Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

"Evidence Points to Israeli Shells in Strikes on Gaza’s Largest Hospital:
Israel said Palestinian militants had misfired projectiles, but an analysis of photos and videos of Friday’s strikes shows that some of the munitions were likely fired by Israeli forces."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-al-shifa-hospital.html

Israeli occupation forces raise their fascist flag over Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Congratulations on ‘conquering’ a hospital full of the sick, dead and injured, full of premature babies on the cusp of death, congrats sick fucks. pic.twitter.com/rmXYZTmGvC

— Jennine (@jennineak) November 15, 2023

for a hospital on top of a Military base they sure were able to take it pretty easily

...U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths, also speaking in Geneva, implored Israel on Wednesday to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel. Aid is currently being allowed into Gaza via the Rafah crossing from Egypt but it was designed for pedestrians, not trucks.
Israel has so far rejected calls for a ceasefire, which it says would benefit Hamas, a position backed by Washington. But a pause in fighting has been discussed in negotiations mediated by Qatar to release some of the hostages held by Hamas.

An official briefed on the negotiations said Qatari mediators were seeking a deal that would include a three-day truce, with Hamas releasing 50 of its captives and Israel to release some women and minors from among its security detainees.

The official said Hamas had agreed to the outlines of the deal but Israel had not and was still negotiating terms.

...Dr Ahmed El Mohallalati, a surgeon, told Reuters by phone on Wednesday morning that staff had hid as the fighting unfolded around the hospital overnight. As he spoke, the sound of what he described as "continuous shooting from the tanks" could be heard in the background.

"One of the big tanks entered within the hospital from the eastern main gate, and... they just parked in the front of the hospital emergency department," he said.

The Israelis had told the hospital administration in advance that they planned to enter, he said. By mid-morning, he and other staff had yet to receive instructions from the troops, although the soldiers were "metres away" from them.

After five days during which he said the hospital had come under repeated Israeli attack, it was a relief at least to have reached an "end point", with troops now inside the grounds instead of outside shooting in, Mohallalati said.

The discourse around the hospital is so depressing. Even if IDF is correct and fighters were in the basement... so what? That makes civilians fair game, so it "doesn't count" as an evil thing?

It reminds me of reading contemporary reporting about the Vietnam War, when civilians deaths would be waved away by U.S. officials because "we didn't mean to" or "it wasn't intentional"--as though it was the intention that mattered, not the end result. As though it should make a different to some mother whether her children had been napalmed by design or by accident.

It's pretty appalling. I haven't responded but read all the support posted by a few acquaintances I have who have been extremely vocal about this, and it basically comes down to 1) we're trying to protect ourselves - are we supposed to NOT bomb them and give them a better chance to regroup and kill more of us? 2) if you have a problem with the civilian deaths, it's on Hamas, not us i.e. they're the ones who created this situation. What's appalling isn't the possibility of Hamas embedding themselves in the hospital - it's not a tactic I'd ever deny - it's how they've gone all-in into this deranged, nihilistic belief that it's better to indiscriminately kill over ten thousand lives in Gaza.

Orson Welles once famously delivered a powerful monologue as Clarence Darrow in which he says "if our state is not kinder, more human, more considerate, more intelligent than the mad act of these [sick individuals], then I'm sorry that I've lived so long," and the sentiment couldn't be more apt.

@MustafaBarghou1
The mother of all scandals
The Israeli channel 13 : Huge Israeli intelligence failure. Contrary to the Israeli army allegations There is no indication that there are any military installations in Al shifa hospital

this some WMD type BS

No fuckin way

It reminds me of reading contemporary reporting about the Vietnam War, when civilians deaths would be waved away by U.S. officials because "we didn't mean to" or "it wasn't intentional"

You don't have to go back to Vietnam for this.

WMD BS is an apt comparison too. Reading the "should we wait for them to attack us?" defense of the incessant bombings from one acquaintance was literally word-for-word what some asshole berated at me in 2003 when in my politically disengaged youth I was merely on the fence on whether or not we should initiate a war.

To be fair, it looks like there's still debate over that, partly because it's still early (investigation still ongoing and there's need to be close scrutiny of what's been allegedly found).

