Diana Henry’s Swift to smash box

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dishes
Saturday
14 October 2023
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Thousands flee ahead of

expected invasion of Gaza
descended into its bloodiest period journalist was killed and six others trapped civilians had to decide
• Israeli army issues Bethan McKernan in decades. from AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera whether to leave home, possibly
mass evacuation orders to Jerusalem Hamas said 70 people had been were wounded when they were never to return, after the Israeli army
over a million residents Thousands of people fled from the
killed when warplanes struck cars
fleeing south, while Israel’s military
caught up in cross-border shelling
amid growing fears of escalating
issued mass evacuation orders in the
early hours of yesterday.
• Continued airstrikes north to the southern half of Gaza said that its troops backed by tanks violence on several fronts after last Following the order from Israel
yesterday in advance of an expected had conducted the first raids inside weekend’s massacre of Israeli civil- for the population to move south of
and shelling of Gaza six ground invasion of the blockaded Gaza since the crisis began. ians by Hamas. the Gaza River, just south
2 
days after Hamas attack strip as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict In southern Lebanon a Reuters Almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million of Gaza City, however,

Clashes Commentary
PHOTOGRAPH: LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES

Violence ‘After the

flares in West pogroms, the
Bank and
Jerusalem angel of death
Page 3 is licking
Israel’s his lips’
darkest day Jonathan
How 24 hours Freedland

T
of terror
unfolded he word pogrom was
not meant to exist
in Hebrew. In the
Page 6 new Israel, the very
idea of Jews being

Explained murdered en masse,

their children butchered before

What are the

their eyes, was meant to have been
banished to the realm of bitter

roots of the
memory. It was only in the eastern
Europe of exile that Jews would
have to flee from tormentors bent

Middle East on killing them, only there that

they would hide in the dark, trying

conflict? to stifle their breath lest they make

a betraying sound. Once they had a
state of their own, where they could
Page 9 defend themselves, there would
be no need to speak of pogroms,
except in the history books.
But it was a pogrom that came
to Israel last weekend, multiple
pogroms in fact, as lethal 5 
•••

▲ The relatives and friends of people taken hostage by Hamas gathered at a press conference in Tel Aviv yesterday as any that cut down the

