Gaza Residents Struggle To Get Out, Biden Pushes For More Aid, Polish Elections

Israel's deadline for civilians to leave Northern Gaza has passed.

And a woman named Nancy says she is still there in Gaza City with a baby and no way to get out. What happens to people who remain behind?

TOMMY MARTINEZ That's Steve Inskeep, and this is up first from NPR News.

We have the capacity to do this and we have an obligation to.

But not the ability to do so as long as the House is paralyzed while it has no speaker. So what's the way forward for the U.S and its allies?

Also, exit polls suggest Poland's opposition parties won enough votes to form a governing coalition. How would the winners change course after eight years of nationalist rule? Stay with us, we've got the news you need to start your day.

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With the NPR Plus bundle, learn more at plus.npr..org. We have a glimpse today of life for civilians in what Israel's defense minister has called a complete siege of Gaza.

Israel is responding to an attack out of Gaza by Hamas, which killed 1,300 people. The bombardment by air and sea has killed more than 2,700 Palestinians. And for those who survive, food and water are running out as Israel has shut off the supply of both.

NPR's Eya Betraoui has been talking with people in Gaza. Welcome back to the program.

Hi.

What are you hearing?

It has been sheer terror and a struggle to survive. Hundreds of thousands of people in northern Gaza left their home over the weekend following Israeli evacuation notices. They dropped leaflets from the sky telling people to leave their homes. And so many people were walking by foot, children were walking for miles heading south.

I'm just thinking through everything you've told me, you're talking about the hardship. Imposed by an evacuation order. In theory, the evacuation order is to protect civilians so that Israel's military can do what it wants without killing civilians. But people are saying they're being harmed by that, being harmed by the blockade. So where does the United States fit into all this?

Well, we have been hearing for the past two days that there are efforts for Gaza's border crossing with Egypt to open. And that would allow some 500 to 600 Americans, Palestinian Americans and other foreigners to leave. But Egypt is insisting if that border crossing opens, aid has to get in from Egypt's side. But we've just heard this morning from Israel's prime minister's office saying no deal for a ceasefire in the south of Gaza has been reached. So no foreigners coming out and no aid going in. Now, Egypt has a huge convoy of aid trucks waiting there at the border, ready to bring in fuel, food, ambulances, surgical kits, medications and chlorine tablets for water.

And Israel, of course, is by no means done with its operation. What is it planning next?

Well, we know there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists at the border, and there's talk of an imminent ground invasion into Gaza. And after all of what has unfolded, Israel says it is still only the beginning of its response to the Hamas attacks. The U.S has made clear it stands by Israel. It is not calling for calm or urging restraint at this time.

Aya. Thanks so much, thank you. That's Sen. Persea-Petraoui in Jerusalem.

Money to help both Israel and Ukraine to defend themselves. President Biden said U.s assistance in both cases is necessary, in an interview that aired on 60 Minutes last night.

We're the United States of America, for God's sake, the most powerful nation in the history, not in the world, in the history of the world, the history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.

But it's not at all clear that this aid package can pass the House of Representatives.

NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith is following this Tam. Good morning, good morning. What is the White House asking for?

Well, at this point, we don't know precisely how much the White House will tell Congress they need. But back in August, they asked for $24 billion to get Ukraine through the end of this calendar year, and that hasn't come through yet. Now we expect that number to increase and, of course, for the administration to add on military assistance to Israel. We know that officials from the administration were up on Capitol Hill laying the groundwork for this request.

The runway is not forever here. In terms of not only operations on the ground in Israel and Ukraine, but our ability to continue to provide security assistance to both partners.

The president and allies in Congress from both sides of the aisle are still looking for ways to get this aid passed, and they aren't giving up.

But if the runway is not forever, to use John Kirby's phrase, what are the stakes if the president cannot get the United States to keep the commitments he's made?