"we have investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong"

Channel 13 is reporting that? Haaretz is still reporting that they found Hamas HQ there. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-15/ty-article-live/two-officers-killed-in-gaza-fighting-idf-enters-part-of-shifa-hospital/0000018b-d124-df9a-ab8b-dfec8ca10000?liveBlogItemId=348849433#348849433

Well, they're never going to admit it if it isn't true.

I'm just curious if someone other than one channel in Israel is going to broadcast this claim

Walach comments on the tweet below:

Yair Wallach
@YairWallach
This will become the main story soon. Ceasefire will hopefully come in a week or two. This refugee catastrophe, however, is not going away

Gregg Carlstrom
@glcarlstrom
Once home to >1m people, north Gaza is now a desolate wasteland. The Israeli army controls a depopulated region that is uninhabitable for years to come. And in the south, swollen to twice its pre-war population, a dire humanitarian crisis is getting worse

in the clip of the Palestinian ambassador to the UK on the BBC that went round a few weeks ago (long before the current hospital discourse), when asked about Hamas using human shields, he gave the example of a gunman taking people hostage in a hospital in the UK and whether that would mean British police would bomb the hospital in that situation

really depressing that for many people now the answer is yes

...release some of the hostages held by Hamas...

...Israel to release some women and minors from among its security detainees...

People inside Al-Shifa have lost contact with other buildings in the complex, jeopardizing efforts by humanitarian workers and Palestinian officials to receive updated information about the catastrophic conditions faced by terrorized patients and medical staff.

Omar Zaqout, the supervisor of the ER department, said people were sheltering inside the buildings and staying away from windows and doors.

“We don’t know what is going on outside, all we’re hearing are explosions, gunfire, screams of older people and cries of children,” Zaqout added.

He said Israeli soldiers were present in buildings around the ER and that he had earlier witnessed people handcuffed, stripped from their clothes and blindfolded. CNN is not on the ground and cannot independently verify his account. CNN has also reached out to the IDF for comment on these allegations but has yet to hear back.

Zaqout, the director general of hospitals in Gaza, alleged the IDF interrogated medical teams, patients and their escorts.

“Some of the escorts were forced to take their clothes off,” said Zaqout, who is not at the hospital but spoke to the doctors inside.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claimed Israeli forces “include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians.” CNN cannot verify Hagari’s claims.

For his part, Zaqout insisted that all the people inside the hospital are civilians. “The situation is currently horrific.”
...arlier this week, doctors and journalists described desperate efforts to keep premature babies alive and limited procedures taking place by candlelight, as food, milk and water runs out.

Hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera there are plans to bury more than 150 bodies, but he was worried the grave would not be large enough. Al-Za’anoun, the Wafa reporter told CNN, “the smell of dead people is unbearable, most of the bodies are of women and children.”

In recent days, 15 patients have died at Al-Shifa, among them six newborns, due to power outages and a shortage of medical supplies, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which draws its figures from the Hamas-controlled territory.

Egyptian health minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar said Tuesday they are working to bring 36 newborns from Al-Shifa to Egypt, though such a transfer would be dangerous.

The World Health Organization has recorded at least 137 attacks on health facilities in Gaza, which it said resulted in 521 deaths and 686 injuries.

Other protected sites, like schools, civilian shelters, and United Nations facilities have already been damaged or destroyed in over a month of Israeli airstrikes. On Monday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced that over 100 UN staffers had been killed in Gaza since fighting began – the most in the United Nation’s history.

Mark Regev, senior advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that more information that he says justifies the IDF’s operation in the hospital would be released “in the coming hours and days.”

“The operation is still ongoing and we’ve released some preliminary information, but more will come,” Regev said.

Israel is under significant international pressure to prove its claims about Hamas’ infiltration of the hospital, in order to justify some of its military decisions, which could otherwise constitute a possible serious violation of international humanitarian law.

saw i pile of rusty guns, seems legit.

Pretty sure it's still a war crime, "nerve center" or not.

no one is surprised that hamas commits war crimes

I'm confused by that post, akm.

Because if you're blaming what is happening in that hospital on Hamas, then...

Seeing more videos of Israeli soldiers in Gaza schools, homes, dancing on the graves of dead.

