January 8, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv ahead of key meetings with Israeli officials on Tuesday.

The top US diplomat landed in Israel on Monday afternoon after a flurry of stops throughout the region. He is expected to push Israeli officials on the need to do more to protect civilians as the staggering humanitarian toll in Gaza continues to mount. 

This is his fourth trip to the region since the October 7 Hamas attack and his fifth visit to Israel. On his first trip following the attack, he visited Israel twice.

Blinken will push Israeli officials on the need to do more to protect civilians as the staggering humanitarian toll in Gaza continues to mount. 

Meetings on Monday: Blinken discussed efforts being made to achieve security and stability in Gaza with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), according to the government-run Saudi Press Agency.

The crown prince "stressed the importance of stopping military operations, intensifying humanitarian efforts, and working to create conditions for the return of stability," the news agency reported.

In addition to Saudi Arabia, Blinken has already visited other Arab nations involved in talks on another possible humanitarian ceasefire and hostage release, including Jordan and Qatar. After meetings in Israel, he will also stop in the West Bank and Egypt. 

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reiterating that it is "clearly not in the interest" of any countries in the region for the war in Gaza to expand. It comes after an Israeli strike killed a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, according to a Lebanese security source.

"It's clearly not in the interest of anyone — Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah, for that matter — to see this... to see this escalate and to see an actual conflict," Blinken said to reporters in Saudi Arabia before departing for Israel.

"The Israelis have been very clear with us that they want to find a diplomatic way forward that creates the kind of security that allows Israelis to return home," the top US diplomat said, noting that "nearly 100,000 Israelis have been forced to leave their homes in northern Israel because of the threat coming from Hezbollah in Lebanon."

"We're working intensely on that effort," Blinken said.

He said the US is also working on a diplomatic solution that would allow Lebanese people to return to their homes in southern Lebanon.

Some background: A senior Hezbollah commander, Wissam Tawil, was killed by an Israeli drone strike on his car in southern Lebanon, a Lebanese security source told CNN on Monday. 

Tawil is the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed in an Israeli strike since the onset of daily crossfire between the Lebanon-based group and Israeli forces in October.

On Saturday, Hezbollah launched a rocket barrage on an Israeli airbase in northern Israel, in an attack the group said was a “preliminary response” to the suspected Israeli attack that killed Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in southern Beirut last week.

On the war in Gaza: Heading next to Israel, the top US diplomat said he will push the Israeli government "on the absolute imperative to do more to protect civilians" in Gaza. 

Blinken said is also planning to press Israeli officials on the need for more humanitarian aid to enter the war-torn strip "and also to talk to them about the future direction of their military campaign in Gaza."

He said in meetings with key Arab leaders on Monday, there was "broad agreement" that Israel "should be able to live in peace and security," which would mean the West Bank and Gaza should be unified under a Palestinian-led government with an independent Palestinian state.

Israel's military said it has killed a Hamas militant in Syria who it says was a central figure in firing rockets from Syria toward Israel in recent weeks.

Hassan Hakashah was killed in the southern town of Beit Jinn on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

"We will not allow terrorism from Syrian territory and hold Syria responsible for all activity emanating from its territory. The IDF will continue to act against any threat posed to the State of Israel," the statement said.

Hamas has so far not publicly commented on Hakashah's death. 

Some buildings are flattened or partially collapsed. Others are riddled with bullets or scarred by smoke. Civilians are nowhere to be found. 

This is the scene CNN found on the outskirts of Al-Bureij in central Gaza after three months of war.

CNN embedded with the Israeli military on Monday, getting a glimpse of the destruction inside Gaza and a rare look inside the alleged Hamas underground and weapons manufacturing infrastructure uncovered by the Israeli military.

Alongside now-bulldozed farmlands and inside a nondescript building, the Israeli military took reporters inside the opening of what it said was a tunnel system leading to a weapons manufacturing facility both above and below ground.

Under a nearby shed, the Israeli military showed another shaft leading into the same tunnel.

The Israeli military also showed reporters the above-ground manufacturing facility, where CNN saw mortar shells which Israeli commanders said were made there. Another tunnel shaft lay in the corner of the factory, leading to what the Israeli military said was an underground facility where explosive material – made in some cases from dual-use materials like fertilizer – was packed into the shells.

The Israeli military did not allow reporters underground, saying the chemicals made it too dangerous, but provided a video it said was filmed inside that underground facility in which large vats and industrial material could be seen.

“What we're seeing is using the embedded civilian industries to build a rocket industry,” IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari told CNN inside the weapons facility, a point he repeatedly raised throughout the day.

Pressed whether he was stressing the connection between Hamas infrastructure and civilian buildings to justify the heavy civilian death toll in Gaza, Hagari said: “We are focusing on Hamas, not, not – we're focusing on a war on Hamas, we’re not fighting the people of Gaza.”

