by tyler | Oct 30, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
In his more than three decades in politics, Benjamin Netanyahu has accrued almost as many nicknames as he has election wins.
There’s “The Magician” for his uncanny ability to grab victory from the jaws of defeat. “King Bibi” for staying atop Israeli politics longer than anyone else. And, universally, though not necessarily affectionately: plain old “Bibi.” But there is another one he revelled in, and which now appears in tatters: “Mr Security.” How did it all go so wrong?
It remains unclear as to how more than 1,000 Hamas militants managed to take Israel by such devastatingly deadly surprise, murdering – as President Isaac Herzog wrote – more Jews in one day than at any time since the Holocaust.
And for now, Netanyahu’s opponents are not calling for Netanyahu to step down. “I’m not dealing now with who is to blame or why we were surprised,” said former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, now leader of the opposition. “It’s not the time, it’s not the place.”
But that time and place will come. Indeed, according to Amit Segal, chief political commentator for Israel’s Channel 12, the surprise would be if Bibi’s prime ministership survives this war. “It would set a national precedent,” he told CNN. “Israeli history has taught us that each and every surprise and crisis led to the collapse of the government. That was the case in 1973 [after the Yom Kippur War] with Golda Meir, in 1982 with Menachem Begin in the first Lebanon war, and in 2006, with Ehud Olmert, in the second Lebanon War. The clock is ticking.”
History certainly provides a useful comparison: the last time Israeli intelligence failed to anything like this degree – and with so many casualties – was almost 50 years ago to the day, when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on Yom Kippur.
That, though, was a war “that followed some kind of logic of norms and rules”, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “We negotiated peace with [Egyptian] President Sadat a few years later, with majority support of the Knesset. We’re not going to negotiate any peace with Hamas. It’s a different ballgame altogether.”
Some kind of negotiation – probably through intermediaries, such as Egypt – is inevitable. Even as Israel pummels Gaza with airstrikes, imposes a “complete siege” on the enclave, and prepares for a possible ground invasion to decimate Hamas, Netanyahu also needs to find a way to free the 150 or so hostages being held by the militants inside Gaza.
This would have been a tall order in Netanyahu’s prime. But after 10 months of facing down protests against his controversial and divisive judicial overhaul, his corruption case – and a near-death experience – this is battered and beaten Bibi, not the vintage version.
It may come as scant consolation to him that Hamas has managed to reunite Israel. “The last thing Israelis care about right now is Netanyahu’s political career,” said Plesner, who also serves in the reserves of the Israeli special forces, where he is a major.
It’s also worth remembering that Bibi has been written off countless times before – only for him to return, Terminator-like, to trounce his opponents. This time, though, feels different. This time, he’s been forced into a war he didn’t choose when he may have been distracted by other things.
Focusing on the judicial overhaul “didn’t help”, said Channel 12’s Segal. But this invasion by Hamas, he said, would have been planned 12 to 18 months ago – when Netanyahu was in opposition. The miscalculation, he said, was that Hamas was after economic concessions, and a softening of Israel’s blockade on Gaza. “At the end of the day it’s a Nazi regime looking to destroy us all. And you can’t live with a monster in your backyard.”
Whether Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces are able to slay the monster may become clearer in the coming days and weeks. He might succeed in forming a national unity “emergency” government that would insulate him from any calls to step down. In the short term, this could marginalise what Lapid describes as the more “extreme” and “dysfunctional” elements of Netanyahu’s coalition. But even if they do move to the sidelines, their ideas may live on.
Such has been the shock and anger over Hamas’ spectacular assault that Israeli voters may be open to more extreme ideas. “A certain portion of the population will expect a very, very harsh response,” said Plesner, “and it will be based on a zero-sum game: it’s either us or them.” And this time, “Mr Security” may fail to deliver.
by tyler | Oct 25, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Queen Rania of Jordan has accused Western leaders of a “glaring double standard” for failing to condemn the deaths of civilians under Israeli bombardment in Gaza, as Israel’s war on Hamas threatens to destabilize relations between US and Arab leaders.
Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview, Rania said, “The people all around the Middle East, including in Jordan, we are just shocked and disappointed by the world’s reaction to this catastrophe that is unfolding. In the last couple of weeks, we have seen a glaring double standard in the world.”
“When October 7 happened, the world immediately and unequivocally stood by Israel and its right to defend itself and condemned the attack that happened … but what we’re seeing in the last couple of weeks, we’re seeing silence in the world,” she told CNN.
