Transcript:
The Inside Story: Israel at War
Episode 115 – October 26, 2023
Show Open:
This week on the inside story:
Bloodshed in Gaza and mass displacements on both sides of the border as Israel continues striking Hamas targets.
Aid trickles through Egypt into Gaza ... but it's not enough, and Egypt says no to refugees.
What’s the latest in the conflict? And what is the world saying about it?
Plus, Jews and Muslims on high alert for hate crimes as the conflict boils outside the region.
Now... on The Inside Story... Israel at War.
The Inside Story:
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA, VOA White House Bureau Chief:
Welcome to the Inside Story, I’m Patsy Widakuswara at the White House. Israel’s military actions against Hamas continue to intensify, as does the humanitarian crisis inside Gaza. The Biden administration continues to support Israeli’s right to defend itself as it tries to contain the conflict from spreading across the region.
As the Israeli military continues to pound Hamas targets in Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank argue that the Palestinian Authority, particularly President Mahmoud Abbas, should adopt a more confrontational approach towards Israel. They point out that decades of negotiations have yielded no significant progress. We begin with Yan Boechat in Ramallah in the West Bank.
YAN BOECHAT, Reporting for VOA:
The streets of the West Bank are filled with anger and frustration. After more than two weeks of war between Israel and Hamas, many Palestinians say the brutality of the conflict is growing closer, and they are criticizing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen.
Othman Hassan, Deputy Mayor of Qusra:
Abu Mazen is incapable of doing anything. He does not have the ability to protect us, to defend us. He is helpless. Our only hope is for other countries to impact Israel.
YAN BOECHAT:
Otham Hassan is the deputy mayor of Qusra, a small Palestinian village in the West Bank. On October 11th, it was attacked by Jewish settlers who live in the area. Four people were killed, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Since the Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, around 100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces and Jewish settlers, according to various reports.
As violence escalates, more people here are calling for a confrontational approach instead of the negotiations favored by the Palestinian Authority in recent decades. For many, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have not benefited Palestinians by taking a less assertive stance toward Israel.
Sabri Saidam, Fatah Central Committee Deputy Secretary-General:
With more pressure over the Palestinians, any group that is aiming to confront Israel becomes popular. I’m not worried about the popularity of this party or our party. Basically, I’m worried about the world not seeing the importance of ending the conflict.
YAN BOECHAT:
Saidam recognizes that pressure is mounting on the Palestinian Authority with the war in Gaza and the escalation of violence in the West Bank. Last week, hundreds of people took to the streets of Ramallah in protest of Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Internal security clashed with the protesters.
Sabri Saidam, Fatah Central Committee Deputy Secretary-General:
I think are charged with emotions, and anybody in power is expected by the people to do more and we are certainly doing everything we could, in every aspect the term, because we want to see the end of hostilities.
YAN BOECHAT:
But at least one person on the streets of West Bank doesn't seem convinced.
Feras Hasan, Teacher:
First of all, I think the Palestinian Authority and the politicians that they have should start thinking about something else, because 30 years of negotiation has brought nothing to us.
YAN BOECHAT:
As the division in the West Bank grows, only one thing seems to unite the Palestinians here: the sense that the worst is yet to come.
Yan Boechat, VOA News, Ramallah, West Bank.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
While the humanitarian situation in Gaza is becoming increasingly dire, on the Israeli side of the border, those forced to evacuate are also looking for shelter. Our Correspondent in Jerusalem Linda Gradstein has the story.
LINDA GRADSTEIN, VOA Correspondent:
A tent city goes up on the grounds of the Kfar Maccabiah Convention Center in a Tel Aviv suburb for the latest group of Israeli evacuees, now fleeing towns near the Lebanese border and the threat of Hezbollah rocket attacks and incursions.
Until now, many of the 200,000 Israeli evacuees fleeing attacks from Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north have been housed in hotels throughout Israel.
Amir Gissin, Maccabi World Union CEO:
Here is an attempt to have a shelter for 200 evacuees from the north of Israel. We erect for them 30 tents, glamping style, that will enable them to really enjoy themselves while they’re here as much as they can.
Gissin says the tents can withstand severe weather conditions if the war continues into the winter. He says the challenge is keeping the tent dwellers safe, so they have limited the number to 200 because that is the capacity of the nearby bomb shelter that would protect them against rockets from Gaza.
Like Kfar Maccabiah, the resort city of Eilat is already over 100 percent capacity with evacuees from near Gaza, and workers are putting up a tent complex for 400 new evacuees coming from the north.