2 News
Thousands flee to
southern Gaza ahead
of expected invasion
! Continued from page 1
messages from Hamas broadcast by
mosques around the tiny strip called
on residents to stay put. The mes-
sages from the militant group called
the order “Israeli propaganda” and
told Palestinians to “hold on to your
homes and land”.
The UN warned that the order to
flee en masse would be calamitous,
and urged Israel to reverse its order.
The UN secretary general, António
Guterres, said the situation in Gaza
had reached a “dangerous new low”
and called for immediate humanitar-
ian access. “Even wars have rules,”
he said.
The US president, Joe Biden, said
it was a priority to “urgently address
the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.
“We can’t lose sight of the fact that
the overwhelming majority of Pales-
tinians had nothing to do with Hamas
and Hamas’s appalling attacks, and
they’re suffering as a result as well,”
he said.
But Israel’s prime minister,
•••
Israel-Hamas
conflict
Benjamin Netanyahu, said the bom-
bardment of Gaza was “just the
beginning” of his country’s response.
“Our enemies have only just begun
to pay the price,” he said last night.
For most of the day, there were no
signs of mass movement. But as the
afternoon wore on, it appeared many
people decided that if they were
going to move, it had to be before
nightfall .
At that point the strip, where
Israel has cut electricity, would be
plunged into a sixth night of total
darkness amid continued airstrikes
and shelling.
By around 3pm yesterday, thou-
sands of people from the northern
town of Beit Hanoun and sprawling
Gaza City had begun making their
way south by any means possible.
Some people packed into cars and
trucks, but with fuel supplies low
because of the tightening of Israel’s
siege on the Mediterranean enclave,
many simply started to walk.
Israel’s order to evacuate came six
days after an unprecedented attack
The Guardian Saturday 14 October 2023
! A man carries
in a blanket
the remains of
a victim of an
Israeli air strike
on Rafah in
southern Gaza
PHOTOGRAPH: SAID
KHATIB/GETTY IMAGES
▼ Palestinians
flee their houses
heading towards
the southern
part of Gaza
Strip after
Israel’s call for
more than one
million civilians
in northern
Gaza to move
within 24 hours
PHOTOGRAPH: AHMED
ZAKOT/REUTERS
by Hamas gunmen early last Satur-
day, a Jewish holiday. At least 1,200
militants burst through dozens of
different points on the heavily mil-
itarised boundary around the Gaza
Strip before fanning out to rampage
through 22 Israeli towns and kibbut-
zim and 10 army bases.
The Rafah crossing into Egypt was
still closed to fleeing civilians in Gaza.
And for those who were severely ill
or had already been injured in air-
strikes that have pounded the strip,
the World Health Organization said
the warning to leave was as good as
“a death sentence”.
More than 450,000 people have
already left their homes at least once
since last Saturday, according to the
Palestinian health ministry. For
Ziad, a 35-year-old from Gaza City,
and many others, the week’s events
are comparable to the Nakba – the
Arabic term for the forcible expul-
sion of about 750,000 Palestinians
from what was previously British
Mandate-controlled Palestine dur- ▲ A family uses a donkey-drawn cart as they try to flee from Gaza City before
ing the creation of Israel in 1948. the expected Israeli ground attack PHOTOGRAPH: MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Saturday 14 October 2023 The Guardian
N
Erez crossing Sderot
Beit Hanoun
Evacuation
Gaza City
Area closed
zone by Israeli
military
Gaza River
Gaza
Strip Israel
Khan
Younis
Rafah
Egypt
Rafah
crossing
5 km
5 miles
“It’s really a new Nakba, and it’s
even worse than the first one. No one
can imagine what is going on on the
ground, it’s horrible.
“Even if there is a decision to evac-
uate, it’s not applicable at all, they
[patients] will die,” said Yusuf Abu
Rish, the head of Gaza City’s al-Shifa
hospital.
Yesterday’s evacuation notice
sent panic through civilians and
civil defence teams already strug-
gling under intense Israeli airstrikes
that have killed 1,800 people so far,
levelling entire neighbourhoods. The
Israeli directive said that Hamas mil-
itants were hiding in tunnels under
the city.
Israel is also not allowing food, fuel
or medical supplies into the strip in
a tightening of the existing blockade
– a move that the United Nation con-
siders a war crime.
An Israel Defence Forces (IDF)
spokesperson admitted in a brief-
ing yesterday morning that it would
take time for Palestinians to follow
its orders to evacuate.
In response to questions from the
Guardian, the army’s media desk
refused to clarify what time the order
was sent, and whether it included a
24-hour deadline, as per a UN report.
More than 1,300 people were killed
on what has been described as Israel’s
9/11 – a day in which more Israelis lost
their lives than in the entirety of the
five-year-long intifada, or Palestin-
ian uprising, of the 2000s.
As reporters have gained access
to affected towns and kibbutzim
this week, the scale of the carnage is
becoming clearer. IDF officials said
they entered homes strewn with bod-
ies, finding women who had been
raped and killed, and children who
had been shot and burned.
Scores of Israeli and foreign
hostages were taken to Gaza after
Saturday’s attack; Hamas claimed
yesterday that 13 captives had been
killed in Israeli strikes over the pre-
vious 24 hours.
Israel has already mounted the
heaviest airstrikes on Gaza ever,
mobilised an unparalleled 360,000
reservists and amassed convoys of
tanks near the border ahead of what
is almost certain to be a major ground
offensive lasting months.
•••
West Bank
Palestinians
say 16 people
killed as
violence flares
in occupied
territories
Bethan McKernan and
Ruth Michaelson Jerusalem
Violence between Palestinian
protesters and Israeli security forces
erupted in several areas of occupied
East Jerusalem and the West Bank
yesterday as the Israeli military
ordered nearly half of Gaza’s popu-
lation to evacuate before an expected
ground offensive.
In the West Bank there were calls
for marches across several major
towns and cities but in the chaos
across the region details on what
under other circumstances would
be described as major incidents were
hard to follow. At least 16 Palestinians
were shot and killed in the West Bank
over the course of the day, the Pales-
tinian health ministry said.
Khaled Mashal, the former leader
of Hamas, called for a “global day
of rage” in support of Palestinians,
demanding governments and people
across the Middle East protest.
“Tribes of Jordan, sons of Jordan,
brothers and sisters of Jordan … This
is a moment of truth and the borders
are close to you, you all know your
responsibility,” he said.
Violent exchanges between Pal-
estinians and Israel Defence Forces,
as well as Israeli settlers living in
the West Bank, were reported near
Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah by
early yesterday afternoon. It was not
immediately clear how many people
were involved, whether live fire had
been used, and whether anyone had
been injured or killed.
Jerusalem – often a flashpoint
for violence on Fridays, the Mus-
lim holy day – had expected an
influx of worshippers for this week’s
most important prayer session
at the flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque
Munitions
IDF denies
using white
phosphorus
Patrick Wintour
The Israel Defence Forces have
denied allegations by Human Rights
Watch that they have used white
phosphorus munitions in their mili-
tary operations in Gaza and Lebanon.
HRW said the use of such weap-
ons put civilians at risk of serious and
▲ Muslim women scuffle with Israeli
soldiers in the Old City of Jerusalem
as they arrive for Friday prayers
PHOTOGRAPH: YURI CORTEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
compound following six days of pun-
ishing airstrikes on Gaza, home to 2.3
million people.
Turnout was low, however,
after the Jordanian Waqf, which
administers the complex’s Muslim
holy sites, said Israel had banned
access to Palestinians under the age
of 60, and the Beyadenu Temple
Mount Movement, an extremist
Jewish group, threatened to prevent
Muslim worshippers from entering
the area.
Israeli media reported that more
than 2,500 officers and volunteers
were patrolling the Old City and its
vicinity. A small crowd formed as
those hoping to pray continued to
try and enter al-Aqsa compound.
“I am going to pray at the mosque
whatever happens. I am 54 but maybe
I will pass as older … I will try. They
can kill us but they can’t keep us away
from here,” said Abu Jihad, a con-
struction worker from Beit Hanina
in East Jerusalem.
Clashes between Palestinians
and Israeli border police were also
reported inside the Old City’s Muslim
Quarter, and in Wadi Joz, a Palestinian
neighbourhood just to the north of
long-term injury. Palestinian groups
have asked for the international crim-
inal court to investigate.
Israel’s military said: “The cur-
rent accusation … regarding the use
of white phosphorus in Gaza is une-
quivocally false.”
HRW said it had verified videos
taken on 10 and 11 October showing
“multiple airbursts of artillery-fired
white phosphorus over the Gaza City
port and two rural locations along
the Israel-Lebanon border”. It said
it had interviewed two people who
described an attack in Gaza.
It provided links to two videos
on social media that it said showed
“155mm white phosphorus artillery
projectiles being used, apparently
as smokescreens, marking or signal-
ling” near the Israel-Lebanon border.
The group did not provide links to
the dense maze of narrow streets and
alleyways.
In Gaza, more firepower than was
used in the entirety of the five-year-
long international campaign against
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has
been dropped on the enclave in the
six days since Israel declared war.
Israel has mobilised 360,000
reservists in what is expected to be
the longest and bloodiest war in the
region since Hamas seized control of
Gaza in 2007.
The two sides have fought four
wars and dozens of smaller escala-
tions in the last 16 years.
Yesterday, a trickle of Jewish wor-
shippers also made their way to the
Western Wall, at the exterior of al-
Aqsa mosque compound, and the
holiest accessible site in Judaism.
“I come here to pray every single
day, and many people didn’t come
today. They didn’t come and it’s a
‘I am going to pray
at the mosque
today whatever
happens … I will try’
Abu Jihad
East Jerusalem
videos showing their alleged use in
Gaza. Palestinian TV channels have
broadcast videos in recent days
showing white smoke over Gaza they
said showed use of such munitions.
Israel’s military said in 2013 it
was phasing out white phosphorus
smokescreen munitions used in its
2008-09 offensive in Gaza, which
▲ Smoke west of Gaza City this week
claimed to be from white phosphorus
problem,” said Rabbi Eliazer. “I came
here today at 6am, down Jaffa Street
and Mamilla neighbourhood. There
was no one.”
The Beyadenu Temple Mount
Movement said it would try to pre-
vent Muslim worshippers from
accessing al-Aqsa compound, known
to many Jews as the Temple Mount.
“I don’t think they represent a lot of
people … but I can understand their
frustration,” said a young Jewish wor-
shipper clutching a prayer book near
the Western Wall.
Dorit Rodan, a school headteacher
who came to Jerusalem from the West
Bank settlement of Efrat to mark a
cousin’s barmitzvah celebration, said
she and her family were determined
to mark the day. She and her family
posed for pictures with a photogra-
pher near the Western Wall, smiling
in silk dresses.
“We debated if they’d let us do it,
and if we were capable of hosting,”
she said, explaining that some of her
family, including her relative under-
taking the barmitzvah ceremony, had
flown in from Los Angeles for the cer-
emony. “Not all of our family came,
people are afraid.”
But, she added: “There are shelters
here you can go to, and you have to
continue life.”
Additional reporting Sufian Taha
drew war crimes allegations from
rights groups. The military at the
time did not say whether it would
also review use of weaponised white
phosphorus, which is designed to
incinerate enemy positions.
HRW said: “White phosphorus,
which can be used either for mark-
ing, signalling and obscuring, or as a
weapon to set fires that burn people
and objects, has a significant incen-
diary effect that can severely burn
people and set structures, fields and
civilian objects in the vicinity on fire.”
White phosphorus munitions can
legally be used on battlefields to make
smokescreens, generate illumina-
tion, mark targets or burn bunkers
and buildings. Because it has legal
uses, white phosphorus is not banned
as a chemical weapon under interna-
tional conventions.

