Operation Swords of Iron: What happened on Day 12?

US President Joe Biden pledged to do everything possible to secure the release of over 200 people held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, including some US citizens.

“There is no higher priority than the release and safe return of all these hostages,” Biden said during a one-day solidarity mission to Israel.

(JTA) – A historic but defunct synagogue in Tunisia was reduced to rubble on Tuesday amid mass rioting after an explosion in Gaza that Hamas blamed on Israel.

Hundreds of people were filmed setting fire to a synagogue in the central Tunisian city of Al Hammah in the hours after the explosion, at a Gaza City hospital where Hamas said many people died. Videos that circulated widely on social media showed people planting Palestinian flags and chipping away at the synagogue building’s stone walls, all without any police intervention.

Some users shared the video of the arson alongside a “#Palestine” hashtag. A video taken Wednesday shows heavy damage to the site, including to the fenced-off grave of a 16th-century rabbi that been a historic pilgrimage site for some Jews.

Images de la destruction de la synagogue filmées ce matin à El Hamma pic.twitter.com/NmO8Iah3ir

— Joseph Hirsch (@josephhirsch5) October 18, 2023

The incident, which has deprived Al Hammah of a key vestige of its Jewish past, comes amid attacks on other Jewish and Israeli sites around the world — including Germany, France, Portugal, China, and Australia — as Israel retaliates in the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ sweeping, deadly attack on Israel Oct. 7.

Protests against Israel ramped up Tuesday night after the hospital explosion. Dozens of rioters targeted the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan. Riots also broke out in Palestinian areas of the West Bank, Hebrew media reported.

Israeli and US officials said they believed with near certainty that the blast was caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Same synagogue damaged in Arab Spring protests

The Al Hammah synagogue was not an active site of worship, as no Jews live in the city; however, it is the site of the tomb of 16th-century Kabbalist Rabbi Yosef Ma’aravi. The same site was previously damaged during the 2011 Arab Spring protests, which were not about Israel.

The American Jewish Committee denounced the vandalism in a statement.

“We are horrified by the burning and destruction of the Al Hammah synagogue in Tunisia,” the group said on X, adding that it was “closely monitoring the situation” and in touch with Tunisian Jewish community leaders.

Tunisia’s small Jewish population of around 1,000 also contended with a deadly terrorist attack earlier this year when a gunman stormed a synagogue on the island of Djerba. Five people died, including two Jewish pilgrims who had traveled to the area from Israel and France, and wounding several others.

In response to the Djerba attack, Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, pledged he would increase security for the country’s Jewish residents. Saied also drew criticism for using the occasion of the attack to criticize Israel.

Since the latest explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza, Tunisians have taken to the streets in large numbers to support Palestinians. Tunisian schoolchildren have saluted the Palestinian flag, and Saied has pledged to stand by Palestinians while continuing to snuff out any talk of normalization with Israel, a path that four Arab countries took in 2020.

An Israeli airstrike targeted a monument to former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani near Odaisseh in southern Lebanon on Wednesday night, according to the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV.

غارة جوية معادية استهدفت مرتفع "العويضة" بين كفركلا والعديسة . pic.twitter.com/tuxMo03h05

— علي شعيب || Ali Shoeib 🇱🇧 (@alishoeib1970) October 18, 2023

Shortly before the report was published, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit announced that the IDF was conducting strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Lebanese reports published a photo of a plume of smoke on top of a hill, saying that the smoke came from a site hit in the strikes between Kfarkela and Aadaysit.

#بالفيديو | الآن قصف من طائرة مسيّرة للعدو في منطقة #الناقورة جنوب مدينة #صور pic.twitter.com/iQqhLOwH2h

— قناة المنار (@TVManar1) October 18, 2023

Later in the night, Lebanese media reported an Israeli airstrike near Naqoura, north of Rosh Hanikra.

US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has agreed to open the Rafah crossing to allow about 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.

"Sisi deserves some real credit because he was accommodating," Biden told reporters.

