Palestinians blame U.S. as Israel-Hamas war takes a soaring toll on civilians in the Gaza Strip
The Israeli military continued pounding the Gaza Strip Tuesday, determined to carry on with its stated mission of destroying the Palestinian militant group Hamas despite rising calls for a cease-fire and its most valuable ally, the United States, urging Israel to "put a premium on human life."
Israel insists it is only targeting terrorists and terror infrastructure, but pressure to halt the ceaseless bombing was mounting fast as Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry said the war had killed more than 18,000 people. The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas, which has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations.
Israel's military says about 1,200 people were killed during Hamas' initial attack and that more than 100 soldiers have been killed in the war in Gaza since then. An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson was quoted by the AFP news agency Tuesday as saying 105 troops had been killed since the start of ground operations in Gaza, including 13 killed in friendly fire incidents.
The Associated Press said hospital records showed an Israeli airstrike killed at least 23 people overnight in the city of Rafah, right on Gaza's southern border with Egypt — an area in which civilians had been directed by Israel to seek shelter.
CBS News producer Marwan al-Ghoul was lucky to survive another strike in the area. Early Monday, he visited the scene of a bombardment that he said had killed at least 10 people not more than 500 yards from his home.
"These children are not Hamas"
The soaring number of dead and wounded in Gaza has fueled rising anger around the world, but perhaps nowhere more intensely than in the other Palestinian territory, the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Protesters marched Monday in the West Bank city of Ramallah carrying a 40-foot banner bearing the names of Palestinians killed in Gaza. "We are not numbers," it read.
That message, in English, was likely aimed at the only nation many people in the region deem capable of restraining Israel's military.
"We are against the position of the United States of America when they use the veto two times against Palestinian people," one man at the rally told CBS News.
The U.S. has blocked the passage of legally binding United Nations security resolutions that would have called for a new cease-fire, and both Washington and Israel argue that any pause in the fighting would allow Hamas militants to regroup.
More than three-quarters of the U.N. General Assembly voted Tuesday to demand an immediate humanitarian cease-fire. The United States was among the 10 countries who voted against the measure, which passed with 153 votes in favor and 23 abstentions. The resolution is largely symbolic and not legally binding.
But Palestinians and their supporters say those suffering most under Israel's blistering offensive in Gaza are not terrorists.
"These are not Hamas," Lubna Kharouf, a local city council official in the West Bank, said as she pointed to Palestinians at the protest in Ramallah. "These children are not Hamas… and the people who are bombarded in Gaza are mainly the women and civilians and children — and these are not Hamas."
The head of the U.N.'s World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Tuesday that prolonged Israeli checks and the "detention of health workers" were putting "lives of already fragile patients at risk" in Gaza.
"In just 66 days the health system [in Gaza] has gone from 36 functional hospitals to 11 partially functional hospitals — one in the north and 10 in the south," the Reuters news agency quoted the WHO's representative in the Palestinian territories, Richard Peeperkorn, as saying during a Tuesday briefing.
Calls for humanitarian aid and a "premium on civilian life"
One of the biggest factors behind the dire humanitarian circumstances in Gaza since Oct. 7 has been Israel's military sealing the territory's borders. Gaza has relied for years on hundreds of trucks crossing daily from Egypt and Israel carrying supplies of virtually everything essential, from medicine to food and fuel. Only one border gate, the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, has been reopened, but aid agencies say the flow of supplies through it has been miniscule in comparison to the needs of Gaza's 2.3 million people.
Hours after U.N. aid agency officials speaking with CBS News renewed their plea for Israel to open the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza on Monday, to increase the flow of aid into the besieged enclave, Israeli authorities indicated that the country's border checkpoint there would be opened, but to add "security screening" capacity, not for additional trucks to cross into Gaza.
It was not clear how much more aid the additional screening might enable or expedite, as the materials would still need to return to the Rafah crossing to enter Gaza.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Nathaniel Tek, meanwhile, echoed remarks made last week by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, telling BBC News on Tuesday that the Biden administration believes it's "critical that Israel places a premium on the protection of human life, and for the ability of aid organizations to access civilians."
"There certainly is more that can be done," Tek said, "and more precise and clear directions can be given to civilians to ensure they can reach safety. We believe that while Israel's intent is there to ensure the protection of civilians, the results also matter, and we are working and pressing the government of Israel to make sure they are putting a premium on civilian life."
He stressed that Hamas, which both Israel and the U.S. accuse of using Palestinians as human shields, also had a responsibility to protect civilians, and he added that the group had "not shown any interest or inclination to do so."
But with both sides seemingly entrenched and little hope for a new cease-fire in the near term, there was instead rising concern that the conflict could spread beyond Gaza.
U.S. "concerned" by reports Israel used white phosphorous in Lebanon
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told journalists Monday that the U.S. was "concerned" by reports that Israel may have used U.S.-provided white phosphorus munitions as it carried out strikes in October in southern Lebanon, where the Hezbollah militant group is based.
"We've seen the reports — certainly concerned about that," Kirby said, referring to a story published by the Washington Post.
"We'll be asking questions to try to learn a little bit more," Kirby said, adding that white phosphorus, a highly incendiary material that is difficult to extinguish and can burn through human bone, does have a "legitimate military utility" for illumination and concealing troop movements with smoke.
"Obviously, anytime that we provide items like white phosphorus to another military, it is with a full expectation that it will be used in keeping with those legitimate purposes and in keeping with the law of armed conflict."
Hezbollah, a powerful regional force that, like Hamas, is backed by Iran, has warned repeatedly that it would join Hamas in the war with Israel if called on to do so. Already Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon have exchanged fire with Israeli troops across Israel's northern border.
Kirby stressed Monday that the White House does not want to see a second front open up in the war.
"We absolutely don't want to see this conflict spill over into Lebanon," he said. "So it is also in the context of that we're concerned about these reports."
Houthis attack European oil tanker near Yemen
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebel movement said Monday that it had attacked a Norwegian-flagged oil tanker off the country's coast, calling it the latest military operation carried out in protest of the Israeli bombing of Gaza.
The U.S. military's Central Command (CENTCOM) said an American warship, the USS Mason, "responded to the M/T STRINDA's mayday call" after what it said appeared to have been a strike with an anti-ship cruise missile. CENTCOM said the Strinda "reported damage causing a fire on-board, but no casualties at this time," and that the Mason had provided unspecified assistance.
The Houthis, a formidable fighting force that captured more than half of Yemen, igniting a civil war in 2014 that continues today, have fired a series of missiles and drones in the direction of U.S. military vessels and other ships in the region since the Israel-Hamas war began.
A French naval frigate, meanwhile, reportedly destroyed a Houthi drone that was threatening the same Norwegian tanker.