Israel’s purported proof of Hamas command center under al-Shifa hospital is seen as ‘anticlimactic’ as bombardment continues across the Gaza Strip, leaving only 4 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants with access to safe drinking water.
Casualties
- 11,470 killed*, including 4,707 children, and more than 29,000 wounded in Gaza
- 197 Palestinians killed and 2,750 injured in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200
*This figure covers the casualties from October 7 to November 16.
Key Developments
- Due to the breakdown of communication services in northern Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health says it has been facing “significant difficulties” in updating its data regarding death tolls for the past week. New numbers issued cannot take into account the full scope of devastation in northern Gaza and Gaza City, where untold numbers of dead are unable to be retrieved from the rubble given the presence of Israeli forces, with Israeli snipers reportedly shooting at anyone in the streets.
- Israeli forces continue to occupy al-Shifa hospital, as its purported proof of Hamas command center lying under the medical complex fails to convince
- Other hospitals in Gaza have also come under fire, amid continued Israeli airstrikes in both northern and southern Gaza
- Heads of major U.N. humanitarian agencies reject “unilateral” Israeli push for so-called ‘safe zones’ in Gaza
- Paltel says lack of electricity amid fuel shortages has led to a total telecommunications blackout across the Gaza Strip
- Telecom shutdown means international aid isn’t entering the Gaza Strip on Friday, UNRWA says, due to impossibility of coordination
- World Food Program warns of “immediate possibility of starvation” in Gaza
- Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics meanwhile says only 4 percent of people in Gaza currently have access to safe drinking water
- At least five Palestinians killed in the West Bank — three in Jenin and two in Hebron — amid confrontations between Palestinian fighters and Israeli forces
- Israeli forces detain 35 Palestinians across the West Bank overnight
- Israeli forces fire tear gas at Palestinians seeking to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque
- Armed man is arrested near the Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan for allegedly planning an attack — a day after an alleged attack against the Israeli embassy in Japan.
- Jordan says it won’t sign a deal that had planned for Amman to provide energy to Israeli in exchange for water due to the “retaliatory barbarism carried out by Israel” in Gaza
- The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sues the state of Florida over its ban of pro-Palestinian student groups, calling the move a “dangerous… attack on free speech.”
- The International Center of Justice for Palestinians issues a notice of intention to seek prosecution of Canadian politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for “complicity in war crimes in Gaza.”
Gaza suffered a blackout of “all telecoms services” yesterday as fuel being used to run generators also ran out. Two major Palestinian mobile networks said that the Gaza Strip was out of service “as all energy sources sustaining the network have been depleted, and fuel was not allowed in.” Hiba Yazbek reports for the New York Times.
No delivery trucks were able to enter Gaza from Egypt for the second consecutive day yesterday due to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) trucks lacking fuel, as future deliveries or humanitarian aid convoys “will be impossible to manage or coordinate” due to the communications shutdown, the UNWRA confirmed today.
The Israel Defense Force (IDF) claimed they found an “operational tunnel shaft” inside the Al-Shifa hospital complex yesterday. In a social media post, the IDF released a video allegedly showing the tunnel shaft – which appears to be reinforced with concrete – located around 30 meters away from one of the hospital’s main buildings, as well as exposed wiring close to the surface. In a televised briefing yesterday, IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said military engineers were working to continue exposing the tunnel network. Andrew Carey reports for CNN.
The Hamas-run media office yesterday denied it was using Al-Shifa hospital as a command center and control center, and labeled Israel’s claims as “baseless lies.” The statement added that the Hamas-run ministry of health “has repeatedly requested dozens of times from all institutions, organizations, international bodies, and relevant parties to form technical teams to visit and inspect all hospitals, in order to refute the false incitement narrative.” Abeer Salman reports for CNN.
A group of U.N. experts said yesterday in a statement there was “evidence of increasing genocidal incitement” against the Palestinian people in what it said were “grave violations” committed by Israel. The statement was made by U.N. experts including several U.N. special rapporteurs. The statement cites the “discernibly genocidal” and “dehumanizing rhetoric” used by senior Israeli government officials, as well as some professional groups and public figures, including calling for the “total destruction,” and “erasure” of Gaza, and the need to “finish them all.” The U.N. experts have previously issued warnings that Palestinian people were at “grave risk of genocide”.
