#Urgent Shehab correspondent | The occupation targeted the home of preacher Wael Al-Zard about an hour ago, and there are a number of injuries and reports of martyrs.

#عاجل مراسل شهاب| الاحتلال يستهدف منزل الداعية وائل الزرد قبل نحو ساعة ووجود عدد من الإصابات وأنباء عن شهداء.

Our dear Sheikh and beloved Dr. Wael Al-Zard is well, as is his family. The rumors circulating about his passing are false.

شيخنا و حبيبنا د. وائل الزرد بخير و عائلته كذلك.... ولا صحة لما يشاع بين الناس عن خبر ارتقائه...

Please pray for Dr. Wael Al-Zard, a preacher, who is in intensive care after suffering a serious injury.

دعواتكم للدكتور الداعية د. وائل الزرد يرقد في العناية الحثيثة نتيجة تعرضه لإصابة بالغة

A month after his son's martyrdom, Gaza bids farewell to preacher Wael al-Zard, whose home was targeted in an airstrike two days prior (video). Al-Zard had posted on Facebook last month, describing his son Baraa as a "groom," before receiving news of his martyrdom. Published On 10/16/2023 | Last updated: 11:24 AM (Mecca Time). Dr. Wael Muhi al-Din al-Zard passed away today, Monday, after spending two days in intensive care at the hospital, following an Israeli airstrike that targeted his home in Gaza City last Friday. Weeks earlier, his son Baraa was martyred after being struck by a shell fired by Israeli forces at him and others near the security fence east of Gaza, while participating in events supporting Al-Aqsa Mosque. Who was preacher al-Zard? The martyr al-Zard was born in 1972 and was 51 years old. He was married and had eight children. He memorized the Quran in 1992. He earned a Bachelor's degree in Islamic Theology in 1995. He served as the Imam of the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza from 1996. He represented Palestine in the Quran memorization competition in Mecca in 1997. He earned a Master's degree in Hadith Studies in 2001 from the Islamic University of Gaza. The martyr Al-Zard earned his PhD from Ain Shams University in Egypt. He worked as a lecturer at Al-Quds Open University in the Department of Islamic Studies. He worked as a lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza in the Faculty of Islamic Theology. He worked as a lecturer at the College of Applied Sciences and Technology at the Islamic University and as the Vice President of the Department of Islamic Studies. He was the Director of the "Women's Virtue Forum," a center that addresses women's issues (educational, social, and cultural), in addition to running a Quran memorization center for girls. He was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Al-Taysir Marriage Association – Palestine. He was the head of the student youth movement at the beginning of his secondary school years at Palestine School in Gaza. As Operation Al-Aqsa Flood enters its tenth day, the Israeli occupation army continues its aggression against the Gaza Strip, targeting civilian gatherings. Its airstrikes have left 2,750 martyrs and 9,700 wounded, in addition to dozens missing under the rubble. Meanwhile, the number of internally displaced persons within the Strip has risen to one million, amid UN accusations that the occupation is carrying out ethnic cleansing against the residents of Gaza. Source: Al Jazeera Mubasher + Palestinian media outlets

بعد شهر من استشهاد ابنه.. غزة تودع الداعية وائل الزرد إثر استهداف منزله بغارة قبل يومين (فيديو)كان الزرد قد كتب منشورًا على فيسبوك الشهر الماضي وصف فيه ابنه براء بـ”العريس” قبل أن يأتيه نبأ استشهادهPublished On 16/10/2023|آخر تحديث: 11:24 AM (توقيت مكة)استشهد اليوم الاثنين الدكتور وائل محيي الدين الزرد، بعد مكوثه يومين بالعناية المركزة بالمستشفى، عقب استهداف طائرات الاحتلال منزله بمدينة غزة الجمعة الماضي.وقبل أسابيع، استشهد ابنه براء بعد إصابته بقذيفة أطلقتها عليه قوات الاحتلال برفقة آخرين على السياج الأمني شرق غزة، خلال مشاركته بفعاليات نصرة الأقصى.من هو الداعية الزرد؟ ولد الشهيد الزرد عام 1972، ويبلغ من العمر 51 عامًا، متزوج وله 8 أبناء. أتم حفظ القرآن سنة 1992. حصل على شهادة بكالوريوس أصول الدين سنة 1995. عمل إمامًا للمسجد العمري الكبير بغزة من سنة 1996. مثّل دولة فلسطين في مسابقة حفظ القرآن الكريم بمكة المكرمة سنة 1997. حصل على درجة الماجستير في الحديث الشريف سنة 2001 من الجامعة الإسلامية بغزة. حصل الشهيد الزرد على درجة الدكتوراه من جامعة عين شمس المصرية. عمل محاضرًا في جامعة القدس المفتوحة قسم الدراسات الإسلامية. عمل محاضرًا في الجامعة الإسلامية بغزة في كلية أصول الدين. عمل محاضرًا في كلية مجتمع العلوم المهنية والتطبيقية -في الجامعة الإسلامية- ونائب رئيس قسم الدراسات الإسلامية. مدير مركز “ملتقى الفضيلة النسائي” وهو ملتقى يهتم بالقضايا النسائية (تربويًا واجتماعيًا وثقافيًا) بالإضافة إلى وجود مركز تعليم القرآن للفتيات. رئيس مجلس إدارة جمعية التيسير للزواج – فلسطين. كان مسؤول الشبيبة الطلابية في بداية المرحلة الثانوية في مدرسة فلسطين بغزة. ومع دخول عملية طوفان الأقصى يومها العاشر، يواصل جيش الاحتلال العدوان على قطاع غزة مستهدفًا تجمّعات المدنيين، وخلّفت غاراته 2750 شهيدًا و9700 مصاب بالإضافة إلى عشرات المفقودين تحت الأنقاض. فيما ارتفع عدد النازحين داخل القطاع إلى مليون وسط اتهامات أممية للاحتلال بممارسة التطهير العرقي ضد سكان غزة.المصدر: الجزيرة مباشر + وسائل إعلام فلسطينية

The dawn prayer on Friday, moments before the bombing... May God have mercy on you, my love. You told me you wouldn't rest unless I was with you, and I stayed with you. But I wish we had been martyred with you. I swear, my love, I stayed only for your sake. Oh, Dad, I'll miss you so much. Who do I have left after you, my love?

صلاة الفجر في يوم الجمعة قبل القصف بلحظات... الله يرحمك يا حبيبي حكتلي برتاحش الا لما تكوني معنا وضليت معك بس ياريتنا استشهدنا معك والله يا حبيبي ضليت بس عشان خاطرك ياباااااا حشتقلك كتيرررررر من الي من بعدك يا حبيبي

My beloved mother, may God grant you and us patience in this time of grief for our dear one. Despite your injury, my darling, you still bid him farewell, thank God. You always told him, "You and I will be martyrs together," but thank God you're still with us, my love. We are nothing without you. 😭😭

حبيبتي يا امي الله يصبرك ويصبرنا يارب على فراق الغالي رغم إصابتك يا نور عيني الا انك ودعتيه الحمدلله طول عمرك بتقوليله انا واياك شهداء مع بعض بس الحمدلله انك ضليتي النا يا حبيبتي والله احنا من بعدكم ولا اشي 😭😭

I see my loved ones have departed from this world. 💔 Oh Dad, I miss you so much. Oh God, grant us patience. Dr. Wael Al-Zard

أرى الأحبة من دنياي قد رحلوا .💔 يا بابا والله مشتقاااااالك يااارب تصبرنا يااااارب د.وائل الزرد

#Urgent Shehab correspondent | The occupation targeted the home of preacher Wael Al-Zard about an hour ago, and there are a number of injuries and reports of martyrs.

#عاجل مراسل شهاب| الاحتلال يستهدف منزل الداعية وائل الزرد قبل نحو ساعة ووجود عدد من الإصابات وأنباء عن شهداء.

Funeral procession for the martyr Dr. Wael Al-Zard, who was killed this morning after being wounded in a Zionist bombing.

تشييع الشهيد الدكتور وائل الزرد الذي ارتقى صباح اليوم إثر إصابته بقصف صهيوني

#Urgent | Just weeks after his son’s martyrdom, preacher Wael Al-Zard has passed away, succumbing to injuries sustained when the occupation’s air force bombed his home days ago.

#عاجل| بعد أسابيع فقط من ارتقاء نجله، ارتقاء الداعية وائل الزرد متأثراً بإصابته بقصف طيران الاحتلال لمنزله قبل أيام.

Item 1 of 3 Israeli tanks and military vehicles take position near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, October 13, 2023. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura [1/3]Israeli tanks and military vehicles take position near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, October 13, 2023. REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tabOct 13 (Reuters) - Mosques broadcast messages telling Gaza Strip residents to stay put on Friday, in defiance of an Israeli military call for more than a million civilians to move south within 24 hours in the build-up to its expected ground offensive.Leaders of the enclave's governing militant group Hamas also urged Palestinians to ignore the call, and by Friday afternoon there were no signs of any mass exodus from the north of the enclave.The Reuters Gulf Currents newsletter brings you the latest on geopolitics, energy and finance in the region. Sign up here.Any incursion into the densely populated territory would be a pivotal moment in Israel's war with Hamas, which on Saturday launched the bloodiest attack on the country since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.Israel has already mounted the heaviest air strikes on Gaza ever, and has mobilised 300,000 reservists and amassed tanks near the border in response to the Hamas assault.In Gaza, the threats of a ground invasion conjured up images of the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe that refers to the 1948 war of Israel's creation that led to their mass dispossession.Gaza analyst Talal Okal described the Israeli relocation order as an “attempt to push the Palestinian people of Gaza into Nakba".“Like they did in 1948 when they pushed people out of historical Palestine by dropping barrels of explosives on their heads, today Israel is repeating this before the eyes of the world and live cameras,” Okal told Reuters.The Israeli military told the civilians of Gaza City to "evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields."In Gaza, mosques broadcast the message: "Hold on to your homes. Hold on to your land."'WE WILL NOT LEAVE'In Gaza's Shifa hospital, a man arrived to check on dozens of relatives and friends who have been brought from the site of a residential building Israel bombed in Beach refugee camp.“I survived, I don’t know why I survived. It is so that I tell the enemy, America, Europe and the world that this Palestinian people will not be defeated,” the man cried toward reporters.“They think there will be another displacement, or that we may go Egypt. Nonsense,” he said before going into the morgue to try and identify dead relatives.Well-Known Gaza Hamas cleric Wael Al-Zard was also killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza, Hamas said. His son was killed a few weeks ago during border protests along the fence.Gaza, a tiny coastal strip of land wedged between Israel in the north and east and Egypt to the southwest, is home to some 2.3 million people who have been living under a blockade since Hamas took control there in 2007.Even if its residents wanted to flee the enclave altogether, they have nowhere to go as the most obvious exit would be through Egypt, something Cairo rejects.Egypt has discussed plans with the United States and others to provide humanitarian aid through its border, but rejects any move to set up safe corridors for refugees fleeing the enclave, Egyptian security sources said.Cairo, a frequent mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, always insists the two sides resolve conflicts within their borders, saying this is the only way Palestinians can secure their right to statehood.Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at a military academy that: "This is the cause of all causes, the cause of all Arabs. It is important that the (Palestinian) people remain steadfast and present on their land. We will expend all efforts to alleviate (the burden) on them."Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Amman that he "rejects the forced displacement" of Palestinians in Gaza, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.He said such an event would constitute a "second Nakba".Eyad Al-Bozom, spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry, urged Arabs everywhere and especially in countries that have borders with Israel to support the people of Gaza.“We tell the people of northern Gaza and from Gaza City, stay put in your homes, and your places. By carrying out massacres against the civilians, the occupation wants to displace us once again from our land,” he told a news conference.The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency on Friday described the Israeli military call for mass movement as "horrendous" and said the enclave was rapidly becoming a "hell hole".The agency said it was moving staff south to keep up its work. Thirteen-year-old Azmi Diab, who was getting ready to move with his mother, a U.N. staffer, said he was also bringing his pet bird.“I raised him, so I brought him to hide him from the bombardment, so he doesn’t die. It was small and we grew up together,” Diab told Reuters.Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Nick Macfie and Andrew HeavensOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Media coverage: "Dr. Wael al-Zard, a #Palestinian Muslim scholar and academic with a PhD in Islamic law, has been murdered in an Israeli airstrike which flattened his home to the ground in Gaza."

