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Israeli artillery at the border with Gaza on Thursday.Credit…Dan Balilty for The New York Times
Israeli ground forces bombarded Gaza with artillery on Friday, escalating a conflict that has already brought Israeli airstrikes, Palestinian rocket attacks and sectarian violence on the streets of Israeli cities.
As world leaders called for calm and American and Egyptian officials tried to broker an end to the violence, the fighting that began on Monday ratcheted up instead. By Friday morning, the Israeli authorities reported that eight Israelis, including one soldier, had been killed. Palestinian health officials reported the death toll in Gaza at 120 and the overall number of wounded in the latest violence at 900.
The Israeli military said on Friday that it had killed 75 operatives of Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. It said that more than 2,000 rockets had been fired from Gaza (including about 400 that fell short of Israeli territory), while the Gaza authorities reported more than 150 strikes from Israeli jets and drones, along with the artillery fire, wounding more than 50 people overnight.
“This is the largest focused operation against a focused target that we have conducted so far,” said Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. Hidai Zilberman, another spokesman, told Kan Radio on Friday that the Israel Defense Forces had deployed as many as 160 aircraft at once in the attack.
Mr. Conricus said the target of the attack was a network of tunnels underneath the Palestinian-controlled territory, through which Hamas is known to deploy militants and smuggle weapons. The spokesman described the complex network as a “city beneath a city.”
The Israel Defense Forces clarified that no Israeli troops were actually in Gaza despite earlier reports to the contrary. Instead, the army had massed troops along the Gazan border and was shelling the territory from Israel.
The sky glowing orange after an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday.Credit…Hosam Salem for The New York Times
“This operation will continue as long as it takes to restore peace and security to the State of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement released early Friday.
Mr. Zilberman warned that the operation might intensify, saying that “all options are on the table, and forces are preparing and will continue to accumulate during the holiday” — the feast of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
Hamas launched dozens of rocket volleys overnight at Israeli targets, killing an 87-year-old woman who was running to a safe room.
The latest round of Israeli-Palestinian unrest began Monday after clashes between protesters and the Israeli police at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Hamas then began firing into Israel with the increasingly potent rockets it has built with the aid of Iran, and Israel responded with air attacks on Hamas and other militant targets in Gaza.
The Biden administration has called for peaceful resolution, while insisting that the rocket attacks on Israel must stop and refraining from any public criticism of Israel.
But the two entrenched sides did not appear ready to cede ground.
“The Americans are talking to me, the Egyptians are talking to me,” Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, said during a video meeting with local council heads, “but I remain focused on the reason we went out on this campaign: to make Hamas and Islamic Jihad pay a price.”
Buildings hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip are seen in Petah Tikv, Israel, on Thursday.Credit…Dan Balilty for The New York Times
The most surprising turn has been the violence between Jews and Arabs who have lived side by side in Israeli cities, with reports of gangs of people from one group pummeling members of another. Riots, stone throwing and protests continued overnight.
The crisis has come at a time when Israel’s political leaders are struggling to form a government after four inconclusive elections in two years. Mr. Netanyahu’s attempt to build a majority coalition in the Israeli Parliament failed, and his rival, Yair Lapid, had been invited to try to form a government.
Workers fixing a power line after an Israeli strike in Gaza City on Thursday.Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Before the current crisis, Gazans already lived in what one United Nations human rights official called a “toxic slum”: a jagged strip of land blockaded indefinitely by Israel and Egypt whose roughly two million residents endured daily power outages of up to 16 hours and running water that worked only every other day.
Now, they are down to about five hours of electricity per day and half their usual water supply, according to an Israeli security official. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of briefing rules, said the shortages were partly because Israel has closed the border crossing through which most of Gaza’s fuel arrives, but also because Hamas, the militant group that governs the area, shot off rockets that damaged power lines. That claim could not be independently confirmed.
The official said that the power lines to two Gaza sewage treatment plants were damaged or down, and the U.N.’s humanitarian aid coordination agency said that a water desalination plant was not operational, cutting 250,000 residents off from water. About 150,000 people in Gaza City had limited access to water because the power cuts were affecting the piped supply, the agency added.
Gaza usually gets roughly a quarter of its electricity from Israel, with another portion coming from a power plant in the territory that relies on fuel from Israel, plus donated fuel from Qatar and aid groups. Before the current conflict, that left the area perpetually short of half to two-thirds of its power needs, meaning residents had no more than eight consecutive hours of electricity, according to Gisha, a Gaza-focused advocacy group. Those who could afford it turned to diesel generators to cover the gap.
Eager to push back on the idea that Israel alone is responsible for Gazans’ deteriorating living conditions, senior officials at the Israeli defense agency that deals with the West Bank and Gaza, , known as COGAT, said that Hamas was using Gaza residents as a “human shield.”
“Instead of focusing on welfare and economy,” the head of the agency’s civil department, Col. Elad Goren, said on Wednesday, “it’s focusing on violence and incitement.”
The lack of power was starting to affect hospitals, which were already at full capacity because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Gisha group said. The Gaza Health Ministry on Friday called on Israel to open a border crossing for patients to receive treatment and medical personnel and supplies to enter.
A tunnel in 2018 that Israel said was dug by the Islamic Jihad group at the Israel-Gaza border.Credit…Uriel Sinai for The New York Times
As the Israel Defense Forces strike Gaza with jets, drones and artillery, a key target has been a network of tunnels beneath the Palestinian-controlled territory that the militant Islamic group Hamas is known to use for deploying militants and smuggling weapons.
A spokesman for the Israeli military described the complex network as a “city beneath a city.”
The tunnels were also the main rationale that Israel gave for its ground invasion of Gaza in 2014. Israel’s leaders said afterward that they had destroyed 32 tunnels during that operation, including 14 that penetrated into Israeli territory.
At the time of that fighting, the Israel Defense Forces took reporters into a 6-foot-by-2-foot underground passage running almost two miles under the border to show the threat posed by the tunnels, and the difficulty that Israel has in finding and destroying them.
Here is an excerpt from what The New York Times reported then:
Tunnels from Gaza to Israel have had a powerful hold on the Israeli psyche since 2006, when Hamas militants used one to capture an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was held for five years before being released in a prisoner exchange.
The tunnels can be quite elaborate. The tunnel toured by journalists was reinforced with concrete and had a rack on the wall for electrical wiring. It also featured a metal track along the floor, used by carts that removed dirt during the tunnel’s construction, that could be used to ferry equipment and weapons, the Israeli military said.
Israeli officials acknowledge that it is a difficult technological and operational challenge to destroy all of the subterranean passageways and neutralize the threat they pose. The tunnels are well hidden, said the officer who conducted the tour, and some tunnels are booby-trapped.
Taking shelter at a United Nations-run school in GazaHosam Salem for The New York Times
Ashkelon, IsraelAriel Schalit/Associated Press
Funeral of an Israeli soldier in ElyakimJack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Rockets being fired from the Gaza StripHosam Salem for The New York Times
Gaza CitySamar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Mourning the death of a relative in Gaza CitySamar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Petah Tikva, IsraelDan Balilty for The New York Times
Funeral of Hamas militants in Gaza CitySamar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
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The conflict is taking a growing toll as Israeli military strikes, Palestinian rocket attacks and street violence continue.
As violence between Israel and the Palestinians has grown this week, misinformation about the situation has circulated on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media outlets.
The false information has included videos, photos and clips of text purported to be from government officials in the region. And the lies have been amplified as they have been shared thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook, spreading to WhatsApp and Telegram groups that have thousands of members, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
The effect is potentially deadly, disinformation experts said, inflaming tensions when suspicions and distrust are already running high.
“A lot of it is rumor and broken telephone, but it is being shared right now because people are desperate to share information about the unfolding situation,” said Arieh Kovler, a political analyst and independent researcher in Jerusalem who studies misinformation.
Israeli soldiers near the border between Israel and Gaza on Friday.Credit…Amir Cohen/Reuters
As United States and Egyptian mediators headed to Israel to begin de-escalation talks, the antagonists were weighing delicate internal considerations before agreeing to discussions on ending the violence.
