Israeli forces raided Gaza’s largest hospital early on November 15, where hundreds of patients, including newborns, have been stranded with dwindling supplies and no electricity, as the Army extended its control across Gaza City and the north.
Shifa Hospital has become a symbol of the widespread suffering of Palestinian civilians during the war between Israel and Hamas, which erupted after the militant group killed some 1,200 people and seized around 240 captives in a surprise October 7 attack into southern Israel.
The hospital is also at the heart of clashing narratives over who is to blame for the thousands of deaths and widespread destruction in the besieged territory. Israel accuses Hamas of using Palestinians as human shields, while Palestinians and rights groups say Israel has recklessly endangered civilians as it seeks to eradicate the group.
Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza, said Israeli tanks had entered the medical compound and that soldiers had entered buildings including the emergency and surgery departments, which house intensive care units.
“The occupation forces stormed the buildings,” he said angrily over the phone. He said the patients, including children, are terrified. “They are screaming. It’s a very terrifying situation ... we can do nothing for the patients but pray.” The Israeli military said it was carrying out a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital”. It said it warned “relevant authorities in Gaza” that all military activities within the hospital must cease. “Unfortunately, it did not.”
Israel says Hamas has a massive command centre inside and beneath Shifa, but has not provided visual evidence, while Hamas and the hospital staff have repeatedly denied the allegations. Hours before the raid, the United States said it had its own intelligence suggesting Hamas used Shifa and other hospitals, and tunnels beneath them, to support military operations and hold hostages.
The military said that the forces raiding Shifa have medical teams and are searching for hostages as part of the operation. Israeli forces also claimed control of several key buildings and a downtown neighbourhood in Gaza City.
Most of the hundreds of thousands of people living in Gaza City and surrounding areas have fled after weeks of Israeli bombardments. Hardly any aid has been delivered to the north, which has been without power or running water for weeks.
More than 11,200 people, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, and two thirds of the territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes. About 2,700 people have been reported missing. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.
Almost the entire population of Gaza has squeezed into the southern two-thirds of the tiny territory, where conditions have been deteriorating as bombardment there continues.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday that its fuel depot in Gaza was empty and that it would soon cease relief operations, including bringing limited supplies of food and medicine in from Egypt for the more than 6,00,000 people
sheltering in severely overcrowded U.N.-run schools and other facilities in the south.
“Without fuel, the humanitarian operation in Gaza is coming to an end. Many more people will suffer and will likely die,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA.
Israeli defence officials changed course early Wednesday to allow some 24,000 litres (6,340 gallons) of fuel in for humanitarian efforts, officials said. Earlier, they repeatedly rejected allowing fuel into Gaza, saying Hamas would divert it for military use.
COGAT, the Israeli defence body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would allow U.N. trucks to refill at the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border later Wednesday. It said the decision was made in response to a request from the U.S.
Thousands of displaced people who had been sheltering at Shifa, along with patients who were able to move, had fled the medical compound in Gaza City through a corridor established by Israeli forces in recent days as Israeli troops encircled the complex and battled Hamas militants outside its gates.
Shifa had stopped operations over the weekend, as its supplies dwindled and a lack of electricity left it no way to run incubators and other lifesaving equipment. After days without refrigeration, morgue stuff dug a mass grave on Nov. 14 for 120 bodies in the yard.
The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel on Saturday. Another 36 babies are at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators, according to the ministry.
Meanwhile, Qatari mediators were on November 15 seeking to negotiate a deal between Hamas and Israel that includes the release of around 50 civilian hostages from Gaza in exchange for a three-day ceasefire, an official briefed on the negotiations said.
The deal, under discussion, which has been coordinated with the U.S., would also see Israel release some Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails and increase the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza, the official said. Hamas has agreed to the general outlines of this deal, but Israel has not and it is still negotiating the details, the official said.
Congress raises questions on release of PM-Kisan instalment two days ahead of M.P., Chhattisgarh polls
The Congress on November 15 questioned the release of the 15th instalment of the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi just two days ahead of assembly elections in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and wondered if it was “intentional”.
While polling in Madhya Pradesh will be held in a single-phase on November 17, in neighbouring Chhattisgarh, voting for the second-phase will be conducted. The first phase was held on November 7.
