No injuries or arrests have been reported at this stage. American authorities made no immediate comment.

Incirlik Air Base is owned by NATO member Turkey but is used by the US Air Force – and occasionally the British Royal Air Force – providing strategic access to large areas of the Middle East.

Antony Blinken is expected in Turkey later on Sunday after visiting the West Bank and Cyprus. He is due to meet his Turkish counterpart, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, in Ankara on Monday to discuss the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza.

Nearly a thousand people also gathered on Sunday in front of the American embassy in Ankara, according to reports.

Turkey has been the scene of major demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in recent weeks.

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White House: more than 300 Americans or US residents evacuated from Gaza

More than 300 Americans or American residents and members of their families have been evacuated in recent days from the Gaza Strip, the White House confirmed.

“We have successfully evacuated more than 300 Americans, legal permanent residents and their family members,” Jonathan Finer, a national security adviser, said in an interview with CBS on Sunday.

The evacuations took place “during the last few days” and were made possible by “intensive negotiations with all parties involved in this conflict,” he said.

“We believe that there are still a number of Americans inside Gaza… and we will continue to work until all Americans who want to leave can do so,” he added.

President Joe Biden announced Thursday the evacuation of 74 dual nationals holding American passports.

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Several hundred wounded, foreigners and dual nationals have been able to leave Gaza towards Egypt since 1 November via the Rafah border post.

Mahmoud Abbas denounces ‘genocide’ carried out by Israel in Gaza

The President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas has denounced the “genocide” carried out in the Gaza Strip by Israel.

Abbas was speaking during a meeting with the American Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“Once again, we meet in the harshest conditions possible, I have no words to describe the war of genocide and the destruction suffered by our Palestinian people in Gaza at the hands of the military apparatus of Israel, without any respect for the principles of international law,” Abbas said in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, where he received the American official.

The meeting comes at a time when the international community fears that the war between Israel and Hamas could extend to the West Bank and beyond.

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This is the first time that the American Secretary of State has visited the occupied West Bank since the start of the war on 7 October triggered by the bloody attack by Hamas on Israeli soil, after having made several trips to Israel and in Jordan.

Hamas Health Ministry announces death toll has risen to 9,770

The Palestinian Hamas Health Ministry has announced that at least 9,770 people, including 4,800 children, had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war with Israel.

According to the ministry, 2,550 women are also among these deaths recorded since 7 October. 

Israeli minister suspended after saying dropping nuclear weapon on Gaza ‘an option’

An Israeli minister has been suspended from his post after suggesting that dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza may be one of the country’s military options.

The Times of Israel reported that far-right heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu said “this is one of the possibilities” when asked during an interview with Radio Kol Berama whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on the war-torn region.

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Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition in Israel, took to X – formerly Twitter – and called the comment a “shocking and crazy statement by an irresponsible minister”, calling for his immediate firing.

Eliyahu later tried to justify the comment, saying it was simply “metaphorical”.

Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the minister’s words were “not based in reality”. 

Hamas government says at least 45 killed in Israeli bombing of refugee camp

At least forty-five people have been killed and a hundred others injured in an Israeli bombardment on Saturday evening against the Maghazi refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip.

That’s according to a new report published on Sunday by the Ministry of Health of Hamas.

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“The number of martyrs in the Maghazi massacre has risen to 45,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry’s spokesperson, Ashraf Al-Qudra, initially reported “more than 30 martyrs” were transported to hospital “after the massacre committed by the occupation in the Maghazi camp.”

The majority of victims “are children and women”, the ministry added, claiminng that houses had been directly targeted.

An Israeli army spokesperson said he was checking whether Israeli forces were operating in the Maghazi camp area.

On Saturday, one of the Israeli bombings hit, according to Hamas, a UN school where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing 15 people. Hamas also reported on Friday evening a strike on a school transformed into a makeshift shelter for displaced people in the north of the Gaza Strip, leaving 20 dead and dozens injured. 

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Israel continues to refuse a humanitarian pause in Gaza despite mounting international pressue

The soaring death toll in Gaza has sparked growing international anger, with tens of thousands from Washington to Berlin taking to the streets Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire.

Israel has rejected the idea of halting its offensive, even for brief humanitarian pauses proposed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his current tour of the region. Instead, it said that the besieged enclave’s Hamas rulers were “encountering the full force” of its troops.

“Anyone in Gaza City is risking their life,” Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said.

Large columns of smoke rose as Israel’s military said it had encircled Gaza City, the initial target of its offensive against Hamas. Gaza’s Health Ministry has said more than 9,400 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war, and that number is likely to rise as the assault continues.

Early Sunday, airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 33 people and wounding 42, said Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Health Ministry.

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He said first responders, aided by residents, were still searching the rubble for dead or possible survivors.

The camp, a built-up residential area, is located in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians in Gaza to seek refuge as it focused its military offensive in the northern areas.

Despite such appeals, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas fighters and assets everywhere. It has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

Arab leaders push for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire now

Blinken met with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan on Saturday after talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insisted there could be no temporary ceasefire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Arab countries want an immediate cease-fire, saying “the whole region is sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come.”

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Blinken, however, said “it is our view now that a ceasefire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7,” when the group launched a wide-ranging attack from Gaza into southern Israel, triggering the war.

He said humanitarian pauses can be critical in protecting civilians, getting aid in and getting foreign nationals out, “while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective, the defeat of Hamas.”

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told reporters in Beirut that Blinken “should stop the aggression and should not come up with ideas that cannot be implemented.” The spokesman of the Hamas military wing, who goes by Abu Obeida, said in a speech that fighters had destroyed 24 Israeli vehicles and inflicted casualties in the past two days.

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Netanyahu rejects calls for ceasefire as Israel deepens attack on Gaza

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All the latest developments from the Israel Hamas war.

Defiant Netanyahu has no plans to resign

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has no plans to resign, despite a public uproar over the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas raid that killed over 1,400 Israelis and sparked the current Israel-Hamas war.

Netanyahu was asked at a news conference on Monday if he has considered stepping down.

“The only thing that I intend to have resigned is Hamas. We’re going to resign them to the dustbin of history,” he said. “That’s my goal. That’s my responsibility.”

Netanyahu also said he would not agree to a cease-fire, saying it would be tantamount “to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen.”

“Israel did not start this war. Israel did not want this war. But Israel will win this war,” he said.

Israel expands ground assault into Gaza

Israeli troops and tanks pushed deeper into Gaza on Monday, advancing on two sides of the territory’s main city. 

Video circulating on social media shows an Israeli tank and bulldozer in central Gaza blocking the enclave’s main north-south highway, which the Israeli military earlier told Palestinians to use to escape the ground offensive. 

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remain in the north would no longer be able to escape if the road is blocked since it’s the only useable route south.

In footage captured by a local journalist, a car is seen approaching an earth barrier across the road. The car stops and turns around. As it heads away, an Israeli tank appears to open fire, and an explosion engulfs the car. 

The journalist, in another car, races away in terror, screaming, “Go back! Go back!” at an approaching ambulance and other vehicles. The Gaza Health Ministry later said three people were killed in the car that was hit.

