Israel at war: What happened on days 21-22?

The Israel Defense Forces have entered the Gaza Strip and are operating on the ground with support from troops in the air and at sea, Israel's political and military leadership said Saturday night.

"Last night, additional ground forces entered Gaza, marking the beginning of the second stage of the war, whose goal is to destroy the military and political capabilities of Hamas and to bring our kidnapped citizens back," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an evening briefing. 

"We are only at the beginning of the road. The war will be tough and long," the prime minister said. But he stressed, "We are prepared for it. This is our second War of Independence. This is our mission, our purpose in life, and together we will prevail."

Netanyahu said that not only do "the people and the leadership stand behind our soldiers," but also the international community is rooting for Israel. 

"Our partners understand that if Israel doesn't win, they will be next," he said. "Many around the world understand well that Israel is not only fighting its war but a war for all of humanity, a war of humanity against barbarism."

Qatar told the United States that it was open to reconsidering Hamas's presence on its territory, a senior US official said on Friday, once the crisis over scores of hostages kidnapped by the Islamist militant group is resolved.

The understanding, which was first reported by the Washington Post, was reached during a meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, when the top US diplomat was visiting Doha earlier this month, the official said.

Eight Indian former naval officers who were handed the death penalty by a court in Qatar on Thursday were charged with spying for Israel, a source in India and another in Qatar said.

Neither New Delhi nor Doha has officially stated the charges against the eight who were arrested in August 2022.

In India, a government official aware of Doha's stance said the Qatar authorities had accused them of spying for Israel.

The sentence will be appealed

The eight Indians will be able to appeal the death sentence, the source briefed on the case in Qatar told Reuters, as well as also saying they had been charged with spying for Israel.

Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the case.

Some three people were wounded, including one in moderate condition and two in light condition, after a rocket hit an apartment in Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon, according to Magen David Adom.

One moderately wounded man was transferred to Sourasky Medical Center.

תיעוד מהבניין שככל הנראה נפגע במטח האחרון; לפחות 3 פצועים | עדכונים שוטפים@OrRavid | https://t.co/rcnYWbhOCs pic.twitter.com/JsYNENpnms

— החדשות - N12 (@N12News) October 27, 2023

Footage reportedly from the scene showed extensive damage to an apartment on the upper floor of an apartment building, with smoke rising from the scene.

Tel Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai asked the crowd gathering at the scene of the blast to evacuate the area.

Moscow seeks to secure the release of the 229 captives in Gaza by working through all its contacts and within that context it also hosted Hamas representatives, Russia’s Embassy in Israel said. 

“Russia’s contacts and actions in the Middle East and in international organizations are focused primarily on the immediate release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip,” the Embassy stated.

Moscow is also seeking to evacuate its citizens and to help other countries extricate their nationals from Gaza, the embassy stated.

Shayetet 13 commandos overnight carried out a targeted raid from the sea in the southern Gaza Strip, destroying Hamas terrorist infrastructure used by the organization’s naval commando force, the IDF said Friday afternoon.

Shayetet 13 is a specialized division within the Israeli Navy. This unit is primarily focused on executing missions involving countering acts of terrorism, gathering maritime intelligence, and rescuing hostages at sea.

The operation also involved the participation of additional naval and aerial troops. The forces exited the area upon completing the mission, the army said.

Hitting Hamas

IDF infantry, engineering, and armored forces entered the central Gaza Strip on Thursday night and struck dozens of Hamas targets, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said Friday morning.

During the raid, IDF aircraft and artillery also struck Hamas targets, including anti-tank missile launchers and operational headquarters. The Israeli forces exited the area at the end of the raid, with no injuries reported.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.

Russia on Friday lashed out at Israeli criticism over hosting Hamas officials in Moscow, claiming in a statement that it is "absolutely unacceptable to accuse us of supporting terrorism." 

A delegation from Hamas visited Moscow on Thursday for talks on the release of foreign hostages including Russian citizens that the terror group is currently holding in Gaza, Russian news agencies reported.

"We find absolutely unacceptable any attempts to accuse us of supporting terrorism and thereby distort and erode our fundamental approaches as well as cast doubt on the purposeful work of our country to solve primary humanitarian tasks that meet the interests of the citizens of Russia, Israel, Palestine and other countries," the Russian embassy to Israel said.

Some three people were wounded, including one in moderate condition and two in light condition, after a rocket hit an apartment in Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon, according to Magen David Adom.

One moderately wounded man was transferred to Sourasky Medical Center.

תיעוד מהבניין שככל הנראה נפגע במטח האחרון; לפחות 3 פצועים | עדכונים שוטפים@OrRavid | https://t.co/rcnYWbhOCs pic.twitter.com/JsYNENpnms

— החדשות - N12 (@N12News) October 27, 2023

Footage reportedly from the scene showed extensive damage to an apartment on the upper floor of an apartment building, with smoke rising from the scene.