Here’s the latest on the war.A second aid convoy crossed into the Gaza Strip from Egypt late Sunday, the latest attempt to stem a growing humanitarian crisis in the enclave as Israeli forces struck the West Bank and traded volleys with Hezbollah along the Lebanese border.The aid included “water, food and medical equipment,” according to a statement from an Israeli defense ministry agency. “All of the equipment was inspected by Israeli security personnel before it was brought into Gaza,” it added.The United Nations said 14 more trucks had entered Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Juliette Touma, the director of communications for U.N.R.W.A., the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, confirmed the shipment, saying it arrived around 10:20 p.m. local time.The shipment came a day after a convoy of 20 trucks made the same trip on Saturday — but international aid officials continued to warn that far more was needed. “Another small glimmer of hope for the millions of people in dire need of humanitarian aid,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s head of emergency relief, wrote on social media. “But they need more, much more.” The Biden administration has advised Israel to delay a ground invasion of Gaza, hoping to buy time for hostage negotiations and to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians, according to several U.S. officials. American officials also want more time to prepare for attacks from Iran-backed groups on U.S. interests in the region, which officials said are likely to intensify once Israel moves its forces fully into Gaza.Israel has continued to pound Gaza with punishing airstrikes after cross-border attacks by Hamas militants on Oct. 7. As Israeli forces massed along the border with Gaza, escalating clashes on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, along with strikes in Syria and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, have intensified fears of a widening regional conflict.The Israeli authorities said they were expanding a state-funded evacuation plan to move residents from an additional 14 Israeli villages near the border with Lebanon to safer areas. The move came as Israel’s military said Sunday it was contending with increasing attacks from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia that controls southern Lebanon, that have resulted in civilian and military casualties.Violence has also been surging across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli military carried out a rare airstrike there overnight against what it described as an underground “terror compound” beneath a mosque in the city of Jenin. Two people were killed, according to Palestinian health officials.Here are some other developments:Senior Israeli commanders have increasingly been making public references to preparations for a ground assault. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said the expected ground invasion into Gaza must be the last one “for the simple reason that after this, Hamas will no longer be.” The efforts to eradicate Hamas “may take a month, two, or three, but in the end, Hamas will no longer exist,” he added.The Israeli military reiterated its warning for civilians in Gaza to move to the southern part of the enclave as a humanitarian crisis spirals. But many people in the north said that doing so was not an option because of cost — and that it was no guarantee of safety.An Israeli soldier was killed and three others injured by an anti-tank missile during a raid inside the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said. The troops were operating “to dismantle terror infrastructure, clear the area of terrorists and weapons, and locate missing persons and bodies,” the Israeli military said.Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued “almost unabated,” while Palestinian armed groups continued with their “indiscriminate rocket firing” toward Israel, the United Nations said. The death toll in Gaza has increased to at least 4,385, while injuries number more than 13,500, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. On the Israeli side, the fatalities remained at 1,400 but injuries increased to almost 5,000, the U.N. said.The Israeli military said one of its tanks accidentally hit an Egyptian post near the border crossing between the two countries at Kerem Shalom. The military expressed “sorrow” and said the episode was under investigation. Egypt’s military said there were minor injuries, but described the incident as an accident and noted Israel’s immediate apology. Kerem Shalom is a couple of miles from Egypt’s Rafah border crossing, from which a small convoy of aid trucks entered Gaza on Saturday.Hamas releases two women, but keeps their husbands in custody.Two Israeli women kidnapped on Oct. 7 during a massacre on the Nir Oz kibbutz were released on Monday, the Israeli prime minister’s office said, but their husbands remain among the more than 200 people still held hostage.The hostages were identified as Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85.Ms . Lifshitz was kidnapped along with her husband, Oded, a well-known left-wing journalist. There was no immediate information about Ms. Lifshitz’s condition on Monday, and no information about the well-being of her husband.Americans for Peace Now, an advocacy group that aims to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said in a statement that Mr. and Ms. Lifshitz also helped to found the Peace Now movement in Israel.Her grandson, Daniel Lifshitz, told reporters in Eilat that his family was “truly hoping that this is just the beginning of the release of all the remaining hostages.” Asked what he would say to his grandmother, Mr. Lifshitz said: “That I love her.” Last week, Sharone Lifschitz, the daughter of Ms. Lifschitz, said at a news conference in London that her mother used an oxygen tank while sleeping and her father was taking medicine for lung disease at the time they were taken. “These are frail people,” Dr. Lifschitz said at the news conference given by the families of those who had been kidnapped, the emotions clear in her voice.Ms. Cooper, 79, was kidnapped with her husband, Amiram Cooper.Their son, Rotem Cooper, who lives in Southern California, traveled to Israel soon after his parents were reported missing. He was on the phone with them as the attacks unfolded on Oct. 7, he told 10 News in San Diego, and feared they would not survive without their medicine. There was no information immediately available on Ms. Cooper’s condition.Video broadcast on Egyptian state media showed both Ms. Lifshitz and Ms. Cooper in ambulances. They were being taken to a medical center in Israel where their families were waiting for them, the Israeli prime minister’s office said.In a statement calling for their release, the National Union of Journalists, an organization based in Britain, said Mr. and Ms. Lifshitz helped to found the kibbutz in 1957. Mr. and Ms. Cooper were also longtime residents.The journalists’ union said Mr. Lifshitz had spent his career documenting war crimes in Lebanon and human rights abuses against Palestinians and Bedouin, and that he spent his retirement volunteering for a group that helps Gazan patients get to medical appointments in Israel.Hamas stated its willingness to release the two women on Saturday, saying there were “compelling humanitarian reasons” to do so.Earlier Monday, Israeli officials said it had been in contact with the families of 222 people it believed were taken hostage by Hamas in the Oct. 7 cross-border assault, up from the 212 it had confirmed a day earlier.On Friday, Hamas released two other hostages — Judith and Natalie Raanan, an American-Israeli mother and daughter — after negotiations involving diplomats from the United States and Qatar.Pregnant women in Gaza face dangerous births on their own.As Israel warns of a monthslong war and steps up an onslaught of airstrikes on Gaza, it has trapped 50,000 pregnant women in a humanitarian nightmare, according to estimates from the United Nations’ sexual and reproductive health agency, known as U.N.F.P.A. Some 5,500 of these women are expected to give birth in the next month and are facing the prospect of doing so on their own, as Gaza’s health system buckles under the Israeli blockade and as intensified airstrikes make traveling to any medical facility a perilous ordeal.Dominic Allen, the U.N.F.P.A. representative for the Palestinian territories, said on Monday that individually packaged emergency delivery kits for at least half the women expected to give birth soon remain held up in Europe, part of the humanitarian response that includes aid convoys waiting in Egypt for permission to enter Gaza.The kits are spartan. Each resealable plastic bag holds one bar of soap, a plastic sheet measuring about 40 inches by 40 inches, a pair of scissors for cutting the umbilical cord, three pieces of umbilical tape, two cotton cloths for cleaning and covering the mother and child, a pair of latex exam gloves and an instruction pamphlet to guide women through their deliveries.U.N.F.P.A. considers the kits a “last resort” to prevent infection during delivery in the absence of safe or reliable access to a health care facility, but that circumstance has become the norm in Gaza since the war began. And as their deliveries approach, many of the pregnant women “don’t know where they’re going to be in the next minute or the next day,” Mr. Allen said.An estimated 19,000 pregnant women were among more than one million people ordered by Israel to leave northern Gaza last week, according to the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association, a nonprofit member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The group said in a statement that women in Gaza have been losing their pregnancies from the stress and shock of the war.Itimad Abu Ward, a midwife and nurse who works as a public health officer for the W.H.O., was among those forced to flee northern Gaza. She said trying to care for pregnant women during the chaotic journey south was near impossible.In a phone interview from Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Ms. Abu Ward said she met a pregnant woman at a United Nations shelter last week who urgently needed to get to a hospital — she was in labor, and had been complaining about decreased fetal movement.But it took two days to find safe transportation and an open bed for the woman at the nearby Nasser Hospital, Ms. Abu Ward said. She feared she would not be able to help patients in similar situations.Ms. Abu Ward spoke to The Times from the Khan Younis Training Center, where an estimated 17,000 displaced people are sheltering in overcrowded conditions with limited water and sanitation facilities.As the center’s electricity flickered on and off and explosions boomed outside, she said the few medical supplies — gloves, umbilical cord ties, clean towels — that she was able to bring when her family left their home in Jabaliya would not be enough to save a pregnant woman if she began hemorrhaging.Even the donated first aid kit that Ms. Abu Ward has been using to treat minor injuries in the center lacks basic tools like thermometers, she said, and when she recently treated a new mother and her feverish 25-day-old baby, she was forced to estimate the baby’s temperature by hand.Gaza’s hospitals and maternity wards, starved of water and fuel, are not much better equipped. Medicines for potentially life-threatening pregnancy complications, like magnesium sulfate for treating pre-eclampsia, are running low and cannot be replenished unless more humanitarian aid is allowed in, said Mr. Allen, the U.N.F.P.A. representative.Also held up in the aid convoys are desperately needed supplies for Gaza’s medical personnel to perform basic obstetric procedures, like suturing perineal tears, and more complex ones, like delivering a baby by cesarean section, he said.Ms. Abu Ward said that unless such aid, and more of it, is allowed in, and until pregnant women in Gaza can safely resume regular pre- and postnatal appointments, she expected maternal mortality rates to rise. “We are trying to help as much as we can, but sometimes, we can’t,” she said. “The future is very, very dark.” A correction was made onOct. 24, 2023: An earlier version of this article, relying on information from the United Nations, misstated the location of emergency delivery kits for pregnant women. The kits are currently held up in Europe, not Egypt.Oct. 22, 2023Daniel VictorPresident Biden spoke with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain on Sunday about support for Israel, the White House said. The group agreed to work on diplomacy, especially with regional partners, to prevent the conflict from spreading. Typically, these nations and Japan comprise the G7. But Japan was not mentioned in the statement.Hamas fails to make the case that Israel struck a hospital in Gaza.Six days after Hamas accused Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza City and killing hundreds of people, the armed Palestinian group has yet to produce or describe any evidence linking Israel to the strike, says it cannot find the munition that hit the site and has declined to provide detail to support its count of the casualties.Within an hour of the blast on Tuesday night, the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry accused Israel of attacking the Ahli Arab hospital, a medical center in Gaza City where scores of families had been sheltering. The allegation was soon denied by Israel but quickly accepted and amplified by Arab leaders across the Middle East, setting off unrest throughout the region. The claim was widely cited by international news outlets, including The New York Times, before Israel issued its denial.But in the days since, as new evidence contradicting the Hamas claim has emerged, the Gazan authorities have changed their story about the blast. Spokespeople have released death tolls varying from 500 to 833, before settling on 471. The Hamas-run health ministry has also declined to release further details about those 471 victims, and all traces of the munition have seemingly vanished from the site of the blast, making it impossible to assess its provenance. Raising further questions about Hamas’s claims, the impact site turned out to be the hospital parking lot, and not the hospital itself.On Sunday, Hamas turned down requests by The Times to view any available evidence of the munition it said had struck the hospital, claiming that it had disintegrated beyond recognition. “The missile has dissolved like salt in the water,” said Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, in a phone interview. “It’s vaporized. Nothing is left.” Salama Maroof, the head of the Hamas-run government media office, said in a text message: “Who says we’re obligated to present the remnants of every rocket that kills our people? In general, you can come and research and confirm for yourself from the evidence we possess.” For Palestinians, the accusation of Israeli responsibility for the blast has cemented the perception that Israel’s response to the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7 has been disproportionate and vengeful. The Hamas-run Gazan health ministry says that Israeli strikes have killed more than 4,300 Palestinians, 40 percent of them children, and the high reported death toll has undermined international support for Israel’s counterattack.But to Israelis, the accusation that Israel hit the hospital is part of a grand deception aimed at undermining the legitimacy of Israel’s response to what officials say was the deadliest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.Roughly 1,400 people were killed by Hamas’s raid on Oct. 7, the vast majority of them civilians, and more than 200 people were abducted to Gaza.Israel said the strike on the hospital parking lot was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket, citing intelligence intercepts and videos of the sky above Gaza at the time. The Israeli military said the rocket was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group in Gaza allied with Hamas, before malfunctioning in midair and exploding when its propellant caught fire upon hitting the ground. “According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the report, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, in a press briefing on Wednesday.The military also said that Palestinian armed groups had mistakenly fired more than 550 rockets into their own territory since the war began more than two weeks ago. The claim could not be immediately verified but Palestinian groups have previously acknowledged that their rockets land in Gaza; video last year showed one zigzagging through the air shortly after launch, before plummeting into a civilian area. “We have made mistakes, I am not going to deny it,” said Musab Al-Breim, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, in an interview on Wednesday. “However, not mistakes of this size.” Israel has also turned down requests by The Times to provide logs of all its military activity in the area at the time of the strike, and declined to specify the video on which it based its assessment of Palestinian responsibility.Israeli messaging about the rocket launch site has also been inconsistent: Admiral Hagari suggested the errant rocket was launched from a cemetery close to the hospital, while a map posted online by the military suggested the launch site was farther away.But the Biden administration has backed Israel, with officials saying that multiple strands of early intelligence, including infrared satellite data, show a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza.A visual investigation conducted by the Wall Street Journal strongly supported the Israeli interpretation, while investigations by the Associated Press and CNN also tentatively backed it. All three investigations cited television footage that they said appeared to show a misfired Palestinian rocket in the sky above the hospital, and experts who said the damage at the site did not resemble that typically caused by an Israeli missile strike.Forensic Architecture, a London-based visual investigation group, disputed the Israeli account, saying that the munition had been fired from the direction of Israel. Al Jazeera, a Qatari news channel, concluded that a Palestinian rocket had been intercepted by an Israeli air defense missile. Both are often critical of Israeli policies.Without examining the munition that hit the parking lot, it may be impossible to draw a definitive conclusion about who fired it.But by the time reporters arrived at the site on the morning after the blast, any remnants of the munition appeared to have been removed, preventing independent analysis of its origin. Reporters and photographers who toured the site that day found a shallow dent in the ground, but no deep crater of the kind usually caused by an Israeli precision-guided missile used in an airstrike.The strike could have been caused by a different Israeli munition that causes a smaller impact, such as an errant interceptor fired by an air defense system or an artillery shell. But Israel said it does not fire interceptors into Gazan airspace, and that it was not firing shells toward that specific area at that time.Munitions experts dismissed Hamas’s claim that the munition had completely disintegrated on impact. “One would expect remnants to be recoverable in all but the most extreme circumstances, and the available imagery of the hospital site suggests something ought to be identifiable on the ground,” said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, a consultancy based in Australia.For Palestinians, the debate over who is responsible for the hospital blast obscures a broader context in which Israeli strikes have devastated whole neighborhoods, displaced hundreds of thousands of Gazans and killed thousands of others. “You ignore all the other massacres,” said Mr. Hamad, the Hamas official.Israel has cut almost all supply of electricity, food, water and fuel, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in the enclave and leaving hospitals short of power and even baby formula. Scores of public institutions in northern Gaza, including hospitals like the Ahli Arab hospital, were warned by Israel to evacuate.The World Health Organization reported on Saturday that at least 19 hospitals had been damaged since the war broke out on Oct. 7. Last week, the organization said that three hospitals had “sustained heavy damages to the point that they are no longer functioning.” At least 16 health care workers have been killed and 28 injured, according to the WHO. “We’ve never lived through a war this intense,” said Motasem Mortaja, a Palestinian journalist who documented the aftermath of the hospital strike.Israeli officials say their attacks are aimed at members of armed Palestinian groups and their military infrastructure, and that Hamas and its allies are to blame for civilian deaths because they construct many of their bases and rocket launchers in residential areas.Israel also disputes the Palestinian death toll, saying that the number of people killed at the Ahli Arab hospital is lower than reported, without elaborating. American intelligence agencies have assessed that the blast killed 100 to 300 people.The Gazan authorities declined to name any of the people killed in the blast, saying that many bodies still had yet to be identified.The Rev. Fadi Diab, deputy chairman of the hospital’s board, said it was hard to confirm the death toll. Father Diab said the hospital administration in Gaza had told him there were between 450 and 500 displaced Gazans sheltering at the hospital site before the blast, but that it was unclear how many of them were in the parking lot when the explosion occurred. “Could the numbers be exaggerated? It’s possible. But could the numbers also be correct? That’s also possible,” Father Diab said in a phone call. “No one is currently able to do verification,” he added.Yousur Al-Hlou contributed reporting from Cairo.The U.S. advises Israel to delay a Gaza invasion, officials say.The Biden administration has advised Israel to delay a ground invasion of Gaza, hoping to buy time for hostage negotiations and to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in the sealed-off enclave, according to several U.S. officials.American officials also want more time to prepare for attacks on U.S. interests in the region from Iran-backed groups, which officials said are likely to intensify once Israel moves its forces fully into Gaza.The administration is not making a demand of Israel and still supports the ground invasion and Israel’s goal of eradicating Hamas, the group controlling Gaza that killed about 1,400 people in terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, the officials said.But fast-moving events since Hamas released two American women on Friday have spurred the administration to more urgently suggest that the Israelis allow time to negotiate the release of 212 other hostages, the officials said.President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday afternoon to discuss the latest developments, the White House said. Mr. Biden also spoke to the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain.Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu agreed that after the entry of the first two convoys of humanitarian aid into Gaza on Saturday, there “will now be continued flow of this critical assistance,” a White House summary of the call said. The leaders also “discussed ongoing efforts to secure the release of all the remaining hostages taken by Hamas — including U.S. citizens — and to provide for safe passage for U.S. citizens and other civilians in Gaza who wish to depart,” the White House said.Two U.S. officials said the advice to the Israelis to hold off on the land war was being conveyed through Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III because the Pentagon is helping advise Israel on military actions, including the ground invasion.Mr. Austin has had near daily calls with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, to discuss operational matters, American arms shipments to Israel and U.S. military deployments to the region. He has also talked about recovering the hostages as a priority, one U.S. official said.A spokesperson for Mr. Gallant declined to comment on the conversations.A diplomat from the Israeli Embassy in Washington denied that the U.S. government was advising the Israelis to delay the ground invasion and said: “We have a close dialogue and consultations with the U.S. administration. The U.S. is not pressing Israel in regards to the ground operation.” An official with knowledge of the hostage negotiations, which are taking place mainly through Qatar, said Hamas had warned that a ground invasion would make hostage releases much less likely. Qatar has close ties to the political leaders of Hamas.The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, avoided answering directly when asked on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday whether the United States was asking Israel to delay a ground invasion to allow time for hostage negotiations. He stressed, though, that the United States was giving advice to the Israelis on the invasion. “It’s important, as we said, not only what they do, but how they do it,” he said, “particularly when it comes to making sure that civilians are as protected as they possibly can be in this crossfire of Hamas’s making.” Mr. Blinken continued: “There are many, many Israelis who are hostages and of course, hostages from other nationalities. So we’re working to do everything we can, using whatever levers, partnerships, relationships we have to get them out. Israel is doing the same. But in terms of what we’re talking to Israel about with regard to their military operations, it really is focused on both how they do it, and how best to achieve the results that they seek.” Mr. Blinken also said it was important that more food and medical supplies get into Gaza, as a humanitarian crisis worsens. Israel imposed a complete cutoff of water, electricity and food on the impoverished coastal strip of two million people soon after the Oct. 7 attacks. The Israeli military has maintained a naval blockade of Gaza since 2007. American officials say they hope the ground invasion will be delayed, but they are wary of playing into the narrative that Iran and its allies have long spread about the United States’ secretly controlling Israel.There have already been a flurry of drone attacks targeting U.S. forces in the region. U.S. officials said that leaving the impression that Biden administration officials are the ones pulling the strings in Israel could drag the United States into a direct conflict with Iran or pro-Iran groups in the region. “In fact we expect that there’s a likelihood of escalation, escalation by Iranian proxies directed against our forces, directed against our personnel,” Mr. Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We are taking steps to make sure that we can effectively defend our people.” The State Department announced Sunday that it had ordered the departure of nonessential American government employees and family members from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq, and increased the travel alert in Iraq to Level 4, meaning U.S. citizens should not go there. The department cited the threats of “terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, civil unrest and Mission Iraq’s limited capacity to provide support to U.S. citizens.” U.S. officials fear that Iraqi militias supported by Iran will attack the 2,500 or so U.S. troops in the country and other American institutions or citizens.Even behind closed doors, American officials are carefully wording their advice to the Israelis. When Mr. Biden met with the Israeli war cabinet during his trip to Tel Aviv last week, he avoided making requests of Mr. Netanyahu, officials said. Instead, the president offered a series of questions that should be answered before a ground invasion starts and raised the specters of the disastrous U.S. decisions to invade Iraq and to wage a long, open-ended war in Afghanistan.Mr. Biden’s questions included who takes over for Hamas after the operation is finished and how the invasion might affect the hostages, as well as what a two-front war might do to Israel.One of the U.S. officials said the Americans had stressed not only the hostage issue to the Israelis, but also concerns about civilian casualties and humanitarian aid.Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, said on CNN that the United States had frequently raised important questions about Israel’s war plans but had not tried to dictate decision making. “There is really no pressure,” he said. “They give us advice, but they are not telling us what to do or what not to do.” The ground invasion has been repeatedly delayed, according to four senior Israeli defense officials, who added that they did not know the reason for the postponement. Two of the officials said it was possibly related to the negotiations.CNN reported Sunday that U.S. officials believe a delay could allow time for the release of more hostages.The New York Times reported last week that American and other Western officials familiar with the talks said there was optimism that Hamas might release women and children because of international backlash to the abductions.A senior Israeli military official said that based on conversations between the United States and Qatar, Hamas could possibly release about 50 dual nationals separate from any broader deal.The repeated delays also reflect a growing tension between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, his defense minister, who supports a broad military operation that would also include Hezbollah, the powerful militia in Lebanon.Mr. Netanyahu has opposed the wider operation for now, and American officials have also privately expressed concern to Israeli leaders about any major strike against the group that would draw it into Israel’s war against Hamas, opening a second front.Hezbollah has stepped up its rocket attacks aimed at northern Israel in recent days, and Israel has retaliated with airstrikes and artillery fire in southern Lebanon but has so far refrained from carrying out a major offensive against the group. The Israeli government has asked more residents of northern Israel to leave their homes.During a visit on Sunday to the underground command of the Israeli Air Force, Mr. Gallant expressed his appreciation to the officers there and, referring to the invasion, his “confidence ahead of the next stage, which will come soon.” Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Washington.LinkedIn issues warning to a site shaming pro-Palestinian sentiment.Online posts asking to “#PrayForPalestine.” Entreaties for peace. Pleas to “Free Gaza.” Over the last 10 days, a website called anti-israel-employees.com published more than 17,000 posts, which one of the people behind the site said had been taken mainly from LinkedIn. The site, which claimed to be a “global live feed of potentially supportive sentiments for terrorism among company employees,” listed thousands of people and grouped them by their workplaces, in an apparent attempt to shame them for their sentiments on the Israeli-Hamas conflict.The website, which was taken offline for a day before being migrated to a new web address, named employees of major international corporations, including Amazon, Mastercard and Ernst & Young, and shared their profile photos, LinkedIn pages and posts.Itai Liptz, a hedge fund manager who said he was one of the people behind the original site, said that its goal was to “expose people who supported Hamas publicly.” “We wanted to have it documented and a record,” he said. “If I work in this company, but I see my friends on LinkedIn celebrating and praising Hamas, then I’m not feeling safe.” But the site also highlighted posts from people who did not explicitly show support for Hamas, according to posts seen by The New York Times. Some people used hash tags like “#GazaUnderAttack” or sought to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The site asked users to submit posts that they believed should be exposed, and included a numeric “hate score” for companies.The site, which was created 10 days ago, comes amid a wider debate over online expression during a fraught international conflict. Similar lists have also been created to track college students who have spoken out in support of Palestinians, while Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said it took down nearly 800,000 pieces of Hebrew and Arabic language content for violating its rules in the three days after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. Some people who were highlighted on the site have already deleted their LinkedIn posts or their LinkedIn profiles. Mr. Liptz, who said he did not expect the site to become as popular as it did after spreading via WhatsApp groups, called the far-ranging capture of all pro-Palestinian sentiment a mistake. “If somebody says ‘Free Palestine’ that is totally OK, and we shouldn’t put it on our website,” he said on Saturday. “We just want to make sure the filters are there because they have the right to say that.” The site, however, was back online on Sunday at a new web address and still displayed the posts and names of people that Mr. Liptz had said would be removed. Now located at an Israel-specific domain, the site is being overseen by Guy Ophir, a lawyer in Israel, who said the team moved it to a new address after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from LinkedIn.A spokesman for LinkedIn said the company determined that the site had used automated programs to extract content from the platform, a practice known as scraping, which is a violation of its rules. Mr. Liptz denied that his site extracted the LinkedIn information through scraping, while Mr. Ophir said he believed that LinkedIn was trying to infringe on his right to free speech. “We are not going to remove the website,” he said. “We are willing to fight them here.” The site has been a subject of discussion at Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and LinkedIn, where employees have expressed concern about the chilling effect it could have on online speech. “People are scraping pro-Palestine LinkedIn posts and adding them to a database of ‘terror supporters,’” one employee wrote last Wednesday in a note on an internal Meta message board that was seen by The Times.Other Meta employees were in disbelief that expressing support for Palestine was equated with supporting terrorism. “The lack of understanding,” a Meta employee wrote, “is beyond insensitive and cruel.” Oct. 22, 2023Daniel VictorPresident Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday, with the leaders affirming that aid would continue into Gaza, according to a summary of the call released by the White House. The leaders discussed work to free the hostages taken by Hamas, including U.S. citizens, and providing safe passage for U.S. citizens and other civilians to leave Gaza, according to the summary.Oct. 22, 2023Aaron BoxermanReporting from JerusalemAn Israeli soldier was killed and three others injured by an anti-tank missile during a raid inside the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said, one of multiple smaller operations ahead of a widely anticipated ground invasion. The troops were operating “to dismantle terror infrastructure, clear the area of terrorists and weapons, and locate missing persons and bodies,” the Israeli military said.Oct. 22, 2023Aaron BoxermanReporting from JerusalemIsraeli officials said that additional humanitarian aid from the United Nations entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday night at the request of the Biden administration. The aid included “only water, food and medical equipment,” according to a statement from COGAT, an Israeli defense ministry agency that manages administrative aspects of the occupation. “All of the equipment was inspected by Israeli security personnel before it was brought into Gaza.” Oct. 22, 2023Aaron BoxermanReporting from JerusalemWael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Rafah border crossing at the Hamas-run interior ministry, confirmed that 14 aid trucks had arrived on the Palestinian side from Egypt. The trucks crossed the border around 10:20 p.m., according to Juliette Touma, the director of communications for UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees.Oct. 22, 2023Daniel VictorPresident Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands will visit Israel this week, arriving “tomorrow and Tuesday,” and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Netanyahu’s office.Here are the Hamas officials believed to have been killed since Oct. 7. Israel said that it had begun the bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip to “eliminate” Hamas in retaliation for the Oct. 7 assaults on its territory that killed at least 1,400 people in southern Israel. Since then, more than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.At least 13 of the casualties have been Hamas officials, according to statements by the group or by the Israeli military. Hamas, the group which controls Gaza, is considered a terror group by the United States and the European Union. Some of the deaths could not be independently verified.They include Gaza’s finance minister, a military commander active since the 1980s and a lawmaker who was the widow of the group’s co-founder, according to Hamas. Israel has also announced the deaths of several Hamas officials, although the group has yet to confirm them.Here are the officials believed to have been killed since the beginning of Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip:On Oct. 10 Hamas said that two senior members of its political bureau, Zakaria Muammar and Jawad Abu Shamala, were both killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military confirmed that it killed the men.Israel identified Mr. Abu Shamala as the finance minister of the Hamas government, whose responsibilities included managing the group’s funds, and said that Mr. Muammar was the head of the group’s internal relations.Israel said it killed three men who played major direct roles in the Oct. 7 attacks.One, Merad Abu Merad, was killed in an airstrike, the Israeli Air Force said on Oct. 14. It described Mr. Abu Merad as the commander of aerial systems in Gaza City and said he helped direct Hamas fighters during the cross-border attack. Hamas has not confirmed his death or role in the attack. On Oct. 14 the Israeli military also said it had killed Ali Qadi, who it identified as a company commander of Hamas’s Nukhba commando force. It said that he “led the terror attack in Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip last weekend.” Hamas has not confirmed his death or his role in the group.The next day, the air force said it had also killed Billal al-Kedra, who it said helped plan the attack. Mr. al-Kedra was a commander in the city of Khan Younis and was responsible for the attack on Kibbutz Nirim, a town roughly one mile from the border with Gaza, the air force said. Hamas has not confirmed his death or role in the organization.On Oct. 15, the Israeli military said that it killed Muetaz Eid and that he was the Commander of the Hamas Southern District of National Security. Hamas has not confirmed his death or his role in the group.On Oct. 17 the military wing of Hamas, the Al Qassam Brigades, said that one of its top commanders, Ayman Nofal, was killed in an Israeli strike on the Bureij refugee camp. He was the first and so far the only military commander whose death Hamas has announced.Israel confirmed that it had killed Mr. Nofal and said that he had been responsible for planning attacks against Israelis. Safa Press Agency, a Palestinian news site linked with Hamas, said he was also a military leader during the two Palestinian uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and from 2000 to 2005, known as the first and second intifadas.Hamas announced the death of two less senior figures in the organization. It said that one, Wael al-Zard, was a preacher affiliated with the group. The other, Tayseer Ibrahim, was the head of the movement’s judicial branch, it said. Hamas said both men were killed when Israel bombed their homes. Israel has not confirmed the death of either man.The commander of the Hamas-led National Security Forces, Maj. Gen. Jihad Muheisen, was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in Gaza City along with some members of his family, Gaza’s government press office said on Oct. 19. The National Security Forces are an internal paramilitary group that assists the Gazan police. Hamas has not officially confirmed his death