Casualties since October 7
Palestinians: 4,651 killed, 14,245 injured.
Israelis: 1,405 killed, 5,132 injured.
West Bank: 90 killed, 1,400 injured.
Key Developments
- According to Gaza health ministry, Israel has committed massacres against 521 Palestinian families in Gaza since October 7.
- Medical Aid for Palestinians warns that 130 premature babies are in “imminent danger if fuel does not reach hospitals soon.”
- Several Hamas fighters, including the deputy commander of the artillery arm, Muhammad Qatamish, are killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike.
- Israeli forces extend airstrikes to the occupied West Bank, bombing the Ansar mosque in Jenin refugee camp.
- Families of 212 Israeli captives protest in Tel Aviv, calling for the release of their relatives and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- Israel evacuates 14 settlements north of occupied Palestine as battles with Hezbollah increase.
- 19 Hezbollah fighters and 7 Israeli soldiers are killed during the past two weeks of fighting.
- Turkey sends a presidential plane filled with medical supplies bound to reach the Gaza Strip after landing in Egypt.
Heavy shelling continues, dozens missing under the rubble
The Israeli air force continued to strike Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip for the sixteenth consecutive day, flattening several restaurants and cafes in a crowded marketplace in al-Nuseirat refugee camp and killing 11 people on Saturday night, October 21.
Additional Israeli airstrikes on residential neighborhoods and buildings Saturday night and Sunday morning killed at least 55 people, including women and children, reports the health ministry.
Ashraf al-Qidra, the health spokesperson in Gaza, said that Israel committed “massacres” against 521 Palestinian families in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians sought shelter from the Israeli bombing in hospitals’ courtyards, schools, and churches, but they were far from safe. Last week, Israel bombed the Anglican-run Ahli Arab Hospital, a British-founded institution in 1882, killing hundreds of Palestinians. On Friday, the Israeli military launched a strike against the Greek Orthodox church in Gaza, killing at least 18 people.
“The massacre of the Greek Orthodox Church mixed the blood of innocent Christian and Muslim families who sought refuge in the church for protection,” said al-Qidra.
Israeli air raids targeted houses in the town of Rafah, and the al-Zawaida and al-Saftawi neighborhoods, in addition to another neighborhood near al-Shifa Hospital west of Gaza City, according to Wafa News Agency. In Khan Younis, several Palestinians were buried under the rubble following an Israeli raid, as rescue teams attempted to reach them. In Beit Lahia, nine Palestinians were killed and 15 injured in an Israeli strike on a house. Al-Nasr Tower, known as the Musa Arafat Tower, was destroyed in the north of Gaza City.
Wafa reported that 80 bodies were lying in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital in the city of Deir Al-Balah overnight following an Israeli missile bombardment. Israeli artillery fired dozens of shells on al-Tuffah, al-Zaytoun, al-Shujaiya, and Juhr al-Dik, all neighborhoods southeast of Gaza City.
Palestine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on Sunday for serious pressure to stop “[Israel’s] aggression against our Palestinian people, continue the entry of humanitarian aid [to Gaza], and promote the political solution to the Palestinian issue and an end t0 the occupation of the State of Palestine’s lands.”
The ministry said that the Israeli government is fully and directly responsible for the destruction in the Gaza Strip and the displacement of nearly one million Palestinians.
On Sunday, Turkey sent a presidential plane filled with medical supplies bound to reach Gaza after landing in Egypt.
“Our plane took off to help Gaza. The presidential plane filled with medicine and medical supplies, carrying 20 specialist doctors, departed from Ankara to Egypt,” Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on X.
Yet, medical and humanitarian aid to Gaza remains an urgent matter for hospitals and shelters. Israel has allowed only 20 aid trucks to enter the Rafah terminal on Saturday — too little to lift the suffering of nearly 2.3 million people, as some experts have asserted that Gaza’s humanitarian needs before the war required at least 500 trucks of aid per day, which means that those needs have only grown since Israel choked off Gaza’s supply of water, food, and fuel over two weeks ago.
Medical Aid for Palestinians warned that 130 premature babies are in “imminent danger if fuel does not reach hospitals soon,” after Israel vowed to cut it. Humza Yousef, the First Minister of Scotland, took to X with a picture of the babies, saying, “How can this be justified? What crime have these babies committed?”.
He added: “This is why collective punishment must be called out and condemned. Let aid in, including fuel. Otherwise, these images should haunt us for the rest of our lives. A ceasefire is needed and needed now.”
Hamas deputy commander of artillery arm killed, protests in Tel Aviv call for release of captives
On Sunday around noon, Israel’s army spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that several Hamas fighters, including the deputy commander of the artillery arm, Muhammad Qatamish, were killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike.
“We are not stopping our attacks on the [Gaza] Strip,” he confirmed. “We are increasing the attacks in the Gaza Strip in order to reduce the threats to our forces in preparation for the next phase of the war.”
“We will go to the next stage under the best conditions for the IDF and in accordance with the decision of the political echelon,” he continued.
Israel has amassed almost 300,000 soldiers on the border fence of Gaza, yet the decision to begin the ground invasion is yet to be made. Haaretz reports that a spirit of vengeance is ripe among soldiers who feel that they got “a one-time pass to kill and be killed, in an attempt to restore some previous normalcy,” which also would signal to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt that they can stick to their alliance with Israel.
On Sunday evening, the families of 212 Israeli captives protested in Tel Aviv, calling for the release of their relatives and for the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Prior to October 7, Netanyahu faced weekly protests against him since January in the wake of his attempt at overhauling the Israeli judiciary. Four days into the war, he appointed a new spokesperson in his office to communicate with military correspondents, which raised eyebrows within the military.
