Israel - Palestinian militants launch massive attack, 7 Oct 2023 #8

[Mo Thuairim]

Thousands of Gaza workers go ‘missing’ in Israel amid wartime mass arrests​

Palestinians whose permits to work in Israel were revoked are believed to be held in detention camps, but Israel has so far refused to release information about them, human rights groups say.

Thousands of workers from Gaza, who were employed in Israel when the war started, have gone missing since then amid a campaign of mass arrests.

Human rights groups and trade unions believe some of the workers have been illegally detained in military facilities in the occupied West Bank, following the revocation of their permits to work in Israel. Authorities in Israel have so far refused to release the names of those they are holding.

When the Palestinian armed group, Hamas, launched an unprecedented assault on the south of Israel on October 7, about 18,500 residents of Gaza held permits to work outside the besieged strip. The exact number of workers present in Israel as hostilities began remains unknown, but thousands are thought to have been rounded up by the Israeli army and transferred to undisclosed locations.

(...)

Not clear ‘where, how many, under what legal status’​

“We have been receiving hundreds and hundreds of phone calls from family members of people who were working in Israel prior to the [October 7] attacks,” Jessica Montell, executive director of HaMoked, told Al Jazeera.

So far, Montell says, more than 400 families and friends of missing people have got in touch with the organisation, trying to trace their loved ones as they simultaneously struggle to survive Israel’s bombardments and “total” siege. Those calls have been dwindling in the past week as residents of Gaza are increasingly cut off from communications.

As part of its work, HaMoked regularly submits the names of detainees to the Israeli authorities to find out where they may be held.

“The Israeli military is supposed to inform us within 24 hours of who they are holding, which location they are being held in,” Montell said. “But for all those Gazans, they told us [they]’re not the right [authority to] address.”

“It can’t be the case that it’s not clear where they’re being held, how many are being held, under what conditions, under what legal status,” she added.

A group of six local organisations, including HaMoked, have petitioned Israel’s High Court to disclose the names and locations of the detainees and to ensure humane holding conditions.

According to the petitioners, some of the Palestinians have been detained in the Almon area – where Walid was detained – as well as in Ofer, near Ramallah, and in Sde Teyman, near Beer al-Sabe (Be’er Sheva), in the southern Naqab or Negev desert.

Once the hostilities began and the Beit Hanoun crossing (known as Erez to Israelis) into northern Gaza was shut, workers attempted to make their way to the West Bank to find shelter among Palestinian residents.

But on October 10, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) revoked all work permits it had previously issued to Gaza residents, instantly turning permit-holders into “illegal aliens”.

Al Jazeera contacted the Israeli army, as well as COGAT, the body that controls the permit system in the occupied territories. Both declined to comment or provide further information on the number of workers whose permits were revoked, as well as how many have been imprisoned and on what grounds.

Unparalleled’​

Miriam Marmur, advocacy director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organisation which calls for the freedom of movement of Palestinians, said the situation was “unparalleled”.

“Of course, at any given point, there are thousands of Palestinians that are being held in administrative detention by Israel,” she told Al Jazeera. “But these are the first Palestinians to be held en masse. The nature of their detention, the revocation of people’s permits and the fact that Israel is so far refusing to divulge any information about where they are … that is not something I have seen before,” she said.

Marmur added that the arrests were “illegal and appear to be acts of vengeance which stand in violation of international law”.

(...)

Israel secretly detaining thousands of missing Gaza workers: Rights groups

Israel has so far refused to release information about Gaza workers who have disappeared, human rights groups say.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[PommyMommy]

Reports of air defense activity over Tiberias in northern Israel. No sirens sounded.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718183401939763528

UPDATE:

12:00 pm

IDF intercepts missile fired from Lebanon toward Israeli military drone​

The Israel Defense Forces says its air defenses intercepted a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon aimed at an Israeli military drone.

The IDF unmanned aerial vehicle was not damaged in the attempt.

