The Conflict Between Israel And Hamas Is Getting Worse, Raising Humanitarian Alarms
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The violence in Israel and Gaza is looking more and more like an all-out war.
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CORNISH: In the past week, Hamas militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel, while Israel has responded with airstrikes that have flattened entire buildings, killing at least 42 people on Sunday alone.
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ANTONIO GUTERRES: Fighting must stop. I appeal to all parties to heed this call.
CORNISH: At a U.N. Security Council meeting on Sunday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the violence in Israel and Gaza the most serious escalation in years. In some cities inside Israel, Jewish and Palestinian mobs have attacked property and each other.
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GUTERRES: United Nations is actively engaging all sides towards an immediate cease-fire.
CORNISH: The sides in this latest round of violence are not suffering equally. As of Monday afternoon, officials said eight Israelis are dead, including a child. Palestinian officials said the strikes have killed nearly 200 people, including many children.
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PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We'll do whatever it takes to restore order and quiet.
CORNISH: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS that Israel's attacks against Hamas, which the U.S. recognizes as a terrorist organization, are targeting rocket sites, weapons and fighters.
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NETANYAHU: We're trying to degrade Hamas' terrorist abilities and to degrade their will to do this again. So it'll take some time. I hope it won't take long. But it's not immediate.
CORNISH: During the Security Council meeting, Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour wondered how much time it would take and how many Palestinian lives would be lost before the international community intervenes.
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RIYAD MANSOUR: Israel keeps telling you, put yourself in our shoes. This is what they say all the time. Put yourself in our shoes. But Israel is not wearing shoes. It is wearing military boots.
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CORNISH: CONSIDER THIS - the conflict between Israel and Gaza, now in its second week, has gone from bad to worse. And a humanitarian crisis in Gaza could be on the horizon.
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CORNISH: From NPR, I'm Audie Cornish. It's Monday, May 17.
It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. In some parts of Gaza, electricity is already in short supply, and the U.N. says a quarter of a million people have limited access to tap water.
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LENI STENSETH: And our teams on the ground are now struggling to provide clean drinking water and make sure that the hospitals are able to operate.
CORNISH: Leni Stenseth, the deputy commissioner-general of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, spoke to NPR on Monday. Stenseth called the humanitarian situation in Gaza extremely alarming. Infrastructure, hospitals and schools have all been damaged.
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STENSETH: What we are focusing on is to aid the civilians. The civilian population in Gaza are the victims of the ongoing fighting. So are civilians on the other side of the conflict. And what people on the ground express is a sense of terror and a nightmare that doesn't end, immense distress on the population that there's nowhere to flee. And the psychological impact on children that have to live through night after night hearing the shelling needs to be acknowledged.
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CORNISH: Now, much of that shelling coming from Israel has been directed at buildings in Gaza, including over the weekend a high-rise that was home to offices used by journalists from The Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other media outlets. The Associated Press published video of its staff rushing to pack equipment and leave the building before it was destroyed.
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NETANYAHU: So it's a perfectly legitimate target. And I can tell you that we took every precaution to make sure that there were no civilian injuries.
CORNISH: Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel warned civilians and journalists inside that a strike was coming and that Israel had intelligence the building was being used by Hamas, something U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken would not personally confirm.
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ANTONY BLINKEN: I will leave it to others to characterize if any information has been shared.
CORNISH: On Monday, Blinken said the Biden administration had raised concerns with Israel about the safety of journalists and other civilians.
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BLINKEN: The broader point, though, remains. And this is really critical. Israel has a special responsibility to protect civilians in the course of its self-defense, and that most certainly includes journalists.
CORNISH: Some Democrats have been calling for the Biden administration to put more pressure on Israel to scale back its military campaign. On Monday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan tweeted that the U.S. was, quote, "engaged in quiet, intensive diplomacy." He went on, "our efforts will continue."
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CORNISH: Now, this latest conflict started a few weeks ago.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: A battle to save Palestinians from eviction triggers the latest rallying call against Israel.
CORNISH: Protests had been going on for weeks there over a plan to evict Palestinians from their homes in a Jerusalem neighborhood called Sheikh Jarrah.
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UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting in non-English language).
CORNISH: But, of course, the roots of the conflict in that region go far beyond one neighborhood. NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro has reported on that conflict up close for years and has this look at its origins.
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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital. Palestinians accuse Israel of trying to expel them home by home in order to cement its control over the city. Israel captured the east of the city in 1967 and annexed it. The Palestinians, though, and most world governments say that the status of Jerusalem should be the subject of negotiations in any peace deal. For its part, Israel says the whole of Jerusalem is its capital and has been building settlements in the area. So tensions were already high when fierce clashes then broke out in early May at one of the most sensitive areas in the city.
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GARCIA-NAVARRO: Jerusalem, of course, is important to both sides for many reasons, including that it is the site of a compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims. The Temple Mount, as it's called by Jews, is the holiest site in Judaism because it was the location of two ancient temples that were destroyed. It is also the location of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the third most sacred site in Islam and where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven.
Last week, Israeli police raided the compound...
