JERUSALEM: Early Friday, just after midnight, the Israeli military put out an ominous statement to the media: “IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.”
The terse statement set off frenzied speculation that Israel had launched a ground invasion of Gaza — a much-feared scenario that would mark a bloody escalation of this week’s operation against Hamas militants. Some reporters were even told outright the incursion had begun.
Hours later, the military issued a “clarification.” There were no troops inside Gaza. But by then, several major news outlets had erroneously reported the ground offensive was under way.
While the army attempted to play down the incident as a misunderstanding, well-placed Israeli military commentators said the media had been used as part of an elaborate ruse to lure Hamas militants into a deadly trap that may have killed dozens of fighters.
“They didn’t lie,” said Or Heller, a veteran military correspondent on Israel’s Channel 13 TV. “It was a manipulation. It was smart and it was successful.”
This is how it unfolded:
Late Thursday, after days of airstrikes, Israel announced it was calling up thousands of reservists and amassing troops along the border ahead of a possible ground invasion. In another sign of escalation, Israeli tanks stationed along the border opened fire at targets inside Gaza.
In previous rounds of fighting, ground incursions have resulted in widespread destruction in Gaza and heavy casualties on both sides.
That set the stage for the late-night deception. According to Heller, Israel began scrambling forces along the border in what appeared to be final preparations for an invasion. Then came the announcement to the media, issued simultaneously in Hebrew and Arabic on Twitter. There followed alerts in major outlets that the invasion was under way.
The Israeli moves sent Hamas fighters rushing into defensive positions in an underground network of tunnels known as the Metro, according to Heller and other Israeli reports.
Israel called in 160 warplanes and bombarded the tunnels for 40 minutes, the military said. Heller said it was his understanding that scores of militants had been killed, though he said it was impossible to say.
“What we saw tonight was a very sophisticated operation that had a media aspect to it,” Heller said.
Hamas has not commented on the incident, and it was impossible to confirm the Israeli reports.
Heller said veteran Israeli correspondents, who have close ties to the military and in many cases have served themselves, knew that there was no way Israel was sending troops across enemy lines at this stage. Heller and other military correspondents even put out statements on Twitter assuring the jittery public that there was no ground operation.
The Associated Press, based on its analysis of the army’s statement, phone calls to military officials and on the ground reporting in Gaza, concluded there was no ground incursion and did not report there was one.
But others said the military had misled them or even lied when asked to clarify, turning the foreign media into an accessory of sorts.
Felicia Schwartz, correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, said she alerted news of a ground offensive after receiving explicit confirmation from Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman.
In a statement posted on Twitter, she said Conricus “told me directly, `There are ground troops in Gaza.’ That was the basis for a first story saying so. He retracted that statement two hours later and I changed the story to reflect that, and that is noted in the text and will be corrected.”
Speaking to reporters on Friday morning, Conricus blamed an “internal miscommunication.”
“These things can sometimes happen in the midst of a complex operation with many moving parts and with an unclear picture of what was happening,” he said. “As soon as I understood that I had the wrong information, I updated the relevant people with a clarification.”
Militaries around the world have long used deception and trickery against their enemies. Two years ago, the Israeli military reportedly faked the injuries of soldiers at the scene of a Hezbollah missile strike, going so far as to evacuate them to a hospital in a helicopter.
According to reports at the time, the army staged the injuries to trick Hezbollah into thinking it had inflicted casualties and therefore would agree to a cease-fire.
Friday’s misleading statement further strained what has often been a rocky relationship between the IDF and the foreign media.
Peter Lerner, a former military spokesman to the foreign media, said the Israeli public in general has long felt the international media focus too heavily on the Palestinian side of the story while minimizing Israeli concerns and suffering — and the army is similarly inclined.
Lerner said he felt it was unlikely the military intentionally lied, but damage was done regardless.
“Your currency is credibility,” he said. “I think this is a crisis of that credibility in the way it’s being portrayed.”