Israel expanded its ground offensive into central Gaza in late December and over the last two weeks, it has carried out strikes and pushed its ground forces into areas where it had previously urged civilians to evacuate.

But there are indications that it is slowing its offensive in parts of Gaza, moving to a lower-intensity phase of the war following significant American pressure.

“There’s big change because it's a different level of intensity. Now, it's not in the same intensity, high intensity that we worked in the north (of Gaza)," Hagari said. "It's more continuous effort in the center of gravity so we can make sure that the population is being distinguished from the terrorists and focusing on Hamas frameworks,” he added.

Experts at the United Nations say crimes committed against civilians during Hamas' October 7 attacks on Israel amounted to war crimes and could qualify as crimes against humanity.

In a statement from Geneva, the experts — Alice Jill Edwards, a special rapporteur on torture and other punishment, and Morris Tidball-Binz, a special rapporteur on "extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions" — called for full accountability for the widespread killings and alleged sexual torture.

The UN experts said that allegations of sexual torture included rape and gang rapes and that there were mutilations and gunshot wounds to genital areas of victims as well as other signs of sexual violence.   

“These acts constitute gross violations of international law, amounting to war crimes which, given the number of victims and the extensive premeditation and planning of the attacks, may also qualify as crimes against humanity," the experts said.

Hamas has repeatedly denied allegations that its fighters committed sexual violence during the attack despite the evidence.

The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Monday released a video showing an Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Elad Katzir, 47, speaks for about three-and-a-half minutes in the video published by the Quds brigade. In the video, he stands in front of the group’s banner. 

It’s the second time he has appeared in one of the group’s videos. The first was in mid-December.

In the new video, Katzir speaks in both English and Hebrew and mentions the name of another man who had been held hostage, Tamir Adar.

The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum in Israel announced last week that Adar, 38, had died, without providing further details. 

Like Adar, Katzir is from Kibbutz Nir Oz, the community in southern Israel from which some 40 people were abducted on October 7.

It is not clear if he is speaking under duress.

Katzir says: “Tamir Adar, my dear friend, may you rest in peace, may your memory be blessed, I share your family's grief.”

Katzir goes on to say:

He adds: “I want them [the government] to get me back, as well as all other hostages, and end this damn war…..With each day of the war, more soldiers and more hostages are being killed. Stop the war and bring us hostages home in peace. Make a deal to exchange prisoners of war, together with the Hamas, and bring us home.”

Katzir’s mother, Hana, was in the first group of hostages to be released during a short-lived truce in November. Her release was a surprise to many Israelis because Islamic Jihad had announced days earlier that she had died. Hana’s husband was killed on October 7, their daughter Karmit told CNN.

It’s unclear when the latest video was shot, but Adar’s death was announced publicly on January 5. 

A barrage of rockets was fired from the Gaza Strip on Monday evening local time, with Israel’s Iron Dome system making at least several interceptions. 

CNN teams in Tel Aviv counted at least half a dozen interceptions south of the city.

A large area of southern Israel from Ashdod northward to Tel Aviv received warnings of the rocket attack.

Hamas’ military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, said on Telegram: “We hit “Tel Aviv” with a rocket barrage in response to the massacres against civilians.”

There are no reports of casualties.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops stationed close to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, telling them that the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah “underestimated us big-time in 2006, and is underestimating us again.”

Netanyahu visited the 769 Brigade, telling them: "I chose to come to Kiryat Shmona on the day of anti-tank fire upon us.”

In July 2006, after the ambush of an Israeli military patrol, Israeli forces crossed the border into Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah positions, while air strikes also targeted Hezbollah infrastructure and commanders.

Netanyahu said that Hezbollah had thought “we were like spiders’ cobwebs. Suddenly it sees what kind of spider.” Hezbollah faced “tremendous power, the unification of a people, a determination to do whatever is necessary to restore security to the north.”

Netanyahu said: “We will do everything to restore security to the north and allow your families, because many of you are local, to return home safely and know that we cannot be messed with. We will do whatever it takes. Of course, we prefer that this be done without a wide campaign, but that will not stop us.”

He added: “We gave them an example of what is happening to their friends in the south, this is what will happen here in the north. We will do everything to restore security.”

About one out of every 100 people in Gaza has been killed since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on October 7, Palestinian statistics show. 

At least 22,835 people have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah announced in its daily update on Monday. That’s 1% of Gaza’s total population of 2.27 million people, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. 

The Ministry generates its data from hospitals in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

It said 58,416 people had been injured. That is more than 2.6% of the population, or more than one in 40 people. 

The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza, which tends to have slightly higher numbers than the ministry in Ramallah due to delays in transmitting information to the West Bank, put the total at 23,084 dead on Monday. It said 58,926 people had been injured. 

Israel has said more than 8,000 of the dead are militants it is targeting in its war on Hamas. 

The Ministry of Health in Ramallah says more than 5,300 of the dead are women and more than 9,000 of them are children. Together that would make up nearly two-thirds of the dead.