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

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, said ending the war in Gaza and ensuring a Hamas victory against Israel were his group’s main objectives.

Speaking for the first time since a Palestinian attack triggered a war in Gaza that risks spiralling into a regional conflict, Nasrallah said the fighting was unlike previous flare-ups in the coastal enclave and was a “decisive battle”.
 

At least 260 Israeli soldiers have been wounded in clashes with Palestinian fighters in Gaza since ground combat escalated earlier this week, according to the Israeli army radio. 

The special tactics rescue unit 669 of the Israeli army carried out 150 rescue missions so far, an indication of the extent of ongoing fierce gun battles. 

The army confirmed at least 24 soldiers have been killed in the clashes since Tuesday, the day Israeli military ground operations significantly expanded deeper into the Gaza Strip. 

The UN relief agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, has said that 72 of its staff have been killed in Gaza by Israel.

Spokeswoman Juliette Touma told the BBC that its remaining facilities that have not been bombed by Israel are housing more than 700,000 civilians in cramped and overcrowded conditions.

The commissioner-general of Unrwa, Philippe Lazzarini, speaking to Christiane Amanpour on CNN on Thursday said the “number of people killed so far is so staggering it can no longer be considered collateral [damage].”

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that the operation launched by Hamas on 7 October was "100 percent Palestinian", speaking for the first time since the war erupted.

Nasrallah said the attack, which killed around 1,400 people in Israel, was solely conducted by Palestinians and completely secretive.

He said it was not revealed to any of the factions that make up the anti-Israeli “Axis of Resistance”.

The Hezbollah leader said the conflict was related only to the Palestinian people, and no other regional issue, perhaps a reference to talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel of establishing diplomatic ties.

Calling the Hamas-led attack an “earthquake”, Nasrallah repeated his old description of Israel as “more fragile than a spider’s web”.

Israel says around 1,000 civilians were killed by Palestinian fighters on 7 October. Nasrallah claimed Israeli forces “committed the massacres” against the civilians.

He said Israel’s objective to completely crush Hamas was impossible. “Is there anyone with a brain in his head who would have such a goal?” he asked.

Nasrallah compared the current conflict to the 2006 Israel war on Lebanon, when the Israelis sought a military solution instead of negotiations and was mired in a battle with Hezbollah that ended in stalemate.

“The end of this battle will be Gaza’s victory, and the defeat of this enemy,” he said.

The wrinkled hands of an elderly Palestinian woman sifting through green olives; a young man somersaulting on a beach in Gaza; the blurry outline of a galloping peacock; blazing sunsets and rainbows descending on the Nuseirat refugee camp. 

These are the everyday images of Gaza that Palestinian photographer Majd Arandas yearned for the world to see. 

But on Wednesday, photographers from across the Middle East were in mourning after it emerged the 29-year-old was killed in an Israeli air strike. 

Read more: Gaza life through the eyes of a photographer killed in an Israeli air strike

Editor's note: Some readers might find details and footage in this update distressing 

Footage aired by Al Jazeera Arabic showed bodies of Palestinians strewn on a key Gaza road after being killed by Israeli fire while fleeing from north to south. 

Al-Rasheed roads stretch along the coast of Gaza from north to south. Dozens of people were travelling on it on Friday when they came under gunfire and shelling from Israeli attack helicopters and fighter jets, according to local media. 

The number of Islamophobic incidents at the University of Cambridge has risen since the onset of war between Israel and Palestinian groups, with students warning of a "climate of censorship" where pro-Palestine solidarity is repeatedly muzzled.

The University of Cambridge Islamic Society released a statement on Tuesday encouraging Muslim students to "remain cautious [and] travel in groups where possible" after reports of "multiple incidents of religiously motivated attacks and Islamophobic hate crimes".

Students told Middle East Eye that there has been a string of attacks against Muslim students since the start of the latest conflict, with some of the victims wearing clothes that clearly identified them as Muslim.

According to the students, two of the incidents involved the perpetrators referencing the Palestinian group Hamas.

MEE understands that several of the University of Cambridge's constituent colleges have been in contact with students about the rise in attacks. Corpus Christi College sent an email to students about the situation on Friday. 

