الكاتب: kafej

To see the column of people up close was quite something.

Several hundred Palestinians, young and elderly, in a thin line facing south on the main north-south road that cuts down through Gaza.

On a loudhailer, an Israeli soldier is issuing instructions in Arabic. They should move south, they are told, and they will be safe.

We’re deep inside Gaza, a couple of miles southeast of Gaza City itself.

Israel-Gaza latest: UN issues dire warning

Behind us, a couple of miles back, to the east, is the border fence with Israel.

The land between us and the fence resembles a wasteland. What were once fields are now a vast area of earth, churned up by the Israeli military vehicles, which are shuttling back and forth.

Ahead of us, looking west, it’s a different sort of wasteland. Not a single building is untouched. Some are barely standing. In the distance, there is the occasional boom.

We’re with the Israeli military on an embedded facility. The purpose, from the Israeli perspective, is to show us what the humanitarian corridors they have been under so much pressure to implement actually look like.

For us, despite the restrictions they have imposed (we cannot film certain soldiers’ faces, screens in vehicles, identifiable landscape or certain equipment), it’s a chance to see first-hand what’s happening inside this tiny part of Gaza they are willing to show us.

There is no other way to enter Gaza at the moment. It’s with the Israeli military or not at all.

The reporting is subject to Israeli military restrictions.

Our ride in was in a battered and dusty Humvee. We passed through the same part of the border fence through which Hamas fighters came, the other way, on 7 October.

We were about to see what Israel’s five-week long response to that massacre looks like up close.

It’s about a 15-minute drive from the border fence to the edge of Gaza City.

To the north, we could see the black smoke rising from the latest airstrikes.

Just ahead I caught a glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea beyond the rubble of the southern outskirts of Gaza City.

At first, I didn’t notice the hundreds of Palestinians. They were obscured behind a berm of earth. My eye was drawn to the battered buildings beyond.

But then they came into view. Honestly, it resembled a scene from another time.

It’s being presented as good news: people being guided out of a warzone, through a temporary pause in fighting, to safety in the south of Gaza.

“We’re protecting it day and night, in the rain and the sun, and making sure that all these civilians that aren’t involved in terror, could leave the area, and let us get our job done,” a major, who we could only identify as Shraga, told me.

“Our job, our main objective, is to totally eliminate Hamas. We won’t want to hurt any of these civilians. And that’s why we’re letting them go out.”

‘An echo of their history’

Seeing these people move south, out of the warzone a few miles to the north, is clearly good for their safety.

But to view it simply in those terms is to miss the point.

From the perspective of the Palestinians, this is an echo of their history. They see it as forced displacement from homes which have been destroyed and to which they never think they will return.

Many Gazans are from families already displaced two generations earlier.

I asked the major if he could see this from the Palestinian perspective; the impact on their psyche – they feel like they’re being moved out of their homes, and that they will never be able to go back?

“After what I saw on October 7, I failed to understand the Palestinian psyche,” the major said.

“So I don’t know how they’re looking at it, or what they understand.

“I don’t know if you visited our kibbutzim that were raided, and how Hamas brought hell into our homes. So the responsibility on that is on them.

“We are here not to fight, not because we love fighting, not because we’re bloodthirsty, and not because we hate any Palestinians. We are here fighting, because we want to live peaceful, productive lives on the other side of the border.”

I asked: “And to those who say that in eliminating evil, you are reaping misery on two million people. What do you say?”

Major Shraga replied: “They’re welcome to take that question straight back to Hamas. You can see here with your own eyes, how much effort we’re putting in to let innocent civilians out.”

“And the civilian casualties?” I asked. “11,000 people dead, killed in four weeks.”

The major said: “Yeah, well, those are big numbers. But when we judge, then it’s not about the numbers. It’s about eliminating evil. And we saw what Hamas could do, what Hamas intends to do.”

It was deeply frustrating not to be able to talk to the people in front of us.

The Israeli military cited security concerns. Hamas snipers, they told us, were emerging from tunnels. And others could be among the civilians being moved south.

So we couldn’t get the reflections of the people here. It’s only when they reach the south that they are able to speak as many have about the pain of being forced from homes destroyed.

And even in the south, they are not safe.

I asked the officer permitted to speak about this: how was it right to destroy peoples’ homes then force them south to areas also being targeted?

The officer replied: “Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that war is not safe. I do know that we are doing everything we can to hit directly the terrorist, not civilians. Honestly, I haven’t been in the south so I cannot answer that question.”

Read more:
Village caught in crossfire ‘could turn into battlefield’
Israel claims al Shifa hospital has a dark side
Footage shows soldier toss grenades back at Hamas

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

I asked the same officer about the accusations of war crimes. The question was cut short.

An Israeli spokesperson, accompanying us, took the question a little later.

“Israel is not guilty of any war crimes,” Major Doron Spielman told me.

“I’ve also heard from many international lawyers. This was an assault that was inflicted on Israel.

