The Decibel - Inside the Israel-Gaza war zone

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Warning: this episode contains descriptions of violenceHundreds of thousands of people have fled south in Gaza after Israel told 1.1 million people living in the northern part of the Gaza Strip to evacuate. Israel is expected to begin a significant ground offensive soon. As of Sunday evening, 150 Canadians are stuck in Gaza, hoping to flee to neighbouring Egypt.Israel has called up more than 360,000 reservists and has amassed tanks and troops at the Gaza border. This comes after Hamas’ surprise deadly attack in areas across Israel on October 7th. Since the conflict began, more than 3,600 have been killed on both sides, many of them civilians.Mark Mackinnon is on the show. He’s the Globe’s Senior International Correspondent and he’s been travelling through the region since the war began.Editor’s note: On this episode of The Decibel, Mark MacKinnon stated that in 2005, Israelis demolished greenhouses in Gaza. A detail omitted from that comment is that half the land occupied by greenhouses remained after Israelis withdrew from the area in the summer of that year. The remaining greenhouses were later damaged and looted by Palestinians.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] 

This weekend, the Israeli military repeated its warning that over a million people in the northern part of the Gaza Strip should head south. They called it a humanitarian gesture to give civilians notice before they begin a ground invasion to root out Hamas fighters. We are asking all the civilians in Gaza City to go south of Gaza. And the reason is that because we don't want to have them. The camouflage of the terrorists is the civil population. Israel has called up more than 360,000 reservists. Troops and tanks have amassed at the Gaza border. Gaza has already been cut off from fuel, food, and water. As of Sunday evening, there are also

people from other countries still stuck in Gaza, including 150 Canadians. They're hoping to cross over into neighboring Egypt. Meanwhile, Israel continues to reel from Hamas's attacks last Saturday, with funerals for people killed by the militant group. At least 3,600 people have died on both sides since the war started last week, many of them civilians. This is an evolving story, and we wanted a perspective from the ground. So today, we have Mark McKinnon, the Globe's senior international correspondent. Mark's been traveling throughout the region since the war began. I spoke with him late afternoon his time on Saturday from Jerusalem. I'm Menaka Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thanks again, Monica. You, of course, have been an international correspondent for more than two decades. You've covered numerous conflicts. What is covering this war over the past week been like? You're right. I have, unfortunately, covered a few of these things before. This one has been, obviously obviously quite unpredictably dangerous. This week,

I drove out towards Raim, which is where the music festival where more than 260 people were horribly murdered last Saturday. And when we arrived at the checkpoint to the road, it's called Route 232. It's this road that runs north from Reim towards Beirut and other kibbutz where horrible things occurred. The Israeli soldiers stopped us at the checkpoint and said, you can't go further. We're sorry. And I said, why? We have to see these things for ourselves. That's why we're here. And he said, it's not safe. There's been missiles fired. And he pointed over at the grass, maybe, I don't know, 50 meters from where I was, and it was on fire.

There had been something that had hit very recently before we arrived, just missing the road that we took down. So, you know, obviously a very active situation. And while we were sort of hanging around, waiting for permission to finally enter, we could see sort of Hamas rockets streaking through the sky. You could hear the Israeli warplanes going in to hit Gaza. So, and, you know, on Friday in Ramallah, very similarly, I've covered many Palestinian demonstrations over the years. I used to be based here in Jerusalem. And there's just a new danger to it. Yeah. And Mark, from your perspective, is there anything that feels different about reporting on this war? There's a particular thing about covering this conflict.

And you can see it in the letters we get, the emails we get, and in our social media mentions online. It's such a divisive and emotional conflict, and everybody wants you to use their language. No matter how carefully you try and look at things from all sides. That's why I went to Bedi this week. And to see exactly what had happened. That's why I was in Ramallah on Friday. So I could experience firsthand the Palestinian anger and the Palestinian reaction. And everybody wants you to use their words.

Terrorists, freedom fighters. These are just words. And the facts are what we're chasing here. And we're not trying to take a side, we're trying to take a side with the civilians. And so when I go into Bedi, I'm not there to listen to the Israeli soldiers. I'm there to try and envision what happened to these civilians, what it must have been like for them, and what horrors they're going through now in Gaza.