Israelis discover Arab moms' decoration styles for the first time. They can't process why we put curtains to cover a wall pic.twitter.com/ERjJ4sBhfQ

— Amani (@Aurorraz_) November 17, 2023

@JehadAbusalim
·
8h
This clip from Al Jazeera shows the situation at the Peace Mills Company, which, until recently, was the only remaining mill with silos full of wheat. It shows hundreds of people from all over Gaza trying to obtain flour to make bread. Israel bombed the silos yesterday

@tamars
·
10h
BABY STEPS…following the public outcry over the burial of the late Alina Falhati outside the Beit Shean cemetery fence due to her lack of Jewish status according to rabbinical standards, the fence that separates Jews from non-Jews in Beit Shean Cemetery will be removed

@YairWallach

According to the veteran Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, the deal was ready for approval on Tuesday night. 50 Israeli hostages (children, women, elderly), 5 day truce, Palestinian women and child prisoners. Netanyahu decided to stall

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/17/israeli-forces-raid-jenin-surround-hospitals-in-occupied-west-bank

not sure what to even post itt anymore

Mersiha Gadzo
@MersihaGadzo
Al-Shifa Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya has told Al Jazeera the Israeli army removed all the dead bodies from the hospital and they have no idea where they took them

not sure what to even post itt anymore

― rob, Friday, November 17, 2023 11:13 AM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i know. what are we going to DO, guys? i know i can call my reps and give aid that may never reach Palestinians, but i feel like i have to do more.

my post was in response to Boring, Maryland, whose post I actually misread. I thought they were saying that Hamas was committing war crimes by having any guns in the hospital (which is not what that user meant, I now realize), and my response meant "yeah I know Hamas has committed war crimes, but that doesn't excuse Israel doing the same in response"

thx for clarification!

my 14 yo said we should go there and help in person ;_;

Yeah i should have been clearer I meant Israel was committing war crimes by targeting a hospital, even, assuming for arguments sake that it was Hamas world headquarters.

Do people think that the weapons etc that the IDF claim to have found were planted there by them prior to the cameras rolling for the express purpose of justifying their actions? That was my immediate reaction when I saw the footage on TV last night but ho idea whether this makes me cynic or realist.

i dunno but 10 rifles doesn't strike me as an armaments cache of the sort they were claiming existed. it's bullshit

The thing is, Israel has been claiming there was a Hamas bunker under Shifa hospital for many years, and there actually is a documented history of Hamas militant activity within the hospital, including a 2014 Amnesty report that described its use as a Hamas torture facility. I have no idea if they planted the guns or not. I have no idea if there is still a functioning Hamas command center or not.

I could see there being bad intelligence, or a changed situation, or maybe the bunker was but is no longer in use, no longer exists, or was even abandoned recently. I find it hard to believe Israel would focus so much attention on this particular hospital just to set itself up to look stupid, or that Israel has just been dying to get its hands on this one particular hospital for 15 years.

I could believe incompetence or being fooled. I’m reserving judgment, it seems premature to conclude there’s nothing there.

I am mostly now less concerned about this and more horrified by the humanitarian catastrophe I believe Israel has created with no immediately apparent plan to deal with it, suggesting the govt either want it, didn’t consider it, or don’t care either way, all of which are hard to contemplate.

yr last graf particularly otm, man alive.

BY WAFAA SHURAFA, JACK JEFFERY AND LEE KEATH
Updated 8:13 PM CST, November 17, 2023
Share
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The United Nations was forced Friday to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing risk of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of lack of fuel.

Israel announced that it will allow two tanker trucks of fuel into Gaza each day for the U.N. and communication systems. That amount is half of what the U.N. said it needs for lifesaving functions for hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, including powering water systems, hospitals, bakeries and the trucks delivering aid.

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR LATEST

2.3 million people in Gaza are cut off from each other and the rest of the world. There is a desperate need for humanitarian aid. As war rages in the coastal enclave, the situation is dire.

Palestinian families are digging by hand to retrieve bodies buried in Gaza rubble
Families of hostages held by Hamas fear their loved ones will be an afterthought
Protesters demanding a cease-fire blocked bridges on both sides of the US
Which are the groups leading protests in the US against Israel’s actions?
Follow more AP coverage of the war here.

If you think-know there are tunnels, why kill everything above ground? Seems like if Hamas were there, they left early, rather than hanging around for an old school stand-off. That's what insurgents do, more often than not.

