Blinken makes surprise visit to occupied West Bank

UNITED NATIONS — The heads of 11 U.N. agencies and six humanitarian organizations issued a joint plea for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, the protection of civilians and the swift entry to Gaza of food, water, medicine and fuel.

In a statement tonight, they called Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attacks in Israel “horrific.”

“However, the horrific killings of even more civilians in Gaza is an outrage, as is cutting off 2.2 million Palestinians from food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel,” the heads of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory said.

The U.N. and humanitarian organizations said that more than 23,000 injured people need immediate treatment and that hospitals are overstretched.

“An entire population is besieged and under attack, denied access to the essentials for survival, bombed in their homes, shelters, hospitals and places of worship,” the joint statement said.The U.N. and aid organization leaders said over a hundred attacks against health care operations have been reported and dozens of staff members from the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, have been reported killed.

ADANA, Turkey — Turkish police used tear gas and water cannons as hundreds of people at a pro-Palestinian rally today tried to storm an air base that houses U.S. troops, hours before Blinken was due in Ankara for talks on Gaza.

Turkey, which has stepped up its criticism of Israel as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened, supports a two-state solution while hosting members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Since the Israel-Hamas war started, protests have erupted across the country.

The IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, an Islamist Turkish aid agency, organized a convoy last week to travel to the Incirlik air base in Adana province in southern Turkey to protest Israeli attacks on Gaza and U.S. support for Israel.

Incirlik, which has been used to support the international coalition fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, also houses U.S. troops. IHH’s protest called for Incirlik to be closed.

Video from the protests showed police firing tear gas and using water cannons to disperse crowds chanting slogans and waving Turkish and Palestinian flags. Protesters toppled barricades and clashed with police in riot gear.

Protesters were also seen hurling plastic chairs, rocks and other items at police, who fired smoke bombs at crowds. Scuffles broke out between the crowds and security forces.

IHH President Bulent Yildirim addressed crowds in Adana and urged them to refrain from attacking police.

“Friends, it is wrong to throw rocks or do similar things, because both the police and soldiers would want to go to Gaza and fight, and they will go when the time comes,” he said. “Our rage is huge. We cannot hold it in. But Turkey is doing what it can.”

IHH ended its rally earlier than planned because of the clashes with police.

Crowds worked to try to save people from the rubble after an Israeli airstrike yesterday that hit al-Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. At least 47 people were killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

"Look at what we are using to get the bodies out. We have no tools or equipment," a man said, holding up a knife. "We are hitting the rubble with knives to get children's bodies out."

Israeli forces paused attacks in northern Gaza for a few hours yesterday and today, said the Israel Defense Forces' international spokesperson, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.

Conricus, speaking on CNN today, said that the pauses in the most active part of the battlefield in northern Gaza were scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and that civilians in the area were forewarned and urged to flee south.

For at least one of the two days, however, the pause was cut short because Hamas militants fired on "humanitarian convoys" heading out of the area, he told CNN.

"We stopped firing in certain areas of northern Gaza, which is the main combat area, and we called on Palestinians to move south," Conricus said on CNN. "Many did. Not enough."

Refugees and residents in parts of the south of Gaza have also faced peril, with the Palestine Red Crescent Society saying attacks by Israeli forces in the vicinity of the Al Quds hospital there injured dozens.

After the U.S. rejected a U.N. resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to get aid and supplies to Gaza, the Biden administration's language shifted, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called for a pause in shelling for the safe passage of hostages and humanitarian supplies on Oct. 24.

An U.S. official told NBC News last month that the U.S. also favored pauses to facilitate the safe passage of Palestinian civilians from Gaza's war-torn north.

But it appeared Israel had outright rejected the idea, with Prime Minister Netanyahu saying in a statement Friday that Israel "refuses a temporary cease-fire that doesn’t include a return of our hostages."

Though Blinken met Netanyahu and other leaders in the region in recent days — some pressured the U.S. and Israel for pauses in the war — it wasn't clear exactly why Israel appeared to relent.

After an Israeli Cabinet minister said dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was "an option," an official in Egypt condemned the remark and said it represents extremism in Israel's politics.

Ambassador Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesperson for Egypt's Foreign Affairs Ministry, responded on the social platform X.

"An Israeli minister demanding to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip is evidence of the extent of the deviation and extremism that has befallen a number of decision-makers in the Israeli government," he said, according to an NBC News translation. 

He urged other nations to decry the remark, noting that world leaders are "talking about nuclear disarmament and its dangers," not proliferation and nuclear warfare.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has suspended Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who made the nuclear bomb comment, from Cabinet meetings.

CIA Director William Burns arrived in Israel today on a trip that focuses on talks with political leaders and intelligence counterparts across the Middle East, a U.S. official said.

"They will discuss issues of mutual concern, including the situation in Gaza, support for hostage negotiations and the U.S. commitment to continuing to deter state and nonstate actors from widening the conflict between Israel and Hamas," the official said.

He "will reinforce our commitment to intelligence cooperation, especially in areas such as counterterrorism and security,” the official said. 

The CIA declined to comment.

The trip comes as Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a surprise visit to the occupied West Bank, where he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Blinken said Palestinians should not be forcibly displaced. 

Telecommunications in Gaza have entered their third near-total blackout since the invasion began, according to a connectivity expert and a Gazan who works in the industry.

Husam Mekdad, a telecommunications expert in Gaza, told NBC News this afternoon that internet and other communications had been cut. He was forced to use an Israeli SIM card to communicate the message, he said.

Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Kintic, a company that tracks internet connectivity, said his company had noticed a major outage.

Paltel, one of the largest telecommunication companies serving Gaza, also announced an outage on its Facebook page.

Former President Barack Obama says “nobody’s hands are clean” in the Israel-Hamas war and acknowledged that he has questioned in recent days whether his administration could have done more to push for a durable peace when he was in power.

“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth,” Obama said in an interview with “Pod Save America.” “And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean. That all of us are complicit to some degree.” He went on to tell his interviewers, Obama administration alumni Dan Pfieffer and Tommy Vietor, that he has asked himself since the start of the war, “Was there something else I could have done?”

Obama did make an attempt at peace between Israel and Palestinians during his second term, but months of talks collapsed in 2014 amid disagreements over Israeli settlements, the release of Palestinian prisoners and other issues.

“I look at this and I think back what could I have done during my presidency to move this forward — as hard as I tried, I’ve got the scars to prove it,” Obama said in excerpts of the interview released on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

The entire interview is scheduled to be released Tuesday.