• US says Palestinian state must for Israel’s security
• 14 fleeing Palestinians killed
• ‘All options’ open, Hezbollah chief declares

RAFAH: Israeli ground troops surrounded Gaza City on Friday and an air strike killed 14 Palestinians who were fleeing the bombarded territory’s north to its south.

Top US diplomat Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv earlier in the day and declared that a Palestinian state was the only way to ensure Israel’s security.

Before his departure, Blinken said he would seek to ensure that harm to Palestinian civilians is reduced, in a visible shift of tone for the United States, which has promised full support and ramped-up military aid to Israel.

Ahead of Blinken’s arrival, Israel’s military said it had “completed the encirclement” of Gaza City — signalling a new phase in the nearly month-long invasion.

About the air strike, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said “the occupation committed a new massacre against displaced civilians and killed 14 citizens, children and women”.

Witnesses said the strike hit Gaza’s coastal road, which the Israeli military has previously told civilians to take to travel south.

According to the ministry, 9,227 people have died in Israeli bombardments, mostly women and children, since the Hamas raid on Oct 7.

In another development, Tel Aviv began expelling thousands of Palestinian workers back to Gaza. The workers were trapped inside Israel after its forces moved to the border with the Palestinian territory last month.

Eyewitnesses said they saw Israeli soldiers escorting thousands of Palestinian to a crossing in order to push them into Gaza Strip.

Israel had earlier said it would start sending the workers back to Gaza. “Israel is severing all contact with Gaza. There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza,” the Israeli cabinet said on Thursday.

The United Nations Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” about the expulsions.

“They are being sent back, we don’t know exactly to where,” and whether they “even have a home to go to”, spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell told a news conference in Geneva.

Some 18,500 Gazans hold Israeli work permits, but it was not clear how many were in the country on Oct 7.

Although many of the city’s 500,000 residents fled south following Israel’s warning to leave ahead of a ground operation, those who stayed behind have endured weeks of aerial bombardment, dwindling supplies and daily carnage.

‘Curse of history’

But yet more mayhem seems to lie ahead, as the fighting turns to urban and underground warfare — with Hamas fighting from a tunnel complex believed to span hundreds of kilometres.

The Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, insisted Israeli soldiers would go home “in black bags”.

“Gaza will be the curse of history for Israel,” spokesman Abu Obeida said.

Israel’s allies have backed its right to self-defence, but there is growing global concern and anger at how Israel has chosen to achieve its aims.

Addressing a summit of Turkic states in the Kazakh capital Astana, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for an immediate halt to the hostilities, saying crimes against humanity were being committed against the Palestinians.

And Irish premier Leo Varadkar expressed concern that Israel’s response had gone beyond tackling Hamas in self-defence and now “resembles something more approaching reve­nge”.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it needed $1.2 billion to meet the needs of 2.7 million people living in Gaza.

Not afraid of US warships

In Beirut, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said his group was not afraid of US warships and “all options” were open for an expansion of the Gaza fighting into Lebanon.

In his first speech on the ongoing crisis, the head of the powerful Lebanese movement said the United States was responsible for the Gaza situation and that Washington could prevent a regional conflagration by telling Israel to halt attacks on Palestinians.

“America is entirely responsible for the ongoing war on Gaza and its people, and Israel is simply a tool of execution,” Nasrallah said in a televised broadcast, calling the hostilities “decisive”.

“Whoever wants to prevent a regional war — and this is addressed to the Americans — must quickly stop the aggression on Gaza,” he said.

“Your fleet in the Mediterranean do not scare us... we are ready to face the fleet you threaten us with,” the Hezbollah chief said.

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2023