Israel’s strikes bring the highest single-day death toll of the war, Gazan officials say. (2024)

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Here’s the latest on the war.

The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, called for a humanitarian cease-fire in an address to the U.N. Security Council, saying that it was important to recognize that the attacks by Hamas “did not happen in a vacuum” and that Palestinians had been subjected to 56 years of “suffocating occupation.”

“The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas,” he said. “And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

His comments prompted fierce backlash from Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, who called on Mr. Guterres to resign in a post on social media. “It’s truly sad that the head of an organization that arose after the Holocaust holds such horrible views,” he wrote.

The civilian toll in Gaza — where a slow trickle of aid trucks have done little to stem a spiraling humanitarian crisis — was underscored by President Emmanuel Macron of France during a visit to Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said his country stood with the Israelis. The fight against terrorism “must be merciless,” Mr. Macron said, “but not without rules.”

John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said the Biden administration did not support a cease-fire because it would only benefit Hamas, and he acknowledged that civilian casualties were all but inevitable as Israel tries to push Hamas out of Gaza.

“It is ugly and it’s going to be messy, and innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward,” he said.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said more than 5,700 people, nearly half of them children, had been killed since Israel began its response to the Oct. 7 attack, a figure that cannot be independently verified.

Here is what else to know:

• One of the two Hamas hostages released on Monday, Yocheved Lifsh*tz, 85, told reporters in Tel Aviv that she had “gone through hell.” The other released hostage was identified by Israel as Nurit Cooper, 79. Last week, Hamas set free an Israeli-American mother and her daughter, but it and other groups are believed to still be holding about 220 people captured during the Oct. 7 raid.

• Six hospitals across the Gaza Strip have had to shut down because they are out of fuel, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. While some aid convoys have made it into Gaza, humanitarian groups have called for fuel to be added to the shipments of food, water and medicine being sent in. But Israel has balked at deliveries of fuel because it says Hamas could use it for military purposes.

• Israeli military officials say they are well prepared for a ground assault in Gaza, but it remains unclear when and if such an invasion will occur. American officials have said Israel’s military is not yet ready with a plan for a successful invasion, and have also urged Israel to give more time for hostage negotiations and aid deliveries.

• The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, told the Security Council that the White House supported humanitarian pauses to allow aid to reach Gaza and civilians to evacuate. He also urged council members to use their influence to prevent Iran from spreading the war to additional fronts in the region, given its support of Hamas, Hezbollah and other militia groups. At least 33 Americans were among the victims of the Oct. 7 attacks, he said.

Calls for a cease-fire dominate a fiery Security Council session.

But he also said that the attack on Israel had not happened “in a vacuum” and noted that Palestinians had suffered more than five decades of occupation and oppression by Israel, comments that drew sharp criticism from Israeli officials.

Mr. Guterres told the Council: “The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

After those comments, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, called for Mr. Guterres to resign, saying in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his remarks were “unfathomable.” And the country’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, forcibly pushed back on the notion of a cease-fire and canceled an afternoon meeting with the secretary general.

There are “not two sides at this moment,” Mr. Cohen said to reporters outside the Council chamber. “There is only one side to support.” He said he had canceled his meeting with Mr. Guterres because “we need a clear and loud voice in regards to what happened. We are here to say ‘never again.’”

Mr. Cohen earlier began his address to the Security Council by holding up a collage of Israeli children killed by Hamas on Oct. 7. “I have to remember and never let you forget,” he said, calling the attacks “a wake-up call for the entire free world, a wake-up call against extremism and terror” and framing Israel’s battle with Hamas as a war of “the free world” against terrorism.

However, at the Council meeting, there were many calls to protect Palestinian civilians and provide them with humanitarian aid. The open-debate format of the Council allowed nonmember states to participate, and representatives of more than 50 countries spoke, many at the ministerial level.

Even representatives of some of Israel’s staunchest allies, including the United States, held that, while Israel had the right to defend itself, the way in which it did so must remain within the bounds of international law and with regard to the safety of noncombatants.

