I'm Rajah Abdul Rahim, and I'm a reporter in the Jerusalem Bureau, and I've been covering the war in Gaza for the past three weeks. On Friday, I was reporting out a story about basically, it was a sentiment that I was trying to hear a lot from people that death felt inevitable. There's now more than 8,000 deaths in Gaza, more than a third of them children. And we're hearing basically entire families are being killed in one strike. I spoke to a woman in Gaza. Her name is Ulfette-Kord.

.

And she told me that 70 members of her family had been killed. Aunts, uncles, cousins, she'd almost lost count of them.

.

And.

What she was telling me and what I've been hearing a lot is that these huge death tolls and when everybody around you, when everybody you love is being killed, it just makes people feel that their turn is next.

The.

Smell of death actually hangs in the air because there's so many bodies, more than a thousand, that are under the rubble because they don't have the equipment or they don't have the ability to get them out. I also spoke with a poet and an essayist, Mus'ab Abu Taha. And he was telling me about how when you're sitting in your home or wherever you are and you hear the approach of a rocket, the sound feels like it's coming for you. It feels like it's intended for you. I asked him some more questions, but I suddenly noticed that the messages weren't being delivered and I wasn't hearing back. It wasn't until a little later that we realized that all phone and internet in Gaza were down. It was very scary to have no eyes on the ground and to not know what was happening in the middle of a war zone. Luckily, our stringer, Amira, her husband actually has an Israeli SIM card, and she was able to message us.

Okay, just to explain the situation here in Gaza today in the streets, it's like a really crazy situation.

I got a very panicked message from her. And in this moment, she's talking as a Palestinian, as a journalist, as a mother.

People, they are very scared and terrified. They keep asking us as a journalist, Do you know what happened? What's the news? Is there any cease fire? Were they bomb last night?

And she told me that there was so much fear and so much panic and so much confusion on the ground because everybody was worried, what did this blackout mean? And what was Israel planning to do?

Good morning, Riza. We all fine here in the camp. So far, we don't know what happened in Qatar. We cannot even reach my family, like my mom, my sisters in Gaza City to check how they are or if they survived this night or not.

That's the thing with this blackout is that not only were people in Qatar cut off from the rest of the world, but they were cut off from each other.

During the night, there were a very heavy bombing and a lot of clashes like shooting. We hear the shooting. We hear that there is like fight.

What was happening was that it was the most intense night of the war so far in terms of Israeli airstrikes. A lot of Palestinians described it as the most terrifying night they've ever lived.

By cutting the communication and the telephone lines, they cannot even people call the ambulance or call the civil defense or call anyone to come to help them.

She was telling me about how the ambulance services, because nobody was able to call them, they didn't know.

Where to go. They are looking for the smoke to know exactly where is the area of the bombing, and they are asking people around to reach the area where they bomb so they can go and help people.

And so some of them were following the sounds of people screaming, or they were basically just driving through the streets looking for places that had been recently hit with Israeli airstrikes. And then suddenly, Sunday morning, the phone and internet was restored. People's phones started messages, and a lot of it were messages of other family members trying to check up on them. But also it was a lot of the news of what had happened since Friday night. And they saw that Israel had started to conduct its ground invasion, and this causes obviously a whole new level of fear.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernissi, and this is The Daily. Over the weekend, the Israeli military appears to have begun an invasion of the Gaza Strip, with tanks rolling into the enclave and Israeli soldiers fighting with Hamas inside. But the operation remains shrouded in secrecy, with Israel revealing little about its actions. Today, my colleagues, Rizjah, Abdul Rahim, and Patrick Kingsley, on the latest escalation in the war. It's Monday, October 30th. Patrick, we're reaching you on Sunday at about 3:00 PM Eastern time, and that's 9:00 PM your time in Jerusalem. We just heard from our colleague, Rajah. She was talking about how things had changed in Gaza over the weekend. I'm wondering if you can tell us what you know about what happened in Israel over the past three days. Start on Friday for me. What did we start to see happen?