Residents of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, just 30 meters from the Gaza border, have been housed in a hotel in Eilat, in better times a popular vacation spot on the Red Sea. It's a small comfort in the midst of a terrifying ordeal.
Bruria Carni Hadas, Displaced Kibbutz Kerem Shalom Resident:
Many people are so terrified and so traumatized now that they don’t even dare (go) out of the hotel. So, living in a tent seems so not protected and not giving the security feeling we need. We need to re-find our trust in people and to rebuild our strength and to feel secure.
LINDA GRADSTEIN:
In Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled their homes in the north of the enclave amid heavy bombardment by Israeli warplanes and an Israeli warning to move to the southern Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground invasion.
Many have been living in tents erected by the U.N. for more than two weeks.
Sojood Najm, Displaced Gaza Resident:
I've been in this tent for nine days, and I can't even bathe my children. I don't have water. I don't have a space to bathe them. I can't find clean clothes. I don't have clean floors to seat them on. I worry for my children. They cough and their noses run at night. My oldest son has asthma.
LINDA GRADSTEIN:
The war between Israel and Hamas shows no sign of ending soon, which means that thousands of people on both sides of the conflict have something in common: They are looking at spending a cold winter in tents.
Linda Gradstein, Voa News, Jerusalem.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
Amid an impending Israeli ground invasion on Gaza, President Joe Biden is facing the challenges of balancing “unwavering” support for America’s closest ally in the Middle East with international demands for a more robust protections for civilians in Gaza and Israeli restraint to avoid a broader war in the Middle East.
As airstrikes in Gaza continue, President Joe Biden has been urging Israel to consider the consequences of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls its “mighty vengeance” on Hamas.
Unidentified Reporter:
Mr. President, are you encouraging the Israelis to delay invasion?
President Joe Biden:
I'm talking to the Israelis.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
It’s part of Biden’s push to buy more time to secure delivery of much-needed aid for civilians, the extraction of several hundred Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza, and hostage negotiations.
Four hostages, including two Americans, have been released from among the more than 200 people that Israeli officials say were abducted by Hamas during its coordinated attacks on Israeli soil on October 7 that killed at least 1400 people.
Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General:
The attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
Those remarks by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday prompted criticism from
Gilad Erdan, Israeli ambassador to the U.N.
Gilad Erdan, Israeli Ambassador to the UN:
The U.N. is failing, and you, Mr. Secretary-General, have lost all morality and impartiality.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, also at the Security Council on Tuesday, warned Tehran against widening the war as Israel braces for more attacks from Iran-backed groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, that are likely to intensify once Israel begins its ground invasion.
Blinken delivered a forceful defense of Israel's military actions but issued the administration’s strongest urging to Israel so far to “avoid harm to civilians.”
Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State:
It means food, water, medicine and other essential humanitarian assistance must be able to flow into Gaza and to the people who need them.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
The White House clarifies that the “humanitarian pause” that Blinken called for is not the same as a cease-fire, which National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says will only benefit Hamas right now.
John Kirby, National Security Council Spokesman:
This is war. It is combat. It is bloody. It is ugly. And it's going to be messy, and innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
Since October 7, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 5,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, and displaced more than a million people.
Egypt has so far refused to open its border to Palestinians fleeing Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, following the October 7 attack by Hamas militants on civilians and soldiers in southern Israel. Cairo is wary of allowing thousands of refugees to cross the frontier. Correspondent Henry Ridgwell explains.
HENRY RIDGWELL, Reporting for VOA:
Egypt, for now, is not allowing Palestinians to cross the border to escape Gaza into the relative safety of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, President of Egypt:
Transferring Palestinian citizens from the [Gaza] Strip to Sinai very simply means that we are transferring the idea of resistance, the idea of fighting from the Gaza Strip to Sinai, and thus Sinai becomes a base for launching operations against Israel.
HENRY RIDGWELL:
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their lands in past conflicts with Israel. Many have never been allowed to return. Egypt – and much of the Arab world – fears the consequences of Palestinians once again fleeing Gaza, says analyst Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding.
Chris Doyle, Council for Arab-British Understanding:
It does not want to land up hosting hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Sinai, in a tented city – with really quite a clear agenda, certainly on the Israeli right, that that becomes the permanent solution. Palestinians and Egyptians are aware of this, are fearful that what happened to them in 1948 and 1967, when they fled in fear or were kicked out, will happen to them again. They're talking about a second Nakba, a catastrophe.