Footage from Tiberias in northern Israel shows a trail of smoke from the air defense missile.

The IDF says it is returning fire at the source of the missile fire.

Hezbollah has attempted to target Israeli military UAVs over northern Israel and southern Lebanon several times in recent weeks.

 

[PommyMommy]

Israel-Hamas war live: Israel says 150 ‘underground targets’ hit in Gaza during heaviest bombing of the war so far (theguardian.com)
7m ago10.16 BST

By 10am the heavy fog over Gaza has burned away and from a hillside in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, it is possible to see into Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, about 5km away.

Hamas said overnight its fighters were in a battle with the IDF and that battle still appears to be going on. Heavy machine gun fire can be heard sporadically from inside Gaza, together with bigger shell bursts, most likely tank fire.

To the south of this hill, you can hear the crump of the big self-propelled howitzers the Israelis have dug into the surrounding farmlands. Occasionally, a warplane can be heard high above and an air strike sends a big white cloud of smoke up on the horizon. The apartment buildings in the eastern side of Beit Hanoun, nearest the Israel border and Sderot, are in ruins.

Behind them is the Jabalya refugee camp, which has also come under heavy fire. The pounding of the city is steady, but less intense than Friday night, when it was at its heaviest between 8pm and 10.30 pm, quite possibly preparing the way for an incursion. An IDF officer predicted it would escalate again when the sun goes down tonight.

 

[katydid23]

IN HIS OWN WORDS: Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh, from the comfort of his home in Qatar: "We need the blood of women, children, and the elderly of #Gaza... so as to awaken our revolutionary spirit."

Listen to this vile terrorist scum sacrifice his own people, while living in the lap of luxury.

#freegazafromHamas #HamasisISIS

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718021899056210213

This 'leader' is staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in Qatar. That is one of the most expensive hotels on the planet. And while his people are dying in squalor he asks them to sacrifice their blood so he can be inspired, in a revolutionary way.

 

[Vern]

From the Times of Israel:

IDF says it killed several terrorists including head of Hamas aerial forces in intense airstrikes and in on-the-ground clashes; no Israeli casualties reported in limited incursion​

Warplanes hit 150 Hamas tunnels, bunkers; ground forces push into northern Gaza | The Times of Israel

IDF says it killed several terrorists including head of Hamas aerial forces in intense airstrikes and in on-the-ground clashes; no Israeli casualties reported in limited incursion

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[PommyMommy]

This 'leader' is staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in Qatar. That is one of the most expensive hotels on the planet. And while his people are dying in squalor he asks them to sacrifice their blood so he can be inspired, in a revolutionary way.

Evil.

 

[PommyMommy]

The UN General Assembly essentially asks Israel to not respond to a large-scale terrorist attack from a neighboring territory, and to accept that such an attack, plus massive rocket attacks, can happen in the future, even on a larger scale.

No state on earth would accept that.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718182303740916139

 

[PommyMommy]

Israel-Hamas war live: Israel says 150 ‘underground targets’ hit in Gaza during heaviest bombing of the war so far (theguardian.com)
3m ago10.57 BST

Hamas has given no sign it would abide by ceasefire, Foreign Secretary says​

[...]

Cleverly told broadcasters: “We have consistently sought to bring about pauses to facilitate the inward passage of humanitarian aid that we are providing and the release of hostages and the evacuation of British nationals in Gaza, so that has been our position from the start.

“Of course we want to see this resolved, we want to see Israel safe, peaceful and secure.

“But, as yet, I have seen or heard nothing from Hamas that gives me any confidence that they desire or would abide by calls for a ceasefire.”

[...]

Mr Cleverly reiterated the Government’s position that Israel has a right to defend itself after Hamas’s attack on October 7.

“Of course we are having conversations and will continue to have conversations with the Israeli military about the preservation of civilian life, about the adherence to international law,” he added.

