2023-10-28 17:31:51
A “battlefield”: this is how the Israeli army now describes the Gaza City region, while airstrikes have increased “very significantly” since Friday evening, and continue this Saturday October 28. “The places of shelter and the entire governorate are not safe,” we can read on leaflets that the IDF claims to have dropped in the Palestinian territory, calling on the civilian populations to “leave immediately” towards the south.
Three weeks after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli bombings are targeting the north of the enclave, in particular the sectors of Jabaliya, Beit Lahya and Beit Hanoun. The number of victims is currently unknown. An imposing column of black smoke was visible above Gaza City. “We have entered a new phase in the war. Yesterday the earth in Gaza shook,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a video published by his services.
This new intensification of Israeli strikes has been the subject of reactions from the international community, and in particular from the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, who declared this Saturday that he “regrets” the escalation in the bombings, calling to a “humanitarian ceasefire”. Same slogan for the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borell, asking for “a pause in hostilities” in order to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Gaza is in complete blackout and isolation while heavy shelling continues. @UNRWA warns about the desperate situation of Gaza people without electricity, food, water. Far too many civilians, including children, have been killed. This is against International Humanitarian Law.
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) October 28, 2023
The Israeli army notably announced that it had “hit 150 underground targets” in northern Gaza overnight, including “tunnels used by terrorists, underground combat sites and other underground infrastructure”. Hundreds of tunnels have been dug under the 14-kilometer border between Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai to move fighters, weapons and other contraband goods. Many have since been destroyed. The Hebrew State reports killing several Hamas members, including “the head of the Hamas air network, Asem Abu Rakaba”. In response, Hamas fired salvos of rockets towards several cities in Israel.
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Ground fighting
Hamas reported on Friday evening violent fighting between its fighters and the Israeli army, in the center and north of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army said it had intensified its strikes. An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed that Israeli forces were operating “inside the Gaza Strip, as they did” by carrying out an incursion the previous night. Following these announcements, Hamas said it was “ready” to face a ground offensive.
“When the war (the ground offensive) starts, we will know it, we will hear it, we will see it,” Colonel Golan Vach, head of the army’s search and rescue operations, said Friday evening. “It’s going to be lethal and it’s going to take time.”
A member of the Hamas political bureau, Houssam Badran, launched an appeal to the Palestinians in the West Bank, inviting them to join the fight in all its forms, armed or not, starting tonight.
In the event of a ground operation in Gaza, the UN fears “thousands of additional civilian deaths”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said this Saturday he feared that a large-scale Israeli ground military operation in Gaza would “lead thousands more civilians.” “Given the manner in which military operations have been carried out so far, in the context of a 56-year-old occupation, I am sounding the alarm about the potentially catastrophic consequences of large-scale ground operations in Gaza and the possibility that they will cause thousands more civilian deaths,” Volker Türk wrote in a statement released in Geneva.
“Hundreds of buildings and houses have been completely destroyed and thousands of other homes have been damaged,” Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesperson for Civil Defense in Gaza, a Palestinian territory under the control of the Islamist movement Hamas, told Mahmoud Bassal. . The intense bombardments of the night “changed the landscape of Gaza and the northern governorates”, he added.
In Paris, justice validates the ban on the pro-Palestinian demonstration
The administrative court validated this Saturday the prefectural ban on the demonstration in Paris in support of the Palestinian people, citing “the seriousness of the risk of disturbances to public order”. This demonstration, planned from Place du Châtelet to Place de la République, however started at 2:30 p.m.
In a press release, the court argued that it was not suspending the order which prohibits it, “in particular with regard to the context of heightened tensions linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the conditions in which this demonstration took place”. “The demonstration in dispute takes place in a context of heightened tensions linked to events in the Gaza Strip with an increase in anti-Semitic acts in France,” he argued.
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Seized urgently, the judge in summary proceedings thus rejected the requests of fourteen associations and individuals who contested this ban in the name of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. “In view of the reality and the seriousness of the risks of disturbances to public order, and while a less restrictive measure could not be implemented, it is without causing, in this case, a manifestly illegal infringement to the freedom of demonstration and expression that the police prefect has pronounced a ban on demonstrations in Paris”, concludes the judge in his order consulted by AFP.
