TOP NEWS
Israel says it has launched a new operation in central Gaza and health officials report dozens dead.
Israel said on Wednesday that it had launched a new operation in central Gaza over the past day, hitting the region with air and artillery strikes and sending in ground troops that have engaged in clashes with Hamas militants. Dozens of people have been killed, according to health workers in Gaza, who warned that the only remaining hospital in the area was inundated with wounded people.
The Gazan Health Ministry said it had recorded 36 dead and 115 injured in the past 24 hours, without saying how many were combatants. The international aid group Doctors Without Borders said at least 70 bodies, mostly those of women and children, had been taken to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir al Balah, since Tuesday. The Israeli military declined to comment on the reports.
“The odor of blood in the hospital’s emergency room this morning was unbearable,” Karin Huster, a medical adviser for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, said in a statement. “There are people lying everywhere, on the floor, outside.”
“The bodies were being brought in plastic bags,” she said. “The situation is overwhelming.”
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Israel’s military said it was conducting military operations “above and below ground” against Hamas militants in Bureij and the eastern part of Deir al Balah, both in central Gaza, and that it had “eliminated” several.
On its Telegram channel, Hamas also reported clashes with Israeli forces in the area, and said on Wednesday that it had fired missiles at Israeli troops in the east of Bureij. The number of people in central Gaza, particularly in Deir al Balah, had swelled as hundreds of thousand of Gazans escaped fighting in the southern city of Rafah, once the main hub for people sheltering from the war.
A spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry warned that Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was now the only functioning hospital in the region and was at three times its normal capacity. Health authorities in central Gaza estimate that the hospital, where the injured are being taken, is now handling services for one million people.
Some people have died of their injuries while waiting outside operating rooms for their turn to be treated, said the spokesman, Khalil al-Daghran, who is also a doctor at the hospital.
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“We can no longer receive new wounded,” he said. “There is tremendous pressure on medical teams, who cannot control the current situation.”
On Wednesday night, the hospital said in a statement distributed by the Gaza Health Ministry that one of its two remaining generators had failed, endangering dozens of patients in critical care, including premature babies. The hospital had been relying on the generators since the war started, and Israeli authorities had blocked access to equipment needed to maintain them, the statement said.
Residents in Bureij reported heavy artillery strikes since Tuesday night and said that they were unsure where to go next, with fighting erupting around the Gaza Strip.
Hani Ahmed, a teacher and father of five who lives near the center of Bureij, said two buildings in his area had been struck. Despite this, he was hesitant to uproot his family again.
“There is no place to flee to now,” said Mr. Ahmed. “Khan Younis is rubble; Rafah is under attack; the north is destroyed.”
“I might take my family in my small bus and live at the beach as I have no tent,” he added. “We are terrified.”
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Adham al-Daya, a videographer based in central Gaza who reports for pan-Arab and Palestinian media outlets, said Israeli strikes had also hit several high-rise buildings in the nearby Maghazi area. While visiting one of the areas hit, he said he saw body parts scattered everywhere amid the rubble.
“The shelling, drone shooting and successive airstrikes are nonstop,” he said in a phone interview, during which several explosions could be heard.
Residents were loading the wounded on horse and donkey carts to get them to ambulances that could drive to the hospital, he said. But some ambulance drivers, unable to coordinate with Israeli forces in advance, were being forced to turn back as they came under gunfire from Israeli drones.
There are still dead bodies in their homes, he said, “and no one can reach them.”
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
— Erika Solomon,Iyad Abuheweila and Abu Bakr Bashir
Key Developments
The Pentagon says repairs to the U.S.-built pier for Gaza have not been completed, and other news.
Repairs to a temporary pier built by the U.S. military to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza are taking longer than the Pentagon originally estimated. The pier will be reattached to the Gaza shore in the next few days, the Pentagon said on Wednesday; the initial estimate was that it would be fully restored by Tuesday. Rough seas broke the pier apart just days after it was installed last month, and it was towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod for repairs. A Pentagon spokeswoman said that building the pier had cost $230 million, not the $320 million originally forecast.
An Israeli court upheld a government ban on Al Jazeera that ends on Saturday, the country’s Ministry of Communications said, adding in a statement on Wednesday that it was working to renew the shutdown for another 45 days. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the network a “mouthpiece” for Hamas, but critics have denounced the decision to shut it down inside Israel as antidemocratic and part of a broader crackdown on criticism of the war in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch said Israel was putting civilians at risk by using white phosphorus munitions in southern Lebanon, saying in a report on Wednesday that it had verified 17 such uses, including five in residential areas. White phosphorus is an incendiary toxic substance used to generate light and smoke screens during combat. Deploying it deliberately against civilians or in a civilian setting violates the laws of war. The Israeli military told The Associated Press that it follows international law and uses white phosphorus only as a smoke screen.