 

[Dotta]

"After several days of bombing, does Hamas exist and what is its condition?
It definitely exists.
It just needs to hide.
All of Israel's 'eyes' - that is, technical and electronic means - are focused on the Gaza Strip and detect any military activity by the Palestinians.
The Israeli IDF is aware that the more Hamas soldiers they eliminate now, the fewer there will be when Israel enters the area.

How long can this Israeli action last?
To actually destroy Hamas, such an operation would have to last several months and involve more than just seizing territory. The Americans quickly occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, and later the situation returned to 'normal'.

After the occupation, new, peaceful relations would have to be introduced in Gaza, which the world doubts.

It is indeed unclear what to do next with the Gaza Strip. Should it be occupied or handed over to the less radical Fatah or perhaps to UN forces?
Nobody wants the Gaza Strip.
Neither Israel nor Egypt. These are no longer military issues, but political ones.
If the operation does not go according to Israel's wishes, brings a lot of civilian casualties and there is pressure from abroad, it may even be interrupted after some time."

Będą do nich strzelać z dachów, chować się w tunelach. Izrael czeka ciężka operacja w Gazie

- Teren zurbanizowany sprzyja Hamasowi, którzy jest gospodarzem tego obszaru - mówi WP Mariusz Cielma, redaktor naczelny "Nowej Techniki Wojskowej".

wiadomosci.wp.pl

From my country's MSM

 

[IDK]

I'm quite perturbed by the obvious bias displayed throughout these threads. Are we just pretending that Israeli forces haven't committed atrocities against the people of Palestine? Are we so enraptured by religious fervor that we ignore statistics like "5,600 Palestinians died up to 2020 while 115,000 were injured. 250 Israelis died during the same period while 5,600 were injured."

I simultaneously don't understand the hard support for Israel's genocide, while also being fully aware of the selective morality of it. But come on people, examine the facts.

Source -

Infographic: The Human Cost Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This chart shows Israeli & Palestinian deaths/injuries documented by the UN in Gaza and the West Bank.

www.statista.com

Thank you for your post. I have similar feelings, and you have expressed it way better than I ever could.

This is an ongoing conflict going back many, many years and is way more nuanced and complicated than “everything Israel does is good, and everything Palestinians do is bad”
( I don’t mean to imply that other posters feel this way, it just comes across that way at times. Maybe I am misreading them, though)

IMO, there is no excuse on either side for aggression and murder of civilians.

 

[Mo Thuairim]

Furniture for firewood, radios for news: Israel’s siege throws life in Gaza back decades​

Families displaced from north face overcrowding, rationed drinking water, and the ever present threat of death from the air

• Warning: Some viewers may find the photographs in this article distressing

by Hazem Balousha in Nuseirat and Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

In Gaza, the ever present fear of sudden death has prompted mothers to write their children’s names on their legs and hips, to help with identification if they are killed in an airstrike.

They have no control over the Israeli war waged against them, which is very much out of the 21st century – fought from the cockpits of jets and the control rooms of hi-tech naval ships. Yet, on the streets of southern Gaza, people’s lives have been bombed back decades.

On Friday night, that bombing intensified in the heaviest strikes of the war, turning the sky orange, as mobile phone networks, internet and even satellite phones stopped working, leaving Gaza almost entirely cut off from the world.

Even before then, families displaced from Gaza City and the cities further north, which have borne the worst of the Israeli strikes, numbering several hundred a day, were surviving by collecting broken furniture and scrap wood in the streets to use as fuel for cooking. There is very little cooking gas. And without power or internet, many had already abandoned phones and televisions, underlining an atmosphere of often brutal isolation. For those who have them, radios have become the sole link to the outside world.

Fridges do not work, and food- and water-borne disease is a daily anxiety. Those who can find accommodation with friends and family crowd into their homes. Others have overwhelmed the UN-run schools used as shelters in times of war in Gaza; more than 600,000 people have converged on 150 schools.

(...)