Israel has positioned its forces on both sides of Gaza City and the surrounding areas of northern Gaza, in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a “second stage” of the war that began after Hamas’ 7 Oct attack.  

Casualties on both sides are expected to rise sharply if Israeli forces expand their ground operation and end up battling Palestinian militants in dense residential areas.

Though Israel ordered Palestinians to flee the north, where Gaza City is located, and move south, hundreds of thousands remain, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones.

Around 117,000 displaced people hoping to stay safe from strikes are staying in hospitals in northern Gaza, alongside thousands of patients and staff, according to UN figures.

Moscow blames Kyiv for antisemitic airport riot

Russia has accused Ukraine of playing a “key role” in an anti-Israeli riot which broke out at an airport in the Russian republic of Dagestan.

On Sunday, a large crowd of men in the Muslim Caucasian region stormed Makhachkala airport, chanting antisemitic slogans and looking for Israelis. 

Moscow did not provide any evidence for its claim, as fighting between Israel and Hamas inflames tensions around the world. 

The clashes were “the result of a planned and externally led provocation” in which Kyiv played a “key and direct” role, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova in a statement.

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Ukraine wanted to “undermine” relations between Russia’s different religious communities, she added.

Kyiv has not reacted to Moscow’s allegation, though President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – who is Jewish – said the event demonstrated Russia’s “culture of hatred against other nations”.

Sixty people have been arrested over the incident, Russian authorities said on Monday. 

Dagestan’s Ministry of Health said more than 20 were injured, with two in critical condition. This included police officers and civilians.

Video on social media showed some in the crowd waving Palestinian flags and others trying to overturn a police car. Antisemitic slogans were shouted and some examined the passports of arriving passengers, apparently in an attempt to identify those who were Israeli.

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In a statement Sunday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel “expects the Russian law enforcement authorities to protect the safety of all Israeli citizens and Jews wherever they may be and to act resolutely against the rioters and against the wild incitement directed against Jews and Israelis.”

While voicing support for Palestinians in Gaza, the regional Dagestani government appealed to citizens to remain calm and not take part in such protests.

“We urge residents of the republic to treat the current situation in the world with understanding. Federal authorities and international organizations are making every effort to bring about a ceasefire against Gaza civilians … we urge residents of the republic not to succumb to the provocations of destructive groups and not to create panic in society,” it wrote on Telegram.

Gaza water shortage forces Palestinians to rely on sea

The besieged Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people don’t have access to clean, running water after Israel cut off essential supplies to the enclave.

If water does trickle from the tap, residents say it’s so contaminated with sewage and seawater that it’s undrinkable. Under these circumstances, some are forced to use the sea to bathe, wash clothes and clean their cookware.

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On Sunday, 33 trucks carrying water, food and medicine entered Gaza’s only border crossing from Egypt.

Israel said it has opened two water lines in southern Gaza within the past week, though it is not clear if they are functioning.

Since 9 October, Israel has imposed a “total siege” on Gaza, cutting off supplies of water, electricity and food. With the territory already subject to an Israeli blockade, this is inflicting a dire humanitarian toll on civilians. 

Journalists ‘explicitly targetted’ in strike near Israeli border – report

Video analysis and witness testimonies from the scene of strikes that killed one journalist and injured six others in south Lebanon this month has found they were “explicitly targeted,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Sunday.

Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed near the village of Alma al-Shaab while covering skirmishes between Israeli troops and members of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group.

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“Two strikes in the same place in such a short space of time … from the same direction, clearly indicate precise targeting,” the statement said.

Analysis noted the journalists had been filming on a hillside for more than an hour until the strikes hit about 37 to 38 seconds apart, both coming from the direction of Israel.  

The first killed Abdallah; the second hit a vehicle belonging to an Al Jazeera team, injuring journalists standing next to it, the statement said. It noted that the journalists were wearing helmets and vests marked “press,” and the car was marked “press” on the roof.

It added that witnesses reported seeing an Israeli helicopter fly over the scene shortly before the strikes. The report did not specifically say Israel was responsible for the fire, saying the investigation was ongoing.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment on the analysis.

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Military spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht previously said Israel was “looking into” the episode. He did not confirm whether the journalists had been hit by Israeli shelling.

More than 3,000 children killed in Gaza

The number of children killed in the blockaded Gaza Strip since the start of the Hamas-Israel war earlier this month has exceeded the number killed in armed conflict every year globally since 2019, international charity Save the Children said on Sunday.

In a statement, the charity cited numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry of at least 3,195 children killed in the war that was sparked following a surprise Hamas attack on 7 Oct.

It also mentioned the deaths of 33 children in the occupied West Bank and 29 children killed in Israel.

“The numbers are harrowing and with violence not only continuing but expanding in Gaza right now, many more children remain at grave risk,” Save the Children Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory Jason Lee said in a statement. 

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“A cease-fire is the only way to ensure their safety.”

After the unprecedented bloody attack by Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil, Israel said it wanted to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement and has since carried out incessant bombings on the Gaza Strip, which it controls.

 Children make up around half of Gaza’s population, according to Save the Children.

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The Gaza Strip and the West Bank: physically situating the Israel-Palestine conflict

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On October 7, 2023, Hamas militants entered Israel in a surprise offensive, killing around 1400 people. Israel has retaliated in a continuing series of ferocious air strikes targeting the Gaza Strip, including areas it earlier designated as safe zones for Palestinians. It is also reportedly amassing troops and tanks for a ground invasion; residents of certain towns along the border with Lebanon border have reportedly been asked to evacuate.

The conflict is unfurling in the Gaza Strip, one of two territories where Palestinians live, the second being the West Bank. These are the two Palestinian enclaves that Israel lays claim to, beyond the borders of the Green Line— the boundary of Israel as determined by the Arab-Israeli Armstice Agreement of 1949. While not officially annexing these areas, Israel has engaged in settlement building in the two, leading to outcry from Palestinians and the international community.

The Hindu examines the embattled land in the Levant where the bloody Israel-Palestine face-off has been underway for decades.

Also see:Worldview with Suhasini Haidar | The Israel-Gaza conflict | What line is India taking?

The broader region

Two terms familiar to the historian can be used to describe the general area where Israel and Palestine are located— the Levant and the Fertile Crescent. The Levant is the historical region in West Asia bordering the Mediterranean Sea which contains present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. The Fertile Crescent is the broader area, fed by the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Nile, consisting of modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, and parts of Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Once the cradle of civilisation, known for rich soil and hospitable conditions, the region has seen deterioration due to the demands of urbanisation and growing population.

Israel itself lies to the west of the Mediterranean Sea, with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east and southeast, and Egypt to the southwest. It claims Jerusalem as its principal seat, although this is not widely recognised in the the international community.

A trickle of Jewish migration to this region increased during World War 2, further intensified by the Holocaust and persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The Jewish nation of Israel came into being on May 14, 1948.

The Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip is a small sliver of land to the northeast of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula— which connects Asia and Africa— in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea. Its size has been described as around twice that of Washington D.C— a total of around 363 square kilometres (140 sq miles); the boundaries of the Gaza Strip were demarcated in the Egyptian-Israeli armistice of February 24, 1949, to 40 km long and 6-8 km wide.

