Conflict Spirals Across Israel and the Palestinian Territories

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/world/middleeast/israel-palestinian-conflict-gaza.html

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JERUSALEM — Fighting between Israelis and Palestinians spiraled across several fronts on Saturday as Israel destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza housing the offices of two major international media outlets, thousands of Palestinians fled their homes, Hamas militants in Gaza fired more rocket barrages toward the Tel Aviv area, and protests broke out again in the occupied West Bank.

The violence continued amid increased American efforts to help mediate a cease-fire, as President Biden spoke with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and an American envoy, Hady Amr, landed in Israel for two days of talks with Israeli and Arab counterparts. They joined efforts led by Egyptian, Qatari and United Nations officials to secure a break in the fighting.

But by Saturday night, those efforts showed no sign of success: The fighting is the most intense since 2014 and has taken on a rare complexity because of its spread across the entirety of Israel and the occupied territories.

The death toll is overwhelmingly higher in Gaza, where at least 145 people have been killed since Monday, according to Palestinian officials. But Israeli cities have been wracked by civil unrest for days, amid mob attacks by both Jews and Arabs. And they have been targeted by more than 2,800 missiles from Gaza, 90 percent of which have been intercepted by the Iron Dome, an antimissile detection system partly financed by the United States. Ten Israeli residents have been killed, along with two Israeli soldiers, according to the Israeli government.

The Israeli Army said it had made more than 670 of its own strikes in Gaza by Saturday night. One of the most recent was in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza, which early Saturday morning killed at least 10 members of the same extended family, eight of them children, according to Palestinian officials and local news reports.

Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents are descended from Palestinians who fled their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and their towns are still known as refugee camps, even though they now resemble small suburbs.

Mohammed al-Hadidi, the father of four of the slain children, said his family had gone to the camp to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, an Islamic festival. His wife, her brother’s four children and her sister-in-law were also among those killed, and only a 5-month-old boy, Omar, was pulled from the rubble alive.

“They were sleeping in their homes,” Mr. al-Hadidi said, speaking to Shehab, a news agency linked to Hamas. “They weren’t holding weapons, they weren’t firing rockets and they weren’t harming anyone.”

Later, as rescue teams picked their way through the rubble, Mr. al-Hadidi could be seen howling at the ruins where his children’s bodies had been found. In one video of the scene posted on social media, he swayed while several other men held him up.

The Israeli Army said it had “attacked a number of Hamas terror organization senior officials in an apartment used as terror infrastructure in the area of the al-Shati refugee camp,” but did not release more information. The Palestinian militant group Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.

Hours after speaking with Mr. Biden, Mr. Netanyahu posted a speech to Facebook in which he vowed to continue attacks until Israel’s security from Hamas rockets fire is guaranteed.

“You know and I know: No country would tolerate this,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Israel has responded forcefully to these attacks and we will continue to respond forcefully until the security of our people is reinstated and restored.”

A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, Lior Haiat, said that Israel did everything possible to minimize civilian casualties, and that it was Hamas that fired indiscriminately at Israeli civilians. “Every one of those missiles that are being launched from the Gaza Strip to Israel is actually a terror attack,” Mr. Haiat said. “But not only that — every one of those missiles is also a war crime.”

Hamas and its allies in Gaza returned fire with a barrage of rockets across central Israel in the early afternoon, sending sunbathers sprinting from the beaches of Tel Aviv toward bomb shelters.

Most of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome. But at least one landed in Ramat Gan, a Tel Aviv suburb, killing one person, the Israeli news media reported. Another rocket fell near an Ikea store south of Tel Aviv, but left no injuries.

On Saturday, the United Nations said more than 17,000 residents of Gaza had evacuated their homes and were sheltering in 41 U.N.-run schools across Gaza, only some of which were equipped with supplies, such as blankets, to house displaced people.

Across the coastal strip, the power supply had fallen to six to eight hours per day on average, and less than four in some areas, affecting medical centers, water supply and Gaza’s sewage treatment plants, the United Nations said. For the third consecutive day, running water to about 230,000 Gazans was shaky, and a desalination plant was not operating for the fifth day in a row, disrupting drinking water for a quarter-million people.

On Saturday afternoon, the Israeli Air Force also destroyed two towers in Gaza City, one of which housed the local offices of The Associated Press, the American news service, and Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based television network. Once again, Israeli officials claimed the target housed militant infrastructure.

The Israeli Army first called the building’s owner, Jawad Mahdi, giving him an hour to evacuate his tenants.

In the minutes before the airstrike, Mr. Mahdi was filmed desperately pleading with the Israeli Army, asking it to allow four journalists who had been filming Mohammed al-Hadidi at a hospital an extra 10 minutes to retrieve their belongings.

“There will be no 10 minutes,” the Israeli soldier replied.

Mr. Mahdi tried again. “In the time we’ve been talking for these last 10 minutes, if you’d just let us go, the journalists could have gone in and picked up their gear and come back.”

Then he gave up. “It’s fine, you can do what you want,” Mr. Mahdi said. “Our life’s work is gone, our lives, our memories you’ve just wasted.”

“There is a God that is bigger than you,” he added later.

Minutes later, the building was destroyed, engulfed in a plume of black smoke.

The Associated Press described the attack as “an incredibly disturbing development,” adding: “We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen A.P. journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time.”

The attack came just days after the home of an A.P. correspondent in Gaza, Fares Akram, and the offices of several Palestinian news outlets, were also bombed.

Gary Pruitt, the A.P.’s chief executive, said he was “shocked and horrified” by the building’s destruction.

‘We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building,” he said. “This is something we actively check to the best of our ability.”

On Saturday, a White House spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, said on Twitter that the United States had “communicated directly to the Israelis that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility.”

After the airstrike, journalists from other news organizations gathered near the rubble of the tower to commiserate with the Associated Press and Al Jazeera journalists who had lost their offices.

“This is clearly to silence the truth and the voices of journalists,” said Heba Akila, an Al Jazeera journalist who had been broadcasting from the tower when the warning call was made.

There were renewed clashes overnight on Friday between Arab and Jewish citizens in Israeli cities. Two Palestinian citizens of Israel were hurt in a firebomb attack on their home in Jaffa, a mixed Arab-Jewish city that was at the heart of Arab life in the Middle East before most of its Arab residents fled to Gaza and other parts of the region in 1948.

For Palestinians, the attack, and the situation in general, had particular resonance on Saturday: It was Nakba Day, an annual commemoration of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948. In Ramallah, the administrative hub of the occupied West Bank, a siren sounded for 73 seconds to mark the 73 years since the dispersal.

Demonstrations and subsequent clashes broke out again in the West Bank, illustrating how widespread the fighting has become since Hamas fired its first rockets shortly after 6 p.m. on Monday.

A Palestinian militant group in Lebanon also fired rockets toward Israel this week, while protesters from Lebanon also briefly entered northern Israel, prompting the Israeli Army to fire on them.

Crowds of Jordanian citizens, many of them of Palestinian descent, have also gathered at the Israeli border to protest the strikes on Gaza.

Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem, and Vivian Yee from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Iyad Abuhweila from Gaza City; Carol Sutherland from Moshav Ben Ami, Israel; Irit Pazner Garshowitz from Tsur Hadasa, Israel; Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel; and Adam Rasgon from Los Angeles.