Israel-Hamas War: Israel ‘Expanding’ Ground Attack in Gaza as Biden Urges Aid Increase (2024)

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Here’s the latest on the war.

The 16-year blockade of Gaza was also tightened in the wake of the Hamas attacks, and food, water and medicine has only in recent days begun to trickle in. Some hospitals have been forced to close even as casualties mount, and what remains of civil order appears to be deteriorating. The U.N. agency that aids Palestinians said Sunday that thousands of people had broken into its warehouses to take wheat flour and other “basic survival items.”

Videos released by the Israeli military and geolocated by The New York Times indicated at least three separate places where Israeli troops have crossed into Gaza. The precise number of Israeli soldiers operating in the territory was unclear, but a spokesman said that the military was “gradually expanding the ground activity and the scope of our forces,” which he said were “progressing through the stages of the war according to plan.”

In a call with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, President Biden reiterated Israel’s right to protect itself, while underscoring “the need to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law that prioritizes the protection of civilians,” according to the White House.

Mr. Biden also spoke with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, whose country has been the sole route into Gaza for relief trucks, including 33 that carried food, water and medical supplies into the enclave on Sunday, according to a spokesman for the Hamas-controlled side of the crossing. That is the most in a single day since trucks were first allowed in more than a week ago.

Mr. Biden and Mr. el-Sisi “committed to the significant acceleration and increase of assistance flowing into Gaza beginning today and then continuously,” a White House summary said.

Here’s what else to know:

• Phone and internet connectivity that had been knocked out for days in Gaza partially returned on Sunday morning. Israeli officials have declined to comment on Palestinian accusations that it instigated the blackout. Two American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the United States believed that Israel was responsible and had urged Israeli counterparts to do what they could to restore service.

• Mr. Netanyahu wrote an online post published shortly after midnight that said Israel’s security establishment had not warned him before Oct. 7 that Hamas had “war intentions,” appearing to blame intelligence officials for the failure to stop the group’s attack. The post drew an immediate outcry and was quickly deleted, and Mr. Netanyahu wrote another post apologizing.

• Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” that even though Hamas had placed its rocket infrastructure among civilians and used them as human shields, Israel remained responsible under international humanitarian law “to distinguish between terrorists and civilians and to protect the lives of innocent people.”

• Israel’s military said that it had also responded to attacks from the north and bombarded targets in Lebanon belonging to Hezbollah, the armed Shiite organization that has sought to show solidarity with Hamas. Both groups are backed by Iran, whose president, Ebrahim Raisi, again raised the specter of a wider regional conflict by saying on Sunday that Israel had crossed a “red line which may force everyone to take action.”

Cornell’s Jewish center is under guard after online posts threaten students.

“We will not tolerate antisemitism at Cornell,” said Ms. Pollack. “Threats of violence are absolutely intolerable, and we will work to ensure that the person or people who posted them are punished to the full extent of the law.”

Campus police referred the threats to the F.B.I. as a potential hate crime, said Ms. Pollack, who visited the center on Sunday evening, according to a statement from the university. The threats were posted on Greekrank, a website for students to discuss fraternities and sororities at various colleges, according to The Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper at Cornell. The posts have been removed from the site, but the student newspaper published screenshots of several virulent threats.

“We hear that as a call for our genocide,” said Rabbi Ari Weiss, the executive director of Cornell Hillel, a Jewish group on campus. “Students are scared. They’re concerned for their safety.”

The postings came as the Israel Defense Forces pushed into Gaza in a war against the armed group Hamas, which is embedded within the civilian population in the Palestinian enclave and which launched terrorist attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages. In the weeks since, as Palestinian deaths in Gaza have risen into the thousands under Israel airstrikes, tensions have sharpened at college campuses across the United States.

The atmosphere at Cornell grew especially taut when Russell Rickford, an associate professor in the university’s history department who specializes in African-American political culture, gave a speech in downtown Ithaca on Oct. 15 in which he said he found the attack on Israel by Hamas to be “exhilarating.” He later apologized and requested a leave of absence from the university.

Campus groups have held at least a handful of events related to the conflict. Jewish students held two vigils, one in response to the attack, and a second to highlight the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, according to Rabbi Weiss. Palestinian students and their supporters have held several demonstrations.

Last Wednesday, students woke to find graffiti on sidewalks across campus that insulted Israel and compared Zionism to genocide, The Cornell Daily Sun reported.

Mob storms plane arriving in Russia from Tel Aviv, authorities say.

The Israeli government said in a statement that it was following the events closely and expected the Russian authorities to protect all Israeli citizens and Jews, and to act firmly against the rioters and against what it described as “the wild incitement directed at Jews and Israelis.”

