One hundred days after Hamas gunmen broke out of Gaza to launch the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, Gaza lies in ruins and the Middle East is sliding toward a wider, more unpredictable conflict.
Israeli tanks and aircraft reportedly hit targets in southern and central Gaza on Sunday and there were fierce gun battles in some areas. Communications and internet services were down for the third day running, complicating the work of emergency and ambulance crews trying to help people in areas hit by fighting.
Fighting was concentrated in the southern city of Khan Younis, where Hamas said its fighters hit an Israeli tank, as well as in Al-Bureij and Al Maghazi in central Gaza, where the Israeli military said several militants were killed. The military also said its forces destroyed several rocket pits used by Hamas to fire missiles at Israel.
For both Israelis and Palestinians, the war has been a trauma that looks likely to last for years, deepening the hostility and mistrust that have stood in the way of peace for more than 75 years.
“No one will win,” said Rebecca Brindza, a spokesperson for families of the 240 Israelis and foreigners seized as hostages during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that opened the war.
Palestinian family marks baby’s 100th day
For one family that had to flee Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Oct. 7 marks the day their newest member was born. They named the infant Tufan — meaning flood or deluge in Arabic — after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. That’s the name given by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups to the series of attacks on southern Israel.
“His birth was happy and his mother was OK afterwards, but in the same moment, we lost 11 in exchange for him; they were killed in the bombing near our house,” Tufan’s grandfather, Ali Ahmed Asfour, told CBC freelancer Mohamed El Saife.
Asfour said those remaining in the family are trying to stay warm in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah, southern Gaza, “in just a tent, which is useless in the summer and the winter.”
In Tel Aviv, family members of those kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 were marking the 100 days since the deadly attacks by taking part in a 24-hour rally, in a part of the city now known as Hostage Square.
Many were praying for those still in captivity; others were grieving those who were killed.
The assault in the early morning hours of Oct. 7 caught Israel’s vaunted military and security services completely off guard, opening days of fear and uncertainty for the country as the details of the slaughter emerged.
The attack killed more than 1,200 people, Israel’s biggest single-day loss of life since the founding of the state in 1948, and the shock was compounded by the multiple accounts of rape and sexual violence by Hamas that emerged in the following weeks.
The Israeli response was immediate and unrelenting, beginning with a systematic aerial bombardment and followed by a ground invasion that have together laid waste to Gaza and forced almost two million people to flee their homes.
Almost 24,000 Palestinians have been killed and 60,000 wounded in the invasion, according to Gaza health authorities, the largest loss of Palestinian life suffered in the decades of wars and conflict with Israel since 1948.
Three months on, Israeli troops are still battling Hamas militants in the ruins of Gaza and hunting the architects of the October attack, such as Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, the movement’s military leader.
Most of the enclave’s hospitals have been destroyed, hunger is a growing threat and a dire humanitarian crisis threatens to kill even more Gazans than the Israeli military.
Palestinian officials lament ‘circle of death’
In a statement marking the 100 days, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Israel of creating “a circle of death” in Gaza.
Israeli officials say they do all they can to avoid civilian casualties, and they accuse Hamas of hiding its network of tunnels and military infrastructure among Gaza’s civilian population, deliberately putting them at risk.
Washington, Israel’s closest ally, has urged restraint and South Africa has brought a case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide, a charge it rejects as a gross and hypocritical distortion of the truth.
In an opening statement at the UN’s International Court of Justice on Thursday, South Africa accused Israel of violating the UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention in its response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. ‘No armed attack on a state’s territory no matter how serious … can provide any justification for, or defence to, breaches of the Convention, whether as a matter of law or morality,’ said Justice Minister Ronald Lamola.
Efforts to establish a new ceasefire have so far failed and the future of Gaza, which has been under blockade for more than 15 years, remains up in the air.
Meanwhile, violence in the volatile cities of the occupied West Bank has spiralled to levels that in other times would cause deep alarm.
The United States and other powers have called for the revival of a process to create an independent Palestinian state after the war, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has so far failed to respond.
2nd conflict brewing on northern border
Tensions have soared across the region, with Israel trading fire almost daily with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, Iran-backed militias attacking U.S. targets in Syria and Iraq, and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — also backed by Iran — targeting international shipping in the Red Sea, drawing a wave of U.S. airstrikes last week.
On Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, there has been a constant, low-level exchange of fire between troops and fighters from the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.
The Israeli military said several anti-tank missiles were fired into northern Israel on Sunday, one of which hit a house in the community of Kfar Yuval, killing one person and wounding a number of others.
The strike came a day after the Israeli army said it had killed three militants who had crossed into Israel from Lebanon and attempted to carry out an attack. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said that his group won’t stop until a ceasefire is in place for Gaza.
Iran, which backs Hamas, has taunted Israel but has so far refrained from direct action, and Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, has taken care to avoid an all-out confrontation.
However, the Houthis have caused increasing turmoil by attacking shipping in the Red Sea, bringing nearer the threat of a wider conflict that could draw in outside powers and further destabilize the global order.
For their part, Israelis see Hamas as an existential threat to their country and surveys show they support the campaign to destroy the group, even though most blame Netanyahu for the security failures that allowed the Oct. 7 attack to take place.
Posters showing the hostages are plastered on walls and bus stops across Israel and Sunday saw large demonstrations, demanding the return of more than 130 still held in Gaza after a truce in November, during which around half were swapped for Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
“Israel’s society is gripped by trauma and we cannot heal without them all coming back,” said Moran Stella Yanai, a former hostage returned in the swap who was kidnapped during the Nova music festival, where hundreds of party-goers were killed on the morning of Oct. 7.
Israel on Friday rejected accusations brought by South Africa at UN’s International Court of Justice that its military operation in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks is a state-led genocide campaign against the Palestinian population. ‘What Israel seeks by operating in Gaza is not to destroy a people, but to protect a people, its people, who are under attack on multiple fronts,’ said the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser, Tal Becker, in an opening statement.
As the war goes on, it imposes an increasing strain on Israel’s economy. The army has begun releasing some of the tens of thousands of reservists called up to fight Hamas and guard the northern border, to enable them to return to their jobs.
But Netanyahu, whose political future will depend on the outcome of the war, has shown no sign that he is listening to the growing calls for an end to the fighting.
“We are continuing the war until the end — until total victory,” he said at a news conference on Saturday.