A gunman opened fire on the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon early Wednesday and was shot and captured by Lebanese security forces, adding to mounting tensions in a crisis-hit nation already on edge over months of cross-border strikes between Israel and the armed militant group Hezbollah. The embassy said that a security guard had been wounded during the attack, without specifying how or whether the injuries were serious
Netanyahu warns of ‘very intense’ action against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as talk of a new war intensifies.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Wednesday threatened further military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon, amid growing talk of another full-scale war, even as Israel fights Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Two days after Hezbollah militants launched a barrage of rockets and exploding drones from Lebanon into northern Israel, igniting several wildfires, Mr. Netanyahu visited soldiers and firefighters in the area, and said the Israeli military was ready to strike.
“Whoever thinks he can hurt us and we will respond by sitting on our hands is making a big mistake,” he said, according to the Israeli government. “We are prepared for very intense action in the north. One way or another, we will restore security to the north.”
Other Israeli officials have threatened war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which has stepped up attacks on northern Israel since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October. But the bellicose talk carries more weight coming from the highest levels — not only the prime minister but the military chief of staff and a cabinet minister.
Israeli forces and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia and political faction that exercises de facto control over southern Lebanon, have been exchanging strikes for months, forcing more than 150,000 people on both sides of the border to flee.
On Monday, the Lebanese television network Al Manar, which is controlled by Hezbollah, said the group had fired at Israeli soldiers in several locations close to the border, starting fires, and claimed to have inflicted casualties.
One of the most intense fires threatened homes in the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, near the Lebanese border, according to Israeli news outlets. That city, like much of the Israeli border area, has been largely evacuated for months, and no casualties were reported.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for another drone attack in the region. The Israeli military said that two drones landed in the area of Hurfeish, a Druse village whose citizens are primarily part of an Arab-Israeli minority in Israel. At least 11 people were reported injured, one critically. No sirens sounded warning of the attack, according to the Israeli military, which said it was reviewing the incident.
Such strikes — and threats of more direct military action — have raised concerns about the prospect of Israel waging war on two fronts.
On Wednesday, Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said that the Biden administration remained “incredibly concerned” about the risk of escalation between Israel and Hezbollah.
“That said, the government of Israel has long maintained — privately to us, and they’ve said it publicly, too — that their preferred solution to this conflict is a diplomatic one, and we continue to pursue a diplomatic resolution,” Mr. Miller said.
The Biden administration has held talks with Israel and Lebanon, exchanging messages with Hezbollah through intermediaries. The talks are aimed at moving Hezbollah forces away from the border, according to Lebanese and Israeli officials, and other participants.
But Hezbollah has said repeatedly that it will not negotiate until the war in Gaza ends, and Israeli military officials have said this week that they are growing increasingly frustrated with Hezbollah’s attacks.
“We are approaching the point in which a decision needs to be made, and the I.D.F. is ready and prepared for that decision,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, said on Tuesday.
Far-right leaders in Israel have been calling for war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. “The time has come,” Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, said on social media on Wednesday. “There is full backing from the entire people of Israel.”
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006 in attempts to root out armed militants who launched attacks into Israel.
Adam Rasgon and Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.
— Michael Levenson
18 people are arrested at an annual Jewish nationalist march through East Jerusalem.
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Tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis joined an annual nationalist march on Wednesday through the heart of Jerusalem to celebrate Israel’s 1967 capture of the city’s eastern half, with some chanting extremist slogans calling for violence against Arabs.
The rally, known as the Dance of the Flags or the Flag March, has long been a flashpoint for tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, but security forces were especially worried the event could spark violence this year because of the eight-month-long war between Israel and Hamas, and a steep rise in violence on the West Bank. The march winds through Jerusalem’s Old City toward the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites.
Chanting, dancing and waving blue-and-white Israeli flags, the marchers made their way through the Old City’s Damascus Gate into largely Palestinian areas of Jerusalem’s Old City. The marchers banged on the shutters of shops closed by Palestinian owners who feared attacks and chanted slogans that included “may your village burn down” and a biblical verse tweaked to call for “revenge on Palestine.”
The Israeli police said they arrested 13 people “involved in various violent incidents” in the Old City. Some of the Israelis attending the march also hurled bottles and jeered at journalists from Arabic news outlets, who were watching the area from a designated platform. Officers later moved in after the bottle-throwing continued, detaining five more people, the police said.
When asked about the violence against journalists, Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said: “Attacks of that nature should be prevented when possible. When they can’t be prevented they should be fully prosecuted, people should be held accountable under the law.”
The demonstrators included many younger Jewish Israelis, wearing clothing emblazoned with the slogans of the religious right’s high schools and military academies.
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“We need vengeance,” said one marcher, Noam Goldstein, 15, a high school student from a small Israeli settlement near the Palestinian city of Hebron, in the West Bank. “They’ve committed attacks against us, so we need to be avenged. That doesn’t mean we need to kill every last one.”
But he added: “I want this entire land to be ours.”
After Israel’s 1948 founding, Jerusalem was divided in two: Israel controlled the city’s western neighborhoods, while Jordan controlled mostly-Palestinian East Jerusalem. During the 1967 Mideast war, Israel conquered East Jerusalem and later annexed it, a move not recognized by most countries, which still regard it as occupied territory.
