Gaza Strip
Biden’s pattern with Israel: public support, private scold
It’s a story Joe Biden has loved recounting over the decades: A chain-smoking Golda Meir welcoming the 30-year-old senator to Israel on his first visit in 1973 and giving him a grandmotherly hug before schooling him on the Six-Day War and the dangers still faced by Israel.
A classified Israeli government memo, though, paints a less anodyne version of Biden’s meeting with the Israeli prime minister that day, reporting that the young senator privately “displayed an enthusiasm” that “signaled his lack of diplomatic experience” as he laid out his concerns over land seized in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israel years earlier. The document was published last year by Israel’s Channel 13.
For Biden it was the start of a familiar dynamic. Over his nearly 50 years in national politics, he has often reserved his toughest messages for Israeli leaders for private talks while publicly burnishing his image as an unwavering supporter of Israel.
The pattern holds true to the present, as Biden has delivered his most pointed messages for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the conflict with Hamas in Gaza during private conversations while having little to say in public.
Read:AP source: US encouraging Israel to wind down Gaza offensive
For days, as Hamas rockets have flown toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza, Biden resisted mounting calls from some Democrats and U.N. Security Council members to more forcefully pressure Israel for a cease-fire. On Wednesday, in their fourth conversation in eight days, Biden told Netanyahu that he expected a “significant de-escalation” by day’s end on the path to a cease-fire, according to a White House readout of the phone call.
But hours later, Biden didn’t make even a passing reference to the Gaza war or his diplomacy during a commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy as he spoke of the need to face accelerating global challenges.
In 1982, Washington was the setting when Biden was among a group of U.S. lawmakers who had a tense meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Biden reportedly pressed Begin to halt the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while some of his colleagues were critical of other aspects of Israel’s policies.
″I think it is fair to say that in my eight years in Washington I’ve never seen such an angry session with a foreign head of state,″ Sen. Paul Tsongas, a Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters after the meeting.
Overall, Biden has hewed to the U.S. establishment line of reaffirming a financial commitment to Israel regardless of its actions toward Palestinians, while frequently reminding Jewish American audiences of his personal closeness to their community. In a 1986 Senate floor speech, he offered a fulsome defense of U.S. aid to Israel — calling it “the best $3 billion investment we make” — and urged colleagues to stop apologizing for their support of the country.
Biden has spoken to Jewish audiences about building bonds with the nine Israeli prime ministers who’ve overlapped with his own time in elected office, recalled his father teaching him about the horrors of Nazi efforts to rid Europe of Jews, and noted that he took each of his children to visit the Dachau concentration camp. On the lighter side, he often jokes that his daughter gave him every Irish-Catholic father’s dream when she married a Jewish surgeon.
But there have also been moments where Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu has seeped into public view.
Read:Israel unleashes strikes after vowing to press on in Gaza
As vice president, he kept Netanyahu waiting for a dinner meeting after the Israeli leader embarrassed Biden and President Barack Obama by approving the construction of 1,600 new apartments in disputed east Jerusalem in the middle of Biden’s 2010 visit to Israel.
Netanyahu sought to patch up hurt feelings at the dinner. But after the meal, Biden admonished the prime minister in a statement, saying the move undermined an Obama administration effort to persuade the Palestinians to resume peace talks.
Amid ongoing tension between Obama and Netanyahu, Biden went out of his way during a 2014 speech before the Jewish Federations of North America to note that he and Netanyahu were “still buddies” — albeit with a somewhat complicated relationship.
Biden noted that he had once inscribed a photo for Netanyahu with the message “Bibi I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.’”
In late 2019, during a question-and-answer session with voters on the campaign trail, Biden called Netanyahu “counterproductive” and an “extreme right” leader, while accusing Palestinian leaders of “fomenting” the conflict and “baiting everyone who is Jewish.” He also suggested that some on the U.S. political left give the Palestinian Authority “a pass” when criticizing Israeli leadership.
As the Biden White House negotiated the current crisis, the president and his advisers made the calculation that the Israelis are unlikely to respond to international resolutions or public demands by the U.S. and that their best leverage would happen behind the scenes, officials said.
At the same time, the White House is mindful that the longer the conflict goes, the greater chance of a very high-casualty event or other provocative action by either side that could make reaching a cease-fire more difficult.
Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast adviser to Democratic and Republican administrations, said Biden had demonstrated patience with Netanyahu’s campaign to degrade Hamas’ military capability in part because Biden has bigger priorities, including shepherding the U.S. recovery from the global pandemic and focusing on an emerging economic and strategic competition from China.
Read:Gaza’s health system buckling under repeated wars, blockade
“This is not Joe Biden approaching the crisis as a young senator or as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” said Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is not even Joe Biden as vice president. This is Joe Biden as a president that faces immediate crises and an agenda that would make your head spin. The last thing he wants to do is find himself bogged down on this issue.”
Biden validated that notion this week during a visit to Michigan as he sat in the cab of an electric-powered Ford truck he was taking for a test drive.
A reporter asked Biden if he would take a question about the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
“Not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it,” Biden shot back. He added that he was teasing, but then hit the gas and sped away.
Israel’s Netanyahu ‘determined’ to continue Gaza operation
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Wednesday to press ahead with a fierce military offensive in the Gaza Strip, pushing back against calls from the United States to wind down the operation that has left hundreds dead.
Netanyahu’s tough comments marked the first public rift between the two close allies since the fighting began last week and could complicate international efforts to reach a cease-fire.