Surrounded by Egypt to the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and Israel to the north and east, the Strip is mostly comprised of flat coastal plain. It is a primarily agricultural zone, with three-fourths of its area under cultivation. Average temperatures range from around 13 degrees in the winter to the upper 20s in the summer.

The chief crop grown here is citrus, cultivated on irrigated land and exported to Europe and other nations via Israel. Other crops include truck crops, wheat and olive. Some light industry is situated in Gaza, the chief city in the area. Per some accounts, a tenth of Gaza Strip residents travel to Israel for work; they are not allowed to stay overnight. There is high unemployment among the inhabitants of Gaza.

History of the Israel-Palestine conflict – A podcast series

The Gaza Strip is densely populated, with a high growth rate. As of 2023, the estimated population of the region is approximately 2.23 million. The population is predominantly Sunni Muslim, with a Christian minority.

The Strip has regularly been referred to as an open-air prison. Living conditions are poor, with a lack of access to adequate water, sewage and electrical facilities. 95% of the population reportedly cannot access clean drinking water, and half do not have enough food. An onerous Israeli permitting system also prevents several Gazans from obtaining medical care.

Many of the Gaza Strip’s inhabitants live in refugee camps—nearly half the populace of Palestinian Arabs is in extreme poverty, and is largely maintained through aid from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). As much as 80% of Gazans rely on aid to survive.

At present, the region is not de jure recognised as part of any country. It has a complicated political past; it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire till World War I, post which it was part of the League of Nations mandate of Palestine under British rule. In November 1947, before this mandate ended, the UN General Assembly accepted a plan for the Arab-Jewish separation of Palestine — under this Gaza and surrounding areas were to be allotted to the Arabs. After the British mandate ended on May 15, 1948, the Arab- Israeli war began. It was during this time that Egypt occupied the small territory of land now known as the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority under Fatah had control of Gaza till 2006. In 2006, the Palestinian Islamist organisation Hamas rose to power, defeating Fatah in an election; this caused a civil war between the two. Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and continues to govern the Gaza Strip.

Hamas was founded in 1987 during the First Intifada. Notably, Hamas, unlike Fatah, rejects Israel as a “Zionist entity.”

After the Hamas takeover, Israel designated the Gaza Strip a hostile entity and blockaded the Strip with Egyptian support. Sanctions, blockades and border closures continue in the Strip till today.

West Bank

Much like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank was part of the mandated former British territory of Palestine.

The 5650 sq km (2180 sq mile) landlocked territory is located to the west of the Jordan River, with Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and Israel to the north, south, and west. The land hosts north-south oriented limestone hills, past which it slopes down into the Great Rift Valley of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. The area lies partly within the drainage of the Jordan River; some streams flow westward to the Mediterranean Sea.

The West Bank has more hospitable terrain than the Gaza Strip. Annual rainfall ranges from 27 inches in the high elevations to 4 inches near the Dead Sea. There is variable land use, with well-watered hill patches used for sheep grazing and cultivation of cereals, olives and melons, and irrigated hill and Jordan River valley zones used for fruit and vegetable cultivation. There is not a lot of industry here as well; Israeli occupation has resulted in constraints. Several small universities (founded circa the 1970s) enrol mostly Palestinian students. The one constant developmental improvement in the region has been transportation—mainly to aid military movement.

The principal cities in this area include Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron (al-Khalil), and Jericho, which lies in the Jordan River valley. This is the area where the holy city of Jerusalem is located. The territory, excluding east Jerusalem, is known in Israel by the biblical names Judaea and Samaria. The estimated population of the West Bank as of 2017 was 2.8 million.

A brief history: the West Bank was a part of the portion retained by Arab forces entering during the Arab-Israeli war of 1949, after the exit of the British. From 1949 to 1988 it was claimed as part of the (Hashemite) Kingdom of Jordan. The borders and status of this area too were demarcated by the Jordanian-Israeli armistice on April 3, 1949.

It was occupied in part by Israel from 1967. Broadly, the West Bank is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, led by Fatah- since a follow-up treaty to the Oslo Accords of the 1990s was signed. Notably, the Palestinian Authority has control over only 18% of the West Bank. It has administrative control over 22% of the territory, over which Israel has security control. 60% of the land is blocked off by Israeli settlements (read more about the Oslo Accords and Israeli occupation here).

There have been waves of migration of Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank, notably after the war of 1948, and then the Six-Day War of 1967. Between 1967 and 1977, more than 6000 Palestinians were evicted from East Jerusalem to be replaced by Jewish immigrants. Several Palestinians also have lost residency under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first government from 1992 to 1996. Displacement continues today.

Before the current conflagration in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians and Israel Defence Forces have also faced off in the West Bank, with loss of life on both sides; disproportionately higher on the Palestinian side.

A changing geography

The physical geography of the land is somewhat inextricably linked to its political geography, with borderlines, town layouts and demographic distribution seeing change. The influx of Jewish immigrants and the attrition of Palestinian Arab has changed the makeup of certain cities; Jerusalem has grown and been altered. In addition to this, constant conflict, terrorism, air strikes and bombings have also altered the face of the land.

Since the 1970s, parcels of land have been subject to de facto annexation by the Israeli army, being declared state property or abandoned land. Many of the changes have taken place largely outside the official Green Line borders, in the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Israelis settled in this land have been given a special civilian status in territory officially under military control.

In 1947, the UN intervened vide UN resolution 181 to partition Palestine and Israel. The intervention came amid growing strife between Palestinian and Zionist militia; moreover, memories of the Holocaust still hung over the world’s Jewish population. The intervention also aimed to stall Israeli settlement building (“Kibbutzim” and “Moshavim”). The partition reportedly saw 55% of the erstwhile territory being earmarked for Israel, while the rest was carved out for the Palestinian Arabs. The city of Jerusalem was to be under international control. 

While the plan saw the approval of Jewish groups, it was rejected by Arabian states and peoples. “The UN blueprint as envisaged was never implemented,” an article in Foreign Policy noted.

While Israel formally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, it has not officially taken over West Bank or Gaza. But it has been gradually building settlements in both areas, deemed illegal by most of the world. While it reportedly withdrew from settlements in Gaza in 2005, it has expanded them in the West Bank, and continues to do so.

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The longer Israel thinks, the more time Washington has to calm its wrath

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Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. 

BEIRUT — “Once you break it, you are going to own it,” General Colin Powell warned former United States President George W. Bush when he was considering invading Iraq in the wake of 9/11.

And as the invasion plan came together, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld blocked any serious postwar planning for how Iraq would be run once the country’s ruler Saddam Hussein had gone. As far as he was concerned, once “shock and awe” had smashed Iraq, others could pick up the pieces.

British generals fumed at this. And General Mike Jackson, head of the British army during the invasion, later described Rumsfeld’s approach as “intellectually bankrupt.”

That history is now worth recalling — and was likely on U.S. President Joe Biden’s mind when he urged the Israeli war cabinet last week not to “repeat mistakes” made by the U.S. after 9/11.

Despite Biden’s prompt, however, Israel still doesn’t appear to have a definitive plan for what to do with the Gaza Strip once it has pulverized the enclave and inflicted lasting damage on Hamas for the heinous October 7 attacks.