4 News
‘Pray for us’ Gaza residents trapped by
evacuation order, Hamas and bombs
Y
Ruth Michaelson Jerusalem
Sam Jones
esterday morning,
more than a million
people in northern
Gaza found
themselves facing
a terrible dilemma.
Should they follow 400,000
friends, relatives and neighbours
who had fled their homes amid
Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes and
its warning that almost half of
the enclave’s 2.3 million people
should evacuate the area for their
“own safety” before an expected
ground assault? Or should they
heed Hamas’s call to stay put and
stand firm against what it called
“this disgusting psychological war
waged by the occupation”?
Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson
for the Palestinian Red Crescent
Society in Gaza City, broke down
in tears as she tried to make sense
of what is going on. “Forget about
food, forget about electricity, forget
about fuel,” she said. “The only
concern now is just if you’ll make
it – if you’re going to live.”
The Palestinian health ministry
said 1,799 people have been killed
and more than 6,400 injured since
Israel began striking Gaza last
Saturday. The UN estimates that
more than 423,000 people have fled
their homes in the territory – many
of them making for the area that
Israel is now telling them to leave.
By yesterday morning, many
people were cramming their
belongings into suitcases and
plastic bags, scooping up their
children and beginning to move
south.
“Right now, I’m leaving what
I thought was the safest place I
could go to,” said Rama Abu Amra,
a student who had fled several
times with her family across Gaza
City since the bombardments
began. The sound of panicked
crowds was audible in the
background as she spoke.
“We’re not safe at all, we’re
constantly under attack. I don’t
know, I’m just praying to God to
protect us, to protect our homes,
mine is really under attack. I might
not find it again.”
Abu Amra said she was saying
goodbye to everything that she
loved: her home; her room; her
childhood memories, even her box
of university supplies.
“I never thought this would
happen,” she added. “We’ve
faced many wars before, many
escalations before, but even those
were easier.”
But this time, she said, there was
nowhere to run to. “We just don’t
know what to do. We hope to stay
alive, because I really don’t know
if I will or not. Just pray for us. We
have no internet, no water and no
food. No connection, everything
• The Guardian Saturday 14 October 2023
Israel-Hamas
conflict
A week of violence
6am Saturday 7 October
Hamas fires several thousand rockets
into Israel. Militants breach the
Israeli-Gaza border, launching brutal
attacks on more than a dozen towns,
villages and kibbutzim
Hamas ground attacks
Israel begins a retaliatory military
campaign against Gaza, shelling targets
across the enclave
Israeli airstrikes (not exhaustive)
Border crossings*
Rimal
Large parts of districts such as
Rimal and Jabaliya reduced to
rubble by days of strikes
Gaza river
Friday 13 October, Israel orders
the evacuation of areas north of
river, reportedly in preparation
for a ground invasion
Gaza Strip
An Naseer hospital Khan
Yunis
Rafah
Sufa
Rafah
crossing Sufa
Kerem Shalom
Egypt Kerem Shalom
Source: OCHA, UN, AP. *Four crossings; Sufa, Kissufim, Karni and Nahal Oz were already permanently closed before last Saturday’s attacks
is so hard. We have never lived
something like this.”
Others, however, had made up
their minds that there would be
no repeat of what Palestinians call
the Nakba – the catastrophe – of
1948, when 700,000 people were
expelled or fled from their homes in
the war surrounding the creation of
the Israeli state.
Inside Shifa hospital, the largest
of Gaza’s 13 public hospitals, a man
arrived to check on friends and
relatives who had been brought
from a building in Beach refugee
camp that had been bombed by
Israel.
“I survived – I don’t know why
I survived,” he said. “It is so that
I [can] tell the enemy, America,
Europe and the world that this
Palestinian people will not be
defeated. They think there will be
another displacement, or that we
Jašarević, its spokesperson, said:
“There are severely ill people
whose injuries mean their only
chances of survival is being on
life support, such as mechanical
ventilators. So moving those people
is a death sentence. Asking health
workers to do so is beyond cruel.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent
Society – four of whose paramedics
have been killed in Gaza in recent
days – also said it would stay.
Area closed by
“The decision has been made,”
Ashkelon Israeli military it said in a statement posted on
Mediterranean Instagram. “We have not and
Sea will not leave. Our paramedics
will continue to provide their
humanitarian missions until the
Zikim last moment. We will not leave
people to face death alone.”
The UN agency for Palestinian
refugees, UNRWA, said it was not
Netiv HaAsara Kfar Aza
Kibbutz of 750 people attacked
evacuating its schools, where
Jabaliya thousands have taken shelter. But
market by about 70 militants from four
Erez directions. Dozens of residents it has relocated its headquarters
crossing killed to southern Gaza, according to
Yassin mosque
spokesperson Juliette Touma.
Gaza Sderot Pressed by reporters on whether
City the Israeli army would protect
Watan tower hospitals, UN shelters and other
civilian locations, a military
Nahal Oz
spokesperson described the areas
Kfar Aza Yakhini as “a war zone”.
Karni
Nahal Oz Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, for
the Israel Defence Forces, said: “If
Alumim Israel Hamas prevents residents from
evacuating, the responsibility lies
with them.”
Be’eri
Clive Baldwin, a senior legal
Netivot adviser at Human Rights Watch,
Nahal Oz said Israel’s warning was not
Militants shot people in the street effective and called on world
Re'im
and set fire to houses to smoke
families out of safe rooms
leaders to speak up. “The roads
are rubble, fuel is scarce and the
Kissufim
main hospital is in the evacuation
Kissufim
Be’eri zone,” he said. “This order does not
More than 120 of 1,100 residents murdered. alter Israel’s obligations in military
IDF battled Hamas for several days before operations to never target civilians
Nirim regaining control and take all the measures it can to
minimise harm to them.”
Nir Oz Ofakim The UN’s human rights office
called for restraint on both sides,
Magan Supernova music festival pointing out that 2,700 people,
Militants stormed festival in the early
hours of 7 October, killing 260 people
including civilians, had been
and taking others hostage killed since Hamas’s assault on
Israel almost a week ago. It voiced
fears that senior Israeli military
officials were giving the impression
Nir Yitzhak that obeying international
humanitarian law had become
“optional rather than compulsory”
in the retaliatory strikes.
5 km Ravina Shamdasani, a
5 miles spokesperson for the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights,
said: “We urge Palestinian armed
may go to Egypt. Nonsense.” With Eyad al-Bozom, a spokesperson groups to halt the use of inherently
that, he went to the morgue to try for Hamas’s interior ministry. “By indiscriminate projectiles, which
to identify his dead relatives. carrying out massacres against the violate international humanitarian
