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GAZA CITY — To enter Gaza now could be to reach in hell.
On Saturday night time, I crossed by way of the damaged barrier between Israel and Gaza at the back of an Israeli army jeep, going quick with out lights underneath a crescent moon. Earlier than the breach, I used to be simply capable of make out the bullet-riddled automobiles by the roadside, among the lots of of civilian automobiles attacked by Hamas fighters who poured by way of this identical fence on Oct. 7.
They mark the gateway to struggle.
Quickly after we crossed into Gaza — racing over debris-covered roads — the primary destroyed buildings appeared. Some have been skeletal silhouettes towards the celebs, windowless and blackened, others mere pancaked stacks of concrete.
Additional in, the ruins have been extra tightly packed. These have been neighborhoods simply weeks in the past. Nearly no construction was untouched.
Explosions sounded frequently. A fireplace burned on a close-by ridge. Each few miles, the bitter stench of decaying our bodies rose with the mud. Hundreds of persons are nonetheless believed to be entombed within the rubble.
Gaza turns into ‘a graveyard for youngsters’ as Israel intensifies airstrikes
Earlier than the struggle, even throughout earlier wars, donkey carts and Toyotas shouldered previous one another in Gaza Metropolis’s chaotic intersections. The poorest fishermen powered their boats with cooking oil and offered their catch from blankets on the sidewalk. There was a mall with flashy sneaker shops and a lately opened cat cafe.
It was an enclave of poverty and energy shortages that additionally bore a fierce pleasure of place. Northern Gaza — an important middle of Palestinian tradition and establish — has change into a smoking, reeking destroy.
A whole lot of hundreds have fled to the south, leaving a silence damaged solely by the pop of machine-gun hearth and the heavy thrum of Israeli tanks. Greater than 11,000 folks have been killed, in response to the Gaza Well being Ministry, however the official quantity has been frozen for 10 days. Counting the useless is not attainable, officers say. Communication blackouts make it more and more tough to succeed in the residing.
I entered Gaza with a small group of journalists, escorted by the Israel Protection Forces. Our final vacation spot was al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest health-care facility.
Israel is keen to indicate what it describes as proof that the hospital was doubling as a Hamas army base, significantly a lately found tunnel shaft on the fringe of the compound — although the proof stays inconclusive. On this journey, reporters have been permitted solely a 60-second glimpse right into a steeply pitched shaft, which Israeli commanders say is simply too perilous to enter.
How Israel constructed its case to raid Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital
Getting there would take hours — in jeeps first, after which an armored personnel provider — within the firm of closely armed troopers.
To realize entry to Gaza, which is blockaded by Israel and Egypt, The Washington Submit agreed to not disclose places or particulars of sure army operations and gear or to {photograph} troopers’ faces. We have been with the army for your complete six hours contained in the enclave and weren’t permitted to hunt out locals to interview, although there have been no Gazans to be seen.
Israeli officers didn’t evaluation The Submit’s reporting earlier than publication.
No Hamas fighters tried to cease our convoy throughout Gaza. Israel’s occupation of this a part of the enclave appears agency, its forces all over the place. “In some areas, now we have gained full management,” stated a lieutenant colonel, the deputy commander of the seventh armored brigade. “In denser areas it’s tougher.”
Like others on this piece, he spoke on the situation of anonymity according to IDF guidelines.
I’ve made many journeys to Gaza throughout my 4 years because the Washington Submit’s bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories. Getting into the Strip has at all times been tough. I final got here in September, navigating the gantlet of Israeli, Hamas and Palestinian Authority checkpoints to succeed in this parallel universe of deprivation and isolation.
It was simply weeks earlier than the Hamas assault, when the horrors of the previous month and a half have been nonetheless past imagining, even for these deeply steeped on this lengthy and brutal battle. However there have been clues.
Throughout that 10-day keep, my Gazan colleague Hazem Balousha and I have been advised that the summer season of relative calm in Gaza — as violence spiked within the occupied West Financial institution — was starting to fray. “It has been quiet, however it’s starting to boil,” Basem Naim, head of Hamas’s Political and Worldwide Relations Division, advised us. “There’s quite a lot of stress underneath the water.”
We observed an uncommon quantity of computerized weapons hearth coming from a Hamas coaching space north of Gaza Metropolis, not removed from the place Balousha has a small fruit orchard. In a Sept. 21 story that now appears chillingly prescient, we reported that Hamas was stated to be drilling its fighters on rocket launches, kidnapping troopers and “storming settlements.”
It was one of many final worldwide press dispatches from Gaza earlier than Oct. 7, when Hamas militants stormed southern Israel — killing some 1,200 folks, a lot of them civilians, and taking greater than 230 hostages, together with kids and the aged.
Hamas envisioned deeper assaults, aiming to impress an Israeli struggle
Gaza’s summer season of peace — and Israel’s sense of safety — has given option to unprecedented destruction on either side of the barrier.
On this return go to, because the jeeps sped by way of the blackness, it was unattainable not to consider the captives nonetheless being held someplace on this unrecognizable warscape. Or maybe beneath it.
“On this space, we expect there’s a Gaza beneath Gaza, stated the lieutenant colonel, who has been combating in Gaza since Israeli floor troops entered in late October.
He was referring to the community of tunnels that Israeli and U.S. intelligence officers stated lace the limestone beneath these neighborhoods, a labyrinth described as important to Hamas’s guerrilla ways.
“The terrorist will come out of 1 constructing to combat, after which disappear and are available out of one other constructing,” he stated. “The identical terrorist.”