yet.Jamila al-Shanti, the first woman to hold a seat on Hamas’s political bureau and a member of the Gaza Legislative Council, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to a statement the council released on Oct. 19. She was the widow of Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who was killed by Israel in 2004, and the third official in Hamas’s political bureau to be killed since Oct. 7. On Oct. 20, the Israeli military said in a statement that it killed a senior operative in the Hamas strategic weapons department, Mahmoud Sabih. The department works to increase Hamas’s weapons capabilities, “exchanging knowledge with terrorist organizations across the Middle East,” the Israeli statement said. Hamas has not confirmed his death, or his role in the organization.On Oct. 22, the Israeli military said that its warplanes killed Muhammad Katamash, who it identified as the deputy head of Hamas’s regional artillery array, responsible for artillery management in the Central Camps Brigade. Hamas has not confirmed his death or role in the organization.Oct. 22, 2023Karoun DemirjianReporting from WashingtonSenator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, warned Iran on Sunday that “if this war grows, it’s coming to your backyard.” Speaking from Tel Aviv after leading a delegation of 10 senators through Saudi Arabia and Israel, Graham said, “If there’s an effort to unleash Hezbollah on the Jewish state to destroy it, my attention will be to Tehran.” Oct. 22, 2023Karoun DemirjianReporting from WashingtonThe bipartisan delegation suggested the eradication of Hamas would be necessary to a more peaceful Middle East. Graham called destroying Hamas “non-negotiable” and Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the trip and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, expressed a commitment to normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia but said “the immediate issue is to make sure Hamas can never do this again.” Oct. 22, 2023Jonathan Reiss and Anushka PatilIsrael’s military efforts to eradicate Hamas “may take a month, two, or three, but in the end, Hamas will no longer exist,” the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said at an air force command center on Sunday, according to video shared online by the Israeli broadcaster Kan. The expected ground invasion into Gaza must be the last one, he said, “for the simple reason that after this, Hamas will no longer be.” Oct. 22, 2023Farnaz FassihiIran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, told Iranian state media outlets during a news conference that the Middle East was “a powder keg.” He said that he wanted to warn the U.S. and Israel that “anything is possible at any given moment and the region will go out of control,” if the strikes on Gaza continue. He called the strikes “genocide and crimes against humanity.” An Israeli reservist from Maryland is killed near the Lebanon border.An Israeli military reservist who was raised in Maryland was killed on Friday when anti-tank missile fire struck his unit near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the Israeli military said.Omer Balva, 22, was among the 360,000 reservists that the Israeli government had mobilized in an immense increase in its military forces ahead of an expected ground invasion of Gaza.Mr. Balva was a staff sergeant in the 9203rd battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade, according to the Israel Defense Forces.He moved to Israel after graduating from high school in Rockville, Md., in 2019 and was a student at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, where he was studying for a degree in business administration and economics.Ethan Missner, a close friend of Mr. Balva’s since childhood, said that the two had talked “almost daily” for their entire lives, except when Mr. Balva was training with the Israeli military. “Since we were 6 years old, I’ve spent, you know, endless time with him,” he said. “I truthfully don’t know a single person that’s ever fought with Omer,” Mr. Missner added. “And I think that that’s a superpower Omer had, that he can know and be close to so many people and he was just only sweet.” Mr. Balva was on vacation in the United States when he was called up to fight in Israel, Mr. Missner said. He said that Mr. Balva had been traveling with his girlfriend of four years, whom he had planned to propose to soon.Before Mr. Balva left for Israel about a week ago, he stopped in Maryland and spent some time with Mr. Missner, who said that his friend’s top concern was making sure his loved ones were not too worried. Mr. Balva’s parents were already in Israel when he arrived and he spent two days with them before he was sent to a military base, Mr. Missner said. “He died fighting for the people that he loved and a country that he loved,” Mr. Missner said.On Sunday, Mr. Missner and his family watched a livestream of Mr. Balva’s funeral in Israel. Thousands of people attended, he said, and the speakers included Mr. Balva’s parents, his three siblings and his girlfriend.Mr. Balva graduated from the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, outside Washington, in 2019. The school said in a statement on Instagram that Mr. Balva was “an unabashed advocate for the State of Israel.” In a 2018 school presentation, Mr. Balva described his family’s long history with Israel and said that his parents had moved to the United States in 1996 for business reasons. He wrote in the presentation that he hoped to move to Israel as an adult and to raise his children there.In 2019, the year Mr. Balva left for Israel and began his compulsory military service, he wrote a letter to Mr. Missner. “I want you to know,” he wrote, “that every time I’m sad I go to this one thought of me and you at 24 or 25 with our families on vacation, the thought of us with wives and children we love and are able to support always brings a smile to my face.” Since Hamas gunmen surged into Israel in a meticulously organized attack on Oct. 7, more than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, most in the initial attack, and more than 200 have been kidnapped.The death toll in Gaza from Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign has risen to at least 4,385, and there have been more than 13,500 injuries, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. More than 60 percent of those killed in the Gaza Strip are women and children, the United Nations said Saturday, citing figures from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.Oct. 22, 2023Elisabetta PovoledoThe Vatican said that Pope Francis spoke for about 20 minutes with President Biden this afternoon. The conversation “focused on conflict situations in the world and the need to identify paths to peace,” the Vatican said in a statement on one of its social media channels.Oct. 22, 2023Edward WongReporting from WashingtonThe State Department has ordered the departure of all non-emergency U.S. government employees and family members from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq. The move comes amid concerns about increasing hostility toward U.S. troops and citizens from Iran-supported militias in Iraq due to the Israel-Hamas war.Canada and France say that it is unlikely Israel was behind the Gaza hospital blast.Canadian and French national security officials have said that an errant rocket fired from within Gaza, not an Israeli airstrike, most likely caused last week’s deadly blast at a hospital in Gaza, echoing statements by American and Israeli officials made in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.While many in the Middle East and beyond still blame Israel for the explosion on Tuesday at Ahli Arab Hospital, the Canadian and French statements — both made in the past two days — add to the growing Western consensus that Palestinian militants were most likely responsible. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza has said the explosion killed hundreds of people. “Analysis conducted independently by the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command indicates with a high degree of confidence that Israel did not strike the Al-Ahli hospital,” Canada’s National Department of Defense said in a statement on Saturday. It added that the hospital was most likely struck by a rocket fired from within Gaza, citing open source and classified reporting.A day earlier, France’s military intelligence directorate made similar statements to reporters, The Associated Press and Reuters reported. “There is nothing that allows us to say that it is an Israeli strike,” the directorate said, according to Reuters. The blast crater appeared too small to have been caused by an Israeli missile and “the most likely hypothesis is a Palestinian rocket,” according to the directorate. It added that the explosive charge was about five kilograms, or 11 pounds — a size that matches rockets known to be used by Palestinian militants.Officials in Gaza quickly blamed Israel after the deadly explosion, setting off protests across the Middle East. Arab leaders canceled meetings with President Biden, who was to arrive in the region the following day for a brief visit. Mr. Biden ended up visiting only Israel.Israel, for its part, swiftly pushed back on claims it was behind the explosion, saying there were no ongoing military operations in the area at the time. Mr. Biden later backed up the Israelis, and American officials said their intelligence — including satellite and other infrared data — showed that a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza was to blame. American intelligence agencies have assessed that between 100 and 300 people were killed.Oct. 22, 2023Iyad AbuheweilaReporting from CairoA Palestinian journalist, Roshdi Sarraj, has been killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, according to tributes posted on social media by colleagues. At least 18 other Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.Oct. 22, 2023Raja AbdulrahimReporting from JerusalemThe Israeli military said one of its tanks accidentally fired on an Egyptian post near its border crossing at Kerem Shalom. The crossing between Israel and Egypt is more than two miles from the Rafah crossing, from where a small convoy of aid trucks traveled into Gaza yesterday. In a statement, the Israeli military expressed its “sorrow” and said the episode was under investigation.Oct. 22, 2023Vivian YeeReporting from CairoThe blast injured nine Egyptian soldiers and damaged a watchtower, according to an ambulance worker and two officials with Egypt’s North Sinai governorate, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation publicly.Oct. 22, 2023Vivian YeeReporting from CairoEgypt’s military confirmed in a statement that a border control tower had been “accidentally hit” by shell fragments from an Israeli tank, resulting in some minor injuries. It added that Israel had apologized immediately for the incident.Oct. 22, 2023Edward WongReporting from WashingtonU.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Hamas was blocking U.S. citizens and other foreign nationals from leaving Gaza. “We have several hundred Americans and other nationalities, other civilians from other countries who want to leave Gaza,” he said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “We’ve had people come to Rafah, the crossing with Egypt. And to date, at least, Hamas has blocked them from leaving.” Oct. 22, 2023Edward WongReporting from WashingtonHe said “the ball is in Hamas’s court" when it comes to letting foreign citizens leave the enclave, adding that the State Department has diplomats in Egypt who are ready to assist.Despite the threat, many in northern Gaza say they can’t leave home.As Israel’s military ramped up its warnings for civilians to flee northern Gaza, many people there said that doing so was not an option because of cost — and that it was no guarantee of safety.The Israeli military said Saturday night that it would intensify its already punishing bombardment of the besieged enclave ahead of an expected ground invasion. In Arabic-language leaflets dropped over Gaza on Saturday, it reiterated calls for people to move south, warning that anyone who did not “may be considered a partner in a terrorist organization.” But Amani Abu Odeh, who lives in the town of Jabalia in Gaza’s north, said that the danger of Israeli airstrikes on the road had pushed up the cost of travel. Drivers were now charging between $200 and $300 to take a family south, she said. Before the war, the same trip cost about $3 a person. “We can’t even afford to eat,” Ms. Abu Odeh said. “We don’t have the money to leave.” Instead, she and other members of her extended family have hunkered down together in one home.Food, water and other supplies are in desperately short supply in Gaza, where officials say the health system is on the brink of collapse after Israel declared a complete siege of the already blockaded enclave nearly two weeks ago.More than half of Gaza’s more than two million residents have been displaced within the enclave, which is about the size of the city of Philadelphia, since Israel launched its retaliatory airstrike campaign. And the leaflets dropped over Gaza calling for more people to move south drew condemnation from Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.Designating hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who were unwilling or unable to flee as accomplices in terrorism was a threat of collective punishment and could possibly amount to ethnic cleansing, she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday. She added that deliberately targeting civilians was a war crime.In response to questions from The New York Times, the Israeli military said that it did not intend to consider those who have not evacuated south to be members of armed Palestinian groups, which it considers terrorist organizations. It said in a statement that it “treats civilians as such, and does not target them.” A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry also said that there was no basis for the suggestion that its evacuation warnings could amount to ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.Even as Israel has told Gazans to head south, airstrikes have continued to hit that part of the enclave. And an Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said on Saturday night that Israel would “deepen” attacks on Gaza overall ahead of the “next stages” of the war — a reference to a widely expected ground offensive.That — coupled with the escalating humanitarian crisis across the enclave — is one of several reasons some families say they are staying put in the north. “I did not go to the south mainly because I know no one there; where am I to go?” said Yasser Shaban, 57, a civil servant in Gaza City. “We will end up in the streets.” Mr. Shaban said a cousin took his family to the south soon after airstrikes on Gaza City began in the hours after Hamas fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7. But a week ago, he said, an Israeli airstrike hit the place where they were sheltering in the city of Khan Younis, killing the cousin’s wife and two daughters. The cousin returned to Gaza City with his surviving family members — a wounded son and his sister — to be treated at Al Shifa Hospital. “I heard of the new leaflets saying they will consider us members of Hamas if we don’t evacuate,” Mr. Shaban said. “But I simply can’t go south.” Abu Bakr Bashir and Ameera Harouda contributed reporting.Oct. 22, 2023Isabel KershnerReporting from JerusalemA man in southern Israel was injured late Sunday afternoon in a rocket attack from Gaza, according to the Israeli police and emergency services. The police said rocket fragments had been found in various locations around the city of Netivot, a few miles from the Gaza border.Oct. 22, 2023Michael D. ShearReporting from WashingtonSecretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday that the United States was making “incessant efforts” to bring home American hostages held by Hamas. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said: “That is continuing as we speak. This is something we’re engaged in virtually around the clock.” Oct. 22, 2023Michael D. ShearReporting from WashingtonBlinken said the Biden administration is bracing for an escalation in fighting in the Middle East in the days ahead. “In fact, we expect that there’s a likelihood of escalation, escalation by Iranian proxies directed against our forces, directed against our personnel,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We are taking steps to make sure that we can effectively defend our people.” Oct. 22, 2023Euan WardReporting from Beirut, LebanonDuring a visit to Israeli troops on the Lebanese border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that if Hezbollah decided to join the war, it would result in “devastating consequences to Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon,” adding, “We’ll hit it with a force it can’t even imagine.” Netanyahu said he did not know whether the militant group would join the conflict. Oct. 22, 2023Matina Stevis-GridneffThousands participated in a peaceful rally in support of the Palestinian people on Sunday in Brussels, ending their march outside the European Union institutions in the city’s European quarter. The organizers had warned that anyone expressing antisemitism or making apologies for crimes against civilians would get kicked out of the massive event.Oct. 22, 2023Michael D. ShearReporting from WashingtonSecretary of Defense Lloyd Austin compared an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza to the fight by Iraqi and U.S. soldiers to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS in 2017. “That was nine months of intense combat,” he said on ABC's “This Week.” “This may be a bit more difficult because of the underground network of tunnels that Hamas has constructed over time, and the fact that they’ve had a long time to prepare for a fight.” (An earlier version of this update misstated the year that Mosul was retaken.) In a rare West Bank airstrike, Israel hits a mosque, killing two.The Israeli military carried out a rare airstrike on a mosque in the occupied West Bank overnight, killing at least two people in what Palestinian officials called a “dangerous escalation.” The strike hit a mosque in the densely packed Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in the northern West Bank. Israel’s military said it was targeting an underground “terror compound” beneath the mosque that it said was being used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to organize an imminent attack. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, called the activity going on beneath the mosque a “ticking time bomb.” The claims had not been independently verified.At least two people were killed and three others were injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Video from the scene showed significant damage to the mosque.The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called the strike a “dangerous escalation in the use of warplanes,” saying in a statement that Israel appeared to be bringing tactics used in the Gaza Strip to the occupied West Bank.After a lull of nearly two decades, Israel resumed limited airstrikes in the West Bank in July, mostly by means of drones, during a two-day siege and assault on the Jenin refugee camp which the Israeli military said was aimed at rooting out armed groups.Violence has been surging in the West Bank in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks that Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, launched against Israel. The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank said 90 Palestinians had been killed since Oct. 7 in the occupied territory in clashes with Israeli forces and attacks by armed Israeli settlers, by far the most in any two consecutive weeks this year. Israeli officers have arrested hundreds of Palestinians, according to Palestinian and Israeli accounts.At least 52 Palestinians were arrested by Israeli security forces overnight during wide-scale raids, Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, reported on Sunday.It said that most of the arrests were concentrated in and around the central city of Ramallah in the West Bank, adding that one of the detainees was Islam Al Tawil — the mayor of Al-Bireh, a city abutting Ramallah, and a former prisoner in Israeli jails.

