LIVE | Day 28: Israel says it has surrounded Gaza; US calls for humanitarian pause
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on Friday (November 3) said that its troops have completed encirclement of the Gaza City, in what is being seen as the beginning of a new phase in the 28-day-long battle between Israel and the Hamas.
The announcement comes amid pressure from the US and Arab leaders to ease its siege of Gaza and at least briefly halt its attacks in order to aid civilians.
So far 9,000 Palestinians have died in the war while more than 1,400 people have been killed on the Israeli side, most of them being civilians killed during the Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Nearly four weeks after Hamas' deadly rampage in Israel sparked the war, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was heading to the region for talks on Friday in Israel and Jordan following President Joe Biden's suggestion for a humanitarian “pause” in the fighting. The aim would be to let in aid for Palestinians and let out more foreign nationals and wounded. Around 800 people left over the past two days. Israel did not immediately respond to Biden's suggestion. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has previously ruled out a cease-fire, said Thursday: “We are advancing … Nothing will stop us.”
He vowed to destroy Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.
An airstrike Thursday smashed a residential building to rubble in the Bureij refugee camp several miles south of Gaza City.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Friday to press for more humanitarian aid to be allowed into besieged Gaza, while Israeli troops tightened their encirclement of Gaza City, the focus of Israel's campaign to crush the enclave's ruling Hamas group.
On the northern border with Lebanon, tensions continued to escalate ahead of a speech planned later Friday by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, his first public comments since Hamas attacked Israel last month, stoking fears the conflict could become a regional one.
On Thursday, Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, attacked Israeli positions in the north with drones, mortar fire and suicide drones. The Israeli military said it retaliated with warplanes and helicopter gunships.
Since the Gaza war began October 7, Hezbollah has been taking calculated steps to keep Israel's military busy on its border with Lebanon, but so far nothing of the extent to ignite an all-out war.
More than 9,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, and another 1,400 people have died in Israel, mainly civilians killed during Hamas' initial attack.
Blinken is making his third trip to Israel since the Hamas attack. This trip takes him to Tel Aviv and Amman, Jordan, and follows President Joe Biden's suggestion for a humanitarian “pause” in the fighting. The aim would be to let in aid for Palestinians and let out more foreign nationals and wounded. Around 800 people left over the past two days.
Israel did not immediately respond to Biden's suggestion. But Netanyahu, who has previously ruled out a cease-fire, said Thursday: "We are advancing … Nothing will stop us." He vowed to destroy Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.
After two Israeli airstrikes flattened an entire block of apartment buildings in the Bureij refugee camp and damaged two UN schools-turned-shelters, rubble-covered Palestinians big and small arrived at a hospital too packed to take them.
Tiny, motionless bodies lay flat against the hospital's hard floor. A small boy bled out onto the tiles as medics tried to staunch the flow from his head. A baby lay next to him with an oxygen mask strapped on — covered in ash, his chest struggled to rise and fall. Their father sat beside them.
“Here they are, America! Here they are, Israel!” he screamed. “They are children. Our children die every day.”
It was not immediately clear why Israel targeted Bureij, which is located in central Gaza in an area where Israel has urged people to go to stay safe from heavy fighting further north.
The Bureij strikes on Thursday (November 2) killed at least 15, Gaza's Civil Defense said. It said dozens of others were believed to be buried in the rubble.
In Bureij, which is home to an estimated 46,000 people, Palestinians hacked at the rubble, searching for survivors.
A growing list of Israeli officials have accepted responsibility for failing to prevent Hamas' brutal attack on Israeli communities during the Oct. 7 incursion that triggered the current Israel-Hamas war. Conspicuously absent from that roll call is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Following the horrific assault, which saw the deadliest day for Israelis since the country was established 75 years ago, Netanyahu has repeatedly sidestepped accountability. He has instead blamed others, in what critics say shows a leader thinking more about his own political survival than soothing and steering a traumatised nation.
“Netanyahu is fighting a personal battle of survival and that takes precedence over fighting Israel's war against Hamas,” said Netanyahu biographer and journalist Anshel Pfeffer. “As part of that battle, he's prepared to malign those who are now commanding Israel's army and intelligence services.”
Israel's top security brass, including the military chief of staff, the defence minister and the head of the domestic security agency Shin Bet, came forward and accepted responsibility for the blunder in the days after the attack.
Netanyahu, however, has not taken outright responsibility for the missteps that led up the horrific attack, despite serving as prime minister for 13 of the past 14 years. He says there will be time for investigations — after the war.
Dozens of Palestinians with foreign passports crossed through the war-torn Gaza Strip's only exit for the second straight day on Thursday (November 2), escaping Israel's suffocating siege into the empty Egyptian desert. But the evacuation rush left families divided by citizenship status in painful limbo.
Nizar, a 41-year-old aid worker from Gaza City, gently shook his children awake at dawn and drove to Gaza's southern Rafah crossing with his wife, 8-month-old son and 6-year-old daughter, Zainab — a dangerous road trip even from where they'd sought refuge in central Gaza.
The bombardment didn't stop and they didn't know what awaited them at the border. All they knew was that the quirk of history that led to Zainab's birth in San Francisco gave her American citizenship and the family its only ticket out of a war that has ravaged Gaza, killed thousands of Palestinians and given his once-bubbly daughter panic attacks and nightmares.
Nizar jumped up when he heard Hamas authorities call Zainab's name from the loudspeaker at the crowded Rafah terminal. But border officials quickly told him that US citizens were the only ones allowed to evacuate and that the rest of his family couldn't cross into Egypt. Many families, they said, had been separated for this reason.
“It's just total confusion, nobody understands what is happening,” Nizar said. “There are just tons of families who are very confused and unable to join their relatives and leave.”
The U.S. embassy in Israel didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the issue of families being separated at the border. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to visit Israel on Friday to discuss the conflict.
Israel has said that it is severing all contact with Gaza and will send back all the Palestinian workers employed on its territory to the strip.
Israel’s security cabinet made the announcement late on Thursday (November 2).
“Israel is severing all contact with Gaza. There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza,” the cabinet announced.
“Those workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day of the outbreak of the war will be returned to Gaza,” it said.
According to Cogat, Israel had issued work permits to over 18,500 Gazans before the Hamas’ October 7 attack, which triggered a full-scale war.
US President Joe Biden on Thursday said that 74 US citizens with dual citizenship have left the Gaza Strip, announcing the development as he dispatched his top diplomat to the Middle East for consultation with Israeli and Jordanian leaders concerning the Israel-Hamas war.
“We got out today 74 American folks out that are dual citizens," Biden said in a brief exchange with reporters as he hosted Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader for an Oval Office meeting. The White House has previously said some 500 to 600 US citizens had been trapped in Gaza since the start of the Oct 7 Israel-Hamas war.
The administration said earlier this week that five Americans were among dozens of dual citizens who were able to get out of the Strip where a humanitarian crisis is unfolding. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the administration was hopeful that additional US citizens will be able to leave Gaza on Thursday and the pace of Americans who want to leave will now move at an accelerated pace.