Three people were killed and more than 15 people injured following an Israeli raid at the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Hamas-run health ministry said today. The IDF said in a statement that “an armed terrorist cell” was struck by Israeli aircraft during the raid, and that at least five “terrorists” were killed. The IDF also said they confiscated weapons, military equipment and explosives during the raid, which saw “eight wanted suspects” apprehended. Lawahez Jabari and Lina Dandees report for NBC News.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for an independent investigation into Israel’s Al-Shifa hospital claims. “This is precisely where you need an independent international investigation, because we have different narratives,” he said yesterday. “You cannot use … hospitals, for any military purposes. But you also cannot attack a hospital in the absence of clear evidence.” Andrew Carey and David Shortell report for CNN.
Civilians in Gaza face the “immediate possibility of starvation,” according to the World Food Programme Executive Director. Bread production has ceased at all bakeries in the Gaza Strip due to a lack of fuel, and the trucks providing food supplies via Egypt have met only 7% of the daily minimum needs for the 2 million people in Gaza. Frances Vinall reports for the Washington Post.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that Israel had “strong indications” that hostages were being held at Al-Shifa hospital. He said it was “one of the reasons” the Israeli military entered the hospital, and added that “if they were [there], they were taken out.” A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Force said yesterday on social media that they found the body of a hostage in a building near Al-Shifa. Mikhail Klimentov, Adam Taylor, and Sammy Westfall report for the Washington Post.
The body of a second Israeli hostage was recovered near the Al-Shifa hospital, the IDF said today. The statement said the body of 19 year-old Noa Marciano, a corporal in the IDF, was located and transferred to Israeli territory. Hamas previously claimed Marciano was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a video which emerged this week. Lucas Lilieholm and Alex Stambaugh report for CNN.
Benjamin Netanyahu said his forces’ attempts to minimize civilian casualties had been “not successful” in an interview with CBS yesterday. He said the IDF were working to defeat Hamas but the group is using civilians as “human shields,” adding that Hamas “don’t give a hoot about the Palestinians.” BBC News reports.
Israel dropped leaflets across southern Gaza on Wednesday urging civilians to “evacuate immediately” to “known shelters,” indicating a possible expansion in its ground operation. The leaflet read: “Everyone who finds themselves near the terrorists or their buildings expose their lives to danger. Every house used by terrorist organizations will be targeted. Respecting the instructions of the IDF will prevent you, the civilians, being exposed to harm.” Andrew Carey and Christian Edwards reports for CNN.
REGIONAL RESPONSE
A hostage release deal is rumored to have been negotiated by Qatari, Egyptian, and American officials, and would include a several-day pause in hostilities, two senior anonymous Israeli officials said this week. Under the proposal, Hamas would release 50 women and children abducted during the Oct. 7 attacks, in return for roughly the same amount of Palestinian women and children currently being held in Israeli prisons. The officials said that Hamas has not provided the names of hostages it is willing to release, but both sides have agreed family members would not be separated. Ronen Bergman and Matthew Rosenberg report for the New York Times.
Egypt media says 150,000 liters of fuel will be delivered to the Gaza Strip today, which will be earmarked for Gaza’s hospital and will enter through the Rafah border crossing. The news reported that “Egyptian pressure on all parties have succeeded in increasing the volume of aid” and “restoring the flow of fuel.” Ayat Al-Tawy reports for ABC News.
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will arrive for an official visit in Berlin today to meet with Chancellor Olaf Sholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Relations between both countries remain tense, as Erdogan’s statements favoring Hamas and opposing Israel pose difficulty for Germany, whose foreign policy includes historical responsibility for the Holocaust and unwavering support for Israel’s existence. Erdogan is widely admired among Turkey’s population in Germany, home to Turkey’s largest diaspora. James Angelos reports for POLITICO.
US RESPONSE
State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said yesterday that Hamas has prevented the safe evacuation of patients from Al-Shifa hospital. He said the US was liaising with potential partners to assist evacuations and that “there are third parties that have expressed an interest to do so,” but “the problem has been Hamas.” Shannah Crawford reports for ABC News.
