Israel-Hamas war is deadliest conflict on record for reporters, says watchdog
Robert Tait
Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has produced the deadliest month for journalists since statistics began more than three decades ago, and created a news blackout in the embattled territory, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said.
The reporters’ watchdog has recorded the deaths of 48 reporters since Hamas embarked on a murderous killing spree in Israel on 7 October, triggering a concerted Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza in response.
The committee had already labelled the first month after the Hamas attacks as the most lethal suffered by journalists since 1992 before six more Palestinian journalists were killed in Gaza over the weekend.
Five were killed on Saturday alone, making it the second deadliest of the war apart from the day of Hamas’ attack, when six journalists lost their lives.
The spiralling death toll over a six-week period compares with the 42 journalists killed worldwide in the whole of 2022, including 15 who died covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, widely considered a highly dangerous conflict for news media.
The CPJ says the lethal trend also far outstrips the 30 journalists killed at the height of the Syrian civil war, previously regarded as the deadliest war zone for journalists in recent times.
The IDF says that it has carried our airstrikes on “about 250” sites in Gaza in the last day, which it describes as “targets of the terrorist organisation Hamas”.
Smoke rises after Israeli air strikes in Gaza, as seen from southern Israel, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, 21 November 2023. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs reports that on Monday, “one Palestinian man died of wounds sustained after being shot by Israeli forces during a search-and-arrest operation in Jenin Refugee Camp on 9 November, bringing the death toll during that operation to 15, including four children.”
Israel’s raid on Jenin on 9 November is the deadliest West Bank raid since the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, of the 2000s.
In an in-depth profile of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the Guardian, Joshua Leifer, an associate editor at Dissent formerly based in Jerusalem, writes:
An attack like Hamas’s 7 October massacre was not supposed to have been possible. Certainly not while prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in charge. He was, as his acolytes put it, “Mr Security”. He wanted to be remembered, he said, as “the protector of Israel”. He boasted that Israel had never known a more peaceful and prosperous time than the roughly 16 years he has been in power. It was under his successive administrations that Israel installed the Iron Dome system to intercept rockets from the Gaza Strip, and constructed, along the Gaza border, a 40-mile, $1.1bn fence, equipped with underground sensors, remote-controlled weapons and an expansive camera system. The success of Netanyahu’s vision of Fortress Israel could be measured in the imperceptibility of the Palestinians and their suffering from the comfort of a Tel Aviv cafe.
But the relative calm of the last decade-and-a-half was built upon a series of illusions: that the Palestinians and their aspirations for freedom could be hidden behind concrete barriers and ignored; that any remaining resistance could be managed through a combination of technology and overwhelming firepower; that the world, and especially Sunni Arab states, had grown so tired of the Palestinian issue that it could be removed from the global agenda, and consequently, that Israeli governments could do as they pleased and suffer few consequences.
Meanwhile Al Jazeera reports that Israeli forces have struck communications towers in Gaza City and northern Gaza, cutting off communications. The Guardian has not verified this report independently.
Details of truce to be announced by Qatar - Hamas official
“The expected agreement will include the release of Israeli women and children hostages in exchange for release of Palestinian children and women in the occupation’s prisons,” Izzat el Reshiq told Al Jazeera.
The details of the truce will be announced by Qatari officials, el Reshiq said.
As far as we know, Hamas says that a truce deal is “close”. Just to be clear: we do not know whether a deal has been reached or terms finalised, and there has not been announcement to this effect yet.
Possible truce terms include swap of women and children hostages for women and children prisoners
Hamas official Izzat el Reshiq told Al Jazeera that the conditions of the truce deal will include the release of Israeli women and children from Gaza in exchange for Palestinian women and children from “occupation prisons”.
Truce under discussion would last 'a number of days' – Hamas official
Hamas official Izzat el Reshiq has told Al Jazeera that the ongoing talks are for a truce that would last “a number of days” and include arrangements for the entry of aid in to Gaza, and a deal, arrangements for entry of aid into Gaza, and a swap of hostages taken by Hamas for people imprisoned by Israel.