Israel declared a “complete siege” on Gaza following the October 7 terror attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the coastal enclave, that killed more than 1,400 people and saw over 200 taken hostage, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The siege has resulted in relentless airstrikes on densely-inhabited Gaza, and a blockade on vital supplies – including food and water – to the isolated strip’s entire population.
“This is the first time in modern history that there is such human suffering and the world is not even calling for a ceasefire,” Queen Rania added. “So the silence is deafening – and to many in our region, it makes the Western world complicit.”
“Are we being told that it is wrong to kill a family, an entire family, at gunpoint, but it’s OK to shell them to death? I mean, there is a glaring double standard here,” she said. “It is just shocking to the Arab world.”
Latest figures from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza put the death toll from Israeli strikes at more than 5,000, including more than 2,000 children. At least 35 UN workers have also been killed.
Israel says that it is targeting Hamas terrorists, and has blamed the group for hiding behind civilian infrastructure.
The United Nations and several aid agencies are calling urgently for a ceasefire and for the free movement of humanitarian aid to the increasingly desperate population. Doctors working in the isolated enclave meanwhile warn that power shortages threaten the lives of their most vulnerable patients, including the critically injured and premature infants in need of incubators.
“As a mom, we’ve seen Palestinian mothers who have to write the names of their children on their hands – because the chances of them being shelled to death, of their bodies turning into corpses are so high,” Rania said. “I just want to remind the world that Palestinian mothers love their children just as much as any other mother in the world.”
Arab leaders have voiced frustration with the perceived unwillingness by the US to try to curb Israel’s siege; Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority pulled out of a planned summit in Jordan with US President Joe Biden last week.
Washington, a close ally of Israel, has remained steadfast in its support of the retaliation on Gaza by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has rebutted calls for a ceasefire.
“We’re not talking about a ceasefire right now,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told CNN on Monday.
“In fact, we don’t believe that this is the time for a ceasefire. Israel has a right to defend themselves. They still have work to do to go after Hamas leadership, we’re going to keep supporting them or giving them more security assistance.”
Speaking in the UN Security Council on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, saying that “humanitarian pauses” should be considered, but notably avoided the phrase “ceasefire.”
However, the US vetoed last week a Security Council proposal for a humanitarian pause in the bloodshed, criticizing the draft resolution for failing to mention Israel’s right to self-defense. The United Kingdom also refused to endorse the resolution.
An earlier Russian ceasefire proposal similarly failed.
Israel is committing “crimes against humanity” in its current campaign, nine independent experts working with the UN said in a joint statement on Thursday. The “unspeakably cruel” blockade on Gaza, coupled with “forcible population transfers” is in violation of international and criminal law, the experts added.
Former Israeli hostage negotiator Gershon Baskin has meanwhile warned that the crisis should be a “wake-up call” for both Israelis and Palestinians and called for a change in leadership on both sides.
Baskin, an Israeli citizen, played a key role in the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured and imprisoned by Hamas from 2006 to 2011. Baskin is the author of “The Negotiator: Freeing Gilad Schalit from Hamas,” and he is now in touch with both the Israeli and Hamas leadership in an unofficial capacity.
“It should be no surprise to anyone that we’ve arrived at such a horrific situation,” he told Amanpour in a separate interview on Tuesday. “It has to be a wake-up call for Israel that you cannot keep another people occupied for 56 years and expect to have peace. You can’t lock two million people in an open-air prison and expect there to be quiet.”
“And for the Palestinians, it should be a wake-up call that if you support radical fanatic leaders and refuse to recognize the other people living in your land as having the same rights that you do, then you’re going to suffer this,” he added, speaking from Jerusalem.
“[These are] the most traumatic events for Israel and Palestine since 1948.”
A growing crisis and fears of displacement
Fears are growing that the conflict could spill into neighboring countries in the Middle East, as Israel urges civilians in the northern part of Gaza to relocate south ahead of an anticipated ground operation.
Forcing Gaza civilians to relocate amounts “to the war crime of forcible transfer,” the Norwegian Refugee Council said.
And Jordanian and Egyptian leaders have raised concerns that millions of Palestinians could eventually be pushed out of Gaza and the occupied West Bank and into Egypt and Jordan, respectively, saying such a move could plunge the region into war.