Early on Friday evening, we began hearing reports of a massive aerial bombardment over Gaza. But at the same time, we were hearing very little about what was actually going on under those bombs because it seemed like there was a communications blackout at that time. The military was consecutively quiet. It was hard to get any clear answers from them about what was going on. In fact, it was hard to get them to pick up the phone. And then finally, at around 9:00 PM, amid this shroud of secrecy and silence, the chief military spokesman came out and made a very vague statement in which he said that Israel was expanding its ground activity. And, as Friday bled into Saturday, we started to see the first footage of tanks inside Gaza, and it started to feel like this incursion into Northern Gaza was something more than just the hours-long incursions that we'd seen on previous nights. But it wasn't until late afternoon on Saturday that we felt ready to call this The Invasion. This was the start of the big push that we'd been expecting for three weeks.

What was it about what happened late afternoon on Saturday that caused you to start calling it an invasion?

Firstly, the fact they were still there, the fact that the military still seemed to be there some 12 hours after they entered. Secondly, the information we were getting from military sources about the numbers of troops that were now inside the number of tanks, the number of armed vehicles, the number of bulldozers, it eventually became clear that this was a major invasive force. And while it wasn't some blitz-creek rush on Gaza City, Hamas's stronghold, it was never the start of what is the Israeli ground invasion of Qatar.

Patrick, what about Hamas? What were they saying?

Hamas made two brief announcements, or rather their military wing made two brief announcements. They said they were engaging troops in the north and also a bit further south. That corresponds now to what we know about the Israeli invasion. They invaded around those two places and clearly they ran into Hamas fighters. What those battles look like? We don't really know, because there was so little information coming out of Gaza and the Israeli army were also keeping very quiet about what was going on.

Why was the Israeli Army keeping so quiet?

It's not entirely clear, but we think one reason was that it wanted to maintain the element of surprise, make Hamas unsure about what was going on. Secondly, we think perhaps that Israel wanted to avoid scrutiny and it wants to avoid outcry across the Middle East and to avoid an immediate reaction from Southern Lebanon, where Hezbolla, another militia, allied to Hamas, hold sway, and which Israelis had feared might launch its own major attack on Israel if it felt that Hamas was under threat due to the ground invasion. Israel making its advance during a communication blackout and without formally announcing it themselves, created a sense of uncertainty about what was actually going on that therefore made journalists like us worry about reporting anything and potentially also prevented groups like Hezbolla from making their own reaction.

Okay, so this is the invasion that we were all anticipating. But at the same time, you're saying it's different. What makes you say that? How is it different than what we expected?

I think we expected, perhaps naively, that we would know what was going on in real time, that we'd have photography, video of something happening. In retrospect, we now know certain details. We know they entered from the northwest of Gaza. At least some of the forces advanced down the Kazakhstan coastline. There's video now that's been released from the Israeli Army that shows tanks and other vehicles moving along the beaches of Northern Gaza. A video has also emerged of a pair of Israeli soldiers standing atop what is believed to be Beachside Hotel, raising an Israeli flag. We also understand that so far the Israeli Army has not pushed that far deep into Gaza. It hasn't entered into Gaza City, the biggest urban centre of the enclave. It appears to be waiting almost surrounding the city. And this has been accompanied by many statements from Israeli officials, both in the military and outside, saying that this is going to be a long, long process and that they won't be charging into Gaza City as quickly as perhaps we'd expect it three weeks ago.

Why do you think the Israeli military is taking this different approach? Do you think that they were responding to pressure from the US?

Well, you're right that the US has been warning Israel not to act out of emotion, not to act too swiftly to make sure that they have clear plans in place before moving in. Everyone's worried about the outbreak of a regional war and it's quite possible that this maneuver, surrounded in secrecy, was intended to try and delay any prospect of regional reaction for as long as possible until the invasion seemed a feta complete that could not be stopped. And perhaps that's why there was essentially a day of uncertainty and the fog over what was going on. By the time that Benjamin Netanyahu made his speech on Saturday night, in which he announced the second phase of this conflict, the Israeli army had already been inside Gaza for more than 24 hours and their presence was a factor rather than a possibility. We'll be.

Right back. Patrick, you told us that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech on Saturday night. What did he say?

He.

Said a number of things.

The.

First is that this is the second stage of the war. That was significant because it confirmed what we'd already gathered by ourselves by that point, which is that the invasion had begun. Yet he didn't actually use the word invasion. Then he said-.

The.

War inside Gaza will be long and difficult, and we are ready for it.

That.

Was perhaps aimed at the Israeli public that is going to have to come to terms with many losses to its own in the coming months. Then he talks about meeting the families of Israeli hostages who were kidnapped during Hamas's own invasion of Israeli territory on October seventh.

