daily newspaper of the year
SATURDAY
Johnson:
My Covid
decisions
saved lives
But mistakes were made, ex-PM will tell inquiry
Steven Swinford Political Editor
Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor
Oliver Wright Policy Editor
Boris Johnson will admit next week
that he “unquestionably made mis-
takes” during the pandemic but insist
that the decisions he took ultimately
saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
In evidence to the Covid public
inquiry the former prime minister is
expected to issue an unreserved
apology and say that he and his
government were initially far too
complacent and vastly underestimated
the risks posed by coronavirus.
He will argue that he had a “basic
confidence that things would turn out
all right” on the “fallacious logic” that
health threats such as BSE and Sars had
not proved as catastrophic as feared.
However, he is expected to say that,
overall, the government succeeded in
its central aim of preventing the NHS
from being overwhelmed. He will insist
that all three lockdowns came at the
right time and in the process the gov-
ernment saved tens if not hundreds of
thousands of lives. He will also empha-
sise the success of the vaccine pro-
gramme, with UK breakthroughs sig-
nalling “the beginning of the end of the
pandemic”.
He will argue that while Britain’s
death toll was “shocking”, the country
had defied the gloomiest predictions
December 2 2023 | thetimes.co.uk | No 74269
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Esther Joe Wicks
‘I’m not lean
Rantzen and ripped
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and ended the pandemic well down the
global league table of excess mortality.
gift guide
Johnson’s appearance at the inquiry,
which he instigated more than two
Plus great
years ago, is a pivotal moment. He has
faced accusations of indecision and
stocking fillers
overseeing a toxic culture of infighting
and chaos in No 10. He is expected to
reject these, arguing that tensions WEEKEND
between departments were useful and
U-turns were flexible reactions to
changing circumstances.
His statement is set to barely
mention Dominic Cummings, one of
his most prominent critics. He will also
give his full support to Matt Hancock,
saying that as health secretary he did a
good job in difficult circumstances.
Despite his falling out with Rishi Sun-
ak, Johnson is expected to avoid criti-
cism of the prime minister and defend
the former chancellor’s Eat Out to Help
The Festive
Out scheme. Contradicting Sir Chris
Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, John-
Ick List
son will claim that scientific advisers
were consulted about the scheme and No mistletoe!
deemed it an acceptable risk. Whitty,
the chief medical officer, is said to have
described it as “eat out to help out the
No karaoke!
virus” and both he and Vallance, the
chief scientific adviser during the pan-
demic, insist they knew nothing about
the scheme before it was launched.
Johnson will claim that the Downing Family The King raised eyebrows by wearing a tie adorned with Greek
flags to Cop28 in Dubai after this week’s Elgin Marbles row. Charles
Street parties scandal did not have “any
ties? — whose father, Prince Philip, was born in Greece — said that the
Earth was heading for “dangerous, uncharted territory”.
y(7HB7E2*OTSNQN( |||+&!:'
44 2GM Saturday December 2 2023 | the times

World
We promise to be more careful
Israel
Richard Spencer Tel Aviv
The death toll in Israel’s renewed
bombing of the Gaza Strip reached
three figures in less than a day, Palestin-
ian officials said last night, despite Bid-
en administration claims to have won
promises that civilian losses would be
reduced.
Jets started pounding towns across
the territory within minutes of a dead-
line passing for the renewal of the
week-long ceasefire yesterday morning
and after rockets fired from Gaza had
already begun targeting Israel.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of
state, said he had won assurances from
the Israeli prime minister that his
forces’ renewed assault on Gaza would
not claim the same loss of civilian life as
the first seven weeks of the war.
Palestinian health officials say
almost 15,000 people died then, 6,000
of them children and 4,000 women.
Most were killed in the north of the
Gaza strip, the focus of the first part of
the war, but the Israel Defence Forces
are soon expected to turn their atten-
tion to the south, where the Hamas
leadership is thought to have fled.
About 2 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million
population are thought to be crammed
into its southern half, northern resi-
dents having heeded Israeli warnings to
flee their homes in advance of the on-
slaught. That will make targeting the
Hamas leadership and military
barracks, many underground, all the
harder without incurring heavy “collat-
eral damage”.
Blinken, after flying from Israel to the
United Arab Emirates for the opening
of the Cop28 summit, said: “The mas-
sive levels of civilian life and displace-
ment scale we saw in the north must
not be repeated in the south.”
Overnight, Israeli planes dropped
leaflets warning residents of the east-
ern half of Khan Yunis, the biggest
town in southern Gaza, to move away
for their own safety.
It also posted online a map it said
Gaza residents should study closely.
The map divided the territory into tiny
squares, each of which was numbered.
Residents of each square would be told
when their number was to be targeted,
so they could move away.
Blinken said this showed Israel had
taken his warnings seriously, but aid
officials challenged the Israeli plan. “I
think nowhere is safe in the Gaza Strip,”
Robert Mardini, director-general of the
International Committee of the Red
Cross, said. “Warnings and asking civil-
ians to evacuate is something that a
party to a conflict can do, of course, pro-
vided that civilians have an option.
Now after 50 days in the fighting, we
know that the civilians in the Gaza Strip
have run out of options.”
Gaza officials said 178 people had
been killed during the course of the day