Well, every foreign policy expert I spoke with in the past couple of weeks, and it's been a bunch of them said that both America's allies and adversaries are watching closely. I asked Leon Panetta, who served in key roles in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, whether President Biden's reputation was on the line.

It's not just the credibility of Joe Biden, it's the credibility of the United States. And the last thing that this country needs to do in a dangerous world is send our adversaries a message of weakness.

The argument is that Russia and China and Iran are all watching the U.

Okay, well, I'd like to know what the public has to say about all of this and if they have any sway. What do Americans think right now about aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel?

Well, a new PBS Newshour NPR Marist poll indicates that a majority of Americans want the U.

NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Thanks so much for your insights. You're welcome now in this country. Police have linked the war between Israel and Hamas to what they call a hate crime. In Illinois, according to police, outside of Chicago, a 71-year-old man stabbed and killed a 6-year-old boy.

Yeah, it seems so. Exit polling shows the ruling Law and Justice Party, which has steadily chipped away at democratic institutions, is suffering a dramatic upset during its rule. The party has had a frosty relationship with its fellow European Union members. That may now change.

NPR's Rob Schmitz is in Poland's capital, Warsaw. Hey there Rob, Morning Steve. What are the results so far?

Well, exit polls are showing that, while the ruling Law and Justice party received the highest percentage of the vote at around 36 percent. That is not enough for them to form a government. And that's because the only other party that would form a coalition with Law and Justice did not get enough votes. So, the left-center Civic Coalition, headed by former EU Council president and former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is poised to form a coalition government with two other parties. And last night, Tusk declared victory.

We won democracy, we won freedom.

And Steve, he's saying here, nobody can cheat us anymore. We have won back our democracy, we've won freedom, and we've won back our beloved Poland.

I could hear the word democracy, even in the Polish, there, it's pretty clear. So how has Law and Justice, the party that got a lot of votes but seems to have lost, responded?

Well, last night, the party head Jaroslaw Kaczynski congratulated his party for garnering the most votes. But he did acknowledge that his party would have a difficult time forming a government if the exit polls are correct.

How are people responding otherwise?

Shock and jubilation, Steve. Political scientists I've spoken to here are all surprised by this result. They were not expecting this. Here's political analyst, Adam Traczyk.

This is a huge win for the Polish democracy and for the Polish society as well. I mean, we are looking at the turnout of 73, which is a record-breaking figure, 10 percentage points higher than during the first free election of 1989. So this is a tremendous win for the whole country and for its citizens.

And Steve? I want to underline something that he said here. Voter turnout yesterday was 73. No election in Polish history has come even close to that, not even in 1989, when Poles voted out communists from government. Voters were in line at some polling stations until 3 in the morning this morning.

What made voters fed up?

Well, Law and Justice has spent the past eight years rigging the judicial system and public media to serve its purposes and to keep itself in power. And in 2020, this largely Catholic conservative government also banned abortion in Poland. And it's interesting. It was after that when law and Justice's popularity began to slide, it slid from 42 to 35, and it never recovered.

What would this imply for other countries, given that Poland is one of a lot of countries where it seemed that democratic norms were slipping?

Well, populism and nationalism are spreading throughout Europe. And should these results hold, it'll show the world that this trend is not inevitable and that voters can put a stop to it. As they seem to have here in Poland. It'll also mean that the European Union again has a close partner in Warsaw. And that the difficult work of restoring a democracy will begin again for the 40 million people here in Poland.

NPR's Rob Schmitz, Thanks so much.

Thank you.

And that's up first for this Monday, October 16th. I'm Steve Inskeep.

And I'm E. Martinez. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Peter Granitz, Roberta Rampton, Mark Katkov and H..J Mai. It was produced by Mansi Khurana, Katie Klein and Lindsay Toddy.

Thanks for listening to Up First. You can find more in-depth coverage of the stories we talked about today, and more on NPR's Morning Edition, which is co-hosted by the same people who bring you this podcast, Find Morning Edition on your NPR radio station.