Setting aside just how difficult a military task Israel will face undertaking its avowed aim of ending Hamas as an organization — former U.S. General David Petraeus told POLITICO last week that a Gaza ground war could be “Mogadishu on steroids” — the lack of endgame here suggests a lack of intellectual rigor that disturbingly echoes Rumsfeld’s.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told lawmakers Friday that the country didn’t have plans to maintain control over Gaza after its war against Hamas had concluded, saying Israel would end its “responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip.” Among other minor matters, this raises the issue of where the coastal enclave of 2.3 million people will get life-sustaining energy and water, as Israel supplies most utility needs.

Israeli and Western officials say the most likely option would be to hand responsibility to the West Bank-based Palestinian National Authority, which oversaw the enclave until Hamas violently grabbed control in 2007. “I think in the end the best thing is that the Palestinian Authority goes back into Gaza,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said last week.

But it isn’t clear whether Mahmoud Abbas — the Palestinian Authority president and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is dominated by his Fatah party — would want Gaza on those terms, or whether he has the power to do much of anything with the enclave in the first place.

Abbas is already struggling to maintain his authority over the West Bank. He’s an unpopular leader, and his government is seen to be not only appallingly venal, but is perceived by many as ceding to the demands of the Israeli authorities too easily. 

Israel now controls 60 percent of the West Bank, and its encroaching settlements in the area — which are illegal under international law — haven’t helped Abbas. Nor have Israeli efforts to hold back the West Bank from developing — a process dubbed “de-developing” by critics and aimed, they say, at restricting growth and strangling Palestinian self-determination.

In West Bank refugee camps, Abbas’ security forces have now lost authority to armed groups — including disgruntled Fatah fighters. “It is unclear whether Abbas would be prepared to play such an obvious role subcontracting for Israel in Gaza. This would further erode whatever domestic standing the PA has left,” assessed Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

But it isn’t only Gaza — or the West Bank — that risks breaking in the coming weeks.

Neighboring countries are watching events unfold with growing alarm, and they fear that if more thought isn’t given to Israel’s response to the savage Hamas attacks, and it isn’t developed in consultation with them, they’ll be crushed in the process. If Israel wants the support of these countries — or their help even — in calming the inevitable anger of their populations once a military campaign is launched, it needs their buy-in and agreement on the future of Gaza and Palestinians, and to stop using the language of collective punishment.

Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah — Hamas’ ally — has been intensifying its skirmishes along the border with Israel, is currently the most vulnerable. And Lebanese politicians are complaining they’re being disregarded by all key protagonists — Israel, the U.S. and Iran — in a tragedy they wish to have no part in.

Already on its knees from an economic crisis that plunged an estimated 85 percent of its population into poverty, and with a barely functioning caretaker government, the Lebanese are desperate not to become the second front in Iran’s war with Israel. Lebanon “could fall apart completely,” Minister of Economy and Trade Amin Salam said.

But the leaders of Egypt and Jordan share Lebanon’s frustrations, arguing that the potential repercussions for them are being overlooked. This is why Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called Saturday’s Cairo summit of regional and international leaders.

El-Sisi focused the conference on a longer-term political solution, hopefully a serious effort to make good on the 2007 Annapolis Conference’s resolution to set up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Egypt has much to lose if the war escalates — and the country’s officials are fuming at what they see as a careless attitude from Israel toward what happens to Gaza after Hamas is subjugated, potentially leaving a cash-strapped Egypt to pick up some of the pieces.

More than that, Egypt and Jordan harbor deep suspicions — as do many other Arab leaders and politicians — that as the conflict unfolds, Israel’s war aims will shift. They worry that under pressure from the country’s messianic hard-right parties, Israel will end up annexing north Gaza, or maybe all of Gaza, permanently uprooting a large proportion of its population, echoing past displacements of Palestinians — including the nakba (catastrophe), the flight and expulsion of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.

This is why both el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II are resisting the “humanitarian” calls for displaced Gazans to find refuge in their countries. They suspect it won’t be temporary and will add to their own security risks, as Gazans would likely have to be accommodated in the Sinai — where Egyptian security forces are already engaged in a long-standing counterinsurgency against Islamist militant groups.

And both countries do have grounds for concern about Israel’s intentions.

Some columnists for Israel Hayom —a newspaper owned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close friend, American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson — are already calling for annexation. “My hope is that the enemy population residing there now will be expelled and that the Strip will be annexed and repopulated by Israel,” wrote Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who served 30 years in prison for spying for Israel before emigrating.

And last week, Gideon Sa’ar, the newly appointed minister in Netanyahu’s wartime government, said that Gaza “must be smaller at the end of the war . . . Whoever starts a war against Israel must lose territory.”

Given all this, there are now signs the Biden administration is starting to take the risks of the Gaza crisis breaking things far and wide fully on board — despite widespread Arab fears that it still isn’t. By not being fast enough to express sympathy for ordinary Gazans’ suffering as Israel pummels the enclave, Biden’s aides initially fumbled. And while that can easily be blamed on Hamas, it needs to be expressed by American officials loudly and often.

In the meantime, the unexplained delay of Israel’s ground attack is being seen by some analysts as a sign that Washington is playing for time, hoping to persuade the country to rethink how it will go about attacking Hamas, prodding Israel to define a realistic endgame that can secure buy-in from Arab leaders and help combat the propaganda of Jew-hatred.

Meanwhile, hostage negotiations now appear to be progressing via Qatar, after two American captives were freed Friday. There have also been reports of top Biden aides back-channeling Iran via Oman.

So, despite Arab condemnation, the Biden administration’s approach may be more subtle than many realize — at least according to Michael Young, an analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center. He said it was always inevitable that Washington would publicly back Israel but that a primary aim has been to “contain Israel’s reaction” to the Hamas attacks, while seemingly deferring to the country.

And time will help. The longer Israel thinks, the more opportunity Washington has to reason, to calm, and to explain the trail of cascading wreckage Israel risks leaving behind if it is unrestrained and fails to answer — as Biden put it — “very hard questions.”

But that might not be sufficient to prevent everything spinning out of control. Israel morally and legally has the right to defend itself from barbaric attacks that were more a pogrom, and it must ensure the safety of its citizens. There are also others — notably Iran — that want the destruction of the Jewish state, and even a scaled down response from Israel may trigger the escalation most in the region fear.



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Gaza | Between occupation and the deep blue sea

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When the state of Israel was declared in May 1948 in Palestine, five Arab countries attacked the newly created state, launching the first Arab-Israeli war. In the subsequent months, some 7,00,000 Arabs from Palestine, mostly from areas that became part of the Jewish state, were uprooted from their homes. Most of them took refuge in Gaza, a tiny Mediterranean strip of land, and the West Bank, the land on the western bank of the Jordan River. As refugees started flowing into Gaza, the 356 sq. km territory saw its population swelling to over 2,00,000 within months. In the war, Israel captured more Palestinian territories than what the UN partition plan had envisaged for a Jewish state. Jordan seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip fell into the hands of Egypt.