And.

He said, We would exhaust every possibility to bring our brothers and sisters back to their families. That was an attempt to reassure the families of the hostages who have enormous public sympathy and support that this invasion is not intended to come at the cost of those hostages' lives.

What else did Netanyahu say in the speech?

He talked about one supreme goal to destroy the murderous enemy and ensure our existence in our land.

That.

Is maybe tilted towards the international audience. It's a reminder that for Israelis, they cannot countenance living next to Hamas on its borders for another minute. Then finally.

He.

Says that this is our Second War of Independence. The first so-called War of Independence was in 1948, when Israel's fledgling army defeated several Arab armies and Palestinian militias in order to create the boundaries of the modern state. Then that war was and remains a unifying event in the minds of most Israelis because it was the foundational event of the state of Israel. By talking about it, Netanyahur, who was trying to present himself as a unifying leader, someone that can bring Israelis together after a period of great division in Israeli society. And to to supporters, that may have felt credible. To critics, that would have come across as very hollow. And to Palestinians, that same comment would have felt very chilling, but for different reasons. During the 1948 war, some 700,000 Palestinian-Arabs, or 80 % of the Arab population of Mandate, Palestine, the territory that Israel was formed from in 1948, either fled their homes or forced to flee their homes, never to return. And that moment in Palestinian history is known as the Nakba or catastrophe. It was hugely traumatic and remains perhaps the defining moment of the Palestinian experience and is seen as almost the start of all the Palestinian trauma over the past 75 years.

That was Saturday, but on the ground in Gaza, things were still very uncertain and it was very unclear what was going on.

Okay, so that's Saturday night. Today's Sunday. Okay, tell me what we've learned now that the communications have come back online.

We're learning that once again, there was devastating loss of civilian life in Gaza. We're learning that the fighting inside Gaza appears to have taken its first Israeli casualties. The Israeli military said this morning that two soldiers had been wounded during the fighting that started after the invasion. And we learned from the Israeli military that they say that they have hit 450 military targets throughout Saturday and early Sunday. And those targets include command centres, observation posts, anti-tank, missile launch posts, and leaders of Hamas's military wing. We also know that they say that they hit 150 underground facilities, some of which may indeed be tunnels. All these are impossible to verify.

Patrick, stepping back here for a minute. Where do you think we are in this war right now? Netanyahu has said we are in a second phase. We don't know how many more there will be. Where are we and where are we going?

Well, the entire region is waiting with baited breath to see how do Hamas's allies in Southern Lebanon respond. Will they up the ante? Will they launch missiles and rockets deeper into Israeli territory? Or will they hold fire and prevent a major escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Inside Gaza, we are braced for what many think will be the bloodiest phase of what has already been a catastrophically bloody war. 8,000 Palestinians have already died, 1,400 Israelis, and the ground phase of the war is thought by most analysts to be the deadliest one. Once the Israeli army moves from the countryside outside Gaza City into the city itself and is met by Hamas fighters on their home turf, emerging from secret exit points from their tunnel network. The war is going to get very bloody indeed for Palestinian civilians, also for Hamas, and also for Israeli soldiers. Quite what Gaza will look like at the end of it is unclear. We're at the edge of a precipice and we don't know exactly where we, where Gaza are going to land.

Patrick, thank you.

Thank you.

The Times reports that the United States believes that Israel was responsible for the communications loss in Gaza and that Washington had pressed Israeli leaders to restore the service. On Sunday, President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone and urged him to conduct operations, quote, in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law. Also on Sunday, as desperation in Gaza spread, thousands of people broke into UN food warehouses and took wheat flour and other basic survival items. More aid came into Gaza from Egypt on Sunday in all 33 trucks, but aid groups said it was not nearly enough. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Friday, the man suspected of killing 18 people and injuring 13 others at a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine, was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The discovery of the perpetrator of Wednesday's mass shooting ended a sweeping manhunt that had forced thousands of residents throughout the region to remain in their homes. Meanwhile, questions continued to build over whether more could have been done to prevent the gunmen who officials said had paranoid beliefs from owning a gun. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chong, Sidney Harper, and Rochelle Bonja with help from Ricky Nowitzki.

It was edited by Patricia Willens and Lisa Chau, contains original music by Alicia Butetube and Marion Lasano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Runberg and Ben Landswork of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernousy, and we'll see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow.