New York Times and CNN deny their Gazan freelancers knew about Hamas plan to attack Israel


Ben Farmer
Fri, 10 November 2023 

The claims made by pro-Israel site, HonestReporting, have been called 'outrageous and irresponsible' - Shutterstock/HAITHAM IMAD/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The New York Times, CNN and other major international news outlets have strongly rejected Israel’s accusations that Gaza-based freelance photographers were accomplices in Hamas’s Oct 7 attacks.

A report by HonestReporting, a pro-Israel site, earlier this week suggested photojournalists working with Reuters, The Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times could not have taken photos of the attacks without prior knowledge and being “part of the plan”.

Pictures filed by the photographers that day included Hamas gunmen escaping to Gaza with kidnapped Israeli citizens, Hamas attackers climbing on a disabled Israeli tank, images of Hamas invaders outside a kibbutz and buildings burning.

The HonestReporting claims led the office of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to declare the journalists were “accomplices in crimes against humanity” and “their actions were contrary to professional ethics”.

Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, declared the photojournalists should be treated as terrorists if it was proven they had advance knowledge of the Hamas attacks, which killed 1,400 Israelis.

Danny Danon, an MP for the ruling Likud party, went on to say they had taken “an active part in the massacre” and “we will hunt them down together with the terrorists”.

“Is it conceivable to assume that ‘journalists’ just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists?” HonestReporting wrote on its website on Wednesday. “Or were they part of the plan?”
No evidence to back up claim

Gil Hoffman, the executive director of HonestReporting, later admitted the group had no evidence to back up the suggestion the reporters had prior knowledge of the Hamas attacks.

He claimed that “some people with an agenda” had made HonestReporting “look bad”.

“They acted as if we were stating facts instead of asking questions,” Mr Hoffman said.

The media organisations all said they had no prior knowledge of the attacks, and had not embedded journalists with Hamas.

They said they had no arrangements in advance with any of the journalists to provide photos and the pictures were taken some time after the attacks first began.

The New York Times dismissed the claims as “untrue and outrageous”.

Yousef Masoud filed this photograph 90 minutes after the attack began - Yousef Masoud/AP

The newspaper said that Yousef Masoud, whose photographs of an Israeli tank captured by Hamas were used by the newspaper and AP, did not know in advance of Hamas’s plans. His first photographs that day were filed 90 minutes after the attack began.

Reuters used pictures credited to Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih, two freelancers it had no prior relationship with.

Its first photo was published more than 45 minutes after Israel said gunmen had crossed the border, the news agency said.

Besides Mr Masoud, AP used photos that day credited to Hassan Eslaiah, Ali Mahmoud and Hatem Ali.

AP and CNN said on Thursday that they would no longer work with Mr Eslaiah, one of the freelance photographers, after HonestReporting posted a photo of Mr Eslaiah being kissed by Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader.

The CPJ said these claims put journalists at further risk - Hatem Ali/AP

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) warned the Israeli government’s rhetoric could endanger journalists.

Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, CPJ’s advocacy and communications director, said: “Targeting journalists with disinformation only endangers them.

“Attempts to smear, delegitimise and criminalise journalists who are doing their job, are outrageous and irresponsible, and they put journalists at further risk.”

At least 39 journalists and media workers have been killed in the conflict so far, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The deadliest month-long period for journalists since the committee began tracking such figures in 1992.

Stop killing women and babies in Gaza, Macron tells Israel

Sky News
Updated Sat, 11 November 2023 


Israel is facing mounting international pressure - including from its main ally - to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The number of people killed in the Gaza Strip in the past five weeks now stands above 11,000, according to health officials in the territory.

Israeli forces have been waging war on Hamas militants who carried out a deadly rampage in southern Israel on 7 October.

Israel initially said more than 1,400 people were killed in the Hamas attack but the figure has since been revised down to around 1,200.

Follow latest: 'Thousands' flee Gaza's largest hospital after 'intense violence' nearby

In his strongest comments to date on the plight of civilians caught in the crossfire, US secretary of state Antony Blinken told reporters on a visit to India: "Far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks."

But Mr Blinken reaffirmed his country's support for Israel's campaign to ensure that Gaza can no longer be used "as a platform for launching terrorism".

It comes as French President Emmanuel Macron said Israel must stop bombing Gaza and killing women and babies.

Speaking to the BBC on Friday, Mr Macron said France "clearly condemns" the "terrorist" actions of Hamas, but also recognises Israel's right to protect itself.

"We do urge them to stop this bombing" in Gaza, he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also said his country is prepared to take injured Palestinians from Gaza, as hospitals in the enclave report being overrun.

In London, a pro-Palestinian march will take place later today. It is the latest in a series of protests and has attracted headlines after Home Secretary Suella Braverman dubbed them "hate marches" due to a small minority of participants chanting inciteful slogans.

This weekend's march is complicated further by it falling on Armistice Day.

How Israel has responded

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said world leaders should be condemning Hamas, not Israel.

"These crimes that Hamas (is) committing today in Gaza will be committed tomorrow in Paris, New York, and anywhere in the world," Mr Netanyahu said.

Read more:
Teens charged for spraying 'Free Palestine' on monument
Israel boss 'proud' of footballers as they fight for nation away from battlefields
Israel's military cannot destroy an ideology - analysis

Israel has said it does not aim its attacks at civilians and tries to protect them, and that Hamas militants have hidden command centres and tunnels underneath hospital buildings.

BIBI LIES
Netanyahu accuses US college protesters of ‘lining up with baby burners, rapists and head-choppers

NO EVIDENCE OF HEAD CHOPPING


David Millward
Fri, 10 November 2023 

Benjamin Netanyahu described the campus protests as an indictment of higher education in the West - Abir Sultan/Pool European Pressphoto Agency

Benjamin Netanyahu has accused US college protesters of “lining up with baby burners and rapists”.

Speaking on Fox News, the Israeli prime minister launched a withering attack on those who have joined the wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at American campuses.

“They’re lining up with Isis, with al-Qaeda, with these baby murderers, these rapists, these head-choppers,” Mr Netanyahu said.

“We have to protect our future and can our world survive if people go with such moral confusion and moral depravity?

‘We have to defeat evil’

“It’s an indictment of higher education in the West when highly educated people cannot distinguish between right and wrong, and between good and evil.

“Hamas is evil and we have to defeat evil, not protest and demonstrate on behalf of evil.”

In the same interview, Mr Netanyahu rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“A ceasefire with Hamas means surrender to Hamas and surrender to terror,” he added.

Senior politicians in Israel have been alarmed by the rising tide of anti-Semitism on US campuses.

Students at a campus protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza in Washington DC - Anadolu

Earlier this week, Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, wrote to 700 US colleges and universities calling for action.