Here’s the latest on the war.A second aid convoy crossed into the Gaza Strip from Egypt late Sunday, the latest attempt to stem a growing humanitarian crisis in the enclave as Israeli forces struck the West Bank and traded volleys with Hezbollah along the Lebanese border.The aid included “water, food and medical equipment,” according to a statement from an Israeli defense ministry agency. “All of the equipment was inspected by Israeli security personnel before it was brought into Gaza,” it added.The United Nations said 14 more trucks had entered Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Juliette Touma, the director of communications for U.N.R.W.A., the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, confirmed the shipment, saying it arrived around 10:20 p.m. local time.The shipment came a day after a convoy of 20 trucks made the same trip on Saturday — but international aid officials continued to warn that far more was needed.“Another small glimmer of hope for the millions of people in dire need of humanitarian aid,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s head of emergency relief, wrote on social media. “But they need more, much more.”The Biden administration has advised Israel to delay a ground invasion of Gaza, hoping to buy time for hostage negotiations and to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians, according to several U.S. officials. American officials also want more time to prepare for attacks from Iran-backed groups on U.S. interests in the region, which officials said are likely to intensify once Israel moves its forces fully into Gaza.Israel has continued to pound Gaza with punishing airstrikes after cross-border attacks by Hamas militants on Oct. 7. As Israeli forces massed along the border with Gaza, escalating clashes on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, along with strikes in Syria and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, have intensified fears of a widening regional conflict.The Israeli authorities said they were expanding a state-funded evacuation plan to move residents from an additional 14 Israeli villages near the border with Lebanon to safer areas. The move came as Israel’s military said Sunday it was contending with increasing attacks from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia that controls southern Lebanon, that have resulted in civilian and military casualties.Violence has also been surging across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli military carried out a rare airstrike there overnight against what it described as an underground “terror compound” beneath a mosque in the city of Jenin. Two people were killed, according to Palestinian health officials.Here are some other developments:Senior Israeli commanders have increasingly been making public references to preparations for a ground assault. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said the expected ground invasion into Gaza must be the last one “for the simple reason that after this, Hamas will no longer be.” The efforts to eradicate Hamas “may take a month, two, or three, but in the end, Hamas will no longer exist,” he added.The Israeli military reiterated its warning for civilians in Gaza to move to the southern part of the enclave as a humanitarian crisis spirals. But many people in the north said that doing so was not an option because of cost — and that it was no guarantee of safety.An Israeli soldier was killed and three others injured by an anti-tank missile during a raid inside the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said. The troops were operating “to dismantle terror infrastructure, clear the area of terrorists and weapons, and locate missing persons and bodies,” the Israeli military said.Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued “almost unabated,” while Palestinian armed groups continued with their “indiscriminate rocket firing” toward Israel, the United Nations said. The death toll in Gaza has increased to at least 4,385, while injuries number more than 13,500, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. On the Israeli side, the fatalities remained at 1,400 but injuries increased to almost 5,000, the U.N. said.The Israeli military said one of its tanks accidentally hit an Egyptian post near the border crossing between the two countries at Kerem Shalom. The military expressed “sorrow” and said the episode was under investigation. Egypt’s military said there were minor injuries, but described the incident as an accident and noted Israel’s immediate apology. Kerem Shalom is a couple of miles from Egypt’s Rafah border crossing, from which a small convoy of aid trucks entered Gaza on Saturday.Hamas releases two women, but keeps their husbands in custody.Two Israeli women kidnapped on Oct. 7 during a massacre on the Nir Oz kibbutz were released on Monday, the Israeli prime minister’s office said, but their husbands remain among the more than 200 people still held hostage.The hostages were identified as Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85.Ms. Lifshitz was kidnapped along with her husband, Oded, a well-known left-wing journalist. There was no immediate information about Ms. Lifshitz’s condition on Monday, and no information about the well-being of her husband.Americans for Peace Now, an advocacy group that aims to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said in a statement that Mr. and Ms. Lifshitz also helped to found the Peace Now movement in Israel.Her grandson, Daniel Lifshitz, told reporters in Eilat that his family was “truly hoping that this is just the beginning of the release of all the remaining hostages.” Asked what he would say to his grandmother, Mr. Lifshitz said: “That I love her.”Last week, Sharone Lifschitz, the daughter of Ms. Lifschitz, said at a news conference in London that her mother used an oxygen tank while sleeping and her father was taking medicine for lung disease at the time they were taken.“These are frail people,” Dr. Lifschitz said at the news conference given by the families of those who had been kidnapped, the emotions clear in her voice.Ms. Cooper, 79, was kidnapped with her husband, Amiram Cooper.Their son, Rotem Cooper, who lives in Southern California, traveled to Israel soon after his parents were reported missing. He was on the phone with them as the attacks unfolded on Oct. 7, he told 10 News in San Diego, and feared they would not survive without their medicine. There was no information immediately available on Ms. Cooper’s condition.Video broadcast on Egyptian state media showed both Ms. Lifshitz and Ms. Cooper in ambulances. They were being taken to a medical center in Israel where their families were waiting for them, the Israeli prime minister’s office said.In a statement calling for their release, the National Union of Journalists, an organization based in Britain, said Mr. and Ms. Lifshitz helped to found the kibbutz in 1957. Mr. and Ms. Cooper were also longtime residents.The journalists’ union said Mr. Lifshitz had spent his career documenting war crimes in Lebanon and human rights abuses against Palestinians and Bedouin, and that he spent his retirement volunteering for a group that helps Gazan patients get to medical appointments in Israel.Hamas stated its willingness to release the two women on Saturday, saying there were “compelling humanitarian reasons” to do so.Earlier Monday, Israeli officials said it had been in contact with the families of 222 people it believed were taken hostage by Hamas in the Oct. 7 cross-border assault, up from the 212 it had confirmed a day earlier.On Friday, Hamas released two other hostages — Judith and Natalie Raanan, an American-Israeli mother and daughter — after negotiations involving diplomats from the United States and Qatar.Pregnant women in Gaza face dangerous births on their own.As Israel warns of a monthslong war and steps up an onslaught of airstrikes on Gaza, it has trapped 50,000 pregnant women in a humanitarian nightmare, according to estimates from the United Nations’ sexual and reproductive health agency, known as U.N.F.P.A. Some 5,500 of these women are expected to give birth in the next month and are facing the prospect of doing so on their own, as Gaza’s health system buckles under the Israeli blockade and as intensified airstrikes make traveling to any medical facility a perilous ordeal.Dominic Allen, the U.N.F.P.A. representative for the Palestinian territories, said on Monday that individually packaged emergency delivery kits for at least half the women expected to give birth soon remain held up in Europe, part of the humanitarian response that includes aid convoys waiting in Egypt for permission to enter Gaza.The kits are spartan. Each resealable plastic bag holds one bar of soap, a plastic sheet measuring about 40 inches by 40 inches, a pair of scissors for cutting the umbilical cord, three pieces of umbilical tape, two cotton cloths for cleaning and covering the mother and child, a pair of latex exam gloves and an instruction pamphlet to guide women through their deliveries.U.N.F.P.A. considers the kits a “last resort” to prevent infection during delivery in the absence of safe or reliable access to a health care facility, but that circumstance has become the norm in Gaza since the war began. And as their deliveries approach, many of the pregnant women “don’t know where they’re going to be in the next minute or the next day,” Mr. Allen said.An estimated 19,000 pregnant women were among more than one million people ordered by Israel to leave northern Gaza last week, according to the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association, a nonprofit member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The group said in a statement that women in Gaza have been losing their pregnancies from the stress and shock of the war.Itimad Abu Ward, a midwife and nurse who works as a public health officer for the W.H.O., was among those forced to flee northern Gaza. She said trying to care for pregnant women during the chaotic journey south was near impossible.In a phone interview from Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Ms. Abu Ward said she met a pregnant woman at a United Nations shelter last week who urgently needed to get to a hospital — she was in labor, and had been complaining about decreased fetal movement.But it took two days to find safe transportation and an open bed for the woman at the nearby Nasser Hospital, Ms. Abu Ward said. She feared she would not be able to help patients in similar situations.Ms. Abu Ward spoke to The Times from the Khan Younis Training Center, where an estimated 17,000 displaced people are sheltering in overcrowded conditions with limited water and sanitation facilities.As the center’s electricity flickered on and off and explosions boomed outside, she said the few medical supplies — gloves, umbilical cord ties, clean towels — that she was able to bring when her family left their home in Jabaliya would not be enough to save a pregnant woman if she began hemorrhaging.Even the donated first aid kit that Ms. Abu Ward has been using to treat minor injuries in the center lacks basic tools like thermometers, she said, and when she recently treated a new mother and her feverish 25-day-old baby, she was forced to estimate the baby’s temperature by hand.Gaza’s hospitals and maternity wards, starved of water and fuel, are not much better equipped. Medicines for potentially life-threatening pregnancy complications, like magnesium sulfate for treating pre-eclampsia, are running low and cannot be replenished unless more humanitarian aid is allowed in, said Mr. Allen, the U.N.F.P.A. representative.Also held up in the aid convoys are desperately needed supplies for Gaza’s medical personnel to perform basic obstetric procedures, like suturing perineal tears, and more complex ones, like delivering a baby by cesarean section, he said.Ms. Abu Ward said that unless such aid, and more of it, is allowed in, and until pregnant women in Gaza can safely resume regular pre- and postnatal appointments, she expected maternal mortality rates to rise.“We are trying to help as much as we can, but sometimes, we can’t,” she said. “The future is very, very dark.”A correction was made onOct. 24, 2023: An earlier version of this article, relying on information from the United Nations, misstated the location of emergency delivery kits for pregnant women. The kits are currently held up in Europe, not Egypt.Oct. 22, 2023Daniel VictorPresident Biden spoke with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain on Sunday about support for Israel, the White House said. The group agreed to work on diplomacy, especially with regional partners, to prevent the conflict from spreading. Typically, these nations and Japan comprise the G7. But Japan was not mentioned in the statement.Hamas fails to make the case that Israel struck a hospital in Gaza.Six days after Hamas accused Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza City and killing hundreds of people, the armed Palestinian group has yet to produce or describe any evidence linking Israel to the strike, says it cannot find the munition that hit the site and has declined to provide detail to support its count of the casualties.Within an hour of the blast on Tuesday night, the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry accused Israel of attacking the Ahli Arab hospital, a medical center in Gaza City where scores of families had been sheltering. The allegation was soon denied by Israel but quickly accepted and amplified by Arab leaders across the Middle East, setting off unrest throughout the region. The claim was widely cited by international news outlets, including The New York Times, before Israel issued its denial.But in the days since, as new evidence contradicting the Hamas claim has emerged, the Gazan authorities have changed their story about the blast. Spokespeople have released death tolls varying from 500 to 833, before settling on 471.The Hamas-run health ministry has also declined to release further details about those 471 victims, and all traces of the munition have seemingly vanished from the site of the blast, making it impossible to assess its provenance. Raising further questions about Hamas’s claims, the impact site turned out to be the hospital parking lot, and not the hospital itself.On Sunday, Hamas turned down requests by The Times to view any available evidence of the munition it said had struck the hospital, claiming that it had disintegrated beyond recognition.“The missile has dissolved like salt in the water,” said Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, in a phone interview. “It’s vaporized. Nothing is left.”Salama Maroof, the head of the Hamas-run government media office, said in a text message: “Who says we’re obligated to present the remnants of every rocket that kills our people? In general, you can come and research and confirm for yourself from the evidence we possess.”For Palestinians, the accusation of Israeli responsibility for the blast has cemented the perception that Israel’s response to the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7 has been disproportionate and vengeful. The Hamas-run Gazan health ministry says that Israeli strikes have killed more than 4,300 Palestinians, 40 percent of them children, and the high reported death toll has undermined international support for Israel’s counterattack.But to Israelis, the accusation that Israel hit the hospital is part of a grand deception aimed at undermining the legitimacy of Israel’s response to what officials say was the deadliest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.Roughly 1,400 people were killed by Hamas’s raid on Oct. 7, the vast majority of them civilians, and more than 200 people were abducted to Gaza.Israel said the strike on the hospital parking lot was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket, citing intelligence intercepts and videos of the sky above Gaza at the time. The Israeli military said the rocket was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group in Gaza allied with Hamas, before malfunctioning in midair and exploding when its propellant caught fire upon hitting the ground.“According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the report, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, in a press briefing on Wednesday.The military also said that Palestinian armed groups had mistakenly fired more than 550 rockets into their own territory since the war began more than two weeks ago. The claim could not be immediately verified but Palestinian groups have previously acknowledged that their rockets land in Gaza; video last year showed one zigzagging through the air shortly after launch, before plummeting into a civilian area.“We have made mistakes, I am not going to deny it,” said Musab Al-Breim, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, in an interview on Wednesday. “However, not mistakes of this size.”Israel has also turned down requests by The Times to provide logs of all its military activity in the area at the time of the strike, and declined to specify the video on which it based its assessment of Palestinian responsibility.Israeli messaging about the rocket launch site has also been inconsistent: Admiral Hagari suggested the errant rocket was launched from a cemetery close to the hospital, while a map posted online by the military suggested the launch site was farther away.But the Biden administration has backed Israel, with officials saying that multiple strands of early intelligence, including infrared satellite data, show a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza.A visual investigation conducted by the Wall Street Journal strongly supported the Israeli interpretation, while investigations by the Associated Press and CNN also tentatively backed it. All three investigations cited television footage that they said appeared to show a misfired Palestinian rocket in the sky above the hospital, and experts who said the damage at the site did not resemble that typically caused by an Israeli missile strike.Forensic Architecture, a London-based visual investigation group, disputed the Israeli account, saying that the munition had been fired from the direction of Israel. Al Jazeera, a Qatari news channel, concluded that a Palestinian rocket had been intercepted by an Israeli air defense missile. Both are often critical of Israeli policies.Without examining the munition that hit the parking lot, it may be impossible to draw a definitive conclusion about who fired it.But by the time reporters arrived at the site on the morning after the blast, any remnants of the munition appeared to have been removed, preventing independent analysis of its origin. Reporters and photographers who toured the site that day found a shallow dent in the ground, but no deep crater of the kind usually caused by an Israeli precision-guided missile used in an airstrike.The strike could have been caused by a different Israeli munition that causes a smaller impact, such as an errant interceptor fired by an air defense system or an artillery shell. But Israel said it does not fire interceptors into Gazan airspace, and that it was not firing shells toward that specific area at that time.Munitions experts dismissed Hamas’s claim that the munition had completely disintegrated on impact.“One would expect remnants to be recoverable in all but the most extreme circumstances, and the available imagery of the hospital site suggests something ought to be identifiable on the ground,” said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, a consultancy based in Australia.For Palestinians, the debate over who is responsible for the hospital blast obscures a broader context in which Israeli strikes have devastated whole neighborhoods, displaced hundreds of thousands of Gazans and killed thousands of others.“You ignore all the other massacres,” said Mr. Hamad, the Hamas official.Israel has cut almost all supply of electricity, food, water and fuel, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in the enclave and leaving hospitals short of power and even baby formula. Scores of public institutions in northern Gaza, including hospitals like the Ahli Arab hospital, were warned by Israel to evacuate.The World Health Organization reported on Saturday that at least 19 hospitals had been damaged since the war broke out on Oct. 7. Last week, the organization said that three hospitals had “sustained heavy damages to the point that they are no longer functioning.” At least 16 health care workers have been killed and 28 injured, according to the WHO.