https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/05/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
Journalists get a glimpse inside Israel’s
invasion as battles go on.
The wall of
a school had shattered into rubble. The minaret of a mosque was tilting to one
side. The roof of a beachfront villa had vanished, leaving a maroon sofa
exposed to the elements.
Along the
northern coastline of Gaza on Saturday afternoon, these were the signs of
battle between Hamas, the Palestinian militia that controls the Gaza Strip, and
the Israeli army, which had for eight days tried to oust Hamas from power.
Israeli
military leaders brought a small group of foreign journalists into northern
Gaza on Saturday for four hours to witness the extent of the advance. A
reporter for The New York Times was among them.
Thousands
of troops began their incursion down the coastline on Oct. 27, one part of a
three-pronged invasive force that aims to vanquish Hamas, which led a brazen
raid on Israel last month that killed roughly 1,400 people.
Eight days
later, the Israeli army has fought its way several miles to the south, reaching
the outskirts of Gaza City, Hamas’s stronghold, and establishing control over
the northern stretch of Gaza’s coastal road.
Less than a
month ago, the northern coastline of Gaza was a quiet seafront flecked here and
there with beach resorts and hotels. On Saturday, it was a giant Israeli
military camp.
Long lines
of infantry marched south along the road, blowing plumes of dust into the air.
In the sand dunes east of the road, long rows of tanks and armored vehicles
dominated the landscape, stretching toward the horizon.
Many
buildings were wrecked, their walls sprayed with bullet holes. Some were most
likely hit from the air during an Israeli bombing campaign that has killed more
than 9,000 Gazans, according to Gaza’s health authority, which is controlled by
Hamas.
Palestinian
residents had fled south, abandoning the seafront to the Israeli soldiers and a
few stray dogs and cats.
An Israeli
officer accompanying the journalists, Lt. Col. Iddo Ben-Anat, projected an
image of quiet confidence.
Hamas had
been routed here, the colonel said, forced out from its bases in the mosque
with the tilting minaret and the school with the shattered wall.
“It’s like
catching a mouse,” Colonel Ben-Anat said of the enemy. “You have to find him.
You know he’s there. You don’t know where he is — but you know when you catch
him, he’s done.”
Nearby,
groups of soldiers gathered around portable camping stoves, boiling sweet corn
and carrots, chatting and joking. Several sported well-groomed mustaches — an
incongruous nod to Movember, an annual global fund-raising campaign in which
men grow mustaches throughout the month of November.
All the
political divisions in Israel of the past year — in which thousands of military
reservists had threatened to refuse to serve in protest of the Israeli
government — had vanished, the colonel said. Many of his men were reservists.
“United,
together,” said Colonel Ben-Anat.
But
drowning out these expressions of bravado were the sounds of an unfinished and
undecided war.
Even as
some soldiers cooked and rested, others had their guns drawn, scanning the
horizon for assailants. At any moment, the colonel said, Hamas fighters might
emerge from hidden shafts that lead to a vast underground tunnel network,
hundreds of miles along, and ambush the Israeli troops.
Gunfire
rattled constantly, and munitions flew regularly overhead.
Shortly
after the journalists entered Gaza through a hole in the wall lining its
perimeter, a mortar shell landed close to the armored vehicle that carried them
south.
A few
minutes later, a roadside bomb exploded as the vehicle passed by, creating a
brief fireball and sending sand toward the sky.
Another
barrage of mortar shells landed near the journalists after they got closer to
the front line.
To reach
the front, the journalists drove in a convoy of five tanks and two armored
vehicles. A reporter for The Times traveled in an armored vehicle known as an
Eitan. It had no windows: To see his surroundings, the driver looked at a
digital screen that showed a live video of the road ahead.
Palestinian
journalists have not had such protection; dozens have been killed in airstrikes
since the start of the war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
To truly
rout Hamas, Israel will need to capture all of Gaza, the colonel said.