In the latest incident, slogans that have been linked to anti-Semitism were beamed on to buildings at the University of Pennsylvania.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” read one message lit up against the John M Huntsman hall.

University president Liz Magill said there had been anti-Semitic graffiti, including swastikas, daubed on campus buildings.

At another campus, a woman was filmed on social media calling somebody a “f----- k--e” at another pro-Palestinian demonstration.

And at Cornell University, an Ivy League institution in upstate New York, a student has been charged with threatening to shoot and stab Jews online.

Elsewhere, a Jewish prayer meeting at Towson University in Maryland was disrupted when students wrote “f--- the Jews” on a blackboard.

At Cooper Union, a private college in New York City, Jewish students took shelter in a library as pro-Palestinian demonstrators banged on doors and windows.

In California, the all-Democrat Legislative Jewish Caucus said students had been harassed and assaulted at campuses across the state.

Jewish students in San Diego needed a police escort to leave a meeting in safety and a faculty member at UC Davis called for violence against Zionists in their homes and their children in school.

The caucus said Jewish students “do not feel seen or heard, nor do they feel safe and protected”.

The wave of sympathy for Hamas on US campuses has attracted the attention of Israeli satirists, with a scathing sketch on the programme Eretz Nehederet, which translates to “A Wonderful Country”.

It shows two “right-on” students chanting: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” before ripping down posters of hostages held by Hamas, which they call Zionist propaganda.

One of the hosts denies he is anti-Semitic, insisting instead that he is “racist fluid”. The sketch, which also featured a gun-toting “bestie freedom fighter” has gone viral with almost 700,000 views.
Jewish students jostled on campus

At Harvard, within four days of the Hamas attacks which killed 1,400 people, a coalition of 34 student organisations issued a statement holding Israel “entirely responsible” for the violence.

Jewish students have also been jostled on campus and complained of feeling intimidated by pro-Palestinian protesters.

Harvard Hillel, a Jewish society, has called for the university to act.

“We know first-hand that our campus community is safest, and our students are best supported when leaders in university administration and student organisations speak out unequivocally against violent hate,” it said in a statement.

“In our continued conversations with Harvard leadership, we will emphasise the need to forcefully condemn anti-Semitism and this heinous terrorist attack. As we do so, the needs of our students are top of mind.”

Despair in Gaza City hospitals encircled by fighting

"The rules of war are clear. Hospitals are specially protected facilities under international humanitarian law," 

AFP
Fri, 10 November 2023

The Israeli military says troops are in the heart of Gaza City, battling Hamas (Ismail Zanoun)

At Gaza's largest hospital, a sheltering Palestinian said Friday he felt "under siege" as the facility was encircled by fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants.

"We need help from the international community, people are dying here due to lack of treatment," said Atef, who has taken refuge at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, surrounded by patients on trolleys.

The hospital was hit earlier on Friday by an Israeli strike, the facility's director and Gaza's Hamas government said, with the latter giving a death toll of 13.

The Israeli military has denied bombing hospitals.

Gaza resident Hanane, whose wounded daughter is being treated at Shifa, said that with each explosion his "daughter starts shaking".

The girl "was wounded in the bombing of a queue outside a bakery", Hanane said, wondering aloud about how join the rest of her family who have fled to the south where the fighting is less intense.

In the courtyard of Shifa hospital, the boom of explosions echoed around Mohammed Rihane as he walked on crutches for his injured leg.

"People are dying, torn to shreds in the streets and we can't go and look for them," he said, while moving around the city remains incredibly dangerous.

The Israeli military says its troops are in the heart of Gaza City, battling Hamas, which it says uses hospitals "as command and control centres and hideouts", a tactic denied by the group.

- Seeking refuge -

Faced with the advance of Israeli troops and bombardments, tens of thousands of residents in Gaza have sought refuge in hospitals across the city, which was home to nearly 600,000 people before the war.

The fighting is also encroaching on other Gaza City hospitals, witnesses and Hamas government officials told AFP.

At Al-Rantisi hospital, a distraught young girl said "Israeli tanks are besieging us from all sides".

"We were asked to immediately leave the hospital, but there's neither the Red Cross nor anyone who can guarantee the safe exit of civilians," she said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli snipers fired on Al-Quds hospital on Friday, killing one person and wounding 28 others, the majority children.

The Israeli military told AFP it would not comment on the attack because it could "compromise the troops".

Israel's campaign has killed over 11,000 people across the Gaza Strip, the majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The war erupted when Hamas gunmen stormed across the border from Gaza into southern Israel in an unprecedented attack that killed around 1,200 people, according to an updated toll from Israeli officials.

- 'Can't evacuate -

After five weeks of war, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Friday that Gaza's health system had "reached a point of no return", putting the lives of thousands of patients and medics at risk.

Rantisi hospital had been forced to cease operations, the ICRC said, while Al-Nasser hospital was among those heavily damaged.

"The rules of war are clear. Hospitals are specially protected facilities under international humanitarian law," the organisation said in a statement.

Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to remain in northern parts of the Palestinian territory, including Gaza City, while overall the United Nations says almost 1.6 million people have been displaced by the war.

At Shifa, director Mohammad Abu Salmiya said "all the hospitals of Gaza City were targeted" by the Israeli military.

"We didn't expect to see hospitals bombed in 2023. We can't evacuate, because we have more than 60 patients in intensive care, more than 50 babies in incubators, more than 500 patients on dialysis," he said, looking visibly exhausted in his blue scrubs.

bur/smk/rsc/jd/sea

Inside Gaza’s bombarded hospitals: ‘I told Israel, I cannot move my patients or they will die’

Lilia Sebouai
Fri, 10 November 2023 

A Palestinian woman injured in an Israeli strike is evacuated from Al-Shifa hospital toward south Gaza

 - REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustaf/REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustaf

“They call me many times to evacuate this hospital,” a Palestinian doctor who works at Al-Awda facility in the north of Gaza City told The Telegraph by voice note on Thursday evening. “[But] I refuse completely to leave … I’m here with my staff to provide health services and health care for injured people and pregnant women.”

Only hours later, as night fell, huge explosions were recorded pummelling the vicinity of Al-Awda, the main maternity provider in northern Gaza. It was one of four hospitals to experience direct, or extremely close, overnight bombardment as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pushed into Gaza City.

By the morning, harrowing footage was circulating online showing men, women and children screaming and covered in blood in a courtyard of Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza. Reuters news agency said it had verified the footage and that one person had died. Israel’s military said radar data showed the projectile to have come from Hamas rather than the IDF.