Israel continued to pound targets in Gaza with airstrikes, while Palestinian militants bombarded Israel with rocket fire throughout the day. In another sign of potential escalation, militants in Lebanon fired a rocket barrage into northern Israel.
After a visit to military headquarters, Netanyahu said he appreciated “the support of the American president,” but he said Israel would push ahead to return “calm and security” to Israeli citizens.
He said he was “determined to continue this operation until its aim is met.”
He spoke shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden told Netanyahu that he expected “a significant de-escalation today on the path to a cease-fire,” the White House said.
Also read: Israeli airstrikes kill 6, level large family home in Gaza
Biden had previously avoided pressing Israel more directly and publicly for a cease-fire with Gaza’s Hamas militant rulers. But pressure has been building for Biden to intervene more forcefully as other diplomatic efforts gather strength.
Egyptian negotiators have also been working to halt the fighting, and an Egyptian diplomat said top officials were waiting for Israel’s response to a cease-fire offer. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he would fly to the region Thursday for talks with Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the foreign ministers of Slovakia and the Czech Republic would also arrive in Israel Thursday, and that the diplomats were invited by Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi “to express their solidarity and support” for Israel.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli military said it was widening its strikes on militant targets in southern Gaza to blunt continuing rocket fire from Hamas. At least nine people were killed Wednesday in the Gaza Strip.
The current round of fighting between Israel and Hamas began May 10, when the militant group fired long-range rockets toward Jerusalem after days of clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint site sacred to Jews and Muslims. Heavy-handed police tactics at the compound and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers had inflamed tensions.
Also read: Palestinians go on strike as Israel-Hamas fighting rages
Since then, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes that it says have targeted Hamas’ infrastructure, and Hamas and other militant groups embedded in residential areas have fired more than 3,700 rockets at Israeli cities, with hundreds falling short and most of the rest intercepted or landing in open areas.
At least 227 Palestinians have been killed, including 64 children and 38 women, with 1,620 people wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not break the numbers down into fighters and civilians. Hamas and Islamic Jihad say at least 20 of their fighters have been killed, while Israel says the number is at least 130. Some 58,000 Palestinians have fled their homes.
Twelve people in Israel, including a 5-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl and a soldier, have been killed.
The rockets fired by militants in Lebanon into northern Israel threatened to open up a new front in the fighting. The rocket attack, which drew Israeli artillery fire in response but did not cause any injuries, raised the possibility of dragging Israel into renewed conflict with the powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to its north.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, and Hezbollah, which fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006, has stayed out of the fighting for now. The rockets were widely believed to be fired by Palestinian factions based in south Lebanon.
But they cannot operate without Hezbollah’s tacit consent, and the barrage appears to be carefully calibrated to send a political message that the group, which has tens of thousands of missiles, could join the battle at any time. Israel considers Hezbollah to be its most formidable threat and has threatened widespread destruction in Lebanon if war were to erupt.
Also read: US reaches out to Arab leaders on Israel, Gaza fighting
In Gaza, one of the Israeli airstrikes destroyed the home of an extended family.
Residents surveyed the piles of bricks, concrete and other debris that had once been the home of 40 members of al-Astal family in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. They said a warning missile struck the building five minutes before the airstrike, allowing everyone to escape.
Ahmed al-Astal, a university professor, described a scene of panic, with men, women and children racing out of the building.
“We had just gotten down to the street, breathless, when the devastating bombardment came,” he said. “They left nothing but destruction, the children’s cries filling the street. ... This is happening, and there is no one to help us.”
Another strike in nearby Deir al-Balah killed a man, his wife and their 2-year-old daughter, witnesses said. Iyad Salha, a brother of the man who was killed, said the family had just sat down for lunch when the missile hit.
Also read: Israeli strikes kill 42, topple buildings in Gaza City
Among those killed Wednesday were a reporter for Hamas-run Al-Aqsa radio and two people who died when warning missiles crashed into their apartment.
The Israeli military said it was striking a militant tunnel network in southern Gaza, with 52 aircraft hitting 40 underground targets.
Military officials, meanwhile, said a mysterious explosion that killed eight members of a Palestinian family on the first day of the fighting was caused by a misfired rocket from Gaza. “This wasn’t an Israeli attack,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman.
Since the fighting began, Gaza’s infrastructure, already weakened by a 14-year blockade, has rapidly deteriorated. Medical supplies, water and fuel for electricity are running low in the territory, on which Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade after Hamas seized power in 2007.
Israeli attacks have damaged at least 18 hospitals and clinics and destroyed one health facility, the World Health Organization said. Nearly half of all essential drugs have run out.
Among the buildings leveled by Israeli airstrikes was one housing The Associated Press’ Gaza office and those of other media outlets.
Also read: Israel strike in Gaza destroys building with AP, other media
Netanyahu has alleged that Hamas military intelligence was operating in the building. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that Israel had given the U.S. information about the bombing, without elaborating.
The AP has called for an independent investigation. The news organization’s president, Gary Pruitt, has said the AP had no indication Hamas was present in the building.
The fighting, the worst since a 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, has ignited protests around the world and inspired Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories to call a general strike Tuesday. It was a rare collective action that spanned boundaries central to decades of failed peace efforts. Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war, territories the Palestinians want for their future state.
