Israel-Palestinian Conflict: Live Updates - The New York Times
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Israeli warplanes unleashed an air bombardment on Gaza City before dawn on Monday, bringing the conflict into the second week of bloodshed and destruction.Hosam Salem for The New York Times
As the grinding and increasingly bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas militants moved into the second week, the violence showed no signs of abating as Israel pounded targets in Gaza overnight and Hamas continued to unleash a barrage of rockets at towns across southern Israel.
Diplomatic efforts appeared stalled as the level of destruction was quickly escalating to the kind of violence not seen since the last major conflict in 2014.
President Biden told reporters on Monday afternoon that he would soon discuss the crisis with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “I will be speaking with the prime minister in an hour and will be able to talk to you after that,” he said.
Mr. Biden and Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, were asked after the president made remarks on Covid-19 vaccines whether he would call for a Middle East cease-fire. Neither answered directly.
“Our approach is through quiet, intensive diplomacy,” Ms. Psaki said. “That is how we feel we can be most effective.”
The 2014 conflict, with a seven-week invasion of Gaza by Israel and Hamas rocket fire, ultimately claimed 2,200 lives, rendered large areas of the Gaza Strip uninhabitable and paralyzed Israel’s south.
On that occasion, it took nearly three months for Israelis and Palestinians to broker a peace and reach an open-ended cease-fire. Mr. Netanyahu, speaking on Sunday, warned that the current operation would “take time.”
The conflict has already settled into a steady if deadly routine, with two main battles being waged: one in the skies above Gaza and another in the tunnels below.
Israeli experts often describe periodic campaigns as “mowing the grass,” a kind of routine maintenance of the militant threat with the aim of curbing rocket fire, destroying as much of militant groups’ infrastructure as possible and increasing deterrence. Critics say the use of such terminology is dehumanizing to Palestinians and tends to minimize the suffering inflicted, including the toll on civilians.
And the dangers of the strategy became evident on Sunday, the deadliest day of the fighting, with at least 42 people killed, including at least 10 children, after an attack on a tunnel network caused three buildings to collapse.
In the past week, of the roughly 200 Palestinians who were killed, more than 50 were children, drawing condemnation across the world and leading to protests that have taken place in recent days in cities including Baghdad, Berlin and London.
A falling bomb about to hit a high-rise building in Gaza City.Hosam Salem for The New York Times
A coffee shop near the beach in Gaza City burns.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
A building in Ashdod, Israel struck by rocket fire from Gaza.Dan Balilty for The New York Times
A woman's home in Ashdod, Israel hit in a rocket attack.Dan Balilty for The New York Times
A damaged residential building in Gaza City.Hosam Salem for The New York Times
Sheltering in Ashdod, Israel during a rocket attack.Dan Balilty for The New York Times
Roads in Gaza City damaged by Israeli bombs.Hosam Salem for The New York Times
An Israeli home damaged in a rocket attack.Dan Balilty for The New York Times
Much of the Israeli assault has been directed at a network of tunnels under Gaza used by Hamas, which controls the territory, to move people and equipment — a subterranean transit system that the Israeli military refers to as the “metro.”
The Israeli Army said that in its “third wave” of attacks on the network early Monday, it employed 54 warplanes, releasing 110 rockets and bombs on around 35 targets for some 20 minutes.
Warplanes also targeted the homes of Hamas’s military leaders, the Israeli military said. At least some of those strikes landed near a row of hotels in a built-up area of Gaza City, forcing some guests into a bomb shelter
But even under sustained military bombardment, Hamas militants based in Gaza still managed to unleash a barrage of missiles into southern Israel — more than 3,100 since the start of the conflict a week ago, according to the Israeli military. Many of the rockets were intercepted by the Israeli defense system known as the Iron Dome.
Some American officials have urged Israel to halt its operations soon or risk losing ground in the international court of public opinion. Late on Sunday, Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat from Georgia, and 27 other senators called for an immediate truce “to prevent further loss of life.”
Short of a lasting cease-fire, the Biden administration is trying to negotiate a humanitarian pause in the fighting to help Palestinians who have been forced from their homes in Gaza. Similar efforts in the past have been a key first step toward winding down hostilities.