“Allah, Allah,” victims cry, as the camera scans the aftermath of the shelling. One boy lies face-up, a pool of blood under his head, his arm draped across the curb. A young girl, no more than 12, cries into the camera, her face and hands covered in blood.

Israel has been urging hospitals in Gaza City to evacuate for weeks but to little avail. While the great bulk of the population has moved south, hospitals have remained open, with the UN and World Health Organisation unable or unwilling to evacuate them.

Some have emptied as fuel has run low and the fighting has got closer. But in others – notably the Al-Shifa, whose grounds the IDF says conceal Hamas command bunkers – civilians have flooded in, seeking shelter.

Between 50,000 and 60,000 people were sheltering inside and around the grounds of Al-Shifa as of Thursday, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza.

That may now finally be starting to change, as the IDF pushes ever deeper into the city and Hamas loses control over the local population. On Friday, there were reports and dramatic pictures of tens of thousands of people moving south, including hospital patients.

On Thursday evening, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British surgeon based at Al-Shifa, told the Telegraph that numbers in the hospital grounds were increasing but by Friday evening the tide appeared to have turned.

“Shifa hospital has collapsed. Wounded and staff leaving in droves,” he said on Twitter on Friday afternoon.

Photographs released by the Associated Press appeared to confirm the exodus, showing thousands of people walking south, some carrying white flags and others being pushed in hospital wheelchairs.

“People are forced to walk and being forced to raise white flags and hold their IDs and hands in the air,” said Tarneem Hammad, an advocacy and communications officer at Medical Aid Palestinian.

Palestinians flee north Gaza and move southward as Israeli tanks roll deeper into the city - REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

“Many report their relatives being arrested [by soldiers], they don’t know what happens to them … People report seeing dead bodies on the road, with birds, crows and dogs eating the bodies.”

Israeli troops now control what they describe as Hamas’s “military quarter”, a significant area of military and administrative facilities adjacent to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

Israeli tanks have also taken up positions around the Rantisi, Al-Quds and Nasser Children’s hospitals, which were also starting to evacuate.

Mustafa al-Kahlout, the head of Al-Nasr Hospital for Children and Al-Rantisi Pediatric hospital, just north of Al-Shifa, told CNN that they were surrounded and asked for the Red Cross to assist with an evacuation.

“We are completely surrounded, there are tanks outside the hospital, and we cannot leave,” Mr Kahlout told the broadcaster. “We do not have electricity, no oxygen for the patients, we do not have medicine and water. We do not know our fate.”

Ever-encroaching Israeli troops, armour and air strikes were believed to be forcing similar panicked evacuations from hospitals across the area. The IDF has promised to push on in its fight to purge Gaza of Hamas terrorists.

“We won’t stop fighting for the people of Israel. That’s what we’re here for, and we’ll do everything so the communities surrounding Gaza can prosper again,” the IDF tweeted on Friday afternoon.

The IDF did not comment directly on Gaza’s hospitals on Friday, but confirmed fierce fighting in the surrounding areas, with some 150 Hamas operatives being killed.

Hospital evacuations of civilians and the walking wounded to the south will save many thousands of civilian lives, but they come far too late for serious patients who could only be moved with a negotiated temporary truce and intensive medical support.

Last month, the WHO said attempts to relocate the sick and injured from Gaza’s hospitals “could be tantamount to a death sentence”, despite mass evacuations of this kind being successfully executed in previous conflicts.
“There is no way that we can evacuate, there is no practical way of doing it,” the Gazan health ministry spokesman continued to insist on Friday.

“We are talking about 45 babies in incubators, 52 children in intensive care units, hundreds of wounded and patients, and tens of thousands of displaced people.”

There is no doubt that conditions in hospital wards are appalling and that help is desperately needed.

Fuel, medicines, blood supplies and other essentials have fallen to critically low levels, officials say, power cuts and a lack of clean water is making infection control nearly impossible.

The Telegraph reported last month that C-sections and other major surgeries were being performed by torchlight and without anaesthetic in some cases, while poor hygiene is causing terrible infections as patients’ wounds become full of worms and flies.

Footage and photos shared with The Telegraph on Wednesday by Palestinian medics showed terrible conditions inside Al-Shifa.

In one video clip, Dr Marwan Abusada, head of surgery at the hospital, describes how its cardiac surgery unit has been turned into a recovery area. The room is overflowing with cots, hospital beds, and injured patients.

“We are overwhelmed by a huge number of patients here”, he says. “There is no place to accommodate them.”

A young boy can be seen in one of the beds with both legs in plaster and a medical screw in his left foot. The doctor explains that he was struck by an explosion while standing in front of the gates of the hospital.

In another video filmed at Al-Shifa, Dr Abusada shows a corridor overflowing with patients, many with terrible injuries.

“This is the corridor of our operating theatre. Many cases in the corridor, there is no place to accommodate more people here in Gaza,” he explains.

Doctors in scrubs weave between beds, stepping over unconscious bodies as they go.

On the floor, a grown man sits cross-legged, wiping the tears from his eyes as he looks down at a boy, a bandage wrapped around his bloodied head, wired up to an oxygen tank.

Dr Abu Sitta also shared with the Telegraph pictures of refrigerated food trucks that he says have been brought to Al-Shifa as an additional morgue for dead bodies.

Humanitarian groups have warned that thousands of mothers and newborn babies are now at risk owing to a lack of functioning maternity services in Gaza.

An estimated 50,000 pregnant women are living in Gaza, with an average 160 births expected to occur every day over the next month, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

In an audio recording shared by UNFPA with The Telegraph, one pregnant teenager who had entered labour described how she was turned away from Al-Shifa because of a lack of space.

“My contractions started at 4 o’clock in the morning,” said 17-year-old Samaa. “I went to Al-Shifa Hospital. They told us there was no maternity care. We kept walking in the street until we found a car.

“I was in a bad condition. I had a caesarean section. I didn’t wish to give birth in such a situation, during a war and in dire circumstances.”

A man and child receive treatment at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in central Gaza - ZUMAPRESS.com / MEGA TheMegaAgenc/ZUMAPRESS.com / MEGA TheMegaAgenc

Another pregnant woman described being “buried in rubble” following an airstrike.

“My face was all covered in blood, my hands, and my legs. Honestly, I couldn’t feel them,” said 26-year-old Sondos.

“I was transferred to the operating room for my legs because bones were shattered. After that, thank God, I gave birth to a girl. I will name her Habiba al-Rahman, after her sister who was martyred on the same day.”

The outbreak of secondary infections continues without clean water and antimicrobial drugs.

“We have a health disaster. We have a type of worm, called white flies, covering the wounds after the surgery. They appear after one day,” said Dr Abusada.

