The Daily: Israeli Troops Enter Gaza

I'm Raja Abdul Rahim, and I'm a reporter in the Jerusalem Bureau, and I've been covering

the war in Gaza for the past three weeks.

On Friday, I was reporting out a story about, basically, it was a sentiment that I was trying

to hear a lot from people, that death felt inevitable.

There's now more than 8,000 deaths in Gaza, more than a third of them children, and we're

hearing basically entire families are being killed in one strike.

I spoke to a woman in Gaza, and she told me that 70 members of her family had been killed.

Aunt, uncles, cousins, you know, she'd almost lost count of them.

And what she was telling me, and what I've been hearing a lot, is that these huge death

tolls, and when everybody around you, when everybody you love is being killed, it just

makes people feel that their turn is next.

The smell of death actually hangs in the air, because there's so many bodies, more than

a thousand, that are under the rubble, because they don't have the equipment, or they don't

have the ability to get them out.

I also spoke with a poet and an essayist, Musab Abu Taha.

And he was telling me about how when you're sitting in your home, or wherever you are,

and you hear the approach of a rocket, the sound feels like it's coming for you, like

it feels like it's intended for you.

And I asked him some more questions, but I suddenly noticed that the messages weren't

being delivered, and I wasn't hearing back.

And it wasn't until a little later that we realized that all phone and internet in Gaza

were down.

It was very scary to have no eyes on the ground and to not know what was happening in the

middle of the war zone.

Luckily our stringer, Amira, her husband actually has an Israeli SIM card, and she was able

to message us.

I got a very panicked message from her, and in this moment she's talking as a Palestinian,

as a journalist, as a mother.

They are very scared and terrified.

They keep asking us as a journalist, do you know what happened?

And she told me that there was so much fear and so much panic and so much confusion on

the ground, because everybody was worried, what did this blackout mean, and what was

Israel planning to do?

We all find here in the camp, so far we don't know what's happening in Gaza.

We cannot even reach my family, like my mom, my sisters, in Gaza city to check how they

are, or if they survived this night or not.

And that's the thing with this blackout, is that not only were people in Gaza cut off

from the rest of the world, but they were cut off from each other.

During the night, they were very heavy bombing, and a lot of the clashes, like shooting.

We hear the shooting.

We hear that there is like fight.

And what was happening was that it was the most intense night of the war so far, in terms

of Israeli airstrikes.

A lot of Palestinians described it as the most terrifying night they'd ever lived.

By cutting the communication and the telephone lines, they cannot even people call the ambulance

or call the civil defense or call anyone to come to help them.

She was telling me about how the ambulance service is, because nobody was able to call

them.

They didn't know where to go.

They are looking for the smoke to know exactly where is the area of the bombing, and they

are asking people around to reach the area where the bomb, so they can go and help people.

And so some of them were following the sounds of people screaming, or they were basically

just driving through the streets, looking for places that had been recently hit with

Israeli airstrikes.

And then suddenly, Sunday morning, the phone and internet was restored.

People's phones were started getting messages, and a lot of it were messages of other family

members trying to check up on them.

But also, it was a lot of the news of what had happened since Friday night.

And they saw that Israel had started to conduct its ground invasion, and this causes obviously

a whole new level of fear.

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily.

Over the weekend, the Israeli military appears to have begun an invasion of the Gaza Strip,

with tanks rolling into the enclave, and Israeli soldiers fighting with Hamas inside.

But the operation remained shrouded in secrecy, with Israel revealing little about its actions.

Today, my colleagues Raja Abdurahim and Patrick Kingsley, on the latest escalation in the war.

It's Monday, October 30th.

So Patrick, we're reaching you on Sunday at about 3 p.m. Eastern time, and that's 9 p.m.

your time in Jerusalem.

We just heard from our colleague Raja.

She was talking about how things had changed in Gaza over the weekend.

And I'm wondering if you can tell us what you know about what happened in Israel over

the past three days.

Start on Friday for me.

What did we start to see happen?

Early on Friday evening, we began hearing reports of a massive aerial bombardment over

Gaza.

But at the same time, we were hearing very little about what was actually going on under

those bombs, because it seemed like there was a communications blackout at that time.

The military was conspicuously quiet.

It was hard to get any clear answers from them about what was going on.

In fact, it was hard to get them to pick up the phone.

And then finally, at around 9 p.m., amid this shroud of secrecy and silence, the chief

military spokesman came out and made a very vague statement in which he said that Israel

was expanding its ground activity.

