Israel bombards northern and southern Gaza, many reported dead
Updated Sat, December 16, 2023 at 6:11 AM MST·5 min read
By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Ibraheem, Abu and Mustafa
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Israeli forces bombarded targets across Gaza on Saturday including a YMCA building, with dozens of Palestinians reported killed or wounded, despite a renewed U.S. call to scale down the campaign and focus on Hamas leaders.
In Khan Younis in the south, Palestinian health officials said the Nasser Hospital had received 20 Palestinians killed in air strikes overnight, in addition to dozens of wounded, including women and children.
Palestinian health officials also said Israeli strikes on Gaza City in the north had hit the YMCA headquarters, which is sheltering hundreds of displaced people and reported several dead and wounded.
The official WAFA news agency said at least three dozen people had been killed in strikes on three houses in the Jabalia refugee camp, which health officials were unable to confirm. Gaza's health ministry has said Israel's ground offensive and the targeting of medical facilities have made it hard to gather information about casualties in northern Gaza.
Rescue workers believed some casualties remained buried under the rubble in some of those areas.
Gaza residents also reported intense overnight fighting and bombardment in Sheijaia, Sheikh Radwan, Zeitoun, Tuffah and Beit Hanoun in the north, and in the centre, east and north of Khan Younis.
"The Gaza Strip turned into a ball of fire overnight, we could hear explosions and gunshots echoing from all directions," Ahmed, 45, an electrician and father of six, told Reuters from a shelter in central Gaza.
U.S. URGES ISRAEL TO NARROW ITS CAMPAIGN
President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, brought a message to Israel on Thursday and Friday to scale down the campaign and transition to more narrowly targeted operations against Hamas leaders, U.S. officials said.
During the visit, Israeli officials publicly emphasised that they would continue the war until they eradicate Hamas. Washington appeared to acknowledge disagreement, as Sullivan said the timing was under "intensive discussion" between the allies.
An Israeli military official said three hostages killed mistakenly in Gaza by Israeli forces had been holding up a white flag, according to an initial inquiry.
The incident happened in an area of intense combat where Hamas militants operate in civilian attire and use deception tactics, the official said, but the hostages were fired upon against Israel's rules of engagement.
Israel, which said it recovered the bodies of three other hostages killed by Hamas, believes around 20 of more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza are dead.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had bombed a building in Jabalia from the air after its forces came under fire and Hamas militants were seen on the roof. It was unclear if the building was one of those that WAFA said had been hit.
The military also said it had killed militants holed up in two school buildings in Gaza City, and raided apartments in Khan Younis stocked with weapons, uncovering what it described as underground infrastructure used by Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza and that Israel has vowed to destroy.
"Every day the situation gets worse. Food gets less, water gets worse, only death, fear and destruction get greater," said Samira, 40, a mother of four, who is displaced in Rafah, near the southern border with Egypt.
"I can't handle the children anymore. They're terrified and so am I. Every night we think it might be our last night. The bombing doesn’t stop," she told Reuters by phone.
With intense fighting across the Gaza Strip and aid organisations warning of a humanitarian catastrophe, the United States has said Israel risks losing international support with "indiscriminate" air strikes.
In a surprise cross-border attack on Oct. 7, Hamas militants rampaged through Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and capturing 240 hostages. Israel's counterattack has killed close to 19,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities, with thousands more feared buried under rubble.
COMBAT INTENSIFIES
Combat has intensified in the past two weeks since the collapse of a week-long truce that had allowed dozens of hostages to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli and Qatari officials were set to meet in Norway on Saturday in an effort to revive talks about the release of hostages in Gaza in return for a ceasefire and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In signs of the wider ramifications of the conflict, Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthis said they had attacked the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat with a swarm of drones, one of several drone incidents reported in the region on Saturday.
Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes over the past two months, many several times.
After Sullivan left, Israel said it would open the Kerem Shalom crossing, the main road link into Gaza, for aid shipments for the first time in the war, allowing in 200 trucks per day.
The U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said it had taken 1.4 million people into its facilities, now so overcrowded that there were 486 people for every toilet in its shelters in Rafah.
Around 1,000 refugees have been wounded in those shelters since Oct. 7 and at least 288 killed, along with 135 UNRWA workers, the agency said.
