Israel-Hamas War: What happened on day 48?

As reports emerged on Friday morning of Gazans who fled south returning to their homes in the north of the Strip as Israel's ceasefire with Hamas came into effect, the IDF reiterated its warning that the situation is still dangerous, and residents should remain in the south of Gaza.

IDF Arabic language spokesman Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee spoke on X (formerly Twitter) stating, "The war is not over yet. The humanitarian pause is temporary. The northern Gaza Strip is a dangerous war zone and it is forbidden to move north. For your safety, you must remain in the humanitarian zone in the south." 

⭕️Watch this important message from the IDF Spokesperson for Arab media, @AvichayAdraee, to the civilians of Gaza:

”The war is not over yet. The humanitarian pause is temporary. The northern Gaza Strip is a dangerous war zone and it is forbidden to move north. For your safety,… https://t.co/OmtxDYHIK3 pic.twitter.com/4gaJDxgy5I

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 24, 2023

Ceasefire comes into effect

The IDF completed preparations for the ceasefire which took effect at 7 a.m. Friday morning and destroyed tunnels and tunnel entry points in Shifa Hospital, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said.

In the day leading up to the ceasefire, the IDF continued its operations in Gaza.

Some 13 of the hostages currently held by Hamas are scheduled to be released at 4 p.m. on Friday, in a deal that was brokered with the help of Qatar and the US. Israel is expected to release 150 Palestinian female and child prisoners who are held or have been convicted on terror charges.

Tesla and X owner, Elon Musk, is expected to visit Israel next week, during which he will visit towns near the Gaza border which were attacked by Hamas on October 7, N12 reported on Thursday.

According to the report, Musk will meet with President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit.

The visit comes as Musk continues to come under fire for failures to combat antisemitism on his X (formerly Twitter) platform, for sharing content from antisemitic accounts, and for attacking and even suing watchdogs who criticize his handling of antisemitism and other hate speech on X.

Musk's comments about the war in Gaza

Earlier this week, Musk announced that X would be donating all revenue from advertising and subscriptions "associated with the war in Gaza" to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seen speaking with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, on September 18, 2023. (credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO)

Last month, Musk also said that he wanted to provide Starlink satellite internet coverage to the Gaza Strip, sparking outrage from Israeli officials, including Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi who warned that Israel would fight any such move.

Musk stressed that if Starlink access is provided to Gaza, the company would take "extraordinary measures" to confirm that it is used for purely humanitarian reasons.

Bahrain has been walking a political tightrope since war erupted in Gaza as it seeks to ease public fury at a conflict that has killed thousands of Palestinians while preserving a deal with Israel that brought the Gulf state closer to the United States.

For tiny Bahrain, home to the US Navy Fifth Fleet, close US relations are a vital bulwark against Iran, a vast Muslim Shi'ite nation across the Gulf that Manama has long blamed for stirring up its own majority Shi'ite population against Bahrain's Sunni monarchy.

The deal to normalize ties with Israel, signed in 2020 by Bahrain when Donald Trump was president, brought few business benefits to Bahrain, unlike those it offered the United Arab Emirates, a regional commercial hub which signed at the same time. But the other strategic gains Bahrain secured are too valuable to jeopardize, sources and analysts said.

Six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters Bahrain would not abandon its ties with Israel, even though parliament - a body that remains subservient to the monarchy - has made a strident statement suggesting Israel relations were in the freezer.

President Isaac Herzog and his wife Michal are welcomed to the Al-Qudaibiya Palace in Manama by HM King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain. (credit: AMOS BEN-GERSHOM/GPO)

Bahrain is trying to preserve the relationship with Israel while also managing public opinion, one of the sources said.

Bahrain's government communications office did not respond to emailed questions on the status of relations with Israel.

"They can't abandon normalization with Israel without endangering this whole strategic framework," said Kristin Smith Diwan, a researcher at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

She said the framework was not just about keeping close to the US but also Bahrain's signing of the deal brought it closer to the wealthy UAE and offered a counterweight to the influence of Saudi Arabia, which has long bankrolled Bahrain whose oil resources long ago dwindled to almost nothing.

"Bahrain’s adoption of the Abraham Accords is as much about its relations with other countries as it is with Israel," she said, using the term for the normalization deals Israel signed with Bahrain and the UAE.

Yet it requires a balancing act by Bahrain, as it seeks to keep the deal intact while reflecting its deep disagreement with Israel's fierce military campaign in Gaza, whether through criticism of Israel by the Bahraini crown prince at a security summit in Manama this month, parliament's statements or the government allowing public protests on the issue. 

AMBIGUITY ABOUT ISRAEL

On Nov. 2, the elected parliament, which has no authority over foreign policy, issued an unusual statement saying the ambassadors of Israel and Bahrain had departed and economic ties had been cut.

"The Zionist entity’s (Israel) ambassador has left from Bahrain, hopefully not to return," parliamentarian Mamdooh Al Saleh said in parliament in the days after the announcement.

The fact that the statement on diplomatic and economic ties came from the parliament, not the foreign ministry, stirred ambiguity about whether or not Bahrain had formally cut ties.

Israel responded that relations were stable and a subsequent statement by Bahrain's government only mentioned the envoys had already left without clarifying any reason. The Bahraini government made no mention of economic ties, which are modest.

The six sources familiar with the matter said parliament's announcement did not reflect government policy.

The sources said the public confusion over relations with Israel appeared to have eased pressure on the government in its efforts to balance domestic outrage and ties with Israel.

In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli official told Reuters the envoys would return "when the situation allows."

On the street, emotions are running high over Israel's assault on Gaza which began after terrorists from the Palestinian group Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people. More than 14,000 people have been killed in Gaza.