Also read: Will Israel’s Gaza offensive stop Hamas? | Explained

The people of Gaza, who lived under Ottoman rule for centuries and British occupation for decades subsequently, would continue to see their fate being determined by colonisers. Israel would capture the enclave in 1967 and keep it under its control, either through direct military occupation or blockades. Gaza has remained a flashpoint ever since, with occasional bouts of violence. The latest in this episode was the October 7 Sabbath attack by Hamas, the Islamist militants who control Gaza today, that killed at least 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians. In retaliation, Israel has launched a massive bombing campaign, already killing some 4,000 people, and is now preparing for a ground invasion.

History of Gaza

When Palestine was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, it was divided into six administrative districts. Gaza Sanjak (District of Gaza) was one of them, stretching from Jaffa in the north (now part of Israel) to Rafah (now, the border crossing with Egypt) in the south. For over four centuries, it remained an Ottoman district of Palestine.

From the early 19th century, Jews, fleeing discrimination in Europe, had started migrating to Palestine. In 1917, during the last leg of the First World War, the British captured Palestine, including Gaza, from a crumbling Ottoman Empire. In the same year, the British had promised to support the creation of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. After the war, Palestine, comprising today’s Israel, West Bank and Gaza, became a British colony. Jewish migration to British-ruled Palestine would pick up pace during the interwar period. This would lead to Arab-Jewish violent riots in the 1930s.

Also read: Why did Hamas launch a surprise attack on Israel? | Analysis

By the time the Second World War was over, Jews had become a sizeable community in Palestine with a parallel administration, the Jewish Agency, and their own militia groups — Haganah and Irgun. Britain approached the UN, declaring its intent to vacate the mandate. The UN partition plan — divide Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state and an international city of Jerusalem—was rejected outright by the Arabs. In 1948, just before the British mandate ended, Zionists unilaterally declared the state of Israel, which triggered the 1948 war.

Under the Israeli occupation, there were two different streams of Palestinian movements—the secular nationalism championed by Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), and the Islamist awakening promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood. In Gaza, the Brothers had established deep roots. In both Palestinian territories (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, public anger was building up against Israel’s occupation. And Gaza played a major part in the outbreak of the first intifada (uprising) against the occupation. On December 8, 1987, several Palestinians were killed in a traffic incident in Gaza, involving an Israeli driver, which immediately led to a wave of protests, which spread to the West Bank. The PLO called for a mass uprising. A year later, Hamas was established.

The intifada would eventually lead to the Oslo Accords of 1993 which saw a provisional authority (the Palestinian Authority) being formed with limited powers in certain parts of the West Bank and Gaza. But the real promise of the Oslo process was Palestinian statehood. That would collapse in the mid-1990s as Israel would accuse the Palestinians of reneging on the security promises they made and walk back from its own promises. Hamas, which opposed the Oslo Accords, would continue to carry out attacks against the Israelis during this period. Oslo Accord’s failure led to the second intifada in 2000. Both Gaza and the West Bank erupted in violence, and this time, Hamas was in the driving seat.

From the 1970s, Israel had promoted Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2005, faced with Hamas’s violent resistance, Israel unilaterally decided to pull back its troops and settlers from Gaza. For the first time in centuries, Palestinians got a chance to establish their own rule in the enclave, even though Israel’s direct occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem continued. In the first elections held in the Palestinian territories, in 2006, Hamas came to power, defeating Fatah. The Islamists and the secularists initially formed a unity government. But it would fall apart quickly, particularly after Western countries refused to sanction funds to the Palestinian Authority led by Hamas, which they see as a terrorist outfit. A brief Fatah-Hamas civil war would break out. Fatah ousted Hamas from the West Bank and the latter captured Gaza in 2007. Ever since, Hamas has been the government in Gaza.

But for Israel, Hamas, which it has designated as a terrorist outfit, taking over Gaza was a security challenge. Hamas did not see Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, which is only a part of Palestine, as an end of its conflict with Israel. It said it retained the right to resist as long as Israel continued the occupation of Palestinian territories. On the other side, Israel imposed a land, air and naval blockade on Gaza from 2007 onwards, to control what and who go in and out of the enclave. Constant tensions led to occasional wars. Since 2007, there have been four major conflicts between Israel and Hamas in which thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis were killed.

Largest open prison

Gaza is often described as the world’s largest open prison. Its population has ballooned to 2.3 million, making it one of the most densely populated regions. Israel has built barriers along the border — both overland and underground — with limited checkpoints.It issues a limited number of permits to the Gazans to get out of the enclave. The unemployment rate in Gaza is roughly 47% (it is 70% among the young). Electricity is scarce — eight-hour power cuts are common. Israel has destroyed Gaza’s only airport and restrained access for the Gazans to the Mediterranean Sea. The enclave’s economy is mostly run on contributions from abroad.

Over the years, Israel has built a security model based on keeping Palestine’s organised resistance under check using force, money, checkpoints, barriers and blockades. In the past, Israel had seen Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, another Islamist group operating from Gaza, launching rockets into Israel in protest against its highhandedness in the West Bank, including raids at the al Aqsa compound in East Jerusalem. But on October 7, Hamas launched an unexpected ground invasion into Israel — something which hasn’t happened since 1948. The attack from Gaza shattered Israel’s security model and brought the Palestine question, which has been sidelined by both Israel and Arab powers, back to the fore of West Asia. To rebuild its deterrence, Israel is now showering fire and fury on the whole of Gaza.

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Israel Hamas war: UN calls for ‘end to the nightmare’ as aid trucks enter Gaza and strikes continue

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The latest updates from the Israel Hamas war.

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Fighting intensifies along Israel’s border with Lebanon

Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters exchanged fire on Saturday in several areas along the Lebanon-Israel border as violence continues to escalate over the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Journalists in south Lebanon heard loud explosions along the border close to the Mediterranean coast.

The state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli shelling hit several villages, adding that a car was directly hit in the village of Houla.

An Israeli army spokesman said a group of gunmen fired a shell into Israel adding that an Israeli drone then targeted them. He added that another group of gunmen fired toward the Israeli town of Margaliot and a drone attacked them shortly afterwards.

“Direct hits were scored in both strikes,” Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X – formerly Twitter.

4,385 Palestinians killed since the start of the war – Hamas Health Ministry

At least 4,385 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on 7 October, the territory’s Health Ministry has announced.

According to the report, 1,756 children and 967 women are among these deaths. At least 13,561 people have been injured in Gaza, relentlessly bombarded in retaliation for the Hamas attack on Israeli soil. 

‘We must act now to end the nightmare’ – UN boss

The head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, has called for an end to the conflict, saying “we must act now to put an end to the nightmare”.

Guterres was speaking at the ongoing ‘Peace Summit’ in Cairo and also called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” on the 15th day of the war between Israel and Hamas in power in Gaza.

“The Gazans need much more, a massive delivery of aid is necessary” added the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Only 20 trucks crossed from Egypt to Gaza besieged and shelled by Israel on Saturday morning, a figure the UN says is totally insufficient.

The organisation has called for 100 trucks of aid per day to help the 2.4 million Gazans in the region.