Do people think that the weapons etc that the IDF claim to have found were planted there by them prior to the cameras rolling for the express purpose of justifying their actions? That was my immediate reaction when I saw the footage on TV last night but ho idea whether this makes me cynic or realist.

some of the weapons in that footage were in the mri room, which means they absolutely were not there while the hospital still had power.

The BBC reports on what appears to be an attempt by the IDF to rearrange guns and equipment they found in al-Shifa Hospital for embedded media.
pic.twitter.com/4uhMElsndz

— Richard Hall (@_RichardHall) November 17, 2023

bbc also noticed that the weapons in the idf's footage differed from what the idf let bbc reporters see hours later.

The thing is, Israel has been claiming there was a Hamas bunker under Shifa hospital for many years, and there actually is a documented history of Hamas militant activity within the hospital, including a 2014 Amnesty report that described its use as a Hamas torture facility. I have no idea if they planted the guns or not. I have no idea if there is still a functioning Hamas command center or not.

the amnesty report referred to a disused outpatient clinic within the hospital grounds being used for torture, which is a categorically different claim to the idea of a secret underground hamas hq beneath the the hospital. there's been absolutely no evidence of a current hamas command centre there and israel is now downplaying the idea that it was hamas hq.

I could see there being bad intelligence, or a changed situation, or maybe the bunker was but is no longer in use, no longer exists, or was even abandoned recently. I find it hard to believe Israel would focus so much attention on this particular hospital just to set itself up to look stupid, or that Israel has just been dying to get its hands on this one particular hospital for 15 years.

I could believe incompetence or being fooled. I’m reserving judgment, it seems premature to conclude there’s nothing there.

israeli's propaganda efforts have really not been very sophisticated during this war and they don't seem to care about looking stupid. i guess ultimately it doesn't matter to them because they know they can act with near-impunity until the usa loses its patience, they only need to provide the flimsiest cover. the claim of the secret underground hamas hq beneath the hospital is useful to the israelis regardless of how accurate it is - it provides cover to significantly destroy civilian infrastructure (which seems to be the most concrete goal of the offensive), and if they find any actual evidence that hamas was there then that's a bonus.

if hamas ever did use the hospital basement as a base, i highly doubt they were still using it recently given that israel has been very publicly declaring it as a hamas base of operations for ages (even targeting it in the 2021 bombing campaign, claiming to have collapsed tunnels beneath the hospital) and hamas was preparing for a ground invasion.

I am mostly now less concerned about this and more horrified by the humanitarian catastrophe I believe Israel has created with no immediately apparent plan to deal with it, suggesting the govt either want it, didn’t consider it, or don’t care either way, all of which are hard to contemplate.

they want it, don't care, and don't seem to have any real plan for dealing with it beyond some vague, unworkable idea of being able to force the entire population of gaza into egypt. it isn't surprising at all.

when IDF propaganda vids are so ridiculously faked that even the bbc are debunking them, perhaps Biden ought to stop parroting the same propaganda and lying he has seen the intelligence reports to back it up.

I note the Israel hawks are coming for Jeremy Bowen now, ugh.

They've never liked him.

I hate how it's not enough for Israeli government/IDF spokespeople to say what a humane and conscientious army the IDF is for warning civilians about forthcoming attacks and allowing them to evacuate (as if), but they have to say the IDF is the most humane and conscientious army in the world or history.

This hospital "Hamas command" thing is such a load of bullshit. It's ethnic cleansing, and the old and sick and injured will not be spared.

---

Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
Gérard Araud, former French ambassador to Israel and to the U.S.:

"Ce qui se passe à l'heure actuelle en Cisjordanie est absolument scandaleux. En réalité, ce que les colons sont en train de faire, c'est un nettoyage ethnique", Gérard Araud, ancien ambassadeur de France en Israël pic.twitter.com/zYs8DFwMGD

— LCI (@LCI) November 14, 2023

"What is currently happening in the West Bank is absolutely scandalous. What the settlers are doing amounts to retail ethnic cleansing. They are taking advantage of the current tragedy to harass the Palestinians, even more than they usually do, in order to get rid of certain communities, certain villages. And I find it absolutely scandalous that Europe is not speaking out very loudly. In reality, these settlers are doing this to make the two-state solution impossible. Because if Palestinians are expelled and colonization progresses, it will make a territorial compromise to create a viable and contiguous Palestinian state almost impossible. What is happening is extremely serious and I think European states should react with much more firmness and strength"

perhaps Biden ought to stop parroting the same propaganda and lying he has seen the intelligence reports to back it up.