The new phenomenon of children’s names being written on their limbs has been confirmed by images of dead children in a Gaza morgue and the accounts of doctors and parents.

(...)

Furniture for firewood, radios for news: Israel’s siege throws life in Gaza back decades

Families displaced from north face overcrowding, rationed drinking water, and the ever present threat of death from the air

www.theguardian.com

 

[katydid23]

Thank you for your post. I have similar feelings, and you have expressed it way better than I ever could.

This is an ongoing conflict going back many, many years and is way more nuanced and complicated than “everything Israel does is good, and everything Palestinians do is bad”
( I don’t mean to imply that other posters feel this way, it just comes across that way at times. Maybe I am misreading them, though)

IMO, there is no excuse on either side for aggression and murder of civilians.

I don't feel like everything Israel does is good. I question their bold decisions to build all the new settlements which seem to go against previous agreements not to do so. I am uncomfortable hearing about the hundreds of 'missing' workers from Gaza who had permits to be in Israel. I do not always side with Israel.

But in this specific case, of October 7th, I am outraged, appalled and very angry with Hamas leaders. I am not going to accept those excuses about Israel being controlling in Gaza or Gaza needing more aid, etc as a justification for that brutal violence, that outright massacre by Hamas.

What would the US do if Mexico sent in 1000 invaders by air, land and sea and brutally killed families in San Diego and Nogales and El Paso? If they set fire to our homes and killed those who climbed out the windows? If they killed babies in their cribs and toddlers and their mothers were stabbed to death in front of kidnapped siblings?

What if they surrounded our young people at a peaceful music festival , shooting hundreds of them as if they were hunting wild animals?

What if they dragged hundreds of the American families, including women, children and grandparents, back across the border and hid them in underground Mexican tunnels?

What would the US response be? What would your response be? Would you be most concerned about injuring any foreign civilians when trying to save the hostages and in trying to capture the terrorists?

 

[GRT]

Thank you for your post. I have similar feelings, and you have expressed it way better than I ever could.

This is an ongoing conflict going back many, many years and is way more nuanced and complicated than “everything Israel does is good, and everything Palestinians do is bad”
( I don’t mean to imply that other posters feel this way, it just comes across that way at times. Maybe I am misreading them, though)

IMO, there is no excuse on either side for aggression and murder of civilians.

Good post. Neither side in this war has spotless hands--and nothing happens in a vacuum.

We're seeing the very human failing of "justifying" the unjustifiable. Slaughtering innocents is unjustifiable, no matter who does it.

What Hamas did earlier this month shocked and disgusted the world, and Israel is lashing out in grief, anger, and fear of it happening again. According to the rules of war, Israel is justified in trying to eradicate Hamas. I get that. Hamas is pretty nasty.

The deeper question, however, is how Hamas got a foothold in the first place and whether another group will rise even if Israel is successful in eradicating all of them.

For 3/4 of a century now, that region has been in near-constant conflict. Israel sits in a sea of unfriendly Arab countries, and Gazans are little more than caged animals--and Israel holds the key to the cage. It's an untenable situation.

Each time there's a conflict or an intifada, people worldwide take sides as if #1--it's their business, and #2--they are somehow on moral high ground.

This latest war will very likely play out as so many other skirmishes have in the past--Israel will exact a high price in return for the atrocities committed by Hamas, and in doing so, they will create more of the same atmosphere and hatred that allowed Hamas to rise.

If something fundamental doesn't change--either the Gazans or the Israelis being relocated to another part of the world--we'll continue to see this story be replayed. Over and over.

 

[Momoffourboys]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718213492367409182

 

[Momoffourboys]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718189475241906257

 

[Momoffourboys]

The Houthis in Yemen have fired rockets at Israel and hit Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon has fired rockets and hit Syria, and Hamas and PIJ rockets have hit Gaza. The Iranian axis of evil doesn’t care about endangering Arab lives to pursue its campaign of genocide against Israel.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718141290997493774

 

[Mo Thuairim]

Mahmud al-Astal (left in pic) is one of many medics providing lifesaving care as casualties flood hospitals in Gaza, only to one day discover his sister and her entire family among the dead.