HENRY RIDGWELL:
As in many cities across the Arab world, Egyptians have taken to the streets to denounce Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Chris Doyle, Council for Arab-British Understanding:
We're seeing a lot of anger right now in Egypt about what's going on. So, they'll be wary of being seen to be somehow supporting Israeli actions at this moment, even though in private they are very critical of Hamas as well.
HENRY RIDGWELL:
Egypt’s president seized power in a 2013 military coup – ousting the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government.
Yossi Mekelberg, Chatham House:
Let's not forget that that Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The more we see death among civilians, Palestinian civilians, the more people will go probably to the street, and it can really inflame the political situation in Egypt. And that's why it's actually in the Egyptian interest to mediate a cease-fire and mediate quickly.
HENRY RIDGWELL:
While Egypt has dialogue with Hamas, it is also able to talk to Israel.
Yossi Mekelberg, Chatham House:
Strategically, there is great understanding between Israel and Egypt over the last ten to eleven years. And the other side – for Israel – he is a convenient neighbor. Because what is the alternative? The Muslim Brotherhood? This is definitely not something that Israel would like.
HENRY RIDGWELL
Henry Ridgwell, VOA News, London.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
With the death toll now reaching into the thousands and disturbing images of the conflict being widely circulated on social media, a sense of mutual hatred is emerging among certain individuals as the conflict continues to escalate. We go back to Yan Boechat in Jerusalem, for the perspectives of both sides in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
YAN BOECHAT, Reporting for VOA:
The violence has been nonstop as Israelis warplanes relentlessly bomb Gaza, while Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel.
In the West Bank, protests broke out after last Friday’s prayers and confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians left several dead.
For the first time in almost 20 years, Israeli jets attacked a West Bank town. On the border with Lebanon, violence is also escalating, raising concerns on both sides that a new war between Israel and Hezbollah might be about to begin.
On social media, graphic scenes of violence are everywhere, available to everyone. The unfiltered and sometimes false information fuels mutual hatred that is becoming more intense and ingrained in people on both sides of this conflict.
Nadoosh Mohamed, Ramallah Resident:
These children you see, these quadruplets, their parents waited 16 years to have them, now they are killed. What did these kids do to Israel?
YAN BOECHAT:
Nadoosh Mohamad lives far from Gaza, in a comfortable house in Ramallah. She says she would prefer to be dead than watch what is coming to her phone every day. After seeing it, she says, it’s impossible to even think about living in peace with an Israeli.
Nadoosh Mohamed, Caretaker:
We are different from them. We saw the treatment of Hamas towards children and the treatment of Israel. What they said about the burning of children is not true. Hamas treats its hostages very well.
YAN BOECHAT:
She refers to video she saw released by the militant group Hamas on Telegram claiming it is taking good care of Israeli children it is holding hostage. The content of the video is unverified.
For several days, Ramallah’s streets have been full of people protesting the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
In Israeli communities close to the Gaza border, life has all but stopped. In Ashkelon, the biggest city near Gaza, few go out into the streets. The sirens don’t go off as often as they used to at the beginning of the war, but rockets keep coming from Gaza - aimed at them.
In this once bustling marina, only a few people came for a stroll on a sunny afternoon.
After several days at home, Yana decided to come out for a walk with her boyfriend, Nikolay. Their realities are quite different from those of Nadoosh, but they strangely seem connected by the hatred they express.
Yana Ikonnikov, Ashkelon Resident:
They showed videos of the soldiers, who are kidnapped, of children, who were pulled from vehicles, they raped girls in the squares in Gaza. I don't think there is a difference between them. They are the same.
YAN BOECHAT:
Yana, like Nadoosh, doesn’t think it will ever be possible for Israelis and Palestinians to coexist after this.
Yana Ikonnikov, Ashkelon Resident:
You cannot live with them in peace, in the end they will kill us. Because they are taught in school that we are their enemies.
YAN BOECHAT:
Yana refers to videos she has seen on social media that claim to show Palestinian schools teaching children to view Israelis as their enemies. That content is also unverified.
Israelis and Palestinians have both grown up in a culture of mutual hatred and distrust.
Many on both sides of this tragedy see death and destruction – more than ever – as the only solution.
Yan Boechat, Voa News, Jerusalem.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
As Israeli airstrikes continue, so has a barrage of disinformation. The conflict is being fought not only on the ground but also on the internet. Correspondent Robin Guess brings us the details.
ROBIN GUESS, VOA Correspondent:
As Israel escalates its military response to Hamas, it is cracking down against media that it says support the militant group.
Included in new emergency regulations, a plan to shutter the Al Jazeera local bureau over claims of Hamas propaganda.
