Israel-Palestine live: Thousands in state of panic as Israel continues to strike hospitals

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "horrified" by the bombing that struck an ambulance convoy outside al-Shifa hospital on 3 November. 

He added that "now, for nearly one month, civilians in Gaza, including children & women, have been besieged, denied aid, killed and bombed out of their homes. This must stop.”

At least 15 people were killed in the bombing of al-Shifa, Gaza's largest hospital, according to Al Jazeera. Video footage circulating online showed bloody and chaotic scenes.

 The al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, said it killed five Israeli soldiers and wounded several others in a building northwest of Gaza City on Saturday. 

According to Palestine's health ministry, a Palestinian has been killed every four minutes in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October.

Mai al-Kala, a Palestinian health minister, issued a statement on Saturday saying that Israel has intensified its attacks, deliberately targeting hospitals, and that all the laws designed to protect medical and ambulance teams have been violated by the Israeli occupation.

She added that the international community's silence over aggressions in Gaza "is giving the green light to Israel to shed Palestinian blood, and commit other atrocities".

Video footage shared by Al Jazeera Arabic shows Israel bombing al-Azhar University in Gaza.

Since the war started on 7 October, Israel has also bombed Gaza University, the Islamic University of Gaza and al-Aqsa University. 

More than 600 academics and scholars have co-signed an open letter, demanding that universities in Ireland suspend all ties with Israel due to the ongoing bombing of Gaza. 

The letter states: "The scale and severity of Israel's current war on the Gaza Strip has exceeded all previous levels of violence in the prolonged and brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is a campaign of ethnic cleansing and, according to many experts, genocidal violence."

It added: "The dehumanising language and tropes widely used by Israeli leaders in reference to Palestinians echo those typically associated with genocidal incitement and intent."

Among those who have signed the letter are Professor Kathleen Lynch and Professor Eugenia Siapera, both from University College Dublin, and Professor Aoife O'Donoghue, from Queen's University, Belfast.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Turkey for two days from Sunday as part of a Middle East tour, according to Reuters.

Blinken is currently in Jordan, after visiting Israel the day before. 
 

Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Israel for consultations due to the humanitarian crisis and ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza, the foreign ministry said on Saturday.

Israel's envoys to Turkey left the country last month due to security reasons, after protests erupted across the country in support of Palestinians. Israel later said it had recalled its envoys to assess bilateral ties.

Ambassador Sakir Ozkan Torunlar was recalled in view of "the ongoing humanitarian tragedy in Gaza caused by Israel's continued attacks on civilians and Israel's refusal [to accept] a ceasefire," the Turkish foreign ministry said.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the BBC offices in central London on Saturday, calling for a ceasefire and denouncing Israel's bombing of Gaza.

Many of the protesters also criticised the BBC's coverage of the war, stating that it is not fairly covering Israeli aggressions in Gaza.

MEE producer Mohammad Saleh, who was at the protest, said that people were chanting "BBC you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!"

One young speaker criticised UK universities and their stance in relation to Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, calling out western academia for its "whitewashing, co-opting and illegitimately redefining the struggles of the Palestinian people".

Generators at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza have completely shut down, according to the interior ministry in Gaza.

Earlier,   a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that 16 hospitals in Gaza have now been rendered out of service due to Israeli bombing and the full siege imposed on 9 October.
 

The death toll in Gaza has reached 9,488 since the start of the war on 7 October, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. 

The number includes 3,900 children and 2,500 women.
 

In a live press conference in Gaza, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that 16 hospitals in Gaza have now been rendered out of service due to Israeli bombing and the full siege imposed on 9 October.

"The occupation is directly targeting the vicinity of hospitals... around 105 medical facilities have also been targeted," he said. 

He also called for the Rafah border to be opened to allow those wounded to receive treatment, "otherwise we will lose hundreds of more lives", he said.

The vicinity of the al-Quds hospital was targeted on Saturday, causing widespread panic and chaos. 
 

Israel's foreign ministry has condemned the Honduran government's decision to recall its ambassador from Israel over Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

According to Israeli media, Lior Haiat, the foreign ministry spokesperson, said: "We expect the Honduran government to condemn Hamas, to support Israel's right to defend itself, and not to take decisions that provide support to Hamas's terrorism."

He also took to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to denounce the Honduran government's decision, saying that it "ignores Israel's right to defend itself".

Israel has also criticised Bolivia, Chile and Colombia for their stances against Israel's bombardment of Gaza.
 

Palestine’s Ministry of Health says that at least 15 people have been killed by Israeli bombing of al-Fakhoura school. More than 54 others were wounded. 

Thousands of Palestinians were sheltering at the school after being displaced from their homes by Israeli air strikes. The school is located in the Jabalia area in Gaza.

An Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent described "scattered limbs" all over the school, while a crater in the ground where the bomb hit was shown in live footage.

One survivor told Al Jazeera Arabic: "Shame on the Arab leaders, these are civilians, children's body parts are scattered everywhere."

US Special Envoy David Satterfield said on Saturday that there were no recorded instances of Hamas interdicting or seizing aid, according to Reuters.

"Fuel in depots in Gaza has been accessed by [UN agency] Unrwa for aid trucks, de-salinisation and hospitals in the south of Gaza," he noted.
 

To find out what Hamas thinks of the 7 October attacks and the ongoing war, MEE spoke to a senior Palestinian source in touch with the political leadership of Hamas.

MEE put three main questions to him. Why did the attack take place when it did? Are Israel’s war aims achievable? What will Hamas think it has achieved when this war is over?

Why now?

The trigger for the 7 October attack was Hamas’s concern that far-right Jews intended to sacrifice an animal at the site of al-Aqsa Mosque, thus laying the ground for the demolition of the Dome on the Rock shrine, and the building of the Third Temple, he said.

Hamas had been following Israeli plans to institute a permanent Jewish presence within the al-Aqsa complex closely. Al-Aqsa is considered the third-holiest site in Islam and a symbol of Palestinian identity. It is known in Israel as the Temple Mount.

The daily presence of far-right Jews at al-Aqsa had already been achieved, with two daily incursions in the morning and afternoon in tours protected by heavily armed police and lasting from 30 minutes to an hour.

 

Can Hamas be wiped out?

It was not the first time Israeli leaders had vowed to wipe Hamas out - and every previous war had ended in Israeli withdrawal, he said.

Hamas leaders acknowledge that the scale of the devastation is different, but they still believe another Israeli withdrawal will be the final outcome, he added.

“But he [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] has a big problem. Even if he succeeds in his war aim of eliminating the leadership of Hamas in Gaza, he still faces questions about his responsibility for the 7 October attack.”

The source dismissed the prospect of Israel achieving its main aim. He said it was physically impossible to finish Hamas off because of the size of the group and its dependents in Gaza.

“Hamas is part of the fabric of society. You have the fighters and their families. You have the charities and their families. You have the government workers and their families. Put that together and it’s a very substantial part of the people.”

 

What will Hamas have achieved after this battle is over?

Hamas does not think the clock can be put back to 6 October when the war ends, with Gaza starting all over again, he said.

“The 7 October attack gave a direct and exact message that Palestinians have the ability to defeat Israel and get rid of the occupation. For Hamas that is now a fact,” he said.

Hamas thinks the attack has broken a covenant that has existed between the Israeli army and the people since the declaration of the state in 1948.

The unspoken pact was that the people would send their sons and daughters to the army and the army would in return protect the country.

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Read more: How Hamas sees the Gaza conflict unfolding - and why it thinks it can win