And as Friday bled into Saturday, we started to see the first footage of tanks inside Gaza,

and it started to feel like this incursion into northern Gaza was something more than

just the hours-long incursions that we'd seen on previous nights.

But it wasn't until late afternoon on Saturday that we felt ready to call this the invasion.

This was the start of the big push that we'd been expecting for three weeks.

And what was it about what happened late afternoon on Saturday that caused you to start calling

it an invasion?

Firstly, the fact that they were still there, the fact that the military still seemed to

be there some 12 hours after they entered, secondly, the information we were getting

from military sources about the numbers of troops that were now inside, the number of

tanks, the number of armored vehicles, the number of bulldozers, it eventually became

clear that this was a major invasive force.

And while it wasn't some kind of Blitzkrieg rush on Gaza City, Hamas' stronghold, it was

nevertheless the start of what is the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

And Patrick, what about Hamas?

What were they saying?

Hamas made two brief announcements, or rather their military wing made two brief announcements.

They said they were engaging troops in the north and also a bit further south.

And that corresponds now to what we know about the Israeli invasion.

They invaded around those two places and clearly they ran into Hamas' fighters.

What those battles looked like, we don't really know because there was so little information

coming out of Gaza and the Israeli army were also keeping very quiet about what was going

on.

Why was the Israeli army keeping so quiet?

It's not entirely clear, but we think one reason was that it wanted to maintain the

element of surprise, make Hamas unsure about what was going on.

Secondly, we think perhaps that Israel wanted to avoid scrutiny and it wants to avoid outcry

across the Middle East and to avoid an immediate reaction from southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah,

another militia, allied to Hamas, holds sway and which Israelis had feared might launch

its own major attack on Israel if it felt that Hamas was under threat due to the ground

invasion.

So Israel making its advance during a communication blackout and without formally announcing it

themselves created a sense of uncertainty about what was actually going on that therefore

made journalists like us worry about reporting anything and potentially also prevented groups

like Hezbollah from making their own reaction.

Okay, so this is the invasion that we were all anticipating, but at the same time you're

saying it's kind of different.

What makes you say that?

How is it different than what we expected?

I think we expected perhaps naively that we would know what was going on in real time,

but we'd have photography video of something happening.

In retrospect, we now know certain details.

We know they entered from the northwest of Gaza, at least some of the forces advanced

down the Gaza coastline.

There's video now that's been released from the Israeli army that shows tanks and other

vehicles moving along the beaches of northern Gaza.

A video has also emerged of a pair of Israeli soldiers standing atop what is believed to

be beachside hotel raising an Israeli flag.

We also understand that so far the Israeli army has not pushed that far deep into Gaza.

It hasn't entered into Gaza City, the biggest urban center of the enclave.

It appears to be waiting almost surrounding the city.

This has been accompanied by many statements from Israeli officials both in the military

and outside saying that this is going to be a long, long process and that they won't be

charging into Gaza City as quickly as perhaps we'd expected three weeks ago.

Why do you think the Israeli military is taking this kind of different approach?

Do you think that they were responding to pressure from the US?

Well, you're right that the US has been warning Israel not to act out of emotion, not to act

too swiftly, to make sure that they have clear plans in place before moving in.

Everyone's worried about the outbreak of a regional war.

It's quite possible that this manoeuvre shrouded in secrecy was intended to try and delay any

prospective regional reaction for as long as possible until the invasion seemed a fader

complete that could not be stopped.

And perhaps that's why there was essentially a day of uncertainty and defog over what was

going on.

And by the time that Benjamin Netanyahu made his speech on Saturday night in which he announced

the second phase of this conflict, the Israeli army had already been inside Gaza for more

than 24 hours and their presence was a factor rather than a possibility.

We'll be right back.

So Patrick, you told us that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech on Saturday

night.

What did he say?

He said a number of things.

The first is that this is the second stage of the war.

And that was significant because it confirmed what we'd already gathered by ourselves by

that point, which is that the invasion had begun.

Yeah, he didn't actually use the word invasion.

Then he said, the war inside Gaza will be long and difficult and we are ready for it.

And that was perhaps aimed at the Israeli public that is going to have to come to terms with

many losses to its own in the coming months.

Then he talks about meeting the families of Israeli hostages who were kidnapped during

Hamas' own invasion of Israeli territory on October 7th.

And he said we would exhaust every possibility to bring our brothers and sisters back to

their families.