Israel says Gaza tunnels destroyed in heavy airstrikes
The Israeli military unleashed a wave of heavy airstrikes on the Gaza Strip early Monday, saying it destroyed 15 kilometers (nine miles) of militant tunnels and the homes of nine Hamas commanders.
Residents of Gaza awakened by the overnight barrage described it as the heaviest since the war began a week ago, and even more powerful than a wave of airstrikes in Gaza City the day before that left 42 dead and flattened three buildings. That earlier attack was the deadliest in the current round of hostilities between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
There was no immediate word on the casualties from the latest strikes. A three-story building in Gaza City was heavily damaged, but residents said the military warned them 10 minutes before the strike and everyone cleared out. They said many of the airstrikes hit nearby farmland.
Gaza’s mayor, Yahya Sarraj, told Al-Jazeera TV that the strikes had caused extensive damage to roads and other infrastructure. “If the aggression continues we expect conditions to become worse,” he said.
Read:AP’s top editor calls for probe into Israeli airstrike
The U.N. has warned that the territory’s sole power station is at risk of running out of fuel, and Sarraj said Gaza was also low on spare parts. Gaza already experiences daily power outages for between eight and 12 hours and tap water is undrinkable. Mohammed Thabet, a spokesman for the the territory’s electricity distribution company, said it has fuel to supply Gaza with electricity for two or a three days. Airstrikes have damaged supply lines and the company’s staff cannot reach areas that were hit because of continued Israeli shelling, he added.
The war broke out last Monday, when the Hamas militant group fired long-range rockets at Jerusalem after weeks of clashes in the holy city between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police. The protests were focused on the heavy-handed policing of a flashpoint sacred site during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers.
Since then, the Israeli military has launched hundreds of airstrikes that it says are targeting Hamas’ militant infrastructure. Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired more than 3,100 rockets into Israel.
At least 198 Palestinians have been killed in the strikes, including 58 children and 35 women, with 1,300 people wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Eight people in Israel have been killed in rocket attacks launched from Gaza, including a 5-year-old boy and a soldier.
“I have not seen this level of destruction through my 14 years of work,” said Samir al-Khatib, an emergency rescue official in Gaza. “Not even in the 2014 war,” he added, referring to the most destructive of the previous three wars fought between Israel and Hamas.
The military said it struck nine houses in different parts of northern Gaza that belonged to “high-ranking commanders” in Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has controlled the territory since seizing power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007.
In recent days, Israel has targeted the homes of a number of senior Hamas leaders, including Yehiyeh Sinwar, the top leader inside Gaza. The group’s leadership goes underground when the fighting begins, and it’s unlikely any were at home at the time of the strikes.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad militant group say at least 20 of their fighters have been killed, while Israel says the number is much higher and has released the names of and photos of more than two dozen militant commanders it says were “eliminated.”
Read: AP 'horrified' by Israeli attack on its office
The military said it struck 35 “terror targets” as well as the tunnels, which it says are part of an elaborate system it refers to as the “Metro,” used by fighters to take cover from airstrikes.
Despite international efforts at a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel’s attacks were continuing at “full-force” and would “take time.“ Israel “wants to levy a heavy price” on the Hamas militant group.
Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh, who is based abroad, said the group has been contacted by the U.S., Russia, Egypt and Qatar as part of cease-fire efforts but “will not accept a solution that is not up to the sacrifices of the Palestinian people.”
In an interview with the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, he blamed the war on Israel’s actions in Jerusalem and boasted that the rockets were “paralyzing the usurping entity (Israel) by imposing a curfew on its citizens and closing its airports and ports.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said his government is working to “urgently” end the violence, in his first comments since the war broke out. Egypt, which borders Gaza and Israel, has played a central role in the cease-fires brokered after previous rounds of fighting.
An Egyptian diplomat said the efforts were focusing on two issues — a halt in all attacks from both sides and halting Israeli policies in the contested city of Jerusalem that helped spark the fighting. These include police raids against Palestinian protesters in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the planned evictions of Palestinians by Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem.
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was talking about confidential diplomatic discussions, said mediators were counting on the Biden administration to put pressure on Israel to stop its offensive and there were expectations for action in the coming 48 hours.
Israel’s airstrikes have leveled a number of Gaza City’s tallest buildings, which Israel alleges contained Hamas military infrastructure. Among them was the building housing The Associated Press Gaza office and those of other media outlets. The Israeli military alerted staff and residents before the strike, and all were able to evacuate the building safely.
Sally Buzbee, the AP’s executive editor, has called for an independent investigation into the airstrike.
Read:AP statement on Israeli attack on building housing AP office
Netanyahu alleged that Hamas military intelligence was operating inside the building and said Sunday any evidence would be shared through intelligence channels. Neither the White House nor the State Department would say if any had been seen.
The AP had operated from the building for 15 years, including through three previous wars between Israel and Hamas. The news agency’s cameras, operating from its top floor office and roof terrace, offered 24-hour live shots as militant rockets arched toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes hammered the city and its surroundings.
AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt released a statement after Saturday’s attack saying he was “shocked and horrified” that Israel targeted the building. He said the AP had “no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building.”
“This is something we actively check to the best of our ability,” he said. “We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”
‘Free Palestine’: Protesters in major US cities decry airstrikes over Gaza
Pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta and other U.S. cities on Saturday to demand an end to Israeli airstrikes over the Gaza Strip.
Thousands of people shut down traffic on a major thoroughfare in west Los Angeles as they marched two miles from outside the federal building to the Israeli consulate. The protesters waved signs that said “free Palestine” and shouted “long live intifada,” or uprising.