Tensions have also soared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces detained 16 Palestinians overnight, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Association, taking the number of arrests there since Oct. 7 to 4,520.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Shani and Fadi Shana in Gaza, Henriette Chacar, Ari Rabinovitch and Frank Jack Daniel in Jerusalem, Andrea Shalal, Jeff Mason and Eric Beech in Washington; Writing by Michael Perry, Kevin Liffey and Giles Elgood; Editing by William Mallard, Tom Hogue and Andrew Heavens)
Sam Fellman
BUSINESS INSIDER
Sat, December 16, 2023
Images of the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza capture similar scenes: Crowds of Palestinians gathering outdoors to stare at the craters where their roads had been, at the heaps of rubble that minutes or hours before had been their houses, apartment buildings, shops, schools, and mosques.
After more than two months of war, the tiny enclave resembles the shattered European and Japanese cities of World War II. Researchers estimate that at least a third of Gaza's housing is damaged or destroyed. Already over 18,700 Palestinians are dead and 50,500 injured, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, and roughly 90% of the population have fled their homes and face food shortages, no electricity, sanitation problems in overcrowded homes and shelters, and spreading disease.
Israeli society has mobilized to support the war and is largely united in the conviction that Hamas, the terror group that launched a murderous rampage from Gaza on October 7, must never again be allowed to threaten Israel. That paramount goal justifies and necessitates the use of maximum force. If Israeli leaders have a theory of what comes after, it is that Israel's retaliatory fury can serve as a wrecking ball to create the rubble from which a new social and political order in Gaza can arise.
But there are few signs Israel can achieve anything like this, and a growing chorus of international leaders and military experts are warning that Israel is pursuing a half-baked strategy that is forged from a national trauma and premised on a flawed assumption — that massive air power and ground battles can defeat a militancy that blends into the population. In fact, these experts say, it's much more likely that these tactics will simply create more enemy combatants and play directly into Hamas' hands.
Hamas' "very identity is based on the destruction of Israel and not working with Israel, so the notion that collective punishment is going to convince the population of Gaza to push Hamas to come to the negotiating table with Israel is just not going to happen," said Paul Poast, a University of Chicago professor specializing in international security. "If anything, they're able to use these very actions to say, 'Look, this is who we're dealing with. We're dealing with Israel. We've long told you that they don't care about you as people, and look.'"
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces told BI in a statement: "In response to Hamas' barbaric attacks, the IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities. In stark contrast to Hamas' intentional attacks on Israeli men, women and children, the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm." The IDF has said that the elevated level of Palestinian casualties are due to Hamas using them as human shields.
So far, Israel's efforts are not bearing much fruit. Hamas's top leaders remain at large, hiding in their extensive tunnels or among the 1.9 million refugees who have fled the violence. Israel's military estimates it has killed 5,000 Hamas militants, or just about 16% of Hamas' armed wing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that "we will continue to the end" on Wednesday, the day it was disclosed that nine Israeli troops died in an urban ambush; the IDF has lost at least 444 troops in the 10/7 attacks and the ground invasion. Israel's defense minister said Thursday that "it is not easy to destroy" Hamas' infrastructure and that Israel needs months more for its war.
One of the US' most influential former diplomats to the Middle East believes the conflict is likely to continue for at least three to four more weeks.
"There's a certain tension in objectives even from our own standpoint," said former Ambassador Dennis Ross, the lead envoy for peace negotiations in two US administrations, in a Tuesday phone call from Israel. "On the one hand, we want the Israelis to get this over as soon as possible. On the other hand, we want them to limit the way that they're doing it."
Asked if the military destruction of Hamas is achievable, Ross told BI: "I think the Israelis are going to do it, period. And in the end, whether they will do it on a timeline that we want — I don't know yet."
Sat, December 16, 2023
Images of the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza capture similar scenes: Crowds of Palestinians gathering outdoors to stare at the craters where their roads had been, at the heaps of rubble that minutes or hours before had been their houses, apartment buildings, shops, schools, and mosques.
After more than two months of war, the tiny enclave resembles the shattered European and Japanese cities of World War II. Researchers estimate that at least a third of Gaza's housing is damaged or destroyed. Already over 18,700 Palestinians are dead and 50,500 injured, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, and roughly 90% of the population have fled their homes and face food shortages, no electricity, sanitation problems in overcrowded homes and shelters, and spreading disease.
Israeli society has mobilized to support the war and is largely united in the conviction that Hamas, the terror group that launched a murderous rampage from Gaza on October 7, must never again be allowed to threaten Israel. That paramount goal justifies and necessitates the use of maximum force. If Israeli leaders have a theory of what comes after, it is that Israel's retaliatory fury can serve as a wrecking ball to create the rubble from which a new social and political order in Gaza can arise.
