Israeli forces ‘fighting in the heart of Gaza City’, says IDF
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has said it is fighting in “significant centres” of the Gaza Strip during a “complex and difficult” war with Hamas militants.
Israel’s southern command has been fighting non-stop for a month to “strike the core of Hamas’ capabilites”, Maj Gen Yaron Finkelman said in a statement on Tuesday.
He said Israeli soldiers are “eliminating terrorists, discovering tunnels, destroying weapons and continuing to advance into the center of the enemy”. He added:
We are fighting at this very hour in significant centers of the Gaza Strip. I have just returned from there. For the first time in a decade, the IDF is fighting in the heart of Gaza City. In the heart of terror. This is a complex and difficult war, and unfortunately, it has costs.
Key events
Oliver Holmes
Waving white flags and holding their hands above their heads, Palestinian families fled past tanks waiting to storm Gaza City.
Israel’s military gave civilians inside the encircled city a four-hour window to leave on Tuesday, as its forces prepared to retake the biggest city in the strip.
Men, women and children, some carrying their belongings on donkeys, fled their homes past Israeli troops out of the city.
In an Arabic-language message, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said they would allow residents to leave from 10am until 2pm local time, and published a video of dozens of people along a main road.
Posting online, one resident, Adam Fayez Zeyara, said the walk on Tuesday was the most dangerous of his life.
We saw the tanks from point blank. We saw decomposed body parts. We saw death.
Hundreds of thousands of people are feared to still be trapped. Hamas, which has long used the tactic of hiding among civilians, has been accused of blocking people from leaving their homes.
Israel has repeatedly told civilians to move south for their own safety but continued to bomb the entire strip, striking the southern city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, killing 23 people according to Palestinian health officials.
Scotland Yard does not believe it has grounds to support a ban on the planned pro-Palestine demonstration through central London on Armistice Day, the Guardian has learned.
Sources say the legal threshold needed, which requires intelligence pointing to a risk of serious disruption, has not yet been met.
The government has been pressing the Metropolitan police to use their powers to ask for a ban of the proposed protest on Saturday.
Earlier on Tuesday, the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, told Sky News he did not believe the pro-Palestine march should proceed.
Those attending the marches in recent weeks have been calling for a ceasefire in the war that broke out last month after Hamas killed 1,400 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostages. Thousands of civilians in Gaza have been killed in the Israeli military operation since, according to Gaza’s health authority, which is run by Hamas.
Saturday’s protest is scheduled to start at 12.45pm at Marble Arch and end at the US embassy in south-west London, about two miles from the Cenotaph, where formal remembrance events will be held the next day.
Ministers had been raising the prospect of disorder on Armistice Day – Saturday, 11 November – for days.
Home office sources said the risks included that of groups splintering off from the main procession, the danger of counterprotests clashing with pro-Palestine protesters and the unusual route of the march.
On Monday the Met pleaded with organisers to postpone the protest, claiming there was a risk of violence, a request that was declined.
Netanyahu urges people in Gaza to move south ‘because Israel will not stop’
Netanyahu says he is in “continuous contact” with Joe Biden and that Israel appreciates the support from him and the US.
The Israeli leader says he is bringing leaders from around the world to show them “the horror of horrors committed by Hamas”.
Netanyahu vows to “completely destroy” the abilities of Hamas to control the Gaza Strip. He adds:
I’m calling on the citizens of Gaza: please go south. I know you’re already doing that. Complete the move to the south because Israel will not stop. There’s no entry of workers and there will be no ceasefire without our hostages being back home.
Netanyahu: No ceasefire without release of hostages
Netanyahu says Hezbollah is “starting to take part in this war”, warning that they will be “making the mistake of a lifetime” if they do so.
The Israeli prime minister says he will not accept a reality where Hamas and Hezbollah from Lebanon will be “hurting our citizens” in northern Israel, and vows to “retaliate with fire”.
He says he has spoken with the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross about the hostages held in Gaza, and demanded that the Red Cross immediately visit the hostages to make sure that they are healthy and well. He added:
I am reiterating and I’m telling both my friends and my enemies: we will not have a ceasefire without the hostages back home.
Israel is “acting with every means possible on every front possible” to bring the hostages home, he said, adding that military action is “an essential part of that effort”.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is making a televised address to provide an update regarding the war in Gaza.
He described the war as going “intensely”, and said the Gaza City is now “surrounded”.
Israeli forces “are acting within the city” and “deepening the pressure” on Hamas, he said.
“So many” Hamas terrorists have been killed, he said, adding that Israeli forces have destroyed many Hamas headquarters, tunnels and bases.
A dozen Palestinian children who have cancer were allowed to leave Gaza through the Rafah border on Tuesday for treatment in Egypt.
The 12 children were transferred to specialised cancer hospitals, AP reported, citing Egyptian’s health ministry.
Authorities did not say whether the children travelled alone or if any family members or guardians were allowed to accompany them.
