The Gaza Strip has not been conquered: Israel’s response to the first Israeli attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah
Israel’s military warned Palestinians to evacuate along the strategic Netzarim corridor in central Gaza that was at the heart of obstacles to a cease-fire deal. The military told people in parts of the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps to evacuate to Muwasi, a coastal area it has designated a humanitarian zone.
According to the civil defense group that runs under the Hamas government, an Israeli airstrike killed two children in Gaza City.
The death toll from the war in the Gaza Strip has reached over 41,000, making it the most devastating conflict in Palestinian history.
A limited ground operation was launched by Israel into southern Lebanon last week after a series of attacks killed Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah and others. The fighting is worse than in 2006 when Israel and Hezbollah fought. Nine Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ground clashes that Israel says have killed 440 Hezbollah fighters.
Other displaced families now shelter alongside Beirut’s famous seaside Corniche, their wind-flapped tents just steps from luxury homes. Om Ali Mcheik said that they don’t want to die at the hands of Netanyahu, but they don’t care if we die.
“We were on the road for two days,” said Issa Hilal, one of many Syrian refugees in Lebanon who are now heading back. “The roads were very crowded … it was very difficult. We almost died while getting here. Some children whimpered or cried.
MASNAA BORDER CROSSING, Lebanon — Powerful new explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs late Saturday as Israel expanded its bombardment in Lebanon, also striking a Palestinian refugee camp deep in the north for the first time as it targeted both Hezbollah and Hamas fighters.
Soon after, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes against southern Lebanon that it said were aimed at Hezbollah targets. One that hit a residential building in downtown Beirut killed a top Hezbollah commander.
Antony Blinken said that Israel had the right to defend itself against terrorism. The way it is done matters.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told reporters in Damascus that “we are trying to reach a cease-fire in Gaza and in Lebanon.” The minister said the unnamed countries putting forward initiatives include regional states and some outside the Middle East.
At least 1,400 Lebanese, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million driven from their homes in less than two weeks. Israel wants the militant group to be driven away from the shared borders so that it doesn’t return to their homes.
Israel has killed several Hamas officials in Lebanon since the Israel-Hamas war began , in addition to most of the top leadership of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah as fighting has sharply escalated.
Two buildings were reportedly targeted by strikes near a road leading to the only international airport in Lebanon. Social media reports claimed that one of the strikes hit an oxygen tank storage facility, but this was later denied by the owner of the company Khaled Kaddouha.
After Israel told residents to leave Dahiyeh, a predominantly Shiite area on the south side of Lebanon, there was a series of explosions throughout the weekend. AP video showed the blasts illuminating the densely populated southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. They were following a day of sporadic strikes, and the buzz of drones.
The United Nations says about 1 million Lebanese have fled their homes amid the Israeli airstrikes. About 63,000 people remain displaced due to Hezbollah rocket fire, according to Israeli authorities.
The Israeli government does not have a clean story in Gaza. This was always going to be the ugliest of Israeli-Palestinian wars since 1947, because Hamas had embedded itself in tunnels underneath Gazan homes, schools, mosques and hospitals. It could not be targeted without significant civilian casualties. Therefore, as I argued from the start, it was doubly incumbent on Israel to make clear that this was not just a war to defend itself but also to destroy Hamas in order to birth something better: the only just and stable solution possible, two states for two people.
So what am I thinking about on this first anniversary of the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran-Israel war? Something my strategy teacher, Prof. John Arquilla of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, taught me: All wars come down to two basic questions: Who wins the battle on the ground? And who wins the battle of the story? Even after a year of warfare, in which Hezbollah and Israel have inflicted terrible pain on one another’s forces and civilians, no one has decisively won the fight on the ground. This war is the first Arab-Israeli war without a name and without a winner because neither side has a clear win or a clean story.
And what story is Iran telling? That it has some right under the U.N. Charter to help create failed states in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq so it can cultivate proxies inside them for the purpose of destroying Israel? And by what right has Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel that the Lebanese people and government had no say in and are now paying a huge price for?