Gaza aid convoy ‘must not be last’ – UN

“The first convoy must not be the last”, the head of the UN humanitarian aid agency Martin Griffiths has warned during a ‘Summit for Peace’ in Cairo, after the passage of 20 trucks from Egypt towards Gaza besieged and shelled by Israel.

“I am confident that this shipment will be the start of a sustainable effort to deliver essential goods – including food, water, medicine and fuel – to Gazans in a secure, unconditional and unhindered manner”, he added.

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Egyptian media have reported that Saturday’s shipments only contain food and medical aid and not fuel, vital in the Gaza Strip.

Griffith’s call comes after humanitarian aid trucks began crossing the Rafah terminal on the Egyptian side towards the Palestinian enclave of Gaza earlier on Saturday.

Egyptian state television showed several trucks passing through the huge gate of the border crossing on the 15th day of war between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza, as tons of aid have been piling up for days in the waiting for a passage to the 2.4 million Gazans, half of them children, without water, electricity or fuel.

Hamas releases two US hostages

Hamas militants freed two Americans late on Friday – a mother and her teenage daughter, who had been held hostage in Gaza since militants rampaged through Israel two weeks ago, the Israeli government said.

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The pair, who also hold Israeli citizenship, were the first hostages to be released. More than 200 are still being held.

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 was releasing them in an agreement with the Qatari government for humanitarian reasons.

Judith and Natalie Ranaan had been on a trip to southern Israel from their home in suburban Chicago to celebrate a Jewish holiday, family said. They had been staying at the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, when Hamas fighters took them and more than 200 others hostage.

Relatives of other captives welcomed the release and appealed for 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,’’ their statement said.

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17 UN refugee agency employees killed since the start of the war

At least 17 employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, the Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarin said on Saturday.

“So far, the deaths in this brutal war of 17 of our colleagues have been confirmed. Unfortunately, the true figure is likely to be higher,” Lazzarin wrote in a statement.

Some “were killed at home while sleeping with their families,” he added.

“In the Gaza Strip, incessant airstrikes and bombardments, coupled with evacuation orders by Israeli forces, have led to the displacement of a million people and caused the deaths of far too many civilians,” Lazzarini went on, calling for “an urgent humanitarian ceasefire”.

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He also noted that the UNRWA’s facilities “are now overcrowded”, with 500,000 people having taken refuge there.

Israel calls on its citizens to immediately leave Egypt and Jordan

Israel has called on its citizens in Egypt and Jordan to leave these two countries “as quickly as possible” due to a “worsening of demonstrations against Israel”.

A similar alert, level 4, the highest, had already been issued for Turkey and the recommendations were raised to level 3 for Morocco, advising Israelis not to go there.

“Due to the continuation of the war, and a significant worsening in recent days of demonstrations against Israel… and demonstrations of hostility and violence against Israeli and Jewish symbols”, the entire ” Middle East and Arab countries” are not recommended for Israelis, warned the Israeli National Security Council in a statement.

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Two Israeli tourists and their Egyptian guide were killed by a police officer in Alexandria on 8 October, the day after Hamas attacks on Israel.

Biden thinks Hamas attack linked to efforts on Israel-Saudi relations

President Joe Biden said he thinks Hamas’ initial attack on Israel was tied in part to efforts to normalise relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, an initiative that Biden was trying to bring to fruition.

“They knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” the U.S. president said late on Friday, speaking at a fundraiser.

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The dogs of war are howling in the Middle East

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Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

BEIRUT — Against a dawning day, just hours after the fatal Gaza hospital explosion that killed hundreds, Israel’s border with Lebanon crackled with shelling and fighter jet strikes as Israeli warplanes responded to an uptick in shelling from Hezbollah.

Regardless of who struck the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, the needle is now rapidly shifting in a dangerous direction. And hopes are being pinned on United States President Joe Biden and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who is set to host an emergency summit in Cairo on Saturday. But the chances of a wider war engulfing Lebanon and the entire region being hurled into violent chaos once more are growing by the hour.

As Hezbollah announced “a day of rage” against Israel, protests have targeted U.S. missions in the region, more embassies in Beirut have started sending off non-essentials staff, and security teams are being flown in to protect diplomatic missions and European NGOs, preparing contingency plans for staff evacuation. An ever-growing sense of dread and foreboding is now gripping the Levant.

Currently, Israel insists the hospital explosion was caused by an errant rocket fired by Islamic Jihad — and the White House agrees. But the Palestinian militant group, which is aligned with Hamas, says this is a “lie and fabrication,” insisting Israel was responsible. Regardless of where the responsibility lies, however, the blast at the hospital — where hundreds of Palestinian civilians were sheltering from days of Israeli airstrikes on the coastal enclave of Gaza — is sending shock waves far and wide.

It has already blown Biden’s trip to the region off course, as his planned Wednesday meeting with Arab leaders in Jordan had to be axed. The meeting was meant to take place after his visit to Israel, where Biden had the tricky task of showing solidarity, while also pressing the country’s reluctant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

A statement from the White House said the the decision to cancel the meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Egypt’s El-Sisi and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had been jointly made in light of the hospital strike.

But Arab leaders have made clear they had no hope the meeting would be productive. Abbas pulled out first, before Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi suggested a meeting would be pointless. “There is no use in talking now about anything except stopping the war,” he said, referencing Israel’s near-constant bombardment of Gaza.

Scrapping the Jordan stop lost the U.S. leader a major face-to-face opportunity to navigate the crisis, leaving American efforts to stave off a wider conflict in disarray.

The U.S. was already facing tough criticism in the region for being too far in Israel’s corner and failing to condemn the country for civilian deaths in Gaza. Meanwhile, Arab leaders have shrugged off U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s efforts to get them to denounce Hamas — they refuse to label the organization as a terror group, seeing the October 7 attacks as the inevitable consequence of the failure to deliver a two-state solution for Palestinians and lift Israel’s 17-year blockade on Gaza.

Whether anyone can now stop a bigger war is highly uncertain. But there was one word that stood out in Biden’s immediate remarks after the Hamas attacks, and that was “don’t.” “To any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of the situation, I have one word,” he said. “Don’t.”

However, this is now being drowned out by furious cries for revenge. Wrath has its grip on all parties in the region, as old hatreds and grievances play out and the tit-for-tat blows accelerate. Much like Mark Antony’s exhortation in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war” is now the sentiment being heard here, obscuring reason and leaving diplomacy struggling in its wake.

In the immediate aftermath of last week’s slaughter, righteous fury had understandably gripped Israelis. Netanyahu channeled that rage, vowing “mighty vengeance” against Hamas for the surprise attacks, pledging to destroy the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group. “Every Hamas terrorist is a dead man,” he said days later.

However, Israel hasn’t officially announced it will launch a ground mission — something it has refrained from doing in recent years due to the risk of losing a high number of soldiers. But it has massed troops and armor along the border, drafted 300,000 reservists — the biggest call-up in decades — and two days after the Hamas attacks, Netanyahu reportedly told Biden that Israel had no choice but to launch a ground operation. Publicly, he warned Israelis the country faced a “long and difficult war.”

The one hope that havoc won’t be unleashed in the region now rests partly — but largely — upon Israel reducing its military goals and deciding not to launch a ground offensive on Gaza, which would be the most likely trigger for Hezbollah and its allies to commence a full-scale attack, either across the southern border or on the Golan Heights.