And the same thing when you go into the Palestinian side, is when we eventually get access to the Gaza Strip, it's not going to be, we're not there to support Hamas. We're there to try and understand what it was like for civilians to try and take their point of view and to get that point of view out to the world. You mentioned you'd gone down to see where that music festival had happened there, Mark. I know one of the other stories that you mentioned as well, you covered, you went to that kibbutz where it was a community of just over a thousand people and at least 120 people were killed by Hamas. You went on a walkthrough of that area with other journalists, I believe. Can you tell me what was that like? I mean, it's difficult to describe what it's

like arriving in a small community, a thousand people. It's this gated sort of patch of greenery in the northern Nega desert. And the only comparison I can think of right now is this is it's just sort of a gated community in Florida where, you know, maybe some Canadians or their parents have retired to. And, you know, you enter these places and you see, you know, the side of the road, just these houses that are utterly destroyed and people's, you know, lying in the rubble of these buildings are people's photographs and personal items. And all of this is so fresh that when we got to this kibbutz on Wednesday, there were still the bodies of Hamas fighters, you know, covered by plastic sheets,

but, you know, sort of lying in the streets. The Israelis had taken away the Israeli bodies they had found, and they were still digging in the rubble to find what they could about other people who were missing. But, you know, the stench of death literally hanging over the place. I mean, that's just obviously really horrific stuff here, Mark. Of course, there's lots of stories that are coming out now. I wonder, you're in Jerusalem. What are you hearing from Gaza as well? This is a place right now where there's no power, water, or fuel. Have we heard stories from anyone there? Absolutely. I mean, it's very difficult to be in contact with people from Gaza these days,

but it is possible. I have a few sources there who I record an audio message and I send it by WhatsApp. And eventually when there's a blip of mobile coverage or if they can get enough electricity to turn their phones back on, they can hear my question and then they can reply. So an absolutely terrifying situation there for residents. We've already had past 1,600, 1,700 Gazans killed, 1,300 Israelis were killed in the initial attack last week. So these are unfathomable numbers for such a short period of time in such a small place. And the Israelis have given this order a few days ago that everyone living in the north of the Gaza Strip,

so 1.1 million people have been asked to move to the south of the Gaza Strip. The northern tip is the most densely populated part of the Palestinian territory, home to over a million people. The UN has described the mass evacuation warning as impossible, saying it would have devastating consequences on civilians. That obviously has added an extra element of chaos. And this is not a big space, right? This is a place that's, you know, 40 kilometers by 12 kilometers.

I mean, this is an incredibly densely populated area in the first place. So just more crowding, more chaos, and the opening for these people to leave has already expired. So we don't know if they ever will get out. And the Israeli military would say, you know, we're trying to minimize the number of civilian casualties by telling people to get out of this area of future military activity. Palestinians say this is forced displacement, pointing to what happened in 1948 and 1967 when wars between Israel and the Palestinian population or the Arab states around resulted in Palestinians being driven from their homes. It's an extremely sensitive request. And Hamas, the militant group

that controls the Gaza Strip, has been telling people, don't leave. This is what they want you to do. And we had similar, going back to Ukraine, at the start of the war, there was people saying, evacuate Kiev, you know, that will, you know, allow this to be a military on military confrontation. And other people say, that's what the Russians want. They want to get all the Ukrainians out of here. So this will become a Russian city. So, you know, this is a very charged thing to ask people to evacuate their homes ahead of an attack. Yeah. And so, of course, ahead of the attack, this is the ground offensive that we've been hearing about since Israel basically declared war a week ago. But it didn't take Israel long to amass troops at the Gazan border, right? 360,000 troops within a few days. Why has Israel

waited so long to go into Gaza? I mean, yeah, it is part of the geography of this place is that you can call up an army and in a very short amount of time, people will drive a couple of hours and report to their base. And every Israeli adult has had military service of some kind. Why have they waited until now? Part of this would be developing a plan. I don't think Israel had a plan to go back on the ground militarily at this moment. Part of this would be allowing the airstrikes to do what they're going to do, sort of to prepare the ground for an invasion. Also, my understanding from various sources is the Western governments,

the United States, Canada, and others have been asking Israel to hold off until these foreign nationals, 150 Canadians, much larger numbers of Americans, French, Germans, passport holders in the Gaza Strip, so they can get out of there. Israel currently has the support of all these Western governments and does not want to lose that at the start, you know, before the ground invasion has began. Everyone expects a ground invasion will commence imminently. So one of the calculations you mentioned, there's the foreign nationals in Gaza. What about the hostages being held in Gaza? Mostly Israelis, but also people from other countries as well, right? Is this a factor here? essential deliveries of other sorts to the Gaza Strip. So this has exasperated an already desperate situation in Gaza. And Israel has said, if you want the siege to be lifted,

