Israel-Gaza War: Israel Orders ‘Siege’ of Gaza; Hamas Threatens to Kill Hostages

Edward Wong

A senior Pentagon official told reporters that the U.S. government has seen no evidence to support reports that Iran had a role in the attacks by Hamas on Saturday. The official said, though, that Iran has been a longtime supporter of Hamas.

Edward Wong

The official said American planes with armament aid to Israel have already taken off, and that the United States was accelerating shipments of air defense equipment and munitions that Israel had ordered from American companies through the State Department’s weapons sales program.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, said that the group will not negotiate the issue of prisoners while the fighting with Israel is ongoing. “The enemy must save its effort and prepare to pay the price,” he said in his first video speech since the start of the assault. He added that the group’s fighters are still battling Israeli soldiers in “many” locations inside Israel and that they are still taking hostages and sending reinforcements.

The Hamas spokesman also took a jab at the United States in his speech, saying that the U.S. supplies Israel with the weapons “with which it is now killing our children and families.”

Video taken during a raid Saturday on the Israeli kibbutz of Nir Oz shows a group of Palestinians, some brandishing weapons, capturing several residents, including a mother and her two children.

The person filming, Muthana al-Najjar, a 39-year-old from Gaza, can be heard asking the gunmen not to harm them.

Video

In messages with The New York Times, family members of the woman identified her as Shiri Silverman Bibas, and her sons as Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months.

Ms. Bibas’s husband, Yarden Bibas, and her parents, Yossi Silberman, 67, and Margit Silberman, 64, are also missing, according to Ms. Bibas’s sister, Dana Sitton. Ms. Silberman has Parkinson’s disease, Ms. Sitton said.

Mr. Al-Najjar, a freelance reporter who posted the footage to social media, initially entered Israel through a breach in the fence along the perimeter with Gaza. He said it was the first time he had ever left Gaza in his life, because of the blockade imposed by Israel and backed by Egypt that restricts movement in and out of the enclave.

In an interview, he provided a window into how some members of the large, loose-knit group of men he saw moving on Nir Oz seemed more organized, carrying weapons and wearing military-style gear. Others appeared to be tagging along as onlookers.

In the video below, he captured fleeting glimpses of men en route to Nir Oz riding in carts with guns, or walking unarmed in civilian clothes and sandals.

Video

When Mr. Al-Najjar arrived at Nir Oz, he appeared on camera describing a chaotic scene while what appeared to be gunfire rang out nearby.

Video

As Mr. Al-Najjar was filming the abductions, he said he tried to offer consolation.

“I wanted to tell a woman who was captured with children, ‘Be calm and patient,’” Al-Najjar told The New York Times. “But I realized I didn’t speak her language.”

Ms. Sitton, Ms. Bibas’s sister, expressed the wrenching pain of waiting to hear news about the fate of the family.

“I don’t know if Shiri has bottles, diapers and baby food for the baby, Kfir. I don’t know how she is feeding him,” Ms. Sitton said. “I can’t sleep, can’t eat just thinking about them. How do they treat them?”

Several other residents of Nir Oz were apparently kidnapped as well, including a man identified by residents as Gadi Mozes, who was photographed by Mr. Al-Najjar.

Mr. Al-Najjar said that as he was leaving Nir Oz, he saw at least two gunmen whose faces he recognized lying dead in a field, and he thought there were likely others.

“There are dozens missing there, as well as dead and injured,” Mr. Al-Najjar said. “No one knows how many.”

Additional production by Meg Felling.

Fighting erupted along Israel’s volatile northern border with Lebanon on Monday in the second such episode since the Palestinian incursion from Gaza into Israel on Saturday, adding to mounting Israeli concerns over the possibility that the conflict — already the broadest invasion in 50 years — could spread to multiple fronts.

Roads out of southern Lebanon toward Beirut, the capital, were clogged with traffic in the evening as people attempted to flee the clashes, according to the Lebanon’s state-run news agency. Lebanon’s Ministry of Education closed schools in the country’s south until further notice. In late-night cafes and in homes across Beirut, people sat glued to television screens on Monday evening, watching news footage of fires from the clashes spreading across hillsides.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group based in Gaza that has in the past been accused of attacking from Lebanon, claimed responsibility for the attack on northern Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces said that the attackers fired mortar shells and entered Israeli territory, and that two of the attackers had been killed and one had escaped back into Lebanon.

The I.D.F. said that Israeli forces backed by helicopters had responded to the incursion. It also said that its aircraft had struck three military posts belonging to Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese Shiite organization that fought a war with Israel in 2006. Hezbollah confirmed on Monday evening that three of its fighters had been killed in Israeli shelling, according to a statement released by Al Manar, the Hezbollah-owned Lebanese broadcaster.