Despite the bombings and the civilians, the occupation wants to law, as well as attacks directed
mass displacements, Hamas urged displace us once again from our against civilians.
the people of Gaza not to move. land. The 1948 displacement will “And we urge Israel to ensure
Once again, the spectre of the not happen. We will die and we will full respect for international
Nakba was invoked. not leave.” humanitarian and human rights law
“We tell the people of northern Gaza’s health ministry said it in any and all military operations.
Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in would be impossible to evacuate Airstrikes and artillery strikes have
your homes, and your places,” said hospitals, adding that staff would already led to the destruction of
not act in accordance with Israel’s large parts of densely populated
warning. neighbourhoods in Gaza, and
“We have a duty and a rhetoric from high-level officials
humanitarian mission, and we raises concerns that a message
cannot evacuate hospitals and is being sent to the members of
leave the wounded and sick the Israeli Defence Forces that
to die,” said Ashraf al-Qidra, a international humanitarian law
spokesperson. In the event of has become optional rather than
severe Israeli strikes, he added, compulsory.”
there was nowhere in the Gaza Strip
to take and treat patients. Additional reporting
▲ An injured child is carried to That was echoed by the World Reuters, Associated Press
hospital as the bombing goes on Health Organization (WHO). Tarik and Agence France-Presse
Saturday 14 October 2023 The Guardian
‘After the pogroms
in Israel last week,
the angel of death
is licking his lips’
! Continued from page 1
Yiddish-speaking Jews of early last
century or, in repeating patterns,
the centuries before. Jews still
remember the Kishinev pogrom of
1903, a calamity recalled in poetry
recited to this day. At Kishinev,
49 Jews were murdered. Last
Saturday, at least 1,200 were put to
death, many in ways too sadistic to
be recounted in a newspaper.
It was a rampage of killing, as the
men of Hamas tore down the fence
that separates Gaza from southern
Israel, gunning down the young
at a music festival, slaughtering
the old at a string of kibbutzim,
killing children wherever they
could be found. The victims were
tortured while alive and mutilated
once dead. One journalist familiar
with the most graphic evidence
says the right comparisons are to
the massacres of 1994’s Rwandan
genocide. In the 75-year history of
the state of Israel, 7 October 2023
stands as its darkest day.
It has already outstripped
••
News
Commentary
6 October 1973 – exactly 50 years
and one day earlier – when Israel
was last caught by a surprise
attack that prompted fears for
the country’s very survival. Until
last week, the Yom Kippur war,
when Egypt and Syria launched an
invasion from the south and north,
was seen as the moment of Israel’s
maximum peril – but the despair,
the dread, is even greater now.
That fear, and anger, seem set to
bring a terrible retribution. Early
yesterday morning, Israel gave
residents of the north of Gaza –
more than a million people – 24
hours to evacuate to the south.
Given that, along with relentless air
strikes, Israel has already imposed
a total siege on the strip, denying
the 2 million Palestinians within
food, fuel, electricity and water,
it’s no wonder the UN has warned
that such a mass movement of
people will bring “devastating
humanitarian consequences”.
Among Palestinians and their
allies, yesterday’s edict prompted
a graver fear, one rooted in
history. They suspect that Israel
is preparing a de facto expulsion
of Palestinians from Gaza into
Egypt, the permanent “transfer”
long demanded by the Israeli far
right – with its baleful echo of the
original dispossession of 1948.
Still, Israel says it is determined
that, after Black Saturday, it must
wipe Hamas off the face of the
earth, and its allies, including the
US, seem to have given it a green
light to try. Such a goal, even if it’s
not inherently unachievable, will
surely entail a ground invasion. The
angel of death is licking his lips.
For Israel, these events will mark
a turning point. Golda Meir was
blamed for the intelligence and
military failure of 1973 and was
driven from power. The same fate
should await Benjamin Netanyahu,
whose people now complain they
feel unled and unprotected. Prime
minister for most of the past 15
years, he can blame no one else –
though, man without honour that
he is, he will try. He will say it’s the
fault of “the left”, and all those
who protested against his power-
grab attempt to gut the judiciary,
including the army reservists
who, in their campaign to save
Israel from autocracy, refused to
You can condemn
Hamas and name its
actions as evil, even
as you support the
Palestinian quest for
life free of oppression
serve. But this failure belongs to
him, to his complacent, fatally
wrong assumption that Gaza was
quiescent and Hamas contained;
and to his diversion of precious
military resources away from
protecting the southern border -
with its left-leaning kibbutzim - to
defending the settlers in the West
Bank instead. It was a criminal
failure, its cost paid in blood.
And yet, 7 October 2023 is also a
landmark event in Jewish history.
It will be remembered as a byword
for Jewish vulnerability, the more
painful for coming in the very
place where Jews were supposed
at last to have shaken off the
powerlessness that blighted them
for two millennia.
Its impact is not confined to
Israel or the Middle East, but is
felt wherever Jews live. Not all,
but most Jews are connected to
these events: it might be a friend
of a friend who was among the 260
murdered at the music festival,
a wife’s cousin on one of the
kibbutzim, an old colleague whose
aged parents are now hostages.
The Jewish people is small, just
16 million people across the world.
This week each of us is just one or
two degrees of separation from
heartbreak.
Even when we are not connected
to it, we are affected by it. In the
UK, antisemitic attacks quadrupled
in the immediate days after the
killings, compared with the same
period last year. Security has
had to be stepped up outside
synagogues, at Jewish schools and,
yesterday, even at a High Wycombe
performance of Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice. At the
Jewish Free school in London, the
children have been told they don’t
have to wear their uniforms when
5
! The funeral yesterday of Daniella
Dana Petrenko, from Haifa, who
was killed at the Supernova festival
PHOTOGRAPH: SHIR TOREM/REUTERS
travelling: the Jewish symbols on
their blazers might cause them
trouble. Three Jewish schools
in London closed yesterday, as a
precaution. Others are practising
“invacuations”: the teachers try
to make it a game for the youngest
children, five-year-olds told to
listen for the siren, run into the
classroom and keep silent – quietest
class wins.
Such vigilance is not born of
paranoia but glum realism. You can
watch the weekend footage of pro-
Hamas demonstrators in Sydney
chanting “Fuck the Jews! Gas the
Jews!” Or the street rallies and
social media posts full of praise for
the murderers and rapists of Hamas
– hailing the massacres as an event
to be celebrated, as something
“beautiful and inspiring”. You
may want to tell yourself these
were expressions of anger at the