The Israeli Civil Disobedience After the Sept. 7 Attacks: When the Prime Minister is Rejoinded and the Dead Sea Will Call for Elections
Thousands of Israelis have decided to leave Israel since Oct. 7; others are considering or planning emigration. Many thousands more have also taken to the streets week after week, engaging in acts of civil disobedience, which began before the Oct. 7 attacks with protests against the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul and, after a brief pause, resumed with a new focus on the hostage crisis and demand for early elections. In September, there were photos of the former Israeli army chief of staff being forcibly removed by police from the street at a sit-in in front of the private residence of the prime minister.
“The Israelis, we all were on the radio, hearing them whispering to the radio people: ‘Why doesn’t anyone come? Where are everyone? Where’s the army? They’re in my house, they’re shooting at me.’ We will remember this for the rest of our lives, all of us,” Roth says.
At one of the recent mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling for a hostage deal and for early elections to replace the Israeli government, one protester held up a sign reading: “Who are we without them?” referring to the hostages. Give me a reason to raise kids here.
The sister of Yair Lapid is a prominent Israeli psychologist and she says there are questions from the fire.
Silence is what helped keep the survivors of this small community alive the day of the attack. They hid out from their safe rooms along the Gaza border to a hotel on the Dead Sea.
Israel Oct. 7: A Kibbutz Beeri-Haas Attack Anniversary for a Small Israeli Village
“I’m so exhausted after every funeral that we have to deal with again,” said Gal Cohen, the head of the kibbutz. We cry again because it brings back everything.
After one year of the Gaza war, a small Israeli community near the border with Gaza is reburiing the dead in a safer location, where it is easier to gather.
Then she saw the man she had heard all day loading gun cartridges in her home. She said that he was naked and guarded by an Israeli soldier while sitting outside.
On Oct. 7, she grabbed her personal firearm, and she and her husband locked themselves inside their reinforced shelter room at home. They survived the attack because they had installed a sliding bolt on the safe room. The attackers tried but failed to open the door. Her neighbors’ safe rooms only had the standard locks and were breached.
But he says others who survived the attack are taking sleeping pills to cope with the trauma and cannot bear seeing the destroyed homes. “I believe we’ll have to take them all down in the end.”
Some of the homes that were attacked last year are a short walk away. October 7 was frozen in time, with bullets, shattered windows, and a pair of kids’ shoes in the debris.
Bringing back the community to Kibbutz Be’eri, where a mother and her teenage son are reburied in their graves
A couple hundred families have moved back to Kibbutz Be’eri. Within two and a half years, Cohen is planning on bringing residents back to the community.
“I really thought about it. And then I decided that I wanted to continue to live,” she said. Today, she is learning how to kayak in the sea to help her face her fears. I do everything I can to give meaning to life after they’re gone.
She wanted to be with his body at the moment it was unearthed. She had not lived on the kibbutz any longer and felt guilty she wasn’t with her brother and family in their worst moment on Oct. 7.
The funeral was attended by Batya Ofir. She exhumed her brother’s body from a temporary grave and reburied him and his family in the kibbutz cemetery.
At Kibbutz Be’eri, one recent afternoon, teens and parents walked quietly out of the neighborhood cemetery after a funeral for a mother and her 15-year-old son — two of the many reburials of recent months.
Bringing out the peace: How many Gazans are killed and their loved ones are alive? The case of Kibbutz Be’eri
“When I gave guidelines to the therapists in Be’eri at the beginning, I said, smile and say, how are you? These people are unaware that it still matters. You have to show them that their wellbeing is still relevant. The life instinct wants the person to call him back.
“They are extremely anxious about the future of this place. Many of them leave the country. Because their parents told them that in the Holocaust, those who didn’t leave, died,” she says. “Hopelessness and helplessness are so strong. The trauma is national.”