Tel Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai asked the crowd gathering at the scene of the blast to evacuate the area.

What lies in wait for Israeli ground troops in Gaza, security sources say, is a Hamas tunnel network hundreds of kilometers long and up to 80 meters deep, described by one freed hostage as "a spider's web" and by one expert as the "Viet Cong times 10."

The Palestinian Islamist terrorist group has different kinds of tunnels running beneath the sandy 360-sq-km coastal strip and its borders - including attack, smuggling, storage and operational burrows, Western and Middle East sources familiar with the matter said.

The United States believes Israel's special forces will face an unprecedented challenge having to battle Hamas terrorists while trying to avoid killing hostages held below ground, a US official said.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that Iraq's nine-month-long battle to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State might prove to have been easier than what awaits the Israelis - likely to be "a lot of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), a lot of booby traps, and just a really grinding activity."

Even though Israel has invested heavily in tunnel detection - including a sensor-equipped underground barrier it called an "iron wall" - Hamas is still thought to have working tunnels to the outside world.

A Palestinian boy walks in a tunnel as he takes part in a military exercise graduation ceremony at a summer camp organised by Hamas's armed wing, east of Gaza City July 22, 2016 (credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMED SALEM)

After the last round of hostilities in 2021, Hamas's leader in Gaza, Yehya Al-Sinwar, said: "They started saying they destroyed 100kms of Hamas tunnels. I am telling you, the tunnels we have in the Gaza Strip exceed 500kms. Even if their narrative is true, they only destroyed 20% of the tunnels."

Hostage witness

There has been no corroboration of the comment by Sinwar, who is thought to be hiding underground ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive.

But the estimate of hundreds of kilometers is widely accepted by security analysts, even though the blockaded coastal strip is only 40km (25 miles) long.

With Israel in full control of Gaza's air and sea access and 59km of its 72km land borders - with Egypt 13km to the south - tunnels provide one of the few ways for Hamas to bring in weapons, equipment and people.

While it and other Palestinian groups are secretive about their networks, recently released Israeli hostage, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, said: "It looked like a spider's web, many, many tunnels," adding: "We walked kilometers under the ground."

Hamas believes that with Israel's overwhelming aerial and armored military superiority, tunnels are a way to cut some of those advantages by forcing Israel's soldiers to move underground in cramped spaces the Hamas fighters know well.

An Israeli military spokesperson said on Thursday: "I won't elaborate on the number of kilometers of tunnels but it is a high number, built under schools and residential areas."

Urging the United Nations Security Council to intervene, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for an immediate cessation of "aggression" on Gaza and moves toward "a political solution instead of military and security solutions."

Underground city

Israeli security sources say Israel's heavy aerial bombardments have caused little damage to the tunnel infrastructure with Hamas naval commandos able to launch a seaborne attack targeting coastal communities near Gaza this week.

"Although we have been attacking massively for days and days, the (Hamas) leadership is pretty much intact, as is the ability to command and control, the ability even to try and launch counter attacks," said Amir Avivi, a former brigadier general whose senior positions in the Israeli military included deputy commander of the Gaza division, tasked with tackling tunnels.

"There is a whole city all over Gaza underneath with depths of 40-50 meters. There are bunkers and headquarters and storage and of course they are connected to more than a thousand rocket launching positions."

Other sources estimated depths of up to 80 meters.

One Western security source said: "They run for miles. They are made of concrete and very well made. Think of the Viet Cong times 10. They have had years and lots of money with which to work with."

Another security source, from one of Israel's neighboring countries, said Hamas's tunnels from Egypt remain active.

"The supply chain is still intact these days. The network involved in facilitating co-ordination are some Egyptian military officers. It is unclear if there is knowledge of this by the Egyptian army," he said.

A small number of narrower, deep, smuggling tunnels were still operating until recently between Egypt and Gaza, according to two security sources and a trader in the Egyptian city of El Arish, but they had slowed to a near-halt since the Israel-Hamas war started.

Egyptian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Wednesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said while inspecting military units in Suez that the army's role was to secure Egyptian borders.

Long game

Hamas was created in Gaza in 1987 and is thought to have begun digging tunnels in the mid-1990s, when Israel granted Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization some degree of self-rule in Gaza.

The tunnel network is a key reason why Hamas is stronger in Gaza than in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israel's settlements, military bases and monitoring devices make it harder to get anything in from Jordan.

Tunneling became easier in 2005 when Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza, and when Hamas won power in a 2006 election.

Shortly afterwards Hamas's military wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, captured Gilad Shalit and killed two other Israeli soldiers after burrowing 600 meters to raid the Kerem Shalom base on the Gaza border.

A year later Hamas used tunnels in Gaza to launch a military strike against the forces of Arafat's successor as PLO leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

Although the military tunnels remained off-limits to outside eyes, during that era Gaza smugglers would show off their scarcely concealed commercial tunnels under the Rafah border.

These were around three feet (one meter) wide and used winch motors to haul goods along the sandy tunnel floors in hollowed-out petrol barrels.

One Rafah tunnel operator, Abu Qusay, said a half-mile tunnel took three to six months to dig and could yield profits of up to $100,000 a day. The most profitable item was bullets, bought for $1 each in Egypt and fetching more than $6 in Gaza. Kalashnikov rifles, he said, cost $800 in Egypt and sold for twice that.

In 2007 the military wing is thought to have brought its commander Mohammed Deif into Gaza through a tunnel from Egypt. Deif was the mastermind behind Hamas's deadly Oct. 7 attack into Israel, which killed 1,400 people and hostages were taken.

Tunnel hunting

Professor Joel Roskin, a geomorphologist and geologist with Israel's Bar-Ilan University said it was difficult to map the tunnel network accurately from the surface or space, adding highly classified information was essential for 3D mapping and imagery visualization.

Among the elite units tasked with going underground is Yahalom, specialist commandos from Israel's Combat Engineering Corps known as the "weasels," who specialize in finding, clearing and destroying the tunnels.

Earlier this week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Yahalom fighters, telling them: "I rely on you, the people of Israel rely on you."

Israeli sources said what awaits them is formidable and they faced an enemy that has regrouped and learned from previous Israeli operations in 2014 and 2021.

"There are going to be a lot of booby traps. They have thermobaric weapons that they didn't have in 2021, which are more lethal. And I believe they acquired a lot of anti-tank weapon systems that are going to try to hit our APCs (armored personnel carriers), tanks," said Amnon Sofrin, a former brigadier general and former commander of the Combat Intelligence Corps.

Sofrin, who was also previously head of the intelligence directorate with Israel's Mossad spy agency, said Hamas would also be trying to kidnap soldiers.

Daphne Richemond-Barak, professor at Israel's Reichman University and author of the book Underground Warfare, said the conflicts in Syria and Iraq had changed the situation.

"What the IDF (Israeli military) is likely to face inside the tunnels is also all of the experience and all of the knowledge that has been gained by groups like ISIS (Islamic State) and has been ... passed on to Hamas."

London Mayor Sadiq Khan called on Friday for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, going a step beyond his Labour Party's appeals for a humanitarian pause in fighting to allow aid into the Gaza Strip.

The apparent difference in stance between Khan and Labour leader Keir Starmer highlights disagreement and growing unrest within Britain's main opposition party over its position on the conflict.

Labour, which polls indicate has a strong chance of forming Britain's next government in an election expected in 2024, called this week for a pause in fighting, echoing similar calls from the US, European Union and Britain's Conservative government.

Such pauses are seen as a measure short of a full ceasefire, but critics say it does not go far enough.

Khan, a senior voice within Labour, said he backed Israel's right to defend itself but that a military escalation could worsen a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Protesters hold placards and flags during a demonstration, organised by the British Board of Jewish Deputies for those who oppose antisemitism, in Parliament Square in London. (credit: HENRY NICHOLLS/REUTERS)

Aid agencies have highlighted an increasingly desperate need for water, food and medical services in the Palestinian enclave.

"I join the international community in calling for a ceasefire. It would stop the killing and would allow vital aid supplies to reach those who need it in Gaza," Khan said in a video posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Thousands of innocent civilians have already been killed in Israel and Gaza.

With the humanitarian crisis set to deteriorate even further, I’m calling for a ceasefire.pic.twitter.com/9HPau9X9jP

— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) October 27, 2023

A Labour spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Khan's statement.

Labour has serious failings handling persistent antisemitism complaints

The equalities watchdog found in 2020 that Labour had serious failings how it handled persistent antisemitism complaints under its former leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Starmer has sought to rid the party of an anti-Jewish image since becoming leader that year.

However, some Labour politicians, especially Muslim lawmakers and local government officials, were angered by comments Starmer made earlier this month that were interpreted to mean he backed Israel's right to cut off power and water to Gaza.

His spokesperson later clarified that he had meant Israel had a right to defend itself, but people in Gaza needed access to water and power.

One Labour lawmaker from northern England said he had received hundreds of emails in the last week from voters complaining about the way Starmer had handled the situation.

"The tone has been completely wrong. We look indifferent to innocent people being bombed in Gaza," the lawmaker said.