Gaza hospital attack leaves 500 dead, derails Biden’s diplomatic efforts

An Israeli airstrike on Tuesday (October 17) hit a Gaza City hospital packed with wounded and other Palestinians seeking shelter, killing hundreds, said the Gaza health ministry. The attack — by far the deadliest Israeli airstrike in the five wars fought since 2008 — derailed the diplomatic efforts led by the US to prevent an escalation of the conflict in the region, with a summit meeting between American President Joe Biden and other leaders in Jordan’s Amman being called off.

Several hospitals in Gaza City have become refuges for hundreds of people hoping they would be spared a bombardment after Israel ordered all residents of the city and surrounding areas to evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip.

Photos from al-Ahli Hospital showed fire engulfing the halls, shattered glass and body parts scattered across the area. The ministry said at least 500 people had been killed. The Israeli military, however, claimed that it had no involvement in the explosion and that it was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket. The Israeli military claimed Palestinian militants had fired a barrage of rockets near the hospital at the time.

Shortly before Biden’s expected departure, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas withdrew from scheduled meetings to protest the explosion. Abbas’s cancellation reflects an increasingly volatile situation that will test the limits of American influence in the region as Biden visits Israel and Jordan on Wednesday (October 18). Soon after that, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi announced that Biden’s summit in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, and Abbas had been cancelled.

Biden’s statement

“I am outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion at the Al Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, and the terrible loss of life that resulted. Immediately upon hearing this news, I spoke with King Abdullah II of Jordan and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, and have directed my national security team to continue gathering information about what exactly happened,” Biden said in a statement minutes before he boarded Air Force One for Israel.

“The United States stands unequivocally for the protection of civilian life during conflict and we mourn the patients, medical staff and other innocents killed or wounded in this tragedy,” Biden said.

In a statement, the White House said after consulting with King Abdullah II of Jordan and in light of the days of mourning announced by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Biden will postpone his travel to Jordan and the planned meeting with these two leaders and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt.

“The President (Biden) sent his deepest condolences for the innocent lives lost in the hospital explosion in Gaza, and wished a speedy recovery to the wounded. He looks forward to consulting in person with these leaders soon, and agreed to remain regularly and directly engaged with each of them over the coming days,” said a White House official.

Israel, Hamas play blame game

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said there were still no details on the hospital deaths: “We will get the details and update the public. I don’t know to say whether it was an Israeli air strike.” In the south, continued strikes killed dozens of civilians and at least one senior Hamas figure on Tuesday in attacks it says are targeted at militants.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, widely considered to be the faction’s overall leader, in a surprising move, blamed the US as responsible for the attack, stressing that Washington gave Israel the “cover for its aggression”. “The hospital massacre confirms the enemy’s brutality and the extent of his feeling of defeat,” Haniyeh said in a televised address.

He called upon all the Palestinian people “to get out and confront the occupation and the settlers” and for all Arabs and Muslims to stage protests against Israel.

Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey also accused Israel of bombing the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held the “barbaric terrorists in Gaza” responsible for the deaths. “So, the whole world knows. The barbaric terrorists in Gaza are the ones who attacked the Gaza hospital, not the IDF (Israel Defence Forces),” Netanyahu said in a statement.

“Those who cruelly murdered our children, murder their children as well,” he stressed.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on to describe the accusations by Hamas as a “blood libel”. An Islamic Jihad missile has killed many Palestinians at a Gazan hospital — a place where lives should be saved,” Herzog said in a tweet.

Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, backing his government’s position said, "We know that at the time of this tragedy in Gaza, there was a huge barrage against targets in central Israel. We had the siren here in Tel Aviv, and I went to a bomb shelter. We know they fired rockets at that same time. Hamas put out a statement that they were sending a long-range rocket on Haifa [northern Israel] at this time,” Regev pointed out.

“Now, no rocket actually reached Haifa. Where did that rocket go? Where did it land?” he questioned.

Shelling of Gaza continues

Violence flared on Tuesday along Israel’s border with Lebanon, too, where Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants operate. With tens of thousands of troops massed along the border, Israel has been expected to launch a ground invasion into Gaza — but plans remained uncertain.

