The White House says that Israel has increased its combat pauses to let civilians flee
Hamas in the Gaza Strip: What will you do if Israel invades Gaza? Revealing Israel’s frustrations with an Israeli diplomat
The Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, is willing to take on such a role. It will not participate if President Biden agrees to plunge into a diplomatic challenge that has eluded several of his predecessors: a deal between Israel and the Palestinians to create two state living together in peace.
It was a great historical wrong for Hamas to be displaced and for Israel to occupy the West Bank during the 1967 Mideast war. Hamas believed that the peace talks with Israel were a betrayal and a capitulation to Israel’s control over what the group considered occupied Palestinian land.
The political rift in the Palestinians became apparent when Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. It was governing Gaza at the same time as fighting Israel. Israel, in tandem with Egypt, imposed a blockade on the strip aimed at weakening Hamas, plunging Gazans into deepening isolation and poverty.
When Mr. Sinwar became the overall head of Hamas in Gaza in 2017, he sometimes projected an interest in accommodation with Israel. In 2018, he gave a rare interview to an Italian journalist working for an Israeli newspaper and appealed for a cease-fire to ease the suffering in Gaza.
“I am not saying I won’t fight anymore,” he said. “I am saying that I don’t want war anymore. I want the end of the siege. At sunset, you walk to the beach and you see a group of teenagers on the shore and they are wondering what the world looks like across the sea. What life looks like,” he added. “I want them free.”
The Israeli-Israel War is with Hamas, and the Israeli-Palestine Connection is With Embedded in the Gazan Community
There was a Hamas political program issued last year that allowed for a two-state solution, but not recognizing Israel’s right to exist.
Israel granted some concessions, agreeing in 2018 to allow $30 million per month in aid from Qatar into Gaza and increasing the number of permits for Gazans to work inside Israel, bringing much needed cash into Gaza’s economy.
The Israelis wanted to know how to get rid of the Palestinian cause. Mr. Hamdan spoke. They were headed in that direction and not thinking about the Palestinians. All of that could have happened if the Palestinians did not resist.
People familiar with the assessments say that Israeli military intelligence thought Hamas wanted to avoid another war.
Many in Israel’s security establishment also came to believe that its complex border defenses to shoot down rockets and prevent infiltrations from Gaza were enough to keep Hamas contained.
By Oct. 7, Hamas was estimated to have 20,000 to 40,000 fighters, with about 15,000 rockets, mainly manufactured in Gaza with components most likely smuggled in through Egypt, according to American and other Western analysts. They said the group had portable air-defense systems and anti-tank missiles.
The restoration has deepened the relationship between Hamas and Iran, which is a part of the axis of resistance. Hamas operatives went to Iran and Lebanon for training over the past few years, adding more sophistication to the group’s capabilities.
The leaders of Hamas say that their group doesn’t have control over all the captives because other groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, entered Israel and took some captives of their own.
Israeli authorities wanted to make certain that the pauses were limited in time and Area and not a broader, sustained halt in their military operations. “There is no cease-fire,” the Israel Defense Forces wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “There are tactical, local pauses for humanitarian aid for Gazan civilians.” The military added: “Our war is with Hamas and not with the people of Gaza.”
“It’s fighting an enemy that is embedded in the civilian population, using hospitals and civilian infrastructure in an effort to shield itself from accountability and to place the innocent Palestinian people at greater risk,” Mr. Kirby said. Israel has a responsibility to fully comply with international law. And we believe these pauses are a step in the right direction, particularly to help ensure that civilians have an opportunity to reach safer areas away from the act of fighting.”
On Oct. 31, an Israeli airstrike hit the densely populated refugee camp of Jabalia, north of Gaza City. The biggest refugee camp in Gaza is reported to have been the target of deadly strikes. Israel has said the attacks killed dozens of militants, including Hamas commanders. More than 200 people were killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry.
Israel has prevented fuel deliveries into Gaza, claiming that Hamas uses it for its rocket attacks and that it has stockpiled fuel meant for civilians. But aid organizations have said that fuel is one of the biggest needs in Gaza, to keep everything from hospitals to bakeries running.
“These must include the Palestinian people’s voices and aspirations at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza,” he said. “It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
Veterans of the often contentious diplomacy between the leaders of Israel and the United States said the willingness of the president and the secretary of state to be critical of Israel in public is a response to that dissatisfaction with Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The remarks by Mr. Blinken on Wednesday reflect a deep anxiety on the part of Mr. Biden and his aides inside the White House as the conflict enters its second month. The president’s attempt to define an alternative to open-ended war in the Middle East has grown more complicated due to an unambiguous rush to the defense of an ally.