Jordan’s King Abdullah warned last week that the displacement of Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt would be a “red line,” and said neither Jordan nor Egypt would accept refugees from Gaza. He said that any suggestion of the two countries taking in fleeing Gazans was a plan “by the usual suspects to try and create de facto issues on the ground,” suggesting that the refugees may not be allowed to return to their homes.
Asked by Amanpour about her husband’s position, Queen Rania said the people of Gaza face “two choices.”
“Essentially they’re given a choice between expulsion or extermination, between ethnic cleansing and genocide. And no people should be given, [should] have to face, that kind of choice. The people of Palestine should not, [the people] of Gaza should not, be forced to be moved again,” she said.
More than half of Gaza’s population are refugees whose ancestors fled or were expelled from their homes in present-day Israel by armed Jewish groups during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which Palestinians call the Nakba or “the catastrophe.” Israel has never allowed them to return to their homes and many have lived in poverty ever since.
The queen also emphasized that the conflict in the Middle East did not begin on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, highlighting the history of Israel’s occupation and the displacement of Palestinians.
“Most networks are covering the story under the title of ‘Israel at war.’ But for many Palestinians on the other side of the separation wall, on the other side of the barbed wire, war has never left,” she said.
“This is a 75-year-old story, a story of overwhelming death and displacement to the Palestinian people. It is a story of an occupation under apartheid regime, that occupies lands, that demolishes houses, confiscates lands, military incursions, night raids.”
Even before the war with Hamas, tensions were high between Palestinians and Israelis in the occupied West Bank. Following a wave of Palestinian attacks on Israelis last year, Israel launched regular incursions and raids into the occupied West Bank targeting what they said were militant strongholds. The resulting violence left a record number of both Palestinians and Israelis dead, numbers not seen in at least a decade.
Since Israel took control and occupied the West Bank in 1967 from Jordan following the Six Day War, large swaths of the territory, which residents hope will form part of a future Palestinian state, has been settled by Israeli civilians, often under military protection.
Most of the world considers these settlements illegal under international law.
Protesters in parts of the Arab world have flooded the streets in recent days to show support for Palestinians under the Israeli siege and bombardment. About 6,000 demonstrators marched in Amman in support of Palestinians on Friday.
A two-state solution to establish a “free, sovereign and independent” Palestine is the only path to peace in the region, Rania told CNN.
“There can never be a resolution except around a negotiating table … there is only one path to this, and that is a free, sovereign, and independent Palestinian state, living side by side, in peace and security, with the state of Israel.”
by tyler | Oct 25, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
A furious diplomatic spat between Israel and the United Nations has broken out, with Israeli officials calling for the resignation of Secretary General Antonio Guterres after he said Hamas’ October 7 attacks on the country “did not happen in a vacuum.”
At a Security Council meeting, Guterres called for a humanitarian ceasefire on Tuesday amid the deepening crisis in Gaza, and told the Security Council that “clear violations of international humanitarian law” are being witnessed.
He called Hamas’ October 7 murder and kidnap rampage “appalling,” and said “nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians, or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.”
“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.”
“But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Excellencies, even war has rules,” he added.
His comments angered Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who was in the chamber as Guterres spoke. “In what world do you live?” said Cohen. “Definitely, this is not our world.”
Writing on social media later, Cohen said that “after the October 7th massacre, there is no place for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased off the face of the planet!”
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, called on Guterres to resign, saying he had “expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder.”
Then, on Wednesday, Erdan said his country will block visas for United Nations officials. It had already rejected an application by the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, Erdan told the Israeli Army Radio channel.
“It’s time we teach them a lesson,” added Erdan.
The deepening spat exposes tensions around the calls from some international observers for a ceasefire, amid a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In an effort to “set the record straight,” Guterres said Wednesday he was “shocked by misinterpretations by some of my statement yesterday in the Security Council – as if I was was justifying acts of terror by Hamas.”
“This is false. It was the opposite,” he told reporters, restating his condemnation of the October 7 attacks.
But Guterres did not back away from his Tuesday call for a ceasefire, or from his nod towards the historical treatment of Palestinians.
The main United Nations agency working in Gaza said it would be forced to halt its operations by Wednesday evening due to a lack of fuel, with the territory having faced days of airstrikes and near-total blockade following the Hamas attacks.
Efforts in the UN to endorse a ceasefire have so far been scuppered, with the US vetoing a draft resolution raised by Brazil last week.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday told the agency that “humanitarian pauses must be considered” to allow aid to reach civilians in Gaza, though he notably avoided the phrase “ceasefire.” On Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby rebutted calls for a ceasefire, telling CNN that Hamas must first release hostages held in Gaza.
