The escalating violence between Israel and Hamas risks ramping up conflict in the Middle East, a United Nations official says, amid regional fury in the wake of an explosion at a hospital in Gaza and warnings from Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The warning from UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland came as Israel and Hamas traded blame for Tuesday’s explosion at Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital.
Hamas blamed an Israeli air strike, while Israel said it was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Gaza Strip’s Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.
Israel’s assertion was backed by United States President Joe Biden during his eight-hour visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, who said the deadly blast seemed to have been caused by a rocket misfired by militants.
In Washington, the White House National Security Council echoed Biden, saying the US assessment was based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts, and open-source information.
Wennesland told the UN Security Council the hospital blast needed more investigation.
“I fear that we are at the brink of a deep and dangerous abyss that could change the trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if not of the Middle East as a whole,” he said.
Wennesland continued: “After more than a century of conflict, and over half a century of occupation, we, the international community, have failed collectively to bring the parties to adjust to stay in political resolution.”
The significant escalation is the latest in a long-standing conflict between Hamas and Israel.
Hamas is a Palestinian military and political group, gaining power in the Gaza Strip since winning legislative elections there in 2006.
Hamas’ stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state, while refusing to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
Arab leaders responded to the loss of life at the hospital, which they blamed on Israel, by cancelling a summit with Biden in Jordan. This had been intended as the second half of his carefully choreographed itinerary for emergency meetings with allies to avert a wider Middle East war.
Biden said the United States would do everything it could to ensure Israel was safe while also urging Israelis not to be consumed by rage, reiterating that the vast majority of Palestinians were not affiliated with Hamas.
The Gaza health ministry said 3,478 Palestinians have been killed and 12,065 injured in Israeli air strikes on the besieged enclave since 7 October.
Biden said the US would provide US$100 million ($158 million) in new funding for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“What sets us apart from the terrorists is we believe in the fundamental dignity of every human life,” Biden said. If that was not respected, “then the terrorists win.”
He also said he would ask Congress for an “unprecedented” aid package this week, before flying out of Israel.
Biden faced intense pressure to secure a clear Israeli commitment to let aid into Gaza from Egypt, to ease the plight of civilians in the small, densely populated coastal enclave.
US President Joe Biden (left) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Source: AAP, EPA / Miriam Alster
At the end of his visit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office put out a statement saying Israel would let food, water and medicines reach southern Gaza via Egypt. It reiterated that it would not let aid in from Israel until Hamas released Israeli hostages.
Biden’s Middle East trip was designed to calm the region, but Jordan called off his planned summit there with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority after the hospital blast. Instead, he was expected to hold phone calls with Jordan and Egypt from Air Force One on his way home.
The accounts of destruction at the hospital were horrific even by the standards of the past 12 days, which have confronted the world with relentless images, first of Israelis in their homes and then of Palestinian families buried under rubble from .
Rescue workers scoured blood-stained debris for survivors. The Gaza health ministry put the death toll at 471, though Israel disputed the figure. Palestinian ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said rescuers were still recovering bodies.
“We don’t know what it was, but we found out what it could do, after it targeted children, who were cut into pieces,” said Mohammad Al-Naqa, a doctor at the hospital who said 3,000 people were sheltering there when it was hit.
Palestinians were convinced the explosion was an Israeli attack, with no warning for patients, staff or the Gazans already made homeless by bombing to leave.
Israel later released drone footage which it said showed it was not responsible because there was no impact crater from any missile or bomb and no structural damage to surrounding buildings.
A Palestinian girl carries blankets as she walks past the site of a deadly explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday. Source: AAP, AP / Abed Khaled
World leaders from United Nations Secretary General António Guterres to Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the blast in statements that nonetheless avoided addressing who was to blame.
The blast unleashed anger across the Middle East.
Riot police used tear gas against protesters during a demonstration near the US. embassy in Aukar, a northern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on Wednesday. Source: AAP, AP / Hassan Ammar
In Lebanon, security forces fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters throwing projectiles near the US embassy north of Beirut. State-sponsored marches were held across Iran, with demonstrators carrying banners that read “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.
“Every drop of blood of Palestinians killed in this war brings the Zionist regime (Israel) closer to its downfall,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a televised speech.
State-sponsored marches were held across Iran, with demonstrators carrying banners that read “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. Source: AAP, AP / Vahid Salemi
There were new clashes on Israel’s border with Lebanon, part of the deadliest violence between the Hezbollah movement and Israel since the last all-out war in 2006, and Hezbollah warned its adversaries on Wednesday it was “thousands of times stronger” than before.
Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, in a speech to thousands of supporters, said Biden, Netanyahu and “malicious Europeans” should be careful.
“The response to the mistake you might make with our resistance will be resounding,” he said.
“Because what we have is faith, and God is stronger than you, all your battleships, and all your weapons,” he said, speaking at a rally called in response to the blast at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital.
The United States has warned Iran, which backs Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, against getting involved in the crisis, and deployed two aircraft carriers which it says aim to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate the war.