A protest that started in a neighborhood in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, which has a large Arabic-speaking community, continued through the streets for several hours on Saturday afternoon. Footage on social media showed people had climbed up the poles of street lights to wave flags while others set off fireworks. As the sun set, some protesters walked onto the Interstate 278 shutting down traffic in at least on direction, according to video posted online.
Read:Israeli military says it bombed home of a top Hamas leader
Bella Hadid, a well-known Palestinian-American model, participated in the Brooklyn protest.
The marches coincided with Nakba Day, which commemorate the 1948 displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians amid Israel’s declaration of independence.
In Atlanta, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including grandparents, teenagers and mothers and fathers with youngsters in tow, assembled downtown to wave signs and chant slogans, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
One sign read, “We can’t breathe since 1948” — a nod to the racial injustice and police brutality protests in the U.S. during the past year in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody after he couldn’t breathe, the newspaper reported.
In San Francisco, a raucous crowd banged drums and yelled “Palestine will be free” as they marched across the Mission district to Dolores Park.
A similar scene played out in Boston as protesters walked a short distance from Copley Square to the Israeli Consulate for New England, blocking traffic.
Footage on social media shows protesters unfurl a banner in the colors of the Palestinian flag with the words “Free Palestine” while standing on top of the awning of the building where the consulate is located.
In Washington, thousands of protesters streamed from the Washington Monument and to the National Archives. In Philadelphia, demonstrators filled Rittenhouse Square to decry U.S. support for Israel.
Read:AP 'horrified' by Israeli attack on its office
At a protest in Pittsburgh, one speaker called on lawmakers to put restrictions on how Israel can spend aid from the United States.
The protests were stoked by five days of mayhem that left at least 145 Palestinians dead in Gaza and eight dead on the Israeli side. The violence, set off by Hamas firing a rocket into Israel on Monday, came after weeks of mounting tensions and heavy-handed Israeli measures in contested Jerusalem.
Israel stepped up its assault and slammed the Gaza Strip with airstrikes Saturday, in a dramatic escalation that included bombing the home of a senior Hamas leader, killing a family of 10 in a refugee camp and destroying a building that house the offices of The Associated Press and other media.
Israeli military says it bombed home of a top Hamas leader
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it bombed the home of Khalil al-Hayeh, a top leader of Gaza’s ruling militant Hamas group.
The military alleged that the home served as part of what it said was the militant group’s “terrorist infrastructure.”
Al-Hayeh is a senior figure in the Hamas political leadership in Gaza. His fate after the strike was not immediately known.
Earlier on Saturday, an Israeli airstrike targeted and destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets.
An Israeli airstrike on Saturday targeted and destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets. AP’s president said the agency was “shocked and horrified” at the strike.
AP staffers and other tenants safely evacuated the building after the military telephoned a warning that the strike was imminent within an hour. Three heavy missiles struck the 12-story building, collapsing it in a giant cloud of dust.
For 15 years, the AP’s top-floor office and roof terrace were a prime location for covering Israel’s conflicts with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, including wars in 2009 and 2014. The news agency's camera offered 24-hour live shots as militants’ rockets arched toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes hammered the city and its surrounding area this week.
Also read: Israel strike in Gaza destroys building with AP, other media
“The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today,” AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said in a statement. “We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.”
“This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life,” he said, adding that the AP was seeking information from the Israeli government and was engaged with the U.S. State Department to learn more.
The building also housed the offices of Qatari-run Al-Jazeera TV, as well as residential apartments. The Israeli military said Hamas was operating inside the building, a standard explanation, and it accused the militant group of using journalists as human shields. But it provided no evidence to back up the claims.
Hours earlier, another Israeli air raid on a densely populated refugee camp killed at least 10 Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children, the deadliest single strike of the current conflict.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists demanded Israel “provide a detailed and documented justification” for the strike.
“This latest attack on a building long known by Israel to house international media raises the specter that the Israel Defense Forces is deliberately targeting media facilities in order to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza,” the group’s executive director, Joel Simon, said in a statement.
Since Monday night, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, which has pounded the Gaza Strip with strikes. In Gaza, at least 139 people have been killed, including 39 children and 22 women; in Israel, eight people have been killed, including a man killed by a rocket that hit in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, on Saturday.
Also read: AP 'horrified' by Israeli attack on its office
The latest outburst of violence started in Jerusalem and spread across the region over the past week, with Jewish-Arab clashes and rioting in mixed cities of Israel. There were also widespread Palestinian protests Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot and killed 11 people.
The spiraling violence has raised fears of a new Palestinian “intifada,” or uprising, when peace talks have not taken place in years. Palestinians on Saturday were marking Nakba (Catastrophe) Day, when they commemorate the estimated 700,000 people who were expelled from or fled their homes in what was now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. That raised the possibility of even more unrest.
U.S. diplomat Hady Amr arrived Friday as part of Washington’s efforts to de-escalate the conflict, and the U.N. Security Council was set to meet Sunday. But Israel turned down an Egyptian proposal for a one-year truce that Hamas rulers had accepted, an Egyptian official said Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
As the hostilities continued, an Israeli bombardment struck a three-story house in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp on Saturday morning, killing eight children aged 14 and under and two women from an extended family.