President Vladimir V. Putin has listed interethnic and interreligious accord in Russia as a main policy priority. Anti-Israel and antisemitic protests in the North Caucasus, a region where Mr. Putin fought his first war as Russian leader, could jeopardize that at a time when the Kremlin is also waging a long and bloody war in Ukraine.

It was not immediately clear exactly what had taken place at the airport, as unverified videos of the chaotic scene spread across social media. Some people in the videos held Palestinian flags and carried signs opposing the war in Gaza, and some chanted “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great.”

RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, posted a video of what it said were law enforcement officers assembling on the airport’s tarmac.

In one video verified by The New York Times, a group of dozens of men, some carrying Palestinian flags, swarms a parked airplane from the carrier Red Wings. “There are no passengers here anymore,” a man in a yellow safety vest tells the rioters, pointing at the plane. He adds, “I am Muslim.”

In another video verified by The Times, filmed from inside an airplane on a tarmac, a crew member can be heard announcing: “Please stay seated and don’t try to open the plane’s door. There is an angry mob outside.”

The regional police said in a statement that they had identified 150 people as having actively taken part in the riot, and that 60 had been arrested. Nine police officers were injured in the clashes, two of whom were hospitalized, according to the statement.

Dagestan’s health care ministry said 20 people in total had been injured, including police officers and civilians. Ten people were hospitalized, two of whom were in grave condition, it said. The police said that local investigators had opened a criminal probe into the riot, and promised that everyone who had participated would be held responsible.

The Russian aviation authorities said on Sunday that the airport “has been cleared of unauthorized entry by citizens.” The government of Dagestan said the situation was “under control.”

Sergei Melikov, the head of Dagestan, condemned the rioters, saying that “there was no honor in swearing at strangers, reaching into their pockets and trying to check their passport,” referring to reports that some protesters had asked passers-by at the airport to prove their nationality.

There were also reports of anti-Israel protests across the North Caucasus, a combustible region in the Russian south. On Saturday, dozens of people gathered in front of a hotel in the town of Khasavyurt, in Dagestan, after reports on social media claimed that it was “full of Jews.” About 200 people also gathered in the central square of Cherkessk, the capital of the Karachay-Cherkessia republic, to protest the potential arrival of Israeli refugees, local news media reported.

The local authorities in Dagestan blamed “extremist” outlets administered by “Russian enemies” for inciting the unrest. Some of the protests were supported by a Telegram channel linked to a former Russian lawmaker, Ilya Ponomaryov, who had fled to Ukraine and has become a staunchly anti-Kremlin politician. Plans to “catch” the passengers of the incoming flight were shared in the Telegram channel, along with screenshots of the flight schedule, on Saturday and Sunday. Local religious figures in the North Caucasus have condemned the protests.

Russia has gone to extraordinary lengths to crack down on protests over its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which it falsely claimed was being fought to rid the country of “Nazis.”

Ukrainian officials were quick to seize on the events in Russia as reflecting a deeper culture of hatred that the Kremlin had fomented for years.

“For Russian propaganda talking heads on official television, hate rhetoric is routine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement, noting the “appalling videos” coming out of Dagestan. “Hatred is what drives aggression and terror. We must all work together to oppose hatred.”

Aric Toler contributed reporting.

Gazans had no cell service. An effort led from Egypt helped reconnect them.

Some journalists and other activists discovered a loophole: Gazans with some Israeli sim cards could still use their phones, if they could get high enough or close enough to an Israeli cellular tower.

While sim cards from Israeli cellphone providers are hard to come by in Gaza, a digital eSIM can be purchased by anyone, anywhere, and sent digitally to Gazans — and could be used more reliably throughout the enclave.

This, Ms. El Helbawi thought, was how she would help circumvent the silence. From her home in Cairo, nearly 200 miles away, she shared a plea with her 750,000 Instagram followers: help keep Gaza online.

Ms. El Helbawi’s post set off a widespread digital effort to elude the telecommunications blackout in Gaza, connecting activists abroad to try to keep Palestinian journalists, aid workers and doctors trapped inside in contact with the outside world.

“It all happened in a spontaneous action,” Ms. El Helbawi said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “I wasn’t expecting the thousands of people from all around the world — in Europe, the United States and Latin American — to be ready to help Palestinians get proper internet access.”

Ms. El Helbawi wasn’t alone in the effort. At the same time, activists from across the world posted on X, formerly Twitter, step-by-step instructions on how to purchase an eSIM and activate a cellular plan on behalf of residents trapped inside Gaza.