Bibi must go, and 589 injured.

The extent to which America sup-
ports Israel’s offensive has become a big

families of the political issue, and one that threatens

President Biden’s standing in advance
of next year’s re-election campaign.

dead demand As his poll numbers have fallen, with

George Grylls Jerusalem
Among the protesters gathered
beneath the Knesset yesterday to
demand Binyamin Netanyahu’s
resignation was Eran Litman, who
described his final phone call with
his daughter on the morning of
October 7. “She was scared and
looking for somewhere to hide,”
Litman, a 59-year-old physicist, said
of Oriya Litman Ricardo, 22. Shortly
after their call she was killed fleeing
the Supernova music festival.
Netanyahu’s popularity has
nosedived since the attack by
Hamas as Israeli voters struggle to
forgive him for presiding over the
worst single loss of Jewish lives since
the Holocaust. The protests began
when Gadi Kedem, who lost six
relatives to Hamas, wrote an open
letter referencing Émile Zola’s
denunciation of antisemitism in
France during the Dreyfus affair.
Eran Litman’s daughter was killed as
she fled the Supernova music festival
They were given further impetus by
Yael Alon, 57, who called for
Netanyahu to resign after her
soldier son was killed fighting in the
kibbutzim. “He should have gone on
October 8,” she said.
Another protester was Martin
Goldberg, 59, a tour guide originally
from Hendon, northwest London.
He questioned whether soldiers had
failed to protect the left-leaning
residents of the southern kibbutzim.
“He didn’t offer his condolences to
[those] residents. Why? Because
they don’t vote for him,” he said.
younger and Muslim voters saying they
can no longer support him because of
his firm backing for Netanyahu, his
administration has issued ever harsher
warnings to Israel. Other world leaders
have also called for restraint, and in
particular for Israel to allow more
humanitarian aid into Gaza, which is
short of water, food and fuel.
Rishi Sunak, also attending the
Cop28 conference, held talks with
regional leaders including President
Herzog of Israel and Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar,
which has mediated the hostage nego-
tiations. Sunak said: “We’ve been con-
sistent that we want to see sustained
humanitarian pauses so that more aid
can get in to the people of Gaza but also
the hostages can come out.”
Netanyahu has shown no sign in
public responses that he intends to
change course, saying the “elimination”
of Hamas is his only goal.
Exchanges of fire also resumed on
Israel’s “northern front” with Hezb-
ollah in Lebanon, where an informal
truce had followed the Gaza ceasefire. Palestinians carrying an injured man after the Israelis bombed Khan Yunis, in the

