Israel announces it has surrounded Gaza City; communications out

People look at the destruction and debris after Israeli strikes.

By WAFAA SHURAFA, NAJIB JOBAIN and KAREEM CHEHAYEB

Associated Press

Nov. 5, 2023 Updated 5:13 PM PT

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — The Gaza Strip on Sunday came under the third total communications outage since war broke out nearly a month ago, while Israel’s military announced that it had encircled Gaza City and divided the besieged coastal enclave into two.

“Today there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters, calling it a “significant stage” in Israel’s campaign against the Hamas militant group that controls Gaza and launched the fighting Oct. 7 with a bloody rampage into southern Israel.

Israeli media reported that troops are expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours. Strong explosions were seen in the northern Gaza Strip after nightfall.

The “new collapse in connectivity” across Gaza reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmed by Palestinian telecom company Paltel made it even more complicated to convey details of the new stage of the military offensive.

“We have lost communication with the vast majority of the UNRWA team members,” United Nations Palestinian refugee agency spokesperson Juliette Touma told the Associated Press. The first Gaza outage lasted 36 hours and the second one for a few hours.

Earlier Sunday, Israeli warplanes struck two central refugee camps in Gaza, killing at least 53 people and wounding dozens, health officials said. The strike came as Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for a pause to get aid to desperate civilians.

Israel has rejected the idea of halting the fighting unless Hamas returns Israeli hostages taken during its incursion, even for brief humanitarian pauses proposed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken during his current tour of the region.

Hamas’ wide-ranging attack left more than 1,400 people dead, mostly civilians in towns, kibbutzes and at a music festival, The militants also kidnapped more than 200 civilians, taking them back to Gaza.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 9,700 Palestinians have since been killed in the territory, and that number is likely to rise as Israeli troops advance into dense, urban neighborhoods.

Blinken met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, a day after talks with Arab foreign ministers in neighboring Jordan.

Abbas, who has had no authority in Gaza since Hamas took over by force in 2007, said the Palestinian Authority would assume control of Gaza only as part of a “comprehensive political solution” establishing an independent state that would also take in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands Israel seized in a 1967 war.

His remarks seemed to further narrow the already slim options for who would govern Gaza if Israel succeeds in toppling Hamas. The last peace talks with Israel broke down more than a decade ago, and Israel’s government is dominated by opponents of Palestinian statehood.

Earlier in his tour, Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Sunday reiterated while visiting an air force base that “there will be no cease-fire without the return of our abductees.” He added: “We will just continue until we beat them. We have no alternative.”

Arab leaders have called for an immediate cease-fire. But Blinken said that “would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7.”

Blinken said humanitarian pauses could be critical in protecting civilians, getting aid in and getting foreign nationals out, “while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective, the defeat of Hamas.”

A Jordanian military cargo plane air-dropped medical aid to a field hospital in northern Gaza, King Abdullah II said on social media shortly after midnight Monday. A trickle of aid has entered Gaza via the land border with Egypt, but it appeared to be the first aid delivered by Jordan, a key U.S. ally that has a peace deal with Israel.

Later on Sunday, Blinken continued his shuttle diplomacy efforts by flying to Baghdad for talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Sudani. American forces in the region face a surge of attacks by Iranian-allied militias in Iraq and elsewhere. U.S. forces shot down another one-way attack drone Sunday that was targeting American and coalition troops near their base in neighboring Syria, a U.S. official said.

Earlier Sunday, airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 40 people and wounding 34 others, the Health Ministry said. An Associated Press reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight dead children, including a baby, who had been brought in after the strike. A surviving child was led down the hospital corridor by an adult holding her hand, her clothes caked in dust, an expression of shock on her face.

Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike flattened several multistory homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. The camp, a built-up residential area, is in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians to seek refuge as it focuses its offensive on the north.

Another airstrike hit a house near a school at the Bureji refugee camp in central Gaza on Sunday and staff at Al Aqsa Hospital told the AP at least 13 people were killed. The camp is home to an estimated 46,000 people and was struck Thursday as well.

Despite appeals, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas fighters and assets and accusing the group of using civilians as human shields. Critics say Israel’s strikes are often disproportionate, considering the large number of civilians killed.

On the ground, Israeli forces in Gaza have reported finding stashes of weapons at times including explosives, suicide drones and missiles.

Swaths of residential neighborhoods in northern Gaza have been leveled in airstrikes. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs says more than half the remaining residents, estimated at around 300,000, are sheltering in U.N.-run facilities. But deadly Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit and damaged those shelters.

Israeli planes once again dropped leaflets urging people to head south during a four-hour window Sunday. Crowds of people could be seen walking down Gaza’s main north-south highway on foot with only what they could carry in their arms, some with baggage, even pets, or pushing wheelchairs. Others led donkey carts.

One man said they had to walk 500 yards with their hands raised while passing Israeli troops. Another described seeing bodies in damaged cars along the road.

Israel’s military said a one-way corridor would continue for residents in the northern part of Gaza to flee to the south.

The U.N. said about 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70% of the population, have fled their homes. Food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities are running out.

The war has stoked tensions across the region, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group repeatedly trading fire along the border.

Four civilians were killed by an Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon on Sunday evening, three of them children, a local civil defense official and state-run media reported. The Israeli military said it had attacked Hezbollah targets in response to anti-tank fire that killed an Israeli civilian.

Hezbollah said it then fired Grad rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel.

In the occupied West Bank, at least two Palestinians were shot dead during an Israeli arrest raid in Abu Dis, just outside of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

At least 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles during arrest raids.

Thousands of Israelis protested outside Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem on Saturday, urging him to resign and calling for the return of the roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas. Some families are now traveling abroad to try to make sure the hostages aren’t forgotten.

In another reflection of widespread anger in Israel, a junior government minister, Amihai Eliyahu, suggested in a radio interview Sunday that Israel could drop an atomic bomb on Gaza. He later walked back the remarks, saying they were “metaphorical.” Netanyahu issued a statement saying the minister’s comments were “not based in reality” and that Israel would continue to try to avoid harming civilians.

Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu from Cabinet meetings, a move that has no practical effect.

Among the Palestinians killed in Gaza are 4,008 children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown of civilians and fighters.

The Israeli military said 29 of its soldiers have died during the ground operation.

Forensic archaeologists and others were still searching in southern Israel for remains of victims of the Oct. 7 attack. Under Jewish religious tradition, body parts are to be kept together for a proper burial.

“We have to try and collect all the pieces, all the blood,” said Yitzchak Ben Shitrit, a salvage operator.