subsequent Israeli retaliation, but
the chronology tells a different
story: these demonstrations were
organised before Israel had made
any substantial response. The bleak
truth is that this was jubilation at
the massacre of Israelis. This was
delight in Jewish death.
Others have detected something
milder and subtler, but more
prevalent: a kind of qualified
empathy, a sense that last
weekend’s acts of terror did not
quite merit the same response
as other atrocities. There was no
moment of silence before last
Sunday’s Premier League matches,
even though such a gesture is
ordinarily routine. Usually vocal
celebrities found themselves
suddenly mute, or issued
condolences that came with an
“all lives matter” refusal to grieve
for Israeli civilians specifically.
The plea from Jewish communal
leaders, urging the BBC to call
Hamas terrorists is partly driven by
an emotional need for Jewish lives
to matter as much as any others.
I suspect there are some
progressives who – even
unconsciously – hesitate before
expressing full sympathy for the
murdered young festivalgoers and
ageing kibbutz peaceniks because
they worry that would somehow
diminish their support for the
Palestinians. That is a mistake.
Because Hamas is not identical
with the Palestinian cause: it is
a curse on it. With a founding
charter – never revoked – packed
with explicit, medieval anti-Jewish
hatred, it has become an IS-style
force of bloodcurdling cruelty,
one that brings calamity down on
its own people – a calamity that
threatens now to become even
more devastating.
It isn’t that difficult. You can
condemn Hamas and name its
actions as evil, even as you support
the Palestinians in their quest
for a life free of occupation and
oppression. And there should still
be room in your heart for a Jewish
child whose last moments were
filled with unimaginable terror –
the same terror his grandparents,
and their grandparents, thought
they had escaped for ever.
 ••
6 News
Israel-Hamas
conflict
▲ Abandoned and torched cars at ▼ An Israeli soldier breaks down
the Supernova music festival, which at the sight of a table still bearing
had drawn thousands of partygoers Friday’s meal at Kfar Aza kibbutz
PHOTOGRAPH: JACK GUEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES PHOTOGRAPH: ZIV KOREN/POLARIS/EYEVINE
Israel’s
A
Daniel Boffey
Sam Jones
s dawn broke last
darkest
Saturday over the
40-mile Gaza-
Israel barrier, once
confidently described
as an “iron wall”,
Hamas struck at the eyes and ears
day
of Israel’s defence.
It was shortly before 6.30am at
the end of a Sukhot holiday week,
when explosive devices, dropped
by drones, made a mockery of
claims of impregnability, by
How
disabling the wall’s communication
towers and its remote-controlled
machine-gun posts while snipers
picked off the sensors and cameras,
blinding Israeli defenders staring
at blank screens to what was in
24 hours
deadly motion.
Unseen in the weak light of
early morning and unheard under
the roar of the first of about 2,200
rockets fired towards southern
and central Israel, Hamas fighters
of terror
made discreet punctures with wire
cutters into the 20ft-high double-
fence barrier, or detonated small
explosive loads to create larger
openings. It allowed their best-
unfolded
trained men to scramble across on
motorbikes and pick-up trucks to
embark on a murderous search for
the closest Israeli soldiers.
The shock troops from the
military wing of Hamas, known
as the Qassam brigades, their
silhouettes bristling with
Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled
grenades, were followed by
bulldozers and hundreds more
armed men, swarming into some 30
different breaches of the defensive
line, many crossing on foot. Some
militants, showing a taste for the
spectacular, flew over on motorised
paragliders – terror on wings.
A total of 1,500 gunmen are
believed to have crossed under a
sky lit by rocket fire.
“We have decided to put an end
to all of the occupation’s crimes,”
announced Hamas’s military
commander, Mohammed Deif.
“The time is over for them to act
without accountability. Thus, we
announce the ‘Al-Aqsa Deluge’”.
Over the last week, hours of
footage have been shared on
social media, taken from security
cameras, car dashcams and the
phones of terrorists and victims,
providing an uncomfortably clear
picture of how Israel’s darkest day
unravelled. What has also become
evident is that those charged with
protecting Israel were hopelessly
unprepared for the terrible reality
that unfolded. As of yesterday,
1,300 residents of Israel had been
killed, including 247 soldiers, while
the Israeli government claims to
have killed about 1,500 Hamas
militants on its territory and 1,530
people in the Gaza Strip.
A surge of communications
activity on the Gazan militant
networks had been picked up
earlier that Saturday morning by
Israeli intelligence. In combination
with a general warning from the
Egyptian security services of an
impending event, the information
could have saved lives.
The Guardian Saturday 14 October 2023
Two telephone consultations ▲ Israelis take
had been held overnight between cover from
Israel’s southern security the incoming
services, the Israel Defence Forces rocket fire from
Intelligence Corps, the operations the Gaza Strip
division and southern command in Ashkelon,
with the knowledge of the IDF chief southern Israel
of staff, Herzl Halevi, according PHOTOGRAPH:
to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. LÉO CORRÊA/AP
But it was decided the alert level
need not rise. It was a catastrophic
miscalculation. Documents and
maps found on the bodies of
Hamas fighters show they knew
the numbers of soldiers they might
meet, and how long it would take
for reinforcements to arrive. They
were out to kill and take hostages
“for negotiations”.
The closest machine-gun posts ▼ The ruins
were cleared with grenades within of a mosque
minutes of the wall being breached. destroyed when
On sea, a motorboat carrying Israeli airstrikes
Hamas commandos headed at pace hit the city of
to Zikim, an Israeli coastal town Khan Yunis in
just north of the Gaza Strip that the southern
hosts the Bahad 4 base where new Gaza Strip
IDF recruits were undergoing basic on Sunday
Saturday 14 October 2023 The Guardian
training. The Israeli navy managed
to cut off at least one of the boats
but already by 7am the Zikim base
had been overrun by land.
The manning of such bases had
been cut down over the years based
on a misplaced confidence that the
iron wall had their backs.
“I deeply care for all of you,”
wrote Cpl Naama Boni, a 19-year-
old soldier serving in the 77th
Battalion of the Armored Brigade,
to friends and family. “I have a head
injury, and a terrorist nearby might
start shooting at me. I am currently
with an injured soldier from the
Golani Brigade, and there are no
reinforcements available.” It was
7.30am. Boni would not survive.
Zikim was one of 11 military bases
to come under attack that morning,
four of which were overrun.
Video footage taken by Hamas
fighters showed how young men
and women were murdered as
they tried to hide in toilet cubicles,
bedrooms and cupboards.
As Boni was typing her last
messages in Zikim, a Hamas
paraglider was cruising above the
heads of 4,000 people still dancing,
drinking and laughing at the
Supernova festival, four miles east