Read more: Islamophobic incidents spike at University of Cambridge since Israel-Palestine war

Israeli soldiers opened fire on worshippers in the occupied West Bank on Friday, killing one person and wounding another. 

Yousef Mohammad Shahin, 33, was killed in the village of Budrus west of Ramallah, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. 

He was shot with a group of people leaving a mosque in the village after performing Friday prayers. 

Eyewitnesses told MEE the worshippers didn’t pose any danger to the soldiers. Shahin was walking on the side of the road, heading home, when he was shot dead, they added.

Translation: Yousef Mohammad Yousef Shahin was killed by [Israeli] occupation bullets during confrontations in the village of Budrus, west of Ramallah.

Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip is now becoming a siege operation, as Israeli troops tentatively advance in a pincer movement to surround Gaza City.

After three weeks of ferocious bombardment, Israeli soldiers entered the coastal enclave overnight on 27 October from the north and the east.

The military is being coy about the number of troops involved and their objectives, but it has acknowledged that artillery, tanks, and bulldozers have accompanied infantry and special forces, in an offensive dubbed "Operation Iron Swords".

So far, the advance has been made through agricultural lands and sparsely populated urban areas, indicating the Israeli military is avoiding clashes with Palestinian fighters in residential areas at this stage.

However, it has no qualms about bombing heavily residential areas and a raid on the Jabalia refugee camp on Tuesday killed around 100 people.

More than 9,000 Palestinians, including over 2,300 children, have been killed by the Israeli bombardment over the last four weeks.

The ground invasion was launched after intense shelling of less built-up areas close to the separation fence on the boundary between Gaza and Israel, specifically near the Palestinian towns of Beit Lahia in the northwest, and Beit Hanoun in the northeast.

However, Israeli troops are still far from the tunnels belonging to Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and other armed groups.

Read more: Israel's army advances in Gaza’s open areas to avoid repeating 2014 mistakes

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has released updated casualty figures from the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

At least 9,227 people have been killed since 7 October, including 3,826 children and 2,405 women, according to officials. At least 23,516 people have been wounded.

The ministry said 196 people were killed in the past 24 hours alone in 16 different "massacres", a word Palestinian officials use to refer to attacks that cause mass deaths at once. 

Around 2,100 people are still missing in Gaza, including 1,200 children. The vast majority of these people are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.

Additionally, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 141 Palestinians in the West Bank in the same period - a sharp rise from the monthly death toll in the occupied territory.

According to the health ministry, the October deaths take the total number of Palestinians killed this year in the West Bank to over 352.

Israeli forces have fired tear gas at Palestinians in the Wadi al Joz neighbourhood in occupied east Jerusalem, as worshippers in the area were heading to Friday prayers at Al Aqsa. 

According to Al Jazeera Arabic, only around 5,000 people have been allowed to attend the prayer, while typically, numbers reach 50,000. 

Roads leading to the holy site have been closed off, while Israeli forces stop worshippers from reaching Al Aqsa and carry out thorough searches.
 

Israeli forces have cut off the water supply in the occupied West Bank village of Beit Lid, south east of Tulkarem.

According to local media, the water supply was cut off on 2 November, with the village’s water technician receiving threats after attempting to open the water pump supply. 

The village has a population of 8,000 people. 
 

Israeli forces are preventing Palestinian worshippers in occupied east Jerusalem from entering Al-Aqsa for Friday prayers, according to local media.

Opinion by Richard Falk - Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid "the fog of war" by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession.

Read more: Israel's endgame is much more sinister than restoring 'security'

The Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar described Israel's war on Gaza as "something approaching revenge" on Friday, in some of the strongest criticism against Israel used by a European leader.

The number of Palestinians killed by Israel is approaching 10,000, the majority of them children and women. 

Varadkar said he "strongly believes" in Israel's right to defend itself but added that their action in Gaza has crossed that limit. 

"What I'm seeing unfolding at the moment isn't just self-defence. It looks, resembles something more approaching revenge," Varadkar told journalists during a visit to South Korea, according to comments broadcast by state radio RTE.

"That's not where we should be. And I don't think that's how Israel will guarantee future freedom and future security," he added.

Asked by a journalist whether Israel's actions were war crimes, Varadkar added "That's not for me to determine."