“We are preparing for the next stages of war,” military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said. “We haven’t said what they will be. Everybody’s talking about a ground offensive. It might be something different.”

In Gaza, dozens of injured were rushed to hospitals after heavy attacks outside the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, residents reported. Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official and former health minister, reported 27 people were killed in Rafah and 30 in Khan Younis.

Shelling from Israeli tanks hit a UN school in central Gaza where 4,000 Palestinians had taken refuge, killing six people and wounding dozens, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency said.

At least 24 UN installations have been hit in the past week, killing at least 14 of the agency’s staff, while the Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas hideouts, infrastructure, and command centres.

A barrage of strikes crashed into the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, levelling an entire block of homes and causing dozens of casualties among families inside, residents said. Among those killed was one of Hamas’s top military commanders, Ayman Nofal, the group’s military wing said. He is the most high-profile militant known to have been killed so far in the war.

No deal on aid in place

US officials worked to convince Israel to allow delivery of supplies to desperate civilians, aid groups, and hospitals after days of failed hopes for an opening in the siege.

With Israel barring entry of water, fuel, and food into Gaza since Hamas’s brutal attack last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken secured an agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the creation of a mechanism for delivering aid to the territory’s 2.3 million people. US officials said the gain might appear modest, but stressed that it was a significant step forward.

Still, as of late Tuesday, there was no deal in place. A top Israeli official told news agency AP that his country was demanding guarantees that Hamas militants would not seize any aid deliveries. Tzahi Hanegbi, head of Israel’s National Security Council, suggested that the entry of aid also depended on the return of hostages held by Hamas.

The UN agency for Palestinians said more than 400,000 displaced people are crowded into schools and other facilities in the south. The agency said it has only 1 litre of water a day for each of its staff members trapped in the territory. Israel opened a water line into the south for three hours that benefitted only 14 percent of Gaza’s population, the UN said.

At the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only connection to Egypt, truckloads of aid were waiting to enter. The World Food Program said that it had more than 300 tonnes of food waiting to cross into Gaza. Repeated reports that an opening was imminent have proven false as negotiations continued to grind on, including the US, Israel and Egypt.

A senior Egyptian official called it a “very tough, complicated back-and-forth process” and said talks were over deliveries through Rafah and Israel's Karam Shalom crossing to Gaza. He said Israel was insisting to search all aid, and wants to “ensure that such aid won’t benefit Hamas.” He said Egypt proposed that the UN oversee the whole process, including inside Gaza.

Biden’s policy

US officials said it has become clear that already limited Arab tolerance of Israel’s military operations would evaporate entirely if conditions in Gaza worsened. Their analysis projected that outright condemnation of Israel by Arab leaders would not only be a boon to Hamas but would likely encourage Iran to step up its anti-Israel activity, adding to fears that a regional conflagration might erupt, according to four officials who spoke to AP.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned that Israel’s continuing offensive in Gaza could cause a violent reaction across the region. “Bombardments should be immediately stopped. Muslim nations are angry,” Khamenei said, according to state media.

In such a situation, Biden’s decision to put himself in a conflict zone — the same year he made a surprise visit to Ukraine — demonstrates his willingness to take personal and political risks as he becomes heavily invested in another intractable foreign conflict with no clear end game and plenty of opportunity for things to spiral out of control.

The high-stakes presidential trip is emblematic of Biden’s belief that the United States should not turn back from its central role on the global stage and his faith that personal diplomacy can play a decisive role. “This is how Joe Biden believes politics works and history is made,” said Jon Alterman, a senior vice-president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while Biden was a member.

Biden has a long track record of showing public support for Israel while expressing concerns privately to the Israelis about their behaviour. “He believes the only way to get inside the Israelis’ heads is to demonstrate profound empathy, but also to be there,” Alterman said.

Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed at least 2,778 people and wounded 9,700, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Nearly two-thirds of those killed were children, a ministry official said. Another 1,200 people across Gaza are believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead, health authorities said.

More than 1 million Palestinians have fled their homes — roughly half of Gaza’s population — and 60 per cent are now in the approximately 14-km-long area south of the evacuation zone, the UN said.

(With agency inputs)