world news
Thousands of Gazans flee south using IDF corridor
Thousands of Gazans fled toward the territory’s southern half using a humanitarian corridor opened by the IDF via the Salah-a-Din Road on Wednesday, representing a jump in the number of evacuees as compared to recent days.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that the number had topped 15,000 people for the day.
IDF Arabic language spokesman Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee on X called on Gazans to “join the hundreds of thousands” who have evacuated already and to head south between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.
Later Wednesday, Adraee sent out an updated message on X, saying “in response to your great response since the morning hours, we have decided to extend the operation of the safe corridor on the Salah al-Din Road for the movement of residents to the south of Wadi Gaza by an additional hour!”
“For your safety, join the large thousands who headed to the southern Wadi Gaza area since the morning hours, so seize the opportunity until three o’clock in the afternoon to protect yourselves and members of your families,” he wrote.
Gazans flee southwards along the IDF’s humanitarian corridor, opened for a few hours, November 8, 2023 (IDF)
IDF Chief Spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari said that the military would continue on Thursday providing a corridor for Palestinians to head south from northern Gaza,
Previously, between 750,000 and one million Gazans had already evacuated northern Gaza where most of the IDF’s ground invasion has been focused since the end of October.
Exchanges of fire on the Lebanese border
On the northern Lebanese border, there were two rounds of exchanges, with Hezbollah firing two rockets earlier Wednesday at Shtula and the Yiftach area and firing anti tank missiles later in the day.
The IDF responded with artillery and tank fire to the source of the rocket fire.
Two soldiers were wounded by the anti-tank missiles and were evacuated for medical care, while the IDF responded to the anti-tank fire with artillery fire of its own.
Hamas also continued to fire rockets on Wednesday, but, at press time, both Hezbollah and Hamas had seen a relative drop in attacks on Israel’s territory.
The Hamas drop continued a tenuous trend from Tuesday, whereas the Hezbollah drop was the first day of a reduction after multiple days of escalation.
Four IDF soldiers killed in Gaza, one near Lebanon border
Also on Wednesday, the IDF announced the names of IDF soldiers who were killed in recent fighting in northern Gaza as: Noam Yosef Abou, 20 from Dimona, from the Division 931, the Nahal Brigade, Yonatan Hatzur, 22 from Katzir, of Shaldag special forces, and Yaakov Ozri, 28 of Shamai Village from tank battalion unit 52.
It was also announced on Wednesday that a 55-year-old Kiryat Shmona resident, Meir Moyal, had been killed earlier in the week during reserves service related operations.
Another soldier was also injured in fighting in northern Gaza.
To date, the IDF has said that 351 IDF soldiers have been killed since October 7, and the Hamas hostage count is at 239.
IDF kills Hamas’s Weapons and Industries head
Earlier Wednesday, the head of Hamas’s Weapons and Industries Department, Mahsan Abu-Zina, was eliminated by the IDF in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip, the IDF and Shin Bet said.
Abu-Zina was one of the leaders in Hamas for producing weapons for the terrorist organization and specialized in the production of strategic ammunition and rockets.
The weapons production leader is the latest in a series of senior Hamas members killed amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, though Hamas’s top two leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif are still at large.
Separately, IDF ground troops and “Yahalom” soldiers conducted joint activity in the Beit Hanoun area in order to locate and destroy terror tunnels.
The troops located a tunnel shaft near an UNWRA school and destroyed the terror tunnel.
To date, the IDF said it has neutralized 130 tunnel shafts.
In addition, the 7th Brigade of the IDF’s Armored Corps encountered and successfully neutralized terrorists who had been launching attacks from a well-coordinated position in the Gaza Strip, the IDF announced in a statement.
The encounter began when the soldiers of the brigade identified an anti-tank missile and observation station that had been in use by Hamas terrorists. It was discovered that this station was connected via an underground tunnel to a larger cache of weaponry.
Upon this discovery, the IDF immediately called in an airstrike, damaging the terrorist infrastructure.
As the operation unfolded, terrorists attempted to escape the initial strike by fleeing to the rooftop of a nearby building. However, their attempt to escape came to a quick end as they were targeted and eliminated in a subsequent airstrike, ensuring that they could not pose any further threat.
The IDF also spotted and neutralized a group of Hamas terrorists who were actively launching mortar shells into Israeli territory. With swift coordination, an aircraft, supported by a fighter jet from the Gaza Division’s Fire Control Center, executed a tactical strike.
This attack successfully hit the launch site, taking out both the position and the terrorists.
Lt.-Col. “G”, commander of the 7th Brigade assault unit, said, “There is no escape: Any terrorist who encounters the brigade will be eliminated, and any terrorist who tries to flee will fail.”
Israel does offer Hamas forces the opportunity to surrender if they put down their arms and come out with their hands raised.
Support for a two-state solution in the Middle East among Arab Americans and Palestinians residing in the West Bank and Gaza is on the rise, according to two recent surveys.
The more recent survey from YouGov and Arab News was published on Tuesday. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) published the other in September.
A survey of Arab Americans leading up to the US presidential elections found that half of those polled (50%) believed in seeking a two-state solution.
The poll touched upon the future of the conflict and possible resolutions to see its conclusion. Half of Arab-Americans polled believed in seeking a two-state solution with shared governance over Jerusalem. 34% believe that there should be one state where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights, and 9% stated that they were unsure.A separate poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in September found that support for the concept of the two-state solution among Palestinians continues to rise and has the support of 39% of those polled.
According to PSR, three months prior, support for two states stood at around 32%. Figures were taken from Gaza and the West Bank, at 39% and 38%, respectively.
However, when asked about a separate Palestinian state not linked to the “two-state solution” and when state borders are identified as those of 1967, support rises to 59%, PSR found.
Half of the respondents prefer the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, while 19% prefer a confederation between the two states of Palestine and Israel. Only 10% prefer establishing a single state with equality between Israelis and Palestinians.
When asked about solving the conflict and reaching statehood, nearly half of Palestinian respondents (48%) said they would choose “armed struggle” as a way to achieve it (50% in the West Bank, 36% in Gaza).
However, a third said they preferred negotiations to end the conflict, and 15% said they would like to see popular peaceful resistance.
International calls for two-states
Recent US administrations and other global actors have called for the end to the ongoing war and to reach a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Biden administration has attempted to broker a hostage and ceasefire deal as a first step. In remarks made ahead of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly in September, US President Joe Biden reiterated his support for a two-state solution.
“As we look ahead, we must also address the rise of violence against innocent Palestinians on the West Bank and set the conditions for a better future, including a two-state solution, where the world — where Israel enjoys security and peace and full recognition and normalized relations with all its neighbors, where Palestinians live in security, dignity, and self-determination in a state of their own,” Biden said.
The survey conducted by Arab News and YouGov was conducted using a sample of 500 Arab Americans across the United States from September 26 to October 1, 2024. The survey data have a margin of error of +/- 5.93%.
The poll conducted by PSR comprised a sample size of 1,200 people, of whom 790 were interviewed face-to-face in the West Bank and 410 in Gaza. The margin of error stood at +/-3.5%.
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, will be remembered as the fighter whose war ultimately cost him his life. It would be premature to suggest that Sinwar’s death means the war in Gaza is over. Both Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had hidden agendas throughout the conflict.
Sinwar had a false vision from the outset. He thought the war he triggered on October 7 would bring about the end of Israel, defeat its army, and open the road to a liberated Jerusalem. He bit off more than he could chew and paid with his life and the lives of 42,000 Palestinians—a price he couldn’t have imagined or expected.
Netanyahu was similarly vague about his intentions. He couldn’t tell the military commanders exactly what he wanted to achieve through the war on Gaza. Commanders repeatedly tried to clarify the war’s objectives so their soldiers would know what they were supposed to achieve. Netanyahu never responded, raising questions about what sort of leader he was, taking his country into a war that the army became deeply engaged in without knowing where to go and what to achieve other than Kill Them All and Come Back Alone, as the 1968 Western action movie was titled.
Both men had reasons for extending the war because they felt their political careers and survival would end the day it ended. Sinwar thought the Israeli captives would become his wild card in pressuring Israel into meeting his demands. He erred. He never expected Netanyahu to turn his back on the captives, placing his political survival and that of his government ahead of the captives’ lives and fate.Sinwar thought the rising death toll among Palestinian civilians would force the international community to intervene, pressure Israel, and stop the war on his terms. He erred in this too. The miscalculated war brought more havoc on the Palestinians than on the Israelis. Assuming that the ratio of deaths among Palestinians and Israelis in almost every showdown was about 10 Palestinians for each Israeli, Sinwar thought that when the number of Palestinians killed in Israel’s airstrikes crossed the threshold of 12,000 civilians, the world would jump to its feet and demand an immediate ceasefire. That didn’t happen. The ratio went up to 40:1, and the numbers kept increasing.