“Every nation, including Israel, including England, including the United States – all over the world – if there’s a massacre that’s committed on your border and an active threat, you have no choice but to destroy that enemy.”

He added: “That is not only international law, that is also the law of morality.”

What about the number of Gazans killed in a little over four weeks?

“I think that the fact remains that Hamas is operating within that civilian population…” Major Speilman said.

But, I asked, can that be an excuse for killing so many civilians in just a few weeks?

He replied: “I think that again, that every one of these civilians that has unfortunately died, is because Hamas is using them to cover up their operations. Hamas is actively, to this day while speaking to you, shooting rockets, even in this humanitarian corridor.”

So the deaths are inevitable, I asked, and worth it to eliminate Hamas?

“Death is a horrific outcome of war,” Major Speilman said.

An armed gang has stormed a hospital in Haiti and taken hundreds of hostages including newborn babies, the boss of the medical facility has said.

Women and children are also said to have been kidnapped from the Fontaine Hospital Centre in the capital of Port-au-Prince.

Pleading for help on social media, the hospital’s founder and director Jose Ulysse – who himself has been targeted by gangs before – said: “We are in great difficulty.”

It is not clear why the assailants may have taken people hostage, but the community in the sprawling Cite Soleil slum has become overrun by gangs that have unleashed increasingly violent attacks.

Civilians in the area are routinely raped, beaten or killed.

A recent UN report highlighted one gang in Haiti that is involved in extortion, hijacking of goods and general violence against civilians – and has form for kidnapping people for ransom.

Read more world news:
Inside Gaza where Israeli military denies being ‘bloodthirsty’
Iceland’s ‘ghost town’ as earthquakes spark evacuation
How dog found next to hiker’s body survived for 10 weeks

Haitian gangs have grown more powerful since the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise.

Earlier this year, at least 20 armed gang members snatched a patient from an operating room after bursting into a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders.

The criminals gained access after faking a life-threatening emergency, the organisation said.

The UN Security Council has passed a resolution calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip” to allow for aid delivery and medical evacuations, after four failed attempts to respond to the Israel-Hamas war.

The resolution, introduced by Malta on Wednesday, also called for “corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days” to safeguard civilians, particularly children, ambassador Vanessa Frazier told the Council.

It additionally asked for the unconditional release of captives held in Gaza.

It was adopted by 12 votes in favour, zero against and three abstentions – Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

“It is binding international law, but we know that there are many Security Council resolutions that are binding international law that Israel does not comply with. But I think it will add added pressure on Israel, particularly as the US allowed this resolution to go through – it could’ve used its veto,” said Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays.

“Out of the previous four resolutions that didn’t go through, probably the one nearest to going through was the one on October 18, that’s when all the countries either voted for, or abstained, and the only country that voted against was the United States – it wielded its veto,” Bays said.

“We’ve had 29 days since that date, and we know all the death toll figures are undercounted, but in that time there have been 7,600 more deaths and 3,653 of those deaths were children. What was called for then was a resolution calling for humanitarian pauses,” he added.

The resolution made no mention of a ceasefire. It also didn’t refer to Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, during which Israeli authorities say about 1,200 people were killed and some 240 were taken captive.

It also omitted Israel’s retaliatory air strikes and ground offensive in Gaza, which Ministry of Health officials say have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children.

The resolution listed fuel as among the items that must be allowed to be delivered “unhindered”. And it required that the UN chief give a report on its implementation at the next meeting of the Security Council concerning the Middle East.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, was quick to respond that the resolution would have “no meaning”, calling it “disconnected from reality”.

He maintained that Israeli is acting in accordance with international law in Gaza, a claim that has been rejected by several experts on the subject.

The @UN Security Council’s resolution is disconnected from reality and is meaningless. Regardless of what the Council decides, Israel will continue acting according to int’l law while the Hamas terrorists will not even read the resolution at all, let alone abide by it. It is…

— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) November 15, 2023

“It is unfortunate that the council is still unable to condemn or even mention the massacre that Hamas carried out on [October 7] and led to the war in Gaza,” he wrote on X.

“This is a disgrace,” he added, saying Hamas’s strategy is to “deliberately deteriorate the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and increase the number of Palestinian casualties in order to activate the UN and the Security Council in an attempt to stop Israel”.

“It will not happen,” he continued.

Earlier, the US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, condemned council members that she said still have not condemned Hamas.

“I want to say that I’m horrified that a few members of this council still cannot bring themselves to condemn the barbaric terrorist attack that Hamas carried out against Israel on October 7,” she said. “What are they afraid of? There’s no excuse for failing to condemn these acts of terror.”

Speaking ahead of a vote on her country’s draft resolution, Malta’s ambassador to the UN said it “aims to ensure respite from the current nightmare in Gaza and give hope to the families of all victims”.

A last-minute amendment introduced by Russia called for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce, leading to a cessation of hostilities”.

The amendment failed to get the support needed with only five of the 15-member council voting in favour. The US voted against it.