“It means Israel must take all possible precautions to avoid harm to civilians,” said the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken. “It means food, water, medicine, and other essential humanitarian assistance must be able to flow into Gaza and to the people who need them. It means civilians must be able to get out of harm’s way. It means humanitarian pauses must be considered for these purposes.”

Arab foreign ministers took a united stand with their Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Maliki, saying outside of the Security Council chamber that their top objective was an immediate cease-fire and getting aid to flow, at scale, into Gaza. They warned that if the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were not addressed and resolved, it would feed more extremism that could risk engulfing the entire region.

The U.N. ambassador from Iran, which has close ties to Hamas and provides it with military and financial support, accused Israel of “apartheid policies” against Palestinians. The official, Saeid Iravani, called Israel’s strikes in Gaza a “brutal massacre.”

The foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, which border Israel, delivered angry statements accusing the Security Council and Israeli allies of applying double standards and sending a message to the world’s two billion Muslims that their lives are valued less.

“Enough with the war, enough with the despair,” said Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, “enough with the oppression, enough with the killing, enough with the violence and enough with the double standards of international law.”

White House officials say a cease-fire would only benefit Hamas.

“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel has the tools and the capabilities that they need to defend themselves,” Mr. Kirby said. “We’re going to continue to try to get that humanitarian assistance in, and we’re going to continue to try to get hostages and people out of Gaza appropriately.”

Mr. Kirby added, “A cease-fire, right now, really only benefits Hamas.”

“It is ugly and it’s going to be messy, and innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward,” he said. The United States, he added, had not discussed any red lines with Israel.

U.S. and Israeli officials have consistently rejected calls for a cease-fire, insisting that Israel must be given time to eradicate Hamas. But the calls for an end to the fighting are growing louder.

On Tuesday, the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, called for a humanitarian cease-fire in an address to the U.N. Security Council. Mr. Guterres said it was important to recognize that the attacks by Hamas “did not happen in a vacuum” and that Palestinians had been subjected to 56 years of “suffocating occupation.”

“The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas,” he said. “And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

In recent weeks, President Biden has faced pressure from members of his own party in Congress, as well as progressive Jewish groups, who staged a protest against the war on Capitol Hill.

The war erupted after Hamas launched attacks inside Israel’s borders on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said more than 5,700 people, nearly half of them children, had been killed since Israel began its response to the attack. The figure cannot be independently verified.

Israel has agreed under pressure to cease-fires in past conflicts with Gaza, including in 2012 after Israel had similarly threatened an invasion and deployed ground forces on the territory’s border. Unlike then, however, Israeli leaders have in this case set Hamas’s total destruction as a goal, making it difficult to back down with limited results.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told the Security Council that humanitarian pauses “must be considered” to allow food, water and other necessities to reach Gaza and for civilians to get out of harm’s way.

“There is no hierarchy when it comes to protecting a civilian’s life,” he said. “Civilians are civilians.”

Though Mr. Blinken did not specify their length, those pauses would presumably involve a very brief halt in combat well short of a typical cease-fire, which can last for days, weeks or indefinitely.

“Israel has to do everything it can to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Mr. Blinken said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “Freezing things in place where they are now would allow Hamas to remain where it is and to repeat what it’s done sometime in the future. No country could accept that.”

The U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, has warned that the region is running low on fuel, which would particularly affect hospitals that are operating generators. Mr. Kirby said that the United States would continue to work to get fuel into Gaza, but added that Israel had a legitimate concern that Hamas could abscond with it and use it for military purposes.

Mr. Biden conceded on Tuesday that it was not reaching civilians fast enough.

‘The Headlines’ podcast focuses on a key border crossing.

After an outcry, the leadership of a writers’ union tries to explain its silence on the Hamas attack.

The guild’s letter acknowledged that it had publicly commented on other situations “which could be characterized as beyond our scope,” but that it had not made any statement following, for instance, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It can be an imprecise science for a labor union to pick and choose where it weighs in on both domestic and world affairs,” said the letter, which was signed by the president, Meredith Stiehm; the vice president, Michele Mulroney; and Betsy Thomas, the secretary-treasurer.

Still, they added, “We understand this has caused tremendous pain and for that we are truly sorry.”