But there are few signs Israel can achieve anything like this, and a growing chorus of international leaders and military experts are warning that Israel is pursuing a half-baked strategy that is forged from a national trauma and premised on a flawed assumption — that massive air power and ground battles can defeat a militancy that blends into the population. In fact, these experts say, it's much more likely that these tactics will simply create more enemy combatants and play directly into Hamas' hands.
Hamas' "very identity is based on the destruction of Israel and not working with Israel, so the notion that collective punishment is going to convince the population of Gaza to push Hamas to come to the negotiating table with Israel is just not going to happen," said Paul Poast, a University of Chicago professor specializing in international security. "If anything, they're able to use these very actions to say, 'Look, this is who we're dealing with. We're dealing with Israel. We've long told you that they don't care about you as people, and look.'"
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces told BI in a statement: "In response to Hamas' barbaric attacks, the IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas military and administrative capabilities. In stark contrast to Hamas' intentional attacks on Israeli men, women and children, the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm." The IDF has said that the elevated level of Palestinian casualties are due to Hamas using them as human shields.
So far, Israel's efforts are not bearing much fruit. Hamas's top leaders remain at large, hiding in their extensive tunnels or among the 1.9 million refugees who have fled the violence. Israel's military estimates it has killed 5,000 Hamas militants, or just about 16% of Hamas' armed wing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that "we will continue to the end" on Wednesday, the day it was disclosed that nine Israeli troops died in an urban ambush; the IDF has lost at least 444 troops in the 10/7 attacks and the ground invasion. Israel's defense minister said Thursday that "it is not easy to destroy" Hamas' infrastructure and that Israel needs months more for its war.
One of the US' most influential former diplomats to the Middle East believes the conflict is likely to continue for at least three to four more weeks.
"There's a certain tension in objectives even from our own standpoint," said former Ambassador Dennis Ross, the lead envoy for peace negotiations in two US administrations, in a Tuesday phone call from Israel. "On the one hand, we want the Israelis to get this over as soon as possible. On the other hand, we want them to limit the way that they're doing it."
Asked if the military destruction of Hamas is achievable, Ross told BI: "I think the Israelis are going to do it, period. And in the end, whether they will do it on a timeline that we want — I don't know yet."
Palestinians stand on the edge of a crater after an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 3, 2023.Said Khatib/Getty Images
The bombing 'trap'
Israeli leaders frequently use World War II, which saw massive civilian casualties in bombing campaigns against large cities like Dresden, Berlin and Toyko, as a reference point in justifying a bombing campaign that struck 22,000 targets in the war's first two months. Historians call it "strategic bombing" — the practice of systematically striking a nation's economy and urban areas to try to damage its ability to wage war.
Netanyahu's office said in late October that accepting a ceasefire with Hamas was akin to the US's refusal to do so "after the bombing of Pearl Harbor," the surprise 1941 attack by Imperial Japan that plunged America into war. Similarly, Netanyahu parried questions about rising civilian deaths by referencing a WWII British raid that bombed a school in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen.
Biden appears to have gotten similar treatment. He said Netanyahu told him in a private discussion: "You carpet bombed Germany, you dropped the atom bomb, a lot of civilians died."
"Hamas conducted the massacre in a way that even the Nazis did not allow themselves to do," former Israeli ambassador Ido Aharoni told BI in a phone interview. "The Nazis were trying to hide their crimes. We don't have footage of Jews dying in the gas chambers, but Hamas did it enthusiastically, and they recorded themselves and they shared it with the world."
Aharoni, a career diplomat who is now a senior faculty member at Tel Aviv University, said that Israel must use its full force to shatter Hamas so it can never again threaten Israel, and if this imperative requires leveling swaths of Gaza and straining the access of its two million residents to food and water, then that's what is going to happen.
"What do you do philosophically when you deal with an enemy that doesn't value life? It's a big philosophical debate. So 10/7 helped us to rewrite the rules of how we fight Hamas. And we made a decision in this philosophical debate that we need to go all the way to take them out. And if the collateral damage is going to be dramatic, just as the collateral damage in Germany and just the collateral damage in Japan was dramatic, then so be it."
Aharoni continued: "It's unreasonable to expect Israel to go to war and expect Israel not to win the war at the same time."
U.S. Troops of the 3rd Armored Division, 1st U.S. Army, advance through the ruins of the city of Cologne, Germany on Mar. 8, 1945. Cologne was one of the German cities the Allies targeted in their strategic bombing campaign.AP Photo
The bombing campaign against Hamas-run Gaza is on pace proportionally with the destruction delivered in the strategic bombing of Nazi Germany. Yet our collective hazy memories of the so-called "Good War" may obscure the fact that, at best, the Allied strategic bombing of Germany didn't work — it likely led to the death of more Allied troops.