Tensions inflamed by the yearly rally commemorating the takeover helped touch off an 11-day conflict in May 2021 between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas. Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem as the march was about to kick off, triggering rocket-alert sirens and sending thousands scrambling for cover.
On Wednesday, Shilo Tzoref, a 19-year-old student at a religious school, or yeshiva, sought to distance himself from some of the more violent chants. “The central idea is that Jerusalem belongs to us,” he said. “You shouldn’t hit every Arab you see in the street. It’s a holy day celebrating Jerusalem, it’s not about having a fistfight with our enemies.”
Earlier on Wednesday, some Jewish Israelis had ascended to the Noble Sanctuary, a hotly contested holy site known to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and to Jews as the Temple Mount. Under a longstanding arrangement at the sensitive holy site, non-Muslims are allowed to visit but only Muslims may pray.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister and a far-right political leader, also joined the procession. Mr. Ben-Gvir, who has long pushed for Jewish worship at the Noble Sanctuary, said that Jews had freely prayed on the Temple Mount in accordance with his orders to police, bucking the status quo.
“We’re here to tell them that Jerusalem is ours, Damascus Gate is ours, and the Temple Mount is ours,” Mr. Ben-Gvir told reporters at the march.
In response, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office released a statement saying, “The status quo at the Temple Mount hasn’t changed, and it will not change.”
Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.
— Aaron Boxerman reporting from Jerusalem
The C.I.A. chief holds talks in Qatar, as Israel and Hamas remain at odds over a cease-fire.
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The C.I.A. director met with top Qatari and Egyptian officials on Wednesday as the Biden administration launched a renewed push for a cease-fire in Gaza, though Israel and Hamas appeared to remain far apart on the latest proposal to pause the fighting.
The U.S. spy chief, William J. Burns, met in Doha, Qatar, with the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and the Egyptian intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, according to an official briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door encounter.
Egypt and Qatar have been key mediators in the talks between Israel and Hamas, which do not talk directly to each other. By dispatching Mr. Burns, the Biden administration signaled that it was still investing heavily in trying to broker a cease-fire to end the bloodshed in Gaza and calm broader regional tensions.
The meeting focused on finding ways to bring Israel and Hamas closer to an agreement, according to the official, who said that Qatar had received preliminary positive feedback from Hamas to a cease-fire proposal endorsed last week by President Biden, but was still waiting to receive a formal response.
On Wednesday, the Qatari prime minister and Mr. Kamel also met with Hamas leaders to discuss the proposal, the official briefed on the talks said.
Mr. Biden described the proposal as a new Israeli offer that would begin with a six-week halt in fighting and ultimately lead to the “cessation of hostilities permanently,” raising hopes among Israelis and Palestinians that a deal to end the nearly eight-month war was finally imminent. But since the president went public with the offer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly rejected ending the war without first destroying Hamas’s governing and military capabilities.
On Wednesday, a senior Hamas official repeated the group’s position that it would not agree to any deal that did not provide for a permanent cease-fire. The official, Bassem Naim, said that “it doesn’t make sense” for the group to negotiate while Israeli forces launch fresh attacks in Gaza, and said Hamas would not accept a temporary truce.
“The thirsty will drink a little and the hungry will eat a little, and then after a month and a half we will return to being killed?” he said.
The official briefed on the meeting in Qatar said that recent statements by Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have made Hamas officials question whether Israel wants a permanent halt in the fighting.
A spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, Majed al-Ansari, said on Tuesday that it was “waiting for a clear Israeli position that represents the entire government.”
Amid the public disagreements, Mr. Burns’ stay in Doha wasn’t expected to bring about major progress, said a second person briefed on the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy. Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza and the presumed mastermind of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on southern Israel, still had to weigh in on the latest proposal, that person said.
Brett McGurk, the White House’s Middle East coordinator, was also returning to the region this week for meetings in Cairo, a U.S. official said.
Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said on Wednesday that the proposal outlined by Mr. Biden was “still a live proposal,” even though Mr. Netanyahu has not publicly endorsed it and two of his ministers have said they would oppose any deal that leaves Hamas intact.
“Israel is a raucous democracy, so there is a lot of talk and a lot of chatter,” Mr. Sullivan said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show. “But the Israeli government has reconfirmed repeatedly, as recently as today, that that proposal is still on the table and now it’s up to Hamas to accept it. And the whole world should call on Hamas to accept it.”
The first phase of the proposal laid out by Mr. Biden called for both sides to observe a temporary six-week cease-fire while they continue to negotiate to reach a permanent one. In a meeting with Israeli lawmakers on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu expressed openness to a 42-day pause in the fighting, embracing at least part of the first phase of the three-part plan described by Mr. Biden, according to a person who attended the discussion.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesman, said the most recent Israeli position communicated to the group didn’t include a permanent cease-fire or a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, both terms that Hamas has insisted on. Israel, Mr. Hamdan said, was interested in only a temporary cease-fire to free hostages, and would then resume the war.
“We call on the mediators to get a clear position from the Israeli occupation,” he said.
Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting.
— Adam Rasgon and Julian E. Barnes