Ms. El Helbawi’s plan to reconnect Gaza with the world was twofold: A volunteer would purchase an eSIM with roaming service, receive a QR code and send it via text to a resident inside Gaza. The recipient would scan the QR code to activate it.

But there was a major challenge: how could a recipient receive the QR code amid a total blackout?

Ms. El Helbawi was determined to make it work. She scanned X to look for journalists who were still online. She knew if she could just reach one, she could send QR codes to many more

At nearly the same time, Ahmed Elmadhoun, a 26-year-old freelance journalist and digital creator, was standing on the roof of a hospital in Khan Younis in search of an internet connection.

He and his friends had purchased a rare Israeli sim card for $100 that morning, but the service was not sustainable because their access to the Israeli mobile network was getting blocked. It was also risky to stand on an open-air roof for too long amid Israeli airstrikes. But he was desperate to connect to the world.

“Even the sound of our pain was blocked from reaching people,” Mr. Elmadhoun said by phone from Gaza City on Sunday. “It was like we were dying alone.”

On Saturday night, the connection clicked for a moment and he asked his 17,000 X followers for help: “Someone told me about an eSIM — who?”

Ms. El Helbawi saw his post. She responded just six minutes later, “Me me me.”

Mr. Elmadhoun’s service was spotty, but he just needed to be connected long enough to receive the QR code.

After multiple attempts, it arrived, and Mr. Elmadhoun was able to scan the code to activate a cellular plan with roaming service within minutes.

“We were able to return Gaza’s voice,” Mr. Elmadhoun said, adding: “Internet connection is a basic thing we took for granted. And suddenly having access to it felt like a miracle.”

From Cairo, Ms. El Helbawi expressed a shared sense of relief and optimism.

“It was hard,” she said. “The internet kept breaking. They see one message from me, and they disappear.”

She added, “My faith in humanity got restored for, like, two days.”

In all, Ms. El Helbawi sent about a dozen QR codes to Mr. Elmadhoun, who shared them with a group of journalists and medical staff at the hospital in Khan Younis.

But the ripple effects of Ms. El Helbawi’s efforts were felt across Gaza over the weekend.

In less than 24 hours, hundreds of eSIMS were distributed across Gaza, according to Ms. El Helbawi. She is now partnering with Simly, an eSIM provider, to try to connect thousands more Palestinians in Gaza to cell service and the internet.

“We will make sure everyone gets stable and consistent internet access there,” Ms. El Helbawi posted on X on Sunday. “Palestinians will not be silenced again.”

Abeer Pamuk contributed production from San Francisco.

With phone and internet service cut, Gazan paramedics drove blindly toward explosions.

“People were bombed, dying and injured while nobody knew anything about them,” he said.

And some people arrived at hospitals running — crossing distances of more than a mile on foot — shouting for help, said Yusuf al-Loh, the head of a medical services agency within Gaza’s interior ministry.

“Last night the scene was heartbreaking,” Mr. al-Loh said in an interview on Sunday after communications were restored, calling the blackout a “disaster” for emergency responders.

On Friday at sunset, three weeks into Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, the weak phone and internet service that had allowed some semblance of life to continue inside the blockaded enclave was suddenly severed. Two American officials said the United States believed Israel was responsible for the communications loss, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Israeli officials have so far declined to comment on accusations that they deliberately caused the service outages.

“I was thinking losing electricity and water is the worst, but losing communications turned out to be far worse,” said Ahmed Yousef, a 45-year-old civil servant who spent the blackout hunkered down at home with his family in the town of Deir al Balah.

“We need to contact our family and friends and make sure they are still alive,” he said. He could watch news about the blackout on television — thanks to a solar panel system that provided electricity — but without phone service he was unable to reach the man who sells water to his family or the man he pays to wait for hours in line at a bakery to buy bread for his family, he said.

More than 8,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, including more than 3,000 children, said Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Gaza health ministry.

After communications returned, ambulance and civil defense crews found hundreds of dead and wounded people lying on the ground or trapped under rubble, Mr. al-Qidra said in a news conference on Sunday.

‘No other option’: Gaza hospital says it can’t follow a new Israeli evacuation order.

“In the past days, they used to say we needed to evacuate because they will be targeting the area,” he told The New York Times. “This time it was clear that they wanted to target us.”

The humanitarian situation in Gaza — ruled by Hamas, the armed group behind the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel that killed about 1,400 people — has grown increasingly dire as Israel’s siege of the enclave completed its third week, cutting off electricity, water and fuel for the more than two million Palestinians who live there. More than 8,000 people have been killed in the Israeli military’s bombardment of the area, the health ministry in Gaza said on Sunday.