(The west and east branches of the W.G.A. are affiliated unions with separate leadership that together represent more than 11,000 writers.)

On Oct. 15, a group of screenwriters sent an open letter to the guild asking why it had not publicly denounced the attack on Israel, noting the union had made public statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and the #MeToo reckoning. They also noted that other major Hollywood unions had issued statements condemning the attack.

The letter has now been signed by more than 300 writers, including Jerry Seinfeld, Eric Roth (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Amy Sherman-Palladino (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”). Some Jewish screenwriters had begun to question whether they should remain part of an organization that they felt did not support them.

Ms. Stiehm’s initial reply to the open letter was an email to inquiring members saying that the lack of response was because “the board’s viewpoints are varied, and we found consensus out of reach.”

The letter on Tuesday, which said the guild’s leadership was “horrified by the atrocities committed by Hamas,” was an attempt to stem the outrage.

“I really appreciate this statement,” said the screenwriter Howard Gordon (“24” and “Homeland”), who added in an interview that the silence from the guild had prompted responses from both Jewish and non-Jewish members ranging from rage to fear to the desire to resign from the organization.

“I hope this letter goes a long way to sort of calming some of it down,” said Mr. Gordon, who signed the open letter to the guild. “Hopefully something constructive comes out of this, which is an acknowledgment of how we combat and confront and talk about antisemitism.”

For Dan Gordon, however, the apology came too late. Mr. Gordon, 76, sent a letter Tuesday morning resigning his membership in the organization, calling its silence “appalling.”

“It is corrosive to me as a writer and repugnant to every fiber of my being as a person of conscience,” wrote Mr. Gordon, who has no relation to Howard Gordon and is best known for “The Hurricane” and “Wyatt Earp.” “I am resigning my membership not because I wish to work on nonunion projects, nor cross any picket line, but because I no longer wish to be a fellow traveler with those who hide behind the fetid veil of a morally bankrupt wokeism and stand silent in the face of unadulterated evil.”

Mr. Gordon’s latest film, “Irena’s Vow” — about a young Polish-Catholic woman during World War II who hid 12 Jews in the basem*nt of a German officer’s house without his knowledge for almost a year — debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

He will change his guild membership status to “financial core,” according to his letter. Under that designation, he will still receive the contract benefits earned by the guild but he will no longer be able to vote or attend any guild meetings. The designation is irreversible and viewed by the guild as an act of disloyalty. The W.G.A. maintains an online list of members who have chosen this status, with a reminder that “Fi-Core is forever.”

Mr. Gordon called Tuesday’s letter from the guild “pusillanimous” and faulted it for not calling for a release of the hostages.

“I don’t retract anything I said,” he added in an interview. “If one cannot condemn, clearly, and without reservation, what Hamas perpetrated, one’s moral compass is absent, not broken.”

Families of hostages rally to put pressure on the U.N.

“We’re not satisfied knowing that it’s been 17 days and nothing seems to be moving,” said Orna Neutra, whose son, Omer Neutra, is being held in Gaza. “This is a world crisis, it’s not just our personal crisis. There were at least 33 citizens of different countries in the world. Where are they? Everyone needs to speak up.”

Ronen Neutra, Omer’s father, said his family had no idea where Omer was or what condition he might be in. Omer was serving as a soldier in the Israeli military on the border with Gaza when he was abducted, but he grew up in New York.

“We are calling all the international world countries to unite and work together in helping those innocent people, the innocent families, and bring them back,” Mr. Neutra said.

Alana Zeitchik, whose six family members were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, the site of one of Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attacks, said her goal was to share her family’s story and keep the spotlight on the missing.

Ms. Zeitchik’s cousin Sharon Cunio; Sharon’s husband, David Cunio; and their 3-year-old twin daughters, Emma and Julia, were believed to have been abducted, as was Ms. Zeitchik’s cousin Danielle Alony and her 5-year-old daughter, Amelia.

“The world is very divided, but I’m not an expert on that,” Ms. Zeitchik said. “I’m an expert on loving my family. Everyone should understand what that feels like, to love your family so much. And I want our families home.”

