World

Inside Gaza with Israeli troops – who are ‘here to make Hamas pay for what they did’

Published

2 years ago

November 5, 2023

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Stepping out of the Israeli armoured personnel carrier, the sound of gunfire was immediate.

So too was evidence of the destruction from four weeks of war inside Gaza.

Journalists living in the Palestinian territory have been reporting on the ground from the beginning, but this is the first time Israel has allowed media to enter with its troops to see their operation.

Follow live: Hamas radio says missile fired at Gaza house of its leader

“There are gun battles all through the town since we have been here,” said an officer who was escorting a small group of reporters that included Sky News.

“We have seen a lot of Hamas, we have seen a lot of anti-tank missiles,” Lieutenant Colonel Gilad said.

Israeli ground troops pushed into Gaza a week ago after three weeks of aerial bombardments.

Commanders say the goal is to “destroy” Hamas and secure the release of more than 230 hostages who were seized by the militants during an unprecedented terrorist attack on 7 October against Israel that triggered the war.

“We are here to make Hamas pay for what he did to us,” the officer said.

We were brought to an Israeli position just over a mile from the border in the central Gaza area. Gaza City could be seen in the distance.

Standing on a patch of dirt ground, we were on the edge of an area of shattered concrete buildings.

Israeli warplanes had targeted this neighbourhood before the troops went in.

Lt Col Gilad said a number of Hamas fighters who took part in the October 7 attack had come from this area.

No sign of life now.

An Israeli flag even hung from the rubble.

The troops have taken up a position in what they said had been a residential home that Hamas had used as an assembly point.

The officer said they had found an entrance next to the building to a network of tunnels that thread under the ground and are used by the militant group to attack Israeli targets.

He said there had also been rocket and missile launchers.

Israeli soldiers stood guard, rifles ready to shoot, from walls around the top floor of the house – which was an open roof.

As we walked through the building, heavy gunfire could be heard.

A second officer said two suspicious individuals had been spotted and Israeli troops had opened fire.

He also described some of the operations that had been conducted, including targeting a network of underground tunnels used by Hamas to launch attacks on Israeli forces.

“We go to search a tunnel in the east section over there,” he said.

“We find two tunnels and now we’re going to destroy them.”

Lt Col Gilad said there were around 200 Hamas fighters in this area alone

His brigade was thought to have killed around 30 militants, but this mission is not without huge risk.

Three soldiers from 828 brigade – a fighting unit that combines tanks, infantry soldiers and combat engineers – have died since the ground offensive began.

Another seven were killed responding to the 7 October attack.

But Palestinian civilians are paying a very heavy price as Hamas operates among the population. The Hamas-controlled health ministry has said more than 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, more than a third of them children.

Asked how the civilian death toll impacted him as a soldier, Lt Col Gilad said: “Personally, I can tell you I haven’t seen one civilian here. We have been here for a week. I haven’t seen civilians.

“They all know the message and all of them – most of them – went for the south. The IDF is doing all what it can to separate between the population and the militants of Hamas.”

He said that his troops were helping to open a new humanitarian corridor for the civilians who have not yet moved to the south of Gaza.

The soldiers regularly move locations – they carry everything on their backs.

Their current position is secure enough for the troops to make lunch. They heat up sweetcorn in cans and make tuna rolls.

One young soldier, sitting down, said he was proud to serve.

“We are taking care that 7 October will never happen again,” he said.

World

Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

2 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

Gaza latest: Follow live updates

The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

8 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

14 hours ago

August 10, 2025