In response to the deaths, Hezbollah later said it had carried out attacks on two Israeli military barracks, using guided missiles and mortars.

An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed that Israeli soldiers had been injured in the clashes earlier Monday, but did not specify the number.

On Sunday, Hezbollah attacked three Israeli posts with artillery shells and rockets targeting the Shebaa Farms area, land it considers to be occupied Lebanese territory. The Israel Defense Forces responded at the time with artillery fire and drone strikes.

Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls Gaza, called on armed groups in Lebanon to join in its attack on Israel on Saturday. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which was already fighting alongside Hamas in that attack, has a sizable presence in Lebanon as well as Gaza.

According to the United Nations, Lebanon is home to around 250,000 Palestinians, either refugees forced to flee their homes in 1948 when the state of Israel was established or their descendants.

After the fighting broke out on Monday, Israel’s Home Front Command ordered the residents of 28 towns and villages close to Lebanon’s border to enter bomb shelters, citing “a large-scale offensive.” They were told to take food, water and sleeping materials, indicating that they might need to stay in hiding for some time.

U.N peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon urged calm. Andrea Tenenti, the spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, said both sides needed to exercise “maximum restraint” in order to “prevent further escalation and loss of life.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

Israelis at a blood donation center in Jerusalem on Monday.

Israel has requested that the United States provide more precision-guided munitions for its combat aircraft and more interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system in response to the surprise attack by Hamas over the weekend, a U.S. official said on Monday.

Administration officials briefed Congress on the specific weapons on Sunday after Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said that the Pentagon would provide Israel’s armed forces with additional equipment and resources, including munitions.

The U.S. official confirmed that the request for munitions, including small-diameter bombs as well as more interceptors for the Iron Dome system, was in the process of being worked on. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Pentagon also announced on Sunday that it would move the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and five battleships to the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, near Israel. The ships were already in the Mediterranean, and moving them closer to Israel was intended to deter Iran, Syria and any country or militant group from joining the conflict, as well as to provide enough ships, warplanes and other weaponry to protect Americans and American interests in the region.

The United States already provides Israel more than $3 billion in military assistance every year, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday that much of the equipment from that funding was already “in the pipeline” to be sent to Israel.

In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on members of the opposition in his government to “immediately establish a national emergency government without preconditions” during the war.

Netanyahu said that Hamas fighters are still inside Israeli territory and that battles are ongoing to “eliminate” them. He compared the Palestinian group to the Islamic State, echoing other Israeli politicians in recent days. “Now the whole world knows that Hamas is ISIS, and we will defeat it just as the enlightened world defeated ISIS,” he said.

Hamas, the group that controls Gaza and staged the brazen surprise attack on Israel, has taken scores of hostages since storming across the border in a deadly assault that began Saturday.

Here’s what we know about the captives.

The Israeli authorities have not yet publicly provided specific details about the number or identities of the kidnapped victims, but military officials have said they included older people and children. Most were captured from small Israeli border towns on Saturday morning.

At least 150 Israelis were taken hostage by Palestinian assailants, according to a preliminary assessment shared by one senior Israeli military official. Officials from the United States, France and several other countries have said they were looking into reports that their citizens may be among the captives.

Most information about those who may have been taken hostage has come from people searching for their missing relatives and friends.

Some appear to have been taken from their homes in the Israeli border communities that were overrun by Palestinian gunmen on Saturday. Others appear to have been seized from a wooded area near the border where they had spent the night at a festival.

Distraught and fearful, their relatives have turned to news organizations and social media platforms, sharing photographs of those who are missing and sharing videos online to solicit clues.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, claimed in a statement on the Telegram app that it had hidden “dozens of hostages” in “safe places and the tunnels of the resistance.”

The militant group is said to use an underground network of defensive tunnels — called the Hamas “metro” system by the Israeli military — to travel undetected, and move weapons. The military has described the network as a “city beneath the city,” much of it under civilian infrastructure.

On Monday, Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said that four Israelis being held by the militants were killed in Israeli bombardment overnight, along with the Palestinians holding them captive. The claim could not be independently verified.

Amid widespread criticism about the lack of reliable information on the hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday announced the appointment of Gal Hirsch, a retired general, as coordinator for the captives and missing.

The military and the police also opened a joint center for families to register missing relatives, asking them to bring photos and items from which they can gather DNA samples.

The seizure of so many hostages suggests that Hamas may want to hold them as bargaining chips for a prisoner swap, and possibly to use them as human shields as Israel strikes back in Gaza.

On Monday evening, Mr. Obeida threatened to execute a civilian hostage every time an Israeli airstrike hits Gazans “in their homes without warning.”

Thousands of Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons, many of them convicted of security offenses or involvement in terrorism. Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, cited the detention of thousands of Palestinian militants in Israeli jails as one of the reasons for Saturday’s assault.