“We’ve never lived through a war this intense,” said Motasem Mortaja, a Palestinian journalist who documented the aftermath of the hospital strike.Israeli officials say their attacks are aimed at members of armed Palestinian groups and their military infrastructure, and that Hamas and its allies are to blame for civilian deaths because they construct many of their bases and rocket launchers in residential areas.Israel also disputes the Palestinian death toll, saying that the number of people killed at the Ahli Arab hospital is lower than reported, without elaborating. American intelligence agencies have assessed that the blast killed 100 to 300 people.The Gazan authorities declined to name any of the people killed in the blast, saying that many bodies still had yet to be identified.The Rev. Fadi Diab, deputy chairman of the hospital’s board, said it was hard to confirm the death toll. Father Diab said the hospital administration in Gaza had told him there were between 450 and 500 displaced Gazans sheltering at the hospital site before the blast, but that it was unclear how many of them were in the parking lot when the explosion occurred.“Could the numbers be exaggerated? It’s possible. But could the numbers also be correct? That’s also possible,” Father Diab said in a phone call. “No one is currently able to do verification,” he added.Yousur Al-Hlou contributed reporting from Cairo.The U.S. advises Israel to delay a Gaza invasion, officials say.The Biden administration has advised Israel to delay a ground invasion of Gaza, hoping to buy time for hostage negotiations and to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in the sealed-off enclave, according to several U.S. officials.American officials also want more time to prepare for attacks on U.S. interests in the region from Iran-backed groups, which officials said are likely to intensify once Israel moves its forces fully into Gaza.The administration is not making a demand of Israel and still supports the ground invasion and Israel’s goal of eradicating Hamas, the group controlling Gaza that killed about 1,400 people in terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, the officials said.But fast-moving events since Hamas released two American women on Friday have spurred the administration to more urgently suggest that the Israelis allow time to negotiate the release of 212 other hostages, the officials said.President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday afternoon to discuss the latest developments, the White House said. Mr. Biden also spoke to the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain.Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu agreed that after the entry of the first two convoys of humanitarian aid into Gaza on Saturday, there “will now be continued flow of this critical assistance,” a White House summary of the call said. The leaders also “discussed ongoing efforts to secure the release of all the remaining hostages taken by Hamas — including U.S. citizens — and to provide for safe passage for U.S. citizens and other civilians in Gaza who wish to depart,” the White House said.Two U.S. officials said the advice to the Israelis to hold off on the land war was being conveyed through Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III because the Pentagon is helping advise Israel on military actions, including the ground invasion.Mr. Austin has had near daily calls with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, to discuss operational matters, American arms shipments to Israel and U.S. military deployments to the region. He has also talked about recovering the hostages as a priority, one U.S. official said.A spokesperson for Mr. Gallant declined to comment on the conversations.A diplomat from the Israeli Embassy in Washington denied that the U.S. government was advising the Israelis to delay the ground invasion and said: “We have a close dialogue and consultations with the U.S. administration. The U.S. is not pressing Israel in regards to the ground operation.”An official with knowledge of the hostage negotiations, which are taking place mainly through Qatar, said Hamas had warned that a ground invasion would make hostage releases much less likely. Qatar has close ties to the political leaders of Hamas.The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, avoided answering directly when asked on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday whether the United States was asking Israel to delay a ground invasion to allow time for hostage negotiations. He stressed, though, that the United States was giving advice to the Israelis on the invasion.“It’s important, as we said, not only what they do, but how they do it,” he said, “particularly when it comes to making sure that civilians are as protected as they possibly can be in this crossfire of Hamas’s making.”Mr. Blinken continued: “There are many, many Israelis who are hostages and of course, hostages from other nationalities. So we’re working to do everything we can, using whatever levers, partnerships, relationships we have to get them out. Israel is doing the same. But in terms of what we’re talking to Israel about with regard to their military operations, it really is focused on both how they do it, and how best to achieve the results that they seek.”Mr. Blinken also said it was important that more food and medical supplies get into Gaza, as a humanitarian crisis worsens. Israel imposed a complete cutoff of water, electricity and food on the impoverished coastal strip of two million people soon after the Oct. 7 attacks. The Israeli military has maintained a naval blockade of Gaza since 2007.American officials say they hope the ground invasion will be delayed, but they are wary of playing into the narrative that Iran and its allies have long spread about the United States’ secretly controlling Israel.There have already been a flurry of drone attacks targeting U.S. forces in the region. U.S. officials said that leaving the impression that Biden administration officials are the ones pulling the strings in Israel could drag the United States into a direct conflict with Iran or pro-Iran groups in the region.“In fact we expect that there’s a likelihood of escalation, escalation by Iranian proxies directed against our forces, directed against our personnel,” Mr. Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We are taking steps to make sure that we can effectively defend our people.”The State Department announced Sunday that it had ordered the departure of nonessential American government employees and family members from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq, and increased the travel alert in Iraq to Level 4, meaning U.S. citizens should not go there. The department cited the threats of “terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, civil unrest and Mission Iraq’s limited capacity to provide support to U.S. citizens.”U.S. officials fear that Iraqi militias supported by Iran will attack the 2,500 or so U.S. troops in the country and other American institutions or citizens.Even behind closed doors, American officials are carefully wording their advice to the Israelis. When Mr. Biden met with the Israeli war cabinet during his trip to Tel Aviv last week, he avoided making requests of Mr. Netanyahu, officials said. Instead, the president offered a series of questions that should be answered before a ground invasion starts and raised the specters of the disastrous U.S. decisions to invade Iraq and to wage a long, open-ended war in Afghanistan.Mr. Biden’s questions included who takes over for Hamas after the operation is finished and how the invasion might affect the hostages, as well as what a two-front war might do to Israel.One of the U.S. officials said the Americans had stressed not only the hostage issue to the Israelis, but also concerns about civilian casualties and humanitarian aid.Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, said on CNN that the United States had frequently raised important questions about Israel’s war plans but had not tried to dictate decision making.“There is really no pressure,” he said. “They give us advice, but they are not telling us what to do or what not to do.”The ground invasion has been repeatedly delayed, according to four senior Israeli defense officials, who added that they did not know the reason for the postponement. Two of the officials said it was possibly related to the negotiations.CNN reported Sunday that U.S. officials believe a delay could allow time for the release of more hostages.The New York Times reported last week that American and other Western officials familiar with the talks said there was optimism that Hamas might release women and children because of international backlash to the abductions.A senior Israeli military official said that based on conversations between the United States and Qatar, Hamas could possibly release about 50 dual nationals separate from any broader deal.The repeated delays also reflect a growing tension between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, his defense minister, who supports a broad military operation that would also include Hezbollah, the powerful militia in Lebanon.Mr. Netanyahu has opposed the wider operation for now, and American officials have also privately expressed concern to Israeli leaders about any major strike against the group that would draw it into Israel’s war against Hamas, opening a second front.Hezbollah has stepped up its rocket attacks aimed at northern Israel in recent days, and Israel has retaliated with airstrikes and artillery fire in southern Lebanon but has so far refrained from carrying out a major offensive against the group. The Israeli government has asked more residents of northern Israel to leave their homes.During a visit on Sunday to the underground command of the Israeli Air Force, Mr. Gallant expressed his appreciation to the officers there and, referring to the invasion, his “confidence ahead of the next stage, which will come soon.”Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Washington.LinkedIn issues warning to a site shaming pro-Palestinian sentiment.Online posts asking to “#PrayForPalestine.” Entreaties for peace. Pleas to “Free Gaza.”Over the last 10 days, a website called anti-israel-employees.com published more than 17,000 posts, which one of the people behind the site said had been taken mainly from LinkedIn. The site, which claimed to be a “global live feed of potentially supportive sentiments for terrorism among company employees,” listed thousands of people and grouped them by their workplaces, in an apparent attempt to shame them for their sentiments on the Israeli-Hamas conflict.The website, which was taken offline for a day before being migrated to a new web address, named employees of major international corporations, including Amazon, Mastercard and Ernst & Young, and shared their profile photos, LinkedIn pages and posts.Itai Liptz, a hedge fund manager who said he was one of the people behind the original site, said that its goal was to “expose people who supported Hamas publicly.”“We wanted to have it documented and a record,” he said. “If I work in this company, but I see my friends on LinkedIn celebrating and praising Hamas, then I’m not feeling safe.”But the site also highlighted posts from people who did not explicitly show support for Hamas, according to posts seen by The New York Times. Some people used hash tags like “#GazaUnderAttack” or sought to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The site asked users to submit posts that they believed should be exposed, and included a numeric “hate score” for companies.The site, which was created 10 days ago, comes amid a wider debate over online expression during a fraught international conflict. Similar lists have also been created to track college students who have spoken out in support of Palestinians, while Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said it took down nearly 800,000 pieces of Hebrew and Arabic language content for violating its rules in the three days after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.Some people who were highlighted on the site have already deleted their LinkedIn posts or their LinkedIn profiles. Mr. Liptz, who said he did not expect the site to become as popular as it did after spreading via WhatsApp groups, called the far-ranging capture of all pro-Palestinian sentiment a mistake.“If somebody says ‘Free Palestine’ that is totally OK, and we shouldn’t put it on our website,” he said on Saturday. “We just want to make sure the filters are there because they have the right to say that.”The site, however, was back online on Sunday at a new web address and still displayed the posts and names of people that Mr. Liptz had said would be removed. Now located at an Israel-specific domain, the site is being overseen by Guy Ophir, a lawyer in Israel, who said the team moved it to a new address after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from LinkedIn.A spokesman for LinkedIn said the company determined that the site had used automated programs to extract content from the platform, a practice known as scraping, which is a violation of its rules. Mr. Liptz denied that his site extracted the LinkedIn information through scraping, while Mr. Ophir said he believed that LinkedIn was trying to infringe on his right to free speech.“We are not going to remove the website,” he said. “We are willing to fight them here.”The site has been a subject of discussion at Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and LinkedIn, where employees have expressed concern about the chilling effect it could have on online speech.“People are scraping pro-Palestine LinkedIn posts and adding them to a database of ‘terror supporters,’” one employee wrote last Wednesday in a note on an internal Meta message board that was seen by The Times.Other Meta employees were in disbelief that expressing support for Palestine was equated with supporting terrorism. “The lack of understanding,” a Meta employee wrote, “is beyond insensitive and cruel.”Oct. 22, 2023Daniel VictorPresident Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday, with the leaders affirming that aid would continue into Gaza, according to a summary of the call released by the White House. The leaders discussed work to free the hostages taken by Hamas, including U.S. citizens, and providing safe passage for U.S. citizens and other civilians to leave Gaza, according to the summary.Oct. 22, 2023Aaron BoxermanReporting from JerusalemAn Israeli soldier was killed and three others injured by an anti-tank missile during a raid inside the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said, one of multiple smaller operations ahead of a widely anticipated ground invasion. The troops were operating “to dismantle terror infrastructure, clear the area of terrorists and weapons, and locate missing persons and bodies,” the Israeli military said.Oct. 22, 2023Aaron BoxermanReporting from JerusalemIsraeli officials said that additional humanitarian aid from the United Nations entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday night at the request of the Biden administration. The aid included “only water, food and medical equipment,” according to a statement from COGAT, an Israeli defense ministry agency that manages administrative aspects of the occupation. “All of the equipment was inspected by Israeli security personnel before it was brought into Gaza.”Oct. 22, 2023Aaron BoxermanReporting from JerusalemWael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Rafah border crossing at the Hamas-run interior ministry, confirmed that 14 aid trucks had arrived on the Palestinian side from Egypt. The trucks crossed the border around 10:20 p.m., according to Juliette Touma, the director of communications for UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees.Oct. 22, 2023Daniel VictorPresident Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands will visit Israel this week, arriving “tomorrow and Tuesday,” and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Netanyahu’s office.Here are the Hamas officials believed to have been killed since Oct. 7.Israel said that it had begun the bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip to “eliminate” Hamas in retaliation for the Oct. 7 assaults on its territory that killed at least 1,400 people in southern Israel. Since then, more than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.At least 13 of the casualties have been Hamas officials, according to statements by the group or by the Israeli military. Hamas, the group which controls Gaza, is considered a terror group by the United States and the European Union. Some of the deaths could not be independently verified.They include Gaza’s finance minister, a military commander active since the 1980s and a lawmaker who was the widow of the group’s co-founder, according to Hamas. Israel has also announced the deaths of several Hamas officials, although the group has yet to confirm them.Here are the officials believed to have been killed since the beginning of Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip:On Oct. 10 Hamas said that two senior members of its political bureau, Zakaria Muammar and Jawad Abu Shamala, were both killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military confirmed that it killed the men.Israel identified Mr. Abu Shamala as the finance minister of the Hamas government, whose responsibilities included managing the group’s funds, and said that Mr. Muammar was the head of the group’s internal relations.Israel said it killed three men who played major direct roles in the Oct. 7 attacks.One, Merad Abu Merad, was killed in an airstrike, the Israeli Air Force said on Oct. 14. It described Mr. Abu Merad as the commander of aerial systems in Gaza City and said he helped direct Hamas fighters during the cross-border attack. Hamas has not confirmed his death or role in the attack. On Oct. 14 the Israeli military also said it had killed Ali Qadi, who it identified as a company commander of Hamas’s Nukhba commando force. It said that he “led the terror attack in Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip last weekend.” Hamas has not confirmed his death or his role in the group.The next day, the air force said it had also killed Billal al-Kedra, who it said helped plan the attack. Mr. al-Kedra was a commander in the city of Khan Younis and was responsible for the attack on Kibbutz Nirim, a town roughly one mile from the border with Gaza, the air force said. Hamas has not confirmed his death or role in the organization.On Oct. 15, the Israeli military said that it killed Muetaz Eid and that he was the Commander of the Hamas Southern District of National Security. Hamas has not confirmed his death or his role in the group.On Oct. 17 the military wing of Hamas, the Al Qassam Brigades, said that one of its top commanders, Ayman Nofal, was killed in an Israeli strike on the Bureij refugee camp. He was the first and so far the only military commander whose death Hamas has announced.Israel confirmed that it had killed Mr. Nofal and said that he had been responsible for planning attacks against Israelis. Safa Press Agency, a Palestinian news site linked with Hamas, said he was also a military leader during the two Palestinian uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and from 2000 to 2005, known as the first and second intifadas.Hamas announced the death of two less senior figures in the organization. It said that one, Wael al-Zard, was a preacher affiliated with the group. The other, Tayseer Ibrahim, was the head of the movement’s judicial branch, it said. Hamas said both men were killed when Israel bombed their homes. Israel has not confirmed the death of either man.The commander of the Hamas-led National Security Forces, Maj. Gen. Jihad Muheisen, was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in Gaza City along with some members of his family, Gaza’s government press office said on Oct. 19. The National Security Forces are an internal paramilitary group that assists the Gazan police. Hamas has not officially confirmed his death yet.Jamila