Haaretz reported, quoting a military source, that Netanyahu “is collecting evidence against the army, explaining in private talks why he’s not to blame and that he didn’t get the intelligence.”
The source added that Netanyahu is attempting to “defame officers.”
Netanyahu has yet to admit failure to stop Hamas’s attack, although the army’s intelligence chief Aharon Haliva said he bears full responsibility for not preventing the attack.
In the meantime, Israeli forces are still finding Hamas fighters inside Israel.
On Sunday, Kan news reported that forces arrested a fighter from Hamas’ Elite Unit on Saturday. It said that he was “exhausted and was taken for questioning, and forces are searching for additional fighters in the area close to Gaza.
On Saturday evening, Israel said that Hamas’s announcement that it wanted to release two more captives on humanitarian grounds but that Israeli forces turned down the offer to receive them, was “propaganda.” This comes on the back of Hamas’s release of two U.S. captives, a mother and her daughter, on Friday, following diplomatic efforts driven by Qatar.
Israel bombs a mosque in Jenin, arrests dozens
Israel extended its airstrikes to the occupied West Bank, bombing the al-Ansar mosque in Jenin refugee camp, which became an increasingly fortified base for resistance fighters. Two Palestinians were killed in the airstrike, Muhammad Hussein Abdel Hafez and Muhammad Marwan Abdullah.
Wafa said they arrived in pieces at the hospital, while three others were reportedly injured.
Israel used airstrikes against Palestinians during the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005, but has since ceased the use of destructive fighter jets in the West Bank. This bombing marks the first time a fighter jet has been deployed in the West Bank since the Intifada, and is the second time that Israel has resorted to aerial bombardment in the West Bank since June, in which an Apache helicopter was used on Palestinian resistance fighters.
These assaults on Palestinian resistance groups in the West Bank are motivated by Israel’s fear of a multi-front confrontation that involves armed resistance in the West Bank, Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, and skirmishes and exchanges of fire with Hezbollah in the north.
The West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem have been the subject of numerous Israeli army raids and settler attacks for the past two years, during which time armed resistance has witnessed a resurgence. Israeli settlers’ attacks ran amok, building 13 illegal outposts in the first half of 2023.
Last week, Israel killed 13 Palestinians, five of them children, in a 30-hour ground operation to invade the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem. One Israeli officer was killed.
In the past two weeks, 90 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, while 1,400 were injured.
In addition to deadly raids, Israeli occupation forces are also intensifying a wide-ranging arrest campaign across the West Bank. In the town of al-Ram town, north of occupied Jerusalem, Israeli forces arrested several Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as “unlawful combatants” despite the fact that they were in occupied Palestine on Israeli-issued work permits. These prisoners have doubled the Palestinian prison population in Israeli jails.
On Sunday, Wafa reported that at least 58 people were arrested in the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Hebron, Salfit, Tubas, al-Bireh, Nablus, occupied Jerusalem, and Tulkarem.
A Palestinian was killed in Qabatiya, south of Jenin city. Obaiba Kameel succumbed to his wounds on Sunday morning, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank on Sunday to five.
Also on Sunday, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the occupied West Bank’s village of Kisan, near Bethlehem, and Yasouf village, east of Salfit, where settlers cut down 70 ancient olive trees. In Huwwara, they attacked homes, fired bullets at residents, and burned a vehicle, with no injuries reported.
Israel evacuates settlements north of occupied Palestine as Hezbollah intensifies attacks
Israel has started the evacuation of thousands of its citizens from settlements in the north of occupied Palestine, near the border with Lebanon. This follows last week’s evacuation of 10,000 people from settlements near the Gaza Strip to Eilat and the Dead Sea following the Palestinian armed attack on October 7.
Residents of fourteen settlements were instructed to evacuate amid increasing gun battles between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli forces. This brings the total number of settlements ordered to evacuate the north since October 7 to 42.
All the settlements are located between 2 – 5 km south of Lebanon, including Kiryat Shmona, which was built on the depopulated Palestinian village al-Khalsa.
Settlers expressed displeasure about the evacuation on Sunday.
“Bibi [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu], I voted for you all these years, but this government failed. My five children were not safe here,” a settler from Kiryat Shmona told Al-Jazeera before boarding a bus to Tel Aviv.
On Sunday morning, Israeli forces said they shot down a drone coming from Lebanon, and that anti-craft missiles were launched into Israel.
Since October 7, 19 fighters from Hezbollah and seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in the cross-border skirmishes. The northern front is expected to witness more violence in the days ahead, as Israel continues to bomb Gaza and crack down on Palestinian armed resistance in the West Bank.
On Sunday morning, a civilian worker was killed following an Israeli airstrike on Damascus International Airport in Syria. Israel also bombed Aleppo Airport.
I am noticing something Israeli disinformation experts must find very alarming, that after years of denial of a Nakba in 1948-1949, they are hearing Israelis in the Knesset openly calling their genocidal strikes on innocent civilians in Gaza, a second Nakba.
There will be no chance to walk this back. Perhaps all Israeli high school students will suddenly open their eyes and realise how their teachers, and parents have lied to them, and protecting a State called Israel will no longer be their focus.
The writer asserts: “Last week, Israel bombed the Anglican-run Ahli Arab Hospital, a British-founded institution in 1882, killing hundreds of Palestinians.” Why are intelligence agencies and media seeing this differently?