A boy from the kibbutz lost many members of his family, two parents and two siblings. So do we tell him about each separately or do we tell him about all of them together?” she says.
Families of those killed in captivity, former hostages who came home from Gaza, and Israelis who lost a loved one suffer from sleep disorders, anxiety attacks and depression, and have been counseled by Roth.
It took a long while for everyone to be accounted for, including the dead and captives in Gaza. Roth sat with the survivors of Kibbutz Be’eri in the Dead Sea hotel basement as the village secretary read the names of 27 identified bodies and 108 people unaccounted for.
When the Israeli military eventually published its investigation into the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, it found about 340 attackers had infiltrated the community and that it had taken about seven hours for significant numbers of Israeli forces to arrive to fight off the invasion there.
Up First Newsletter Oct.7: Israel-Hamas War Disrupted Lives and Key Factors for Michigan Voters
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He often meets a young girl named Habiba at the hospital in central Gaza. She’s been colorblind since birth. Anas was told that she saw a man drown with water coming out of his nose. It wasn’t water; it was blood.
Our colleague Anas Baba in Gaza has been reporting for NPR in Gaza all year. After Israeli strikes, he has videotaped bodies in the mortuary. He always watches silently as corpses are laid out, and trains his camera on young children, who are sheltered near the morgue.
I think about Batya Ofir as I think about the deaths in the Israeli village of Kibbutz Be’eri. Her brother and his family were killed. She felt survivor’s guilt, and she told us she asked herself whether she wanted to keep on living.
The Israel-Hamas War: How a Year of War in Michigan Disrupted Lives. And, Key Factors for Michigan Voters
Michigan, a “blue wall” state, is part of Vice President Harris’ clearest path to the White House. But the victory won’t be easy. Harris and former President Donald Trump remain in a close battle. Here are key factors that could decide which way Michigan swings:
Hear directly from people in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank as they describe how one year of this war has upended their lives. For more coverage marking this anniversary, check out NPR’s special series page.
The war in the Middle East is very personal in Michigan, a swing state. The GOP and Democrats are focused on the Arab and Muslim American voting bloc, and the state has the largest Lebanese American population in the country. Many in the state have families living in the areas of Lebanon that are being bombed right now.
The new report showed that the economic plans of Harris and Trump would increase the national debt. According to the nonpartisan nonprofit Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, Trump’s plan would add an estimated $7.5 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next decade, while Harris’ proposals would cost the government an estimated $3.5 trillion. The committee has cautioned that there could be a future fiscal crisis if politicians do not take more decisive action on the national debt. The details of both economic plans need to be taken into account.
Source: How a year of Israel-Hamas war disrupted lives. And, key factors for Michigan voters
The October 7, 2023 Israeli-Hamas Attack: What Happens When Israel and Hamas Come together to Spare a Faint Gaza?
This year, NPR is traveling to swing states that are likely to decide the election. This week, Morning Edition is in Michigan to listen to voters about what matters to them and how that will affect their vote.
Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023, marked the deadliest day in the history of modern Israel, triggering a devastating attack on Palestinians. Gaza has been ravaged by a humanitarian catastrophe. Beginning in the days after the Hamas attack, Israeli warplanes began punishing airstrikes inside the narrow strip of Palestinian territory that also lies adjacent to Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. By the end of the month, Israeli forces launched a ground invasion of Gaza.
Although Israel and Hamas managed a brief cease-fire in November that allowed for the exchange of more than 100 hostages for nearly 250 Palestinian prisoners, the truce lasted just a week. Hamas did unilaterally release four hostages, and eight others were rescued by Israeli forces. Israel’s military also recovered the bodies of several hostages.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — already weathering intense criticism for intelligence failures in the lead-up to the surprise attack — came under intense pressure to halt the fighting in Gaza and secure the release of the hostages.