Bloodier
battles await the Israelis in Gaza City, where Hamas fighters are entrenched in
their subterranean fortifications and are thought to be planning many more
ambushes.
Analysts
say that such fighting could cause catastrophic civilian losses — an outcome
Israel says it is trying to avoid.
“We do our
best to destroy Hamas only, without harming the civilians,” said Colonel
Ben-Anat. “We’ll think 10 times before we do something.”
But for the
civilians in Gaza City, who have witnessed one of the most intense bombing
campaigns of the 21st century, the Israeli army’s approach is terrifying.
Saher Abu
Adgham, 37, a Palestinian graphic designer, had been searching the streets of
Gaza City for firewood to boil some rice. As dusk approached, he bedded down at
home in case the army advanced at nightfall.
“I am
afraid to go out one night and meet a tank,” Mr. Abu Adgham said in a phone
interview.
With mobile
networks often out of service, other residents of Gaza City were trying to
assess the Israeli advance by listening to the sound of the gunfire.
“We don’t
have internet to listen to the news and know what is happening — but we can
hear it,” said Majdi Ahmed, 32, a taxi driver taking shelter in a hospital in
the city.
“Now I can
hear the shooting,” Mr. Ahmed said in a voice message. “Seems they are now
fighting.”
Iyad
Abuheweila contributed reporting from Cairo, Abu Bakr Bashir from London and
Patrick Kingsley from Jerusalem.
— Ronen
Bergman reporting from northern Gaza
Israel gives Gazans a four-hour window to move
south.
As Israel’s
military moves to surround the Hamas stronghold of Gaza City, it again urged
civilians in the northern part of the Gaza Strip to head south on Sunday toward
what it described as safer areas of the enclave, and said it would offer a
four-hour window to do so.
Gazans will
be allowed safe passage on Salah al-Din Road, the strip’s main north-south
highway, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time, Avichay Adraee, a spokesman for
the Israeli military, said on social media. He said Israel had offered a
similar window on Saturday but its forces that attempted to open the road were
attacked by Hamas, which fired mortar and antitank shells.
The attack,
which could not immediately be independently verified, was another example of
Hamas using civilians as “human shields,” Mr. Adraee said.
For nearly
a month, Israel has been urging Palestinians in northern Gaza to leave their
homes and head south, closer to the Egyptian border, as it tries to destroy
Hamas. In retaliation for Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault that killed some 1,400 people
in Israel, the Israeli military has relentlessly bombarded the Gaza Strip,
including in the southern areas it has described as safer for civilians.
Some
Palestinians have refused to heed Israel’s warnings and have stayed in the
north. Others doubt Israeli assurances, and as the evacuation window opened on
Sunday, it was not clear if many Gazans would attempt to make the journey.
Residents also say that Israeli strikes have left craters on the highway, and
disruptions in phone and internet connections mean that many in Gaza might not
be aware of Israel’s latest announcement.
Israel has
faced criticism for demanding that civilians leave their homes, which worsened
the humanitarian crisis in the Hamas-run enclave as hundreds of thousands of
people fled. More than 9,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza
since Oct. 7, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
The
announcement of a brief window for evacuations did not appear to be the type of
“humanitarian pause” that U.S. officials have urged Israel to observe in order
to allow more aid into blockaded Gaza. On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said that Israel would not consider a cease-fire until the roughly
240 people Hamas and other armed groups took hostage in the Oct. 7 attacks were
released — a tough stance that appeared to be a rebuff to the U.S. secretary of
state, Antony J. Blinken, whom he had just met with.
While
humanitarian aid has been slow to enter Gaza, there was some relief last week
for the thousands of foreign passport holders and others hoping to evacuate
from Gaza to Egypt. More than 1,100 people left Gaza for Egypt on Thursday and
Friday, according to United Nations estimates. There were no reports of people
moving across the border on Saturday, the U.N. said.
Israeli
ground forces entered Gaza a little over a week ago, and have fought their way
to the outskirts of Gaza City, which was the most populous part of the strip
before the war.
— Vivek Shankar
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