The common fallacy of the so-called "bomb the shit out of them" approach is that enough death and destruction creates a breaking point where the populace cracks and refuses to support its government or overthrows it. In Nazi Germany, for example, the Allies pursued a devastating bombing campaign against 92 cities and towns with the aim of fomenting dissent against dictator Adolf Hitler and degrading Germany's will to fight.
"That never happened, and the Wehrmacht fought hard all the way to the very end," said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor and scholar of military power. "There's really no case to make that the killing of German civilians in World War II by the Allied bombing hastened the end of the war. It did not produce political effects and, if anything, it stiffened the morale of the German fighters."
Pape is the author of "Bombing to Win," a landmark study of 40 strategic bombing campaigns in the 20th Century. Pape's research identified what he called an air power "trap" of mistaken thinking by military leaders, who often believe massive bombardment leads those bombed to capitulate.
"When you bomb the civilians, the local population gets more angry and more fearful at the same time," Pape said. "And what they're fearful of is being then occupied militarily by this country and military force that bombed them so mercilessly."
Nazi Germany's defeat may also be instructive for Israel's goal of a post-war Gaza free of Hamas, which the Israeli prime minister has vowed to "eliminate." The military defeat of the Nazis required a naval blockade, air power, and enormous armies closing in on Germany from two sides — and in its wake only about 200 of the top Nazi leaders were tried, leaving many responsible for atrocities untouched. Many Nazi Party members held positions of authority in postwar Germany, including 25 cabinet ministers and a chancellor. In other words, the new government was hardly de-Nazified.
Massive bombardment has had a checkered track record in the wars since. For instance, Poast, the University of Chicago professor and a colleague of Pape, said Israel's campaign in some ways resembles the US's expansion of strategic bombing into Laos and Cambodia, which ultimately failed to strangle North Vietnam and the Vietcong's supply lines and came at an estimated cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.
Smoke rises after bombing of Israeli forces with warplanes in Gaza City, October 7, 2023. Another munition can be seen falling toward a target.
Momen Faiz/NurPhoto via Getty Images
'Pumped up'
Israel faces long odds. Very few terror groups are defeated purely by military force; it's many times more likely they become part of a legitimate political process — an outcome that Israel has ruled out. In the throes of its war, Israel has struggled to define who will rule Gaza in Hamas' absence, or persuade its residents why this would be any better for them.
Aharoni, the former Israeli ambassador, said that the time for Israeli leaders to lay out that roadmap is only once Hamas' leaders are killed and its forces defeated. He said the end of the military campaign will likely spell the end of the Netanyahu government as well, but for now "the Israeli public is pumped up, united, high spirits. Everybody wants to help. I've never seen anything like it. The entire society is galvanized."
Even under mounting international pressure, the war is almost certain to continue. The thought of Hamas remaining in power, if diminished, is untenable to Israelis, an estimated quarter million of whom fled their homes after 10/7 and have not returned.
"If Hamas still looks like it's able to fire rockets into Israel, that's not an outcome that Israelis are going to accept," said Ross, the veteran US diplomat and peace negotiator who's also a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Residents and civil defense teams search for victims in the rubble of Israeli attacks on the Jabalia Camp in Gaza on Dec. 6, 2023.
Mahmoud Sabbah/Getty Images
'Payback' time
Another clear motive in Israel's war also motivated the strategic bombings of World War II — vengeance. Israel has an entire category of targets chosen for their significance to Hamas and whose destruction inflicts "tactical and mental damage," an anonymous Israeli military intelligence officer told the magazine IsraelDefense; the Israeli left-wing outlet +972 Magazine and the Hebrew language news site Local Call have reported that the IDF has expanded its targeting and tolerance of civilian casualties. Israel relies on an AI-driven target factory that is able to rapidly produce recommended targets, as BI's Jake Epstein has reported, and its air force is dropping both unguided munitions and 2,000-pound guided munitions that can be expected to bring death and destruction beyond their targets in Gaza's dense urban environment. Targeting videos publicized by the Israeli Air Force show it shattering buildings in Gaza it claims were used by Hamas, including their homes.