Over a two-week period last month, four previous resolutions failed in the Security Council, twice when Russia failed to get the minimum votes needed, once when the US vetoed a Brazilian-drafted resolution, and again when Russia and China vetoed a resolution put forward by the US.

The US, Russia, China, France and the UK wield veto power as permanent members of the body.

An initial Brazil-drafted resolution calling for humanitarian pauses was vetoed by the US for failing to “mention Israel’s right of self-defence”. A subsequent US-drafted resolution, which stated Israel’s “right to self-defence” but did not call for humanitarian pauses, was vetoed by Russia and China.

Two subsequent Russian draft resolutions were not vetoed but did not attain the nine votes needed to be approved by the council.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called the US-China relationship ‘the most important bilateral relationship in the world.’

US President Joe Biden has met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of an economic summit in California, where they shook hands and spoke about ways to improve bruised relations.

The meeting took place on Wednesday during a conference for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative (APEC), and comes amid a period of mounting tension between Washington and Beijing.

Biden said that the two countries should strive to make sure they do not “veer into conflict” and manage their relationship “responsibly”.

Xi called the US-China relationship “the most important bilateral relationship in the world”, and said he and Biden “shoulder heavy responsibilities for the two peoples, for the world, and for history”.

“For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” he said. “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has unbearable consequences for both sides.”

Officials on both sides of the Pacific have set expectations low as Biden and Xi are set to discuss Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Israel-Hamas war, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea and human rights – areas where the leaders have been unable to resolve long-standing disagreements.

Cooperation between the US and China, which make up the first and second-largest economies in the world, respectively, remains vital for progress on global issues such as climate change. But both sides have expressed mounting frustration with the other, disagreeing over issues such as technology and global politics.

Washington has accused China of offering Russia an economic lifeline as Moscow carries out a bloody invasion of Ukraine, which the US has backed with military assistance and humanitarian aid.

The two sides have also differed on issues in the Middle East, where China has called for a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian armed group HaInternalmas. The US has used its position on the United Nations Security Council to veto calls for a ceasefire and has thrown its support behind Israel.

The two have also clashed over technology and trade, with the US instituting new measures in an effort to hobble China’s microchip industry.

Iran, fentanyl

During the meeting, Biden is expected to press Xi to use China’s influence to urge Iran to avoid provocative action or encouraging its proxies to enter the fray in moves that could spread the Israel-Hamas conflict across the Middle East.

He is also expected to raise alleged Chinese operations to influence foreign elections, the status of US citizens that Washington believes are wrongly detained in China and human rights.

US officials expected concrete steps to restore staff-level conversations between the two countries on issues from military-to-military communications to reducing the flow of fentanyl, managing the growth of artificial intelligence technologies, and managing trade and climate.

Many of the chemicals used to make the opioid drug fentanyl come from China, US officials say.

Before the meeting, both countries backed a new renewable energy target and said they would work to reduce methane and plastic pollution, a renewal of climate cooperation that was suspended after former US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022.

Watchdog says stonewalling of inspectors ‘extreme and unjustified’ as stockpile reaches 22 times the nuclear deal limit.

Iran continues barring several experienced nuclear inspectors, and has enough uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity, close to weapons-grade, for three atom bombs, according to confidential reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The United Nations nuclear watchdog on Wednesday slammed Iran’s decision to withdraw the accreditation of several inspectors, announced in September, as “extreme and unjustified” and said it “directly and seriously affected” the agency’s work.

“Iran’s stance is not only unprecedented, but unambiguously contrary to the cooperation that is required,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi wrote in a report to the agency’s member states.

Iran in September withdrew the accreditation of several inspectors, a move Tehran described as retaliation for “political abuses” by the United States, France, Germany and Britain.

The move targets eight top inspectors, with French and German nationals among them, according to a diplomatic source.

In the report, the IAEA said it received a letter from Iran on Wednesday, reiterating its position “that it was within its rights” to withdraw the accreditation, but was “exploring possibilities to address the request” of the agency to reinstate it.

Member states can generally veto inspectors assigned to visit their nuclear facilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Grossi expressed “his hope that this matter will be resolved promptly”.

In a separate confidential report, the IAEA said that Iran’s estimated stockpile of enriched uranium had reached more than 22 times the limit set out in the 2015 accord between Tehran and world powers.

Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile was estimated at 4,486.8kg (9,891.7lb) as of October 28, up by 693.1kg (1,528lb) from August, the report said. The limit in the 2015 deal was set at 202.8kg (447lb).

The report comes amid long-standing tensions between Iran and the agency, which is tasked with monitoring a nuclear programme that Western nations have long suspected is aimed at eventually developing a nuclear weapon. Iran denies wanting to build nuclear weapons.

In 2015, major world powers reached a deal with Iran, aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.

That started to unravel in 2018 when then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from it and reimposed sanctions, and Iran retaliated by stepping up its nuclear activities.

European Union-mediated efforts to revive the deal have so far proved fruitless.