“The planned gathering may present a particular serious risk of violence against other groups or the police and damage to property,” said the judge in summary proceedings. Notably because unlike the gatherings of October 19, 22 and 24, 2023, this one is “ambulatory, and not static”, passing through “the Marais and Sentier districts where a large Jewish community is located and are notably installed Jewish places of worship and culture,” he noted in his press release.
For environmentalists, this ban “is a serious obstacle to the fundamental right to demonstrate peacefully in support of the Palestinian populations who are suffering from deadly Israeli bombings”, in the words of its national secretary Marine Tondelier. The first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, denounced a response “that has become revenge”, in reaction to the intensification of strikes by the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip, inviting France and Europe to “mount on the table” to try to obtain a cease-fire.
Hostages’ families want to meet Netanyahu
Several Israeli media, like Time, Ynet et The Times of Israel, report that the families of hostages wish to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other members of the war cabinet after “this night which was the worst of all nights”. “Families are worried about the fate of their loved ones and are waiting for explanations. Every minute seems like an eternity. We demand that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and members of the war cabinet meet with us this morning,” according to a statement from the association bringing together relatives of the hostages.
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According to the IDF, the hostages were taken to Gaza on October 7 by Hamas, which has since released four women. One of them described being taken into “a sprawling network” of tunnels at the start of her detention. Still according to the Israeli army, the families of some 200 hostages were contacted to be informed that their loved ones were being held by Hamas. The terrorist group estimated Thursday that “nearly 50” hostages were killed in the Israeli bombings.
In Gaza, communications are cut
Communications and the internet have been cut since Friday. The Palestinian Red Crescent and several UN agencies said they had lost contact with their teams in Gaza. The human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Saturday that this cut risked “serving as a cover for mass atrocities”.
American billionaire Elon Musk assured this Saturday that his Starlink satellite Internet access service would support the connectivity of “internationally recognized aid organizations” in Gaza, cut off from the world due to the shutdown of telecommunications.
We will support the UN and other internationally recognized aid groups
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2023
UN General Assembly calls for truce
The UN General Assembly demanded on Friday by a large majority (120 for, 14 against and 45 abstentions, for 193 UN member countries) an “immediate humanitarian truce”. A non-binding resolution described as “infamy” by Israel but welcomed by Hamas. “It’s a dark day for the UN and for humanity,” lambasted Gilad Erdan, assuring that Israel would continue to use “all means” at its disposal to “rid the world of the evil that Hamas represents” and “bring the hostages home” This Saturday, a shell hit the base of the UN Interim Force in southern Lebanon.
Reports of intense bombardment in Gaza are extremely distressing.
Evacuation of patients is not possible under such circumstances, nor to find safe shelter.
The blackout is also making it impossible for ambulances to reach the injured.
We are still out of touch with our staff…
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) October 28, 2023
Furthermore, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), regrets that “the evacuation of patients is not possible in such circumstances, nor the search for safe shelter.” He specifies that the power cut prevents “ambulances from reaching the injured”, adding that the organization is “still disconnected [du] personnel and health establishments”. He says he is “worried for their safety”.
Later in the day, the WHO said it was “gravely concerned” by reports of bombings near the two hospitals. “The morgues are full. More than half of the dead are women and children,” she added, calling for a “humanitarian truce” and the release of all “civilians held hostage.”
Erdogan accuses the West of being “the main culprit of the massacres in Gaza”
This Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan affirmed on X that “the Israeli bombings which intensified last night on Gaza have once again targeted women, children and innocent civilians and deepened the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Israel must immediately stop this madness and put an end to his attacks.” On Wednesday October 25, he had already attacked the Jewish state and described Hamas as “liberator”, behind the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7.
“The main culprits of the massacres in Gaza are the Westerners. With the exception of a few consciences who raised their voices, (these) massacres are totally the work of the West,” launched the head of state, during of a “meeting in support of Palestine” which brought together several hundred thousand people at the former Atatürk airport in Istanbul.
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