PROTEST RALLIES

Hundreds of Bahrainis have marched at rallies to show solidarity with Palestinians and protest at the kingdom's ties with Israel, demonstrating in a nation that has typically clamped down on any form of protest, particularly if it targets government policy.

"People are angry. The government needs to release the pressure," said Smith Diwan, referring to a decision by the authorities to allow citizens to stage weekly protests. She described apparent state tolerance of the protests as "jarring," reflecting a contrast with Bahrain's normally tight security.

The government came down hard on protests in 2011 when demonstrators, many from the Shi'ite majority, rose up to demand the downfall of Bahrain's monarchy in the Arab Spring. Bahrain partly blamed that unrest on Iran, an accusation Tehran denied.

Almost a decade later when Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords, worries about Iran again formed the security backdrop, with the Islamic Republic still seen by Gulf Arabs as an expansionist security threat to much of the Middle East.

Western officials said the accords reinforced Bahrain's US ties, pointing to a defense pact signed this year.

Israel, largely cut off economically and politically for decades from its Middle East neighbors, saw the accords as a shift in regional dynamics and an opening for new trade ties.

"I've seen here clear signals from the Arab Gulf countries that they don't want to let go of what has been achieved in the last three years," Tobias Lindner, a German foreign office minister of state told Reuters at a summit this month in Manama.

"The government of the Kingdom of Bahrain is a staunch supporter of the Abraham Accords," he said.

The UAE, a regional power, also intends to maintain its relationship with Israel, which has yielded billions of dollars in trade and close security cooperation, sources have said.

In contrast, Bahrain-Israel trade remains modest, worth about $30 million since 2021, according to Israeli government data.

Hamas will release 23 Thai hostages unconditionally, mediated by Iran, according to a report by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed from late on Thursday.

This is a developing story.
 

The IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced on Thursday that they had eliminated the commander of the Hamas naval force of Khan Yunis.

The IDF, guided by the intelligence of the Navy, the Military Intelligence Directorate, and the Shin Bet, using fighter jets, eliminated Omar Abu Jallal, the commander of the Hamas naval force in Khan Yunis, and another terrorist from the organization's naval force.

Omar Abu Jallal was a senior commander in the Hamas naval force and was involved in a number of naval attacks that were thwarted by the IDF.

Among other things, under the direction of the Navy's intelligence ship, weapons warehouses, tunnel sites near the coast, training posts, and observation posts of the terrorist organization Hamas were located and destroyed.

A junior Israeli officer in the elite 8200 intelligence unit warned over Hamas's plan of a mass infiltration event and was ignored by her commanders, N12 reported on Thursday evening.

The officer claims to have warned for the past 12 months about a scenario that involves a mass intrusion event by Hamas, foreshadowing what occurred on October 7.

She turned to her commanders, but they did nothing. "You are imagining it," her commanders were quoted by N12 as telling her.

Last week, Channel 12's Weekend News program published new testimonies of female observers who served near the Gaza border.

In the testimonies of the observers, they tell how for months they warned repeatedly about changes they see in the field, which require special attention and raising red flags.

One of the most challenging experiences for any human being is the loss of a loved one. The pain is indescribable. Yet, not knowing what has happened to them can sometimes be even more unbearable.

In such cases, the external memory of the deceased cannot be internalized by family members and friends, due to the uncertainty surrounding their fate. The possibility of their survival perpetuates this agony. 

In addition to the unresolved grief caused by the inability to internalize their memory, the very uncertainty itself is an overwhelming source of suffering. Waiting for medical test results is a prime example of how the waiting period can be more difficult than receiving the actual news.

For instance, during the AIDS epidemic in the last century, many individuals found the waiting period for test results so distressing that they chose to abstain from sexual activity altogether, to avoid experiencing this agonizing uncertainty again. Similarly, the pain of love can stem from the uncertainty between hope and insecurity about the longevity of a relationship.

Israel vehemently rejected a Hamas demand for Israeli forces to retreat and withdraw from the Shifa Hospital in Gaza, N12 reported on Thursday.

As per the report, the Palestinian terrorist group's request came as a last-minute demand in the Qatar-mediated deal to release some 13 hostages for four days of ceasefire in the Strip.

IDF Spokesperson R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari on Thursday evening noted that no aspect of the hostage deal is set in stone "until it happens...it is subject to changes," he said in a daily briefing.

"We have difficult days of grief and happiness ahead of us," Hagari said. "We embarked on a long journey and we have targets to achieve - destroy Hamas, bring the hostages home, and bring order to the region and our borders."

The spokesperson stressed that, as part of the agreement, Israeli forces will remain inside the ceasefire line marked inside the Gaza Strip. The IDF will have freedom of movement in that area for the duration of the ceasefire, he added.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, took to X to inform Israel that its bombing campaign in Gaza will not undo the October 7 massacre.

In a post on X, Khamenei said "This bombing will not make up for the crushing defeat that the Zionist entity suffered (October 7). This bombing will shorten its life, while the deprivation and atrocities will not remain unanswered."

ההפצצה הזו לא תפצה על התבוסה המוחצת אשר נחלה הישות הציונית (7 אוקטובר).ההפצצה הזו תקצר את החיים שלה, ואילו הקיפוח וזוועות לא יישארו בלי תגובה.

— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) November 23, 2023

The ceasefire in Gaza is a "brief respite" from the war, which could last for a further two months, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli forces from the IDF's elite Shayetet 13 Unit on Thursday.

"This respite will be brief,"  Gallant said, "what is expected of you is to get organized, prepare, examine, and re-arm ahead of what is next. There will be a continuation to the war, because we must complete our victory," the defense minister added.

"There will be massive fighting over the next month or so," he told the fighters.