“Most injuries and surgeries have no follow-ups as the medical teams cannot cope with the influx of injuries every hour.”

Calling the situation “disastrous”, he said that the wards have “zero” space left for patients.

“On a normal day, we have a capacity of 210 beds, and now we have more than 800 patients that need to be admitted.”

As night settled over Gaza on Friday, there was no sign of a let up in the fighting around the hospitals.

Palestinian sources report that there is a heavy exchange of fire in Al-Quds Hospital area in Gaza City. The Red Crescent reported one dead and 20 wounded, including two seriously, from IDF fire.

There were also calls for the IDF to make greater efforts to reduce civilian deaths.

Speaking in New Delhi at the end of an intense nine-day diplomatic tour of the Middle East and Asia, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said on Friday that the US “appreciates” Israel’s formalisation of pauses in their military operations to allow Palestinians to move south and its creation of a second safe corridor for them to use to escape harm but that more needed to be done.

Mr Blinken added that Israel’s steps “will save lives and will enable more assistance to get to Palestinians in need”, but at the same time ”much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them”.

He said “far too many Palestinians have been killed, far too many have suffered these past weeks” and that everything possible should be done to prevent harm and maximise the assistance they need.

Margaret Harris, a World Health Organisation spokesman, said on Friday that Al-Shifa hospital had been “coming under bombardment”, adding that 20 hospitals in Gaza were now out of action entirely.

Asked about the Gaza health ministry’s allegation of an Israeli strike on the hospital courtyard, Ms Harris said: “I haven’t got the details on Al-Shifa, but we do know they are coming under bombardment.” Asked to elaborate, she said there was “intense violence” at the site, quoting colleagues on the ground.

Palestinian girl Orheen Al-Dayah, who was injured on her forehead in an Israeli strike, is treated at Al-Shifa hospital - REUTERS/REUTERS

At the same briefing, Jens Laerke, a UN humanitarian office spokesman, said: “If there is hell on earth today, it’s name is northern Gaza. It is a life of fear by day and darkness at night and what do you tell your children in such a situation, it’s almost unimaginable – that the fire they see in the sky is out to kill them?”

Although the current focus is on the hospital in the north of Gaza, there are fears also for the south.

The flow of aid into the strip remains a fraction of what is usually delivered, as the Israeli government continues to limit the provision of supplies amid concerns it could be diverted to Hamas terrorists.

The US government said it “saw 106 trucks of humanitarian aid flow into Gaza through the Rafah crossing” on Wednesday. Prior to the war, more than 500 trucks were granted daily access to distribute food, water, medicine and other resources among the territory’s 2.3 million civilians.

With Gaza’s healthcare system on its knees, Turkey said on Friday it had sent a ship loaded with field hospital equipment, ambulances and generators to Egypt to treat war casualties. Other governments, including the UK, have sent officials to the border to support the flow of aid.

Despite the increasing international pressure, Israel has reiterated its intention to push ahead with its military operations until Hamas is destroyed in Gaza.

“It’s a process that will end in the defeat of Hamas as a governing authority,” said Lt Col Peter Lerner, the spokesman of the IDF, on Tuesday.

“We’re determined to do it. And, as I said, we really don’t have any other choice. There is no way that Israel can go back to the situation of October 6, the day before.”

Gaza hospitals forced to evacuate after being encircled by Israeli tanks

Ben Farmer
Fri, 10 November 2023 

al-Shifa Hospital was struck by Israeli forces on Friday, killing at least one person and injuring others - STRINGER/REUTERS

Israeli tanks surrounded several hospitals in northern Gaza and ordered staff and patients to evacuate after artillery struck the compounds where thousands have been sheltering.

The territory’s main health centre came under gunfire from Isreali troops, aid agencies said, as Hamas officials claimed the death toll in the territory had hit more than 11,000.

Meanwhile, thousands of civilians travelled south along the strip’s main road as they used a brief humanitarian pause in Israel’s offensive in an attempt to flee fighting.

Tanks closed in on Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital late on Friday, which had been hit by an Israeli strike earlier in the day, killing at least one person and wounding others, officials said.


Staff refused to evacuate last night as three other hospitals were successfully emptied. Israel claims Hamas uses al-Shifa as an underground base shielded by civilians.

Videos from inside Gaza yesterday showed tanks inching towards hospitals as Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza City. One video showed a small crowd of apparent civilians waving white flags before being forced back by gunfire. It is not clear if the fire came from Israeli forces or Hamas, which has previously ordered civilians not leave the city.

Israeli troops advanced around at least three hospitals in Gaza City’s north-west on Friday night, forcing their evacuation, the Washington Post reported.

Videos showed Israeli tanks right outside the Al-Rantisi Hospital, with more troops streets away outside the Al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital.

A separate video showed a series of explosions around the Al-Awda Hospital near the town of Beit Hanoun.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, warned on Friday that “far too many Palestinians have been killed” in fighting despite a deal to open humanitarian corridors out of Gaza’s capital.

A UK-based medical charity working in the strip warned the enclave’s hospitals were now at risk of a full-scale military assault as Israel continued its ground offensive to wipe out Hamas.

Health officials said Israeli forces had surrounded al-Nasr and Rantissi hospitals, and the Eye Hospital. All three were later evacuated. This was later confirmed by an announcement on Israel’s army radio.

Israeli officials said its forces were “taking an operational risk” by evacuating civilians from the north to the south.

Lt Col Richard Hecht, an IDF spokesperson said: “It would be easier if Hamas would just leave the hospitals.”

The al-Shifa hospital appears to be set for a standoff with Israeli forces after refusing orders to evacuate.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defence minister, said: “The terrorists located in the basements of Shifa tonight can hear the thundering sound of our tanks and bulldozers.”

‘We will do what we need to do’

Doctors inside the hospital said they had no plans to fully evacuate, saying they could not transport vulnerable patients in intensive care, or babies in incubators.

Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, the director of al-Shifa Hospital, told Reuters: “Israel is now launching a war on Gaza City hospitals, on Rantissi, Nasr hospitals and on al-Shifa.”

Both the al-Shifa and Rantissi hospitals came under bombardment on Friday, the World Health Organisation said, without attributing blame.

Gunfire was later reported, while the Palestinian Red Cross claimed Israeli snipers were firing at medical facilities.

Lt Col Hecht said. “If we see Hamas terrorists firing from hospitals, then we will do what we need to do.”

Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas in the strip after gunmen stormed into southern Israel on Oct 7, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages.