The colonel had led among the forces that lower straight throughout Gaza to the Mediterranean shore within the first days of the bottom invasion. Saturday’s jeep trip ended on that seashore. Not far-off was the Roots Resort, now largely destroyed, which had been our frequent base on visits right here.
I had by no means been to Gaza with out Balousha by my aspect. Luckily, he and his younger household — who have been displaced 5 occasions within the first weeks of bombing and spent an evening sleeping on the sidewalk close to al-Shifa — managed to cross into Egypt. He continues to report from Amman.
We transferred to a hulking personnel provider for the ultimate passage to al-Shifa, its large ramp closing with an ear-popping pressurized hiss. There have been no home windows, however the displays introduced a ghostly white survey of crumbled buildings as we crept down streets stripped of pavement.
The machine rolled into and out of a crater as its cameras swiveled forwards and backwards looking for threats. Disembarking at al-Shifa, we noticed among the solely lighted buildings of our journey. A window glowed in the principle construction and much more glowed within the emergency wing.
We entered a couple of hundred yards from these buildings, by way of a blasted wall in a hospital provide space, by no means seeing any of the lots of of sufferers and caregivers nonetheless within the wards.
Israeli troops scour Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital for proof of Hamas
For weeks, the hospital has been collapsing, slowly at first after which with catastrophic pace, because the useless and injured overwhelmed the wards and workers ran out of water, drugs and gas. Medical doctors operated on soiled flooring with out anesthesia and our bodies have been buried in a mass grave within the hospital courtyard.
A U.N. staff, led by the World Well being Group, described the ability as “a loss of life zone” after a quick tour on Saturday. “Indicators of gunfire and shelling have been evident,” the WHO stated in a press release.
Medical workers reported heavy combating within the hours after Israeli troops first stormed al-Shifa early Wednesday. The IDF advised The Submit that its forces have “not fired a shot” contained in the compound and have supplied the hospital with meals, water and medical provides.
Israel introduced journalists on this dangerous journey as a result of officers are adamant to show the case they’ve been urgent for weeks: That Hamas makes use of hospitals as shields for army operations, whilst hundreds of wounded and displaced civilians depend on them for remedy and shelter.
Medical employees and the militant group have denied the accusations. Many amenities, besieged and surrounded, have already been compelled to close down or evacuate.
On Oct. 27, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari stated that al-Shifa hid an enormous Hamas subterranean headquarters, accessed by way of secret entrances to underground tunnels. He confirmed an animated video of what allegedly lay under. It was the “beating coronary heart” of Hamas operations, one other official stated. Earlier than the raid, U.S. officers declassified intelligence that they stated supported Israel’s conclusions about al-Shifa.
On Saturday, Hagari stated the uncovered shaft was clear proof of Hamas infrastructure, however he additionally appeared to minimize its significance. “I talked about Shifa Hospital, it’s on file,” he stated. “I stated ‘It’s not the command and management [center], like [top Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar is sitting down there with [his top deputy] Marwan Issa.’ It’s for seniors, for brigade commanders.”
Forbidden from utilizing flashlights in an space the place troopers had battled Hamas simply hours earlier than, we felt our manner over rubble and tangled cables. We held pink security lights as much as interview a masked particular forces soldier who described breaching the wall of a storage space within the hospital advanced, looking for Hamas fighters, then discovering a automobile full of weapons close by.
Israel says the underground shaft is a portal to the broader Hamas tunnel community in Gaza, a declare The Submit can not independently affirm. (Video: Israeli Army Handout)
Israel says its forces discovered the tunnel shaft once they detonated the explosives within the automobile and a army bulldozer concerned within the motion revealed the opening.
Gunshots sounded close by as we moved towards the opening. The CNN cameraman was permitted to activate a white gentle for a couple of minute to movie, revealing how precariously we have been crowded across the sloped, debris-littered shaft.
Earlier, earlier than we entered Gaza, Hagari confirmed the group a video that troops had lately made by decreasing a distant digicam into the shaft. On the backside, previous a spiral steel stairway, an extended horizontal tunnel is proven, ending at a heavy door.
Hagari stated that the passage was possible booby-trapped and that engineers have been in search of methods to analyze safely — to guard Israeli troops and probably hostages, two of whom have been lately found useless in close by homes, he stated.
Israel says the shaft is a portal to the broader Hamas tunnel community, a declare The Submit can not independently affirm. Stress is mounting on the IDF to make a extra conclusive case — to justify the humanitarian toll of its assaults in and round Gaza’s hospitals, and to say a army victory as a deal to pause the combating and free hostages hangs within the steadiness.
U.S. near cope with Israel and Hamas to pause battle, free some hostages
On the trip again within the personnel provider, the Israeli colonel confirmed movies on his cellphone of Hamas fighters attaching magnetic explosives to an IDF tank, killing two troopers. He described how militants launched rocket propelled grenades from the decrease and higher tales of condo buildings, and the way IDF troops had begun taking pictures quickly, each excessive and low, once they entered site visitors junctions.
Requested how these ways comported with Israel’s pledge to guard civilians, the colonel cited a number of steps the IDF has taken, from warning residents to depart northern Gaza to halting actions every day alongside a significant evacuation route.
Finally, he returned to Hamas’s brutality on Oct. 7. “It is a struggle zone,” he stated. “We didn’t wish to be right here however Hamas gave us no alternative.”
The sky was even blacker when our jeep convoy lastly crossed again into Israel. It had been a darkish trip from one traumatized inhabitants to a different.