Operation Iron Swords - Day 15 - 21 October 2023

Palestinian armed group Hamas launched thousands of missiles at Israel and deployed its militants to infiltrate Jewish settlements near the country’s border with Gaza on 07 October 2023. The 1,200 Israelis killed on the first day would be the equivalent of 36,000 Americans killed in an attack, as a proportion to Israel’s population of 9.3 million people (compared to 332 million in the USA). Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated: “Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed in one day". PM Netanyahu stated "On October 7th, Hamas murdered 1,400 Israelis. Maybe more. This is in a country of fewer than 10 million people. This would be equivalent to over 50,000 Americans murdered in a single day. That’s twenty 9/11s. That is why October 7th is another day that will live in infamy."

The current US-led world order has “sort of run out of steam,” but Washington will shape the system that replaces it, US President Joe Biden told supporters. Leaders in Moscow and Beijing, however, have argued otherwise. Speaking at a campaign reception in Washington, Biden bragged about how he convinced Japan and South Korea to send financial aid to Ukraine, and how he signed a rail and ports deal with the EU, India, and Saudi Arabia at the G20 summit in New Delhi last month. “So, I think we have an opportunity to do things, if we’re bold enough and have enough confidence in ourselves, to unite the world in ways that it never has been,” Biden declared. “We were in a post-war period for 50 years where it worked pretty damn well, but that's sort of run out of steam. Sort of run out of steam. We need a new, new world order in a sense,” he continued.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken at length about building a multipolar world, describing such an order as one in which individual “civilization-states” are free to pursue their own interests free from the dictates of a hegemonic power like the US. Russia, China, and their partners in the BRICS group and across the Global South all share this goal, Putin told China Central Television (CCTV).

Israel bombarded Gaza relentlessly, killing at least 4,385 people and destroying entire neighbourhoods, according to Palestinian officials, The Gaza health ministry said over 13,651 were wounded in Israeli air raids. The Palestinian territory's health authority also reported that 1,756 of the people killed were children and 967 were women. Gaza’s Ministry of Health also reported that some 70 percent of victims of Israeli attacks are children, women and the elderly, indicating about 350 were elderly. About 1,300 people across Gaza were believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead, according to health authorities, including 600 children. IDF said it was holding 1,500 bodies of HAMAS terrorists. The Occupied West Bank saw 84 killed and 1,782 wounded, while Israel numbered 1,405 killed and 5,007 wounded. At least 307 Israeli soldiers had been killed since war started.

Hamas said it had 200 hostages and that 50 more were held by other armed groups in the enclave. It said more than 20 hostages had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. The IDF military spokesman said that the army had confirmed information about 210 persons taken hostage in Gaza and about 100 missing persons. Hamas had released two American hostages - a mother and her daughter - “for humanitarian reasons”. Israeli army and security forces received the hostages, Judith and Natalie Raanan, on the Gaza border.

The US government and some European allies are pushing Israel to postpone its ground attack on Gaza in order to negotiate the release of more hostages held by Hamas, Bloomberg reported. Israeli forces were planning a major operation in the Palestinian enclave in response to a deadly terrorist attack earlier this month. Though Israel previously signaled it would soon deploy troops to Gaza, it has “agreed under US pressure to hold off,” multiple sources familiar with the hostage negotiations told the outlet.

Hamas said it won’t discuss the fate of Israeli army captives until Israel ends its “aggression” on the Gaza strip. “Our stance with regards to Israeli army captives is clear: it’s related to a (possible) exchange of prisoners, and we will not discuss it until Israel ends its aggression on Gaza and Palestinians,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking from Lebanon, told a televised presser. Hamas had suggested the hostages could be swapped for 6,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

There were about 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons prior to Hamas’s attack on October 7. Since then, officials and rights groups said Israel had arrested some 4,000 labourers from Gaza who were working in Israel and is holding them in military bases. Separately, it had also arrested 1,070 other Palestinians in overnight army raids in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. On the night of 20 Otober 2023, the Israeli army arrested a further 670 people in the West Bank, including 450 Hamas members.