Critics argue moves to silence journalists or an entire news organization amount to censorship.
Quinn McKew is the executive director of the press freedom organization Article 19.
Quinn McKew, Article 19:
Shutting down access to information and a legitimate news agency like Al Jazeera should never be taken lightly, and it is a worrying step of losing a credible news source.
The Israel-Hamas conflict is rife with disinformation and misinformation weaponized for war. The false narratives are prominent online, especially through social media.
Media watchdogs say that the role of news organizations to debunk disinformation is critical and that no voice should be silenced.
The Committee to Protect Journalists and other media advocates urge Israel not to take such a drastic step.
U.S. public broadcaster National Public Radio, or NPR, has a team of eight journalists on the ground covering the war. It's CEO John Lansing — who used to head VOA parent, the U.S. Agency for Global Media— says the primary obligation of journalists is the truth.
John Lansing, NPR CEO:
Just vigilance. Understanding that all you have is credibility, whether it’s VOA, NPR or the New York Times. Anything that threatens the credibility of what people are reading or seeing is a failure, and we always have to put our audiences first.
ROBIN GUESS:
Israel’s Communications Ministry did not respond to VOA’s email requesting comment.
But directives from its Communications and Defense Ministries accuse Al Jazeera of pro-Hamas bias and spreading propaganda.
Israel says it considers Al Jazeera’s reporting a threat to its national security, its soldiers and its civilians.
Al Jazeera did not respond to VOA’s email request for comment.
But its published code of ethics states in part that its journalists must adhere to values of fairness and independence.
At least some media watchdogs say Al Jazeera is not an outlier news organization spreading disinformation.
Quinn McKew, Article 19:
They are able to provide a very interesting and balanced and unique perspective. Shutting that agency down and removing them would be a very chilling step for freedom of expression in the media and in the region that would open the floodgates to other kinds of restrictions and repressions.
ROBIN GUESS:
As the conflict escalates, media analysts watch closely for moves to restrict news coverage on either side of the war.
Robin Guess, VOA News:
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
Muslim and Jewish communities in the U.S. are on alert, fearing a rise in harassment and hostilities related to the Israel-Hamas War. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the perspectives of those affected and those calling for measures to defuse the mounting tensions.
VERONICA BALDERAS IGLESIAS, Reporting for VOA:
For the first time in two decades the Council on American Islamic Relations or “CAIR” was forced to move its annual banquet to an undisclosed location, due to threats of violence related to its stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Council on American Islamic Relations:
The hotel informed us they were receiving significant bomb threats to plant bombs in the parking garage, to storm the building. These threats were coming from anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian extremists who are angry about our organization’s support for Palestinian human rights.
VERONICA BALDERAS IGLESIAS:
Some U.S. Synagogues have also had to interrupt online and hybrid services due to bomb threats related to the war in the Middle East, according to the American Jewish Committee.
The advocacy organization had ties to Samantha Woll, President of the board of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, who was found stabbed to death at her home in Detroit on October 21.
Police have not found evidence that it was a hate crime, but the investigation is continuing and Jewish leaders are taking extra precautions.
Melanie Maron Pell, American Jewish Committee:
We’re seeing individuals really trying to take efforts to ensure their personal information is not available. It’s a moment where we have to be really really really aware and observant.
VERONICA BALDERAS IGLESIAS:
Fear is also engulfing some environments where Muslim students receive their education, the national nonprofit Islamic Schools League of America told VOA.
Shaza Khan, Islamic Schools League of America:
On Friday there was one full time Islamic school in the Chicago land area that received credible and detailed threats against their school community and they decided to move to remote learning. School teachers in older grades are allowing students to share how they are feeling, creating safe spaces for them.
VERONICA BALDERAS IGLESIAS:
Jewish Daytime schools are actively seeking more funding to strengthen their own security measures.
Dan Mitzner, Teach Coalition:
Shatterproof glass and bollards and all other safety measures that institutions can put into place. But we also call on religious leadership and political leadership across the world to condemn antisemitism, to condemn islamophobia, to condemn hate motivated violence and speech and to call it out when they see it, not to encourage it.
VERONICA BALDERAS IGLESIAS:
Veronica Balderas Iglesias, VOA News, Washington.
PATSY WIDAKUSWARA:
Thanks for joining us on this episode of The Inside Story highlighting our continuing coverage of the War in Gaza.
Catch up on past episodes on our free streaming service, VOA Plus and stay up to date with all the latest news at voanews.com.
Follow me on social media at pwidakuswara.
See you next week with another episode of The Inside Story.
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