Analysis: Netanyahu’s vague vision for Gaza after war may open up new chapter of violence
Peter Beaumont
The last time Israeli troops had a permanent security role inside Gaza, Israel’s prime minister was Ariel Sharon. Twenty-one Israeli settlements were scattered across the Gaza Strip, connected to Israel through a bypass road, used by Israeli surfers at the weekend to reach the coast.
Soldiers manned checkpoints and metal-clad towers. At night, Palestinian children would approach the towers under cover of darkness to throw crude pipe bombs that could be bought for pocket money.
For their part, the armed factions in Gaza, Hamas among them, would attempt serious attacks including shootings and suicide bombings.
Now Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has suggested what many Israelis thought unthinkable: a return of security in Gaza to the Israeli administration, a place already half in ruins, with a population of 2.3 million.
![‘Israel will for an indefinite period have the overall security responsibility [in Gaza] because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have that security responsibility,’ said Netanyahu.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4befe5380a0d2a4ba1f15e4e4ce27b6b6d86431a/0_417_5500_3300/master/5500.jpg?width=700&dpr=2&s=none)
“Israel will for an indefinite period have the overall security responsibly,” Netanyahu told ABC news on Monday, “because we have seen what happens when we do not have it.”
Exactly what Netanyahu has in mind remains unclear. Indeed, his comments appear to run contrary to assessments in the US and elsewhere that Israel – which militarily controlled Gaza from 1967 to 2005 – planned to reoccupy Gaza in any fashion and in any case would be opposed by Washington.
Read the full analysis here.
Israeli defence minister says IDF ‘tightening chokehold’ around Gaza City, rejects pause until hostages freed
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are operating in the heart of Gaza City and “tightening the chokehold” around the city.
In a televised statement on Tuesday, Gallant described the Gaza Strip as “the biggest terror base mankind has ever built” and said IDF ground forces have stormed terror strongholds in Gaza “from all directions, in perfect coordination with maritime and aerial forces”, the Times of Israel reported.
On the subject of international demands for humanitarian pauses, he said:
Humanitarian pauses, to me, means first and foremost the captives held by animals. There will be no humanitarian truce without [the return of] the hostages.
He said neither Israel nor Hamas would govern the Palestinian enclave once the war was over, Reuters reported.
Israeli forces ‘fighting in the heart of Gaza City’, says IDF
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has said it is fighting in “significant centres” of the Gaza Strip during a “complex and difficult” war with Hamas militants.
Israel’s southern command has been fighting non-stop for a month to “strike the core of Hamas’ capabilites”, Maj Gen Yaron Finkelman said in a statement on Tuesday.
He said Israeli soldiers are “eliminating terrorists, discovering tunnels, destroying weapons and continuing to advance into the center of the enemy”. He added:
We are fighting at this very hour in significant centers of the Gaza Strip. I have just returned from there. For the first time in a decade, the IDF is fighting in the heart of Gaza City. In the heart of terror. This is a complex and difficult war, and unfortunately, it has costs.
Civilians are Gaza are “drinking water from a swimming pool” and children “crying for lack of bread”, an international humanitarian organisation said as it urged an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.
In a statement on Tuesday, CARE International warned that “a rapidly escalating humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes” in Gaza and risks spreading beyond.
It has called for the release of hostages, an immediate ceasefire by all parties, the free flow of humanitarian aid inside Gaza and the evacuation of the sick and wounded.
Hiba Tibi, the organisation’s West Bank and Gaza country director, said:
My colleagues in Gaza speak of drinking water from a swimming pool, of their children crying for lack of bread, and of nights that are something out of a horror film amid incessant bombardment and airstrikes.
Like the 2.3 million Gazans around them, they don’t know if they will still be alive the next morning, or even the next hour. This conflict is killing children and robbing millions of their dignity.
More than 400 US citizens, lawful permanent residents and other eligible people have evacuated from Gaza, Reuters reported that a US state department spokesperson said.
‘Nothing justifies the horror being endured’ in Gaza, says WHO
The level of death and suffering in the Israel-Palestine crisis is “hard to fathom”, a World Health Organization spokesperson (WHO) has said.
“Every day, you think it is the worst day and then the next day is worse,” Christian Lindmeier told journalists in Geneva on Tuesday, quoting a colleague in Gaza.
He noted Gaza’s health ministry figures that show that an average of 160 children are killed every day in the territory and the total death toll has passed 10,000. The WHO is also mourning the 16 health workers who have been killed while on duty, he said.
What is needed now is “the political will to at least grant a humanitarian pause and access to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population as well as the hostages in Gaza”, he said.
Nothing justifies the horror being endured by civilians in Gaza.
The WHO spokesperson reiterated the UN’s calls for “unhindered, safe and secure access” for some 500 trucks of aid a day, not only across the border but also “all the way through to the patients in the hospitals” where he said surgeries including amputations were being performed without anaesthesia.