of Gaza, close to the Re’im kibbutz.
Small black plumes of smoke had
appeared in the sky from defensive
missiles used by the Israeli military
to intercept rockets fired from
Gaza. At first, few of the partygoers,
who had been promised a “journey
of unity and love” by organisers,
were concerned, perhaps reckoning
it was all part of the event.
Then the sirens went off.
••
▼ Search and rescue efforts in Gaza
City on Sunday after Israel launches
airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which is
home to more than 2 million people
The music stopped. Almost
immediately the crack of gunfire
was heard. Terror followed.
The local armed security was
overwhelmed by fire from all
directions. Stalking among the
partygoers, Hamas gunmen ran
amok, firing at “anything with a
pulse”, one witness recalled. Some
tried to get to their cars to escape
but those who made it to the main
road faced armed men further
O
down the line, guns raised, murder
on their minds.
thers attempted to
flee in vehicles or
by foot across the
fields, aiming to
reach the woods on
the horizon. Sniper
fire whistled around them. Some
of the Hamas militants took chase,
pursuing miles away from the
festival site, through orchards
and dusty fields, looking for a kill.
Those easy to snatch, such as Noa
Argamani, 25, and her boyfriend,
Avinatan Or, were hustled away at
gunpoint. “Don’t kill me! No, no,
no,” Argamani pleaded as she was
driven away on the back of a bike.
Her boyfriend was marched down
a dirt path, destination unknown.
Video footage timed at 9.23am
captured just one horrific moment
among many during the carnage:
a Hamas gunman firing close to
one young man before leading him
away. A second injured Israeli,
lying by a car, possibly injured but
certainly playing dead, lifted his
head momentarily. It was the last
thing he would do. A second Hamas
▼ Palestinian militants transport a
captured Israeli civilian from Kfar
Aza kibbutz into the Gaza Strip after
Hamas’s unprecedented incursion
fighter casually shot a round in his
prostrate body. Others later looted
his remains.
An estimated 260 festivalgoers
were murdered. Tens more are
believed to be among the 150 Israeli
hostages thought to have been
taken back to Gaza that day. A video
emerged of Shani Louk, 23, lifeless
in the back of a truck, spat upon by
Hamas fighters, legs unnaturally
bent and her hair matted by blood.
It took minutes for Hamas to
reach the closest Israeli settlements
to the Gaza Strip, the communal
gatherings known as kibbutzim.
The timings of the horror can
be put precisely thanks to video
released by a Telegram channel
called South First Responders.
A camera caught the arrival of two
armed men at the Be’eri kibbutz
at 6.55am. They attempted to lift
the security gate but then made
themselves discreet as a Mazda
pulled up. The gate lifted at which
point those inside were shot dead.
Later footage at 10.06am shows
Hamas militants pulling the dead
‘We heard shots … all
I had to keep the door
of the shelter closed
was my muscles
and my will to live’
Eldad Hess
Nir Oz kibbutz survivor
▲ A plume of smoke rises above
Gaza City as Israel retaliates with
airstrikes on the Gaza Strip this week
PHOTOGRAPH: MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
from the car and looting their
bodies. They were two of 118 to
die in Be’eri. One corpse is later
thrown into the back of a white SUV
and driven away. It was a crime
captured in vivid colour but where
video footage is missing, gripping
testimony fills the gap.
In Nirim, a kibbutz with a
population of 400 people, Eldad
Hess, a 38-year-old civil engineer,
was woken at 6.30am by the
rockets. He and his wife, Goldi,
took their two year-old son, Uri,
to the reinforced concrete shelter
where their older children, Avigail,
seven, and four-year-old Yotam,
were sleeping and swung the steel
door shut. They moved to their
reinforced concrete shelter and
swung the steel door shut. At first,
Hess thought it was just a “wake-up
alarm” from Gaza to mark Sukhot.
Then the family heard explosions.
“Ten minutes later, we heard
automatic rifle shots outside the
house,” he said. “I understood
what was happening, but in my
heart, I couldn’t believe what was
happening.”
A barrage of WhatsApp
messages arrived from neighbours,
confirming that shots – and
shouting in Arabic – had been heard
all over the kibbutz. Hess realised
he needed to lock the door.
The problem was that the door
could still be opened from the
outside – a precaution the family
7
had taken to stop the children
locking themselves in the shelter.
“All I had to keep the door closed
was my muscles and my will to
live,” said Hess. A few minutes later,
the family heard voices and shots
inside the house. Many attempts
were made by the Hamas fighters to
get in. They failed – but murdered
their nextdoor neighbours,
including a 17-year-old girl.
In Kibbutz Nir-oz, a number of
people, including Doron Asher
Katz, 34, and her young daughters,
and 85-year-old Yafa Adar, were
taken hostage and paraded and
videoed by their captors.
In Kfar Aza kibbutz, the largest
in the northern area of the Gaza
border, where 750 Israelis lived
just 800 metres from the iron wall,
reports emerged of babies being
killed in their cots. Yesterday, the
Israeli government published
images, including one of the corpse
of a baby, its clothes spattered
in blood.
With cellular communications
at the wall down, the scale of the
assault had not been immediately
clear in Tel Aviv – but the prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
was updated on some worrying
movements at 6.29am, and by
8.23am the state of Israel was
on a war footing, with reservists
called to arms.
In Gaza, there too was a dawning
realisation. The operation had been
kept to a tight circle. Few knew to
what it amounted but the potential
repercussions swiftly became
obvious.
“We were ecstatic. It’s like a
dream that is hard to wake up
from,” said Maha, a 34-year-old
woman from Gaza City in a call
with Haaretz about the first reports
of the incursion into Israel by
Palestinian fights. “But as the
picture became clearer, and I saw
that there were Israeli prisoners,
I realised that we were in a
nightmare, in hell.”
The first Israeli strikes on Gaza
were at 10.34am. It would be the
first of thousands on a thin stretch
of land containing 2.3 million
people. “Citizens of Israel, we are
at war,” Netanyahu told the nation
at 11.35am. “The enemy will pay an
unprecedented price.”
Within two hours, 21 buildings
said to house Hamas’s military
operations were flattened. Troops
were sent to the south of the
country to rescue those in the
settlements who had survived the
Hamas onslaught.
But it would take days more
to secure them. “There were
burned cars and broken windows,”
said Hess of his family’s escape
from their shelter under Israeli
protection late on Saturday. “What
we saw was a war zone. There’s no
other word for it. And then we had
to run for our lives.”
A second statement to the
nation was made by Netanyahu
at 10.16pm. Gaza was “the city of
evil”, he said. “We will turn all the
places where Hamas is organised
and hiding into cities of ruins.”
By 2.19am on Sunday, Israel’s
prime minister said all the sites
used to launch the Hamas attacks
had been destroyed. But Israel
had just begun. The “offensive
formation” phase was under way.

