NAKBA 2
With communications down, UNRWA warns there will be no aid deliveries across Rafah
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 17, 2023
Despite the dire need for humanitarian aid in Gaza, there would be no deliveries across the Rafah border crossing from Egypt on Friday, according to the communications director for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Gaza appeared to be left with downed communications systems for a second day Friday, halting cross-border deliveries of humanitarian supplies even as aid agencies warned that most people in the Gaza Strip already do not have adequate food or clean water. A severe lack of fuel in the Gaza Strip shut down all internet and phone networks Thursday, the main Palestinian telecom provider said, effectively cutting off the besieged territory from the outside world.
“We have seen fuel and food and water and humanitarian assistance being used as a weapon of war,” Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, said Thursday.
At least 11,470 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors — have been killed since the war began, according to Palestinian health authorities, who do not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people are reported missing.
Israel vowed to wipe out Hamas after the militant group launched its Oct. 7 incursion. Some 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial attack, and around 240 were taken captive by militants.
Currently:
— Thousands of bodies lie buried in rubble in Gaza. Families dig to retrieve them, often by hand.
— As the battle for Gaza rages, families of hostages wait with trepidation.
— Under a communication blackout, Gaza’s 2.3 million people are cut off from each other and the world.
— Turkey’s Erdogan is visiting Germany as differences over the Israel-Hamas war widen.
— Cease-fire protests shut down bridges in Boston and San Francisco.
— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Here’s what's happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
AFGHANISTAN DENOUNCES ISRAEL'S ONGOING STRIKES IN GAZA
ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration denounced the ongoing Israeli strikes in Gaza, including the raid on Shifa Hospital. In an overnight statement, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Israeli forces were continually breaking all rules of war.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan called on the United Nations and other human rights bodies, saying that “if they genuinely believe in their stated values, they must prevent the ongoing brutalities by adopting an honest, transparent & just position vis-a-vis crimes against humanity carried out by the zionists against the people of Gaza," the statement read, referring to Jews who seek to regain and retain their biblical homeland.
It also asked Arab and Islamic countries “to respond to the cries of the oppressed Muslims of Gaza, & to fulfill their religious & human responsibility through effective & meaningful positions & steps.”
The Taliban-led administration seized power in 2021, and since then the U.N. and other human rights groups have blamed it for human rights violations.
In September, the U.N. said it documented more than 1,600 cases of human rights violations committed by authorities in Afghanistan during arrests and detentions of people. At the time, it urged the Taliban government to stop torture and protect the rights of detainees. The report by the mission’s Human Rights Service covered 19 months — from January 2022 until the end of July 2023 — with cases documented across 29 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. It said 11% of the cases involved women.
SEVERAL ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES HIT NEAR DAMASCUS, SYRIA'S STATE NEWS AGENCY SAYS
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s state news agency says Israel’s military has carried out strikes that hit several posts near the capital, Damascus, causing material damage but no casualties.
SANA quoted an unnamed military official as saying that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles before they reached their targets early Friday.
There has been no confirmation from the Israeli military.
In the weeks since the latest war between Israel and Hamas broke out, Syria reported Israeli airstrikes that hit the international airports in Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, damaging their runways and putting them out of service.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, including attacks on the Damascus and Aleppo airports, but rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 17, 2023
Despite the dire need for humanitarian aid in Gaza, there would be no deliveries across the Rafah border crossing from Egypt on Friday, according to the communications director for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Gaza appeared to be left with downed communications systems for a second day Friday, halting cross-border deliveries of humanitarian supplies even as aid agencies warned that most people in the Gaza Strip already do not have adequate food or clean water. A severe lack of fuel in the Gaza Strip shut down all internet and phone networks Thursday, the main Palestinian telecom provider said, effectively cutting off the besieged territory from the outside world.
“We have seen fuel and food and water and humanitarian assistance being used as a weapon of war,” Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, said Thursday.
At least 11,470 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors — have been killed since the war began, according to Palestinian health authorities, who do not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people are reported missing.
Israel vowed to wipe out Hamas after the militant group launched its Oct. 7 incursion. Some 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial attack, and around 240 were taken captive by militants.
Currently:
— Thousands of bodies lie buried in rubble in Gaza. Families dig to retrieve them, often by hand.
— As the battle for Gaza rages, families of hostages wait with trepidation.
— Under a communication blackout, Gaza’s 2.3 million people are cut off from each other and the world.
— Turkey’s Erdogan is visiting Germany as differences over the Israel-Hamas war widen.
— Cease-fire protests shut down bridges in Boston and San Francisco.
— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Here’s what's happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
AFGHANISTAN DENOUNCES ISRAEL'S ONGOING STRIKES IN GAZA
ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s Taliban-led administration denounced the ongoing Israeli strikes in Gaza, including the raid on Shifa Hospital. In an overnight statement, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Israeli forces were continually breaking all rules of war.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan called on the United Nations and other human rights bodies, saying that “if they genuinely believe in their stated values, they must prevent the ongoing brutalities by adopting an honest, transparent & just position vis-a-vis crimes against humanity carried out by the zionists against the people of Gaza," the statement read, referring to Jews who seek to regain and retain their biblical homeland.
