Deadly Gaza Hospital Bombing Kills Hundreds

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a hospital bombing in Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to China, and LGBTQ rights in India.

Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The exact death toll is currently unclear, with Gaza officials providing conflicting numbers ranging from 200 to 500 people. Hamas accused Israel of being behind the strike, calling it a “horrific massacre.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), however, said in a statement that an initial analysis indicates the blast was from a failed rocket launched toward Israel by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Gaza-based Islamist militant group.

The conflicting claims come as Israel has ramped up attacks on Gaza in recent days ahead of a planned ground offensive. On Tuesday, Israeli strikes targeted a house in Gaza City where the family of Hamas’s top political official, Ismail Haniyeh, lives, killing at least 14 people. Haniyeh himself lives in Doha, Qatar.

In the war’s most high-profile death thus far, an Israeli airstrike on central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp killed senior Hamas commander Ayman Nofal on Tuesday. Nofal oversaw Hamas’s Central Gaza Brigade and served on its General Military Council, which helped coordinate attacks among Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other militants in the region. He was also allegedly involved in the development of weapons and the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

“Hamas members have two options: Either die in their positions or surrender unconditionally,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. “There is no third option. We will wipe out the Hamas organization and dismantle all of its capabilities.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded nearly nine hours of negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by announcing that Israel has developed a plan to provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via donor nations and multilateral organizations without benefitting Hamas. The aid deal would establish “safe zones” in southern Gaza and eventually help reopen the border crossing into Egypt, but it would not create a humanitarian corridor nor allow select foreigners to leave the Gaza Strip.

Blinken has spent the past week conducting intense shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Arab nations in the region. And on Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden will join him in Israel to show Washington’s commitment to the IDF. Biden will then visit Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II as well as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Alongside leadership visits, the U.S. Defense Department ordered 2,000 troops on Tuesday to be ready to deploy to the region. These forces would provide advice and medical support to the IDF and would not serve in combat roles. However, the decision of whether to deploy them has not yet been made. A 2,000-strong U.S. Marines rapid response force is also sailing toward the Eastern Mediterranean, according to a U.S. official. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier will also arrive in the Middle East in the next few days, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has extended the deployment of USS Gerald R. Ford and its warships in the region.

• Vengeance Is Not a Policy by Ian S. Lustick
• Can Israel Handle a War on 2 Fronts? by Amy Mackinnon
• The 1973 War Analogy Is Deeper Than You Think by Kenneth M. Pollack

Friendship goals. Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for the 10th annual Belt and Road Forum. During the two-day summit, Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to reaffirm Beijing’s support for Moscow in its war against Ukraine and efforts to combat Western dominance. This is Putin’s first visit to a country not formerly part of the Soviet Union since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest in March.

Russia and China are increasingly aligning their geopolitical ambitions to boost their sway over the world order. Both have maintained a more neutral stance on the Israel-Hamas war. And on Monday, Moscow joined Beijing in banning Japanese seafood imports, citing the release of treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into regional waters as dangerous despite scientists ensuring that the practice is safe.

India’s LGBTQ ruling. In a blow to LGBTQ rights in the world’s most populous country, India’s Supreme Court refused to legalize same-sex marriage on Tuesday. A five-justice bench said the creation of such a law should be left up to India’s Parliament. However, the chief justice also stated during the ruling that queerness is a “natural phenomenon” and told the government to ensure the “queer community is not discriminated against because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.” This year, the country’s top court heard 20 petitions to legalize same-sex marriage.

In 2018, India’s Supreme Court reversed a colonial-era law that criminalized same-sex intercourse. However, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, other discriminatory LGBTQ laws forged while under British rule have been protected, with top leaders emphasizing Hinduism’s view of procreation between a man and woman as the defining status of marriage.

Unauthorized meetings. Georgia’s constitutional court approved the opening of impeachment proceedings against President Salome Zourabichvili on Tuesday for violating the country’s constitution by making unauthorized foreign trips. In September, members of the ruling Georgian Dream party called for Zourabichvili’s removal for meeting with leaders in Berlin and Brussels without government approval. Zourabichvili had hoped the visits would help Georgia obtain European Union membership.

Zourabichvili condemned the ruling and said Georgian Dream is trying to “kill Georgia’s European future and democracy.” An impeachment vote will be held in the coming days, marking the first such case in the country’s history.

On Monday, hundreds of EU parliamentarians and their teams en route from Brussels to Strasbourg, France, unexpectedly found themselves at the happiest place on Earth when a rail signaling error caused their train to make an unplanned 45-minute stop at the Disneyland Paris station. Their constituents can rest assured, though; the hardworking politicians somehow managed to resist the temptation to take a quick ride on Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain or Peter Pan’s Flight during the brief delay. “We are NOT a Mickey Mouse parliament,” German lawmaker Daniel Freund said.