The World Health Organization meanwhile reiterated calls on Tuesday for a ceasefire, saying it is “unable to distribute fuel and essential, life-saving health supplies to major hospitals in northern Gaza due to lack of security guarantees.” Six hospitals in Gaza have been forced to shut due to a lack of fuel, WHO added.
by tyler | Oct 25, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Through the narrow streets of the Jabal Al-Hussein refugee camp in the Jordanian capital Amman, the mood is clear.
“Palestine! No America, No America… Palestine,” a local fruit seller shouts amid the market crowds.
Established more than seventy years ago by the United Nations, the community is now home to more than 30,000 Palestinian refugees, descendants of some of the more than 700,000 who were expelled or fled their homes in what is now Israel following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Israelis call it the War of Independence. To Arabs, that event is known as the Nakba, or catastrophe.
Families in this camp, now a built-up urban community, know exile all too well, denied the right to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. According to the United Nations, there are now some 5.9 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, most of them descendants of that 1948 generation of exiles.
These refugees say it is a life sentence of separation from family, friends, and their homeland. And for those with loved ones still in Gaza, they say it is a sentence to the cruelest form of anguish.
Israel launched a massive air offensive on the enclave that is home to more than two million Palestinians after Hamas militants from Gaza killed 1,400 people in a brazen attack inside Israel on October 7, and kidnapped more than 200.
Camp resident Abdel-Munim Dababsheh, 49, says his family moved to Jordan after the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. He says he left behind most of his family.
He has lost several family members in successive Israeli wars in Gaza, he says. His mother was killed in 2009 and his sister in 2012, and his aunt and oldest daughter died in the latest round of Israeli airstrikes. “At any given moment, I could get a phone call telling me that my sister and her children have also been killed.
At least 2,789 Palestinian civilians were killed in Gaza in the past 15 years, according to the United Nations, often in operations Israel says were launched to target Hamas and other militant groups.
The overall death toll in Gaza from the current conflict is now at more than 5,000, according to Palestinian health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, just over two weeks since Israel launched its relentless air campaign.
Despite the rising civilian death toll and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, Israel has vowed to intensify its aerial bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, and expand it to a multi-pronged operation in the coming days, as it says it seeks to wipe out Hamas, which has been designated by Israel, the European Union and the US as a terrorist organization.
And with Israel’s thousands of punishing strikes, the fear of history repeating itself – of another Nakba – is being felt across the region.
While Israel has not said it aims to evict Gazans to Egypt or elsewhere, fears of such prospects arose after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) asked Gazans to evacuate the strip’s north and move southwards, as their military operation continued, as well as after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was in talks with Egypt and Israel to establish a humanitarian corridor in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula for Americans and other civilians fleeing Gaza.
On Sunday, Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Israel has “absolutely no intent” to run Gaza.
But the prospect of hundreds of thousands more Palestinians being forcibly displaced to neighboring countries, or even further afield, is being condemned across the Arab world.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said last week that a transfer of Palestinians from Gaza would likely be followed by a similar “expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan.” Jordan’s foreign minister later said such a move would be considered a declaration of “war.”
Commentators on Arab media outlets have warned that Israel may be planning to de-populate the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and even re-occupy it.
But some Palestinians would rather die than be made refugees once again.
“Of course, no one wants to go to Egypt. It’s impossible. My relatives refuse it, I refuse it. This is displacement. Gaza is their home. They will stay there even if it means being wiped out by an airstrike,” Dababsheh says of his relatives.
Palestinians, he says, won’t accept being displaced this time. “The new generation will not allow it,” he says. “They put their foot down.”
Of Gaza’s more than 2 million people, 1.7 million are refugees, according to UNRWA.
“The Israelis were always adamant about no return of refugees, and that’s why the Palestinians cling to… the right of return,” Jordanian Senator Mustafa Hamarneh says, adding that 75 years later, the Arab world has still not recovered from the loss of the Palestinian homeland.
“I don’t think the West realizes the depth of the collective shame we feel as a result of 1948 and the sense of injustice that has been inflicted upon us that we need to correct this. There is a very deep sense of shame, that what happened to us in 1948 shouldn’t have happened,” Hamarneh says. “Any new mass eviction of Palestinian refugees, for us, is a repeat of 1948.”
Israeli officials have said they have “no interest” in reoccupying Gaza. Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops from the territory and pulled out Jewish settlers in 2005.
The struggle of the Palestinians is felt especially keenly in Jordan, where more than half of the population is either Palestinian or of Palestinian descent – including more than two million Palestinian refugees.
But that passion for the Palestinian cause resonates across the Arab world that is home to more than 450 million people.
In a fiery exchange with CNN’s Clarissa Ward at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza that went viral on social media last week, an Egyptian activist shouted that despite attempts to “divide” Arabs, “we stand with the Palestinians, and we stand with Arabs.”
The activist, Rahma Zein, was one of many Arabs around the region impassioned by the war, bloody images from which have made their way to almost every Arab news channel and social media platform.
For more than two weeks now, protests in solidarity with the Palestinians have erupted in countries including Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait and Iran. Hundreds of thousands have also taken to the streets of several European capitals and US cities, all calling for an end to Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza strip, and to the 17-year blockade of the territory.
Young people from across the Arab world have chanted the very same rallying cries their parents and grandparents chanted before them. This is a multi-generational cause which, more than 75 years since the dispossession of the Palestinians, has not diminished in salience in the region.
“For much of the Arab world, the question of Palestine represents the last colonized Arab people trying to gain their freedom,” said H.A. Hellyer, an international security studies expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Royal United Services Institute in London.
While Arab states have tended to focus on problems closer to home in recent years, the latest war “has driven the Palestine question back onto the agenda,” he said.
For many protesters, the demonstrations are not an expression of support for Hamas, nor an expression of indifference to the killing of Israeli civilians. Many protesters say they believe this crisis began long before the October 7 attacks, citing what they say is decades-long Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.
In the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which saw hundreds of protesters take to the streets over the weekend, 45-year-old Ahmed El-Saied said that in recent years Western governments compelled Arab states and their populations to forget the Palestinian issue, especially as Arabs grappled with “internal and sectarian conflicts.”
In Egypt, where mass protests were allowed Friday for the first time in a decade, Alya, who took part in the protest, said that the recent wave of Arab normalization deals with Israel brought on a sense of “defeatism.”
“What we saw after October 7, however, was a shocking reminder to ourselves and the world that actually, this entire situation hasn’t been normalized,” said Alya, who only gave her first name due to fear of reprisal from the authorities.
Analysts say Arab fears of another displacement of Palestinians are particularly heightened due to inflammatory rhetoric that has come from some members of Israel’s right-wing government in the past.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in 2017, as a member of parliament, wrote in an essay that emigration of Palestinians should be encouraged and incentivized, adding that the notion that emigration is cruel is “absurd.” The process, he argued, should not be “a cruel expulsion” but be done in a manner that is “planned, willing, and based on a desire for a better life.”
More recently, he caused an outcry in March after calling for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be “erased” following the murder of two Israeli settlers in the town in a Palestinian attack, which led to revenge rampages by Israeli settlers that one of Israel’s top military generals later called a “pogrom.”
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was convicted of anti-Arab racism by an Israeli court decades before joining the government and was once a follower of Meir Kahane, a Jewish fanatic who openly called for the expulsion of Palestinians. Ben Gvir’s wife, Ayala Nimrodi, has been cited as saying she wishes to “get rid of” the Palestinians.
When asked about the rhetoric of his right-wing coalition partners, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it is his hands that are “on the wheel.”
Hellyer said that this kind of rhetoric has given Arabs good reason to fear that the expulsion of Palestinians may indeed be on the table.
“I don’t think it’s unusual (that) many in the Arab world would take them seriously at their word, especially considering the reality that in every previous situation where Palestinians left Palestinian territory, they were never allowed to go back,” Hellyer said.
Hanya Sabawi, a Palestinian who left Gaza as an infant but whose family remain in the enclave, told CNN she doesn’t know whether her family will have homes to go back to.
“And the biggest fear of course, is that they’re going to be evacuated and turned into refugees. This is what everyone is now openly talking about, as if they didn’t matter,” she said. “They don’t want to move. They would rather die in Gaza than move.”
CNN’s Claudia Otto and Aqeel Najim contributed to this report.
by tyler | Oct 25, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
The main United Nations agency in Gaza says it will have to halt aid operations within a day if fuel is not delivered, in what the organization says would mark the end of a “lifeline” for civilians.
While some aid has reached Gaza through Egypt, those deliveries included food, water and medicine – but not fuel. Israel has refused to allow fuel to enter Gaza since Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack, saying it would only be used by the militant group to fuel its fight against Israel.
Asked how long the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) could last without fuel, spokesperson Tamara Alrifai told CNN: “We’re probably talking a day. We have already warned that if fuel runs out by tonight or tomorrow, we as UNWRA, the largest UN agency in Gaza, will no longer be able to work.” The organization initially said it would have to halt operations Wednesday evening.
UN officials warned the current supplies were “a drop in the ocean” for the needs of 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza and will be of little use without the fuel needed to collect and distribute the aid.
“Without fuel, aid cannot be delivered, hospitals will not have power, and drinking water cannot be purified or even pumped,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council Tuesday.
Doctors in overwhelmed hospitals on the brink of shutting down have repeatedly warned that waves of new patients injured in the daily bombings and babies relying on oxygen supplies will die if fuel is not brought in.
The warnings from senior UN officials came after Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killed more than 700 people in 24 hours, the highest daily number published since Israeli strikes against what it called Hamas targets in Gaza began two and a half weeks ago, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah on Tuesday.
UNRWA director of communications Juliette Touma told CNN that the agency was sheltering some 600,000 people across Gaza. “UNRWA is their only lifeline,” Touma said.
The UNRWA director for Gaza Tom White told CNN that aid workers would have to decide what aspects of life-saving aid they could and could not provide to civilians.
“Do we provide fuel for desalination plants for drinking water? Can we provide fuel to hospitals? Can we provide the essential fuel that is currently producing the bread that is feeding people in Gaza?” he said.
UNRWA was founded in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War to provide essential services for Palestinians who had been made refugees by the conflict. It began its operations in 1950 and its mandate has since been repeatedly renewed.
As well as humanitarian aid, UNRWA also provides schooling to almost 300,000 students in Gaza, according to figures from the 2021/22 school year. Recent fighting has meant that schools have become places of refuge for thousands of Gazans who have fled their homes.
But White warned that fuel shortages could lead to the agency “winding down” its operations, even as some humanitarian supplies begin to arrive through the Rafah crossing. White did not specify exactly when that process would begin, but stressed that the agency cannot operate without fuel. “Even if convoys come into Gaza, we won’t have the fuel in our trucks to collect that aid or distribute that aid,” he said.
“We need to find a solution to the fuel – otherwise our aid operation will come to a stop,” White told CNN.
The deteriorating health environment, lack of sanitation, and consumption of dirty, salty water in Gaza is raising fears of a health crisis in which people could start dying from dehydration as the water system collapses while bombs continue to rain down.
Just eight out of 20 aid trucks scheduled to cross into Gaza on Tuesday made the journey, UNRWA said. No specific reason was provided as to why the other 12 trucks didn’t make it through the Rafah crossing.
Since the start of the Israeli siege two weeks ago, six hospitals in Gaza have been forced to close due to a lack of fuel, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
Among those at risk of dying or suffering medical complications are “1,000 patients dependent on dialysis” and “130 premature babies” and other vulnerable patients “who depend on a stable and uninterrupted supply of electricity to stay alive,” WHO said in a statement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday ruled out any fuel being allowed to enter Gaza, saying Hamas would co-opt fuel for its operational infrastructure and to continue its rocket attacks.
Israel has also disputed that there are fuel shortages in Gaza. Responding to the UNRWA’s post on X about low supplies, the IDF posted an aerial photo of what it said were fuel tanks in Gaza, and claimed they held more than 500,000 liters of fuel. CNN is unable to verify the IDF claim.
Israel’s leadership has vowed to wipe out Hamas in response to its October 7 deadly terror attacks and kidnap rampage in which 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.
In the wake of the assault, Israel launched a sustained aerial bombardment of Gaza that Palestinian health officials say has now killed more than 5,000 people.
More than 700 of those were killed in Gaza in the previous 24-hour period, according to Palestinian officials Those killed included 305 children, 173 women and 78 elderly individuals, the ministry said.
Some two million people are crammed into the 140 square mile coastal strip that makes up Gaza, half of whom are children.
Meanwhile, a spat has broken out between Israel and the UN, after Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealed for a ceasefire and said he was “concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law we are witnessing in Gaza.”
Guterres condemned Hamas’ “horrifying and unprecedented” terror attack on October 7, but said it “cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
“It is important to recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said in remarks to the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
His comments sparked a furious response from Israeli officials. Israel’s ambassador to the UN GIlad Erdan said Guterres was “not fit to lead the UN” and called for him to “resign immediately.”
The US has rebutted calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, with National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby telling CNN on Monday that Hamas must first release hostages held in Gaza.
Talks to secure the release of a large number of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza are ongoing, CNN reported Tuesday, citing two sources familiar with the matter and one Western diplomat familiar with the deliberations, but the talks are being complicated by a number of factors.
The United States, Israel, Qatar, Egypt and Hamas are engaged in the ongoing deliberations. Four hostages – two American and two Israeli – have been freed so far. But the hope now is to reach a deal for a bigger group of hostages to be released at once.
Israel has so far held off on making a ground incursion into Gaza, and the US has pressed Israel to further delay to allow for the release of more hostages held by Hamas.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said outside the UN Tuesday it was Israel’s mission to bring the hostages home.
“While we are still here, there are babies that are in captivity, twins, holocaust survivors, and we have one mission: To bring them home,” Cohen said.
US military advisers have also urged Israelis to avoid an all-out ground assault in Gaza, and steer Israel away from the type of brutal, urban combat the US engaged in against insurgents during the Iraq War, in an effort to keep the Israelis from getting bogged down in bloody, house-by-house fighting, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to tell soldiers on Tuesday a ground offensive was still on track, saying, “we stand before the next stage, it is coming.”
by tyler | Oct 25, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Palestinian officials say hundreds were killed by a massive blast at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday, as humanitarian concerns mount over Israel’s deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the enclave’s population.
Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital was sheltering thousands of displaced people when it was bombed Tuesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement. Many victims are still under the rubble, it added.
Palestinian officials blamed ongoing Israeli airstrikes for the lethal incident. But the Israel Defense Forces has “categorically” denied any involvement in the hospital attack, blaming instead a “failed rocket launch” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, a rival Islamist militant group in Gaza.
“We did not strike that, and that the intelligence that we have suggests that it was a failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad, and I want to add, categorically, that we do not intentionally strike any sensitive facilities, any sensitive facilities, and definitely not hospitals,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN.
Gaza has been under siege by Israel for more than a week, in response to the deadly incursion by Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the coastal enclave, home to 2.2 million people. Hospitals meanwhile are struggling to tend to the wounded across the territory, operating with shortages of electricity and water.
Vital humanitarian aid is meanwhile piling up at Gaza’s shuttered border, despite diplomatic efforts to open a corridor from Egypt. The United Nations and other officials have said they need assurance of safe passage for any potential aid convoys.
Amid growing international pressure to address the crisis, US President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday, an extraordinary wartime visit that follows intense efforts by Secretary of State Antony Blinken across the Middle East.
Biden was also due to attend a summit scheduled in Amman, the capital of Jordan, with several Arab leaders. However, the summit was canceled in the wake of the hospital blast.
Instead of the planned meeting, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would travel back to Ramallah for an urgent meeting of the Palestinian leadership.
The Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the center of Gaza City was sheltering thousands of people who had been forcibly evacuated, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Hamas, which controls the enclave, said more than 500 people were killed by the bombing. The Palestinian Health Ministry earlier said preliminary estimates indicate that between 200 to 300 people died in the attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed the “barbaric terrorists in Gaza” for “attacking” the hospital on Tuesday.
“Whoever brutally murdered our children is also murdering their children,” he added.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari later told CNN the IDF has communications between militants in Gaza “saying this is an Islamic Jihad event” as well as drone footage showing strike impact on the hospital’s parking lot, but not the hospital itself.
Hagari said the IDF will soon release that footage and audio of the intercepted communications.
As Israeli and Gazan officials blame the other for the hospital tragedy, protests have sprung up in a number of Middle Eastern cities including Amman, where protesters attempted to reach the Israeli embassy.
More than a week of Israeli bombardment has killed at least 3,000 people, including 1,032 girls and 940 boys, and wounded 12,500 in Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Tuesday. Casualties in Gaza over the past 10 days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014.
While the IDF has said it does not target hospitals, the UN and Doctors Without Borders say Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.
On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes hit two densely populated refugee camps and an UNRWA school housing displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 18 people and injured scores, Palestinian officials said.
The IDF said that high-level Hamas commander Ayman Nofal was killed in the airstrikes in Gaza on Tuesday.
In the occupied West Bank at least 61 people have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Tuesday. At least 20 humanitarian workers from the UN, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have been killed in Gaza, the UN said.