A building in Gaza City collapsed, killing more than 40 people, after an airstrike that Israel said was targeted at military tunnels beneath.Hosam Salem for The New York Times
For much of the eight days of fighting between Israel and the militant groups in Gaza, eyes on both sides have turned upward, scanning the skies for imminent airstrikes or incoming rocket fire. Increasingly, though, the focus of Israel’s battle plan has shifted underground.
Early on Monday, dozens of fighter jets conducted a third wave of strikes against what the Israeli military has called the Hamas “metro” system, an underground network of defensive tunnels that militants are said to use to travel undetected, and move rockets and other munitions. The military has described the network as a “city beneath the city,” much of it under civilian infrastructure.
The tunnels are also meant to complicate any Israeli ground invasion. Hamas has warned in the past that it would surprise Israeli soldiers should they enter the coastal territory.
The Israeli airstrikes began after Hamas militants fired a salvo of rockets toward Jerusalem on May 10. Among the first targets, officials said, were some offensive tunnels dug by Hamas that stopped short of the Israeli side of the border. Israel has constructed an underground barrier with sensors to detect tunnels crossing into its territory but still wanted to thwart any possibility of militants emerging from tunnels very close to the border and then attacking military posts or rushing the fence.
In parallel, the military says its airstrikes have been aimed against rocket launchers and rocket production facilities, militant commanders, their homes and several high-rise buildings. The military says that Hamas utilizes these towers, in part, for military purposes, but has not publicly offered evidence of Hamas activities in those buildings, including one, the Jalaa tower, that housed the offices in Gaza of The Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said on Monday that Israeli officials had shared some of the intelligence about the tower with American counterparts.
During 50 days of fighting in the summer of 2014, Israel made a priority of destroying the tunnels that led to Israeli territory. It went public in 2017 with its plans to construct an underground barrier, which has now been completed.
Inside Gaza, Hamas’s defensive underground network has remained one of its main strategic assets.
Israel’s first offensive wave against the network took place early on Friday morning, in a combined assault by 160 aircraft, tanks, artillery and infantry units along the border, the military said.
The second wave followed early on Sunday and exacted a heavy human toll when civilian buildings collapsed, killing at least 42 people, including 10 children, according to Palestinian officials. The military said it had struck a section of tunnel beneath a road in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, accidentally causing the foundations of the homes above ground to collapse.
Colonel Conricus described the collapse as “abnormal” and said that the military was looking into the event to examine if it needed to adjust its approach to attacking the tunnel network, for example in the angle of firing the munitions.
After the third wave of strikes, concentrated in northern Gaza, Colonel Conricus said that the army’s early assessment was that it had destroyed more than 60 miles of subterranean infrastructure.
An Israeli Air Force official, who briefed reporters on Monday on the condition of anonymity, in line with military rules, said the tunnels ran for hundreds of miles. The idea, he said, was not to destroy all of the network but to create “choke points” that would seal sections off and make them inoperable. He said the tunnels could run as deep as 20 meters and were made of reinforced concrete.
A residential building in Ashdod in southern Israel on Monday after it was hit by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.Dan Balilty for The New York Times
As Israelis and Palestinians hunkered down for the second week of an increasingly stubborn conflict, a series of deadly flash points have galvanized both sides in a region where the human cost of war is all too familiar.
Before dawn on Monday, Israeli warplanes bombarded Gaza City, compounding the civilian suffering in the coastal enclave. At the same time, the rocket barrage by Hamas militants continued to take its toll on Israeli cities, including in Tel Aviv, the commercial center of the country, where the bubble of peacetime has been radically punctured.
As the casualties mount, along with the suffering of those Palestinians and Israelis left behind, several attacks stand out as seminal moments in a conflict that has transformed with surprising velocity, polarizing Israeli society like seldom before and spurring mob violence on both sides that has fanned fears of civil war.
Here are a few of the major flash points:
In the bombardment before dawn on Monday, the Israeli army said 54 Israeli warplanes used 110 rockets and bombs as they attacked around 35 targets for a period of 20 minutes. Much of the assault was aimed at a network of underground tunnels used by Hamas to move people and equipment. Israeli strategists refer to this strategy of targeting the tunnels as “mowing the grass.” Warplanes also targeted the homes of Hamas’s military leaders, the Israeli military said.