Hamas leader Haniyeh says ‘we are close to reaching a truce agreement’
The chief of Hamas told Reuters on Tuesday that the Palestinian militant group was near a truce agreement with Israel.
Hamas officials are “close to reaching a truce agreement” with Israel and the group has delivered its response to Qatari mediators, Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement sent to Reuters by his aide.
US President Joe Biden said on Monday he believed an accord was near. “We’re closer now than we’ve been before,” White House spokesman John Kirby said of an agreement aimed at securing the release of some hostages held in Gaza and a pause in the fighting that would allow much needed aid into Gaza.
Two sources familiar with the truce talks have told AFP a tentative deal includes a five-day truce, comprised of a ceasefire on the ground and limits to Israeli air operations over southern Gaza.
In return, between 50 and 100 prisoners held by Hamas and Islamic Jihad – a separate Palestinian militant group – would be released.
They would include Israeli civilians and captives of other nationalities, but no military personnel.
This is the Guardian’s live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war with me, Helen Sullivan.
The chief of Hamas told Reuters on Tuesday that the Palestinian militant group was near a truce agreement with Israel.
Hamas officials are “close to reaching a truce agreement” with Israel and the group has delivered its response to Qatari mediators, Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement sent to Reuters by his aide.
There were no more details about the terms of the potential agreement.
US President Joe Biden said on Monday he believed an accord was near. “We’re closer now than we’ve been before,” White House spokesman John Kirby said of an agreement aimed at securing the release of some hostages held in Gaza and a pause in the fighting that would allow much needed aid into Gaza.
Here are the other key recent developments:
Gaza authorities said at least 13,300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October. The death toll, published by Gaza’s government media office on Monday, includes 5,600 children and 3,550 women.
Israeli forces continued their offensive against Hamas in northern Gaza, closing in on the Indonesian hospital where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was “appalled” by reports that 12 people, including patients, were killed in overnight shelling at the last hospital operating in northern Gaza. Some 200 patients have been evacuated from the Indonesian hospital on Monday, Gaza’s health ministry has said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that health services in Gaza have suffered “catastrophic” damage, with most hospitals no longer functioning. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies programme, warned that the thousands of injuries sustained by civilians across Gaza, combined with the growing public health crisis in the besieged enclave,is a “recipe for epidemics”. He also described Israel’s cooperation for humanitarian relief in Gaza as “subpar”.
The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said a clinic it operated in Gaza City was attacked on Monday morning. Part of the building was engulfed in flames, it said, and four marked MSF cars were burned while a fifth was found crushed by a heavy vehicle or a tank. The charity said it was not immediately aware of the status of one member of staff and 20 family members.
Twenty-eight premature babies were rescued from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and taken to Egypt on Monday. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said 31 “very sick” babies were moved from al-Shifa hospital in a joint operation with the UN and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and 12 of them had been flown to Cairo. Three babies remain in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas appear to be edging towards a deal that would see the release of a significant number of hostages,possibly in return for a limited ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Joe Biden on Monday said he believed a deal is near, and the White House later said the US is “doing everything we can” and that it believed “we’re closer than we’ve ever been”.
Families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas have clashed with far-right Israeli politicians who want to bring in the death penalty as a possible sentence for captured Hamas members. The families said on Monday that even talk of doing so might endanger the lives of their relatives. The row underlines the deep divisions in Israel over how to deal with the hostage crisis.
The UN secretary general has said it is clear that the war in Gaza has seen “a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict” since he began his role in 2017. At a press conference on Monday, António Guterres also said he did not believe a UN protectorate in Gaza would be a solution to the conflict and that war must “move in a determined, irreversible way to a two-state solution”.
Relief trucks originally from Jordan entered Gaza from Egypt on Monday with the intention of setting up a new field hospitalin the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. Jordanian state media said it hoped the facility would help ease some of the humanitarian crisis as Israel’s forces seize medical facilities in the north.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels said they have seized what they called an Israeli cargo ship in the Red Sea, and warned that all vessels linked to Israel “will become a legitimate target for armed forces”. They have since released video footage reportedly showing armed men seizing a ship. Israel said the vessel was a British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo ship.