if you want services to be restored, step one is releasing all of these hostages. Hamas obviously has planned for all of this. That's the part that is most worrying in a way. Hamas launched this attack knowing, especially if it took hostages, that it would face Israeli military action, that Israel would punish Gaza. What their plan is to respond to what happens next, we don't know. They've threatened to start executing hostages if Israel continues its aerial bombardment. That, to our knowledge, hasn't happened yet, though Hamas claims that some of the hostages have been killed in the aerial bombardment. That, to our knowledge, hasn't happened yet, though Hamas claims that some of the hostages have been killed in the aerial bombardment. There was an early raid into Gaza last night, Friday night, that seems to have been aimed at establishing where, get more information about where the hostages may be being kept. This, you know, this is incredibly delicate. When I was living here 15 years ago now, there was a hostage, a single Israeli hostage named Gilad Shalit who was taken by Hamas.

He ended up being swapped for a thousand Palestinian prisoners. One thousand Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for one Israeli soldier. Now you're in a situation where Hamas has, we believe, more than a hundred hostages. That kind of trade isn't possible, nor does Israel or America or any of the Western governments want to encourage this kind of behavior. So the hostages are probably in an extremely difficult situation,

and the Israeli military operation will obviously be targeted at trying to rescue as many as possible, but you have to imagine that Hamas is going to try and make that very difficult. We'll be right back. So, Mark, obviously the question of foreign nationals in Gaza, the question of hostages there as well is a factor here. But I also want to ask you, I guess, about the broader factors of why Israel doesn't really want to or is reluctant to go into Gaza this way. There has been historically kind of a hesitation there from Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister,

but also beyond that, to launch a ground offensive in Gaza, to go in with soldiers, essentially, right? Why does Israel not want to get drawn into a ground offensive? You know, this is, you know, Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. In the aftermath, Hamas took over, which was sort of the worst case outcome. And so ever since then, there have been these periodic exchanges of fire where the Palestinians launch rockets at Israeli cities and Israel responds with extreme force. And you end up having these death tolls that are often five, ten Palestinians for every Israeli killed, almost some awful mathematic that gets used. They've gone in once before in a limited ground operation over that time. I think there are two reasons for the hesitation.

The first is the difficulty of urban warfare in such a densely populated strip. The likelihood of high military casualties is there. Tanks can be very useless in a situation where they can't turn a maneuver, so you have to do it often with infantry. The other side of that equation, of course, is the one that's going to weigh on how long this operation lasts, and that's the public relations side of this. And the Israelis are very aware of this, very alert to world public opinion. And by going into Gaza, if it's going to cost soldiers' lives, it's going to cost civilian lives.

It's likely to cost hostages' lives. At some point, we're already seeing, you know, yesterday I saw it in the West Bank, people in Toronto and London and Paris saw it, in Washington saw these protests, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, whatever you want to call them. But, you know, the feeling that Israel is responsible for what happens next, the number of civilian casualties. Western governments currently, as I said, are standing behind Israel. They say that that support is unlimited, but we're starting to see the caveats already, respecting international law,

minimize civilian harm. The longer this goes on, the higher the civilian death toll will be, the more images the world will see of not just the Israelis who were horribly murdered in kibbutzes and at a music festival, but you'll start to see more and more of what we're already seeing, these horrible images from hospitals in Gaza of children dying from lack of medication. And then, you know, the pressure to stop the operation comes pretty quickly. And Mark, I believe you were there covering this in 2005 when Israel withdrew from Gaza. What do you remember, I guess, about the mood at that time? That was, looking back, it was a strangely hopeful period. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time, took a lot of criticism from Israelis who thought he was giving up sort of part of what, you know, what's known as

the land of Israel. Many people believe that this is part of that Gaza was part of the territory bequeathed to the Jewish people. He had a vision of doing this first and then establishing what, you know, the security barrier, the wall through the West Bank. And I think, you know, he had he lived, that would have been the plan. And I remember talking to Palestinians back then, and one of them sticks out in my mind. His name was Abu Kholi, if I recall correctly. And he was saying to me, you know, come visit me in a year. We'll have a great celebration. The Israelis are gone. Gaza will be wonderful. Finally, we can do what we want. But as described, Palestinians never got back control of Gaza. The Israelis demolished the settlements, the greenhouses, the agriculture that

they had built over the time of the occupation, leaving basically piles of rubble for Gaza rather than sort of something they could build on. And then in this vacuum, Hamas took over the stretch. And that was basically the nightmare for everyone involved, but certainly for the Israelis and for Palestinians who, from that moment on, those living in the Gaza Strip were cut off politically, economically, from those living in the West Bank and became priors to Western governments. So just getting a trickle of aid into Gaza, enough to keep people from starving, has become the only goal since then.