An Israeli airstrike over the weekend at a refugee camp killed at least 10 Palestinians, including eight children. Mohammed al-Hadidi said his wife and their sons Suhaib, 14, Yahya, 11, Abdelrahman, 8, and Wissam, 5, were killed, as were her brother’s four children and her sister-in-law. Only a 5-month-old baby boy, Omar, was pulled from the rubble alive. The attack magnified growing criticism against Israel’s military for the number of children that have been killed in airstrikes on Gaza. Outrage has been fanned on social media where images of children’s bodies have circulated.
On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a well-known 12-story building in Gaza City that housed some of the world’s leading media organizations including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera. The destruction of the al-Jalaa tower drew global criticism that Israel was undermining press freedom. On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces tweeted that the building was “an important base of operations” for Hamas military intelligence. But The A.P. said it had operated from the building for 15 years and had no indication that Hamas was operating there. There were no casualties.
The al-Jalaa tower was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on Saturday. Hosam Salem for The New York Times
A 5-year-old Israeli boy, Ido Avigal, was killed on Wednesday when a rocket fired from Gaza made a direct hit on the building next door to his aunt’s apartment, where he was visiting with his mother and older sister. He had been sheltering in a fortified safe room. Nearly 3,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza this week.
The conflict began last Monday when weeks of simmering tensions in Jerusalem between Palestinian protesters, the police and right-wing Israelis escalated, against the backdrop of a longstanding local battle for control of a city sacred to Jews, Arabs and Christians. Among the main catalysts was a raid by the Israeli police on the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, in which hundreds of Palestinians and a score of police officers were wounded. Militants in Gaza responded by lobbing rockets at Jerusalem, spurring Israel to respond with airstrikes.
The root of the latest escalation was intense disputes over East Jerusalem. Israeli police prevented Palestinians from gathering near one of the city’s ancient gates during the holy month of Ramadan, as they had customarily. At the same time, Palestinians faced eviction by Jewish landlords from homes in East Jerusalem. Many Arabs called it part of a wider Israeli campaign to force Palestinians out of the city, describing it as ethnic cleansing.
Intense political struggles for leadership of Israel and the Palestinians are part of the backdrop for the fighting. After four inconclusive elections in Israel in two years, no one has been able to form a governing coalition. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on trial on corruption charges, has been able to remain in office, and hopes Israelis will rally around him in the crisis. In Palestinian elections that were recently postponed, Hamas hoped to take control of the Palestinian Authority, and has positioned itself as the defender of Jerusalem.
Troops during an exercise by Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza City in December.Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When it comes it Hamas’s military capabilities, much of the focus has been on the labyrinthine tunnels it uses to launch attacks against Israel or the arsenal of missiles it aims at Israeli cities.
But Israeli military experts and officials say there is another, less-discussed and murkier threat: clandestine naval commandoes entering or hitting Israel by sea.
It sounds like a scene from a Cold War thriller: An undercover commando unit infiltrating a country with underwater vessel in order to target an energy facility, a populated town, or wreak havoc in some other way.
But that was possibly the goal, according to the Israeli military, of a naval unit being directed by Hamas.
“Over the last days, Israeli naval troops spotted suspicious activity in the Northern Gaza Strip, near assets of the Hamas naval forces, and tracked the movements of a number of suspect enemy combatants,” the Israeli defense forces said in a statement.
They military said that the suspects were moving a “Hamas submergible naval weapon” that “appeared to be on its way to carry out a terror attack in Israeli waters.”
The military released a video showing Israeli defense forces destroying the vessel early Monday.
Shaul Chorev, a retired Israeli admiral who is Head of Haifa University’s Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Center, said Israel in recent years has been increasingly concerned about Hamas’s naval commando units. He said that undercover and surprise sea attacks were one way the militant group had sought to overcome Israel’s superior military power, including its mighty air force and Iron Dome defense system used to shoot down rockets fired by militants in Gaza.
“The fear is that these commando units can be used to target infrastructure like power stations or to try and infiltrate Israel by sea,” he said.
He said Israelis still shuddered at the memory of an episode in July 2014, during Israel’s invasion of Gaza, when four Hamas operatives armed with automatic weapons, explosives and grenades, surreptitiously swam ashore near Kibbutz Zikkim, on Israel’s southern coast, and tried to target an Israeli tank before being killed.