It also asked Arab and Islamic countries “to respond to the cries of the oppressed Muslims of Gaza, & to fulfill their religious & human responsibility through effective & meaningful positions & steps.”
The Taliban-led administration seized power in 2021, and since then the U.N. and other human rights groups have blamed it for human rights violations.
In September, the U.N. said it documented more than 1,600 cases of human rights violations committed by authorities in Afghanistan during arrests and detentions of people. At the time, it urged the Taliban government to stop torture and protect the rights of detainees. The report by the mission’s Human Rights Service covered 19 months — from January 2022 until the end of July 2023 — with cases documented across 29 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. It said 11% of the cases involved women.
SEVERAL ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES HIT NEAR DAMASCUS, SYRIA'S STATE NEWS AGENCY SAYS
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s state news agency says Israel’s military has carried out strikes that hit several posts near the capital, Damascus, causing material damage but no casualties.
SANA quoted an unnamed military official as saying that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles before they reached their targets early Friday.
There has been no confirmation from the Israeli military.
In the weeks since the latest war between Israel and Hamas broke out, Syria reported Israeli airstrikes that hit the international airports in Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, damaging their runways and putting them out of service.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, including attacks on the Damascus and Aleppo airports, but rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.
Palestinians say Israeli settlers are seizing West Bank homes by force
DEBORA PATTA, AGNES REAU
November 16, 2023
East Jerusalem — Just to enter the driveway of his own home in East Jerusalem, Sa'adat Gharib must pass through a gate controlled remotely by Israeli security forces. Gharib's home is on his family's ancestral land, but it has been surrounded by an imposing metal fence, sitting within a cage encircled by Israeli settlements.
Gharib said the settler communities were built around his home — illegally — when he was a child. He said the settlers have offered to pay him whatever he wants to leave, but he has refused. He told CBS News that his family, including his young children, have been threatened.
Sa'adat Gharib stands with his children at the entrance to their home in East Jerusalem, which is entirely surrounded by an Israeli settlement - and a high security fence - in mid-November 2023. / Credit: CBS News/Agnes Reau
Gharib said his 11-year-old son Sabri was detained for six hours after his soccer ball rolled close to the settlements. Asked about it, Sabri grinned with youthful bravado and insisted he wasn't scared.
"But I was," piped up his sister.
The circumstances have taken a toll on Gharib.
"As a father I feel broken inside, because my children are unable to play outside like other kids," he said.
Patrolling just on the other side of the fence, armed with a rifle, we found Israeli settler Jonathan Landman. He said he was "a man of peace," and that the fence was built to keep him and the other settlers safe. He was born there, on land he insisted that his mother purchased.
Settler Jonathan Landman speaks with CBS News through the fence that separates Palestinian Sa'adat Gharib's family home from the surrounding Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, Nov. 9, 2023. / Credit: CBS News/Agnes Reau
"When you live here all of your life… you get afraid and you need to protect yourself," he said. "If the Palestinians leave their guns, we will live in peace here… If the Israelis leave their guns, they will kill us."
The West Bank, the much larger of the two Palestinian territories, is occupied by Israeli security forces. It's made up of rugged, limestone hills dotted with olive groves — land that is at the very heart of this conflict.
Some 700,000 Israelis live in settlements scattered across the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem.
An aerial photo shows Sa'adat Gharib's family home, surrounded by a high security fence in the middle of an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, Nov. 9, 2023. / Credit: CBS News
The settlements are regarded as illegal under international law, but they've been encouraged by Israel's current government, which swung sharply to the right when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a coalition with parties that had long existed on the fringes of Israeli politics.
Israeli civilians, including settlers, are increasingly well-armed, and they're also increasingly emboldened. Since the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers launched their bloody Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel — in which Israel says about 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage — the West Bank has reached boiling point, and there's fear it could spark a civil uprising.
The Ministry of Health in the West Bank says almost 200 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since Oct. 7, and the United Nations humanitarian relief agency OCHA says almost 1,150 people have been displaced from their homes there due to settler violence and land access restrictions.
Among those displaced are around 400 men, women and children from ethnic Bedouin families in the village of Wadi Al Seeq, according to Abu Basher, an elder from the community of Arab herders. He shared cellphone video with CBS News that appears to show armed settlers forcing him and others to leave at gunpoint at the end of October.
"People were bleeding, and women and children were screaming," he said. "I was terrified my wife and children would be slaughtered."
Basher said the settlers destroyed their homes and property, even their local school, and stole money, cellphones and valuable livestock.
"I am so depressed. All my hard work over the past 48 years…all gone," he said. "I still haven't processed the shock… I have lost all hope."
Some of the displaced Bedouins have been living in tents on land belonging to a neighbor — temporary shelter while they try to get back on their feet.