al-Shanti, the first woman to hold a seat on Hamas’s political bureau and a member of the Gaza Legislative Council, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to a statement the council released on Oct. 19. She was the widow of Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who was killed by Israel in 2004, and the third official in Hamas’s political bureau to be killed since Oct. 7.On Oct. 20, the Israeli military said in a statement that it killed a senior operative in the Hamas strategic weapons department, Mahmoud Sabih. The department works to increase Hamas’s weapons capabilities, “exchanging knowledge with terrorist organizations across the Middle East,” the Israeli statement said. Hamas has not confirmed his death, or his role in the organization.On Oct. 22, the Israeli military said that its warplanes killed Muhammad Katamash, who it identified as the deputy head of Hamas’s regional artillery array, responsible for artillery management in the Central Camps Brigade. Hamas has not confirmed his death or role in the organization.Oct. 22, 2023Karoun DemirjianReporting from WashingtonSenator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, warned Iran on Sunday that “if this war grows, it’s coming to your backyard.” Speaking from Tel Aviv after leading a delegation of 10 senators through Saudi Arabia and Israel, Graham said, “If there’s an effort to unleash Hezbollah on the Jewish state to destroy it, my attention will be to Tehran.”Oct. 22, 2023Karoun DemirjianReporting from WashingtonThe bipartisan delegation suggested the eradication of Hamas would be necessary to a more peaceful Middle East. Graham called destroying Hamas “non-negotiable” and Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the trip and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, expressed a commitment to normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia but said “the immediate issue is to make sure Hamas can never do this again.”Oct. 22, 2023Jonathan Reiss and Anushka PatilIsrael’s military efforts to eradicate Hamas “may take a month, two, or three, but in the end, Hamas will no longer exist,” the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said at an air force command center on Sunday, according to video shared online by the Israeli broadcaster Kan. The expected ground invasion into Gaza must be the last one, he said, “for the simple reason that after this, Hamas will no longer be.”Oct. 22, 2023Farnaz FassihiIran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, told Iranian state media outlets during a news conference that the Middle East was “a powder keg.” He said that he wanted to warn the U.S. and Israel that “anything is possible at any given moment and the region will go out of control,” if the strikes on Gaza continue. He called the strikes “genocide and crimes against humanity.”An Israeli reservist from Maryland is killed near the Lebanon border.An Israeli military reservist who was raised in Maryland was killed on Friday when anti-tank missile fire struck his unit near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the Israeli military said.Omer Balva, 22, was among the 360,000 reservists that the Israeli government had mobilized in an immense increase in its military forces ahead of an expected ground invasion of Gaza.Mr. Balva was a staff sergeant in the 9203rd battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade, according to the Israel Defense Forces.He moved to Israel after graduating from high school in Rockville, Md., in 2019 and was a student at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, where he was studying for a degree in business administration and economics.Ethan Missner, a close friend of Mr. Balva’s since childhood, said that the two had talked “almost daily” for their entire lives, except when Mr. Balva was training with the Israeli military.“Since we were 6 years old, I’ve spent, you know, endless time with him,” he said.“I truthfully don’t know a single person that’s ever fought with Omer,” Mr. Missner added. “And I think that that’s a superpower Omer had, that he can know and be close to so many people and he was just only sweet.”Mr. Balva was on vacation in the United States when he was called up to fight in Israel, Mr. Missner said. He said that Mr. Balva had been traveling with his girlfriend of four years, whom he had planned to propose to soon.Before Mr. Balva left for Israel about a week ago, he stopped in Maryland and spent some time with Mr. Missner, who said that his friend’s top concern was making sure his loved ones were not too worried. Mr. Balva’s parents were already in Israel when he arrived and he spent two days with them before he was sent to a military base, Mr. Missner said.“He died fighting for the people that he loved and a country that he loved,” Mr. Missner said.On Sunday, Mr. Missner and his family watched a livestream of Mr. Balva’s funeral in Israel. Thousands of people attended, he said, and the speakers included Mr. Balva’s parents, his three siblings and his girlfriend.Mr. Balva graduated from the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, outside Washington, in 2019. The school said in a statement on Instagram that Mr. Balva was “an unabashed advocate for the State of Israel.”In a 2018 school presentation, Mr. Balva described his family’s long history with Israel and said that his parents had moved to the United States in 1996 for business reasons. He wrote in the presentation that he hoped to move to Israel as an adult and to raise his children there.In 2019, the year Mr. Balva left for Israel and began his compulsory military service, he wrote a letter to Mr. Missner. “I want you to know,” he wrote, “that every time I’m sad I go to this one thought of me and you at 24 or 25 with our families on vacation, the thought of us with wives and children we love and are able to support always brings a smile to my face.”Since Hamas gunmen surged into Israel in a meticulously organized attack on Oct. 7, more than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, most in the initial attack, and more than 200 have been kidnapped.The death toll in Gaza from Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign has risen to at least 4,385, and there have been more than 13,500 injuries, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. More than 60 percent of those killed in the Gaza Strip are women and children, the United Nations said Saturday, citing figures from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.Oct. 22, 2023Elisabetta PovoledoThe Vatican said that Pope Francis spoke for about 20 minutes with President Biden this afternoon. The conversation “focused on conflict situations in the world and the need to identify paths to peace,” the Vatican said in a statement on one of its social media channels.Oct. 22, 2023Edward WongReporting from WashingtonThe State Department has ordered the departure of all non-emergency U.S. government employees and family members from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq. The move comes amid concerns about increasing hostility toward U.S. troops and citizens from Iran-supported militias in Iraq due to the Israel-Hamas war.Canada and France say that it is unlikely Israel was behind the Gaza hospital blast.Canadian and French national security officials have said that an errant rocket fired from within Gaza, not an Israeli airstrike, most likely caused last week’s deadly blast at a hospital in Gaza, echoing statements by American and Israeli officials made in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.While many in the Middle East and beyond still blame Israel for the explosion on Tuesday at Ahli Arab Hospital, the Canadian and French statements — both made in the past two days — add to the growing Western consensus that Palestinian militants were most likely responsible. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza has said the explosion killed hundreds of people.“Analysis conducted independently by the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command indicates with a high degree of confidence that Israel did not strike the Al-Ahli hospital,” Canada’s National Department of Defense said in a statement on Saturday. It added that the hospital was most likely struck by a rocket fired from within Gaza, citing open source and classified reporting.A day earlier, France’s military intelligence directorate made similar statements to reporters, The Associated Press and Reuters reported.“There is nothing that allows us to say that it is an Israeli strike,” the directorate said, according to Reuters. The blast crater appeared too small to have been caused by an Israeli missile and “the most likely hypothesis is a Palestinian rocket,” according to the directorate. It added that the explosive charge was about five kilograms, or 11 pounds — a size that matches rockets known to be used by Palestinian militants.Officials in Gaza quickly blamed Israel after the deadly explosion, setting off protests across the Middle East. Arab leaders canceled meetings with President Biden, who was to arrive in the region the following day for a brief visit. Mr. Biden ended up visiting only Israel.Israel, for its part, swiftly pushed back on claims it was behind the explosion, saying there were no ongoing military operations in the area at the time. Mr. Biden later backed up the Israelis, and American officials said their intelligence — including satellite and other infrared data — showed that a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza was to blame. American intelligence agencies have assessed that between 100 and 300 people were killed.Oct. 22, 2023Iyad AbuheweilaReporting from CairoA Palestinian journalist, Roshdi Sarraj, has been killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, according to tributes posted on social media by colleagues. At least 18 other Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.Oct. 22, 2023Raja AbdulrahimReporting from JerusalemThe Israeli military said one of its tanks accidentally fired on an Egyptian post near its border crossing at Kerem Shalom. The crossing between Israel and Egypt is more than two miles from the Rafah crossing, from where a small convoy of aid trucks traveled into Gaza yesterday. In a statement, the Israeli military expressed its “sorrow” and said the episode was under investigation.Oct. 22, 2023Vivian YeeReporting from CairoThe blast injured nine Egyptian soldiers and damaged a watchtower, according to an ambulance worker and two officials with Egypt’s North Sinai governorate, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation publicly.Oct. 22, 2023Vivian YeeReporting from CairoEgypt’s military confirmed in a statement that a border control tower had been “accidentally hit” by shell fragments from an Israeli tank, resulting in some minor injuries. It added that Israel had apologized immediately for the incident.Oct. 22, 2023Edward WongReporting from WashingtonU.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Hamas was blocking U.S. citizens and other foreign nationals from leaving Gaza. “We have several hundred Americans and other nationalities, other civilians from other countries who want to leave Gaza,” he said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “We’ve had people come to Rafah, the crossing with Egypt. And to date, at least, Hamas has blocked them from leaving.”Oct. 22, 2023Edward WongReporting from WashingtonHe said “the ball is in Hamas’s court" when it comes to letting foreign citizens leave the enclave, adding that the State Department has diplomats in Egypt who are ready to assist.Despite the threat, many in northern Gaza say they can’t leave home.As Israel’s military ramped up its warnings for civilians to flee northern Gaza, many people there said that doing so was not an option because of cost — and that it was no guarantee of safety.The Israeli military said Saturday night that it would intensify its already punishing bombardment of the besieged enclave ahead of an expected ground invasion. In Arabic-language leaflets dropped over Gaza on Saturday, it reiterated calls for people to move south, warning that anyone who did not “may be considered a partner in a terrorist organization.”But Amani Abu Odeh, who lives in the town of Jabalia in Gaza’s north, said that the danger of Israeli airstrikes on the road had pushed up the cost of travel. Drivers were now charging between $200 and $300 to take a family south, she said. Before the war, the same trip cost about $3 a person.“We can’t even afford to eat,” Ms. Abu Odeh said. “We don’t have the money to leave.” Instead, she and other members of her extended family have hunkered down together in one home.Food, water and other supplies are in desperately short supply in Gaza, where officials say the health system is on the brink of collapse after Israel declared a complete siege of the already blockaded enclave nearly two weeks ago.More than half of Gaza’s more than two million residents have been displaced within the enclave, which is about the size of the city of Philadelphia, since Israel launched its retaliatory airstrike campaign. And the leaflets dropped over Gaza calling for more people to move south drew condemnation from Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.Designating hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians who were unwilling or unable to flee as accomplices in terrorism was a threat of collective punishment and could possibly amount to ethnic cleansing, she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday. She added that deliberately targeting civilians was a war crime.In response to questions from The New York Times, the Israeli military said that it did not intend to consider those who have not evacuated south to be members of armed Palestinian groups, which it considers terrorist organizations. It said in a statement that it “treats civilians as such, and does not target them.” A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry also said that there was no basis for the suggestion that its evacuation warnings could amount to ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.Even as Israel has told Gazans to head south, airstrikes have continued to hit that part of the enclave. And an Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said on Saturday night that Israel would “deepen” attacks on Gaza overall ahead of the “next stages” of the war — a reference to a widely expected ground offensive.That — coupled with the escalating humanitarian crisis across the enclave — is one of several reasons some families say they are staying put in the north.“I did not go to the south mainly because I know no one there; where am I to go?” said Yasser Shaban, 57, a civil servant in Gaza City. “We will end up in the streets.”Mr. Shaban said a cousin took his family to the south soon after airstrikes on Gaza City began in the hours after Hamas fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7. But a week ago, he said, an Israeli airstrike hit the place where they were sheltering in the city of Khan Younis, killing the cousin’s wife and two daughters. The cousin returned to Gaza City with his surviving family members — a wounded son and his sister — to be treated at Al Shifa Hospital.“I heard of the new leaflets saying they will consider us members of Hamas if we don’t evacuate,” Mr. Shaban said. “But I simply can’t go south.”Abu Bakr Bashir and Ameera Harouda contributed reporting.Oct. 22, 2023Isabel KershnerReporting from JerusalemA man in southern Israel was injured late Sunday afternoon in a rocket attack from Gaza, according to the Israeli police and emergency services. The police said rocket fragments had been found in various locations around the city of Netivot, a few miles from the Gaza border.Oct. 22, 2023Michael D. ShearReporting from WashingtonSecretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday that the United States was making “incessant efforts” to bring home American hostages held by Hamas. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said: “That is continuing as we speak. This is something we’re engaged in virtually around the clock.”Oct. 22, 2023Michael D. ShearReporting from WashingtonBlinken said the Biden administration is bracing for an escalation in fighting in the Middle East in the days ahead. “In fact, we expect that there’s a likelihood of escalation, escalation by Iranian proxies directed against our forces, directed against our personnel,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We are taking steps to make sure that we can effectively defend our people.”Oct. 22, 2023Euan WardReporting from Beirut, LebanonDuring a visit to Israeli troops on the Lebanese border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that if Hezbollah decided to join the war, it would result in “devastating consequences to Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon,” adding, “We’ll hit it with a force it can’t even imagine.” Netanyahu said he did not know whether the militant group would join the conflict. Oct. 22, 2023Matina Stevis-GridneffThousands participated in a peaceful rally in support of the Palestinian people on Sunday in Brussels, ending their march outside the European Union institutions in the city’s European quarter. The organizers had warned that anyone expressing antisemitism or making apologies for crimes against civilians would get kicked out of the massive event.Oct. 22, 2023Michael D. ShearReporting from WashingtonSecretary of Defense Lloyd Austin compared an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza to the fight by Iraqi and U.S. soldiers to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS in 2017. “That was nine months of intense combat,” he said on ABC's “This Week.” “This may be a bit more difficult because of the underground network of tunnels that Hamas has constructed over time, and the fact that they’ve had a long time to prepare for a fight.” (An earlier version of this update misstated the year that Mosul was retaken.)In a rare West Bank airstrike, Israel hits a mosque, killing two.The Israeli military carried out a rare airstrike on a mosque in the occupied West Bank overnight, killing at least two people in what Palestinian officials called a “dangerous escalation.”The strike hit a mosque in the densely packed Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in the northern West Bank. Israel’s military said it was targeting an underground “terror compound” beneath the mosque that it said was being used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to organize an imminent attack. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, called the activity going on beneath the mosque a “ticking time bomb.” The claims had not been independently verified.At least two people were killed and three others were injured, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Video from the scene showed significant damage to the mosque.The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called the strike a “dangerous escalation in the use of warplanes,” saying in a statement that Israel appeared to be bringing tactics used in the Gaza Strip to the occupied West Bank.After a lull of nearly two decades, Israel resumed limited airstrikes in the West Bank in July, mostly by means of drones, during a two-day siege and assault on the Jenin refugee camp which the Israeli military said was aimed at rooting out armed groups.Violence has been surging in the West Bank in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks that Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, launched against Israel. The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank said 90 Palestinians had been killed since Oct. 7 in the occupied territory in clashes with Israeli forces and attacks by armed Israeli settlers, by far the most in any two consecutive weeks this year. Israeli officers have arrested hundreds of Palestinians, according to Palestinian and Israeli accounts.At least 52 Palestinians were arrested by Israeli security forces overnight during wide-scale raids, Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, reported on Sunday. It said that most of the arrests were concentrated in and around the central city of Ramallah in the West Bank, adding that one of the detainees was Islam Al Tawil — the mayor of Al-Bireh, a city abutting Ramallah, and a former prisoner in Israeli jails.