Mohammed Hadidi told reporters his wife and five children had gone to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday with her brother’s wife and three of their children. All were killed instantly, he said. The only known survivor from Hadidi's family was his 5-month-old son Omar; another son, 11-year-old Yahya, was missing, he said.
Children’s toys and a Monopoly board game could be seen among the rubble, as well as plates of uneaten food from the holiday gathering.
“There was no warning,” Jamal Al-Naji, a neighbor living in the same building, said. “You filmed people eating and then you bombed them?” he said, addressing Israel. “Why are you confronting us? Go and confront the strong people!”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hamas said it fired a salvo of rockets at southern Israel in response to the airstrike.
The strike on the building housing media offices came in the afternoon, after the owner received a call from the Israeli military warning that the building would be hit within the hour. A video broadcast by Al-Jazeera showed the building’s owner, Jawwad Mahdi, pleading over the phone with an Israeli intelligence officer to wait 10 minutes to allow journalists to go inside the building to retrieve valuable equipment before it is bombed.
Also read: Israeli airstrike on Gaza home kills 10, mostly children
“All I’m asking is to let four people ... to go inside and get their cameras,” he says. “We respect your wishes, we will not do it if you don’t allow it, but give us 10 minutes.” When the officer rejected the request, Mahdi said, “You have destroyed our life’s work, memories, life. I will hang up, do what you want. There is a God.”
Al-Jazeera, the news network funded by Qatar’s government, broadcast the airstrikes live as the building collapsed.
“This channel will not be silenced. Al-Jazeera will not be silenced,” Halla Mohieddeen. on-air anchorperson for Al-Jazeera English said, her voice thick with emotion. “We can guarantee you that right now.”
Later in the day, the White House responded by saying Israel had a “paramount responsibility” to ensure the safety of journalists covering the spiraling conflict. U.S. President Joe Biden has urged a deescalation in the 5-day conflict between Hamas and Israel, but has publicly backed Israel’s right to self-defense from Hamas rockets fired from Gaza.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Saturday that the U.S. had “communicated directly to the Israelis that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility.”
A furious Israeli barrage early Friday killed a family of six in their house and sent thousands fleeing to U.N.-run shelters. The military said the operation involved 160 warplanes dropping some 80 tons of explosives over the course of 40 minutes and succeeded in destroying a vast tunnel network used by Hamas.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said the military aims to minimize collateral damage in striking military targets. But measures it takes in other strikes, such as warning shots to get civilians to leave, were not “feasible this time.”
Israeli media said the military believed dozens of militants were killed inside the tunnels. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups have confirmed 20 deaths in their ranks, but the military said the real number is far higher.
Gaza’s infrastructure, already in widespread disrepair because of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas seized power in 2007, showed signs of breaking down further, compounding residents’ misery. The territory’s sole power plant is at risk of running out of fuel in the coming days.
The U.N. said Gazans already are experiencing daily power cuts of 8-12 hours and at least 230,000 have limited access to tap water. The impoverished and densely populated territory is home to 2 million Palestinians, most of them the descendants of refugees from what is now Israel.
The conflict has reverberated widely. Israeli cities with mixed Arab and Jewish populations have seen nightly violence, with mobs from each community fighting in the streets and trashing each other’s property.
Late on Friday, someone threw a firebomb at an Arab family’s home in the Ajami neighborhood of Tel Aviv, striking two children. A 12-year-old boy was in moderate condition with burns on his upper body and a 10-year-old girl was treated for a head injury, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.
The tensions began in east Jerusalem earlier this month, with Palestinian protests against attempts by settlers to forcibly evict a number of Palestinian families from their homes and Israeli police measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a frequent flashpoint located on a mount in the Old City revered by Muslims and Jews.
Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem late Monday, in an apparent attempt to present itself as the champion of the protesters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Hamas will “pay a very heavy price” for its rocket attacks.
AP 'horrified' by Israeli attack on its office
An Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets on Saturday. All AP employees and freelancers evacuated the building safely.
AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt has released the following statement:
We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit.
Also read: Israel strike in Gaza destroys building with AP, other media
We are seeking information from the Israeli government and are engaged with the U.S. State Department to try to learn more.
This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time.
Also read: Israeli airstrike on Gaza home kills 10, mostly children
The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.
Israel strike in Gaza destroys building with AP, other media
An Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets on Saturday, the latest step by the military to silence reporting from the territory amid its battle with the militant group Hamas.
The strike came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike brought the entire 12-story building down, collapsing with a gigantic cloud of dust. There was no immediate explanation for why it was attacked.
The strike came hours after another Israeli air raid on a densely populated refugee camp in Gaza City killed at least 10 Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children, in the deadliest single strike of the current conflict. Both sides pressed for an advantage as cease-fire efforts gathered strength.
The latest outburst of violence began in Jerusalem and has spread across the region, with Jewish-Arab clashes and rioting in mixed cities of Israel. There were also widespread Palestinian protests Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot and killed 11 people.
The spiraling violence has raised fears of a new Palestinian “intifada,” or uprising at a time when there have been no peace talks in years. Palestinians on Saturday were marking Nakba (Catastrophe) Day, when they commemorate the estimated 700,000 people who were expelled from or fled their homes in what was now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. That raised the possibility of even more unrest.
U.S. diplomat Hady Amr arrived Friday as part of Washington’s efforts to de-escalate the conflict, and the U.N. Security Council was set to meet Sunday. But Israel turned down an Egyptian proposal for a one-year truce that Hamas rulers had accepted, an Egyptian official said Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
Since Monday night, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, which has pounded the Gaza Strip with strikes. In Gaza, at least 139 people have been killed, including 39 children and 22 women; in Israel, eight people have been killed, including the death Saturday of a man killed by a rocket that hit in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv.
