Above photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, arrives for a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, September 10, 2023. Ohad Zwigenberg/EFE via ZUMA Press/APA Images.
As It Blocks 3,800 Aid Trucks From Entering Gaza.
Israel continues to bomb Kamal Adwan Hospital over a week after raiding the compound in northern Gaza. Meanwhile, fabricated documents falsely attributed to Yahya Sinwar repudiate Israeli claims of Hamas rejectionism in ceasefire talks last summer.
Casualties
- 43,259 + killed* and at least 101,827 wounded in the Gaza Strip, including 59% women, children and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.*
- 768+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
- 3,002 Lebanese killed and more than 13,492 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
- Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
- The Israeli army recognizes the death of 890 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 5,065 others since October 7.****
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on November 4, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of November 3, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on November 3, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Key Developments
Gaza
- Israel’s offensive and siege against north Gaza enters its second month, killing 1,800 Palestinians since early October.
- Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Husam Abu Safiyeh, in Beit Lahia in north Gaza says Israeli strikes targeted the upper floors of the hospital, which continues to host 150 patients more than a week after its raid and forcible evacuation by Israeli troops.
- Abu Safiyeh says Israeli forces are blocking and targeting all aid shipments to hospital, and that the children in the hospital were transferred to the ground floor for safety.
- Wounded child transferred from Kamal Adwan Hospital after its forcible evacuation dies of wounds at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
- Gaza Government Media Office says Israel using starvation as a weapon of war in northern Gaza, blocking 3,800 aid trucks from entering.
- Gaza Government Media Office accuses U.S., Germany, France, and UK of responsibility for continuation of genocide in Gaza.
- UNRWA says its ban could result in collapse of humanitarian work in Gaza.
- Haaretz quotes chief of UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) saying that “there is no such a thing as a safe place in Gaza.”
Lebanon
- Israel withdraws from Lebanese town of al-Khyam in south Lebanon after several days of fighting against Hezbollah units.
- Israel continues to bomb Lebanese towns in south Lebanon and across Lebanon.
- Hezbollah rockets target Haifa, Safad, and Israeli army gathering points across border.
- Netanyahu says there is “no date to end the war in Lebanon.”
West Bank
- Israeli settlers attack outskirts of al-Bireh and Ramallah, torch 18 Palestinian cars early on Monday.
- Israeli settlers attack Palestinian farmers during olive harvest in Burqa, north of Ramallah, setting fire to olive groves.
- Israeli settlers plow private Palestinian lands in village of Khalayel al-Loz, east of Bethlehem.
- Israeli forces kill 16-year-old Palestinian teenager during a raid into the town of Halhul, near Hebron.
Fabricated Leaked Documents Revelation Shows Israel, Not Hamas, Doesn’t Want Ceasefire
Israeli internal intelligence arrested four Israelis, one of whom works at Netanyahu’s office, for charges of leaking and falsification of classified documents concerning the ongoing war on Gaza, an Israeli court revealed over the weekend.
The fabricated documents allegedly leaked by one of Netanyahu’s aides were falsely attributed to the late Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar. The revelations of the recent fabrications repudiate Israeli propaganda claims of Hamas’s alleged intransigence in ceasefire negotiations throughout the war, especially during the last round of negotiations over the summer. During those negotiations, Netanyahu had insisted that Israel maintain a permanent military presence along the Philadelphi corridor, a strip of land bordering Gaza and Egypt, because he claimed that Hamas was using it to smuggle weapons and supplies. At around the same time, the leaked documents falsely claimed that the Philadelphi corridor was to be used by Hamas to smuggle Israeli captives out of Gaza alongside Sinwar.
These recent revelations offer further evidence that it was not Hamas that stood in the way of a ceasefire over the summer, but Netanyahu’s intransigence.