A Bedouin Palestinian man sits with his children in a tent on a neighbor's property in the West Bank, Nov. 11, 2023, after hundreds of members of their community were allegedly forced from their homes in the village of Wadi al Seeq by Israeli settlers. / Credit: CBS News/Agnes Reau
Activist Mohammed Mattar was helping protect the Bedouins after they said they'd received death threats from the settlers, but it turned out it was Mattar who needed protecting.
He said settlers kidnapped him and two others, stripped them naked and then beat and tortured them for more than eight hours.
A photo provided by Palestinian activist Mohammed Mattar shows bruises he says he got from Israeli settlers who kidnapped him in the West Bank. / Credit: Courtesy of Mohammed Mattar
"After that we were in a state of collapse," he said. "Then someone started to pee on us. That's when I started screaming." At one point, he said Israeli soldiers joined in the abuse. An Israeli military commander has since been dismissed and an investigation opened, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The settlers even bragged about it, posting an image on social media showing the bruised men blindfolded with their hands bound.
"The settlers believe if you're Arab… they can do anything they want," he said. "They can take your blood, your money, your women… anything."
An image shared online by Israeli settlers in the West Bank shows three Palestinian men, including, at right, activist Mohammed Mattar Mattar, who told CBS News they were all kidnapped and tortured for hours by the settlers amid Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Mattar's bruises have healed and, despite his ordeal, his desire for justice has only strengthened. He will take the Bedouins' case to court, he said, but only once the war is over.
The Bedouin herders put on a brave face for the sake of their children, but they told CBS News it felt as if they were in a dark tunnel with no light at the end. Winter is coming, and they're terrified of what a future without their land might hold.
Israel now occupies Gaza having completely destroyed it - so what does it do with the smouldering ruins?
Sky News
Thu, November 16, 2023
Israel is approaching the end of the first phase of its operation in Gaza and with it comes a dilemma.
"You break it, you own it," US secretary of state Colin Powell warned President Bush ahead of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, quoting signs in US department stores meant for customers.
The same principle applies to Israel with northern Gaza. Sporadic fighting goes on but it effectively controls the top third of the territory and has comprehensively broken the area as a place to live.
Israel has its reasons for flattening it. It says it has used artillery and air strikes "professionally" to protect its soldiers and that ultimate blame lies with Hamas.
But either way, it has pulverised most of the zone it now occupies to rubble and is well on the way to erasing Gaza City from the map.
So what does it do with the smouldering ruins?
Follow live: Biden warns Israel of 'big mistake' after war
Israel doesn't look like it wants to own what it has broken. It has not followed its military campaign with any largescale humanitarian operation, though it has a duty to do so.
Israeli spokesman Mark Regev has told Sky News this is not the time for that, with fighting still going on. But that seems disingenuous.
It is clear that any fighting in northern Gaza is increasingly limited and largely confined to night-time. More importantly there are no signs of Israel preparing such a humanitarian mission.
Mr Regev estimates a million people have now moved south on the Israeli military's urging.
Inside Gaza our correspondent Mark Stone and his cameraman Richie Mockler have documented what that looks like.
They've witnessed utterly miserable scenes belonging to another century as Palestinians line up to file away from their completely devastated neighbourhoods.
By Mr Regev's figures, that leaves an estimated 200,000 people behind.
Israel is now the occupying force in northern Gaza. Under the rules of law it has obligations to the civilian population whose homes it has utterly broken. So far, it says it has brought in 300 litres of fuel, boxes of medical aid and a few incubators.
That is the here and now. Israel faces an even bigger dilemma over what it does next.
It could call it quits and give up what it's broken. There's talk of pulling out, leaving Arab neighbours and the West to put Gaza back together. But that could leave the field clear for Hamas to return, as it has every time in the past. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised this time to destroy it for good.
His political survival depends on it.
It could double down. Hamas forces still prevail in two thirds of the Gaza Strip. If Israel is serious about eradicating its threat it will need to go after them. But really? In an area already one of the most densely populated on Earth that's now been swelled by another million? It seems inconceivable, even if the mission remains Israel's stated war aim.
Or there's a halfway house. Staying in, but only in the north and not pressing south.
Read more:
Inside Gaza's 'humanitarian corridors'
Labour frontbenchers quit over Gaza ceasefire vote
Village caught in crossfire 'could turn into battlefield'
Mr Netanyahu insists Israel will keep control of security in Gaza which implies a lasting presence on the ground of some sort.
That will suit his far-right partners in government just fine because it destroys even further the chances of a viable Palestinian state, something they vehemently oppose.
But in Washington the Biden administration is warning against anything approaching reoccupation because it jeopardises the only hope for peace in the region, however remote, that ever elusive two-state solution.
Read more:
What is the two-state solution for Israel and Palestinians?
Potential donor countries whose support could rebuild Gaza want the same. They will demand signs of progress towards peace before pouring in the billions needed to rebuild broken Gaza.
A divided, destroyed Gaza, still under Israeli occupation, may satisfy Mr Netanyahu's far-right partners in government for their own ideological reasons. But the Biden administration won't tolerate that outcome for long.