That was certainly the message from Ahmed Abdul-Hadi, Hamas’ chief representative in Lebanon. He told POLITICO that an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would be one of the key triggers that could bring Hezbollah fully into the conflict, and that Hamas and Hezbollah are now closely coordinating their responses.

“Hezbollah will pay no attention to threats from anyone against it entering the war; it will ignore warnings to stay out of it. The timing of when Hezbollah wants to enter the war or not will relate to Israeli escalation and incidents on the ground, and especially if Israel tries to enter Gaza on the ground,” he said.

Lebanese politicians are now pinning their hopes on Israel not opting to mount a ground offensive on the densely populated enclave — an operation that would almost certainly lead to a high number of civilian casualties and spark further Arab outrage, in addition to a likely Hezbollah intervention. They see some possibility in Biden’s warning that any move by Israel to reoccupy Gaza would be a “big mistake” — a belated sign that Washington is now trying to impose a limit on Israel’s actions in retaliation for the Hamas attacks.

And how that dovetails with Netanyahu’s stated aim to “demolish Hamas”and “defeat the bloodthirsty monsters who have risen against us to destroy us” is another one of the major uncertainties that will determine if the dogs of war will be fully unleashed.

At the moment, however, an apparent pause in Israeli ground operations is giving some a reason to hope. While assembled units are on standby and awaiting orders, on Tuesday an Israel military spokesman suggested a full-scale ground assault might not be what’s being prepared.

Michael Young, an analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, suspects a “rethink” is underway, likely prompted by Israeli military chiefs’ realization that a ground offensive wouldn’t just be bloody, it wouldn’t rid Gaza of Hamas either. “When the PLO was forced out of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, it still was able to maintain a presence in the country and Yasser Arafat was back within a year in Lebanon,” he said.

Likewise, lawmaker Ashraf Rifi — a former director of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces — told POLITICO he thinks Israeli generals are likely just as behind the apparent hold as their Western allies. “Military commanders are always less enthusiastic about going to war than politicians, and Israeli military commanders are always cautious,” he said.

“Let’s hope so, otherwise we will all be thrown into hell.”



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What did Hamas achieve from the attack on Israel?

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Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, on October 7, 2023. The rockets were fired as Hamas announced a new operation against Israel.
| Photo Credit: AP

On October 6, 1973, when Egyptian and Syrian troops launched a coordinated attack on Israeli forces stationed in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, Israel was totally caught off guard. Just six years before, Israel had defeated Arab armies and seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Sinai Peninsula and Gaza from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria — all in six days. Israel’s policy makers as well as military pundits then believed that Israel had established credible deterrence against its rivals in the region. Then came the combined Egyptian-Syrian attack, shattering this theory.

Parallels are already drawn between the Yom Kippur war and the attack Hamas launched from Gaza on Israel on October 7. In 1973, after the initial shock, Israel got itself together and recaptured the lost territories. But the fact that Egypt launched such a massive attack, causing heavy casualties, remained etched in Israel’s collective psyche. In five years, Israel signed the Camp David Agreement with Egypt, agreeing to hand over Sinai in return for normalisation. Egypt’s risky bet paid off in the medium term.

Israel-Palestine conflict October 9 updates

Hamas’ goal 

Will Hamas achieve anything for the Palestinian cause from its attack on Israel? If the Yom Kippur war was fought between national Armies, here, Israel is facing an Islamist militant group. Also, if, in 1973, the fighting mostly took place in Sinai and Golan — territories captured and occupied by Israel — Hamas launched attacks into Israeli towns on its southern border and fired thousands of rockets, killing some 700 Israelis, including many civilians. A furious Israel has already declared war on Hamas and is mobilising troops. What’s awaiting Gaza is fire and fury. While it’s unclear whether Hamas would make any strategic gains in the medium term, like Egypt did, the key question here is whether Hamas actually wanted to extract any strategic gains or concessions from Israel. What was the goal of Hamas’s attack?

After the Oslo process, which promised a two-state solution, froze in the mid-1990s, there has been no major movement in the peace efforts. The late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and the Middle East Quartet (the UN, the U.S., the EU and Russia) made separate proposals in the millennium aimed at reviving the two-state solution, but those proposals reached nowhere. During this period, divisions between the Palestinian leadership factions widened further, plunging the territories into armed battles between Fatah and Hamas. Israel saw international focus shifting away from Palestine, regional Arab countries coming forward to have ties with it and Palestinian resistance getting weakened by the year. So Israel took a status quoist approach — continue occupation without compromise. 

Unsustainable status quo

It pulled back from Gaza unilaterally in 2005, following the violent first intifada. But from 2007 onwards, Israel (along with Egypt) has imposed a permanent blockade on the enclave. In the West Bank, Israel has set up hundreds of security checkpoints and huge security barriers, limiting the Palestinian movements. Jewish settlements mushroomed in the West Bank (which are segregated by barriers from Arab inhabitants) and pro-settlement politicians rose to power. The Palestinian Authority, which is dependent on foreign aid, or Fatah remained largely helpless

Also read | Breaking the Israel-Palestine logjam

There were frequent isolated violent attacks by the Palestinians, mostly knife attacks, which were met with instant retribution — in almost all cases the attacker would be shot dead and their houses would be demolished. Over the years, Israel managed to build a security order that neutralised large-scale Palestinian violence through force, checkpoints and barriers, while the occupation and blockade of the Palestinian territories continued. The status quo, without any progress in their quest for statehood, was unsustainable for the Palestinians, but preferable for the Israelis — until October 7.

Collapse of deterrence 

Hamas’s coordinated attack on Saturday seems to have punctured holes in this security model and Israel’s aura of invincibility. For a country that’s proud of its intelligence prowess and military superiority, which it never hesitated to use against its enemies, the failures on October 7 is likely to haunt Israel’s policymakers for years, if not decades. It’s an old axiom in conflict studies that deterrence doesn’t hold in asymmetric conflicts, which was proved right once again. But if deterrence doesn’t hold against Hamas, Islamic JIhad and other non-state actors such as Hezbollah, what shall Israel do next to ensure its security?    

Hamas also showed that the Palestine issue remains at the centre of West Asia’s political problems, irrespective of the geopolitical realignments that are recently under way in the region, be it the Saudi-Iran detente; the Qatar-Saudi patch-up; the Turkey-Saudi/UAE reengagement, the reaccommodation of Syria into the Arab fold; or the Israel-Saudi talks.

So the objective of Hamas’s attack was the attack itself, which drilled holes into Israel’s security model and brought the Palestine issue back to the fore of West Asian geopolitics. But for that, it has taken a huge risk. By massacring hundreds of Israeli civilians, Hamas has gone back to its original tactics used in the 1990s and early 2000s, which earned it the terrorist tag. Its regional backers would come under heavy international pressure. The unprecedented attack would also invite a ground offensive from Israel, besides massive air strikes that are already under way. Israel would target Hamas’s military and social infrastructure. Hundreds more Palestinians would be killed. When Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon in 2006, Hezbollah fought back for 30 days, finally forcing Israel to reach a ceasefire. Does Hamas have the wherewithal to resist Israel for long in the tiny besieged Gaza strip? Only time would tell. 