The strike on the building housing media offices came in the afternoon, after the building’s owner received a call from the Israeli military warning that it would be hit. AP’s staff and others in the building evacuated immediately.
Also read: Israeli military says it bombed home of a top Hamas leader
Al-Jazeera, the news network funded by Qatar’s government, broadcast the airstrikes live as the building collapsed.
“This channel will not be silence. Al-Jazeera will not be silenced,” an on-air anchorwoman said, her voice thick with emotion. “We can guarantee you that right now.”
Earlier Saturday, an airstrike hit a three-story house in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, killing eight children and two women from an extended family.
Mohammed Hadidi told reporters his wife and five children had gone to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday with relatives. She and three of the children, aged 6 to 14, were killed, while an 11-year-old is missing. Only his 5-month-old son Omar is known to have survived.
Children’s toys and a Monopoly board game could be seen among the rubble, as well as plates of uneaten food from the holiday gathering.
DIARY: In Gaza, bombs drop and the conflict again hits home
On Friday morning, a military airstrike smashed my family’s farm in the northern Gaza Strip into a jagged mass of metal and splintered trees. An Israeli bomb had slammed into the yard, carving a crater into the dirt and leaving rubble in its wake.
The conflict, once again, hit home.
The first Gaza war taught me that while our lush citrus grove might offer some breathing space from the congestion and difficulties of city life, it’s no refuge. A previous Israeli airstrike killed my father, Akram al-Ghoul, on January 3, 2009. As fighting raged, he’d insisted on sleeping at the farm to tend to the cattle and chicken, and to nurture the trees.
Read:Israeli military accused of using media to trick Hamas
In all, six of my relatives, three close friends and several colleagues have died in the three bloody wars and countless battles between Israel and Hamas. Each time the violence erupts and I report as a journalist on the people who lost their homes, their children or their lives, the memories creep back. I always think, “That could be me.” When the thundering bombs, buzzing drones and pounding artillery refresh the pain and trigger the old fear, I seek refuge in work.
The Associated Press office is the only place in Gaza City I feel somewhat safe. The Israeli military has the coordinates of the high-rise, so it’s less likely a bomb will bring it crashing down. But on a deeper level, it’s speaking to people in Gaza, working to get their voices out of a territory they themselves cannot leave, that keeps me sane. When I tell the world what’s happening here, I find some small solace.
Still, the work comes at a cost. This latest explosion of violence already has drained me. I can’t imagine covering another 2014 — the year of Gaza’s grisliest conflict, which killed some 2,200 Palestinians. I can’t imagine returning to those seven sleepless, hellish weeks of bombardment, bloody hospitals and overflowing morgues. I may have no choice.
As the terrible nights grind on now, I feel fortunate to be alone here. My wife and two daughters are living safely in Canada. As Gaza marked Eid al-Fitr, one of the biggest Muslim holidays, under the long shadow of war this week, no longer were my girls leaping out from bed, screaming at the falling bombs, huddling terrified in the darkness. Instead, they feasted on chocolate and tried on new clothes.
At times, when their absence feels excruciating, I’ve regretted the choice to send my family abroad while I am trapped in this blockaded enclave, unable to see them without months of paperwork. But it’s weeks like these, filled with worry for my mother and sister who also remain in Gaza, that bring certain and pure relief. At least my daughters are out of harm’s way.
I know their hearts remain in this patch of earth. After I shared photos of our wrecked farm Friday, my 9-year-old called me crying. The blast had felled the fir tree she’d planted three years ago and cherished ever since.
Read:West Bank erupts in protest amid more Israel-Hamas fighting
Like my father, I grew up in Gaza City. His father grew up just across the border and, like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, fled the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. A decade later, he began planting citrus in Beit Lahiya, the northern Gaza Strip.
His nostalgic desire to live as close as possible to the border — to his original village in what is now Israel — has put the farm in what can be one of the territory’s most dangerous corners. Seen from roof height, the Israeli frontier looms as an ominous vista, with fortified fences and troops staffing guard towers.
The Gaza that the world knows today — impoverished, under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade, always mired in conflict — was not the Gaza of my youth. People can’t believe it when I tell them how as a teenager, before the second intifada erupted in the early 2000s, I flew from Gaza’s airport (yes, airport) to Istanbul for a day of press conferences and back within 24 hours.
Now, thousands of Palestinians wait weeks to hear authorities call their names over a crackling loudspeaker to pass through the iron gate known as Rafah crossing into Egypt, where a harrowing journey through the lawless desert of North Sinai awaits.
When the Palestinian uprisings seized the world’s attention, I dove into journalism with my TV producer uncle, Marwan Alghoul, a source of fascination and inspiration. Moments of hope for my homeland punctuated my career; in 2005, just after Israel pulled out, massive aid pledges flooded the tiny territory. Egypt flung open Rafah, and for once I imagined living a somewhat normal life.
But two years later, the Hamas militant group took over Gaza, and conditions went from bad to worse. The group is committed to confronting Israel, which has imposed a land, sea and air blockade.
Read:Israeli tanks pound Gaza ahead of possible ground incursion
Now, even as my daily fare is documenting the tragedies of the endless conflict between Hamas and Israel, people in Gaza often urge me to set hope against experience, to believe in a better future. Abraded by three wars, I’ve stopped heeding their advice and find hope only in planning a life far away.
The conflict never really changes. With Israel and Hamas locked in a violent loop, so much remains static. After an airstrike pummeled my uncle’s home in 2014, he waited patiently for compensation to rebuild. Three years later, installments trickled in and he could finish most of the repairs.
On Thursday night, a shell from an Israeli tank crashed into his house.
Israeli military accused of using media to trick Hamas
Early Friday, just after midnight, the Israeli military put out an ominous statement to the media: “IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.”
The terse statement set off frenzied speculation that Israel had launched a ground invasion of Gaza -- a much-feared scenario that would mark a bloody escalation of this week’s operation against Hamas militants. Some reporters were even told outright the incursion had begun.
Hours later, the military issued a “clarification.” There were no troops inside Gaza. But by then, several major news outlets had erroneously reported the ground offensive was under way.
While the army attempted to play down the incident as a misunderstanding, well-placed Israeli military commentators said the media had been used as part of an elaborate ruse to lure Hamas militants into a deadly trap that may have killed dozens of fighters.
Read:West Bank erupts in protest amid more Israel-Hamas fighting
“They didn’t lie,” said Or Heller, a veteran military correspondent on Israel’s Channel 13 TV. “It was a manipulation. It was smart and it was successful.”
This is how it unfolded:
Late Thursday, after days of airstrikes, Israel announced it was calling up thousands of reservists and amassing troops along the border ahead of a possible ground invasion. In another sign of escalation, Israeli tanks stationed along the border opened fire at targets inside Gaza.
In previous rounds of fighting, ground incursions have resulted in widespread destruction in Gaza and heavy casualties on both sides.
That set the stage for the late-night deception. According to Heller, Israel began scrambling forces along the border in what appeared to be final preparations for an invasion. Then came the announcement to the media, issued simultaneously in Hebrew and Arabic on Twitter. There followed alerts in major outlets that the invasion was under way.
The Israeli moves sent Hamas fighters rushing into defensive positions in an underground network of tunnels known as the Metro, according to Heller and other Israeli reports.
Israel called in 160 warplanes and bombarded the tunnels for 40 minutes, the military said. Heller said it was his understanding that scores of militants had been killed, though he said it was impossible to say.
“What we saw tonight was a very sophisticated operation that had a media aspect to it,” Heller said.
Read:Israeli tanks pound Gaza ahead of possible ground incursion
Hamas has not commented on the incident, and it was impossible to confirm the Israeli reports.
Heller said veteran Israeli correspondents, who have close ties to the military and in many cases have served themselves, knew that there was no way Israel was sending troops across enemy lines at this stage. Heller and other military correspondents even put out statements on Twitter assuring the jittery public that there was no ground operation.
The Associated Press, based on its analysis of the army’s statement, phone calls to military officials and on the ground reporting in Gaza, concluded there was no ground incursion and did not report there was one.
But others said the military had misled them or even lied when asked to clarify, turning the foreign media into an accessory of sorts.
Felicia Schwartz, correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, said she alerted news of a ground offensive after receiving explicit confirmation from Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman.
In a statement posted on Twitter, she said Conricus “told me directly, `There are ground troops in Gaza.’ That was the basis for a first story saying so. He retracted that statement two hours later and I changed the story to reflect that, and that is noted in the text and will be corrected.”
Speaking to reporters on Friday morning, Conricus blamed an “internal miscommunication.”
“These things can sometimes happen in the midst of a complex operation with many moving parts and with an unclear picture of what was happening,” he said. “As soon as I understood that I had the wrong information, I updated the relevant people with a clarification.”
Militaries around the world have long used deception and trickery against their enemies. Two years ago, the Israeli military reportedly faked the injuries of soldiers at the scene of a Hezbollah missile strike, going so far as to evacuate them to a hospital in a helicopter.
According to reports at the time, the army staged the injuries to trick Hezbollah into thinking it had inflicted casualties and therefore would agree to a cease-fire.
Read:Israel threatens Gaza ground invasion despite truce efforts
Friday’s misleading statement further strained what has often been a rocky relationship between the IDF and the foreign media.
Peter Lerner, a former military spokesman to the foreign media, said the Israeli public in general has long felt the international media focus too heavily on the Palestinian side of the story while minimizing Israeli concerns and suffering -- and the army is similarly inclined.
Lerner said he felt it was unlikely the military intentionally lied, but damage was done regardless.
“Your currency is credibility,” he said. “I think this is a crisis of that credibility in the way it’s being portrayed.”
West Bank erupts in protest amid more Israel-Hamas fighting
Turmoil from the battle between Israel and Hamas spilled over into the West Bank on Friday, sparking the most widespread Palestinian protests in years as hundreds of young demonstrators in multiple towns clashed with Israeli troops, who shot and killed at least 11 people.
Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip continued into early Saturday, when an airstrike on a house in Gaza City killed at least seven Palestinians — the highest number of fatalities in a single hit. That strike came a day after a furious overnight barrage of tank fire and airstrikes that wreaked destruction in some towns, killed a family of six in their house and sent thousands fleeing their homes.
The Israeli military said the operation involved 160 warplanes dropping some 80 tons of explosives over the course of 40 minutes and succeeded in destroying a network of tunnels used by Hamas to elude airstrikes and surveillance.
Israel appeared determined to inflict as much damage as possible on Gaza’s Hamas rulers before international efforts for a cease-fire accelerated. Since Monday night, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, which has pounded the Gaza Strip with strikes. In Gaza, at least 126 people have been killed, including 31 children and 20 women; in Israel, seven people have been killed, including a 6-year-old boy and a soldier.
Read:Israeli tanks pound Gaza ahead of possible ground incursion
Houda Ouda said she and her extended family ran frantically into their home in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, seeking safety as the earth shook in the darkness.
“We even did not dare to look from the window to know what is being hit,” she said. When daylight came, she saw the destruction: streets cratered, buildings crushed or with facades blown off, an olive tree burned bare, dust covering everything.
The latest airstrike targeted a three-story house on the edge of a refugee camp. Said Alghoul, who lives nearby, said Israeli warplanes dropped at least three bombs on the home without warning residents in advance.
“I could not endure and ran back to my home,” he said. Rescuers called a bulldozer to dig through the rubble for survivors or bodies.
Shortly afterward, Hamas said it fired a salvo of rockets at southern Israel in response to the airstrike.
The conflict, which was sparked by tensions in Jerusalem during the past month, has reverberated widely. Israeli cities with mixed Arab and Jewish populations have seen daily violence, with mobs from each community clashing and trashing each other’s property. New clashes broke out Friday in the coastal city of Acre.
In the occupied West Bank, on the outskirts of Ramallah, Nablus and other towns and cities, hundreds of Palestinians protested against the Gaza campaign and Israeli actions in Jerusalem. Waving Palestinian flags, they trucked in tires that they set up in burning barricades and hurled stones at Israeli soldiers. At least 10 protesters were shot and killed by soldiers. An 11th Palestinian was killed when he tried to stab a soldier at a military position.
In east Jerusalem, online video showed young Jewish nationalists firing pistols as they traded volleys of stone with Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, which became a flashpoint for tensions over attempts by settlers to forcibly evict a number of Palestinian families from their homes.
On Israel’s northern border, troops opened fire when a group of Lebanese and Palestinian protesters on the other side cut through the border fence and briefly crossed. One Lebanese was killed. Three rockets were fired toward Israel from neighboring Syria, but they either landed in Syrian territory or in empty areas, Israeli media said. It was not immediately known who fired them.
The spiraling violence has raised fears of a new Palestinian “intifada,” or uprising, at a time when the peace process has been virtually nonexistent for years. The tensions began in east Jerusalem earlier this month, with Palestinian protests against the Sheikh Jarrah evictions and Israeli police measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a frequent flashpoint located on a mount in the Old City revered by Muslims and Jews.
Read:Israel threatens Gaza ground invasion despite truce efforts
Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem late Monday, in an apparent attempt to present itself as the champion of the protesters. In the conflict that spiraled from there, Israel says it wants to inflict as much damage as it can on Hamas’ military infrastructure in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Hamas would “pay a very heavy price” for its rocket attacks. Israel called up 9,000 reservists Thursday to join its troops massed at the Gaza border.
An Egyptian intelligence official said Israel had turned down an Egyptian proposal for a one-year cease-fire that Hamas had accepted. The official, who was close to Egypt’s talks with both sides, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal negotiations.
On Friday, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel-Palestinian affairs, Hady Amr, arrived in Israel as part of an attempt by Washington to de-escalate the conflict.
U.S. President Joe Biden gave a show of support to Netanyahu in a call a day earlier, saying “there has not been a significant overreaction” in Israel’s response to Hamas rockets. He said the aim is to get a “significant reduction in attacks, particularly rocket attacks.”
Hamas has fired some 2,000 rockets toward Israel since Monday, according to the Israeli military. Most have been intercepted by anti-missile defenses, but they have brought life to a standstill in southern Israeli cities, caused disruptions at airports and have set off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Rafat Tanani, his pregnant wife and four children, ages 7 and under, were killed after an Israeli warplane reduced their four-story apartment building to rubble in the neighboring town of Beit Lahia, residents said. Four strikes hit the building, Rafat’s brother Fadi said. The building’s owner and his wife also were killed.
“It was a massacre,” said Sadallah Tanani, another relative. “My feelings are indescribable.”
When the sun rose Friday, residents streamed out of the area in pickup trucks, on donkeys and on foot, taking pillows, blankets, pots and pans and bread. Thousands took shelter inside 16 schools run by the United Nations relief agency UNWRA, agency spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said.
Mohammed Ghabayen, who took refuge in a school with his family, said his children had eaten nothing since the day before, and they had no mattresses to sleep on. “And this is in the shadow of the coronavirus crisis,” he said. “We don’t know whether to take precautions for the coronavirus or the rockets or what to do exactly.”
Read:Nowhere to run: Fear in Gaza grows amid conflict with Israel
Israeli military officials cheered the operation as a successful blow against the tunnel network. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said 160 warplanes operated in a “synchronized manner” for about 40 minutes as part of the operation.
He said the military aims to minimize collateral damage in striking military targets. But measures the military takes in other strikes, such as warning shots to get civilians to leave, were not “feasible this time.”
Military correspondents in Israeli media said the military believed dozens of militants were killed inside the tunnels. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups have confirmed 20 deaths in their ranks, but the Israeli military said the real number is far higher.
“We turned the tunnels which they thought were death traps for our soldiers into traps for them.” Reserve Air Force Col. Koby Regev said on Israeli television.