Meanwhile, health services within Gaza are on the brink and food and water supplies are running low. Twenty out of 23 hospitals were offering partial services because fuel reserves are “almost totally depleted,” the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) warned on Tuesday.
UN agencies have warned that shops are less than a week away from running out of available food stocks and that that Gaza’s last seawater desalination plant had shut down, bringing the risk of further deaths, dehydration and waterborne diseases.
Hospitals have been receiving dozens of bodies from different areas of south Gaza, the director of Gaza hospitals, Dr. Mohammad Zaqout, told CNN. The toll includes dozens of victims from air strikes in Rafah.
The Palestinian Interior Ministry said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 49 people in strikes on the southern Gaza cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN he was “not aware of any strikes specifically in those areas but they could have happened.”
Urgent calls for help are growing on both sides of the crossing as aid amasses on the Egyptian side of the border.
Blinken on Tuesday said the the United States and Israel “have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza.”
But on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, a miles long convoy of humanitarian assistance awaiting entry into Gaza, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN.
“Until now, there is no safe passage that has been granted” as they do not “have any authorization or clear, secure routes for those convoys to be able to enter safely and without any possibility of their being targeted,” he said.
He added that the crossing was bombed four times in the past few days.
Beyond the border crossing, moving aid to those in need is extremely complex in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly hit UN facilities in the past week.
“We need to have areas where humanitarians can move through safely, where people who are receiving humanitarian aid can receive that aid safely,” UN spokesman Dujarric told CNN in a press briefing Tuesday.
“The last thing you would want to see is creating distribution points where people receive that aid are not safe.”
WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told CNN the UN health agency had struck an agreement with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to open the Rafah crossing for aid – but Israel’s strikes rendered the facility unsafe, thereby halting the movement of crucial supplies.
On Tuesday, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the only things that should be entering Gaza “are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid” until Hamas releases hostages, he wrote on Telegram.
On the Gaza side, large numbers of evacuees have gathered by the crossing, part of the mass displacement that has seen at least 1 million people flee their homes in the past week alone, according to UNRWA.
One family of five Palestinian-Americans, all US citizens, drove to Rafah on Monday after hearing the borders would be opened but to no avail, said Haifa Kaoud, whose husband Hesham is among the five stuck in Gaza.
Satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies show four 30-foot (9-meter) craters blocking the roadway at the border crossing closest to the Egyptian gate, along with concrete slabs.
Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to ease the conflict. On Monday, the UN Security Council rejected a Russian resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire after it failed to get enough votes.
Several countries including the US, the United Kingdom and France voted against it because the draft did not condemn Hamas for the October 7 attack, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said killed at least 1,400 people with scores taken hostage.
This includes French-Israeli woman, Mia Schem, who was shown in the first hostage video released by Hamas. Her mother, Keren Scharf Schem implored world leaders “to bring my baby back home” when speaking to reporters Tuesday.
CNN cannot independently verify where and when the video of Schem, 21, was taken and what condition she is currently in.
Regional leaders raised concerns of fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah in the north, and Syria, as strikes at the border become a flashpoint for wider conflict.
The IDF said on Tuesday shots were fired towards several locations on the security fence between Israel and Lebanon.
At the same time, Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, warned if the “atrocities” against Gaza persist, “Muslims and resistance forces could lose patience,” and no-one would be able to prevent their actions.
After Hamas’ incursion on October 7, militants fired shots from Lebanon that were intercepted by Israel, leading to a deadly exchange of fire.
On Friday evening local time an Israeli strike killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah who was also from south Lebanon. The assault wounded at least six other reporters.
A CNN video analysis found that the journalists were wearing vest jackets clearly marked as press.
And on Tuesday, Israeli strikes killed at least four people in Alma al-Shaab, in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
Two Hezbollah fighters were killed in confrontations on Tuesday, the militant group said. It is unclear whether they are part of the death toll reported by the Red Cross.
CORRECTION: This article on the Gaza hospital blast initially did not clearly attribute claims about Israel’s responsibility to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza. Israel later said a “misfired” rocket by militant group Islamic Jihad caused the blast and produced evidence to support its claim. US President Joe Biden said the Israeli position is backed by US intelligence. CNN’s forensic analysis of images and videos suggests a rocket fired from within Gaza caused the blast, not an Israeli airstrike.
An earlier version of this story also misidentified the embassy protesters attempted to reach in Amman. It was the Israeli embassy.