So a long way from what Mr. Abou-Holi was hoping for. And so this brings us back to the present day, Mark. So let's talk about the bigger picture here. I mean, Hamas must have known that their major attack on Israel would mean a heavy response from the Israeli military, right? I mean, this is a very powerful military. And that's exactly what we're seeing now. And we're seeing the deaths of so many civilians in Gaza. So what did Hamas accomplish with this attack? I mean, from a military perspective, this was a, you know, a great military surprise, arguably a success for Hamas in terms of it caught off guard, you know, one of the most famed armies in the Middle East, the most famed army in the Middle East. And had they restricted

their attack to the Israeli military base that took over, it may have just gone down in history as this counterattack, frankly. By going on this murderous rampage through cities and kibbutzes of southern Israel, I think what Hamas was hoping to do, what both sides now are talking about doing, is changing the paradigm. Over the last 18 years that Hamas has been in control of the Gaza Strip, it has been effectively under a blockade. Israel controls the airspace. Gazans cannot build an airport. Israel controls the waters. They have not allowed Gaza to build a seaport. It's very difficult for anyone who governs Gaza to try and make your population better, healthier, richer. It's just an impossible situation.

Have you been able to speak to Hamas at all, Mark? I have, and in part. So when I've visited the Gaza Strip in the past, you do have to sort of go in and speak to the local authorities, and local authorities in Gaza or Hamas. And so there is a Hamas official. He's a former minister of health that I had a WhatsApp number for. And so when this conflict began, when Hamas started this with its sort of murderous attack on southern Israel, I wrote to him and I said, you know, how does this help? You know, how does this help your cause? And he said, you know, this is a great victory for the Palestinian people, was his reply. And I said, yes, but, you know, many, many Gazans are now going to suffer. And he said, you know, this is, that's Israel's fault. I said, no, I mean,

you attacked civilians. You, you know, have, have set this in motion. And he said, oh, that's Israeli propaganda. It didn't happen. And it made me think back, and this is, you know, way back in history after the attack on a school in southern Russia in a city called Beslan that was carried out by Chechen militants. And in the aftermath of that, I tried to reach out to the head of the Chechen militant organization, a man named Shamil Basayev. And I, again, made contact with him through his intermediaries, and I sent him some questions. And he came back with the same sort of, don't you see this? Our attack is justified by what's happened to our people over centuries. They did this to our children. So we're allowed to do this to their children. And I think in both cases, it was just a dramatic miscalculation. And they have ended up wounding the cause they

purport to support. Before I let you go, Mark, I want to ask you about Israel's side of this here. So I asked you about the why for Hamas, but what about Israel here? So even if they do go into the Gaza Strip and defeat Hamas, as they say they want to, there are still countless Palestinians and others not associated with Hamas who are fighting to create a Palestinian state. So what will Israel have accomplished here? Right now, the mood in Israel is they don't want to talk about any of this. The mood here is anger. It's grief. It's a desire for revenge. And I had an interesting conversation with some soldiers, the ones who escorted us into Bedi. And one of them said to me, you know, the hardest part when we get into Gaza will be keeping my cool. He was admitting he's just having a hard time. He doesn't want to behave like Hamas. He doesn't want to see Israeli soldiers treating Gazan civilians the way that Hamas treated Israeli civilians.

But he said it's going to be hard. We're furious, effectively, is what he was saying. Clearly, a ground operation to uproot, to destroy Hamas is envisioned. Of course, Hamas is linked to the wider Muslim Brotherhood and has allies all around the region. So that's going to be politically combustible and also just difficult to eliminate a group such as Hamas without creating a whole new generation of people who admire them for having fought. So we don't know what Israel's endgame is here. People are wondering if the plan is to reestablish an occupation of the Gaza Strip, if it's to restore the Palestinian authority of Makloud Abbas to power here. But you're right, at the end of the

day, this conversation now, or in five years or 15 years, is going to have to come back to the idea of either a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, or as many Palestinians now say, at least those in the West Bank, a single state solution. Just give us the same rights as Israelis do and call it whatever you want. Just end the occupation. And of course, that would be very dangerous for the idea of a Jewish state because Palestinian growth rates are higher than Israeli growth rates. And so at some point, if you're a believer in the idea of a Jewish state of Israel, that idea is not acceptable because you would eventually become a minority in this Jewish state. So that puts you back on this track that we were so hopefully on in the 1990s and early 2000s of a two-state solution. No one's been talking about it for a long time, but it is where this conversation has to come back to.

Mark, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today and please take care. Thank you, Menaka. That's it for today. I'm Menaka Raman-Welms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive

editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.