But even before the mediators got to work, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to have calculated that brute force was required first.
Early Friday, Israeli ground troops shelled Gaza — a potentially major move of escalation against the Hamas militants who have been launching hundreds of rockets at Israel.
For the Palestinians, the indefinite postponement of elections last month by the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, created a vacuum that Hamas is more than willing to fill. Hamas argues that it is the only Palestinian faction that, with its large stockpile of improved missiles, is defending the holy places of Jerusalem, turning Mr. Abbas into a spectator.
President Biden has spoken to Mr. Netanyahu and repeated the usual formula about Israel’s right to self-defense. The American leader also dispatched an experienced diplomat, the deputy assistant secretary of state Hady Amr, to urge de-escalation on both sides.
The Biden administration has resisted calls at the United Nations Security Council for an immediate discussion of the crisis, arguing that Mr. Amr and other diplomats need at least a few days to work toward a possible solution.
A proposal to convene an urgent meeting on Friday by the 15-member council was effectively blocked by the United States, diplomats said. Criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians is widespread among members of the United Nations, and the United States has often stood alone in defending Israel, its key Middle East ally.
In Washington, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, when asked about American objections to a Security Council meeting, told reporters on Thursday that “we are open to and supportive of a discussion, an open discussion, at the United Nations,” but wanted to wait until early next week.
“This, I hope, will give some time for the diplomacy to have some effect and to see if indeed we get a real de-escalation,” Mr. Blinken said.
Jordanian protesters gathered near the Israeli embassy in Amman, the capital, this week.Credit…Khalil Mazraawi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
AMMAN, Jordan — Thousands of protesters in Jordan, Israel’s western neighbor, marched toward the border on Friday morning, chanting slogans in solidarity with the Palestinians and waving Palestinian flags as Jordanian riot police surrounded them.
“We are here. Either we go down, or they will have to carry us back,” they chanted, videos posted to social media showed. “To Palestine, to Palestine. We are going to Palestine. We are going in millions as martyrs to Palestine.”
Arriving in buses and cars, the protesters called on Jordan’s government to open the border, where it has stepped up security in recent days amid the growing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Before the protesters could reach the demarcation line, however, the riot police blocked their path, social media videos and photos at the scene showed.
Jordanians have been protesting near the Israeli Embassy in Amman for several days, some of the largest expressions of solidarity for the Palestinians in a region that has otherwise reacted mildly if at all to the outbreak of violence. Protesters have called on the government to expel the Israeli ambassador.
Jordan’s 1994 treaty normalizing relations with Israel produced a chilly-at-best peace between the two countries, and the latest conflict has strained it further. This week, Jordan summoned the Israeli chargé d’affaires in Amman to condemn Israeli “attacks on worshipers” around the Aqsa Mosque compound in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, which played a major role in setting off the current conflict.
A damaged building in Petah Tikva, Israel, that was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip.Credit…Dan Balilty for The New York Times
There is no simple answer to the question “What set off the current violence in Israel?”
But in an episode of The Daily this week, Isabel Kershner, The New York Times’s Jerusalem correspondent, explained the series of recent events that reignited violence in the region.
In Jerusalem, nearly every square foot of land is contested — its ownership and tenancy symbolic of larger abiding questions about who has rightful claim to a city considered holy by three major world religions.
As Isabel explained, a longstanding legal battle over attempts to forcibly evict six Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem heightened tensions in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of violence.
The always tenuous peace was further tested by the overlap of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with a month of politically charged days in Israel.
A series of provocative events followed: Israeli forces barred people from gathering to celebrate Ramadan outside Damascus Gate, an Old City entrance that is usually a festive meeting place for young people after the breaking of the daily fast during the holy month.
Then young Palestinians filmed themselves slapping an ultra-Orthodox Jew on a light rail, videos that went viral on TikTok.
And on Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking the capture of East Jerusalem during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, groups of young Israelis marched through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter to reach the Western Wall, chanting, “Death to Arabs,” along the way.
Stability in the city collapsed after a police raid on the Aqsa Mosque complex, an overture that Palestinians saw as an invasion on holy territory. Muslim worshipers threw rocks, and officers met them with tear gas, rubber tipped bullets and stun grenades. At least 21 police officers and more than 330 Palestinians were wounded in that fighting.
Listen to the episode to hear how these clashes spiraled into an exchange of airstrikes that has brought Israeli forces to the edge of Gaza — and the brink of war.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Israeli-Palestinian Crisis, Reignited
Rockets, airstrikes and mob violence: Why is this happening now, and how much worse could it get?
A building in Gaza City on Thursday that was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.Credit…Hosam Salem for The New York Times
GAZA CITY — The taxi was loaded with everything the family would need for Eid al-Fitr, a holiday of feasts and cookies and new clothes that Israeli airstrikes on Gaza had, even before the assault by ground forces on Friday, transfigured into a time of explosions and fear.
In their four suitcases, the al-Hatu family — mother, father, son and daughter — had made sure to pack kaak filled with date paste, the biscuits traditionally shared among friends and family during Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
But they also brought enough clothing and food for several days — no one knew when it might be safe to go back home. Until then, to try to escape the airstrikes, they were going to stay with another daughter, on Al Mughrabi Street, a five-minute drive away.
They had all agreed: It would feel safer if they were all together, said the son, Mohammed al-Hatu, 28.
They were still unloading the taxi driver’s white Skoda sedan outside their temporary home shortly before noon on Wednesday when the first drone attacked.
Mr. al-Hatu’s sister had already lugged one suitcase inside. Mr. al-Hatu, who had been carrying another, staggered into the doorway of the building, bleeding, and collapsed.
Out on the street, their father, Said al-Hatu, 65, and the taxi driver lay dead. A few yards away, their mother, Maysoun al-Hatu, 58, was alive, but desperately wounded.
“Save me,” she begged Yousef al-Draimly, a neighbor who had rushed downstairs, he recounted. “I need an ambulance. Save me.”
An ambulance came, but Ms. al-Hatu did not make it.
Less than a minute after the first strike, a second drone strike ruptured the street, killing two more men: a worker at a laundry on the block and a passer-by. Another man, a barber whose shop was next to the laundry, was so badly wounded that his leg had to be amputated.
On Thursday, the first day of Eid al-Fitr, and the fourth day of the worst conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in years, Gaza City was silent with fear, except when it was loud with terror: the sudden smash of Israeli airstrikes, the whoosh of militants’ rockets arcing toward Israel, the shouts of people checking on one another, the last moans of the dying
Rockets launched toward Israel from the Gaza Strip on Friday.Credit…Anas Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Palestinian militants have fired some 1,800 rockets from Gaza at Israel this week, far more than in previous clashes, according to Israeli officials, who on Thursday expressed surprise at the size of the barrage and the range of some of the rockets.
Israel’s “Iron Dome” antimissile system has shot down many of the rockets, and many others have struck places where they could do little damage. But some of the rockets, which are unguided, have hit populated areas, blowing up buildings and cars and killing seven people in Israel.
The increasingly sophisticated arsenal of rockets is the primary weapon of Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. Other groups there, like Islamic Jihad, also have them. Israeli intelligence estimates there are 30,000 rockets and mortar projectiles stockpiled in Gaza.
Hamas was believed before this week to have rockets with ranges approaching 100 miles, and many more with shorter ranges. Israel’s largest cities, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, as well as its primary airport, Ben Gurion airport, are within 40 miles of Gaza. The airport has been closed to incoming passenger flights because of the danger, with flights diverted to Ramon airport to the southeast.
But rockets have also been fired at Ramon, more than 110 miles from the nearest part of Gaza. A Hamas spokesman said the rockets aimed at that airport were a new type that could travel 155 miles, putting all of Israel within range of Gaza. The claim could not be verified, and it was not clear how many of the new rockets the group had.
In the past, many of the rockets fired from Gaza were smuggled in from Egypt, or assembled locally from smuggled parts. But in recent years, most have been made in Gaza, with technical assistance from Iran that Hamas has openly acknowledged.