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Police coming in in huge numbers, firing tear gas. We're seeing stun grenades.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Saying that they were chasing violent protesters, injuring hundreds and generating images that shocked Muslims around the world.
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GARCIA-NAVARRO: The militant group Hamas, which controls a tiny strip of land in Gaza, then entered the fray.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: The wail of an air raid siren persuaded Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall to flee and run for cover.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: They started by firing hundreds of rockets into Israel. Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States. It rejects Israel and embraces armed resistance against it. Now, Gaza is completely isolated. It's surrounded and blocked off by both Israel and Egypt, which borders it. And most of its residents cannot leave.
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GARCIA-NAVARRO: Israel then retaliated with hundreds of airstrikes on Gaza.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: As you can hear now, the raids are directly targeting the tower.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is so far the deadliest part of the fighting, but a new flashpoint has also opened up.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is from the town of Lod inside Israel, which has been placed under a state of emergency. Fights between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Jews who live in mixed communities have broken out there and across the country, which is, we should say, highly unusual. Roving mobs have been attacking the other side and destroying property, including places of worship.
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GARCIA-NAVARRO: Now, also in recent days, there have been pitched battles between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces in the West Bank, too, which is part of the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. The many fronts now in this conflict are raising fears of a new intifada - or uprising - similar to what was seen with devastating consequences only two times before.
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CORNISH: Lulu Garcia-Navarro. She's the host of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday.
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AKIVA ELDAR: How are you, Abusada?
MKHAIMAR ABUSADA: Good, good. Thank you. I'm doing fine. Thank you.
ELDAR: Yeah. I keep thinking about you guys.
CORNISH: Mkhaimar Abusada and Akiva Eldar are two political scientists from different areas of the region.
ABUSADA: How is the situation in your side?
ELDAR: Well, compared to you, it's great, but my family is very nervous, especially my wife.
CORNISH: Eldar lives north of Tel Aviv, away from the heart of the conflict.
ELDAR: I can't complain if I look at the footage from Gaza.
CORNISH: Mkhaimar Abusada, on the other hand, is in Gaza, right in the thick of things.
ABUSADA: And as a matter of fact...
CORNISH: We spoke a few days ago.
ABUSADA: ...My mother and one of our brothers evacuated their home in Beit Lahia and moved into Gaza City, where I live right now. They were very much afraid that Israel will bomb the area again tonight.
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CORNISH: We got Abusada and Eldar together to talk about what the path forward looks like. Over the weekend, the U.S. sent Hady Amr, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel and Palestinian affairs, to meet with leaders from both sides. And as of when we're recording this, Monday afternoon, there is no sign of any cease-fire agreement.
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CORNISH: Professor Abusada, I want to talk about the players involved who might be able to contribute to de-escalation. Is that wishful thinking? What is possible at this moment?
ABUSADA: Well, Audie, look; there is no one who is going to win out of this current escalation. Both Palestinians and Israelis are big losers out of the current escalations. We see dead people on both sides. We see carnage and destruction on both sides, probably more in Gaza because of the intensity of the Israeli bombing. And we do hope that there is an immediate cease-fire that will be in effect any time soon, even though that we know that the U.S. is very supportive of Israel and the U.S. is not an honest broker in this Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But we have to wait and see.
CORNISH: Akiva, I want to come to you because, obviously, the last peace negotiations collapsed. I think this was back in April 2014, in fact, under then-Secretary of State John Kerry. How different are things now, especially since Netanyahu, the prime minister, has really been struggling to maintain his power in recent months?
ELDAR: You touched the bottom line of this event, and this is the future of Prime Minister Netanyahu. I believe that we can reach now truce or cease-fire because Netanyahu got what he wanted, and what he wanted is to destroy the possibility and to put an end to this tango between the right, left and center in Israel.
CORNISH: And for context for people, he was supposed to form a coalition government, has struggled to do so and is facing corruption charges.
ELDAR: Right. And I don't see any way where the Israelis and Hamas can reach an agreement as long as the Israeli government is held by the Israeli right-wing parties who don't believe in a two-state solution. And in Gaza, what the Hamas managed to do is to unite the Palestinian communities in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel proper. And this is not going away if we don't deal with it in the roots of this seriously.
ABUSADA: Akiva, can - let me just interrupt here and say let's agree on one thing here, that the continuation of the Israeli occupation of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, which has been going on for more than half a century now, since 1967, and the creeping annexation with settlement expansion on Palestinian territory is the source of the problem. Let's agree that if Israel puts an end to its occupation of Palestinian land and accept international law and U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, there is a good possibility for peace. There's a good possibility for security and peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.
ELDAR: I fully agree with you, my friend.
CORNISH: That's Israeli political analyst and journalist Akiva Eldar and Mkhaimar Abusada, professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.
ABUSADA: Take care of yourself. And hopefully we meet again.
ELDAR: And take good care of yourself and avoid the Israeli strikes. Let's hope this will stop as soon as possible.
ABUSADA: I hope so. I hope so. Thanks very much, Audie. Thank you very much, Audie.
CORNISH: Yes. Thank you to both of you.
ELDAR: Thank you, Audie.
ABUSADA: Thank you. Take care.
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CORNISH: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Audie Cornish.
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