Tanks pushed into the 25-mile strip under the cover of heavy bombardment nearly two weeks ago. They have since cut the territory in two and besieged the Gaza City area, which Israel says is the centre of Hamas’ military operations.
Stocks and supplies are dangerously low

Gaza’s hospitals are working under dire conditions, staff and aid agencies warn. Wards are overflowing with seriously wounded people and stocks of medicines and supplies are low. Surgeons are performing operations without anaesthetics and large numbers of people have also taken refuge from the fighting in hospital compounds.

Melanie Ward, the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, said: “Without urgent action from the international community, including the UK government, Gaza’s hospitals remain at serious and imminent risk of full-scale military attacks.

“Palestinian civilians and healthcare must be protected, and Israel must cease its attacks on hospitals now.”

The overnight strike on al-Shifa triggered an exodus among crowds who had spent weeks sheltering in the complex.

Ayman Al-Masri, a refugee, told Reuters: “They struck Shifa today... Everyone started to run to the streets and we came here walking.”

He had joined a flow of people carrying belongings including mattresses, and luggage, with some carrying white flags.

An Israeli artillery shell that landed in the compound of the al-Shifa hospital late on Thursday is thought to have injured at least two people.

Experts said the colour and markings suggest the round was an illumination round used to light up the battlefield.

This photograph of IDF forces inside Gaza was taken half a mile from the al-Shifa hospital - Ziv Koren/Polaris / eyevine

Doctors at the hospital also said at least 20 people were killed in Israeli strikes on al-Buraq school in Gaza City, where people whose homes had been destroyed were sheltering.

The Palestinian Red Cross said Israeli forces had shot at al-Quds hospital, where violent clashes ensued, with one person killed and 28 wounded, most of them children. Two children were in a critical condition, it said.

Israel says it does not attack civilians and tries to protect them, but accuses Hamas of building bases and fortified tunnels beneath hospitals.

“While the world sees neighbourhoods with schools, hospitals, scout groups, children’s playgrounds and mosques, Hamas sees an opportunity to exploit,” the Israeli military said.

Israel is under growing international pressure to show restraint, but it has refused to impose a ceasefire without the release of hostages.

Mr Blinken said recent Israeli moves to improve dire conditions in Gaza by allowing brief pauses in operations were positive, but not nearly enough.

He said: “Much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them.

“Far too many Palestinians have been killed, far too many have suffered these past weeks, and we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximise the assistance that gets to them.”

Sudan violence 'verging on pure evil,' UN warns

Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS
Fri, 10 November 2023 

Sudanese refugees cross into Chad near Koufroun, Echbara, in May 2023: the latest arrivals are bring reports of new artocities in the country's civil war 

(Gueipeur Denis SASSOU)

The UN warned Friday of soaring human rights violations in Sudan's Darfur region and said they were "verging on pure evil," amid escalating fighting seven months into the war between the army and paramilitaries.

"We keep saying that the situation is horrific and grim. But frankly, we are running out of words to describe the horror of what is happening in Sudan," said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan.

"We continue to receive unrelenting and appalling reports of sexual and gender-based violence, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detentions and grave violations of human and children's rights," she told reporters.

"What is happening is verging on pure evil," she said, citing reports of young girls being raped in front of their mothers.

She said she was worried about the risk of a repeat of the genocide of the early 2000s in this region of western Sudan.

Since April, forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan -- Sudan's de facto head of state -- have been at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) pointed to reports that more than 800 people had been killed by armed groups in Ardamata in West Darfur, an area that so far had been less affected by the conflict.

"We have received these reports from new arrivals in Chad, these are refugees fleeing the Darfur area, that are talking about armed militia going from house to house killing men and boys," spokesman William Spindler told reporters in Geneva.

"These killings reportedly have happened in the last few days," he added.

- 'Extensive looting' -

Ardamata among other things houses a camp for people displaced inside Sudan, where UNHCR said nearly 100 shelters had been razed to the ground.

It also warned in a statement that extensive looting had taken place, including of UNHCR relief items.

UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi echoed Nkweta-Salami's warning of the danger of a repeat of the horrors unleashed two decades ago when the government of Omar al-Bashir unleashed the Janjaweed militia in response to a rebel uprising.

"Twenty years ago, the world was shocked by the terrible atrocities and human rights violations in Darfur," Grandi said in a statement. "We fear a similar dynamic might be developing."

UNHCR said it was preparing for a new flood of refugees from the region into Chad, which is already hosting hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in the Sudan conflict so far, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.

But aid groups and medics have repeatedly warned the real toll exceeds recorded figures, with many of those wounded and killed never reaching hospitals or morgues.

The war has displaced more than 4.8 million people within Sudan and has forced a further 1.2 million to flee into neighbouring countries, according to UN figures.

apo/nl/jh/dw

UK
‘It was a case study for what not to do’: the regeneration project that became a £100m luxury ghost town

Simon Usborne
Sat, 11 November 2023 


LONG READ

When Alvin Owusu-Fordwuo was growing up in central Hackney in east London, the small businesses that operated under the arches on Morning Lane blended into the background. As a kid he had little need for discount office furniture or the free “crypton tune” that came with a service at one of the car garages tucked under the railway line.

“I knew those businesses had a function,” says Owusu-Fordwuo, 26. Rain begins to fleck his glasses as we stand on a wedge of land where the busy road bends close to the train tracks. “But it’s like you didn’t know they were there until they weren’t.”

Owusu-Fordwuo grew up round the corner and went to the Urswick school, one of the most disadvantaged secondaries in the country. It stands on the other side of a big housing estate, close to the border between the E8 and E9 postcodes; there is also a history of gang violence here. “This strip was … if you were younger and not from this area, well, it was complicated,” he says.


Hackney, which shares borders with Islington and the City of London to the south and west, as well as Tower Hamlets and Newham to the east, has for the past two decades been a hotspot of gentrification, not least in areas such as Shoreditch and Dalston. Yet it also still contains some of London’s most deprived wards, including parts of Hackney Central.

In 2011, the London riots started up the road in Tottenham after the killing by police of Mark Duggan, before sweeping through other boroughs and cities across England. Violence flared on streets not far from the arches. Owusu-Fordwuo, who is the son of a postman and a school worker, was still at school at the time, but he didn’t need all the subsequent official and academic reports to tell him what had happened: he saw the unrest as a response to decades of social deprivation and growing inequality tied up with mistrust of the police.

Soon after the riots, the Greater London Authority, then led by mayor Boris Johnson, announced a £70m fund “to invest in the long-term regeneration of some of the worst affected boroughs”. Money was put into various schemes, including an employment centre in Haringey and reductions in business rates in Croydon. In Hackney, the council would invest £1.5m in “a visitor attraction and an enhanced retail circuit” – part of an ambitious project that would soon raise eyebrows.

