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Israel hits targets in Gaza as its cease-fire with Hamas collapses
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Updated December 1, 2023 at 6:35 AM ET
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel's warplanes began pounding targets in Gaza early Friday, shortly after the collapse of a cease-fire deal that had allowed the release of more than 100 hostages seized by Hamas militants and hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli jails.
Airstrikes in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, began just after 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET), with one hitting an apartment building near an open market. However, the full scope of the renewed bombardment was not immediately clear. A spokesman for the Gaza health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory said that more than 30 Palestinians had been killed in the opening hours of renewed conflict.
Five-year-old Joury Meqdad, who woke up in the morning and went to play with her cousin, was killed in the Rafah strike, the girl's father, Ramadan Meqdad told NPR. Her cousin was injured. Joury's mother, Fadwa Meqdad, cried aloud for her daughter.
"My beloved, it was going to be your birthday, I was going to make a cake for you," she said.
The end of the truce and the resumption of fighting came hours after a seventh hostages-for-prisoners exchange between the two sides, and just as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was leaving Israel after high-level meetings, including with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Blinken had pressed Israel to further extend the temporary truce.
Israel's military said it was restarting combat operations because Hamas "violated the operational pause ... and fired toward Israeli territory." Netanyahu's office added that Hamas "did not live up to its duty to release all the kidnapped women today, and launched rockets at the citizens of Israel."
"With the return to fighting we will emphasize: the Israeli government is committed to achieving the goals of the war — to release our hostages, eliminate Hamas and ensure that Gaza will never again pose a threat to the residents of Israel," the prime minister's office said.
A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Qatar, where the temporary cease-fire was negotiated, said the Gulf state was "deeply saddened" by the collapse of the deal, but confirmed that talks were ongoing "with the aim of a return to a pause."
Qatar said Israel's renewed strikes on Gaza "complicates mediation efforts and exacerbates the humanitarian catastrophe in the Strip."
The temporary cease-fire, which began a week ago, came after weeks of heavy bombardment by Israeli air and ground forces in response to an Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, Israel says. Some 240 hostages, including Israelis and a number of foreign workers, were also seized from communities bordering Gaza.
Members of Hamas' political bureau, issued a statement saying: "What Israel did not achieve during the fifty days before the truce, it will not achieve by continuing its aggression after the truce." Osama Hamden, a senior Beirut-based Hamas official, told NPR that the Islamist militant group "tried till the very last minutes to negotiate an extension of the truce, but (Israel) was not interested in that, and only interested in continuing its aggression on the Palestinian people."
After hostilities resumed, Israel's military issued a warning to Gazans that "Hamas uses the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields, placing its command and military infrastructure in residential areas, hospitals, mosques, and schools."
"Hamas turns civilian sites into military targets while using civilians and civilian facilities as a human shield," the military said, issuing what it said was an interactive evacuation map for residents that it says shows safe evacuation areas. However, many Gaza residents have been without electricity or an internet connection for weeks and the map is difficult to navigate on a cell phone.
Israeli planes dropped leaflets over Khan Younis, warning that the city is a dangerous combat zone. It said residents should move to Rafah, about 6 miles to the south.
During the week-long pause in fighting, Hamas and other militants in Gaza released more than 100 hostages, most of them Israelis, in return for 240 Palestinians freed from prisons in Israel.
The truce also allowed desperately needed humanitarian aid to reach besieged Gaza, whose 2.2 million people had been under weeks of bombardment from Israeli airstrikes and a ground campaign that has killed at least 13,300 people, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Expressing "deep regret" that military operations had restarted in Gaza, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that he still hopes "that it will be possible to renew the pause that was established. The return to hostilities only shows how important it is to have a true humanitarian ceasefire."
The original four-day cease-fire deal that began a week ago was twice extended for a total of three days to allow for the exchange of more captives. Israel had agreed to prolong the truce if Hamas turned over an additional ten hostages per day in exchange for 30 Palestinians. But on Thursday, in the final exchange under the extension, Hamas released only eight captives.
As Israelis woke up to the news that the war was back on, hundreds of them gathered in a square in central Tel Aviv where the families of hostages and their supporters have kept vigil since the crisis began.
Some families of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas voiced sorrow on Friday at the resumption of fighting. "I feel very bad about the whole issue," said Yoav Shelhav, from the Nahal Oz kibbutz, where two residents were abducted in the Hamas attack eight weeks ago. Two men from the kibbutz, Omri Miran and Tzahi Idan, remain in captivity. Shelhav said Idan is a distant cousin of his.
"I think our main concern should be getting back not just these two guys, but everyone." he said. "I think this should be the first priority. The issue with Hamas is important, it should be resolved, but it can be second priority."
Shelhav said he remains hopeful more hostages will eventually be freed: "I have no actual idea of them, if they are still alive or not, but I have hope."
Nihal Deeba lives in East Jerusalem, part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. One of her two sons, 17-year-old Malik, was released from an Israeli jail as part of the truce, but another, 20-year-old Arafat, is still behind bars. Both were accused of stone-throwing, which they deny.
"We are all upset, for our people and for the situation we are in," she said. "I just pray to God that he has mercy on the people in Gaza, and protects them, and that things go back to being peaceful.
"We have hope that there will be another truce, that all the prisoners will be released, and that things calm down."
Deeba said that she had really been hoping her older son, Arafat, would be released as well.
"I still have that hope," she said. "I pray that all the prisoners are freed, and that the prisons are emptied."
NPR producers Anas Baba contributed reporting from Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, and Fatima Al-Kassab contributed from London.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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