An Israeli military official declined to say whether the military told the hospital’s management that it would be directly targeted. The official described the call to the hospital as “part of a humanitarian effort” to urge civilians to move south. The Israeli military has been bombarding Gaza’s north with airstrikes — although its strikes have continued to kill Gazans in the south, too.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military rules, said the military was trying to put people out of harm’s way while it pursued Hamas targets in the north.

Either way, the evacuation order is impossible to follow, Mr. Al Nems said.

“There are over 12,000 displaced people here and over 500 patients,” he said. “We have no other option but to keep operating.”

Israel views civilian infrastructure such as homes, malls and places of worship as legitimate targets for its strikes, saying Hamas runs operations in those kinds of places, an accusation that the group denies.

In an interview, Mr. Al Nems described a desperate situation at the hospital, which he said was running out of fuel stocks and medical supplies. Some of its ambulances cannot operate because of the fuel shortage.

“If we have everything but don’t have fuel, then we actually have nothing,” he said.

An already difficult situation at the hospital was made even more challenging by a communications blackout that severed most phone and internet connectivity in Gaza from Friday night until Sunday morning while Israeli forces entered the enclave on the ground.

During the blackout, calls for help to the Red Crescent — which operates an emergency line for ambulances — never went through. Rescue personnel tried to guess where to go by following the sounds of explosions, Mr. Al Nems said.

The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on social media that the situation was “deeply concerning.”

He added that it was “impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives.”

The official said that 10 trucks of aid were currently ready to cross into Gaza, while Israel was inspecting another 40 that were expected to cross later. On previous days, no more than 20 trucks of aid were able to enter Gaza each day.

Netanyahu apologizes after blaming Israel’s security chiefs for failing to stop the Oct. 7 attack.

Among the first to call out Mr. Netanyahu’s comments was Benny Gantz, a centrist former defense minister and military chief who, for the sake of national unity, left the ranks of the parliamentary opposition to join Mr. Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet in the days after the Oct. 7 massacre. At least 1,400 people were killed in the Hamas attacks, the deadliest day for Israel in its 75-year history, and more than 220 people were taken as hostages to Gaza.

Although many senior officials, including military and security chiefs and the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, have accepted some responsibility for Israel being caught so off-guard, Mr. Netanyahu has declined to do so. He has said several times, most recently at a news conference on Saturday evening, that after the war tough questions would be asked of everybody, including himself. Mr. Netanyahu has been in power for 14 of the past 16 years.

Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to publicly accept blame has further shaken confidence in his leadership, which had fallen even before the war, in part because of his efforts to push through a judicial overhaul that sparked huge nationwide protests. Opinion surveys since Oct. 7 have indicated overwhelming public trust in the military and plummeting faith in government officials.

The news conference on Saturday was an attempt by the government to show unity: Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Gallant and Mr. Gantz appeared alongside one another, and the prime minister answered questions from reporters for the first time since Oct. 7.

Many of the questions focused on responsibility for the Hamas attack. Hours afterward, Mr. Netanyahu sought to deflect blame from himself, instead directing it at the security establishment — and specifically the heads of military intelligence and the Shin Bet internal security agency.

“Under no circ*mstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas,” his post read. “On the contrary, the assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement.”

“This was the assessment presented time and again to the prime minister and the cabinet by all the security echelon and the intelligence community, including right up until the outbreak of the war,” it added.

Mr. Gantz responded with a sharp post expressing his full support for the military and the Shin Bet, which is playing a key role in the war, and urging Mr. Netanyahu to retract his statement.

“When we are at war, leadership means displaying responsibility, deciding to do the right things and strengthening the forces so that they will be able to carry out what we are demanding of them,” Mr. Gantz wrote.

The centrist leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, said Mr. Netanyahu had “crossed a red line.” Another former military chief, Gabi Ashkenazi, told Mr. Netanyahu to remove his post, adding, “We are at war.”

Following the backlash, Mr. Netanyahu’s post was removed. In a new post late Sunday morning, showing an unusual level of contrition, he wrote: “I was wrong. Things I said following the news conference should not have been said and I apologize for that.”

Expressing his support for the security branch heads, the military chief of staff and commanders and soldiers in the field, he added: “Together we will win.”

Protesters fill the streets in New York to support Palestinians in Gaza.

The demonstration was the latest in a string of protests around New York City since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Saturday’s march took place a day after Israeli forces began what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called “the second stage of the war.”