Tensions ran high during the rally when the Israeli foreign affairs minister, Eli Cohen, went to speak after meeting with the U.N. Security Council. As Mr. Cohen began to address the crowd, a faction repeatedly yelled “Disgrace!” and shouted over him as he called for unity. “Where were you?” one man shouted. Their anger reflected the sense of betrayal many Israelis felt toward their own government following Oct. 7.

Another remark that had riled the crowd was made earlier in the day by the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, who, while condemning Hamas for the attacks, said that the assault against Israel “did not happen in a vacuum” and that Palestinians had been subjected to “suffocating occupation.”

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., criticized Mr. Guterres at the rally, saying that Mr. Guterres and the U.N. had lost “all morality and impartiality.”

“Shame on the U.N.,” Mr. Erdan said.

Mr. Neutra said that his family had sat in on the Security Council meeting but that the families of hostages did not meet with Mr. Guterres as they had originally planned, after his “harsh remarks regarding the responsibility of Israel in this.”

This is not the first time the military has dropped leaflets to communicate with Gazans. The Israeli army has done so historically to warn Gazans of impending attacks on Hamas targets and did so multiple times last week, warning Gazans to move south.

Citing ‘urgency,’ the U.S. is asking Gulf allies to help root out Hamas’s financing.

“This moment should bring a profound sense of urgency,” Brian E. Nelson, under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the U.S. Treasury, told the group as part of his prepared remarks. He asked that member countries step up their information sharing with an eye toward joint or unilateral actions to cut off the stream of money to Hamas.

“Your insights and actions are vital to understanding and acting against the threat picture this group poses to the Gulf,” Mr. Nelson said.

The Saudi Arabian government could not immediately be reached for comment. Saudi Arabia is one of several Gulf States that did not condemn Hamas in the initial aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. The kingdom has also faulted Israel’s military response to the attacks, saying that it disproportionately harmed civilians.

Mr. Nelson helped broker Monday’s meeting in his capacity as co-chairman of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, a group that was convened by the United States and Saudi Arabia in 2017 in hopes of undermining money laundering and terrorist financing. All six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional alliance that was established in 1981, are members of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center.

In a text message, Steven T. Mnuchin, the former Treasury secretary who helped set up the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, praised its latest initiative. The center was built “to cut off funding to terrorist networks,” Mr. Mnuchin wrote.

“I am glad to see that the T.F.T.C. member countries are meeting to consider additional sanctions to stop the flow of funds to Hamas,” he added. Mr. Mnuchin called the effort “exactly the kind of mission that T.F.T.C. was created to pursue.”

In recent days, the Treasury has taken steps to crack down on Hamas’s financial supporters — a group that the Treasury officials said includes both charitable organizations and direct funders. Those funders, the officials added, operate through cash, cryptocurrencies and the financial system.

On Oct. 18, the Treasury imposed sanctions on 10 players it identified as Hamas group members, operatives or financial facilitators around the Middle East and North Africa. Two days later, the department’s financial crimes enforcement arm alerted financial institutions to a series of red flags that it believed might indicate Hamas funding activity.

Among other directives, it asked institutions to scrutinize activity in virtual currencies in jurisdictions where Hamas has been known to operate; transactions with shell companies that have hubs in Iran, or terrorist groups backed by Iran; and funding to a nonprofit organization from an unknown source that was quickly wired to a second nonprofit group.

Mr. Nelson is now in Qatar, having parallel discussions with terrorism financing authorities there, a Treasury official said.

Vivian Nereim contributed reporting from Riyadh.

“The situation in the Gaza Strip is a growing stain on our collective conscience,” Khodr added.

The summary did not mention in any detail their discussion on earlier U.S. efforts at getting Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. But it did say the two leaders “affirmed the importance of working toward a sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians as soon as the crisis subsides, building on the work that was already underway between Saudi Arabia and the United States over recent months.”

Qatar has been involved in the current hostage negotiations, and has previously acted as a go-between for U.S. and other western countries seeking to free citizens held by Hamas.

Rachel Polin, whose son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, is a Hamas hostage, talked about the devastating impact of the war, saying, “In the competition of pain, there is never a winner.”