8 News
US urges Israel not to target civilians
amid fears of wider Middle East war
Patrick Wintour
Diplomatic editor
The most senior US diplomat has
urged Israel to take every possible
precaution to avoid civilian casu-
alties in Gaza as he called for safe
zones to be established in the terri-
tory where shelter, food, water and
medical supplies can be provided.
The US secretary of state, Antony
Blinken, was on a tour of six Arab
nations yesterday to forestall a wider
war sweeping across the Middle East.
There are fears that a conflagration
may erupt if Israel’s determination
to crush Hamas leads to a slaughter
in Gaza or an enforced exodus of mil-
lions of Palestinians into Egypt.
Blinken has been putting pressure
on the Egyptian president, Abdel
Fatah al-Sisi, to open the southern
border crossing from Gaza into Egypt,
or to create a broader humanitarian
corridor, after Israel ordered 1.1 mil-
lion people to leave their homes and
head farther south in Gaza.
Shelling on
Lebanon-Israel
border kills one
journalist and
wounds six
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Southern Lebanon
A group of international journal-
ists covering clashes on the border
in south Lebanon have been hit by
shelling, with one killed and six
injured. The Associated Press and
Al Jazeera said the weapon was an
Israeli shell.
Reuters said: “We are deeply sad-
dened to learn that our videographer,
Issam Abdallah, has been killed.
Issam was part of a Reuters crew in
southern Lebanon who was provid-
ing a live signal.
“Our thoughts are with their fam-
ilies at this terrible time.”
Al Jazeera TV said two of its
employees – Elie Brakhya, a camera
operator, and Carmen Joukhadar, a
reporter – were among the wounded.
Images from the scene showed a
charred car, as the wounded were
rushed to hospital in ambulances.
The shelling occurred during an
exchange of fire along the Lebanon-
Israel border between Israeli troops
and members of Lebanon’s militant
Hezbollah group.
The Lebanon-Israel border has
been witnessing sporadic acts of
violence since Saturday’s attack by
Hamas on southern Israel.
Further from the border, after
••
Israel-Hamas
conflict
But speaking in Doha after meet-
ing Qatar’s prime minister, he said he
was working with UN agencies, Israel
and regional powers on a plan for safe
zones in Gaza.
He repeatedly defended Israel’s
right to protect itself and added:
“What makes this so complicated
is that Hamas uses human shields,
puts civilians in places where they
are used to protect Hamas officials or
their equipment or infrastructure.”
He said “Civilians should not be
the target of military operations.
They are not the target of Israeli oper-
ations. They are very deliberately the
target of Hamas operations.”
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul-
rahman bin Jassim Al Thani, Qatar’s
prime minister, said he was working
on de-escalation, humanitarian cor-
ridors and the freeing of hostages.
Hamas has a political office in Doha.
US officials said Blinken had dis-
cussed the Israeli mass evacuation
plan when he met Israel’s prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in
Jerusalem on Thursday. “One of the
three days of attacks and counter-
attacks between Hezbollah fighters
and their Palestinian allies on one
side and Israeli forces on the other,
an eerie quietness settled over the
hills of south Lebanon.
Roads that meandered between
olive groves and stony hills were
deserted, town squares emptied of
noisy crowds, shops shuttered, and
fruit and vegetable stalls abandoned.
In Maroun al-Ras, a village atop
a strategic hill less than a mile from
the border, which saw some of the
fiercest fighting in the July 2006 war
▲ A protest in the West Bank city of
Hebron against the Israeli airstrikes
things that we did discuss with them
was the need to protect civilian lives
in Gaza, the need to establish some
safe areas, where civilians could relo-
cate to be safe from Israel’s legitimate
security operations,” an official said.
Palestinians and Arab states fear
that nationalists in the Israeli gov-
ernment are planning a permanent
expulsion, a repeat of what Palestin-
ians call the Nakba, or catastrophe,
of 1948, and are not just seeking to
clear areas to make it easier to destroy
the Hamas leadership. Israel has not
yet been clear about its plans for the
between elite Hezbollah and Israeli
commandos, all the houses had their
curtains drawn and doors shut.
During that war, other towns and
villages scattered along the hills of
south Lebanon were pulverised by
Israeli aerial bombardment and shell-
ing. About 1,200 people were killed in
Lebanon, mostly civilians, and nearly
200 Israelis died, mostly soldiers.
In that conflict, Beirut’s southern
suburbs also suffered significant
destruction.
In a hardware shop in the area,
its owner, who gave his name as
The Guardian Saturday 14 October 2023
future administration of Gaza other
than that Hamas must play no part.
The first indications from mili-
tant groups such as the well-armed
Iranian-backed Hezbollah group in
Lebanon, as well as Iran itself, was
that they would not immediately
intervene militarily.
The Hezbollah deputy chief, Naim
Qassem, said yesterday that the
group was “fully ready” to contribute
to the fighting. He said: “We will con-
tribute to the confrontation within
our plan … When the time comes for
any action, we will carry it out. The
behind-the-scenes calls with us by
great powers, Arab countries, envoys
of the United Nations – directly and
indirectly telling us not to interfere –
will have no effect.”
The Iranian foreign minister,
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, met the
Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah,
yesterday. He is also due to travel to
Damascus to meet the Syrian presi-
dent, Bashar al-Assad. Iran has always
avoided direct military conflict
with the west, preferring to operate
Hamdan, was defiant: “We believe
in the resistance and nothing will
dissuade us or change or beliefs, not
the destruction of our property nor
the loss of our families. It’s a spirit-
ual matter for us.”
Since last weekend Hezbollah’s
engagement in the conflict has been
calculated and gradual, allowing
Palestinian allies to fire rockets and
infiltrate the border to attack Israeli
military units.
When Israel responded by shelling
a Hezbollah post and killing three of
its fighters, it retaliated by firing and
through proxies, and although it has
supported Hamas ideologically, the
west has produced no evidence that
Iran directed the Hamas attacks.
The Saudi crown prince, Moham-
med bin Salman, spoke to the Iranian
president, Ebrahim Raisi, for 45 min-
utes this week in a rare direct call.
Although both men support the Pal-
estinian cause, neither side will want
an all-out war with Israel. A full-scale
regional conflagration would drive oil
prices above $150 a barrel, tipping the
world into a global recession.
The US is caught in the dilemma
of supporting Israel’s right to defend
itself, but urging it in private to do so
in a way that does not create a back-
lash across the Middle East and parts
of the west. Blinken said in Jerusalem
on Thursday: “Israel has the right,
indeed the obligation to defend itself
and to ensure that this never happens
again. But how Israel does this mat-
ters. We as democracies operate to a
higher standard.”
The US defence secretary, Lloyd
Austin, said yesterday that the Pen-
tagon was ready to deploy more
military aid to Israel.
Blinken spent a morning in Amman
discussing the crisis within Jordan’s
King Abdullah II, a longtime US
partner, and the Palestinian Author-
ity president, Mahmoud Abbas. He
urged Abbas to try to restrain reprisals
by Palestinians in the West Bank,but
his authority is limited.
" Issam
Abdallah, who
was working as
a videographer
for Reuters,
was killed
in southern
Lebanon
yesterday
PHOTOGRAPH:
TOM W HORNIG
destroying an armoured vehicle, kill-
ing one soldier and severely injuring
another.
These attacks and counterattacks
seem to follow the “rules of engage-
ment” established between the two
sides since their war in 2006: violent
deterrence that is limited in scope
and geography while maintaining a
general, if tentative, calm along the
rest of the border.