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Israel’s Security Cabinet has declared the country is at war

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Israel has declared it’s a nation at war as the death toll of the conflict has risen to at least 600 people, according to local media reports.

All the latest developments as fighting continues between Israel and Hamas.

Israel’s Security Cabinet declared the country is at war

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says his Security Cabinet has declared the country at war following a deadly Hamas assault in southern Israel.

The decision, announced on Sunday, formally authorizes “the taking of significant military steps,” it said in a statement.

“The war that was forced on the State of Israel in a murderous terrorist assault from the Gaza Strip began at 06:00 yesterday,” it said.

It gave no further details. But Netanyahu had previously declared the country at war, and the military has promised a harsh response in Gaza.

Palestinians seek refuge in UN schools

The UN agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, said over 20,000 people were sheltering in 44 of its schools around Gaza by Saturday evening.

“The number (of displaced) is rapidly increasing, “ said Inas Hamdan, acting public information officer in Gaza.

The agency said three of its schools suffered “collateral” damage from Israeli airstrikes. The agency also said its operations of nine water wells around the Gaza Strip were stopped early on Saturday. Operations in three wells resumed on Sunday, said Hamdan.

 The agency’s food distribution centres, which provide for over 540,000 Gaza residents, have been closed since Saturday.

Hundreds killed since Saturday

The death toll in Israel following a surprise attack by the militant group Hamas stands at 600, according to several Israeli media outlets.

The Kan public broadcaster and Channel 12, as well as the Haaretz and Times of Israel newspapers, reported the toll on Sunday.

There has been no official confirmation of the number of deaths on the Israeli side since the fighting erupted early on Saturday.

Palestinian officials say more than 300 people have been killed in Gaza, without differentiating between fighters and civilians.

Netanyahu says there will be a ‘long and difficult’ war

Israeli forces on Sunday tracked down hundreds of Palestinian fighters who infiltrated into their territory and bombarded the Gaza Strip after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “long and difficult” war against Hamas.

The surprise offensive, launched at dawn on Saturday by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in power in Gaza, left hundreds dead on both sides.

“The first phase is being completed… with the elimination of the vast majority of enemy forces that have infiltrated our territory,” Netanyahu said, warning the Israelis that they were “embarking on a long and difficult war.”

The army announced that it would evacuate all residents living near the Palestinian territory in the next 24 hours.

On Sunday, Israeli forces regained control of the Sderot police station, bordering Gaza, after “neutralising 10 terrorists who were there”, according to police.

The Israeli authorities have not provided any figures on the civilians and soldiers kidnapped by Palestinian fighters, but the Israeli online news site Ynet puts forward “an estimate of around a hundred people”.

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Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another armed Palestinian group, claimed to have captured “numerous soldiers” from Israel.

Schools will remain closed on Sunday, the start of the week in Israel.

UN Peacekeepers call for restraint

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group fired dozens of rockets and shells on Sunday at three Israeli positions in a disputed area along the country’s border with Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Hezbollah said in a statement that the attack using “large numbers of rockets and shells” was in solidarity with the “Palestinian resistance.” It said the Israeli positions were directly hit.

A UN peacekeeping force deployed along Lebanon’s southern border called for “everyone to exercise restraint” and make use of the force’s “liaison and coordination mechanisms to de-escalate” and prevent a fast deterioration of the security situation.

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It said it had detected several rockets fired from southeast Lebanon toward “Israeli-occupied territory,” followed by artillery fire from Israel toward Lebanon.

Israel’s military fired back at the Lebanese areas, but there was no immediate word on casualties.

Rockets fired overnight

Before daybreak on Sunday, rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel, hitting a hospital in the coastal town of Ashkelon. The hospital sustained damage, said senior hospital official Tal Bergman.

There was no report of casualties.

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza had intensified after nightfall, flattening residential buildings in giant explosions, including a 14-story tower that held dozens of apartments as well as Hamas offices in central Gaza City. 

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Around 3 am, a loudspeaker atop a mosque in Gaza City blared a stark warning to residents of nearby apartment buildings: Evacuate immediately. Just minutes later, an Israeli airstrike reduced one nearby five-story building to ashes.

After one Israeli strike, a Hamas rocket barrage hit four cities, including Tel Aviv and a nearby suburb. Throughout the day, Hamas fired more than 3,500 rockets, the Israeli military said.

Netanyahu says Israel will cut off supplies to Gaza

Israel will stop supplying electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza, according to a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office Saturday night. Much of Gaza was already thrown into darkness by nightfall after electrical supplies from Israel, which supplies almost all of the territories’ power, were cut off earlier in the day.

Israel’s allies express their unconditional support

On Saturday, Western allies expressed their unconditional support for Israel. The United States warned “any party hostile to Israel” from exploiting the situation.

US President Joe Biden added that his country’s support for Israel was “rock solid and unwavering”

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“In this moment of tragedy, I want to say to them and to the world and the terrorists everywhere: the United States stands with Israel,” he said. ” We will not ever fail to have their back.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned what she called a “senseless attack carried out by Hamas against Israel” amid a day of unprecedented violence in the region.

Speaking to attendees of the two-day gathering of the Renaissance political party in Bordeaux, von der Leyen branded the attack as “terrorism” and said that Israel had the right to defend itself.

She also said the European Union “stands with Israel”, and that the “ordeal” would be the latest in a long list of challenges that would be “overcome together”.

Support for Hamas

Thousands in Turkey’s capital Istanbul participated in a march called “March for Fatah” to support the Palestinians.

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It was a response echoed in Sanaa in Yemen, where thousands of pro-Palestine Yemeni supporters took to the streets with Palestinian flags on Saturday to celebrate Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel.

In Beirut, Lebanon, hundreds of Hezbollah supporters took to the streets, waving the Palestinian flags together with the Hezbollah flag and chanting supportive slogans while others distributed celebratory sweets to passers-by.

Supporters hailed Hamas’ operation and considered it a victory for the resistance against Israel. Others expressed their joy and happiness and announced the 7th of October as a day of victory.

While in Iran, lawmakers chanted “death to Israel” in their parliament chamber on Saturday after Hamas’ unprecedented, wide-ranging incursion into Israel.

Airlines suspend flights to Israel

Airlines cancelled more than 80 flights to and from Tel Aviv by Saturday evening — roughly 14% of all flights scheduled — because of the unprecedented attack in Israel by the militant group Hamas, according to FlightAware.

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Delta Air Lines and American Airlines cancelled flights Saturday night and Sunday night from New York’s JFK Airport to Tel Aviv, although a Delta return flight was able to depart Tel Aviv Saturday night. United Airlines also cancelled a Saturday flight from San Francisco. An earlier United flight turned around over Greenland and returned to San Francisco.

German carrier Lufthansa cancelled several flights between Frankfurt and Tel Aviv.

British man among the dead

A young British Jewish man fighting with the Israeli army was killed in the Hamas attack, his family said on Sunday, while another remains “missing” after he was lost near the Gaza border.

London resident Gaby Shalev confirmed the death of her brother Nathanel Young on Facebook.

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