The issue of Israelis in captivity is a deeply emotional one in Israel, with the government having paid a high price in the past for the return of its citizens or of the remains of soldiers in lopsided prisoner exchange deals.

In 2006, Gaza militants seized an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and Hamas held him for five years, until he was exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted of deadly terrorist attacks against Israelis. Hamas has also been holding the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in a 2014 war as well as two Israeli civilians who entered Gaza that year by foot and are believed to be alive.

Israel’s monthlong war against Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant organization, in 2006 also began with a cross-border raid by Hezbollah and the abduction of two Israeli soldiers. The remains of the two soldiers were returned to Israel in 2008 as part of a prisoner exchange in which Israel handed over five Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Kuntar, who had been held for nearly three decades after being convicted in connection with a notorious attack.

At least 687 Palestinians have been killed, including 140 children, since the assault began on Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said. An additional 3,726 Palestinians have been wounded, according to the ministry.

Israeli emergency workers removed the bodies of more than 100 people killed in the Palestinian militant assault on the kibbutz Be’eri, said Moti Bukjin, a spokesman for the ZAKA relief organization, which ran the effort.

“It was horrible work. There were killed children there,” Bukjin said, adding that there were dozens of dead militants in the town as well. “We still haven’t gone through all of the homes.”

Israel’s defense minister’s order to place a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip comes on top of a 16-year blockade that Israel, often along with Egypt, has imposed on the coastal territory.

Israel announced the move after a major incursion by Palestinian gunmen that has left hundreds dead.

The announcement by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that Gaza would receive “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” has led aid agencies to warn of a worsening humanitarian crisis.

Under the longstanding blockade, the densely populated strip, with more than two million residents, nearly half of whom are under 18 years old, faces severe restrictions on the movements of goods and people.

Most commodities in Gaza, from foodstuffs to construction supplies, are imported from Israel through official border crossings, according to the United Nations. Gaza gets most of its electricity via Israeli power lines, and produces some at a power plant in Gaza with fuel imported from Israel. It receives a smaller number of goods through its much shorter border with Egypt.

Electricity shortages are chronic, with power often available for only 12 to 15 hours per day. That undermines health services, water pumping and purification and the area’s fragile economy, aid workers say.

Movement of people in and out of Gaza was heavily restricted before the attacks, with Israel and Egypt granting small numbers of people permission to travel, mostly for work or medical care.

On Saturday, after Palestinian gunmen began their assault inside Israel, the Israeli authorities stopped supplying electricity, leaving Gaza’s residents with only about three or four hours of power per day, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian office, which said Gaza’s power plant might soon run out of fuel.

Now, Israel has closed both of its crossings with Gaza, the Kerem Shalom Crossing for cargo and the Erez Crossing for people.

“Before things were restricted, now they are blocked entirely,” said Tania Hary, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli nonprofit that focuses on free movement of Palestinians in Gaza.

Humanitarian officials said that a complete blockade would create more severe suffering for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

“Overwhelmed hospitals treating thousands of wounded will now have to do so without reliable access to electricity,” Mahmoud Shalabi, a senior program manager for Medical aid for Palestinians, a charity based in the U.K., said in an email.

Egyptian officials did not immediately say whether Israel’s announced siege of Gaza would affect their policy toward the movement of goods and people in and out of the territory.

Gaza’s border with Egypt remained open on Sunday, and truckloads of food, construction material, fuel and emergency medical supplies entered over the weekend. But Egypt also heavily controls the movement of people and goods across its border crossing, opening and closing it in response to security conditions.

Even if Egypt left its crossing open, experts said, it could not fill the gaps left by the complete closure of Israel’s crossings. In 2022, some 32 percent of goods entering Gaza came from Egypt, Gisha said in a report.

The Israeli army said it had detected “a number of launches” from Lebanese territory toward Israel. They resulted in no casualties, the army said.

Suella Braverman, Britain’s home secretary, said that police across the country would be urged to step up patrols after the attacks in Israel. “Sadly, we have seen in recent years how events in the Middle East are used as an excuse to stir up hatred against British Jewish communities,” she said in a statement. “There is no place for demonstrations, convoys, or flag-waving on British streets that glorifies terrorism or harasses the Jewish community."

France said that in addition to the two French nationals confirmed dead in Israel, 14 others were still unaccounted for. “Based on the information at our disposal, we consider it highly likely that some of them, including a twelve-year-old minor, have been abducted,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that their situation was “very worrying.”

The Israeli military says it struck three Hezbollah military positions in Lebanon after armed militants infiltrated Israeli territory earlier today.

President Biden met this morning with the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other aides to discuss the violence in Israel. The White House said in a statement that the president “directed his team to follow up on coordination with Israel on all aspects of the crisis and to continue their work with regional partners to warn anyone who might seek to take advantage in this situation.”