At the same time, the war seems to be in its beginning as the Israeli army runs in circles, displacing Palestinians from one place to another, changing tactics and goals, and returning to the northern Gaza Strip to mop it up, disregarding earlier announcements that the area had been cleansed of Hamas fighters in the first weeks of the Israeli ground assault.
In his recent interview with the Haredi weekly Mishpacha, Netanyahu argued he was right in standing by his intention to continue the war. He defended his stubborn stand in the face of army generals, public opinion, and international pressure in stalling any deal with Hamas because, as he said, history will remember him as Israel’s savior.
Therefore, for him, the ends always justify the means. That was the lesson he learned from his late father, who advised him to hand over parts of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority after the Wye River Memorandum if that would allow him to safeguard the rest of the “land of Israel.” In this war, Netanyahu behaved like a drunken driver who knew nothing about traffic lights and the meaning of a red light. To his credit, he made it, but at what price, other than gaining more egoism and costing both Israelis and Palestinians dearly?
When both leaders, Netanyahu and Sinwar, become hostages to their zero-sum addiction, the end is clear. Sinwar paid with his life. Netanyahu will eventually pay with his political career. No state commission of inquiry would ever disregard Netanyahu’s behavior before, during, and after October 7. The Israeli public will wake up from its intoxication from the tactical successes in the field to the ugly reality of how bad the war was for Israel and the region. The same applies to the Palestinians, even in Gaza.
Even though Sinwar was seen as personally responsible for the agony and plight of the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, words of mourning spread all over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In Arab culture, people believe in honoring the dead no matter how profound their differences with the deceased are. The images and videos that filled social networks of Sinwar’s last moments of life gave the man a prestige he may not have dreamed of among his people. An Israeli soldier who sent his drone into a building to check its interior spotted three armed Palestinians and suspected that Sinwar was one of them. The orders were given to the tank to hit that building. The drone returned to film and showed Sinwar, wounded and seated on an armchair, waving a wooden bar and throwing it at the drone. These images gave Sinwar a prestige none of the movement’s political leaders abroad ever had.
Who takes the steering wheel for Hamas?
What matters is not what the Palestinian public feels today about Sinwar’s death as much as the question of who will take over the steering wheel after him. Before discussing the potential successors, it is worth reminding everyone that any leader who fills Sinwar’s shoes will have the onus of proving to his constituency that he is no less harsh against the Israelis than Sinwar. Therefore, in the absence of an Israeli readiness to cut a deal that brings the Israeli captives back home, ends the war, and releases the agreed-upon list of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, no Hamas leader can move forward. Incentives are needed for whoever is going to run Hamas from now on.
If the lives of the Israeli captives mean something to the government of Israel, then everything should be done, and done now, to close the captives’ dossier and move on to a different reality not only in the Gaza Strip but in the region. The region needs a reality based on a political agreement between two states for two peoples to live side by side along the 1967 lines. No matter how long this war goes on, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, or even beyond, a political settlement will always remain the way out. Why not take a shortcut and spare the Palestinians and the Israelis the pain of an ongoing and meaningless war? Honestly, I don’t see this happening soon. The wounds of the current war will take time to heal, if ever.
One dark prophecy about what may happen to the Israeli captives who are still alive is a decision by the local commanders of Hamas in Gaza to kill all the hostages if they are convinced that they don’t count in Israel’s long-term strategy. They might do it to avenge the killing of their commander or even to preemptively avenge their potential assassination by Israel since they see it coming today, tomorrow, or next year. Sinwar, too, understood that this would be the case with him, even if an interim deal were reached for him to leave Gaza and live elsewhere. He was sure that Israel’s long arm would hunt him down no matter where he hid.
The question is, who will take over from Sinwar? His brother Mohammed Sinwar seems to have the highest chance to fill his shoes. Mohammed was the one who kidnapped Gilad Shalit and kept for himself the veto power within Hamas not to sign any exchange deal with Israel if his brother, Yahya, was not on the list of the Palestinian prisoners destined to be released. One day, Mohammed explained that his mother told him she wouldn’t rest until she hugged her son, Yahya, at home. He took an oath to release him. He did it. Mohammed is a stubborn and ruthless commander and his brother’s closest aide and ally. The commander of the Khan Yunis Brigade, Mohammed is not that easy to deal with. Only a generous incentive can bring him on board. In the meantime, he is the one who will take over responsibility for the Israeli captives. Hamas has no intention to declare who the new boss is out of fear that he, too, would be assassinated by Israel.
Nevertheless, the name of Khalil al-Hayya popped up as the successor. He was the closest to Sinwar and his deputy. He belongs to the Iranian camp and is vehemently opposed to most political bureau members who are more affiliated with Turkey and Qatar. It is the fight between the Shia and Sunni camps of Islamism.
Izz al-Din Haddad, the commander of the Gaza Brigade and the one in charge of the entire northern part of the Gaza Strip, is also one of the potential successors. Even if Mohammed takes over, Haddad remains a candidate to take over once Mohammed is assassinated. They all know Israel would hunt them down just as it did with the senior command of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Muhammad Shabana, the commander of Hamas’ Rafah Brigade, is also one of the prominent commanders in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. He was added to the list of potential commanders to control Gaza during the war. None of these commanders knows or can be confident that he will still be around when the war in Gaza ends.
Regarding Hamas’ leadership abroad, Khaled Mashaal is currently the de facto leader. Living in Doha, Mashaal believes he can take Hamas away from the war in Gaza, transforming it into a political party with a reserved seat in Middle East politics. He did it before when he took over after the assassination in 2004 of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of Hamas. In two years, Mashal took Hamas to the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, which it had boycotted in 1996. The Arab media quoted him as saying that the time has come for Hamas to become political and join the Palestine Liberation Organization, insinuating his acceptance of the two-state solution.
Mashal is submitting his credentials as Hamas’ moderate leader with whom the West can do business. Whether the West would believe his words and subsequently embrace him is too early to judge. Most of the keys to a solution are in the hands of Israelis, the overriding military power that controls the flow of events in the region. Only if Israel is convinced that the war must end can it end. Otherwise, the sky is the limit.
Elias Zananiri is a veteran journalist from east Jerusalem who has held several senior positions in the PLO as a political adviser and media consultant over the past two decades.
The war between Israel and Hamas has devastated the Palestinian economy and left nearly all of Gaza’s population in poverty, with quality of life indicators such as health and education knocked back 70 years, the United Nations’ development agency said on Tuesday.
Launching a study on the war’s socioeconomic impacts, the UNDP’s Chitose Noguchi said the economy of the Palestinian territories – the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank – was now 35% smaller than it was at the start of Israel’s invasion of Gaza a year ago.
By some measures the poverty level in Gaza was now approaching 100% as a result of the disruption, with unemployment now at 80%, Noguchi said.
“The state of Palestine is experiencing unprecedented levels of setbacks,” she told a UN press conference in Geneva over a sometimes crackling line from Deir Al-Balah. “For Gaza, reversing development by an estimated 70 years to 1955.”Even under optimal conditions, with international aid remaining at current levels and flowing into Gaza and the West Bank unhindered, it would still take at least a decade for economic output to recover to pre-war levels, she said.
The war, launched by Israel after attacks by Hamas on Israeli territory on October 7 last year that killed about 1,200 people, has brought immense destruction to the Gaza Strip.
Schools, hospitals and other essential infrastructure have been razed to the ground. Nearly 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Hamas-run health ministry figures.
Some 3.3 million Palestinians, 2.3 million of them in Gaza and 1.5 million of them children, need urgent humanitarian assistance, the report said.
The cost of repairing damaged infrastructure was expected to run to $18.5 billion, almost the entire annual economic output of the Palestinian territories in 2022.
The war had taken a similarly severe toll on human capital, the report added, with 625,000 students in Gaza having no access to education at the end of September and 93% of school buildings severely damaged.
The situation was similar with regard to healthcare. A total of 986 health workers had been killed by the end of September, and less than half of primary healthcare centers were even partially functional.
-
Solar Energy3 years agoDLR testing the use of molten salt in a solar power plant in Portugal
-
world news11 months ago
Gulf, France aid Gaza, Russia evacuates citizens
-
Camera11 months agoDJI Air 3 vs. Mini 4 Pro: which compact drone is best?
-
world news11 months ago
Strong majority of Americans support Israel-Hamas hostage deal
-
Camera4 years agoCharles ‘Chuck’ Geschke, co-founder of Adobe and inventor of the PDF, dies at 81
-
Solar Energy11 months agoGlencore eyes options on battery recycling project
-
Camera12 months agoSony a9 III: what you need to know
-
TOP SCEINCE6 months agoCan animals count?