"I went to the morgue and found her charred and in pieces," the 34-year-old doctor told AFP from the main hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

"On the third day of the war, while I was working at the emergency unit in Nasser Hospital, I discovered my sister had been killed with her husband and children," he said.

Those strikes razed entire buildings, including one where Astal's 40-year-old sister Sadafah died alongside her husband Hussein, also 40, and their children Fadwa, Azar, Ahmad and Suleiman, aged between six and 13.

Israel began striking Gaza following the 7 October Hamas attack that saw gunmen storm across the border, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians and taking 229 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.

The fierce aerial campaign has so far claimed the lives of more than 7,300 people, including about 3,000 children, in the impoverished enclave, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

"Ever since my sister was killed... the nightmares don't leave me. I imagine that my children will arrive at the hospital in pieces," Astal said.

"My children dream of travelling one day. Now I don't know if they will come out of this war alive."

Despite the tragedy, he is determined to continue his vital work.

"We have no other choice but to work and serve the injured to save them."

'Anxiety' racks Israeli hostage families as army assaults Gaza

A group representing the families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza has said they have been racked with worry for their loved ones since the military stepped up ground assaults inside the Palestinian territory.

"This night was the most terrible of all nights ... against the backdrop of the major IDF operation in the Strip," the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

It said that the hostages being held by Hamas were being subjected to the same heavy bombardment as Palestinian residents and that their families were racked with "anxiety, frustration" that Israel's long-awaited ground invasion will put them in more danger.

Israeli military 'still in the field' in northern Gaza

All the developments from the Israel-Hamas conflict as they happen as the World Health Organisation says it has lost touch with its staff and health facilities in Gaza.

www.rte.ie

 

[Momoffourboys]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718221623570899364

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718228735113982391

 

[Momoffourboys]

#Hamas is looking for eight people identified by #Russia as possibly being among the hostages in #Gaza and is ready to free them, Hamas Politburo member Abu Marzouk told Russian state news agency RIA on Saturday.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1718230384352051446

 

[IDK]

I don't feel like everything Israel does is good. I question their bold decisions to build all the new settlements which seem to go against previous agreements not to do so. I am uncomfortable hearing about the hundreds of 'missing' workers from Gaza who had permits to be in Israel. I do not always side with Israel.

But in this specific case, of October 7th, I am outraged, appalled and very angry with Hamas leaders. I am not going to accept those excuses about Israel being controlling in Gaza or Gaza needing more aid, etc as a justification for that brutal violence, that outright massacre by Hamas.

What would the US do if Mexico sent in 1000 invaders by air, land and sea and brutally killed families in San Diego and Nogales and El Paso? If they set fire to our homes and killed those who climbed out the windows? If they killed babies in their cribs and toddlers and their mothers were stabbed to death in front of kidnapped siblings?

What if they surrounded our young people at a peaceful music festival , shooting hundreds of them as if they were hunting wild animals?

What if they dragged hundreds of the American families, including women, children and grandparents, back across the border and hid them in underground Mexican tunnels?

What would the US response be? What would your response be? Would you be most concerned about injuring any foreign civilians when trying to save the hostages and in trying to capture the terrorists?

I appreciate your reply and agree with some of your points. I still don’t believe that carpet bombing innocent civilians is the answer.

Current death tolls:
“1,400
Number of Israelis killed

7,326
Number of Palestinians killed

5,431
Number of Israeli’s injured

18,967
Number of Palestinians injured

250,000
Number of Israelis displaced

1.4 million
Number of Palestinians displaced in Gaza”

These numbers show the staggering toll of the Israel-Hamas war

The latest Israel-Hamas war has become the deadliest and most destructive in the long history of the bitter enemies.

apnews.com