Connecting Ideas, Empowering Growth Home » Biography » Wael Al Zard Wael Al Zard Biography Sheikh Wael Mohieldin Sayed Al Zard is a Palestinian preacher based in Gaza. He obtained his bachelor degree in the fundamentals of religion in 1995 from the Islamic University in the Palestinian territories. He also obtained a master’s degree in Hadith from the same university in 2001. Since 1996, Al Zard has been the Imam of Al Omari Grand Mosque in Gaza. In addition to this, Al Zard is a lecturer at the College of Professional and Applied Sciences at the Islamic University. Evidence of Hate Speech/Incitement: 29 June 2019: In a Friday sermon, Al Zard said that Jews were raised on treason, villainy and pettiness. June 2014: In a research paper published by the Magazine of Islamic Studies at the Islamic University, Al Zard said that Jews still feel happy when innocent people are being killed. Post navigation Related Post You Missed

Gaza Islamic scholar Wael Al-Zard said in a September 14, 2022 show on Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas-Gaza) that when the Jews pay Palestinian laborers in Israel, they are actually giving back to them money that was "rightfully" theirs. He elaborated that the “filthy” Jews are not doing the Palestinian laborers any favors, and that they have been sucking the blood of Palestinians’ resources for over 70 years. Al-Zard explained that the Palestinians would have been “many times richer” than the Jews, had the...This report is part of the archives of the Middle East Media Research Institute and is not available to the general public. If you are a professional in media, academia, public policy, law enforcement, or the military, you can request this report by pressing the button below: