Dueling Israel-Hamas narratives spotlight threat of wider conflict

By Robert Murray Last updated Oct 19, 2023

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RAMALLAH, West Financial institution —

With every passing day, clashing narratives put forth by Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas about their bloodiest conflict thus far have diverged ever extra dramatically.

However a dozen days into the battle, after a deadly conflagration within the Gaza Strip, these dueling realities offered the starkest distinction but — and underscored the hazard that an already chaotic and unpredictable conflict might widen regionally.

Within the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Financial institution and throughout the Arab world, livid condemnation of Israel erupted over the lethal blast Tuesday evening on the grounds of a Gaza hospital full of Palestinians pushed from their houses. Hamas blamed an Israeli airstrike.

In Tel Aviv on Wednesday, a visiting President Biden firmly backed Israel’s rivalry that its forces didn’t trigger the carnage on the Ahli Arab Hospital, one among Gaza Metropolis’s preeminent medical facilities, though Israeli forces had for days been waging an intensive marketing campaign of airstrikes throughout the coastal enclave.

Two men in dark suits embrace near photographers

Israel’s army stated detailed proof indicated that the highly effective explosion and fireball, which left burned-out husks of automobiles and our bodies and physique elements scattered all through the hospital compound, was attributable to an errant rocket fired by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which is preventing alongside Hamas.

Biden’s vocal help for the Israeli model of occasions surrounding the hospital blast strengthened as his daylong go to went on. And all through it, his expressions of solidarity within the wake of Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 assault on Israel — its largest one-day lack of life ever — had been specific and heartfelt.

“You aren’t alone,” he advised Israelis.

Shortly after touching down at Israel’s worldwide airport, the place airspace was closed to make method for his arrival, Biden stated it appeared the “different staff” was liable for the hospital blast, however added that extra info was wanted.

By day’s finish, his tone was far much less equivocal, citing a U.S. army analysis of the explosion, which Palestinians stated killed tons of. American officers additionally pointed to intelligence together with satellite tv for pc and infrared information that implicated Palestinian fighters.

Throughout the Arab world, nevertheless, that message was largely dismissed — an indication of deep fissures over the battle between Israel’s allies and its neighbors.

From diplomatic suites to the seething streets of West Financial institution refugee camps, Israel was universally blamed for the hospital deaths, with many voicing incendiary anger over its ongoing marketing campaign of retaliatory air and artillery strikes on Gaza.

Avenue demonstrations broke out throughout the area — in Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, Tunisia, Lebanon and Iran — with protesters chanting slogans, burning Israeli flags and expressing bitter scorn for Israel and the US alike.

A huge crowd throngs an open area near buildings, with one person waving a green flag

Even governments that had flirted with rapprochement with Israel, together with these of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, brushed apart Israeli denials of duty for the hospital deaths.

Within the West Financial institution, protesters hurled rocks and shattered home windows within the administrative capital, Ramallah, after the Gaza hospital was hit, and in predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem, a crowd threw firebombs at Israeli police. Palestinian officers referred to as a common strike Wednesday, and most of the people stayed inside, with outlets and companies locked tight.

Sitting by his son’s grave in the Jenin refugee camp’s cemetery within the northern West Financial institution, a Palestinian named Nabil abu Sabbah vented bitterness on the mere point out of the visiting U.S. president.

“Take a look at the Israelis, what they’re doing to us, and the People are serving to them!” he stated. “The Israelis do it, and so they blame us? And Biden believes them instantly?”

The bloody occasions that ignited the conflict had been much less topic to dispute — partly as a result of Hamas fighters who breached Israel’s border fence with Gaza on Oct. 7 recorded their violent assaults on Israeli civilians and gleefully touted the ugly killings on social media.

People grieve over bodies at a funeral in Israel.

The Hamas assault left a minimum of 1,400 useless on the Israeli aspect, greater than 1,000 of them civilians, and marked the deadliest day for Israel for the reason that nation’s conflict of independence.

However amongst Palestinians, the emphasis swiftly pivoted to Israel’s punishing airstrikes in Gaza. Together with a cutoff of electrical energy and gas and a essential scarcity of meals, drugs and water in a territory the place motion of products and folks has lengthy been restricted, the bombardment swiftly escalated widespread distress.

Towards that backdrop of desperation, the hospital tragedy propelled the battle right into a harmful new section, inflicting the most important single lack of Palestinian civilian lives for the reason that begin of the conflict and bringing the overall to just about 3,400, in accordance with Gazan officers.

In step with a grim sample in previous Israeli wars with Hamas, concentrations of Gazans searching for refuge are sometimes probably the most weak and proved so once more.

By the point the hospital was hit, Israeli requires the evacuation of northern Gaza earlier than a possible floor invasion had despatched tons of of 1000’s of Palestinian civilians fleeing for hoped-for havens — with hospitals a popular vacation spot. On the time of Tuesday evening’s blast, the tree-shaded compound of the hospital that was hit was full of displaced Gazans.

Harrowing accounts of the carnage on the compound shortly unfold in movies and by way of witness accounts. The multistory constructing was engulfed by hearth, with blackened, mutilated corpses, together with these of kids, scattered about its courtyard.

Bodies wrapped in white cloth lie on the floor of a room with white walls

“We had been working within the hospital. There was a powerful explosion and the ceiling fell on the working room,” Ghassan abu Sittah, a health care provider with the medical charity Medical doctors With out Borders, wrote in an account on Fb. “This bloodshed should cease. Sufficient is sufficient.”

The Biden go to ended with a pledge by Israel that it will enable Egypt to ship some humanitarian support to Gaza, however in restricted portions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated the step was taken at Biden’s behest. Nevertheless, Egypt had not but stated whether or not it will enable deliveries by way of the crossing at its border, and Israel warned that any provisions sure for Hamas can be “thwarted.”

But when the gesture was meant to calm the waters, the temper amongst each Israelis and Palestinians remained ominously vengeful.

Or Tzuk, whose mother and father had been killed within the southern Israeli group of Otef, advised Israel’s Channel 13 that Gazans weren’t deserving of aid.

“My mother and father weren’t granted a humanitarian hall,” he stated.

After dusk Wednesday, Palestinian demonstrators, primarily younger males, assembled in Ramallah’s most important sq., one among them waving a inexperienced Hamas flag. None was prepared to entertain the concept that anybody however Israel was at fault for the Gaza bloodletting.

“I got here right here for Gaza,” stated a 20-year-old named Ahmed. “For the martyrs.”

People stand on a street, one waving a green flag

A 35-year-old protester who recognized himself solely as Ibrahim carried his 6-year-old son, Jad, on his shoulders.

“The People are mendacity,” he stated, as his different son, 9-year-old Jihad, seemed on.

“They all the time lie. I don’t imagine them in something.”

Bulos reported from Ramallah and King from Jerusalem. A particular correspondent in Gaza, who can’t be named for safety causes, contributed to this report.