The Daily - Israel's Invasion Begins

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Over the weekend, the Israeli military appears to have begun an invasion of the Gaza Strip, with tanks rolling into the enclave and Israeli soldiers fighting Hamas inside. But the operation remains shrouded in secrecy, and Israel is revealing little about its actions.Raja Abdulrahim, a Middle East correspondent for The Times, and Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief, discuss the latest escalation in the war.Guests: Raja Abdulrahim, a Middle East correspondent for The New York Times, based in Jerusalem, and Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israel-Hamas war had entered its “second stage.”As Israeli troops began pressing into Gaza, officials avoided calling the operation an invasion.Here is the latest on the war.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

I'm Raja Abderrahim, and I'm a reporter in the Jerusalem Bureau, and I've been covering the war in Gaza for the past three weeks. On Friday, I was reporting out a story about, basically it was a sentiment that I was starting to hear a lot from people, that death felt inevitable. There's now more than 8,000 deaths in Gaza, more than a third of them children. And we're hearing basically entire families are being killed in one strike. I spoke to a woman in Gaza. Her name is Ulfat Al-Kurd.

Her name is Ulfat Al-Kurd. And she told me that 70 members of her family had been killed. Aunts, uncles, cousins, you know, she'd almost lost count of them. And what she was telling me and what I've been hearing a lot is that these huge death tolls, and when everybody around you, when everybody you love is being killed, it just makes people feel that their turn is next. The smell of death actually hangs in the air because there's so many bodies, more than a thousand, that are under the rubble because they don't have the equipment

or they don't have the ability to get them out. I also spoke with a poet and an essayist, Mus'ab Abu Taha. And he was telling me about how when you're sitting in your home or wherever you are and you hear the approach of a rocket, the sound feels like it's coming for you. Like it feels like it's coming for you. Like it feels like it's intended for you. And I asked him some more questions, but I suddenly noticed that the messages weren't being delivered. And I wasn't hearing back. And it wasn't until a little later that we realized that all phone and internet in Gaza were down.

It was very scary to have no eyes on the ground and to not know what was happening in the middle of a war zone. Luckily, our stringer, Amira, her husband actually has an Israeli SIM card, and she was able to message us. Okay, just to explain the situation here in Gaza today in the streets, it's like a really crazy situation. I got a very panicked message from her and, you know, in this moment she's talking as a Palestinian, as a journalist, as a mother. People, they are very scared and terrified. They keep asking us as a journalist, do you know what People, they are very scared and terrified. They keep asking us as a journalist, do you know what happened?

What's the news? Is there any ceasefire? Where did they bomb last night? And she told me that there was so much fear and so much panic and so much confusion on the ground because everybody was worried, what did this blackout mean? And what was Israel planning to do?

And that's the thing with this blackout is that not only were people in Gaza cut off from the rest of the world, but they were cut off from each other. During the night, there were very heavy bombing and a lot of clashes, like shooting. We hear the shooting. We hear that there is like fight. And what was happening was that it was the most intense night of the war so far in terms of Israeli airstrikes. A lot of Palestinians described it as the most intense night of the war so far in terms of Israeli airstrikes. A lot of Palestinians

described it as the most terrifying night they'd ever lived. By cutting the communication and the telephone lines, they cannot even people call the ambulance or call the civil defense or call anyone to come to help them. She was telling me about how the ambulance services, because nobody was able to call them. They didn't know where to go. They are looking for the smoke to know exactly where is the area of the bombing. And they are asking people around to reach the area where they bomb so they can go and help people. And so some of them were following the sounds of people screaming, or they were basically just driving through the streets looking for

places that had been recently hit with Israeli airstrikes. And then suddenly, Sunday morning, the phone and internet was restored. People's phones started getting messages, and a lot of it were messages of other family members trying to check up on them. But also, it was a lot of the news of what had happened since Friday night. And they saw that Israel had started to conduct its ground invasion. And this causes, obviously, a whole new level of fear. From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Over the weekend, the Israeli military appears to have begun an invasion of the Gaza Strip, with tanks rolling into the enclave and Israeli soldiers fighting with Hamas inside.