Hosam Salem for The New York Times
Hosam Salem for The New York Times
Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Hosam Salem for The New York Times
Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Hosam Salem for The New York Times
Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Hosam Salem for The New York Times
In the deadliest attack of the current conflict so far, Israeli airstrikes on buildings in Gaza City on Sunday killed at least 42 people, including 10 children, Palestinian officials said.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it had “struck an underground military structure belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization which was located under the road.” It added: “Hamas intentionally locates its terrorist infrastructure under civilian houses, exposing them to danger. The underground foundations collapsed, causing the civilian housing above them to collapse, causing unintended casualties.”
Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages on Gaza, an impoverished and densely packed enclave of two million people, have killed at least 198 Palestinians, including 35 women and 58 children, between last Monday and Sunday evening, producing stark images of destruction that have reverberated around the world.
Searching for survivors on Sunday after an overnight air strike in Gaza City.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
Civilians are paying an especially high price in the latest bout of violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, raising urgent questions about how the laws of war apply to the conflagration: which military actions are legal, what war crimes are being committed and who, if anyone, will ever be held to account.
Both sides appear to be violating those laws, experts said: Hamas has fired nearly 3,000 rockets toward Israeli cities and towns, a clear war crime. And Israel, although it says it takes measures to avoid civilian casualties, has subjected Gaza to such an intense bombardment, killing families and flattening buildings, that it probably constitutes a disproportionate use of force — also a crime.
No legal adjudication is possible in the heat of battle. But Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages on Gaza killed at least 198 Palestinians, including 93 women and children, between last Monday and Sunday evening, according to Palestinian authorities, producing stark images of destruction that have reverberated around the world.
In the other direction, Hamas missiles have rained over Israeli towns and cities, sowing fear and killing at least 10 people, including two children — a greater toll than during the last war, in 2014, which lasted more than seven weeks. The latest victim, a 55-year-old man, died on Saturday after missile shrapnel slammed through the door of his home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.
With neither side apparently capable of outright victory, the conflict seems locked in an endless loop of bloodshed. So the focus on civilian casualties has become more intense than ever as a proxy for the moral high ground in a seemingly unwinnable war.
In one of the deadliest episodes of the week, an Israeli missile slammed into an apartment on Friday, killing eight children and two women as they celebrated a major Muslim holiday. Israel said a senior Hamas commander was the target.
Graphic video footage showed Palestinian medics stepping over rubble that included children’s toys and a Monopoly board game as they evacuated the bloodied victims from the pulverized building. The only survivor was an infant boy.
“They weren’t holding weapons, they weren’t firing rockets and they weren’t harming anyone,” said the boy’s father, Mohammed al-Hadidi, who was later seen on television holding his son’s small hand in a hospital.
Although Hamas fires unguided missiles at Israeli cities at a blistering rate, sometimes over 100 at once, the vast majority are either intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system or miss their targets, resulting in a relatively low death toll.
Israel sometimes warns Gaza residents to evacuate before an airstrike, and it says it has called off strikes to avoid civilian casualties. But its use of artillery and airstrikes to pound such a confined area, packed with poorly protected people, has led to a death toll 20 times as high as that caused by Hamas, and wounded 1,235 more.
Under international treaties and unwritten rules, combatants are supposed to take all reasonable precautions to limit any civilian damage. But applying those principles in a place like Gaza is a highly contentious affair.
The Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Our Jerusalem bureau chief,Patrick Kingsley, examined the events that have led to the past week’s violence, the worst between Israelis and Palestinians in years. A little-noticed police action in Jerusalem was among them. He writes:
Twenty-seven days before the first rocket was fired from Gaza this week, a squad of Israeli police officers entered the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, brushed the Palestinian attendants aside and strode across its vast limestone courtyard. Then they cut the cables to the loudspeakers that broadcast prayers to the faithful from four medieval minarets.
It was the night of April 13, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It was also Memorial Day in Israel, which honors those who died fighting for the country. The Israeli president was delivering a speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site that lies below the mosque, and Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out.
The United Nations Security Council met to discuss the crisis in Gaza and Israel on Sunday but took no action, even as members decried the violence. Palestinian and Israeli diplomats spoke at the meeting.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
International pressure to bring an end to the raging conflict between Israel and Hamas militants has intensified, with the United States stepping up its diplomatic engagement and the United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the conflict in public for the first time. But the council took no action even as member after member decried the death and devastation.
Secretary-General António Guterres was the first of nearly two dozen speakers on the agenda of the meeting on Sunday, led by China, which holds the council’s rotating presidency for the month of May.