Israel relies on America for military aid and diplomatic support and cannot afford to alienate its patrons indefinitely.
Mr Netanyahu relies on his far-right partners to stay in power.
Patrons and partners. Israel's leader cannot please both and will need to choose between them sometime soon.
Sky News
Thu, November 16, 2023
Israel is approaching the end of the first phase of its operation in Gaza and with it comes a dilemma.
"You break it, you own it," US secretary of state Colin Powell warned President Bush ahead of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, quoting signs in US department stores meant for customers.
The same principle applies to Israel with northern Gaza. Sporadic fighting goes on but it effectively controls the top third of the territory and has comprehensively broken the area as a place to live.
Israel has its reasons for flattening it. It says it has used artillery and air strikes "professionally" to protect its soldiers and that ultimate blame lies with Hamas.
But either way, it has pulverised most of the zone it now occupies to rubble and is well on the way to erasing Gaza City from the map.
So what does it do with the smouldering ruins?
Follow live: Biden warns Israel of 'big mistake' after war
Israel doesn't look like it wants to own what it has broken. It has not followed its military campaign with any largescale humanitarian operation, though it has a duty to do so.
Israeli spokesman Mark Regev has told Sky News this is not the time for that, with fighting still going on. But that seems disingenuous.
It is clear that any fighting in northern Gaza is increasingly limited and largely confined to night-time. More importantly there are no signs of Israel preparing such a humanitarian mission.
Mr Regev estimates a million people have now moved south on the Israeli military's urging.
Inside Gaza our correspondent Mark Stone and his cameraman Richie Mockler have documented what that looks like.
They've witnessed utterly miserable scenes belonging to another century as Palestinians line up to file away from their completely devastated neighbourhoods.
By Mr Regev's figures, that leaves an estimated 200,000 people behind.
Israel is now the occupying force in northern Gaza. Under the rules of law it has obligations to the civilian population whose homes it has utterly broken. So far, it says it has brought in 300 litres of fuel, boxes of medical aid and a few incubators.
That is the here and now. Israel faces an even bigger dilemma over what it does next.
It could call it quits and give up what it's broken. There's talk of pulling out, leaving Arab neighbours and the West to put Gaza back together. But that could leave the field clear for Hamas to return, as it has every time in the past. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised this time to destroy it for good.
His political survival depends on it.
It could double down. Hamas forces still prevail in two thirds of the Gaza Strip. If Israel is serious about eradicating its threat it will need to go after them. But really? In an area already one of the most densely populated on Earth that's now been swelled by another million? It seems inconceivable, even if the mission remains Israel's stated war aim.
Or there's a halfway house. Staying in, but only in the north and not pressing south.
Read more:
Inside Gaza's 'humanitarian corridors'
Labour frontbenchers quit over Gaza ceasefire vote
Village caught in crossfire 'could turn into battlefield'
Mr Netanyahu insists Israel will keep control of security in Gaza which implies a lasting presence on the ground of some sort.
That will suit his far-right partners in government just fine because it destroys even further the chances of a viable Palestinian state, something they vehemently oppose.
But in Washington the Biden administration is warning against anything approaching reoccupation because it jeopardises the only hope for peace in the region, however remote, that ever elusive two-state solution.
Read more:
What is the two-state solution for Israel and Palestinians?
Potential donor countries whose support could rebuild Gaza want the same. They will demand signs of progress towards peace before pouring in the billions needed to rebuild broken Gaza.
A divided, destroyed Gaza, still under Israeli occupation, may satisfy Mr Netanyahu's far-right partners in government for their own ideological reasons. But the Biden administration won't tolerate that outcome for long.
Israel relies on America for military aid and diplomatic support and cannot afford to alienate its patrons indefinitely.
Mr Netanyahu relies on his far-right partners to stay in power.
Patrons and partners. Israel's leader cannot please both and will need to choose between them sometime soon.
Thousands of bodies lie buried in rubble in Gaza. Families dig to retrieve them, often by hand
WAFAA SHURAFA AND SAMY MAGDY
November 16, 2023
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The wreckage goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.
They are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their neighbors. All of them killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses are there, somewhere in the endless acres of destruction.
More than five weeks into Israel’s war against Hamas, some streets are now more like graveyards. Officials in Gaza say they don’t have the equipment, manpower or fuel to search properly for the living, let alone the dead.
Hamas, the militant group behind the deadly Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, has many of its bases within Gaza’s crowded neighborhoods. Israel is targeting those strongholds.
But the victims are often everyday Palestinians, many of whom have yet to be found.
Omar al-Darawi and his neighbors have spent weeks searching the ruins of a pair of four-story houses in central Gaza. Forty-five people lived in the homes; 32 were killed. In the first days after the attack, 27 bodies were recovered.
The five still missing were al-Darawi’s cousins.
They include Amani, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom who died with her husband and their four children. There’s Aliaa, 28, who was taking care of her aging parents. There’s another Amani, who died with her 14-year-old daughter. Her husband and their five sons survived.