and Israeli soldiers fighting with Hamas inside. But the operation remained shrouded in secrecy, with Israel revealing little about its actions. Today, my colleagues Raja Abdurrahim and Patrick Kingsley on the latest escalation in the war. It's Monday, October 30th. So Patrick, we're reaching you on Sunday at about 3 p.m. Eastern time, and that's 9 p.m. your time in Jerusalem. And we just heard from our colleague Raja. She was talking about how things had changed in Gaza over the weekend. And I'm wondering if you can tell us what you know about what happened in Israel over the past three days. Start on Friday for me. What did we start to see happen? we start to see happen? Early on Friday evening, we began hearing reports of a massive aerial bombardment over Gaza. But at the same time, we were hearing very little about what was actually

going on under those bombs, because it seemed like there was a communications blackout at that time. The military was conspicuously quiet. It was hard to get any clear answers from them about what was going on in fact it was hard to get them to pick up the phone and then finally at around 9 p.m amid this shroud of secrecy and silence the chief military spokesman came out and made a very vague statement in which he said that Israel was expanding its ground activity. And as Friday bled into Saturday, we started to see the first footage of tanks inside Gaza and it started to feel like this incursion into northern Gaza was something more than just the hours-long incursions that we'd seen on previous nights. But it wasn't until late afternoon on Saturday that we felt ready to call this the invasion. This was the start of the big push that we'd been expecting for three weeks.

And what was it about what happened late afternoon on Saturday that caused you to start calling it an invasion? Firstly, the fact they were still there. The fact that the military still seemed to be there some 12 hours after they entered. Secondly, the information we were getting from military sources about the numbers of troops that were now inside, the number of tanks, the number of armored vehicles, the number of bulldozers, it eventually became clear that this was a major invasive force. And while it wasn't some kind of blitzkrieg rush on Gaza City, Hamas' stronghold, it was nevertheless the start of what is the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. And Patrick, what about Hamas? What were they saying?

Hamas made two brief announcements, or rather their military wing made two brief announcements. They said they were engaging troops in the north and also a bit further south. And that corresponds now to what we know about the Israeli invasion. They invaded around those two places, and clearly they ran into Hamas fighters. What those battles looked like, we don't really know, because there was so little information coming out of Gaza, and the Israeli army were also keeping very quiet about what was going on. Why was the Israeli army keeping so quiet?

It's not entirely clear, but we think one reason was that it wanted to maintain the element of surprise, make Hamas unsure about what was going on. Secondly, we think perhaps that Israel wanted to avoid scrutiny and it wants to avoid outcry across the Middle East and to avoid an immediate reaction from southern Lebanon where Hezbollah, another militia allied to Hamas, holds sway. and which Israelis had feared might launch its own major attack on Israel if it felt that Hamas was under threat due to the ground invasion. So Israel making its advance during a communication blackout and without formally announcing it themselves created a sense of uncertainty about what was actually going on that therefore made journalists like us wary about reporting anything, and potentially also prevented groups like Hezbollah

from making their own reaction. Okay, so this is the invasion that we were all anticipating, but at the same time, you're saying it's kind of different. What makes you say that? How is it different than what we expected? I think we expected, perhaps naively, that we would know what was going on in real time, that we'd have photography, video of something happening. In retrospect, we now know certain details. We know they entered from the northwest of Gaza. At least some of the forces advanced down the Gazan coastline. There's video now that's been released from the Israeli army that shows tanks and other vehicles moving along the beaches of northern Gaza. also emerged of a pair of Israeli soldiers standing atop what is believed to be a beachside hotel raising an Israeli flag. We also understand that so far the Israeli army has not pushed that far deep into Gaza.

It hasn't entered into Gaza City, the biggest urban center of the enclave. It appears to be waiting almost surrounding the city. And this has been accompanied by many statements from Israeli officials, both in the military and outside, saying that this is going to be a long, long process and that they won't be charging into Gaza City as quickly as perhaps we'd expected three weeks ago. Why do you think the Israeli military is taking this kind of different approach? Do you think that they were responding to pressure from the U.S.? Well, you're right that the U.S. has been warning Israel not to act out of emotion,

You're right that the US has been warning Israel not to act out of emotion, not to act too swiftly, to make sure that they have clear plans in place before moving in. Everyone's worried about the outbreak of a regional war. And it's quite possible that this maneuver, shrouded in secrecy, was intended to try and delay any prospect of regional reaction for as long as possible until the invasion seemed a fait accompli that could not be stopped. And perhaps that's why there was essentially a day of uncertainty and the fog over what was going on. fog over what was going on. And by the time that Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech on Saturday night in which he announced the second phase of this conflict, the Israeli army had already been inside Gaza for more than 24 hours and their presence was a fact rather than a possibility.