After the attack, Israelis were afraid for the safety of the hostages. Hostages Square was transformed into a gathering place for the families and friends of the captives. posters showing the faces of the hostages became ubiquitous, as a potent rally cry was “Bring them home now!” Many Israelis began to wear special jewelry in support of the captives. Daily vigils in Hostages Square drew large crowds.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called the humanitarian situation in Gaza a “moral stain on us all,” and the aid group Refugees International has said that Israel’s military response “has wrought disproportionate death and suffering among civilians in Gaza, generating famine-like conditions while obstructing and undermining the humanitarian response.”
Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, which Israeli authorities considered to be a Hamas stronghold, experienced some of the most intense bombardment of the conflict.
There is a shortage of food, drinking water, and other supplies for temporary shelters and are being carried in by international relief organizations. People in Gaza are down to one meal every other day, and an estimated 50,000 children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years are in urgent need of treatment for malnutrition.
The U.S. attempts to speed aid to Gaza have been less successful than expected. High winds and rough seas in the eastern Mediterranean caused the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system to malfunction most of the time.
Talks have failed to make much headway even after a brief cease-fire and a prisoner swap. Animosities and the fragmented nature of the Palestinian leadership have caused any peace deal to fail.
The U.S. tried to maintain military support for Israel in order to help the people of Gaza, while also trying to contain the wider war that has dragged Iran and Israel into direct conflict.
Meanwhile, public opinion in the U.S. has been split largely along partisan lines, with conservatives showing support for Israel, but some people, younger and more liberal, turning out for pro-Palestinian rallies on college campuses.
A Pearson Institute/AP-NORC poll published last week shows that more than half of Democrats agree that Israel bears a lot of responsibility for the continuation of the war in Gaza.
Some Democrats are suggesting that Netanyahu is trying to get Donald Trump elected President of the U.S. by ignoring the peace efforts of the Biden administration. According to a poll by the New York-based Institute for Global Affairs, Trump gets higher marks from voters on foreign policy matters than Vice President Harris.
A year after the Gaza war began, people in Gaza still have the opportunity to live in peace and be with their families if Israel can regain its sovereignty
Fast-forward to last month: In an operation credited to Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, in synchronized attacks over two days, electronic pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah suddenly exploded across Lebanon, killing more than a dozen people — including two children — and wounding thousands more, according to Lebanese health authorities.
Multiple residential buildings in southern Lebanon were demolished as Israeli warplanes continued to bomb. Israel said that Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, died in one of the strikes. Hezbollah confirmed his death.
Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the United States and several other nations, has seen its control over territory in Gaza diminish over the past 12 months, leaving a political and logistical vacuum that international aid groups have struggled to fill.
For people in Gaza, forced displacement is still going on after the cease-fire talks between Hamas and Israel were put on hold.
The father of seven comes from the same area of northern Gaza where civilians were once again ordered to evacuate Monday, and he’s been displaced four times in the last year.
When Hamas-led fighters attacked communities in southern Israel a year ago, they killed more than 1,200 and seized about 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Musleh was a teacher on his way to school that day.
He told NPR on Monday he feels empathy for the Israeli hostages held by Hamas — but he blames Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the suffering both sides have endured, and he insists peace will only be possible if Israeli citizens oust their premier.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, violence has worsened in the past year between Palestinian militants belonging to Hamas and other armed groups, and Israeli settlers and the Israeli military, which oversees the occupied territory with a vast network of checkpoints and military outposts.
Dozens of Palestinians gathered in the main square of the largest city of the West Bank, waving Palestinian flags and carrying anti-occupation signs.
Basma Abu Sway said she had come to mark one year since the war in Gaza began, and called last Oct. 7 one of the most important days in Palestinian history.
Israel’s actions after Oct. 7 may not lead to an enlarged Occupation of Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club
Israeli military forces arrested 45 people across the West Bank from Sunday night to Monday morning, according to the Palestinian advocacy group, Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
She was in Manara Square on Monday and worried that Israel’s actions after Oct. 7 of last year would cause the Occupation of Palestinians to grow stronger.