Israeli military accused of using media to trick Hamas militants in Gaza
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Israeli military accused of using media to trick Hamas militants in Gaza
- ‘It was not a lie. It was a manipulation,’ says Or Heller, a veteran military correspondent
- Ruse sent Hamas fighters rushing into an underground network of tunnels
Trucks bringing bodies and detainees into Gaza hold up aid says UNRWA
- Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
- Asked for more details, UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said that Israel had sent 225 bodies to Gaza in three containers since December that were then transported by the UN agency to local health authorities for burial, shutting the crossing temporarily
GENEVA: Trucks bringing both bodies and detainees from Israel back to Gaza through the main crossing point of Kerem Shalom regularly hold up aid deliveries, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday.
A deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza has raised pressure on Israel to boost supplies into the enclave to curb disease among the 1.7 million people displaced by the Israeli-Hamas conflict and relieve hunger amid famine warnings from the United Nations.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told journalists on Tuesday that aid supplies into Gaza had improved in April but listed a series of ongoing difficulties including regular crossing closures “because they (Israel) are dumping released detainees or dumping sometimes bodies taken to Israel and back to the Gaza Strip.”
Asked for more details, UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma said that Israel had sent 225 bodies to Gaza in three containers since December that were then transported by the UN agency to local health authorities for burial, shutting the crossing temporarily. She did not have details of the circumstances of their deaths and said it was not UNRWA’s mandate to investigate.
On the detainee transfers, some of which have been previously reported by Reuters, she said that they had been transferred from Israel back to Gaza “dozens of times.”
Israel’s COGAT, a military branch in charge of aid, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva referred questions on the transfers to Jerusalem.
On aid deliveries, he said: “Mr. Lazzarini is deflecting from UNRWA’s own failures and responsibilities. Again today, there was a backlog of more than 150 trucks screened by Israel in Kerem Shalom not picked up by UN agencies.”
Tensions are high between Israel and UNRWA with the former accusing 19 UNRWA staff of involvement in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel that killed 1,200 people and prompted the latter’s military campaign in Gaza. Israel’s allegations are being examined by UN investigators although a separate review found Israel has yet to provide evidence for accusations that hundreds of UNRWA staff are members of terrorist groups.
Kerem Shalom is one of just two crossings the UN says is currently open between Gaza and its neighbors Egypt and Israel.
Palestinian authorities have previously said that Israel has returned bodies from the Israeli-Hamas conflict after confirming they were not hostages. They said they were trying to identify them and figure out where they were killed.
Tunisian opposition wants political prisoners freed before taking part in presidential election
- Ennahdha’s headquarters were shut down a year ago, and its leader Rached Ghannouchi – a former parliament speaker – was sentenced to 15 months in prison on charges of glorifying terrorism
TUNIS, Tunisia: Tunisia’s main opposition coalition said Tuesday it won’t take part in the North African country’s upcoming presidential election unless President Kais Saied’s political opponents are freed and judicial independence is restored.
More than 20 political opponents have been charged or imprisoned since Saied consolidated power in 2021 by suspending parliament and rewriting the country’s constitution. Voters weary of political and economic turmoil approved his constitutional changes in a 2021 referendum with low turnout.
Saied is widely expected to run in the presidential election, likely to take place in September or October. It is unclear if anyone will challenge him.
The National Salvation Front, a coalition of the main opposition parties including once-powerful Islamist movement Ennahdha, expressed concern that the election wouldn’t be fair, and laid out its conditions for presenting a candidate.
They include freeing imprisoned politicians, allowing Ennahdha’s headquarters to reopen, guaranteeing the neutrality and independence of the electoral commission and restoring the independence of the judicial system, according to National Salvation Front president Ahmed Nejib Chebbi.
Ennahdha’s headquarters were shut down a year ago, and its leader Rached Ghannouchi – a former parliament speaker – was sentenced to 15 months in prison on charges of glorifying terrorism. His supporters say the charge is politically driven.
Under the constitutional changes Saied introduced, the president can appoint members of the electoral authority as well as magistrates.
Tunisia’s earlier charter had been seen as a model for democracies in the region.
Tunisia built a widely praised but shaky democracy after unleashing Arab Spring popular uprisings across the region in 2011. Its economic woes have deepened in recent years, and it is now a major jumping off point for migrants from Tunisia and elsewhere in Africa who take dangerous boat journeys toward Europe.
Israeli ground operation in Rafah would be ‘tragedy beyond words’: UN
- “The world has been appealing to the Israeli authorities for weeks to spare Rafah, but a ground operation there is on the immediate horizon,” said Griffiths
UNITED NATIONS, United States: A ground operation by Israeli troops in the southern Gaza city of Rafah would be a “tragedy beyond words,” the UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The simplest truth is that a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words. No humanitarian plan can counter that,” Griffiths said, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to launch an offensive on Rafah, which has become a refuge to some 1.5 million Palestinians.
With Hamas weighing a truce plan proposed in Cairo talks with the US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators, Netanyahu vowed to launch the assault on Rafah “with or without a deal.”
Washington has joined calls on Israel from other countries and humanitarian organizations to spare the city for fear an army incursion would lead to massive civilian casualties.
“The world has been appealing to the Israeli authorities for weeks to spare Rafah, but a ground operation there is on the immediate horizon,” said Griffiths.
“For the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled to Gaza’s southernmost point to escape disease, famine, mass graves and direct fighting, a ground invasion would spell even more trauma and death.
“For agencies struggling to provide humanitarian aid despite the active hostilities, impassable roads, unexploded ordnance, fuel shortages, delays at checkpoints, and Israeli restrictions, a ground invasion would strike a disastrous blow.
“We are in a race to stave off hunger and death, and we are losing.”
The war in Gaza started after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,535 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Palestinian militants also took some 250 hostages on October 7. Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 believed to be dead.
Why Israel is so determined to launch an offensive in Rafah. And why so many oppose it
- Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
- Palestinians live in densely packed tent camps, overflowing UN shelters or crowded apartments, and are dependent on international aid for food, with sanitation systems and medical facilities infrastructure crippled
JERUSALEM: Israel is determined to launch a ground offensive against Hamas in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town, a plan that has raised global alarm because of the potential for harm to more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there.
Even as the US, Egypt and Qatar pushed for a ceasefire deal they hope would avert an assault on Rafah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated on Tuesday that the military would move on the town “with or without a deal” to achieve its goal of destroying the Hamas militant group.
“We will enter Rafah because we have no other choice. We will destroy the Hamas battalions there, we will complete all the objectives of the war, including the return of all our hostages,” he said.
Israel has approved military plans for its offensive and has moved troops and tanks to southern Israel in apparent preparation — though it’s still unknown when or if it will happen.
About 1.4 million Palestinians — more than half of Gaza’s population — are jammed into the town and its surroundings. Most of them fled their homes elsewhere in the territory to escape Israel’s onslaught and now face another wrenching move, or the danger of facing the brunt of a new assault. They live in densely packed tent camps, overflowing UN shelters or crowded apartments, and are dependent on international aid for food, with sanitation systems and medical facilities infrastructure crippled.
WHY RAFAH IS SO CRITICAL
Since Israel declared war in response to Hamas’ deadly cross-border attack on Oct. 7, Netanyahu has said a central goal is to destroy its military capabilities.
Israel says Rafah is Hamas’ last major stronghold in the Gaza Strip, after operations elsewhere dismantled 18 out of the militant group’s 24 battalions, according to the military. But even in northern Gaza, the first target of the offensive, Hamas has regrouped in some areas and continued to launch attacks.
Israel says Hamas has four battalions in Rafah and that it must send in ground forces to topple them. Some senior militants could also be hiding in the city.
WHY THERE IS SO MUCH OPPOSITION TO ISRAEL’S PLAN
The US has urged Israel not to carry out the operation without a “credible” plan to evacuate civilians. Egypt, a strategic partner of Israel, has said that an Israeli military seizure of the Gaza-Egypt border — which is supposed to be demilitarized — or any move to push Palestinians into Egypt would threaten its four-decade-old peace agreement with Israel.
Israel’s previous ground assaults, backed by devastating bombardment since October, leveled huge parts of northern Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis and caused widespread civilian deaths, even after evacuation orders were given for those areas.
Israel’s military says it plans to direct the civilians in Rafah to “humanitarian islands” in central Gaza before the planned offensive. It says it has ordered thousands of tents to shelter people. But it hasn’t given details on its plan. It’s unclear if it’s logistically possible to move such a large population all at once without widespread suffering among a population already exhausted by multiple moves and months of bombardment.
Moreover, UN officials say an attack on Rafah will collapse the aid operation that is keeping the population across the Gaza Strip alive,. and potentially push Palestinians into greater starvation and mass death.
Some entry points have been opened in the north, and the US has promised that a port to bring in supplies by sea will be ready in weeks. But the majority of food, medicine and other material enters Gaza from Egypt through Rafah or the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing — traffic that is likely to be impossible during an invasion.
The US has said that Israel should use pinpoint operations against Hamas inside Rafah without a major ground assault.
After Netanyahu’s latest comments, US National Security spokesperson John Kirby said, “We don’t want to see a major ground operation in Rafah. Certainly, we don’t want to see operations that haven’t factored in the safety, security of” those taking refuge in the town.
POLITICAL CALCULATIONS
The question of attacking Rafah has heavy political repercussions for Netanyahu. His government could be threatened with collapse if he doesn’t go through with it. Some of his ultranationalist and conservative religious governing partners could pull out of the coalition, if he signs onto a ceasefire deal that prevents an assault.
Critics of Netanyahu say that he’s more concerned with keeping his government intact and staying in power than national interest, an accusation he denies.
One of his coalition members, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, said Tuesday that accepting a ceasefire deal and not carrying out a Rafah operation would amount to Israel “raising a white flag” and giving victory to Hamas.
On the other hand, Netanyahu risks increasing Israel’s international isolation — and alienating its top ally, the United States — if it does attack Rafah. His vocal refusals to be swayed by world pressure and his promises to launch the operation could be aimed at placating his political allies even as he considers a deal.
Or he could bet that international anger will remain largely rhetorical if he goes ahead with the attack. The Biden administration has used progressively tougher language to express concerns over Netanyahu’s conduct of the war, but it has also continued to provide weapons to Israel’s military and diplomatic support.
Libyan parliament approves 2024 budget of $18.5 bln to its installed government
- The budget is for the Benghazi-based government of Osama Hamad, who came to power in March 2023 and is allied with the military commander Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east and large parts of the southern region of Libya
BENGHAZI: Libya’s eastern-based parliament on Tuesday unanimously approved the 2024 budget for the government it installed of 90 billion Libyan dinars ($18.5 billion), excluding an item for development projects, three MPs told Reuters.
The budget is for the Benghazi-based government of Osama Hamad, who came to power in March 2023 and is allied with the military commander Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east and large parts of the southern region of Libya.
Libya’s separate Tripoli-based Government of National Unity is headed by interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah, who was installed through a UN-backed process in 2021.
House of Representatives (HoR) member Aisha Tublqi said the item for development projects was excluded from the budget because “the government demanded 30 billion LYD for three years but the parliament wants more details for the projects for approval.”
It is unclear if the Tripoli-based Central Bank of Libya (CBL) governor, Sadiq Kabir, will hand over the money to the government of Hamad.
CBL is the only internationally recognized depository for Libyan oil revenues, the country’s vital economic income.
“We accepted and approved the budget with taking into account some notes,” said HoR member Abdulmenam Alorafi.
In February, Kabir called for a new unified government and a national budget in an apparent challenge to his former ally Dbeibah over government spending, urging for an end to what he described as parallel spending “from unknown sources.”
Dbeibah, who is no longer recognized by HoR, has vowed not to cede power to a new government without national elections.
A political process to resolve more than a decade of conflict in Libya has been stalled since an election scheduled for December 2021 collapsed amid disputes over the eligibility of the main candidates and disputes over elections laws.
The dispute over control of government and state revenue, and over a political solution to resolve years of violent chaos, threatens to launch Libya back into administrative partition and war.
In his briefing to the Security Council this month, UN special envoy Abdullah Bathily urged Libyan authorities “to promptly agree on a national budget and decisively address significant deficiencies.”
Bathily, who had tendered his resignation to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said, “The economic situation in Libya is becoming severely strained, amidst warnings from the Central Bank of Libya of an impending liquidity crisis.”
