Hamas did not make a case that the Israel Struck Hospital was a lie
Palestinians are afraid to move: Israeli attacks on the besieged enclave and Syria’s airstrikes in the Gaza Strip
The Israeli military said it would intensify its bombardment of the besieged enclave ahead of an expected ground invasion. On Saturday, Arabic-language banners dropped over the Gaza Strip reiterated calls for people to move south and warned that anyone who did not might be seen as a partner in a terrorist organization.
The tally includes five Palestinians who were killed on Sunday. Israel carried out an airstrike during a battle in another West Bank refugee camp last week, in which 13 Palestinians, including five minors, and a member of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police were killed.
Israel has confirmed that 212 people are being held hostage in Gaza. Military spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said on Sunday that Israeli strikes overnight had killed dozens of Palestinian fighters, including the deputy chief of Hamas rocket forces.
According to the report, many Palestinians were warned by Israel’s military via phone and leaflets to leave the north of Gaza or face being labeled as a terrorist if they didn’t. However, there have also been strikes in the south of Gaza, making it unclear whether moving is truly safe.
Fighting outside Gaza has increased. Over the weekend, several Israeli towns near the Israel-Lebanon border were evacuated amid rocket exchanges and gunfire with the Iranian-backed militant group, Hezbollah. Prior to the current conflict, Israel increased its airstrikes in the West Bank in an effort to battle Hamas.
In the West Bank, Israel rarely uses air power. Israel says its forces have detained over 700 suspects in the West Bank, including 480 members of Hamas, since the start of hostilities.
Meanwhile, Israel also carried out strikes on Hezbollah targets on the border with Lebanon on Saturday, after one Israeli soldier was hit by an anti-tank missile in northern Israel. Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said on Saturday that the group was in the heart of the battle and that six of its fighters had been killed.
To the northeast, Syrian state media reported that Israeli airstrikes early Sunday targeted the international airports of the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, killing one person. The runways were damaged and are out of service. The Israeli military had not made a comment.
The First Delivered Convoy of Aid to the Occupied Palestinian Territory: U.S. President Donald Rumsey, Secretary of State and Defense Secretary Amin Abu Odeh
He said the Pentagon is sending an anti-ballistic missile defense system called the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to the Middle East, as well as additional Patriot air defense missile system battalions.
The U.S. has deployed a significant amount of naval power to the area in recent weeks, including two aircraft carriers, their support ships and about 2,000 Marines.
After the entry of the first 2 convoys of aid into Gaza on Saturday, there will be continued flow of aid, according to a White House summary of the call. The leaders also “discussed ongoing efforts to secure the release of all the remaining hostages taken by Hamas — including U.S. citizens — and to provide for safe passage for U.S. citizens and other civilians in Gaza who wish to depart,” the White House said.
Loaded on the trucks were medical supplies for trauma treatment and chronic disease, the World Health Organization said Saturday. The delivery also included some food, mattresses and blankets. Notably, no fuel arrived, which aid groups say is needed to power hospitals and desalination plants for much-needed water.
Lynn Hastings, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told NPR that the arrival of the trucks Saturday “represents a very small first but important start. Obviously it’s really a drop in the bucket.”
But Amani Abu Odeh, who lives in the town of Jabalia in Gaza’s north, said that the danger of Israeli airstrikes on the road had pushed up the cost of travel. She said that drivers now charge between $200 and $300 to take a family south. The trip cost $3 a person before the war.
“We can’t even afford to eat,” Ms. Abu Odeh said. “We don’t have the money to leave.” She and other members of her family are hunkering down at a single home.
Virtually every medical specialty in Gaza has run out of supplies, said Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon working at al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center.
Hamas, the Health Ministry, and the Middle East: When Israeli Air Strikes On Gaza City and the Enclave is Resolved
Designating hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who were unwilling or unable to flee as accomplices in terrorism was a threat of collective punishment and could possibly amount to ethnic cleansing, she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday. She said that it was a war crime to target civilians.
That — coupled with the escalating humanitarian crisis across the enclave — is one of several reasons some families say they are staying put in the north.
Yasser Shaban is a civil servant in Gaza City and he said that he wasn’t going to the south because he hadn’t met anyone there. We will end up in the streets.
Mr. Shaban said his cousin took his family to the south in the hours after the first airstrikes on Gaza City. He said that an Israeli airstrike a week ago resulted in the death of the cousin’s wife and two daughters. A cousin and two of his family members returned to Gaza City to be treated at the hospital.
The Hamas-run health ministry declined to give further details about the 971 victims, and all traces of the munition have vanished from the site, making it impossible to assess its provenance. Raising further questions about Hamas’s claims, the impact site turned out to be the hospital parking lot, and not the hospital itself.
The new evidence has changed the story about the blast from Hamas to the other side. Spokespeople have released death tolls varying from 500 to 833, before settling on 471.
On Sunday, The Times asked Hamas to provide any evidence of the munition it said had struck the hospital, but that Hamas turned them down.