How military chiefs underestimated Hamas threat Hope lost

Analysis
N
o nation is
militarily
invincible. The
United States
found this out in
Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Russia is discovering its
vulnerabilities in Ukraine
(Michael Evans writes).
Israel, however, has
proved again and again that
it has a deserved reputation
for military prowess.
In the Six-Day War of
1967, Israel defeated three
Arab armies, captured and
occupied the Golan Heights
from Syria, the West Bank
and East Jerusalem from
Jordan and the Gaza Strip
and Sinai Peninsula from
Egypt. Taken by surprise
when Egypt and Syria
launched a joint attack on
the Jewish holy day of Yom
Kippur in October 1973,
Israel fought them off.
Now Israel is facing an
enemy which is using
underground urban
fighting, hostage retention
and psychological warfare
to put pressure on an
opponent with far superior
technology and manpower.
The intelligence failure
prior to the Hamas attacks
on October 7 laid the
groundwork for what
looked like a hurried
operation to eliminate the
organisation by airstrikes,
artillery bombardment and
tank warfare.
The revelation that the
high command of the Israel
Defence Forces (IDF) had
received and dismissed a
detailed intelligence
analysis report that
outlined a year ago what
Hamas was planning to do,
according to The New York
Times, has underlined how
Tel Aviv underestimated
the enemy. “The
underground tunnel
infrastructure is more
complex than even the
Israelis had imagined,” a
former senior US defence
official told The Times.
“The degree of difficulty
of what they are up against
is enormous.”
Apart from the pressure
on Israel to temper its air
and land bombardments,
there are other reasons for
a change in tactics.
“They have succeeded in
compressing the Hamas
fighting force into a smaller
geographic area in the
south, which means that
Hamas can generate more
combat power and inflict
more casualties on the
[Israel Defence Forces],”
the former defence official
said. “Until now, the Israelis
have not suffered more KIA
[killed in action], around 70
so far.
“But their stocks of
munition are running down
and they need reserves for a
potential conflict on the
northern front [with
Hezbollah in southern
Lebanon] as well.
“Understandably, Israelis
are enraged over the
butchery and barbarism
of the Hamas attacks on
October 7 but there are no
easy answers when it comes
to destroying Hamas.”
for youngest
and oldest
hostages
Richard Spencer
The oldest hostage being held in Gaza
has died, residents of his kibbutz said, as
Hamas claimed it had offered to return
the body of the youngest.
The Nir Oz kibbutz released a
statement mourning the death of Arye
Zalmanovich, 86, one of its founders in
1955. He had managed to send a text to
one of his sons saying that it was under
attack before he was abducted.
The statement hailed him as “a man
the times | Saturday December 2 2023
this time, Israelis tell America
southern Gaza Strip. Israel resumed its attacks yesterday at the end of a week-long pause to allow hostages to be released
of the earth, engaged in agriculture and
farming”, but also as “a man of books,
who had extensive knowledge in the
fields of history and the land of Israel”.
The kibbutz did not say how his
death was verified, but added that other
members had also been murdered in
captivity. It named them as Maya
Goren, 56, a teacher at the kibbutz kin-
dergarten, and Ronen Engel, 54, a
photographer. The deaths were con-
firmed by the IDF.
Goren’s husband, Avner, 56, was
killed on the day of the attack.
One of their sons paid tribute
to her, adding: “I cannot
stop thinking about you.”
The fate of the re-
maining hostages was
central to the collapse
of the ceasefire yester-
day morning, according
to reports emerging
Arye Zalmanovich, 86, was
hailed as “a man of books”
2GM
from the negotiators in Qatar. Israel
had demanded at least ten women or
children be freed every day in return for
the ceasefire. Yesterday Hamas pre-
sented a list of only seven names, along
with an offer to return the bodies of
three more hostages, which Israel
rejected.
A later Hamas statement identified
the three bodies being offered as those
of Shiri Bibas, 32, and her two sons
Ariel, 4, and Kfir, ten months. Kfir was
the youngest hostage taken on October
7, and his fate had been the sub-
ject of emotional appeals.
On Thursday night
Hamas released a video
of the reaction of the
boys’ captive father,
Yarden Bibas, to being
informed of his
family’s death, alle-
gedly in an Israeli strike.
Israel denounced the
video as a form of “psycho-
logical terror”.
IDF troops shot Jewish have-a-go hero
George Grylls
Israeli soldiers killed a Jewish man
confronting Hamas gunmen during
a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, videos
suggest.
Yuval Doron Kastelman, 38, an
attorney, was commuting to work on
Thursday morning when he saw the
attack unfold at a bus stop.
Three Israelis waiting for the bus, in-
cluding a pregnant schoolteacher, were
killed in the rampage, which ended
when two off-duty Israeli soldiers, one
of whom was returning to Gaza after a
period of leave, shot the attackers dead.
However, the footage suggests they
also killed Kastelman by mistake after
ignoring his pleas for them to hold fire.
The lawyer jumped out of his car and
used his licensed handgun to shoot at
