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TEL AVIV, Israel — President Biden weighed an unprecedented trip to Israel on Monday as a humanitarian crisis mounted in Gaza, where aid remained blocked, and Israeli generals prepared for the military’s most significant operation in years.
The challenge facing U.S. diplomatic efforts was crystallized as air sirens warning of incoming rocket fire disrupted a meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israel’s war cabinet, sending the top U.S. diplomat and Israeli military officials rushing to a nearby shelter.
The dramatic moment underscored the stark decisions facing Israeli and U.S. officials. Aid workers warned that Gaza was already reckoning with a humanitarian disaster because of Israel’s blockade of water and electricity, a punishing response to the Hamas attack that killed more than 1,400 people.
Israel’s planned invasion — aimed at eradicating the territory’s ruling Hamas government — would inevitably deepen the crisis. The operation is expected to focus in part on the de facto capital, Gaza City, and the network of tunnels Hamas militants use to ferry weapons and evade strikes, according to senior U.S. and Israeli officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.
Already, at least 2,778 people have been killed in Gaza and almost 10,000 wounded. Body bags have run out and the dead are now being buried in mass graves.
Hospital workers brought in ice cream freezer trucks on Oct. 15 to store bodies in Gaza City as the city’s hospital morgues were packed. (Video: Reuters)
U.S. officials said they were attempting to create safe zones and limit civilian casualties, while also trying to deter Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah from entering the conflict, using diplomatic back channels to warn adversaries against opening a new front. The Pentagon is sending two aircraft carrier strike groups to the Middle East. Amid the tension, Biden is considering visiting Israel as early as this week, in what would be a high-stakes demonstration of support for its ally, U.S. officials said.
Israeli officials remained adamant that a violent response targeting Hamas in Gaza was necessary.
“This will be a long war, the price will be high, but we are going to win,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Blinken during a meeting in Tel Aviv.
Blinken then joined a meeting of Israel’s war cabinet when the country’s commercial capital came under rocket fire. The meeting was one of several the secretary has had during his second visit to the Jewish state in the span of four days aimed at conveying Washington’s unequivocal support for Israel.
“You have and always have the support of the United States,” Blinken told Israel’s defense minister.
Earlier, Blinken sought to negotiate a deal to open the Rafah crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border, to allow much-needed aid in and foreigners and dual nationals out. Following his meeting Sunday with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, Blinken said Rafah “will be opened” so that hundreds of U.S. citizens could have the chance to leave. He added that the United States was in talks with the United Nations, Egypt, Israel and others to agree on a mechanism to allow aid into Gaza.
Egypt also believed a deal had been reached with the United States and Israel to open the crossing for almost five hours on Monday, to allow 100 trucks carrying humanitarian aid into Gaza and foreign passport holders to leave the strip, according to a person with knowledge of Egyptian diplomatic efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Several hundred people gathered on the Palestinian side of the gate Monday in anticipation of the border reopening, television footage from the crossing showed. Palestinians who have been waiting for days on the Egyptian side of the border to cross back to their families in Gaza piled into buses on Monday to wait, according to Ahmed Salem, head of the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, which has a team monitoring the border.
But the crossing remained closed, and Jens Laerke, spokesman in Geneva for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Monday that the agreement was not, “as of this point, a done deal.”
The standoff over the border crossing deepened frustration and panic among aid groups, which warn that time is running out for wounded and displaced Gazans to receive critical — and in many cases, lifesaving — supplies, as the humanitarian situation rapidly deteriorates.
More than 2 million people live in Gaza, a cramped enclave that has been ruled by Hamas for 17 years. Israeli troops were massed along the territory’s border, after warning more than 1 million residents to leave northern Gaza and retreat to the south.
Israeli officials have declared the area under “full siege,” meaning that no food, fuel or medicines are allowed to enter.
To keep the lights on in Gaza City’s largest hospital, Wissam AbuJarad, an anesthetist, said staff were collecting gas from dwindling stocks in the area to maintain a steady supply to their generators.
“If we run out of fuel, then we will lose all of the patients in the ICU, the babies in the incubators, and the patients who need surgery,” AbuJarad said.
He said that some staff had been reduced to drinking from IV solution bags because Israel had cut off water supplies to the enclave.
But even as Palestinians fled northern Gaza, Israeli strikes continued to pummel the relatively safer cities in the south. In Rafah, the crossing itself was damaged by a strike on Oct. 10, leading to its closure. In Rafah city nearby, civilians have also been killed.
One resident, Mohamed Youssef Abutaha, described through tears how he had been stocking up on groceries with his son and his sister Monday morning when an Israeli airstrike slammed into the street up ahead of them. “It fell in the sand,” he said. “If it had hit the building, we would instantly have died.”
The newly appointed U.S. envoy for humanitarian efforts, David Satterfield, a former ambassador to Lebanon and Turkey, is now charged with helping establish “safe zones” inside Gaza, U.S. officials said. But the practicalities remain elusive, and aid groups have warned that forced displacement without guarantees of safe passage or return would amount to a war crime.
At the same time, a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that had not yet been made public, said that the Pentagon had issued prepare-to-deploy orders this week for roughly 2,000 service members as part of the Biden administration’s evolving response to the crisis in the Middle East — essentially shortening the time period in which that personnel must be ready to deploy if military leaders make that decision.
The troops, who were categorized as advisory and medical personnel, are not expected to be sent into Israel but could be sent to the Middle East or moved around within the region. The decision was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
In Israel, the director of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, Ronen Bar, said in an all-staff memo published Monday that he took responsibility for failing to thwart the attack by Hamas militants. The brazen, multipronged assault in southern Israel sent shock waves across the country, puncturing the widespread view among Israelis that the nation’s extensive surveillance apparatus would detect plans for an attack before it was carried out.
“The responsibility is mine. Despite a series of actions we carried out, unfortunately, on Saturday we were unable to establish sufficient deterrence so as to thwart the attack,” Bar said. “There will be time for investigations. Now we are fighting.”
Israeli officials said Monday that its military was holding a number of gunmen that it captured during the attack. The Israel Defense Forces was also reviewing body-camera footage taken from some of the prisoners, as well as from slain Hamas fighters, giving the army more insight into their movements, planning and communications, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said.
The material also added to the gruesome and growing evidence of the killings and torture carried out by Palestinian militants in the day-long rampage. Among the images The Post was allowed to view Monday were previously unviewed scenes of a man being beheaded with a garden hoe, bodies of burned children and infants, and drivers being shot.
Much of the new material comes from cameras worn on the vests or helmets of many of the attackers, and from cellphones they carried.
In Gaza, about 200 to 250 Israeli captives are also being held, the spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing said in an audio recording Monday, which was broadcast by the Al Jazeera news network. At least 200 captives are held by Hamas, the spokesman, Abu Obaida said, while the rest are being held by different armed factions in Gaza.
Fighting also flared along Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, raising the prospect that the conflict could still drag in more regional players.
The IDF said Monday that it plans to evacuate Israelis from 28 communities within 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) of the country’s border with Lebanon, after exchanging fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah overnight.
On Monday, Hezbollah released a video showing its snipers shooting at Israeli surveillance cameras at several points along the border, destroying them.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who lives outside Gaza, said he was grateful for the actions Hezbollah has taken against Israel in an interview Monday with an Arabic-language news channel.
“But the battle needs more,” Meshal said.
Parker and Mahfouz reported from Cairo and Loveluck from London. Steve Hendrix contributed reporting from Tel Aviv. Hazem Balousha in Gaza, Noga Tarnopolsky in Jerusalem, Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan in Washington, Kevin Sieff in Mexico City and Leo Sands in London contributed to this report.