“The missile has dissolved like salt in the water,” said Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, in a phone interview. “It’s vaporized. Nothing is left.”
Salama Maroof, the head of the Hamas-run government media office, said in a text message: “Who says we’re obligated to present the remnants of every rocket that kills our people? In general, you can come and research and confirm for yourself from the evidence we possess.”
The American War Cabinet Addressed to Netanyahu in Tel Aviv: What are we saying to the Israelis about advising them on the plan of the war?
Behind closed doors, officials from the American government give advice to the Israelis. When Mr. Biden met with the Israeli war cabinet during his trip to Tel Aviv last week, he avoided making requests of Mr. Netanyahu, officials said. Instead, the president offered a series of questions that should be answered before a ground invasion starts and raised the specters of the disastrous U.S. decisions to invade Iraq and to wage a long, open-ended war in Afghanistan.
American officials also want more time to prepare for attacks on U.S. interests in the region from Iran-backed groups, which officials said are likely to intensify once Israel moves its forces fully into Gaza.
There is no demand that the administration makes of Israel and it still supports the ground invasion and the goal of expelling Hamas from Gaza, according to the officials.
But fast-moving events since Hamas released two American women on Friday have spurred the administration to more urgently suggest that the Israelis allow time to negotiate the release of 212 other hostages, the officials said.
President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday afternoon to discuss the latest developments, the White House said. Mr. Biden talked to the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain.
Two U.S. officials said the advice to the Israelis to hold off on the land war was being conveyed through Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III because the Pentagon is helping advise Israel on military actions, including the ground invasion.
Mr. Austin has had near daily calls with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, to discuss operational matters, American arms shipments to Israel and U.S. military deployments to the region. He has also talked about recovering the hostages as a priority, one U.S. official said.
An official with knowledge of the hostage negotiations, which are taking place mainly through Qatar, said Hamas had warned that a ground invasion would make hostage releases much less likely. Qatar has close ties to the political leaders of Hamas.
There are many Israelis who are hostages as well as hostages from other nationalities. So we’re working to do everything we can, using whatever levers, partnerships, relationships we have to get them out. Israel also is doing the same thing. But in terms of what we’re talking to Israel about with regard to their military operations, it really is focused on both how they do it, and how best to achieve the results that they seek.”
American officials say they hope the ground invasion will be delayed, but they are wary of playing into the narrative that Iran and its allies have long spread about the United States secretly controlling Israel.
drones are hitting U.S. forces in the region U.S. officials said that leaving the impression that Biden administration officials are the ones pulling the strings in Israel could drag the United States into a direct conflict with Iran or pro-Iran groups in the region.
“In fact we expect that there’s a likelihood of escalation, escalation by Iranian proxies directed against our forces, directed against our personnel,” Mr. Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” They are trying to make sure that we can defend ourselves.
The State Department announced Sunday that it had ordered the departure of nonessential American government employees and family members from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq, and increased the travel alert in Iraq to Level 4, meaning U.S. citizens should not go there. There were threats to the United States of terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, and civil unrest, as well as Mission Iraq’s limited capacity to provide support.
US officials are afraid that Iranian-backed militias could attack the 2,500 or so American troops in Iraq.
The Defense Forces of Gaza: “We are working diligently in all ways to free the hostages and bring them home,” Hagari told the Guardian
The Israel Defense Forces said that they hit over a hundred military targets on Sunday, including the headquarters of Hamas, tunnels, and firing positions in Gaza.
“We are working in all ways to free the hostages and bring them home,” Hagari said, according to The Guardian, adding that the weekend Israeli raids inside Gaza were aimed at gathering information on them.
A mother and her teenage daughter who were held captive in Iraq are free but at least 10 other Americans are still missing, said the Secretary of State on Friday.
After 20 truckloads worth of aid were delivered Saturday, more than 15 were delivered on Sunday. An additional shipment entered the country on Monday.
Humanitarian workers say the relief isn’t enough. The UN says the shipments amount to about 3% of what would normally cross the border.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries. Aid will not reach people in need if there is no fuel. Without fuel there will be no humanitarian assistance, according to Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general. Without fuel, we will fail the people of Gaza, whose needs are growing at an alarming rate.
The United Nations Relief agency for Palestine will run out of fuel within a few days.
A group of 14,000 wounded have consumed all of the supplies in the system from the medication to the equipment to everything they need, he told NPR.
Security and Security in the Middle East: Israel and the “Right to defend ourselves against terrorism” vs. the “Civil Law”
A group of Western leaders issued a statement Sunday repeating their support for Israel’s ” right to defend itself against terrorism” while also calling for the country to follow humanitarian law.
The leaders committed to coordinating with partners in the region to ensure aid reached those in Gaza, as well as “close diplomatic coordination, including with key partners in the region, to prevent the conflict from spreading, preserve stability in the Middle East, and work toward a political solution and durable peace,” the statement reads.
China’s special envoy to the Middle East, Zhai Jun, is also in the region today. Sergei Lavrov is going to head to the Middle East, but will have allies in Iran when he arrives on Monday.