Hackney Walk was a luxury fashion hub that would occupy 12 of the old arches on Morning Lane after the existing businesses had been kicked out. The £100m scheme was conceived by a developer and funded largely by his backers. It also included £3.7m from Network Rail, which owned almost 4,500 arches across Britain, investing their rental income into the ailing railways. Architect David Adjaye was brought in to reimagine a slice of the capital’s Victorian transport infrastructure – traditionally where small businesses could survive on affordable rents – as a monument to luxury retail with a striking new gold-and-glass facade.

The development also included several surrounding shopfronts and was to expand into a bigger neighbouring site, further along Morning Lane, occupied by a Tesco. The master plan was sold as east London’s answer to Bicester Village, the Oxfordshire designer outlet that is one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions. And it had the full support of the council. Jules Pipe, then mayor of Hackney, gave a speech at a launch party in March 2016, alongside the developer, a man called Jack Basrawy who has not commented for this article, as a street artist in a flat cap went to work behind them. Street-food vans doled out ramen and craft beer while a DJ played.

Pipe, who left Hackney later in 2016 to become one of London’s deputy mayors, acknowledged some of the scepticism in a speech at the event. He was anxious to “celebrate the beginnings of Hackney Walk – a project which had its roots in the riots”, insisting it was about regeneration rather than gentrification. As well as attracting big spenders to its luxury stores, he said it would create vital jobs and opportunities for locals, and ultimately “be judged by the people of Hackney”.

Owusu-Fordwuo, who studied for an economics degree, now co-runs Tag agency, which helps companies engage meaningfully with local youth projects, and works for community charity Hackney Quest. He says the idea that a luxury fashion hub could transform Hackney Central – or that the community needed it – is delusional. “After the riots, there was this opportunity to invest in our young people’s futures,” he says. “Almost half of Hackney’s children grow up in poverty and instead of pushing money into that, they made this.”

* * *

Google Street View offers a compelling picture of what happened next. The earliest imagery, in 2008, shows weeds tumbling from the railway down towards the arches. Behind a billboard advertising the iPhone 3G, there is a hand car wash, several garages, a carpet wholesaler and a furniture store called Steptoe & Son.

By April 2012, the arches have been shelled out and the weeds are gone. Two summers later, a steel framework has gone up in front of the arches. In October 2015 a wall of glass has been hung from it and shimmering security shutters are poised to protect it. Two large new buildings are rising at either end of the arches, in the triangles left by the road as it bends back away from the railway.

Soon, in 2016, shop names are appearing: Savile Row tailor Gieves & Hawkes, Joseph, designer label stockist Matches Fashion. One of the new buildings has become a large Nike store. The old arch forecourts have been landscaped in slate to create a new thoroughfare with plants and seating; across the road, several shops have been bought up and painted black. An Anya Hindmarch store occupies what used to be a florist and cafe. The Edwardian Duke of Wellington pub is now Pringle; a former dance shoe factory is an Aquascutum outlet.

The picture in 2023, as I meet Owusu-Fordwuo by the arches, is very different. Hackney Walk is a ghost town. Shutters are broken, the slate is crumbling and graffitied chipboard covers the smashed-in former entrance to Gieves & Hawkes. Brackets that until last December held up a giant Nike Swoosh still hang from one of the new buildings. Its sister store, at the eastern end of the development, has never been occupied. Only one shop remains open at the time of writing: Present, which sells Stone Island streetwear. One of its giant glass doors has also been smashed. “The shutters stopped working years ago, then we got ram-raided,” an assistant says.

Owusu-Fordwuo often walks past the arches. “I ran some workshops recently on how young people would redesign their neighbourhoods for creativity and this place came up a lot,” he says as another freight train rolls over the abandoned arches. “They talked about creative workspaces and studios. They walk past here now and they have visions of what it could have been. There is a collective anger and distrust, and people just want to know how something like this happens.”

* * *

The rapid expansion of the railways through and above Victorian Britain’s cities left thousands of brick arches that were noisy, damp and awkwardly shaped, so rents were low. “They were cheap, messy spaces that came right into the heart of the city,” says Francesca Froy, a lecturer in sustainable urban development at the University of Oxford and co-author of a 2017 study of 165 London arches. “They preserved economic activities that couldn’t otherwise afford to be there.”

Arches also became sanctuaries for working-class and immigrant businesses. In 1988, Chuong Chu, who had arrived as a refugee from Vietnam in 1980, set up Chu’s Garage in a vacant arch in nearby London Fields. “In those days Railtrack, which owned the arches, was begging people to look after them as opposed to making money from them,” says Derec Hickman whose wife, Nhi Chu, is part of the family business.

These arches, Froy’s report said, functioned as “a bulwark against gentrification”, their imperfections acting as a kind of rent control. But their locations – close to urban centres and train stations – have latterly given many of these “messy” spaces a new aesthetic and cultural appeal. You could set up a craft brewery in an arch and people would happily stick around to drink there. “Arches became hip because they have that industrial atmosphere,” says Hickman who, with Nhi, runs Guardians of the Arches, a collective and campaign group that supports immigrant-run businesses.

Network Rail, which took on the ownership of almost 4,500 arches across the country (more than 60% of them are in London) when it replaced Railtrack in 2002, began to realise the value sitting under its lines and the possibility of raising more money from rent to invest in the railways. As often neglected former industrial quarters in cities including Manchester and Glasgow became destinations, rents started to rise, doubling overnight at their garage, the Chu family say. Meanwhile some arches were targeted for redevelopment.

Planning notices first appeared on Morning Lane in 2009. Two years later, Mehmet Erkant remembers the pain his father felt when the family’s MOT centre and secondhand car business were forced out, later to make way for Gieves & Hawkes. Emir Erkant, who died in 2021, had moved to London from Cyprus in the 70s and set up shop in the arches in the 80s. “It was more lively in the old days, even if it was a poor place,” says Mehmet, 41. “We’d do a barbecue every Friday, invite people over and have fun … He put so much into that place.”

The London riots coincided with the evictions, and the search by Jack Basrawy for a site on which to develop an urban fashion outlet. Basrawy, who is 60 and has had a string of tourism and retail businesses in London, heard that Hackney had riots funding to contribute to something new on Morning Lane. He saw great potential in Hackney Central where, he would later say, “People come because it’s human, a little bit gritty and cool, and very much part of the London experience.” (When I reach him by phone, he declines to talk to me about Hackney Walk or respond to any questions.)

If there was a kernel of logic in Basrawy’s master plan, it was that Hackney Central’s industrial history included textile factories, such as the one operated by Burberry on Chatham Place, which joins Morning Lane opposite the arches. The luxury brand has had a successful retail outlet there since the 90s, which now sits next to the site of the old factory. The glossy, cavernous store became a destination for tourists, who still swoop in by taxi or tour bus to peruse £230 pairs of trainers (down from £670) and similarly discounted coats for £800.

If people were prepared to travel from central London all the way out to Morning Lane for one brand, why not others? Yet Basrawy was determined not only to attract tourists but, as he put it in 2016, locals and Londoners who “want to be able to see and touch – and hopefully afford to buy” designer clothing.

* * *

Guy Nicholson, Hackney council’s deputy mayor, with a brief for regeneration, was one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the project. The success of Burberry, the area’s fashion heritage and Basrawy’s promise of jobs and opportunity had convinced the council that his vision was worth investing in. As well as the £1.5m of riots funding from the London mayor’s office, it added £135,000 from its own coffers to be used for community engagement and “public realm improvements”.

I meet Nicholson, 62, in a drab meeting room in the handsome art deco Hackney town hall, a short walk from the Morning Lane arches. He worked in theatre design before a friend suggested his energy and problem-solving skills might make him suited to politics. He won election as a councillor in Hackney, where he lived, in 1998. “We all wanted to be the Tony Blairs of tomorrow,” he says. But before long “that ambition had been washed away and we were confronted with a pretty grim reality”.

Hackney had become bankrupt – and a national embarrassment for the new Labour government – after years of unchecked spending and political instability, and Nicholson was part of the team tasked with reversing the rot. “It was a time when burnt-out cars littered the place, street lights didn’t work and people felt unsafe at night,” he says. “If you could move out, you moved out.”

Nicholson remembers lamenting not only the terrible state of schools and services, but the poor choice for consumers: “There were cafes where you could get a bacon sandwich, and the street markets were functioning, but it wasn’t a place where commerce and enterprise really thrived.”

Yet pockets of Hackney were rapidly gentrifying, thanks to the borough’s proximity to the city centre, handsome housing stock and the creative energy of young artists who were finding cheap digs in areas such as Hoxton Square in the 90s. Nicholson had moved to Homerton, the ward in which the Morning Lane arches sit, in the late 80s. “We were probably yuppies, you know, in the day,” he says.

Private investment washed in as developers sought to capitalise on Hackney’s growing cachet. Shoreditch House, an outpost for the Soho House private members’ club, opened in 2007 in a 1930s building once occupied by the Lipton tea company. A year earlier, Hackney had taken Nike to court after it used the council’s logo in a range of football clothing (Nike settled the case and gave Hackney £300,000). “Suddenly this Hackney brand started to gain strength,” Nicholson says.

In 2010 the prime minister, David Cameron, came to Shoreditch to announce plans to turn part of Hackney into a tech hub for startups to rival Silicon Valley. “Placemaking” – creating destinations – had become a buzzword among local authorities and developers, and Nicholson was receptive to Basrawy’s big idea. He remembers the arches on Morning Lane as “marginal businesses operating in a marginal economy” and saw potential in a largely privately funded bid to boost opportunities for young people in a neglected part of the borough. “If people are concerned about gentrification, rather than just complaining about it, use it,” he says. The private sector “brings with it a deal of resource and investment, and that isn’t necessarily about cash but investment into people’s lives. That underpins our public sector principles.” He hesitates before adding, “But it’s difficult to translate that into the commercial sector.”

* * *

In October 2013, Hackney council granted permission for the new development on Morning Lane. The application, which followed a separate bid to transform the arches, was more ambitious than what would be built. It included an eight-storey glass-walled building on the corner of Chatham Place and Morning Lane (which would have meant demolishing the Duke of Wellington pub) and a five-storey building opposite.

Basrawy headed up Chatham Works Limited, one of two companies initially behind the plans. The other was the Manhattan Loft Corporation, headed by Harry Handelsman, a pioneer of 90s London loft living and developer of the A-list favourite Chiltern Firehouse restaurant, the restored former Midland Grand hotel at St Pancras station and a £300m skyscraper in Stratford.

Jobs and opportunities would be central to their plans, they said, and to the council’s support for them. As well as high-end outlets, there would be a “stitch academy” with apprenticeships and equipment for use, as well as support for local designers, including Hackney Shop, a rent-free sales space that had already opened in an old discounted bed store. The council said at least half of the planned 400 jobs would go to local residents.

There was a lot of scepticism. The Hackney Society, which campaigns to preserve the borough’s heritage, doubted the scheme could attract enough people to a relatively isolated area cut through by a busy road. In 2013 it wrote: “The Fashion Hub is ultimately a grand, exciting and innovative idea, but rapidly implanted in the wrong place and without major infrastructure changes needed to support it.”

There were problems with the development right up to the opening in 2016. Work had not started on the two larger buildings that were central to the project, making the gold-shuttered arches its focus. Handelsman says the buildings were jettisoned when the Manhattan Loft Corporation sold its stake after receiving “an acceptable offer”. He declined to say why he had pulled out, and did not respond to other criticisms of the scheme.

Someone close to the project at its launch, who prefers not to be named, describes it as “just amateurish … The shutters never worked properly, the arches leaked, you couldn’t tell where the shops were because there was no signage and the windows were so dark, you couldn’t see the clothes.” A marketing agency was due to plaster the nearby Hackney Central station with advertising. “They called it ‘station domination’,” the insider says, “but it turned out to be basically one of those signs you hang on railings when you’re promoting a funfair.” The finances didn’t seem to add up – “They were giving a lot away to get people in there” – and opening day was chaotic. With hours to go, one retailer pointed out there was no wifi or phone lines to make it possible to operate the tills. “There were design issues, the leasing structure was a disaster – it was a case study for what not to do.”

Owusu-Fordwuo saw a strange symbolism in the arches’ design. Here was a £100m scheme, built and partly funded as a result of social unrest that involved smashing shops, imposed on a deprived community, with gilded shutters designed to protect windows and the luxury goods behind them. “It’s like: ‘You can’t smash these windows!’” Owusu-Fordwuo says. “It feels like the design of it was always meant to be exclusive.”

* * *

In early 2017, Hackney council put even more faith in Basrawy by agreeing to a deal by which it would buy the larger Tesco site for £55m and give Hackney Walk a five-year option to put in an application for its redevelopment. The alternative, the council tells me, would have been to leave the site, which Tesco intended to sell anyway, to the free market. The council included the five-year limit because it was aware of the situation next door at the fashion hub. But no planning application for the Tesco site would materialise. And in July 2017, Basrawy – the passionate founder and chairman of Hackney Walk – sold his stake in the arches to LabTech, a property company that owns Camden Market in north London and is owned by Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi. (LabTech says it left the scheme in 2020.)

Basrawy, who still owned other properties that were part of the master plan, later insisted that almost all the arches had been occupied when he left them. “It was a success,” he said, adding, “I believe Hackney Central has great potential and the scheme will evolve over time.”



To think you could just repurpose the arches and it would all work was a misunderstanding of how cities operate

It did not evolve. By October 2019, all but four retailers had abandoned their arches as the promised footfall failed to materialise. Hackney Walk’s official Instagram feed’s last post, in March 2019, had been a promotion for the Matches Fashion store, with a photo of designer handbags and hashtags including #grittyprettylondon and #london4all. One by one, stores continued to leave until the pandemic prompted an exodus. When they were permitted to reopen after lockdown restrictions were lifted, only Present and Nike did so.

The empty arches and shops were left to decline. The weeds grew back. Since Basrawy’s option to redevelop the Tesco supermarket expired in 2022, the store has remained well used and is the subject of a campaign to preserve a community function for the site. Nike abandoned its store in late 2022. Pelin Gok, who works opposite at Gabba, a furniture store that replaced Pringle in the old pub, says Nike’s exit killed what little footfall remained. “Now it really is a ghost town,” she says.

The Basrawy family’s only visible presence appears to be The Box, a space down an alleyway off Chatham Place where luxury brands host sample sales. It is run by Basrawy’s daughter, Natalie Yaffe, who also declined to talk to me. The dream of a fashion hub in Hackney is dead and the fate of Morning Lane and its abandoned arches is uncertain as a complex web of landlords and lenders to the scheme work out what to do.

Someone with knowledge of one of the financing deals behind the scheme tells me it failed because nobody could afford, or was willing to fund, the vast marketing and advertising budget that would have been required to draw sufficient crowds to a relatively isolated corner of London. As Francesca Froy, the urban development academic, says, the “build it and they will come” approach to 21st-century placemaking is flawed.

“People often think you can plan where economic activity is going to succeed, whereas actually it’s businesses that find the places that are going to work for them. And those that had found the arches in the past were car-repair firms and other light industry. To think you could just repurpose the arches and it would all work was a misunderstanding of how cities operate.”

At Hackney town hall, Guy Nicholson says he genuinely believed Hackney Walk could work. He says he despairs at the council’s powerlessness in the face of its failure. “It’s very disappointing because nothing’s happened – it’s just empty. And the council has been frustrated in trying to change that. Civil servants can’t talk to anybody or broker anything, and there’s still no conversation about what is going to happen next.”

These aren’t the only arches facing challenges. In 2015, not long before the grand opening on Morning Lane, a Network Rail report included a proposal to sell off assets not essential for the running of the railways to help plug a huge funding gap. Many tenants accused Network Rail of increasing rents in this sale period to boost the valuation – something it has always denied. A spokesperson says Network Rail only charges market value rents for its commercial property and has always worked with tenants to negotiate stepped increases or find alternative space. “Any uplift in rent achieved was revenue directly reinvested back into the railway.”

Either way, tenants reported rent hike demands in some arches by up to 500%. In London and other big former industrial cities such as Manchester, railway arches were becoming a gentrification battleground. Nhi Chu and Hickman launched Guardians of the Arches in 2017 to campaign against the sale and extreme rent hikes. In February 2019 Network Rail completed the sale of its arches as part of a £1.46bn deal with a joint venture made up of Telereal Trillium, part of the London-based William Pears property empire, and Blackstone, the largest commercial landlord in history.

These corporate giants created the Arch Company, known as ArchCo, to let and manage thousands of arches, including the dozen on Morning Lane, which were by then being vacated. Want an empty 327 sq metre arch under a railway line in Southwark in south London? That’ll be £113,400 a year including VAT.

Whereas Network Rail, a public sector body without shareholders, had been motivated to maximise the value of its commercial properties to help keep the crumbling railways going, ArchCo was beholden to corporate interests. Guardians of the Arches has criticised the company for continuing to increase rents and for giving new businesses less secure tenancy agreements. “We’ve had so many people move out, they can’t keep doubling the rents any more,” Hickman says.

ArchCo tells me it only charges market rents and offers support to tenants dealing with rent inflation, including discounts and help with relocation. According to its tenants’ charter, it was a condition of its purchase of the arches that new leases exclude “security of tenancy” to ensure Network Rail retains access to the railways for major works. ArchCo advises any tenant changing to a new lease to seek professional advice.

The challenge on Morning Lane will be encouraging people to move in. ArchCo has now submitted an application to Hackney council to bin the broken gold shutters and remove restrictions that required stores to be in the fashion trade. The company tells me it is planning to invest £1.2m in the arches to return them to use, but won’t predict what rents are likely to be.

* * *

On another visit to Morning Lane, I meet Luke Billingham, who grew up in Hackney and is now an academic researcher specialising in youth violence while also working at Hackney Quest alongside Owusu-Fordwuo. He looks back on the rise and fall of Hackney Walk with despair. In its early stages, he was struck by some of the language used by the developers. As well as describing Hackney as “gritty and cool”, Basrawy also later said his strategy was “based on our belief that the changing demographics of east London mean there is a big market for luxury in this part of the city”. “Presumably he felt Hackney had just enough social problems to make it seem thrillingly risky, but enough social cleansing to make it ready for some luxury shops,” Billingham wrote in 2021. He compares Hackney Walk with the 2012 Olympics site just a mile to the east, where, after the games, the promised level of affordable housing failed to materialise.

Related: Rent-free revival: ‘dead’ Poole shopping street brought back to life

“There are people who’ve made their life here, experienced all the wonderful things in Hackney, but a lot of difficulties, too,” he says. “And then developers basically look down on it as their little plaything.”

One of Owusu-Fordwuo’s gripes has been the lack of meaningful engagement with locals, including groups as central to the community as Hackney Quest. “I don’t know anyone who has been consulted,” he says. “I’ve spent my whole life in this part of Hackney and I feel like this was built in opposition to me.” Experience would make him hesitate even if an email were to land in his inbox, he adds. “It’s dangerous territory. People like me get used as pawns. ‘Community consultation’ and ‘co-create’ are becoming increasingly popular, but they’re just buzzwords. They just stick some poor people in a room, get someone to facilitate it, then forget about them later. It’s extractive and paternalistic.”

No one I speak to believes this section of Morning Lane, as it was in 2009, could not have benefited from investment. Even Mehmet Erkant, whose family garage got kicked out, recognises that many of the other arches were in poor condition. But he wasn’t alone in thinking a luxury fashion hub might not be the answer.

As Owusu-Fordwuo surveys what remains of that grand vision – the broken shutters and empty stores – he tells me these spaces have been abandoned but not forgotten. “In this cost of living crisis, when space is at a premium, people are still angry,” he says as a train rolls past. “They’re not going to let this happen again.”