Biden and Sisi agreed to work closely on encouraging an "urgent and robust" response to a humanitarian appeal by the United Nations over the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the White House said on Wednesday.

The two leaders also agreed on the need to preserve stability in the Middle East and prevent escalation of the conflict, as well as reaffirming their commitment to the two nations' strategic partnership.

The Egyptian presidency said in a statement late on Wednesday that Biden and Sis discussed in a phone call ways to accelerate the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will arrive in Israel on Thursday as part of a two-day visit to the Middle East, British media reported on Wednesday night.

During the visit, Sunak will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog. Sunak will visit other countries in the region afterward to meet with counterparts across the Middle East.

Before departing for Israel, Sunak stated "Every civilian death is a tragedy. And too many lives have been lost following Hamas's horrific act of terror. The attack on al Ahli hospital should be a watershed moment for leaders in the region and across the world to come together to avoid further dangerous escalation of conflict. I will ensure the UK is at the forefront of this effort," according to Sky News.

The British prime minister referenced the explosion at al-Ahli hospital on Wednesday, saying "We should not rush to judgements before we have all the facts."

"Our intelligence services have been rapidly analyzing the evidence to independently establish the facts. We are not in a position at this point to say more than that."

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets Jordan's King Abdullah II, at Downing Street in London, Britain, October 15, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/HANNAH MCKAY/POOL)

UK foreign secretary to visit Middle East in coming days

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who visited Israel last week, is set to meet with leaders in Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar in the coming days, according to the BBC.

"It is in no one's interests - neither Israeli, Palestinian nor the wider Middle East - for others to be drawn into this conflict," said Cleverly on Thursday, according to Sky News. "I am meeting counterparts from influential states in the region to push for calm and stability, facilitate humanitarian access into Gaza and work together to secure the release of hostages."

Reuters contributed to this report.

Major General Rafi Milo of the Home Front Command said that he takes responsibility for the terrorist attack by Hamas that led to the outbreak of the war in Gaza on Wednesday night.


At a closed meeting on emergency preparedness, in which Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other senior officials took part, Milo said, "We failed in guarding the southern front. We cannot return people to their homes until we prove that life in Gaza has changed. Until the public sees it, there is no confidence in our security. The goal is of the operation that there will be no military or political rule by Hamas."

The burned bodies of a mother and a child were found in one of the Gaza border settlements by Zaka volunteers who work there as part of cleaning up the scenes of Hamas's October 7 attack.

Upon entering one of the houses, the charred body of a woman was discovered, and in the attic, they identified the body of a minor, apparently after he fled there trying to escape the terrorists.

The bodies are now being collected and will later be transferred for police and army inspection to the medical laboratories.

"We provide care to patients from the West Bank, Gaza, Israeli Arabs, and Jews, and we treat all of them without distinction," explained Dr. Jordanna Koppel, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital of Sheba Medical Center, in a conversation with US President Joe Biden on Wednesday. 
 
"When I receive a call in the middle of the night, and I'm told, 'We need you here urgently because someone's condition is unstable,' I don't ask questions," she emphasized. "We have children in Gaza who are not receiving medical attention. No one has visited them, and we have not received any updates." 

The spokesperson for Rabin Medical Center-Hasharon Hospital, Petah Tikvah has confirmed that a doctor at the hospital has been suspended from work after posts on his Facebook page appeared to support terrorism. A police complaint has been filed by hospital management.

This is the third case this week in which a medical worker allegedly published inflammatory publications supporting terrorism.

As of Wednesday 63 residents of Israel, most of them Israeli Arabs, have been arrested and imprisoned since the outbreak of the war on suspicion of inciting and supporting a terrorist organization as well as harming the IDF.

Forced displacement of Gaza residents is a red line that cannot be crossed, the Palestinian leadership said in a statement after a meeting in the West Bank City of Ramallah on Wednesday.

The statement said the Palestinian leadership considered the idea of the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip "a red line that we will not allow to be crossed, just as the displacement of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem or the West Bank should not be allowed."