Waving a Palestinian flag as she marched, Alaa Essafi said that after Israel’s escalated attacks, it felt especially important that she travel from her home in New Jersey to support her “brothers and sisters in Palestine.”

“Together we will send a message,” Ms. Essafi, 21, said.

The museum has a large outdoor plaza, and it has been the site of several large-scale gatherings, including a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020 that drew more than 15,000 people.

Standing outside the museum, Hany Barakat, 34, said he had family in Gaza and that some had been killed during recent airstrikes.

“It has to stop,” said Mr. Barakat, who is Egyptian and lives in New Jersey.

The protest prompted the police to shut down several blocks of the Eastern Parkway. Helicopters and a drone hovered above the crowd.

The crowd waved banners and held signs that bore messages including, “We demand a free Palestine” and “Let Gaza Live.” At the Brooklyn Bridge, a few people scaled a metal support structure and unfurled Palestinian flags, prompting protesters to erupt into chants of, “Gaza! Gaza! Gaza!”

The demonstration began to thin as it crossed into Manhattan and daylight faded. Just before 7 p.m., as the crowd streamed through SoHo, the Muslim call to prayer echoed through the streets and event organizers instructed everyone to stop marching to allow time to pray.

The final destination was Union Square, where hundreds of protesters stopped to beat drums. Some carried signs that read, “Support Palestinian resistance,” while others climbed the square’s iconic George Washington statue.

Liset Cruz and Michael D. Regan contributed to this story.

Netanyahu takes the first questions about his responsibility in the Oct. 7 attacks.

“After the war, everyone will need to give answers to hard questions, including me,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “There was a horrible failure, and it will be fully checked. I promise you, no stone will be left unturned.”

Several current and former Israeli officials, including the head of the country’s Shin Bet intelligence service; Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich; and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett; have acknowledged some responsibility for the failure to prevent Palestinian gunmen from killing and kidnapping Israelis in towns near the Gaza border.

Some Israeli commentators have blamed Mr. Netanyahu’s current right-wing coalition government, which pursued a wide-ranging judicial overhaul that tore the country apart and prompted scores of Israelis to say they would refuse volunteer reserve duty in the military. The controversy shook Israel’s security establishment and left it in turmoil, they argue.

Others have pointed to Mr. Netanyahu’s role in overseeing Israel’s policy of seeking an economic accommodation with Hamas — including allowing hundreds of millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza annually — in exchange for a fragile cease-fire. Critics say those economic incentives ultimately propped up Hamas’s rule, rather than moderating it.

Mr. Netanyahu has strongly rebuffed both claims. “They say that I wanted to strengthen Hamas,” he said. “Certainly not me. I led three campaigns against Hamas.” And he argued that those campaigns “weakened the military capabilities of Hamas and at least prevented it from growing stronger.”

Still, Mr. Netanyahu said, in hindsight, it wasn’t enough.

He said the Israeli authorities were doing all they could to bring back the at least 230 people confirmed to be held hostage after Oct. 7. Earlier on Saturday, family members of some of the hostages met with Mr. Netanyahu after raising concerns that an expanded ground offensive could endanger the lives of their loved ones in Gaza.

“The war inside Gaza will be long and difficult — and we are ready for it,” Mr. Netanyahu said Saturday night. “This is our second independence war. We will fight to protect our country. We will fight on land, in the sea and in the air. We will destroy the enemy above ground and underground.”

The prime minister was accompanied by two other top members of the country’s emergency unity government: Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and the former Israeli military chief of staff Benny Gantz, whose National Unity Party joined the government for the duration of the war.

The three have had their differences. Mr. Netanyahu briefly tried to fire Mr. Gallant in March, while Mr. Gantz has severely criticized Mr. Netanyahu in the past. But all three hit similar notes in their speeches, preparing Israel’s citizens for what they said would be a protracted and bloody campaign.

At the end of his speech, Mr. Netanyahu said the country faced an existential campaign — one equivalent to a second war of independence. The statement was most likely intended as a rallying cry for Israelis, for whom the young state’s triumph against its Arab neighbors in 1948 is a cherished national story.

But for Palestinians, that time holds much darker memories. Around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the wars surrounding Israel’s founding, an event widely known as the Nakba, or catastrophe, in Arabic.

As hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have recently fled their homes in northern Gaza amid Israeli warnings to evacuate to the southern part of the enclave, some Palestinian officials have drawn their own comparisons to 1948.

One goal of Israeli policy is “to expel the Palestinian people” and “repeat the Nakba,” Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, claimed in a televised speech on Saturday night. Israeli officials have said the evacuation within Gaza was to ensure civilians’ safety as Israeli forces continued their offensive against Hamas there.