The sixth installment of the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi was released on August 1, 2020, while the ninth instalment on August 9, 2021, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X in Hindi.
The 12th instalment was released on October 17 last year, said Ramesh, whose party aims to retain power in Chhattisgarh and defeat the BJP in Madhya Pradesh. “The 15th instalment under PM-Kisan is coming today i.e. on November 15, 2023. Now when elections are to be held in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in two days, in Rajasthan in 10 days and in Telangana in 15 days, the 15th instalment is being released today,” he said in his post on X.
“Is this delay not intentional?” Ramesh asked. Polling in Rajasthan is scheduled for November 25 and in Telangana for November 30. The counting of votes for these states along with Mizoram will be held on December 3.
36 killed as bus falls into gorge in J&K’s Doda district
The bus, which could be seen in CCTV footage crossing a checkpoint minutes before the accident, skidded off the road and rolled down the slope of a gorge in Assar area in the morning. The cause of the accident is not immediately known. The bus was badly damaged due to the impact of the accident, as it kept hitting big rocks, eyewitnesses said.
According to senior officials from the Doda district administration, 36 people died in the incident so far, and 19 others were injured. “We fear the toll is likely to go up,” they said. The victims include men as well as women, they added.
U.K. Supreme Court says Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation policy is unlawful
In a big blow to the Rishi Sunak government, the U.K. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that the government’s proposed policy to send certain asylum seekers to Rwanda while their cases are processed is unlawful. The Supreme Court concurred with a Court of Appeal decision from June this year, and said that there were sufficient grounds to believe that ‘refoulment’ could occur, i.e., genuine refugees could be returned to their countries of origin and unsafe circumstances.
U.K Supreme Court’s President Justice Robert Reed said that “there were substantial grounds for believing that a real risk of refoulment existed” and that there were “serious and systematic defects” in Rwanda’s asylum claims processing. The Rwandan system may, in the future, be able to deliver the changes required to address this risk, Justice Reed said, adding, however, that those changes were not in place now.
The ruling is also a blow — the second this week — to former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, herself the child of Indian-origin migrants from Africa. Braverman, who was fired by Sunak on Monday had said in October 2022 that it was her “dream” and “obsession” to see a flight take off for Rwanda. However, the first flight in June 2022 did not take off, after the European Court of Human Rights intervened stopping seven individuals from being deported.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court made it clear that it had made a legal decision, not a political one, and that the Rwanda policy, if currently executed, would run afoul of the European Convention on Human Rights (which is valid in the U.K.) as well as several United Nations treaty.
Cracking down on illegal migration and bringing down net migration numbers has been one of the core policies of successive Conservative Prime Ministers. The Rwanda plan was conceived by former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, largely to tackle migrants arriving across the English Channel in “small boats”. The government had paid the Rwandan government £140m for the scheme.
Once they had been sent to Rwanda, the asylum seekers could return to their home countries, stay in Rwanda, or apply for asylum in another country (not the U.K.). Significantly, the government is in the process of adding India to a “safe country” list to facilitate the removal of its citizens who arrive illegally. A total of 683 Indians arrived in the U.K. via illegal Channel crossings in 2022 and Indian citizens were the third largest group of asylum seekers in the U.K. as per data from the first half of this year.
Responding to the verdict, Sunak said that the government had been “planning for all eventualities” and was “completely committed to stopping the boats”. He said the court had confirmed that it was not, per se, unlawful to send illegal migrants to a safe third country, suggesting that the government could come up with a country other than Rwanda to send asylum seekers to.
“If necessary, I am prepared to revisit our domestic legal frameworks,” Sunak tweeted.
“The British people deserve a serious government with serious plans to fix the broken asylum system,” Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said. “My Labour government will stop squandering taxpayer’s money and deliver the secure borders our country needs,” he added.
In Brief:
Freedom fighter, senior-most Communist leader in the country, and one of the founding members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), N. Sankaraiah, died at a private hospital in Chennai on November 15 aged 101. The veteran leader had not been well for a couple of days, and was admitted to the hospital on November 13. Born on July 15, 1922, Sankaraiah was among the 32 national council members of the Communist Party of India (CPI), who left the party over ideological differences, which led to the formation of the CPI(M) in 1964.
Evening Wrap will return tomorrow.
