RT News - November 08 2023 LATE (with the day's updates on Gaza)

Numbers update: Gaza officials say 10,468 have been killed and more than 27,000 wounded since 7th October 2023. Day 33. Updates of the day "as it happened" below descriptions.Show more

Bombardment of Gaza has continued and now includes the Israeli navy being involved, saying they are targeting HAMAS forces. Israel's ground forces remain in central/northern Gaza. General Yaron Finkelman says "it's a complex and difficult war and comes at a price"

Contradictory claims are being made by USA and Israel as to "who will have control of security" at the end of the conflict, which Israel calls a war. Charlotte Dubenskij tries to make sense of it as relationships seem to sour and PM Netanyahu is called on by some to stand down.
Rory speaks to Amit Assa, a former member of the Israel Security Agency and Colonel Sultan Hali, a former Pakistani air force officer about the conflicting claims from Israel and USA.

On Tuesday Israel airstrikes claimed many lives in central and southern Gaza; in Khan Yunis many are still under the rubble left by the bombings. Iyad Shaqura (a doctor) talks about his family losses and asks "what crime did my children commit to have tons of bombs dropped on them?"

The Indonesian hospital has been hit again in northern Gaza. Israel justified it's actions by saying HAMAS are hiding in tunnels under the hospital. Muhammad Husein (founder of the hospital NGO sponsor) said he was involved in it's building in 2011 and no such tunnels exist - that Israel is using such narratives as an excuse to bomb.
In Surabaya (Indonesia) protests about the Israeli bombing have started.

In South Africa, Naledi Pandor (SA's FM) made a statement about the war crimes being committed against the Gaza civilians and alikens the situation with apartheid South Africa. Collective punishment. South Africa has submitted a peace plan. FM Pandor spoke to RT. "Double standards"

The Israel Heritage Minister called for dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza. It hasn't escaped Russia's notice. Maria Zakharova (Russian FM spokeswoman) spoke to RT and asks "where is the IAEA - where are the inspectors" ???

Pres. Putin held a meeting with Vice Chairman of China's Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia. (Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu also attended) Pres. Putin said stable Russia/China relationships are good, and are key, and calm is essential in the international situation as NATO tries to expand. Oumaima Ichchar reports.

short take: The Israeli military says its forces are now fighting in the quote 'very heart of Gaza' after Prime Minister Netanyahu states Israel will take over control of security there 'indefinitely'. Those remarks contradict the country's closest ally, with the US having declared neither Washington nor Israel was seeking control over the Palestinian enclave. Israel strikes an area near the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, and says it's targeting Hamas tunnels underneath. We spoke to one of the builders of the hospital, who says there's no safe place left to go. South Africa's foreign minister condemns Israel's assault on Gaza, drawing a direct comparison with the history of apartheid in her nation.
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======Updates "as they happened === 08 November 2023

20:31 GMT
Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri offered to release the remaining hostages kidnapped on October 7 during the militant group’s raids on Israel in exchange for the release of all Palestinian prisoners held in Israel in a televised speech on Wednesday. Hamas had conducted the surprise attack in order to secure the freedom of its political prisoners, among other reasons, he claimed.

“Take everyone we have and give us all of the prisoners you have,” he proposed, urging negotiators not to waste time. While Israel would rather “kill all of their hostages,” it “cannot escape from a comprehensive offer,” he argued. Hamas has previously claimed Israel rejected its attempts to release multiple hostages on humanitarian grounds, claims West Jerusalem rejected as propaganda.

19:14 GMT
The high volume of civilians being killed in Gaza indicates there is “something that is clearly wrong” with Israel’s military operations in the enclave, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

“Every year the highest number of killing of children by any of the actors in all the conflicts that we witness is the maximum in the hundreds,” the UN chief continued. “We have in a few days in Gaza seen thousands of children killed.”

Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli military veterans critical of the occupation of Palestine, suggested in a thread on X that the IDF was using the “Dahiya doctrine,” a strategy allegedly devised by the IDF during its war against Lebanon that purports to justify the deliberate (and illegal) targeting of civilian infrastructure and homes as a valid military tactic, based on the extent of the destruction and loss of civilian life in Gaza.

18:49 GMT
Israel’s ground operations in Gaza have no definite time limit, war cabinet minister Benny Gantz told reporters on Wednesday. “The war here is for our existence and for Zionism, and so I can’t provide an estimate of the length of each stage in the war and the fighting that will continue after,” he said.