Hundreds of truckloads of aid are waiting for access at the Egypt-Gaza border and humanitarians on the ground in Gaza are on standby to facilitate the distribution of relief items, he said, adding:
Access, access, access is necessary.
In Israel, people are “frightened, traumatised and anguished for their loved ones”, he said, calling on Hamas to release the hostages. Many of those held captive need urgent medical attention, he stressed.
At least 320 foreign nationals and dependents, 100 Egyptians, and 262 Jordanians were evacuated from Gaza through the Rafah border crossing today, Reuters reported, citing an Egyptian security source and Jordan’s foreign ministry.
However, only four injured Gazans were allowed through the crossing into Egypt, according to a medical source.
Evacuations through the Rafah crossing resumed on Monday after it was closed on Saturday and Sunday following an Israeli strike on an ambulance in Gaza.
The German government has decided to release €91m (£79m) for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) after a review launched in response to the Hamas attacks on Israel.
On 8 October, Germany suspended its development aid to the Palestinian territories pending a review.
The review had not yet been fully completed “due to the fragile situation in the region”, the development ministry said on Tuesday.
But it said the review focused on continuing support for UNRWA, and “as a first partial result” it had decided to release €71m already earmarked for the UN agency and to add €20m in new funding.
The UNRWA activities funded by Germany would focus on the permanent provision of drinking water as well as hygiene and sanitation in emergency shelters for internally displaced people in Gaza, the ministry said.
A Palestinian journalist has been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza and another was wounded, the official Palestinian news agency reported.
Mohammad Abu Hasira “was killed in an Israeli bombing that targeted his house located near the fishermen’s port west of Gaza City”, WAFA news agency reported.
He was killed along with 42 members of his family, including his sons and brothers, it said.
The Hamas-run news press service in the Gaza Strip said the bombardment took place overnight between Sunday and Monday but his body had only been found in the rubble on Tuesday.
Abu Hasira is one of at least 37 journalists killed since 7 October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Those figures include 32 Palestinians, four Israelis, and one Lebanese citizen.
Andrew Sparrow
Rishi Sunak has been updating the House of Commons on the situation in the Middle East.
The UK prime minister started by talking about Israel and Gaza, stressing the UK’s support for Israel’s right to defend himself.
He said more than 100 Britons had now left Gaza.
And he said the government would “not stand for the hatred and antisemitism we have seen on our streets”. He went on:
It sickens me to think that British Jews are looking over their shoulder in this country, that children are going to school covering up their school badges for fear of attack.
This government will do whatever it takes to keep the Jewish community safe.
For more live updates from the UK, do follow our UK politics live blog here.
The British Army is “posturing” itself for the prospect of a “non-combatant evacuation operation” in the Middle East in the event the Israel-Hamas conflict expands, the UK’s chief of the general staff has said.
Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, appearing before parliament’s defence select committee, was asked about the readiness of the armed services and the steps taken in light of the fighting, the PA Media news agency reported. He said:
I don’t think it’s likely that we are going to find ourselves drawn into combat or conflict in the region, or certainly we would seek to avert that.
He added:
At the moment, the role we’re playing is a combination of exploiting the network we have, so for example we have our special operations forces, the rangers, in Lebanon.
They have been there for many years and they have built up a very close relationship with Lebanese armed forces and through that, that provides an insight and influence on to Lebanese decision-making and seeing things from the other side of the northern border which clearly concerns Israel.
Discussing “contingency” options, he said:
Clearly there is a prospect, if the conflict does expand, of a non-combatant evacuation operation in some parts of that region. We’re posturing ourselves for that.
The first group of Canadian nationals has been evacuated out of Gaza through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, according Canada’s international development minister, Ahmed Hussen.
He told reporters on Tuesday:
They are now safe and sound in Egypt and we’re very, very happy.
An approved evacuation list from Gaza’s border authority included about 80 people connected to Canada who had been granted permission to cross into Egypt, the Canadian Press reported.
‘History will judge us all’: WHO chief urges humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged all parties involved to agree to a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and “work toward a lasting peace”.
Posting to social media, the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said 10,000 people had been killed over the course of a month of “intense bombardment” in Gaza, more than 4,000 of them children, adding:
How long will this human catastrophe last?
He reiterated his call for a humanitarian ceasefire and the immediate release of hostages held in Gaza, adding:
History will judge us all by what we do to end this tragedy.
It has been a month of intense bombardment in #Gaza.
10,000 people have died. Over 4,000 of them were children.
How long will this human catastrophe last?
We urge all parties to agree to a humanitarian ceasefire and work toward lasting peace. We again call for the immediate…
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 7, 2023
On Monday, Tedros joined the heads of several major UN bodies in a united call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. “Enough is enough. This must stop now,” a joint statement said.
An entire population is besieged and under attack, denied access to the essentials for survival, bombed in their homes, shelters, hospitals and places of worship. This is unacceptable.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