Famed Jewish professor in the US, Norman Finkelstein, said there are two possible reactions to Israel's attack on the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. On the emotional level, he said, "It was obviously a horror of the highest magnitude, and there is not much to say at that level. If you follow these events for 20 years, you will eventually become indifferent, desensitised, or exposed to the brutality that follows, and I have spent most of my adult life documenting a series of atrocities against the people of Gaza, only in small details". On the intellectual level, he said he tends to ignore Israel's denial of attacks because "Israel always denies responsibility... What I know is, don't trust what the US government says, don't trust what the British government says, and of course, it goes without saying, don't trust what Israel says".

“In a situation like this even if we trust the Israeli side, even if you say okay you were right there were a few combatants in the hospital and firing rockets, you killed 500 people, 500 innocents,” says Neve Gordon, a professor of international law and human rights at the Queen Mary University of London. “The principle of proportionality says you cannot do that.” A new investigation into photographic and audio evidence of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital blast conducted by Channel 4 News cast more doubt on Israel’s account of the events. An audio analysis conducted by a consortium of specialised NGOs concluded that the sound heard on a video right before the explosion was incompatible with the trajectory of a purported Palestinian rocket fired from southwestern Gaza, as argued by the Israeli army.

The Israeli army also released a video with a recording of a conversation between purported Hamas officials, where they appear to talk about the alleged misfired rocket that had caused the hospital blast. Earshot also studied the telephone recording and found that unlike most calls, in which both parties’ voices are transmitted on the same audio channel, the recording consists of two separately-recorded voices stitched together. While Earshot said “this recording was manipulated and cannot be used as a credible source of evidence. ”

"When calls are intercepted, we would expect them to be single monophonic recordings with both voices on the same channel of audio. What is unusual in this alleged intercepted call is that we have the voices divided across two channels, left and right. The fact that this recording is made up of two separate channels demonstrates that these two voices have been recorded independently. These two independent recordings have then been edited together with added effects (such as pan control). Though this audio analysis cannot categorically state that the audible dialogue is fake, http://Earshot.ngo’s opinion is that the level of manipulation required to edit these two voices together disqualifies it as a source of credible evidence."

Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification team also investigated the incident and found that Israeli statements seem to have misinterpreted the evidence to build a story that one of the flashes recorded by several sources was a rocket misfire. Teams at Qatar's Al Jazeera and British-network Channel 4 studied the video and concluded that the flash could not be linked with the subsequent explosion at the hospital. Al Jazeera noted that the flash “was in fact consistent with Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepting a missile fired from the Gaza Strip and destroying it in midair.”

In a second video shot near the blast site, an incoming rocket or missile can be heard screeching through the air before impacting the hospital. Earshot studied this video and found that the frequency of the incoming projectile indicates that it “approached the hospital from north-east, east or south-east,” while Israel claimed it approached from the west. Forensic Architecture backed up Earshot’s findings, stating that the projectile likely came from the direction of Israel. Further analysis of the crater left at the hospital pointed to an approach from the north-east, the agency said.

Earshot conducts "Sonic investigations for communities affected by corporate, state, and environmental injustice... [it conducts] ground-breaking research that forges new pathways in environmental and human rights advocacy... [Earshot Investigations' team is]... exposing and challenging injustices in vulnerable and marginalised communities around the world."

"Earshot performed a Doppler Effect analysis from two videos from the missile attack on the Al-Ahli hospital. The results cast doubt on the IDF’s claim that the missile that hit the hospital approached from the south-west. The Doppler Effect is a change in the observed frequency emitted by a sound source that is moving relative to an observer. In the first video, taken 150m south-east of the hospital, we hear a pronounced frequency increasing in pitch and then decreasing until impact. The increasing pitch suggests the missile is accelerating towards the camera. The decreasing pitch suggests that the missile is now moving away from the camera while still accelerating, upon the missile’s impact.