At the rally near U.N. headquarters in New York, demonstrators laid more than 200 pairs of shoes to represent the hostages kidnapped from Israel.

In southern Gaza, 10,000 more people have sought shelter in Rafah and Khan Younis in the past 24 hours, UNRWA added. The most crowded shelter, it said, is accommodating 12 times more people than it was designed for.

A lack of fuel has Gaza hospitals in crisis, including the region’s largest facility.

Al Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, is based in northern Gaza, where Israel has ordered everyone, including hospital personnel and patients, to evacuate amid continued airstrikes. Israel has also insisted that aid not be allowed to reach northern Gaza, though Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al Shifa, said that the hospital had received a small amount of medicine from the W.H.O. on Tuesday.

Dr. Abu Salmiya said on Tuesday night that the hospital had about 800 patients, and its three generators would stop functioning within 24 or 48 hours. He compared the potential deaths of patients dependent on oxygen or dialysis machines to premeditated murder.

Throughout Gaza, civilians have flocked to hospitals and schools, believing they will be safer from airstrikes there than in residential buildings. Tens of thousands of people have sheltered around Al Shifa, according to Dr. Abu Salmiya.

The W.H.O. said it had been unable to deliver supplies to northern Gaza because of a lack of “security guarantees” and called for an immediate cease-fire to transport aid. It said that the facilities waiting for aid include Al Shifa.

The Indonesian Hospital, north of Gaza City, had partially shut down, as had Gaza’s only cancer hospital, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, endangering about 2,000 patients, the agency said.

Dr. Abu Salmiya said that airstrikes had been hitting northern Gaza virtually nonstop since Monday, causing third- and fourth-degree burn injuries to more than 150 wounded people who were streaming into the hospital from several different areas of Gaza City. About 60 patients with serious burns could die at any time, he said, adding that he had seen one child beheaded in the bombardment.

“This is not a disaster — this is greater than a disaster,” he said. “Tragedy.”

A spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, Ashraf Al-Qudra, said that hundreds of people who were wounded by Israeli airstrikes have been lying on the ground without being treated because the hospitals are short of medics and medical supplies.

The W.H.O. said it had documented 72 attacks on health care facilities in Gaza as of Monday, resulting in 16 deaths and 30 injuries of medical workers during their shifts. The attacks affected 34 health facilities, including 19 hospitals, it said.

None of the trucks carried fuel, which the United Nations and aid groups have said is vital to keep hospitals, bakeries and other civilian infrastructure running in Gaza.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, criticized Secretary General António Guterres at the rally, accusing Guterres -- who earlier had said that the attacks by Hamas “didn’t happen in a vacuum” -- of having lost “all morality and impartiality.” Erdan added, “Shame on the U.N.”

About 20 children are hostages in Gaza. Families are pleading for their release.

According to the Israeli military, about 20 hostages under the age of 18 are being held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, among the roughly 220 people Israel believes were taken prisoner. Some are as young as 6 months old.

One of those younger hostages, 17-year-old Natalie Raanan, was among the four people released by Hamas in recent days. She was released with her mother, and Hamas freed two older women on Monday for “humanitarian and health” reasons, leaving the parents of other young hostages with little information about their fates.

Ms. Yaacov is part of a group of parents and Nobel laureates led by Aaron Ciechanover, a biologist, who are campaigning for the immediate release of all the hostages, starting with the children. In a letter addressed to the United Nations this week, the group wrote: “It is our sacred duty to protect the innocent and shield the vulnerable.”

Some families of hostages planned to demonstrate outside U.N. headquarters in New York on Tuesday. Others have protested in front of Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv in an effort to keep the issue in the public eye.

“There is nothing that is more important than releasing the hostages,” said Avihai Brodutch, a resident of Kfar Azza whose wife and three children are being held captive. He has been demonstrating in Tel Aviv, saying the Israeli government should secure the safe return of as many hostages as possible.

The families and Nobel laureates want all civilian hostages released, but they feel that time is particularly of the essence for the children.

