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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has presented a vision for postwar Gaza that differs starkly from and is significantly more detailed than Israel’s: governance by the Hamas-rival Palestinian Authority, minimal presence by Israeli troops, an end to the 16-year blockade of the Palestinian enclave and “no reduction in the territory of Gaza”.
In news: the latest developments
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Israeli forces are operating in the “heart of the city”, according to Israeli officials, while Palestinians have reported heavy fighting in central Gaza City. Large numbers of families are streaming south on Salah-ad-Din Road, an evacuation route, some waving white flags, to escape the fighting.
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European and Arab officials meet in Paris to find ways to increase aid to the Gaza Strip, where 2.3mn people face a deepening humanitarian crisis. Israel will not attend. Ideas include a maritime aid corridor and hospital ships in the Mediterranean.
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The death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza has surpassed 10,500 people, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials in the strip.
Military briefing: how Israel’s spymasters misread Hamas
Current and former intelligence officers as well as amateur snoopers warned the Israeli military that Hamas fighters were conducting elaborate war games near the border — but they were brushed aside. Israel suffered from “overconfidence, which led to arrogance, which led to complacency”, former prime minister Ehud Olmert said after the October 7 attack. “Hamas did to us what we normally do: surprise, cleverness, outside-the-box thinking.”
Comment: there will be no peace in the Middle East without politics
“It is not just the horror of the killing that makes dialogue about Gaza so difficult. It is the fact, as the sociologist Eva Illouz insists, that there is not one context but several disjoint contexts — the Holocaust and the Nakba, a brutal pogrom and indiscriminate bombing — so the act of contextualising, including the invocation of laws of conventional war, is inescapably political and emotionally charged. It does not get easier when we think about what comes next.” Adam Tooze
In data: the Israel-Hamas war in maps
Israel’s defence forces are now in Gaza City. “They have one target — Hamas terrorists in Gaza, their infrastructure, their commanders, bunkers, communication rooms,” said Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant. Many Palestinians remain in the north, with the UN describing the situation for hundreds of thousands of people across the territory as “increasingly dire”.
Read more at ft.com/israel-hamas-war
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