"The IDF claimed the missile was fired by the Islamic Jihad from a south-western location. If this was the case, we would expect the pitch observed by this camera to increase continuously until the missile’s impact. However, the Doppler Effect that we hear indicates that the missile was closer to the camera before hitting the hospital. This would mean that the missile approached the hospital from north-east, east or south-east.

"A second video captures the moment of the strike from around 1,500 meters north-west of the hospital. In this video, the missile can be heard moving with a less pronounced Doppler Effect, where the pitch is increasing up to the moment of the explosion. This increasing pitch suggests the missile is continuously accelerating towards the camera until impact. The camera’s north-western location suggests an eastern missile trajectory, further decreasing the probability that the missile approached the hospital from south-west."

A misfired rocket launched by a Palestinian faction in Gaza was likely responsible for the al-Ahli hospital blast, according to a European military source interviewed by FRANCE 24. The death toll of the explosion, which Hamas attributed to an Israeli air strike, is likely to be lower than announced, the same source said.

Hamas and the Israeli government had been trading blame for the deadly explosion that rocked al-Ahli hospital in central Gaza on October 17. At least 471 people were killed, according to the Gazan Ministry of Health, while US intelligence sources put the death toll between 100 and 300. Hamas officials blamed the explosion on an Israeli air strike, with Israeli authorities in turn saying the blast was the result of a misfired rocket launched by Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad. Islamic Jihad denied responsibility.

Having examined images showing the damage at the point of impact at al-Ahli hospital, a European military source interviewed by FRANCE 24 contested Hamas's version of events, taking into account the weapons likely to have been used and the context in which the strike took place.

Satellite images of the impact appear to show little structural damage to the hospital buildings and a relatively small blast zone from the explosion. The point of impact appears to be a 30-cm-deep hole measuring roughly one-metre-by-75 cm in diameter. This damage pattern is consistent with a rocket carrying around 5 kg of explosives, and no more than 10kg, according to the source. A metal object visible in the bottom of the hole seems to have an oblique inclination, which the source interprets as the result of a south-to-north trajectory.

Photos taken the day after the strike show several surrounding buildings and vehicles still relatively intact, with some windows shattered either by the blast or the ensuing fire. There appear to be no rocket or missile remains around the site. Among the possible scenarios, the military source considered a number of them unlikely based on the armaments likely to have been used and the damage that can be observed in these images.

The European source asserted that we can rule out this hypothesis, as the usual 250-kg-bomb used by the Israeli military would have left a huge crater, not a 30-cm-deep hole. A fighter jet strike, or even a smaller drone strike, seems unlikely given the absence of debris, the source said. The source also referred to a confidential image allegedly showing the extremity of a rocket in the hole.

The same source explained that the Israeli system for intercepting rockets usually destroys incoming projectiles in the middle of their trajectory rather than during their firing phase. In addition, the source said, debris from an intercepted rocket could not have caused the amount of damage observed on the ground. The source also discarded the possibility of an Israeli interceptor missile falling on al-Ahli hospital, arguing that Israel’s interception devices are programmed to explode at a certain altitude to prevent debris from hitting Israeli civilians below.

The European military source assessed that the explosion was probably caused by a rocket fired from Gaza. The dimensions of the hole and the damage caused by the explosion are consistent with the smaller model of rockets used by Palestinian factions, the source said – approximately 107 mm, with an explosive head weighing around 5 kg.

An analysis of the context also supports this hypothesis, the source said, saying that there was a 10 percent misfiring rate for Palestinian rockets. According to confidential information the source reportedly exchanged with other intelligence services, Hamas and other Palestinian factions had launched about 6,500 rockets by October 17, compared with between 5,000 and 6,000 Israeli strikes.

The European military source also questioned the death toll announced by the Gazan Ministry of Health, saying that it was highly unlikely that 471 people died in this explosion. Besides the size of the hole and limited structural damage, the usual dead-to-injured ration suggests that there should be four people wounded for each person killed, the source said.

The fact that the blast took place outside, coupled with the small amount of human remains such as blood, hair and clothing visible at the site as well as the speed with which the death toll was announced all point to an inflated death toll, according to the source.