חיל-האוויר בשיתוף פעולה עם לוחמי חטיבת הצנחנים תקפו אמש (ב׳) בתים של מחבלי נ'חבה, וחיסלו מחבלים מארגון הטרור חמאס שהיוו איום במרחב על כוחות צה"ל. כחלק מהפעילות הלוחמים איתרו והשמידו רקטות בחצר של בית בצפון הרצועה. pic.twitter.com/R8dso1o6Ae
— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) December 5, 2023
Israel's intelligence minister has argued that Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza should be resettled in other countries, a move that would further erode Palestinian claims for a state of their own. For these reasons, Palestinians who flee the Israeli onslaught into Egypt fear they won't be able to return.
Collective punishment may serve to instill fear towards deterrence from a future attack, but in an ongoing campaign it often has the adverse effect of steeling an opponent's will to resist. In 1940, Nazi bombers blasted London and other British cities, but the Battle of Britain backfired. It failed to stall Britain's industries critical to the war and actually strengthened the public's will to fight.
"The British wanted payback," said Pape. Britain's air plans for Germany from the 1930s had focused solely on striking German economic centers, Pape said. But after the blitz, British leaders added population centers to their targets and began to bomb them with a goal of killing 900,000 German civilians. Over the next three years, Allied bombers would damage or destroy an average of half of the buildings in the 92 cities and towns targeted. And yet that campaign also failed to achieve its aims.
Rage is also an essential element for Israel's sworn enemy. Hamas relies on perceptions that Israel cannot be collaborated with, that it is a deadly enemy of Palestinians that must be destroyed by force, and that its civilians are legitimate targets. A recent poll shows that Hamas' support has risen in Gaza and soared in the West Bank since the 10/7 terror attacks.
The challenge for Israel is that this ideology is fueled by the hatred for Israelis that's simmering across Gaza and the West Bank.
"That's why Hamas is actually so willing to have civilian casualties occur in Gaza," said Pape, who has also studied the demographics and motivations of suicide bombers. "It's because each time Israeli bombs kill Palestinians, those Palestinians have family. They have friends who are ripe recruits for Hamas in the future."
He added: "The real issue here is that very likely Israel is creating more terrorists than it's killing."
— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) December 5, 2023
Israel's intelligence minister has argued that Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza should be resettled in other countries, a move that would further erode Palestinian claims for a state of their own. For these reasons, Palestinians who flee the Israeli onslaught into Egypt fear they won't be able to return.
Collective punishment may serve to instill fear towards deterrence from a future attack, but in an ongoing campaign it often has the adverse effect of steeling an opponent's will to resist. In 1940, Nazi bombers blasted London and other British cities, but the Battle of Britain backfired. It failed to stall Britain's industries critical to the war and actually strengthened the public's will to fight.
"The British wanted payback," said Pape. Britain's air plans for Germany from the 1930s had focused solely on striking German economic centers, Pape said. But after the blitz, British leaders added population centers to their targets and began to bomb them with a goal of killing 900,000 German civilians. Over the next three years, Allied bombers would damage or destroy an average of half of the buildings in the 92 cities and towns targeted. And yet that campaign also failed to achieve its aims.
Rage is also an essential element for Israel's sworn enemy. Hamas relies on perceptions that Israel cannot be collaborated with, that it is a deadly enemy of Palestinians that must be destroyed by force, and that its civilians are legitimate targets. A recent poll shows that Hamas' support has risen in Gaza and soared in the West Bank since the 10/7 terror attacks.
The challenge for Israel is that this ideology is fueled by the hatred for Israelis that's simmering across Gaza and the West Bank.
"That's why Hamas is actually so willing to have civilian casualties occur in Gaza," said Pape, who has also studied the demographics and motivations of suicide bombers. "It's because each time Israeli bombs kill Palestinians, those Palestinians have family. They have friends who are ripe recruits for Hamas in the future."
He added: "The real issue here is that very likely Israel is creating more terrorists than it's killing."
Israel warns Gaza war could last 'several months' despite US pressure to wind it down
Jitendra Joshi
EVENING STANDARD
Fri, December 15, 2023
Israel warns Gaza war could last 'several months' despite US pressure to wind it down
Israel’s defence minister said the devastating war in Gaza is set to last “several months”, defying US pressure to wind it down soon in favour of more targeted operations against Hamas.
The comments by Yoav Gallant came despite Joe Biden urging Israeli restraint in a conflict that has killed nearly 19,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
“I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives,” the US president said when asked if he wants Israel to scale down its operations by the end of the month. “Not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful.”