We'll be right back. So Patrick, you told us that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech on Saturday night. What did he say? Israeli citizens, yesterday evening... He said a number of things. This is the second stage of the war. The first is that this is the second stage of the war. And that was significant because it confirmed what we'd already gathered by ourselves by that point,

which is that the invasion had begun. Yet he didn't actually use the word invasion. Then he said, The war inside Gaza will be long and difficult, and we are ready for it. And that was perhaps aimed at the Israeli public that is going to have to come to terms with many losses to its own in the coming months. Then he talks about meeting the families of Israeli hostages who were kidnapped during Hamas's own invasion of Israeli territory on October 7th. And he said, we will exhaust every possibility to bring our brothers and sisters back to their families. That was an attempt to reassure the families of the hostages who have enormous public sympathy and support

that this invasion is not intended to come at the cost of those hostages' lives. And what else did Netanyahu say in the speech? He talked about one supreme goal, to destroy the murderous enemy and ensure our existence in our land. And that is maybe tilted towards the international audience. It's a reminder that for Israelis, they cannot countenance living next to Hamas on its borders for another minute.

And then finally, he says that this is our second war of independence. The first so-called war of Independence was in 1948, when Israel's fledgling army defeated several Arab armies and Palestinian militias in order to create the boundaries of the modern state. Then that war was and remains a unifying event in the minds of most Israelis because it was the foundational event of the state of Israel. So by talking about it, Netanyahu was trying to present himself as a unifying leader, someone that can bring Israelis together after a period of great division in Israeli society.

And to supporters, that may have felt credible. To critics, that would have come across as very hollow. And to Palestinians, that same comment would have felt very chilling, but for different reasons. During the 1948 war, some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, or 80% of the Arab population of Mandate Palestine, the territory that Israel was formed from in 1948, either fled their homes or forced to flee their homes, never to return. And that moment in Palestinian history is known as the Nakba or catastrophe. It was hugely traumatic and remains perhaps the defining moment of the Palestinian experience and is seen as almost the start of all the Palestinian trauma over the past 75 years. So that was Saturday, but on the ground in Gaza, things were still very uncertain and it was very unclear what was going

on. Okay, so that's Saturday night. Today's Sunday. Tell me what we've learned now that the communications have come back online. We're learning that once again, there was devastating loss of civilian life in Gaza. We're learning that the fighting inside Gaza appears to have taken its first Israeli casualties. The Israeli military said this morning that two soldiers had been wounded during the fighting that started after the invasion. And we learn from the Israeli military that they say that they have hit 450 military targets throughout Saturday and early Sunday. And those targets include command centers, observation posts,

anti-tank missile launch posts, and leaders of Hamas's military wing. We also know that they say that they hit 150 underground facilities, some of which may indeed be tunnels. All these are impossible to verify. So Patrick, stepping back here for a minute, where do you think we are in this war right now? Netanyahu said we're in a second phase. You know, we don't know how many more there will be.

Where are we and where are we going? Well, the entire region is waiting with bated breath to see how do Hamas's allies in southern Lebanon respond? Will they up the ante? Will they launch missiles and rockets deeper into Israeli territory, or will they hold fire and prevent a major escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese border? Inside Gaza, we are braced for what many think will be the bloodiest phase of what has already been a catastrophically bloody war. war. 8,000 Palestinians have already died, 1,400 Israelis, and the ground phase of the war is thought by most analysts to be the deadliest one. Once the Israeli army moves from the countryside outside Gaza City into the city itself and is met by Hamas fighters on their home turf, emerging from secret exit points from their tunnel network. The war is going to get very bloody indeed for Palestinian civilians,

also for Hamas, and also for Israeli soldiers. And quite what Gaza will look like at the end of it is unclear. We're at the edge of a precipice and we don't know exactly where we, where Gaza, are going to land. Patrick, thank you. Thank you. The Times reports that the United States believes that Israel was responsible for the communications loss in Gaza, and that Washington had pressed Israeli leaders to restore the service. On Sunday, President Biden spoke

with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone and urged him to conduct operations, quote, in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law. Also on Sunday, as desperation in Gaza spread, thousands of people broke into UN food warehouses and took wheat flour and other basic survival items. More aid came into Gaza from Egypt on Sunday, in all, 33 trucks. But aid groups said it was not nearly enough. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Friday, the man suspected of killing 18 people and injuring 13 others at a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The discovery of the perpetrator of Wednesday's mass shooting ended a sweeping manhunt that had forced thousands of residents throughout the region to remain in their homes. Meanwhile, questions continued to build over whether more could have been done to prevent the gunman, who officials said had paranoid beliefs, from owning a gun. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung, Sydney Harper, and Rochelle Bonja, with help from Ricky Nowatzki. It was edited by Patricia Willans and Lisa Chow, contains original music by Alicia Baitube and Marian Lozano and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.