All that could change if Hezbollah
and its regional allies decide that
more active involvement is needed to
ease the pressure on Hamas in Gaza.
Saturday 14 October 2023 The Guardian
Explained: the Israel-Palestine conflict
A quick recap by Chris McGreal
What are the roots of the Israeli/
Palestinian conflict?
As with almost everything to do
with this conflict, it depends who
you ask. Some say the Romans.
But the starting point for many
is the UN vote in 1947 to partition
British Mandate Palestine into
two states – one Jewish, one Arab.
Neither the Palestinians nor the
neighbouring Arab countries
accepted the founding of modern
Israel. Fighting between Jewish
armed groups and Palestinians
escalated until the armies of
Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan and
Syria invaded after Israel declared
independence in May 1948.
With Israel’s new army gaining
ground, an armistice agreement
in 1949 saw new de facto borders
that gave the fledgling Jewish
state considerably more territory
than it was awarded under the UN
partition plan.
So what happened to the
Palestinians?
Some 700,000 Palestinians were
expelled or fled – about 85%
of the Arab population of the
territory captured by Israel – and
were never allowed to return.
About 150,000 Palestinians
remained in Israel. Palestinians
called the exodus and eradication
of much of their society in Israel
the Nakba, or catastrophe, and
it remains the traumatic event at
the heart of their modern history.
Arabs who remained in Israel
as citizens were subject to official
discrimination. They were placed
under military rule for nearly two
decades, which deprived them
of many basic civil rights. Much
of their land was expropriated
and Arab Israeli communities
were deliberately kept poor and
underfunded.
What is the Palestine Liberation
Organisation?
In 1964, a coalition of Palestinian
groups founded the Palestine
Liberation Organisation under
the leadership of Yasser Arafat
to pursue armed struggle
and establish an Arab state in
place of Israel. The PLO drew
international attention with high-
profile attacks and hijackings.
How did the Palestinian
territories come to be occupied?
In 1967, Israel launched what it
said was a pre-emptive defensive
war against Egypt, Jordan and
Syria. The attack caught Arab
governments by surprise and saw
Israel achieve rapid victories,
including seizing the Sinai
peninsula and Gaza Strip from
Egypt, the Golan Heights from
Syria and the West Bank and
East Jerusalem from Jordan. The
six-day war was a spectacular
military success for Israel. Its
capture of all of Jerusalem and
control over the biblical lands
called Judea and Samaria in
Israel opened the way to the
•
▲ David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first
PM, proclaims the state of Israel
construction of Jewish settlements
in the West Bank, which became
central to the conflict. Israel placed
the Arab population of the West
Bank under military rule, which is
enforced to this day.
How did ordinary Palestinians
view occupation?
Israel regarded the Palestinian
population under its control as
largely quiescent even as it went
on expanding Jewish settlements
in Gaza and the West Bank,
and expropriating Arab land.
Palestinians were also treated as
a cheap source of largely manual
labour inside Israel.
When does Hamas enter the
picture?
The PLO was a generally secular
organisation modelled on other
leftwing guerrilla movements,
although most of its supporters
were Muslim. Islamist groups
such as the Muslim Brotherhood
had previously avoided armed
conflict and were largely dedicated
to working for a more religious
society. But that position shifted
under Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a
charismatic man with quadriplegia
living in Gaza who helped found
several Islamist organisation,
including Mujama al-Islamiya.
Shortly after the outbreak of the
first intifada, in 1987 Yassin used
support for Mujama al-Islamiya to
form Hamas in alliance with other
Islamists.
So what was the first intifada?
In 1987 young Palestinians rose
up. The precise spark for the
first intifada – or uprising – is
disputed but it spread quickly,
marked by mass stone throwing.
The Israeli army responded with
large-scale arrests and collective
punishments. The intifada is
largely recognised as a success for
the Palestinians, helping to solidify
their identity independently of
neighbouring Arab states and
forcing Israel into negotiations.
It strengthened Arafat’s hand to
make compromises with Israel,
including adopting the principle
of a two-state solution.
What happened to the peace
process?
The Oslo peace process started as
the first intifada wound down in
1993, with secret talks between
Israel and the PLO. Israel’s then
prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin,
$ Israelis
conquer the
old city of
Jerusalem on
7 June 1967,
during the
six-day war
The uprising was different from
the first intifada because of
widespread suicide bombings
against Israeli civilians led by
Hamas and other groups, and
the scale of the Israeli military
retaliation. It lasted four years;
more than 3,000 Palestinians and
more than 1,000 Israelis died.
And then?
The political ramifications were
significant, with a hardening of
attitudes among ordinary Israelis
and the construction of the West
Bank barrier. It also prompted the
prime minister of the time, Ariel
Sharon, to say that Israel could
not go on occupying Palestinian
territory, although he did not
say that the alternative was an
PHOTOGRAPH: AFP/GETTY
independent Palestinian state.
What happened to Gaza?
Sharon “disengaged” from the
Palestinians from 2005 with the
closing of Israeli settlements in
Gaza and parts of the northern
▲ Young Jews ▼ An Arab West Bank. It is not clear how
in Tel Aviv refugee and much further Sharon would have
celebrate the her child, from gone with this policy as he had a
founding of the Ramallah stroke and went into a coma the
the new state region near following year.
of Israel on Jerusalem, in The status of Gaza since the
14 May 1948 December 1948 disengagement has remained
disputed. Israel says it is no
longer occupied. The United
Nations says otherwise as Israel
continues to control airspace,
territorial waters and access.
Israel has also blockaded the
territory since Hamas came to
power in 2006.
Why does Hamas control Gaza?
Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian
legislative elections, in part
because of a backlash against
the corruption and political
stagnation of the ruling Fatah
party. The Hamas leader,
Ismail Haniya, was appointed
prime minister. Israel imposed
sanctions on Gaza.
Deteriorating relations
signed an agreement with Arafat between Hamas and Fatah
aimed at fulfilling the “right of resulted in violence. An
the Palestinian people to self agreement to form a national
determination”, although Rabin unity government fell apart and
did not accept the principle of a Hamas led an armed takeover of
Palestinian state. Gaza while Fatah continued to
The Oslo accords established control the Palestinian Authority
the Palestinian National Authority, in the West Bank. There have
granting limited self-governance been no elections since.
over patches of the West Bank and Hamas continued to attack
Gaza Strip. Further negotiations Israel from Gaza – until the lateset
were intended to resolve issues ground incursion, mostly using
such as the status of Jerusalem rockets. Israel has maintained a
and the future of the Israeli tight blockade of the territory,
settlements. which has contributed to
Some prominent Palestinians deteriorating living conditions
regarded the accords as a form of and deepening poverty.
surrender, while rightwing Israelis
opposed giving up settlements or Where are we now?
territory. Although western governments
still pay lip service to a two-
What caused the second intifada? state solution, there has been
Peace negotiations spluttered along no progress on an agreement.
until attempts, led by Bill Clinton, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin
to broker a deal at Camp David in Netanyahu, has repeatedly
2000 failed, contributing to the said that he will never accept a
outbreak of the second intifada. Palestinian state.