Since dawn broke last Saturday, thousands have died and the political fallout has spread across the region. Observer reporters tell the full story of a week that began in blood and ends in fear
Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, last Saturday.Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, last Saturday.last Saturday morning when sirens wailed and rockets thudded. But at an all-night festival at a kibbutz near the Gaza border, the sounds blended with the music and the people danced on.
Video shot by Hamas showed a detonation at Erez, the high-security crossing at the northern end of the Gaza Strip. Members of Hamas’s special forces – Nukhba – gained control of the complex and the access gate used by the Israeli military to enter Gaza during incursions. As its forces were massacring Israeli citizens last Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, who lives outside Gaza, restated the organisation’s goals in unambiguous and chilling terms.“Our objective is clear: we want to liberate our land, our holy sites, our Al-Aqsa mosque, our prisoners. We have no hesitation about this.
Others spent hours in safe rooms and shelters. Daniel Rahamim, 68, from the Israeli village of Nahal Oz, and his family were trapped at home for hours. “We have terrorists in our community, I’m locked in my security room with my wife from 6.30am. We hear a lot of gunshots. We know the army is here, but not with enough forces,” he said.
In some kibbutzim, Hamas forces lit fires or threw molotov cocktails to smoke terrified families out of safe rooms. At the Supernova festival, revellers were gunned down as they tried to escape on foot or in cars. Videos posted on social media showed hundreds of young people running as Hamas gunmen pursued them on motorbikes. Some played dead for hours until they heard voices speaking in Hebrew and knew help had arrived.
Jake Marlowe, a 26-year-old British man who was working on the festival’s security team, was not heard from after he called his mother, Lisa, at dawn on Saturday to say rockets were flying overhead. An hour later he texted to say “signal very bad, everything OK, will keep you updated I promise you”. Gaza has been hit by powerful airstrikes day and night for the past week, and at least 360,000 Israeli military reservists have been called up before a widely expected ground invasion of the territory.
Rama Abu Amra, 21, a university student, spoke of “bombs falling all around us”. She said: “We are so afraid about what will happen next.… They are trying to kill us, not with bombs but psychologically. I am terrified of losing my home, or a member of my family. We are so afraid of the night coming. It feels like the darkness is enveloping us.”
On Friday, a different kind of bombshell dropped on the people of Gaza. In an unprecedented move, the IDF ordered the entire population of the northern half of the strip to evacuate to the southern half as it prepared to intensify military action. Israel has always vowed that none of its own would be “left behind”. Now it faces its biggest hostage crisis ever with up to 150 Israelis – civilians and soldiers, children and elderly people – being held in Gaza by Hamas in unknown locations and conditions, and under heavy Israeli bombardment.
Many relatives complained about the lack of information. Israel set up a “hostage situation room” to gather information on the identity of each hostage. By Thursday, 97 people had been identified. The organisation also vowed to kill a hostage for every airstrike carried out by Israel without prior warning to residents of the area.
Gaza is closely monitored by the Israeli security establishment. Phones and other communications are tapped, surveillance drones constantly fly overhead, and Palestinians are recruited as informants, usually with the help of blackmail or other coercion. The Hamas operation must have taken detailed planning over months, if not years. It’s almost inconceivable that nothing caught the attention of intelligence officials.
Hamas may have been able to achieve surprise by “the complete abandonment of any electronic device or signature”, thereby evading electronic surveillance or signals intelligence, Younger added. At least 400,000 people were internally displaced by the bombardment even before the IDF’s order that 1.1 million people in the north of Gaza should move to the south. Families were crammed into UN schools, camping in corridors, classrooms and playgrounds, in the hope the premises would offer some degree of safety.
The government’s planned judicial reforms, which have been the cause of huge protests in Israel, were put on the back burner. Diplomats warned that the war between Israel and Hamas risked drawing in other players in the region.
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