The National Security Council does not have it all figured out right now, a spokesman said on Wednesday. “And I don’t know that it would be reasonable for us to think that we could, at this particular point, one month into the conflict. But we know that it has to be something different than what it was under Hamas.”
In the immediate hours and days after Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,400 people, Mr. Biden fully embraced Israel’s right to respond, a position that White House officials still repeat frequently.
In his comments on Wednesday, Mr. Blinken made no reference to the presence of Israeli forces remaining inside Gaza, home to about 2 million Palestinians.
“We are still seeing damage occurring in the northern Gaza region,” says Scher. The researchers noticed a decline in the number of bombs dropped on Israeli targets between October 25 and October 29. But in the most recent satellite data update, from Nov. 5, damage again appears to be widespread and growing.
Gaza’s Health Ministry reports at least 52 mosques and seven churches in the territory have been damaged since the beginning of the conflict. UNRWA says 50 of its installations in Gaza have also been hit with airstrikes or bombs, resulting in the deaths of at least 66 displaced people on their properties and hundreds injured.
“It’s just steadily increasing,” said Van Den Hoek, a satellite imagery and remote sensing expert who has been studying this imagery since the war’s onset. There’s damage in the cities and refugee camps.
Palestinian Authority to Play a Role in the West Bank and Gaza: A Challenge for the U.S. Administration in the Gaza Strip as a United States Initiative
There is a small strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and Israel. Its footprint is nearly the same as that of the city of Philadelphia but with half a million more people, there are many built into high-rises up and down the coast.
It is not known how many residents remain in the northern half of the Gaza Strip. More than 160,000 people are accommodated in 57 schools in northern Gaza, according to the UN. Some 117,000 people are sheltered in hospitals in Gaza City and northern Gaza. The World Health Organization said on Oct. 29 that “evacuation of hospitals is impossible without endangering patients’ lives.”
The Israeli military has denied targeting Gaza’s hospitals. According to witnesses and international aid groups, there are still Israeli bombings on hospitals in the northern part of Gaza.
A top official from the Palestine Liberation Organization stated that the Palestinian Authority was willing to serve as a governing body in Gaza after a two-state solution was reached.
Speaking to The New York Times on Tuesday in Ramallah, the West Bank city where the Palestinian Authority is headquartered, Mr. al-Sheikh said that Palestinian leaders were looking for “a serious American initiative that would force Israel to abide by it, to commit to it.” He stated that the U.S. administration is capable of doing that.
The message is a challenge for the White House, which has been desperately trying to find a way out of the worst violence between Israel and Hamas in decades. The Palestinian Authority must play a role in Gaza after the war between Israel and Hamas ends, according to American officials.
Mr. al-Sheikh said the core issues that have stymied peacemakers for three decades include Israel withdrawal from the West Bank and the political status of East Jerusalem.
Mr. al-Sheikh does not think the current Israeli government will agree to those terms. “Where is the partner on the Israeli side?” he asked.
Israel Will Give Gaza a Rest for the Future: Israeli Military Action Plan for the U.S. Armed Forces to Evaluate Hamas
Residents of northern Gaza have used Salah al-Din Road as an escape route to southern Gaza this week during pauses in fighting by the Israeli military.
Israel has agreed to put in place regular daily four-hour pauses in its relentless assault on Hamas in selected areas of northern Gaza to allow civilians to flee, the White House announced on Thursday, culminating days of pressure from President Biden as the casualty toll mounts.
Mr. Kirby said the daily pauses would not only provide a greater opportunity for civilians to escape the fighting but also permit the delivery of more humanitarian supplies and possibly facilitate the release of some of the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas, including a handful of Americans. He noted that 106 trucks of humanitarian aid crossed into Gaza on Wednesday, toward a U.S. goal of 150 trucks a day.
Mr. Biden said he wanted a pause longer than three days. Asked if he was frustrated that Mr. Netanyahu took so long to agree, the president hinted at some impatience. “It’s taken a little longer than I hoped,” he said. As for the fate of the hostages, he said, “We’re still optimistic.”
Mr. Biden has not joined the calls in his party and around the world for a full cease-fire because he thinks Israel has a legitimate interest in destroying Hamas. He ruled out the prospect of a cease-fire again on Thursday, saying: “None. No possibility.”
Mr. Kirby said they wouldn’t stand for a cease-fire at this time as it would legitimize what happened on the 7th.