Admitting Israel still does not have a concrete plan for Gaza after Hamas is defeated, Gantz promised that “we will sit down and review an alternative mechanism for Gaza” only once the area was “safe” and the occupied West Bank had “calm[ed] down.” He did not address earlier comments by Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel would maintain “security responsibility” over the enclave indefinitely.

17:38 GMT
Yemen said on Wednesday it had shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone over its territorial waters, while it was on a “hostile, monitoring and spying” mission in support of Israel. The US military has yet to comment on the incident. Last month, the Houthi government in Sanaa endorsed the Palestinian cause and confirmed it had launched several waves of missiles and drones at Israel.

14:09 GMT
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, has passed a law prohibiting the systematic consumption of terrorist content, the Times of Israel has reported. Watching or reading materials from organizations classed by the Israeli authorities as terrorist, in a manner that indicates that a person identifies with those groups, could lead to a prison term of up to one year, according to the legislation. The law singles out groups such as Hamas and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

The legislation states that it’s not applicable to someone who consumes terrorist content “randomly, in good faith, or for a legitimate reason including providing information to the public, preventing terror attacks, or for research purposes.” The law is set to remain in force for the next two years, but the Knesset can vote to prolong it at the end of that period.

13:02 GMT
The IDF has published a video showing huge crowds of Palestinian refugees leaving their homes in northern Gaza, walking to the southern part of the enclave. “Thousands of residents responded to repeated calls from the Israeli army to move south along the Saladin Highway,” it said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1722211007811244289

12:50 GMT
The IDF has claimed that “one of Hamas’ leading weapon developers” has been killed in an airstrike on Gaza. Mohsen Abu Zina had headed the weapons and industries division of the Palestinian militant group, specializing in manufacturing “strategic weapons and rockets,” the Israeli military said.

12:07 GMT
Gaza’s Health Ministry has said 214 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave in the past 24 hours, putting the overall death toll from Israeli attacks at 10,569, including 4,324 children. At least 2,550 Palestinians are missing, including 1,350 children, the ministry said. The number of wounded has reached 26,475 people, it added.

11:18 GMT
The UK Labour Party’s Shadow Minister for the New Deal for Working People, Imran Hussain, has announced his resignation from the party’s frontbench over its leader Keir Starmer’s refusal to call for a humanitarian truce in Gaza. “A ceasefire is essential to ending the bloodshed, to ensuring that enough aid can pass into Gaza and reach those most in need, and to help ensure the safe return of the Israeli hostages,” Hussain said in a letter addressed to Starmer, which he published on X (formerly Twitter).

The right of countries to self-defence should “never become a right to deliberately violate international law on protecting civilians or to commit war crimes,” he said, referring to Israel’s military campaign Gaza.

10:40 GMT
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has insisted that the conditions for “durable peace and security” must be established in Gaza after the conclusion of Israel’s ground operation against Hamas. They include “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, not now, not after the war. No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempts to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza,” Blinken said during a press conference after the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Tokyo.

According to the US secretary of state, there should be “Palestinian governance, Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority… a sustained mechanism for reconstruction in Gaza, and a pathway [to a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict].” When asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to put Gaza under IDF control for an indefinite period of time, Blinken replied that “there may be a need for some transition period.”

09:25 GMT
The G7 countries are working together with partners in the Middle East on sanctions “to deny Hamas the ability to raise and use funds to carry out atrocities,” the group’s foreign ministers have said in a joint statement after their meeting in Tokyo.

The G7 is “working intensively to prevent the conflict [between Israel and Hamas] from escalating further and spreading more widely,” the statement read. The top diplomats from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US also said that they “support humanitarian pauses and corridors to facilitate urgently needed assistance, civilian movement [in Gaza] and the release of hostages,” held by the Palestinian armed group.

08:45 GMT
Israeli police say they have identified the remains of 843 civilians killed during the attack by Hamas on October 7. They added that work to identify the remaining victims continues.

According to estimates by the Israeli authorities, around 1,000 civilians and 400 members of the security forces were killed in the incursion by Palestinian militants.