the two militants after they randomly
Pope’s Vatican rivals face
losing lavish apartments
Page 47
I thought they would
give us another day’s
peace, I was wrong
Amal Helles Khan Yunis
The residents of Gaza feared the end of
the ceasefire was coming, but thought
they had at least one day left. It was not
to be. On Thursday, hopes were high
that a week of peaceful nights would be
extended. The explosions at seven the
next morning showed those hopes had
been dashed.
“We woke up to the sound of artillery,
shelling and aircraft in the air,” said
Manar Mohammed, 29, from Abassan,
a town east of Khan Yunis, in the south
of the Gaza Strip. It was one of the first
targets of the renewed bombing. “We
were very afraid and fled to the shelters
set up in the schools,” she added.
Israel had already dropped leaflets
warning residents of the next rough
target for attack, as it has done through-
out the war. The reason that almost two
million people are crammed into
southern Gaza is that most of the popu-
lation in the north obeyed Israel’s
instructions to leave. Now they will
have to move again. This time, the leaf-
lets urged residents of the east side of
Khan Yunis to move to Rafah, on the
Egyptian border.
Crowds began to fill the streets.
Many, like Mohammed and her family,
headed for one of the United Nations-
run schools that have become the big-
gest centres for the displaced. “There is
a lot of fear and terror,” she said. “We
were afraid that we would be bombed
on the way.”
Other residents had prepared them-
selves to be homeless again. Taha Abu
Tawfiq, 51, followed the news all night,
hour by hour, minute by minute, he
said, until the talks collapsed. They
packed their bags and left. Finding no
way to get a car or bus into the centre of
town, they walked four miles, listening
to the sounds of missiles overhead and
bombs landing. “People shook as they
targeted passers-by during rush-hour.
He found himself pleading for his
life after the off-duty soldiers
apparently mistook him for another
Hamas gunman.
In one video Kastelman is seen
kneeling in the road, holding up his
hands to show he is no longer armed
and begging the soldiers not to shoot.
The soldiers advance towards him and
open fire from close range, hitting him
in the stomach. The lawyer collapses to
the floor with blood soaking his T-shirt.
Another video shows another
civilian running up to the gunmen and
attacking them before realising he is
also being targeted by the soldiers and
taking off his coat in an effort to show
he is unarmed. It is unclear whether he
was injured as well.
Israelis have been encouraged to
carry guns since October 7 and minis-
45
Moment of truth for the
Walter Mitty senator
Page 48
ran,” he said. “Women, children, the
elderly.”
Many Gaza residents, particularly
those who have already fled from Gaza
City and other towns in the north, be-
lieve it is futile to try to follow the Israeli
instructions to move again.
Abduhakim Abu Daqan, 33, who fled
from Gaza City earlier in the war, found
himself with his wife and two young
children in the compound of Khan
Yunis’s Nasser Hospital when an Israeli
airstrike hit nearby. Conditions were
already poor, with thousands of people
sleeping on the ground and infections
spreading among the children.
Then the bombs struck. “We saw
many injuries, elderly people, children,
and there were also martyrs,” he said.
He said that at least he had not lost
sight of his children, Elen, three, and
Majid, two. “I was afraid I would lose
them if we had to flee again,” he said. “Is
it possible that we will be targeted here?
This is our biggest fear. There are no
safe corridors and there is no protection
for unarmed civilians like us.”
The Israeli side, as well as dropping
leaflets, have also instituted an unprec-
edented safety-by-numbers guide to
their future plans. A map posted online,
which residents are supposed to study,
divides the strip up into tiny boxes, each
numbered, with the Israel Defence
Forces promising to notify residents if
their number was to be struck.
Gazans reacted with scepticism
about the whole idea of continually
trying to find new “safe areas” in which
to hide. In particular, they fear ending
up on the Egyptian border, and then
forced into exile in Egypt itself, never to
return.
“I won’t leave Khan Yunis even if
they force us,” Manar Mohammed
said. “If they want to kill us, they will kill
us here in Khan Yunis. I will not go
anywhere.”
ters have promised to buy 10,000
assault rifles to distribute throughout
the country.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli
prime minister, vowed to hasten the
distribution of guns to civilians after
the attack. “The quick reaction of two
fighters and a civilian who eliminated
the terrorists prevented an even more
serious attack. I salute them,” he said on
Twitter/X. “The government will con-
tinue expanding the distribution of
weapons to citizens. This is a measure
that proves itself time and time again in
the war against murderous terrorism.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the security minis-
ter, visited the bus stop hours after the
shootings to encourage armed civilians
to police themselves. “I am calling on
the citizens of Israel: policemen aren’t
everywhere, therefore where citizens
have weapons it can save lives,” he said.