Arab leaders at a Cairo summit condemned Israeli bombardment of Gaza as Europeans said civilians should be shielded, but with Israel and senior US officials absent there was no agreement towards containing the violence. The United States, Israel’s closest ally and a vital player in all past peace efforts in the region, only sent its Cairo charge d’affaires who did not address the meeting in public.

Egypt, which called the meeting and hosted it, said it had hoped participants would call for peace and resume efforts to resolve the decades-long Palestinian quest for statehood. But the meeting ended without leaders and foreign ministers agreeing a joint statement, two weeks into a conflict that has killed thousands and visited a humanitarian catastrophe on the blockaded Gaza enclave of 2.3 million people. Diplomats attending the talks had not been optimistic of a breakthrough, with Israel preparing a ground invasion of Gaza aimed at wiping out the militant Palestinian group Hamas that rampaged through its towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his country opposed what he called the displacement of Palestinians into Egypt’s largely desert Sinai region, adding the only solution was an independent Palestinian state. Egypt fears insecurity near the border with Gaza in northeastern Sinai, where it faced an Islamist insurgency that peaked after 2013 and has now largely been suppressed.

Jordan, home to many Palestinian refugees and their descendants, fears a wider conflagration would give Israel the chance to expel Palestinians en masse from the West Bank. King Abdullah said forced displacement “is a war crime according to international law, and a red line for all of us.”

Israel is now "out for blood," which is why a ground operation seems inevitable. No Israeli leader can credibly go for marginal gains against Hamas. The question now is how deep Israeli forces will go into the enclaves and how long they will stay there. The Israel's military objective will now be destroying Hamas, or at least cripple them severely. It will try to demolish Hamas's infrastructure and weapon. And these aims in turn will likely require at least a temporary occupation of all or part of Gaza. But the Hamas is simply too entrenched in too many places to be rooted out with bombs and raid alone so it will be a war that will last quite a while.

The Israeli government extending the time frame for everyone to leave northern Gaza, and air striking Gaza in multiple locations, meant a possible ceasefire seems far away. Israeli troops had been gathering around Gaza in preparation for a ground invasion, which seemed to be just a matter of time. Israel will intensify its air attacks in Gaza to heighten the pressure on Hamas, a military spokesman said. “We have to enter the next phase of the war in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us. From today, we are increasing the strikes and minimising the danger,” Daniel Hagari said at a press conference.

An Israeli military official said the use of civilian infrastructure by Hamas “turns a private home into a legitimate target. And anyone who supports that home is a legitimate target”. He told journalists in West Jerusalem the military will try not to attack zones in Gaza where humanitarian aid is being distributed, unless rockets are fired from the area. “It’s a safe zone. We have a system, which, every time we decide that an area … is a safe zone, we declare no attack in this area. We won’t attack them,” he said.

Since the beginning of the day, residents of north Gaza were getting phone calls on mobiles telling them that everyone in Gaza City now was considered a terrorist [by Israeli] and a collaborator with terrorism if they do not evacuate the city. Warplanes started dropping leaflets saying the same thing: To leave. Otherwise, they are considered collaborators with terrorism and to bear the consequences of the Israeli military operation to be carried out in this area.

About 700,000 Palestinians had so far evacuated to southern Gaza, Israel's military said on Saturday. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement that civilians remaining in Gaza City and the northern part of the Palestinian territory should move south of the Wadi Gaza nature reserve for their own protection, He warned that Israel will intensify attacks on Hamas military targets and government facilities in the north in the coming days. The United Nations estimates that about 1.4 million people in the Gaza Strip have already been displaced from their homes during the Israeli counterattack that followed the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel. More than 544,000 people have sought shelter in facilities run by the UN's Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Others are sheltering with family or friends, according to the UN.

The Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt closed again on Saturday afternoon after 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid were allowed to pass through and offload their cargo. The agreement struck by Egypt, Israel and the United States earlier in the week had stipulated that 20 trucks would be allowed to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip. Reports indicated there were over 200 trucks loaded with some 3,000 tons of aid waiting at the border. Before the latest outburst in fighting between Israel and Hamas, some 400 trucks were entering Gaza daily.

The UN’s children agency says it was able to send only some 44,000 bottles of drinking water to Gaza through the Rafah crossing. UNICEF noted that this would be enough for just 22,000 people for one day. Gaza’s population is about 2.3 million. “With one million children in Gaza now facing a critical protection and humanitarian crisis, the delivery of water is a matter of life or death. Every minute counts,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.

Israel repeated that the aid shipments entering Gaza from Egypt would not include fuel. This is a major cause of concern for the besieged enclave’s population and relief agencies providing essential services. Fuel is required to pump the water supply and to power generators used for operating crucial facilities such as hospitals. Residents traditionally need to fill up tanks to access water. Without fuel, they cannot also operate trucks needed to transport water or pump it. Gaza’s last functioning seawater desalination plant shut down due to fuel running out. Meanwhile, several hospitals were currently completely out of service while others were running on very low fuel supplies and have already had to shut down major health departments.

The US embassy in Israel said "Security Alert 11: We have received info that the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will open on Saturday, 21 October, 10:00am local time. If the border is opened, we do not know how long it will remain open for foreign citizens to depart Gaza.". Meanwhile, Israeli authorities urged citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan immediately. The US Embassy said that it anticipated "many people would attempt to cross should the border open," and warned US citizens attempting to leave Gaza to "expect a potentially chaotic and disorderly environment." But foreign passport holders in Gaza were not allowed to cross into Egypt.

Israeli authorities urged citizens to leave neighboring Arab countries of Egypt and Jordan immediately. Israel's Foreign Ministry published the travel advice issued by the country's National Security Council. "Israel's National Security Council raises its travel warnings for Egypt (including Sinai) and Jordan to level 4 (high threat): recommendation not to travel to these countries and for those staying there to leave... as soon as possible," it said in a statement. The notice came days after Israel recalled its diplomats from Turkey as a security precaution following an earlier request for its citizens to leave as well.

Some US diplomats and officials were left fuming after US President Joe Biden’s quick trip to the Middle East was seen as worsening the crisis and giving Israel the green light to further inflict heavy civilian losses on Palestinians as part of its military campaign against Hamas. “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist,” Biden said from Israel after meeting the families of the victims of the Hamas attack.

One senior State Department official resigned in protest, while more officials from the Biden administration are preparing to follow suit, according to sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. They said the way a section of Biden administration officials showed their enthusiasm for Israel and did not consider innocent Palestinians had frustrated many who are now ready to step down from their posts.

The State Department sent an internal email to a small group of officials in the days following the attack, ordering them to refrain from using phrases such as “de-escalation,” “ceasefire,” or “restoring calm.” On the night of the attack, a post on the US Office of Palestinian Affairs was deleted for urging “all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.”

Several Arab Americans serving in the Biden administration voiced their disappointment with the approach being adopted, sources told Al Arabiya English. Senior officials in the Biden administration had sit-downs with colleagues in recent days to discuss the administration’s positions. Next year’s US presidential election appears to have been the overarching theme of how and why Biden has come to make his decisions.

The Huffington Post first reported about a “dissent cable” drafted by current US diplomats and career service officers, criticizing the US stance on Israel for being too one-sided. Diplomats told Al Arabiya English that Israeli lives were being considered “more important” than Arab lives when the policy decisions were being made. The US veto against the UN resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza further motivated some Biden administration officials to consider quitting their roles in the government.

Reuters cited senior diplomats from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East voicing their disappointment with the US veto at the UN. “They lost credibility with the veto. What is good enough for Ukraine is not good enough for Palestine. The veto told us that Ukrainian lives are more valuable than Palestinian ones,” an African diplomat was quoted as saying. A senior Arab diplomat reportedly said the “double standard” was unjust and made the world more dangerous. “We cannot choose to call on the UN Charter’s principles to protect Ukraine and ignore it for Palestine,” the unnamed diplomat told Reuters.