Matt Miller said yesterday that the US has not assessed if Israel has “violated international humanitarian law” but that in Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “judgment, far too many Palestinian civilians have been killed as a result of this conflict.” He added that the US “is constantly monitoring facts as they develop,” and that he has urged all parties to “take feasible precautions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.” Jennifer Hansler reports for CNN.
The United States will not share any Israeli intelligence or detail its own intelligence, which they say shows that Hamas used Al-Shifa hospital as a command center, White House spokesperson John Kirby said yesterday. Kirby made clear that the US is confident of its assessment “about how Hamas was using that hospital.” An anonymous source said the sources remain classified “because some of those same channels are being used to monitor the status of hostages.” Doina Chiacu, Nandita Bose, and Jonathan Landay report for Reuters.
| Demonstrators calling for a ceasefire blocked bridges on both sides of the US yesterday, as police arrested 80 protestors on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and towed away 29 vehicles that blocked all lanes on the upper deck. In Boston, around 100 protestors stopped traffic for over two hours during rush hour. Janie Har reports for AP News. |
| U.N. aid deliveries to Gaza were suspended again due to shortages of fuel and a communications shutdown, deepening the misery of thousands of hungry and homeless Palestinians as Israeli troops battled militants in the enclave. Israel risks facing a long and bloody insurgency if it defeats Hamas and occupies Gaza without a credible post-war plan to withdraw its troops and move toward the creation of a Palestinian state, US and Arab officials, diplomats and analysts said.With mapping robots and blast gel, Israel is waging war on Hamas’ tunnels.Clearing the tunnels is an important part of Israel’s military campaign againstthe Palestinian militant group in response to the deadly attack on Oct. 7. |
| “The situation for emergency medical services is even harder because basically paramedics, ambulances are in danger of losing their life every single second” amid the ongoing conflict, Palestine Red Crescent Society spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told Newsweek.As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) clash with Hamas in Gaza Within hours of the initial Hamas assault, IDF reserve Colonel Ofir Cohen told Newsweek that the IDF mobilized to activate measures to protect civilians and assist evacuees whose homes had been destroyed. 42 days into the conflict, the mission continues.Why it matters: The conditions for Palestinians in Gaza are even more dire. Gaza’s Health Ministry said over 11,500, including more than 4,600 children, have been killed due to Israel’s operation. Israel dismissed the claims and accused Hamas of using humans as shields. International rescue and medical organizations have struggled to cope with the wartime conditions, too. “Many Palestinians have already lost their lives because they didn’t have any access to hospitals,” Nebal Farsakh of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. |
| Palestinians in southern Gaza brace for an upcoming Israeli offensive with nowhere to go.The World , Chris Harland-Dunaway The Israeli air force dropped leaflets on the eastern part of Khan Yunis, the second largest city in the Gaza Strip, warning people to evacuate. Huge numbers of civilians emptied out of the north after similar warnings from the Israeli military. With nowhere to go, Palestinian civilians in Gaza are increasingly cornered in a war within a geopolitical theater that’s left them no place to go. Host Marco Werman talks to Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, about where these civilians can and can’t go, and the possible longterm implications of their ordeal.How Hamas Became the Violent Face of Palestinian ResistanceINTERVIEW WITH TAREQ BACONI BY DANIEL DENVIR Hamas has been all over the news since its brutal October 7 attack, but there’s much less understanding of how the group emerged. Only by studying Hamas’s history can we chart a better way forward.After Hamas’s attack on October 7 killed 1,400 Israelis, the political class in the United States and across the world were quick to rally behind Israel as it launched its own brutal campaign of retribution. So far, over eight thousand Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were civilians, have been killed by Israeli bombs that have landed on schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and refugee camps.Despite public support for a ceasefire, politicians have insisted that even to attempt to contextualize Hamas’ actions is to offer a defense for terrorism. Tareq Baconi, the author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, spoke to Daniel Denvir on Jacobin’s the Dig podcast about the origins of Hamas in the failure decades of peace talks between Israel and Fatah. These efforts, whose high-water mark was the 1993 Oslo Accords, only succeeded in normalizing Israeli apartheid, creating a regime in which Israel policed the West Bank and kept Gaza as an open-air prison, Baconi argues.In this interview, he offers much-needed context to the events of October 7, which he sees as Hamas’s effort to prevent any attempt to normalize the apartheid regime and ensure that Middle Eastern stability cannot not be achieved without Palestinian liberation. Opinion: Israel’s Palestinian strategy was a grave miscalculation By Hussein Ibish. A senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. The most important factor in determining the political outcome of Israel’s current war will not take place in Gaza — but will instead unfold in the West Bank.That’s because if Israel really wants to deliver a serious long-term blow to Hamas as a potent political movement among the Palestinian people, it’s going to be essential to seriously rethink its attitude towards the Islamist extremist group’s archrivals: the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on the international stage.Without strengthening these Palestinian groups, which still represent the mainstream of the national movement, Hamas and even more extreme groups will almost certainly continue to grow and thrive among the Palestinian people.f Israel is now serious about decimating Hamas’s military and political power, that cannot be done only or even mainly by killing the group’s leaders and members and blowing up its equipment and infrastructure. New people can and will fill the void and insurgencies can successfully operate on a shoestring and under extremely onerous conditions.Because the Palestinian people, their cause and their national movement are not going to disappear, the only way to really marginalize Hamas in the long run is to abandon the policy of simultaneously strengthening and weakening both Palestinian factions to keep them at odds with each other and therefore ineffective as a national movement.Hamas, the early yearsIn one of the most reckless and self-defeating policies in its young history, Israel, from the outset, sought to bolster and use Hamas to split and thereby cripple the Palestinian national movement.Hamas was formed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza during the firmament of the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israeli occupation in 1987. Israeli occupation authorities immediately believed they had stumbled upon a marvelous opportunity to divide Palestinians between secular nationalists and Islamists just as they began to rise up on the ground in the occupied territories.Hamas was given considerable leeway to organize and form itself, with Israel turning a blind eye to the organization’s early efforts to structure and found itself — activities that would have been ruthlessly suppressed if pursued by either Fatah-dominated organizations or the local grassroots committees that led the first uprising in its initial months.For a brief period during the Oslo negotiations and the initial implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements that led to the formation of the small self-administered Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank and most of Gaza in the 1990s, this deeply misguided strategy of divide and rule was essentially set aside in favor of serious negotiations with the PLO and a significant degree of cooperation with the PA.However, after the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the subsequent outbreak of the far more violent second intifada in the fall of that year, the Israeli right resumed power. Under Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli right has dominated national politics for the vast majority of subsequent years, and it eagerly resumed a divide and rule approach.This seemed to reach a successful crescendo in 2007, when a year of divided government among Palestinians — with a Fatah presidency under Mahmoud Abbas and a Hamas-dominated legislature — collapsed into open conflict and Hamas violently expelled Fatah and the PA from Gaza.Israel’s ‘divide and rule’ approachFor Netanyahu and his colleagues, this split was ideal. Hamas’ unwavering commitment to armed struggle and violence allowed the Israeli right to paint the entire Palestinian national movement as hopelessly extreme.And the split between Gaza and the West Bank provided Israelis who wanted no part in any additional negotiations with the Palestinians which could result in a two-state solution with a perfect excuse not to sit down with the PLO, by claFor almost 20 years, Israel’s policy was to keep Hamas in power in Gaza, albeit besieged and contained, and periodically and literally cut down to size through wars cynically described as “mowing the grass,” while at the same time ensuring that the PA continued to control the self-administered enclaves in the West Bank, albeit with extreme institutional and political weakness.Above all, the core goal appeared to be to ensure that the Palestinian division prevented any additional movement towards the creation of a Palestinian state or the development of any further restrictions on Israeli settlement activity and the now openly-declared national policy goal of eventual additional major annexation in the West Bank.In March 2019, Netanyahu told a private meeting of Likud party Knesset members that “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring funds to Hamas in Gaza, according to the Jerusalem Post. He reportedly said that this was part of Israel’s strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank. This articulated policies that the Israeli right had been diligently following for many years. And it led, inexorably and predictably, to the October 7 massacres.What Hamas did nextIsraelis, including the national security establishment, were taken aback by the Hamas attack of October 7 because they had wrongly concluded that both Palestinian groups were content to rule their separate fiefdoms and persist in a relative stalemate for dominance of the national movement that played perfectly into Israel’s hands.What the Israelis had not appreciated is that since Hamas’ founding in 1987, its prime directive has been to maneuver to take over the Palestinian national movement and, eventually, the PLO with its invaluable international diplomatic presence, including nonmember observer state status at the UN and over 100 embassies around the world.It was instantly obvious after the October 7 killing spree that the increasingly unpopular Hamas was seeking to use violence assert its dominance of the national movement. Indeed, it’s clear that Hamas expected an overwhelming military response from Israel on the ground in Gaza, and that it hopes to provoke a long-term Israeli security presence against which it can, sooner rather than later, organize a sustained and increasingly powerful insurgency.The obvious goal is to contrast this armed resistance, not just now, but especially in coming years, with PA security cooperation with Israel and the PLO’s unwavering commitment to securing independence through a two-state agreement with Israel.The only rational choice left for Israel in the wake of October 7 is to finally choose to deal seriously and constructively with the Palestinians who are committed to talking to Israelis, as opposed to bolstering those who want to kill Israelis.It may go against all the instincts of many Israeli extremists in the current government, including Netanyahu, but if they do not begin to deal seriously, constructively and cooperatively with the PA and the PLO, Hamas and even more extreme groups will continue to thrive.This means taking any number of obvious measures to strengthen the PA institutionally and politically, including by expanding its authority in the West BAnd it means reengaging with the PLO at the negotiating table to seriously discuss a viable accommodation that meets the needs of both peoples.Beyond Mahmoud AbbasMany Israelis may find it hard to imagine suddenly taking Mahmoud Abbas, who is both the PA president and the PLO chairman, seriously, both because they are used to thinking of him as a spent force and ineffective leader, and because he has lashed out in frustration with language that has been highly offensive, including regarding the Holocaust.There is no doubt that Abbas is, in almost every imaginable way, long past his sell-by date. But the old, infirm and chain-smoking politician, who at least has time and again proven his unwavering rejection of violence as a Palestinian national strategy, represents exactly this trend among Palestinians. And when he passes, sooner rather than later, from the scene, he will be replaced by others from the same tendency.Israelis cannot approach this decisive strategic and political inflection point by focusing on the personality, failures or foibles of Abbas. In many ways, Israel’s consistently hostile policies were the single biggest factor in shaping him into the highly flawed figure he has become.This is the Palestinian leader who, after all, resigned as Yasser Arafat’s Prime Minister during the second intifada and voluntarily went into an open-ended sojourn in the political wilderness, precisely because he categorically rejected the use of violence.Moreover, it’s not about Abbas or his inner circle as personalities. It must be about strengthening the hands of Palestinians who sincerely seek an accommodation with Jewish Israelis and represent the primary obstacle to Hamas finally achieving political dominance among Palestinians.It’s a no-brainer, but Netanyahu and his government show no signs of understanding the necessity of such a radical policy shift. The Biden administration appears to understand the challenge in theory, but how much they can or will do to implement such a revised policy towards the Palestinian political scene is uncertain at best.Given the profound governance, security and intelligence failures revealed by the October 7 attack — which was “successful” beyond Hamas’s wildest fantasies —Israelis should certainly be seeking new leadership. If and when they at last turn their backs on Netanyahu and the coterie of Jewish supremacists surrounding him, it’s essential that the next phase of Israeli strategic thinking reflects at least some understanding of the Palestinian political scene and what Israel’s real options are.It’s not too late to choose to deal seriously, respectfully and constructively with Palestinians who are sincere about a negotiated agreement for peaceful coexistence. The alternative was on full display on October 7.No amount of death and destruction in Gaza or elsewhere is going to provide Israel with lasting security. A negotiated agreement with the Palestinian factions who, despite everything, still want to reach a peace deal with Israel — for good or ill, currently led by Abbas — can bring that about. It’s the only thing that can bring Israelis peace and genuine security. |