08:11 GMT
The suggestion by the now suspended Israeli heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, that Gaza should be nuked is proof of Israel having nuclear weapons, Mohammad Eslami the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) has said. “Once again, an Israeli official has admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, and more importantly, by threatening the innocent people of Gaza, he challenged the basic principles of international law and the UN Charter,” Eslami told IRNA news agency. The UN and other international organizations should “break their silence and take serious decisions against this arrogance that poses a serious threat to international peace and security,” he stressed.

Israel is widely believed to be a nuclear power. However, the country maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity on the issue, never officially admitting or denying having atomic weapons.

07:16 GMT
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been “destroyed emotionally” by last month’s Hamas attack on Israel and is now overreacting by planning to put Gaza under IDF control for an indefinite period of time, the country’s former PM Ehud Olmert has told Politico.

“I mean, something terrible happened to him. Bibi [Netanyahu] has been working all his life on the false pretence that he is Mr. Security. He’s Mr. Bulls**t,” he said. “Every minute he is prime minister he is a danger to Israel. I seriously mean it. I am certain the Americans understand he is in bad shape.”

Olmert, who led the government between 2006 and 2009, suggested that “it’s not in Israel’s interests to oversee the security of Gaza.” The priority should be to negotiate a settlement to the crisis with the international community, involving a return to talks on the formation of a Palestinian state, he said.

06:44 GMT
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said it is “deeply troubled” after its humanitarian convoy came under fire in Gaza City on Tuesday. According to a statement by the ICRC, two trucks were damaged and a driver lightly wounded in the incident. It didn’t specify which side was behind the attack.

“These are not the conditions under which humanitarian personnel can work,” William Schomburg, the head of the ICRC delegation in Gaza, insisted. “We are here to bring urgent assistance to civilians in need. Ensuring that vital assistance can reach medical facilities is a legal obligation under international humanitarian law.”

06:17 GMT
The US House of Representatives has voted to censure Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib over her criticism of the IDF’s attacks on Gaza and claims that US President Joe Biden is supporting the “genocide” of the Palestinians by backing Israel. The House voted 234 to 188 to slap its only Palestinian-American lawmaker with the hash punishment, which is just a step below expulsion.

Tlaib defended her stance ahead of the vote, insisting that “Palestinian people are not disposable. We are human beings just like anyone else.” She also stressed that her rhetoric had been targeted at Israel’s authorities, but not the Israeli people. “The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is anti-Semitic sets a very dangerous precedent, and it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation,” the lawmaker said.

05:46 GMT
The Israeli military has announced the name of another soldier killed in the fighting with Hamas in northern Gaza. This puts the IDF’s overall losses since the launch of the ground operation in the Palestinian enclave at 31 troops. https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1722104184219025498

04:46 GMT
US Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a House bill that would have provided emergency aid to Israel without funding to Ukraine, demanding the Republicans agree to President Joe Biden’s $106 bundle request instead. The Republican-majority House of Representatives passed a $14 billion standalone package for Israel last week.

“Time is of the essence and it's imperative that the Senate not delay delivering this crucial aid to Israel another day,” Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas said on Tuesday, urging the Democrats to agree to the House bill.

“Our allies in Ukraine can no more afford a delay than our allies in Israel,” replied Patty Murray of Washington, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Meanwhile, the White House proposal has sought to combine the aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and migration policy – presented as “border security” – in order to overcome opposition by some Republicans to continued funding of Kiev.

02:17 GMT
The White House has sounded alarms over the possible “reoccupation” of Gaza by Israel, after the country’s leader indicated Israeli forces would handle “overall security responsibility” in the area following the conflict with Hamas.

Asked to weigh in on the long-term plans for Gaza during an interview with CNN on Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby urged Israel to reconsider a lengthy military deployment.

“The president still believes that a reoccupation of Gaza by Israeli forces is not good. It’s not good for Israel; not good for the Israeli people,” he said without elaborating.

“One of the conversations that Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken has been having in the region is what does post-conflict Gaza look like?” the spokesman added “What does governance look like in Gaza? Because whatever it is it can’t be what it was on October 6. It can’t be Hamas.”

00:38 GMT
The IDF says that its warplanes have carried out a series of airstrikes against multiple Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon, including a warehouse, suspected rocket launch positions as well as “terrorist infrastructure and technological means.” The raid allegedly came in response to rocket fire from the Lebanese territory, the Israeli military said, releasing a video of its retaliatory strikes.
https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1721987782753603850