“This latest round of violence only perpetuates the cycles of death, destruction and despair, and pushes farther to the horizon any hopes of coexistence and peace,” Mr. Guterres said. “Fighting must stop. It must stop immediately.”
Palestinian and Israeli diplomats, who were also invited to speak, used the meeting as a high-profile forum to vent longstanding grievances, in effect talking past each other with no sign of any softening in an intractable conflict nearly as old as the United Nations itself.
Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, implicitly rebuked the United States and other powers that have defended Israel’s right to protect itself from Hamas rocket attacks, asserting that such arguments makes Israel “further emboldened to continue to murder entire families in their sleep.”
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, who spoke after Mr. Maliki, rejected any attempt to portray the actions of Israel and Hamas as moral equivalents. “Israel uses missiles to protect its children,” Mr. Erdan said. “Hamas uses children to protect its missiles.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said President Biden had spoken with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, while U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had also been engaging with his counterparts in the region.
She called on Hamas to stop its rockets barrage against Israel, expressed concerns about inter-communal violence, warned against incitement on both sides and said the United States was “prepared to lend our support and good offices should the parties seek a cease-fire.”
While envoys from all of the council’s 15 members urged an immediate de-escalation, there was no indication of what next steps the council was prepared to take. Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador, told reporters after the meeting had adjourned that he was continuing to work with other members “to take prompt action and speak in one voice.”
Mr. Netanyahu of Israel vowed late Saturday to continue striking Gaza “until we reach our targets,” suggesting a prolonged assault on the coastal territory even as casualties rose on both sides.
Israeli ground forces on Sunday at the Gaza Border.Dan Balilty for The New York Times
In separate calls on Saturday, Mr. Biden conferred with Mr. Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, about efforts to broker a cease-fire. While supporting Israel’s right to defend itself from rocket attacks by Hamas militants, Mr. Biden urged Mr. Netanyahu to protect civilians and journalists.
Over the past week, the 15-member U.N. Security Council met privately at least twice to discuss ways of reducing tensions. But efforts to agree a statement or to hold an open meeting had faced resistance from the United States, Israel’s biggest defender on the council.
American officials said they wanted to give mediators sent to the region from the United States, Egypt and Qatar an opportunity to defuse the crisis.
But with violence worsening, a compromise was reached for a meeting on Sunday.
Security Council meetings on the Israeli-Palestinian issue have often ended inconclusively. But they have also demonstrated the widespread view among United Nations members that Israel’s actions as an occupying power are illegal and that its use of deadly force is disproportionately harsh.
A damaged building in Petah Tikva, Israel, that was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip.Dan Balilty for The New York Times
There is no simple answer to the question “What set off the current violence in Israel?”
But in a recent episode of The Daily, Isabel Kershner, The New York Times’s Jerusalem correspondent, explained the series of recent events that reignited violence in the region.
In Jerusalem, nearly every square foot of land is contested — its ownership and tenancy symbolic of larger abiding questions about who has rightful claim to a city considered holy by three major world religions.
As Isabel explained, a longstanding legal battle over attempts to forcibly evict six Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem heightened tensions in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of violence.
The always tenuous peace was further tested by the overlap of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with a month of politically charged days in Israel.
A series of provocative events followed: Israeli forces barred people from gathering to celebrate Ramadan outside Damascus Gate, an Old City entrance that is usually a festive meeting place for young people after the breaking of the daily fast during the holy month.
Then young Palestinians filmed themselves slapping an ultra-Orthodox Jew, videos that went viral on TikTok.
And on Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking the capture of East Jerusalem during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, groups of young Israelis marched through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter to reach the Western Wall, chanting “Death to Arabs” along the way.
Stability in the city collapsed after a police raid on the Aqsa Mosque complex, an overture that Palestinians saw as an invasion on holy territory. Muslim worshipers threw rocks, and officers met them with tear gas, rubber-tipped bullets and stun grenades. At least 21 police officers and more than 330 Palestinians were wounded in that fighting.
Listen to the episode to hear how these clashes spiraled into an exchange of airstrikes that has brought Israeli forces to the edge of Gaza — and the brink of war.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Israeli-Palestinian Crisis, Reignited
Rockets, airstrikes and mob violence: Why is this happening now, and how much worse could it get?
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