unfortunately the most the us government seems to be interested in doing is forcing israel to let a little more aid through, seemingly just for pr purposes more than anything else

@yaraeid_
A new massacre at the UNRWA school of Al Fakhoura in Jabalia refugee camp, north of Gaza. At least 200 displaced civilians between killed and injured. Horrific scenes of bodies everywhere. Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Say it as it is. Israel is a war criminal. Carnage everywhere, children, women and elderly cut into pieces. I cannot believe this is still continuing for 43 days. More massacres every day. Gaza is being wiped out!

washington post reporting tentative agreement to "pause conflict and free hostages"

From Reuters:

HAN YOUNIS, Gaza/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel prepared on Sunday to expand its offensive against Hamas militants to southern Gaza after air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians reported to be sheltering at two schools.
...Elsewhere in the north, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini of UNRWA, the U.N. aid organization for Palestinian refugees, said on social media platform X that Israel bombarded two agency schools. More than 4,000 civilians were sheltered at one of them, he said.

"Dozens reported killed including children," he said. "Second time in less than 24 hours schools are not spared. ENOUGH, these horrors must stop."

A spokesperson for Gaza's Hamas authorities said 200 people had been killed or injured at the school. Israel's military did not comment.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Saturday said "hundreds of forcibly displaced people were killed" at the two schools in Gaza.

As As the conflict entered its seventh week, authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip raised their death toll to 12,300, including 5,000 children.

...An Israeli offensive in the south could compel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City in the north to uproot again, along with residents of Khan Younis, a city of more than 400,000, compounding a dire humanitarian crisis.

The conflict has already displaced around two-thirds of Gaza's population of 2.3 million.

An advance into southern Gaza may prove more complicated and deadlier than in the north, however, with Hamas militants dug into the Khan Younis region, a senior Israeli source and two top ex-officials said.

AIR STRIKES

Early Saturday, an air strike in a busy residential district of Khan Younis killed 26 Palestinians and wounded 23, health officials said.

Eyad Al-Zaeem told Reuters he lost his aunt, her children and her grandchildren in the air strike in Khan Younis. They all had evacuated from northern Gaza on Israeli army orders only to die where the army told them they could be safe, he said.

"All of them were martyred. They had nothing to do with the (Hamas) resistance," said Zaeem, standing outside the morgue at Nasser Hospital, where the 26 bodies were laid out before they were to be carried by loved ones to burials.

A few miles (kms) to the north, six Palestinians were killed when a house was bombed from the air in the town of Deir Al-Balah, health authorities said.

A third Israeli air strike on Saturday afternoon killed 15 Palestinians in a house west of Khan Younis, close to a shelter for displaced people, witnesses and medics said.

Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, James Mackenzie Henriette Chacar and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Another Reuters report:

Palestinian detainees report Israeli beatings, mistreatment as West Bank arrests surge

...Sticking points include how many days a potential pause in fighting would last, the number of hostages that would be released, and Hamas’ demand that Israel stop flying surveillance drones over Gaza, according to several sources familiar with the talks.

Gestures to relieve pressure on the besieged enclave’s civilian population have already drawn the ire of Netanyahu’s unruly governing cabinet – the most right-wing in Israel’s history.

After Israel’s war cabinet on Friday approved two fuel tankers to enter Gaza per day to support water and sewage systems, far-right members of his governing coalition raged over what they saw as concessions to Hamas in the absence of a deal to release hostages.

In a letter to Netanyahu posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the decision went against the views of the governing cabinet, which is separate to the war cabinet.

His colleague, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, posted on social media around the same time saying that “as long as our abductees (hostages) are not even visited by the Red Cross, there is no sense in giving the enemy ‘humanitarian gifts,’” while calling it an insult to soldiers, the bereaved and families of the missing and kidnapped.

Netanyahu defended the decision in an address late Saturday, saying that the tankers are a minimal emergency amount to operate water and sewage pumps in Gaza, and denied there had been any change of policy.

He also said he had invited representatives of the hostages’ families to a meeting with his war cabinet later this week.