That was an attempt to reassure the families of the hostages who have enormous public sympathy

and support that this invasion is not intended to come at the cost of those hostages' lives.

And what else did Netanyahu say in the speech?

He talked about one supreme goal, to destroy the murderous enemy and ensure our existence

in our land.

And that is maybe tilted towards the international audience.

It's a reminder that for Israelis, they cannot countenance living next to Hamas on its borders

for another minute.

And then finally, he says that this is our second war of independence.

The first so-called war of independence was in 1948 when Israel's fledgling army defeated

several Arab armies and Palestinian militias in order to create the boundaries of the modern

state.

Then that war was and remains a unifying event in the minds of most Israelis because it was

the foundational event of the state of Israel.

So by talking about it, Netanyahu was trying to present himself as a unifying leader, someone

that can bring Israelis together after a period of great division in Israeli society.

And to supporters that may have felt credible, to critics that would have come across as

very hollow.

And to Palestinians, that same comment would have felt very chilling but for different reasons.

During the 1948 war, some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs or 80% of the Arab population of Mandate

Palestine, the territory that Israel was formed from in 1948, either fled their homes or forced

to flee their homes, never to return.

And that moment in Palestinian history is known as the Nakba or catastrophe.

It was hugely traumatic and remains perhaps the defining moment of the Palestinian experience

and is seen as almost the start of all the Palestinian trauma over the past 75 years.

So that was Saturday, but on the ground in Gaza, things were still very uncertain and

it was very unclear what was going on.

Okay, so that's Saturday night, today's Sunday.

Tell me what we've learned now that the communications have come back online.

We're learning that once again, there was devastating loss of civilian life in Gaza.

We're learning that the fighting inside Gaza appears to have taken its first Israeli casualties.

The Israeli military said this morning that two soldiers had been wounded during the fighting

that started after the invasion and we learn from Israeli military that they say that they

have hit 450 military targets throughout Saturday and early Sunday and that targets

include command centers, observation posts, anti-tank missile, launch posts and leaders

of Hamas's military wing.

We also know that they say that they hit 150 underground facilities, some of which may

indeed be tunnels.

All these are impossible to verify.

So Patrick, stepping back here for a minute, where do you think we are in this war right

now?

Netanyahu has said we're in a second phase.

You know, we don't know how many more there will be.

Where are we and where are we going?

Well, the entire region is waiting with bated breath to see how do Hamas's allies in southern

Lebanon respond.

Will they up the ante?

Will they launch missiles and rockets deeper into Israeli territory or will they hold fire

and prevent a major escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese border?

Gaza, we are braced for what many think will be the bloodiest phase of what has already

been a catastrophically bloody war.

8,000 Palestinians have already died, 1,400 Israelis, and the ground phase of the war

is thought by most analysts to be the deadliest one.

Once the Israeli army moves from the countryside outside Gaza City into the city itself and

is met by Hamas fighters on their home turf, emerging from secret exit points from their

tunnel network, the war is going to get very bloody indeed for Palestinian civilians, also

for Hamas and also for Israeli soldiers.

And quite what Gaza will look like at the end of it is unclear.

We're at the edge of a precipice and we don't know exactly where we, where Gaza are going

to land.

Patrick, thank you.

Thank you.

The Times reports that the United States believes that Israel was responsible for the communications

loss in Gaza and that Washington had pressed Israeli leaders to restore the service.

On Sunday, President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone and urged

him to conduct operations, quote, in a manner consistent with international humanitarian

law.

Also on Sunday, as desperation in Gaza spread, thousands of people broke into UN food warehouses

and took wheat flour and other basic survival items.

More aid came into Gaza from Egypt on Sunday in all 33 trucks, but aid groups said it was

not nearly enough.

We'll be right back.

Here's what else you should know today.

On Friday, the man suspected of killing 18 people and injuring 13 others at a bar and

a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot

wound.

The discovery of the perpetrator of Wednesday's mass shooting ended a sweeping manhunt that

had forced thousands of residents throughout the region to remain in their homes.

Meanwhile, questions continued to build over whether more could have been done to prevent

the gunman, who officials said had paranoid beliefs, from owning a gun.

Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung, Sidney Harper, and Rachelle Bonja, with help

from Rikinovetsky.

It was edited by Patricia Willins and Lisa Chow, contains original music by Alicia Bititube

and Marianne Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansverk of Wunderlea.

That's it for the Daily.

I'm Sabrina Taverniese, see you tomorrow.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.