For a child in captivity, Dr. Ciechanover said, “Every moment is an endless trauma that will affect them for their whole lives.”

Activists and families have emphasized the importance of a swift release for other vulnerable hostages, such as those with special medical needs.

Nine-year-old Ohad Munder Zachri and Ohad’s mother, Keren Munder, are being held in Gaza. Ohad’s aunt, Merav Raviv, said she keeps calm by imagining Ms. Munder, who worked as a special-needs teacher in Israel, keeping the children active with lessons and games.

For Ms. Yaacov, amid the uncertainty, the only way to cope as a mother is “to hope that I’ve given them enough tools to overcome this situation.”

See how the death toll in Gaza is rising.

The reported death toll for 2023 is more than double that of 2014, when more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed in a 50-day war. Before this year, 2014 had been the deadliest year in the conflict in at least a decade.

On Tuesday, the Gazan Health Ministry reported that at least 704 people had been killed in the past day, as Israel said it had launched hundreds of airstrikes. That is the highest single-day death toll the ministry has reported during the war.

Violence is also surging in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Health Ministry reported that 95 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces or settlers since Oct. 7. That is more than in any similar period in the West Bank in at least the past 15 years.

An 85-year-old Israeli held hostage in Gaza for 17 days says she ‘went through hell.’

“I went through hell,” Ms. Lifsh*tz told reporters the day after her release, sitting in a wheelchair at a hospital in Tel Aviv amid a thicket of microphones.

She was freed along with Nurit Cooper, 79, on Monday and transferred from Hamas custody to Israeli forces via the International Committee for the Red Cross and Egypt. Both of their husbands are still being held hostage in Gaza.

Her account of the tunnels offered a glimpse of the difficulties facing Israel as it weighs whether and how to launch a ground invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas, which led the devastating Oct. 7 attacks against Israel.

Hamas has built a labyrinth of underground passages in Gaza for its fighters, military analysts said, complicating both Israel’s anticipated ground operation and any attempt to rescue the hostages.

Ms. Lifsh*tz’s voice at times faltered as she recalled her abduction and the horrors suffered by her neighbors when Hamas attacked her town of Kibbutz Nir Oz. Her daughter Sharone, who was crouched at her side on Tuesday, occasionally translated for foreign journalists.

“Many people stormed our homes, they beat people, some of them they abducted, like me,” Ms. Lifsh*tz said. “It made no difference, they abducted the elderly and the young.”

“In my memory, I have these images all the time,” she added later.

She said her kidnappers hauled her onto a motorcycle and beat her painfully in the ribs, making it hard for her to breathe, and also took away her watch. They drove off through the fields surrounding Nir Oz.

They took her through the network of tunnels until they reached a large hall where about 25 people were, she said. After about two to three hours, they separated five people from her kibbutz into their own room, where they were overseen by guards and a medic, she said.

Ms. Lifsh*tz said that she and others were relatively well taken care of, given medicine and the same food as their captors. Fearing disease, her captors worked to sanitize the area, she said, and doctors would visit sporadically to check on them. “They treated us gently and fulfilled all of our needs,” she said.

Hamas has released four hostages in the few days, including Judith and Natalie Raanan, American-Israeli citizens who were freed last week. Ms. Lifsh*tz is the first released hostage to speak publicly about her ordeal.

Ms. Lifsh*tz’s husband, Oded — an Israeli journalist and peace activist — remains in Hamas captivity, according to Israeli authorities.

The Hamas-led attacks against Israel’s border communities shocked and traumatized the country. Israel had repeatedly fought short battles with Palestinian militants in Gaza in recent years, but nothing approaching the scale and brutality of the assault.

Ms. Lifsh*tz at times criticized the Israeli military, saying that it and the Shin Bet domestic security service had ignored warning signs of the threat to towns near Gaza. The Israeli military’s chief of staff acknowledged after the attacks that the military had failed to live up to its mission to protect Israel’s citizens.

Weeks before the assault, Palestinians had rioted and fired explosive balloons near the Gaza border fence, sparking fires in southern Israel, Ms. Lifsh*tz said.

The Israeli army “didn’t take this seriously,” she said.