“The situation has become worse every day,” said the 23-year-old, who was once a college journalism student. The smell has become unbearable.
“We can’t stop,” he said. “We just want to find and bury them” before their bodies are lost in the rubble forever.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the attacks have killed more than 11,200 people, two-thirds of them women and children. The U.N. humanitarian affairs office estimates that about 2,700 people, including 1,500 children, are missing and believed buried in the ruins.
The missing have added layers of pain to Gaza’s families, who are overwhelmingly Muslim. Islam calls for the dead to be buried quickly — within 24 hours if possible — with the shrouded bodies turned to face the holy city of Mecca. Traditionally, the body is washed by family members with soap and scented water, and prayers for forgiveness are said at the gravesite.
The search is particularly difficult in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where Israeli ground forces are battling Hamas militants. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled southward, terrified by the combat and pushed by Israeli warnings to evacuate. But even in the south, continued Israeli airstrikes and shelling mean nowhere is safe in the tiny territory.
The Palestinian Civil Defense department, Gaza’s primary search-and-rescue force, has had more than two dozen workers killed and over 100 injured since the war began, said Mahmoud Bassal, the department spokesman.
More than half of its vehicles are now either without fuel or have been damaged by strikes, he said.
In central Gaza, outside the northern combat zone, the area's civil defense director has no working heavy equipment at all, including bulldozers and cranes.
“We actually don’t have fuel to keep the sole bulldozer we have operating," said Rami Ali al-Aidei.
At least five large bulldozers are needed just to search a series of collapsed high-rise buildings in the coastal town of Deir al-Balah, he said.
This means that bodies, and the desperate people searching for them, are not the focus.
“We’re prioritizing areas where we think we will find survivors,” said Bassal.
As a result, the search for bodies often falls to relatives, or to volunteers like Bilal Abu Sama, a former freelance journalist.
He ticks off a handful of Deir al-Balah’s victims: 10 corpses still lost in what is left of the al-Salam Mosque; two dozen bodies missing in a destroyed home; 10 missing in another mosque attack.
“Will those bodies remain under the rubble until the war ends? OK, when will the war end?” said Abu Sama, 30, describing how families dig through the wreckage without any tools. “The bodies will be decomposed. Many of them have already decomposed.”
On Tuesday, 28 days after an airstrike flattened his home, Izzel-Din al-Moghari found his cousin’s body.
Twenty-four people from his extended family lived in the home, in the Bureij refugee camp. All but three were killed.
Eight are still missing.
A civil defense bulldozer came three days after the strike to clear the road, then left quickly for another collapsed building. The bulldozer came again Tuesday and helped find al-Moghari's cousin.
After finding his cousin, al-Moghari went back into the wreckage in search of his father and other relatives.
"I am stunned,” he said. “What we lived through is indescribable.”
Gaza has become a place where many families are denied even the comfort of a funeral.
Al-Darawi, the man searching for his cousins, understands that.
“Those who found their dead are lucky," he said.
WAFAA SHURAFA AND SAMY MAGDY
November 16, 2023
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The wreckage goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.
They are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their neighbors. All of them killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses are there, somewhere in the endless acres of destruction.
More than five weeks into Israel’s war against Hamas, some streets are now more like graveyards. Officials in Gaza say they don’t have the equipment, manpower or fuel to search properly for the living, let alone the dead.
Hamas, the militant group behind the deadly Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, has many of its bases within Gaza’s crowded neighborhoods. Israel is targeting those strongholds.
But the victims are often everyday Palestinians, many of whom have yet to be found.
Omar al-Darawi and his neighbors have spent weeks searching the ruins of a pair of four-story houses in central Gaza. Forty-five people lived in the homes; 32 were killed. In the first days after the attack, 27 bodies were recovered.
The five still missing were al-Darawi’s cousins.
They include Amani, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom who died with her husband and their four children. There’s Aliaa, 28, who was taking care of her aging parents. There’s another Amani, who died with her 14-year-old daughter. Her husband and their five sons survived.
“The situation has become worse every day,” said the 23-year-old, who was once a college journalism student. The smell has become unbearable.
“We can’t stop,” he said. “We just want to find and bury them” before their bodies are lost in the rubble forever.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the attacks have killed more than 11,200 people, two-thirds of them women and children. The U.N. humanitarian affairs office estimates that about 2,700 people, including 1,500 children, are missing and believed buried in the ruins.
The missing have added layers of pain to Gaza’s families, who are overwhelmingly Muslim. Islam calls for the dead to be buried quickly — within 24 hours if possible — with the shrouded bodies turned to face the holy city of Mecca. Traditionally, the body is washed by family members with soap and scented water, and prayers for forgiveness are said at the gravesite.
The search is particularly difficult in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, where Israeli ground forces are battling Hamas militants. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled southward, terrified by the combat and pushed by Israeli warnings to evacuate. But even in the south, continued Israeli airstrikes and shelling mean nowhere is safe in the tiny territory.
The Palestinian Civil Defense department, Gaza’s primary search-and-rescue force, has had more than two dozen workers killed and over 100 injured since the war began, said Mahmoud Bassal, the department spokesman.
More than half of its vehicles are now either without fuel or have been damaged by strikes, he said.
In central Gaza, outside the northern combat zone, the area's civil defense director has no working heavy equipment at all, including bulldozers and cranes.
“We actually don’t have fuel to keep the sole bulldozer we have operating," said Rami Ali al-Aidei.
At least five large bulldozers are needed just to search a series of collapsed high-rise buildings in the coastal town of Deir al-Balah, he said.
This means that bodies, and the desperate people searching for them, are not the focus.
“We’re prioritizing areas where we think we will find survivors,” said Bassal.
As a result, the search for bodies often falls to relatives, or to volunteers like Bilal Abu Sama, a former freelance journalist.
He ticks off a handful of Deir al-Balah’s victims: 10 corpses still lost in what is left of the al-Salam Mosque; two dozen bodies missing in a destroyed home; 10 missing in another mosque attack.
“Will those bodies remain under the rubble until the war ends? OK, when will the war end?” said Abu Sama, 30, describing how families dig through the wreckage without any tools. “The bodies will be decomposed. Many of them have already decomposed.”
On Tuesday, 28 days after an airstrike flattened his home, Izzel-Din al-Moghari found his cousin’s body.
Twenty-four people from his extended family lived in the home, in the Bureij refugee camp. All but three were killed.
Eight are still missing.
A civil defense bulldozer came three days after the strike to clear the road, then left quickly for another collapsed building. The bulldozer came again Tuesday and helped find al-Moghari's cousin.
After finding his cousin, al-Moghari went back into the wreckage in search of his father and other relatives.
"I am stunned,” he said. “What we lived through is indescribable.”
Gaza has become a place where many families are denied even the comfort of a funeral.
Al-Darawi, the man searching for his cousins, understands that.
“Those who found their dead are lucky," he said.
NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI
November 14, 2023
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Driven from her home by war and sheltering in a tent with no certainty of ever being able to return, elderly Palestinian refugee Abla Awad felt like history was repeating itself in a tragic, never-ending loop.
When she was a girl, she and her family were forced from their village, inside what is now Israel, to Gaza, during the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948, when Israel was created, an event Palestinians call the "Nakba", or catastrophe.
Now, she has had to abandon her home all over again, fleeing Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza to escape Israeli air strikes, and taking shelter with generations of her family in a tent city in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the enclave.
"I was five years old and I remember being displaced. Our families carried us along with their bags, and they took us to Gaza. I swear it's the same as what's happening today," said Awad, sitting outside her tent on a patch of sand.
"I was a little girl and now I am reliving the same thing ... Ever since I can remember, since I was five years old, I have been witnessing wars," she said, as her grandchildren ran around her, playfully darting in and out of the tent.
The latest war, between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, began when Hamas fighters rampaged through southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 Israelis, including babies and children, and taking 240 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
In response, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza and launched an air, sea and ground assault that has killed more than 11,000 people, most of them women and children, according to Gazan officials. An estimated two thirds of the enclave's 2.3 million residents have been made homeless.
"What did we do to them? Every few years they bring a new Nakba on us," said Awad, breaking down in tears.
"They displaced us from our home and brought us to Gaza. Now where will they send us? To Sinai? Where will they take us? Let them throw us in the sea, then they can rest without Gaza and the poor Palestinian people," she said.
Israel contests the assertion that it drove Palestinians out, highlighting that Arab armies attacked it the day after it was created, rejecting a United Nations partition plan that would have created a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The Israeli military has said its current war is against Hamas, not civilians, and that displaced people will be allowed home when it is over, but this has given little reassurance to Palestinians still suffering the consequences of the Nakba.
Most people in Gaza are registered as refugees, after they or their ancestors fled their homes in 1948.
On Tuesday, a senior far-right member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government said Gaza could not survive as an independent entity and it would be better for Palestinians there to leave for other countries.
The comments by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich are likely to reinforce fears in much of the Arab world that Israel wants to drive Palestinians out of land where they want to build a future state, repeating the Nakba.
"I can't take this anymore. I'm so tired of this life. We're so sick of this, oh God. Have mercy on us. Countries of the world, please look at us, have mercy on us. We're hungry. We've been displaced. How many more years?" said Awad, her voice full of despair.
(Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Christina Fincher)
JACK JEFFERY
November 14, 2023
CAIRO (AP) — It was the call Shaymma Alloh had been dreading, the news from Gaza she hoped would never come: The house where 26 members of her family were sheltering was hit by a missile strike.
Among the four confirmed deaths from the strike late Saturday was her 36-year-old brother, Hammam Alloh, a renowned physician who stayed in northern Gaza to help treat patients at Shifa Hospital, which has been encircled by Israeli troops for days.
He and many of his relatives were staying at his in-laws' home near the hospital because they had nowhere else to go. And that's where surviving family members found their bodies. One was disemboweled by the blast, two more buried in rubble, she said.
The dead included Shaymma Alloh's father and two in-laws, she told The Associated Press by phone Monday as she pieced together the tragedy from her home in the U.S. She declined to disclose her exact location out of concern about possible repercussions.
Her brother was a well-known kidney specialist at Gaza's largest hospital and had conducted several interviews with American news outlet "Democracy Now!" during the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. While thousands fled Shifa over the weekend after Israeli troops encircled the facility, Hammam chose to stay behind as did hundreds of patients and displaced people who were seeking safety on the hospital's grounds.
“You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?” he said to the outlet, explaining why he didn't flee. It was Oct. 31, his last interview.
The doctor's final days and violent death go to the core of battling narratives over how the war is conducted. Israel says it is striking Hamas fighters, while trying to avoid harm to civilians, and alleges that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. But its airstrikes and shelling, in retaliation for Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, have also killed thousands of women and children in Gaza. Palestinians and rights groups accuse Israel of recklessly harming civilians.
Last month, Israel urged all Palestinians to evacuate to the southern part of Gaza as it launched a ground invasion. Israel has since agreed to open daily windows during which civilians can flee northern Gaza along two main roads.
But tens of thousands of people remain in the north. Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targets across the territory, often killing civilians.
According to Shaymma, her entire extended family was staying with her brother at their in-laws' house, a 10-minute walk from the hospital, when the airstrike they blamed on Israel hit. They had no relatives or friends in the south who could house them.
She learned of the attack from her Qatar-based sister, who called after hearing that the neighborhood had been hit, she said.
After failing to reach her brother or her father, Mahmoud, she finally got in contact with her mother, Haifa, who was hiding in an adjacent building with female relatives. They were frozen with shock and fearful that another strike could come.
Eventually her mother was convinced to go into the upstairs room of the home to look for male relatives. That’s where she found Hammam’s body in the rubble, Shaymma said, retelling what she could of her mother’s story. With him were two men who were gravely wounded.
Next to her brother was the body of his father-in-law, whose stomach had been torn open. Their father was discovered hours later beneath the remnants of a destroyed concrete wall. Another in-law was also killed, but Shaymma, overwhelmed by grief, was unable to recount the precise circumstances of his death.
Shaymma said she was not able to provide the exact location of her in-laws' house as she has never been there. The Israeli army said it is only able to comment on individual strikes if provided with coordinates.
More than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. The vast majority have been killed in Israeli airstrikes. The ministry said it was forced to temporarily halt its count Friday because of the difficulty of collecting information.
At least 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed in Hamas' Oct. 7 assault. Palestinian militants are holding nearly 240 hostages seized in the raid. The military says more than 40 soldiers have been killed in ground operations in Gaza.
Throughout Sunday, Shaymma tried contacting several aid groups, including the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, in an attempt to get medical treatment for the two wounded male relatives. One had a deep neck wound, and both struggled to walk. She said she was told no ambulances could come to the area because it was too dangerous.
Then on Monday morning, the Israeli army made contact. She said a relative received a phone call telling the family to leave the house and head south waving a white flag.
She said her mother was distraught by the idea of leaving loved ones unburied and scared that the family might be targeted on the journey. But her daughter convinced her otherwise.
“You have to think about the living,” Shaymma said, recounting the conversation. “If you take the other choice, you might be bombed.”
Her female relatives and the two injured in-laws left the neighborhood Monday, she said, turning their phones off before they left to save battery power.
She made contact with her sister-in-law, Noor, on Monday evening and discovered they had not traveled far. They were at Shifa Hospital.
While passing by the hospital, she said her family had been warned by people sheltering there that the Israeli army was shooting at Palestinians fleeing south. So they decided to stay.
“While it's not completely safe," she said, "I am glad they are OK.”
___
Heartbreaking message from London student killed in Israeli airstrike who feared being trapped by rubble
ANDY WELLS
Updated 9 November 2023
Dr Maisara Alrayyes, 30, was a former alumni of King's College London and SOAS University.
A London student killed in a retaliatory Israeli airstrike told friend he was “terrified” as he lay under the rubble days before his death.
Dr Maisara Alrayyes, 30, a former alumni of King's College London (KCL) and SOAS University, was stuck under the rubble with his family for 30 hours before they died.
Now a message from Alrayyes sent to his former classmates has been shared by KCL’s Justice for Palestine society.
Recommended reading
Israel-Hamas war: What will it take for a ceasefire in Gaza?(Yahoo News)
Who are the British victims of the Israel-Hamas war?(Sky News)
Israel-Hamas war: What is the two-state solution?(HuffPost)
Can the Palestinian Authority lead a post-Hamas Gaza Strip?(France 24)
He wrote: “In the last few days, I'm starting to feel more terrified than ever.
“I imagine myself underneath the rubble, and I have a great fear of staying alive under the rubble."
According to a post shared by the society, rescuers struggled to reach Alrayyes and his family due to a blackout and they all died while trapped.
Palestinians inspect the damage of a destroyed house following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City. (AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Israel launched retaliatory strikes on Gaza after Hamas militants attacked southern Israeli towns on 7 October, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
It was the single worst day of bloodshed in Israel's 75-year history.
Palestinian authorities claim that over 10,000 civilians have since been killed in the strikes, which Israel says are targeting Hamas figures who are holed up in civilian buildings.
‘Lively and happy and joyful’
Friends of Alrayyes posted tributes to him following his death.
Anas Ismail posted on X: "My best friend Maisara Alrayyes and his family were killed in an Israeli airstrike two days ago. His two brothers who survived have been trying to get the bodies from under the rubble. Another airstrike killed the two brothers while they were getting the bodies out."
Another tribute on X by Ahmed Alnaouq before Maisara's death was announced, said: "My best friend Maisara came to London two months ago for his honeymoon. He was lively and happy and joyful.
“And now it is more than 30 hours since his home was bombed and no one can retrieve his body or the bodies of his family from under the rubble."
Israeli military are continuing their ground operations in Gaza. (Reuters) (Handout . / reuters)
Gaza strikes intensify
Israel continues to pound Gaza, with its forces fighting Hamas militants in the north on Thursday.
Residents in Gaza City – a militant stronghold in the north of the Hamas-ruled territory – said Israeli tanks were stationed around the city.
Israeli forces were moving closer to two hospitals where thousands of displaced Palestinians were seeking shelter, they said.
Israel, which has vowed to wipe out Hamas, says 33 of its soldiers have been killed in its ground operation.
Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City. (AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Israeli soldiers also discovered a Hamas weapons manufacturing and storage site in a residential building in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in northern Gaza, it said.
A humanitarian crisis has gripped the enclave, with basic supplies running out and buildings demolished by Israeli bombardments.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have fled the north of Gaza over Wednesday and Thursday seeking refuge from Israeli air strikes and the fierce ground fighting.
Israel has told residents to evacuate encircled northern parts of Gaza or risk being trapped in the violence.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
ANDY WELLS
Updated 9 November 2023
Dr Maisara Alrayyes, 30, was a former alumni of King's College London and SOAS University.
A London student killed in a retaliatory Israeli airstrike told friend he was “terrified” as he lay under the rubble days before his death.
Dr Maisara Alrayyes, 30, a former alumni of King's College London (KCL) and SOAS University, was stuck under the rubble with his family for 30 hours before they died.
Now a message from Alrayyes sent to his former classmates has been shared by KCL’s Justice for Palestine society.
Recommended reading
Israel-Hamas war: What will it take for a ceasefire in Gaza?(Yahoo News)
Who are the British victims of the Israel-Hamas war?(Sky News)
Israel-Hamas war: What is the two-state solution?(HuffPost)
Can the Palestinian Authority lead a post-Hamas Gaza Strip?(France 24)
He wrote: “In the last few days, I'm starting to feel more terrified than ever.
“I imagine myself underneath the rubble, and I have a great fear of staying alive under the rubble."
According to a post shared by the society, rescuers struggled to reach Alrayyes and his family due to a blackout and they all died while trapped.
Palestinians inspect the damage of a destroyed house following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City. (AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Israel launched retaliatory strikes on Gaza after Hamas militants attacked southern Israeli towns on 7 October, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
It was the single worst day of bloodshed in Israel's 75-year history.
Palestinian authorities claim that over 10,000 civilians have since been killed in the strikes, which Israel says are targeting Hamas figures who are holed up in civilian buildings.
‘Lively and happy and joyful’
Friends of Alrayyes posted tributes to him following his death.
Anas Ismail posted on X: "My best friend Maisara Alrayyes and his family were killed in an Israeli airstrike two days ago. His two brothers who survived have been trying to get the bodies from under the rubble. Another airstrike killed the two brothers while they were getting the bodies out."
Another tribute on X by Ahmed Alnaouq before Maisara's death was announced, said: "My best friend Maisara came to London two months ago for his honeymoon. He was lively and happy and joyful.
“And now it is more than 30 hours since his home was bombed and no one can retrieve his body or the bodies of his family from under the rubble."
Israeli military are continuing their ground operations in Gaza. (Reuters) (Handout . / reuters)
Gaza strikes intensify
Israel continues to pound Gaza, with its forces fighting Hamas militants in the north on Thursday.
Residents in Gaza City – a militant stronghold in the north of the Hamas-ruled territory – said Israeli tanks were stationed around the city.
Israeli forces were moving closer to two hospitals where thousands of displaced Palestinians were seeking shelter, they said.
Israel, which has vowed to wipe out Hamas, says 33 of its soldiers have been killed in its ground operation.
Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City. (AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Israeli soldiers also discovered a Hamas weapons manufacturing and storage site in a residential building in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in northern Gaza, it said.
A humanitarian crisis has gripped the enclave, with basic supplies running out and buildings demolished by Israeli bombardments.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have fled the north of Gaza over Wednesday and Thursday seeking refuge from Israeli air strikes and the fierce ground fighting.
Israel has told residents to evacuate encircled northern parts of Gaza or risk being trapped in the violence.
Additional reporting by Reuters.
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