The US is supplying Israel with crucial military aid and diplomatic backing at the United Nations, but has been sounding the alarm about the civilian toll in Gaza. Mr Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with Israeli leaders to discuss a timetable for winding down major combat.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Mr Sullivan talked with Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu about moving to "lower intensity operations" sometime "in the near future".
But Mr Gallant said Hamas had been building military infrastructure in Gaza for more than a decade leading up to its deadly rampage across southern Israel on October 7, "and it is not easy to destroy them”.
“It will require a period of time,” he said. "It will last more than several months, but we will win, and we will destroy them.”
After his talks with the top US official, Mr Netanyahu said Israel was "more determined than ever to continue fighting until Hamas is eliminated - until complete victory".
Mr Sullivan was heading on Friday to the West Bank to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Shtayyeh, said it was time for the United States to deal more firmly with Israel, including on a two-state solution to the long-running conflict after Mr Netanyahu and other Israeli officials ruled that out this week.
"Now that the United States has talked the talk, we want Washington to walk the walk," Mr Shtayyeh said in an interview with the Associated Press. "If the United States cannot deliver Israel, who can?"
Israeli officials pointed to a broader alleged threat from Hamas after seven people were arrested in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands on suspicion of planning attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe.
Three of the suspects detained in Berlin and another in Rotterdam are longstanding members of Hamas with close links to the leadership of its military branch, according to German prosecutors. Hamas denied any link.
One of the men in Berlin, Lebanon-born Abdelhamid Al A, had been assigned by Hamas leaders with sourcing weapons in readiness for potential terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions, the prosecutors said.
On Friday morning, communications still appeared to be down across Gaza after heavy Israeli airstrikes and tank shelling overnight. Areas targeted for bombardment included parts of the border city of Rafah, where many Palestinians have congregated after fleeing the fighting elsewhere.
Late on Thursday, eight US cities saw protests led by a Jewish group demanding a ceasefire, on the eighth night of Hanukkah.
Streets and bridges were blocked in Washington and Philadelphia as demonstrators held signs reading: "Let Gaza Live" and "Not in our name
Fri, December 15, 2023
Israel warns Gaza war could last 'several months' despite US pressure to wind it down
Israel’s defence minister said the devastating war in Gaza is set to last “several months”, defying US pressure to wind it down soon in favour of more targeted operations against Hamas.
The comments by Yoav Gallant came despite Joe Biden urging Israeli restraint in a conflict that has killed nearly 19,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
“I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives,” the US president said when asked if he wants Israel to scale down its operations by the end of the month. “Not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful.”
The US is supplying Israel with crucial military aid and diplomatic backing at the United Nations, but has been sounding the alarm about the civilian toll in Gaza. Mr Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with Israeli leaders to discuss a timetable for winding down major combat.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Mr Sullivan talked with Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu about moving to "lower intensity operations" sometime "in the near future".
But Mr Gallant said Hamas had been building military infrastructure in Gaza for more than a decade leading up to its deadly rampage across southern Israel on October 7, "and it is not easy to destroy them”.
“It will require a period of time,” he said. "It will last more than several months, but we will win, and we will destroy them.”
After his talks with the top US official, Mr Netanyahu said Israel was "more determined than ever to continue fighting until Hamas is eliminated - until complete victory".
Mr Sullivan was heading on Friday to the West Bank to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Shtayyeh, said it was time for the United States to deal more firmly with Israel, including on a two-state solution to the long-running conflict after Mr Netanyahu and other Israeli officials ruled that out this week.
"Now that the United States has talked the talk, we want Washington to walk the walk," Mr Shtayyeh said in an interview with the Associated Press. "If the United States cannot deliver Israel, who can?"
Israeli officials pointed to a broader alleged threat from Hamas after seven people were arrested in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands on suspicion of planning attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe.
Three of the suspects detained in Berlin and another in Rotterdam are longstanding members of Hamas with close links to the leadership of its military branch, according to German prosecutors. Hamas denied any link.
One of the men in Berlin, Lebanon-born Abdelhamid Al A, had been assigned by Hamas leaders with sourcing weapons in readiness for potential terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions, the prosecutors said.
On Friday morning, communications still appeared to be down across Gaza after heavy Israeli airstrikes and tank shelling overnight. Areas targeted for bombardment included parts of the border city of Rafah, where many Palestinians have congregated after fleeing the fighting elsewhere.
Late on Thursday, eight US cities saw protests led by a Jewish group demanding a ceasefire, on the eighth night of Hanukkah.
Streets and bridges were blocked in Washington and Philadelphia as demonstrators held signs reading: "Let Gaza Live" and "Not in our name
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