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gaza city
Israel Kills Dozens in Gaza City Despite Moves Toward Peace Talks
Children were among those killed Saturday, as Israeli ministers rejected the idea of deescalating before defeating Hamas.
Oct 04, 2025
"We have not seen any change on the ground," reported Al Jazeera correspondent Hind Khoudary on Saturday, after US President Donald Trump called on the Israel Defense Forces to stop their attacks on Gaza and as some in the Western media reported that there were "hopeful signs" that negotiations in Egypt planned for the coming days would result in a major diplomatic breakthrough.
Despite Hamas' statement Friday saying it would conditionally release the remaining hostages it has held since October 7, 2023, which led Trump to demand that Israel "immediately stop the bombing of Gaza," Al Jazeera reported that at least 55 people had been killed in Gaza Saturday morning, including 39 in Gaza City. At least seven children between the ages of two months and eight years old were among those killed in the city, the Palestinian Civil Defense told the outlet.
"The Israeli forces a short while ago targeted a house in the Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City, where at least 17 Palestinians have been confirmed killed and transferred to the hospital," reported Khoudary. "Dozens of others have been injured, and the hospitals are unable to treat all of these Palestinians. What is happening on the ground doesn’t show that there is any type of ceasefire."
Trump claimed Saturday that Israel had “temporarily stopped the bombing."
Regarding the Tuffah attack, Israeli officials told The New York Times that "the military has only been told to shift to defensive operations."
The IDF "had attacked a Hamas militant who threatened Israeli soldiers in the area and... was looking into reports civilians had been harmed," the Times reported.
Israel and the US have consistently denied that the IDF intentionally targets civilians—even as Israeli soldiers have said they've been ordered to do so and doctors have reported treating children with gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
The IDF also warned Gaza City residents Saturday that the city is still a "dangerous combat zone" and called on them to "move south."
Saturday's attacks continued as far-right members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government warned against deescalating the offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and injured more than 169,000. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has called for Israel to annex the Gaza Strip and to build a West Bank settlement that would "bury" the potential for a Palestinian state, said that halting attacks while the details of the peace deal proposed by Trump were still being negotiated would be a "big mistake."
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir added that he would leave the government if Netanyahu "compromised on the goal of destroying Hamas after the hostages were released in a deal," The New York Times reported.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have rejected the idea of Israel ending its attacks before Hamas is destroyed.
The 20-point peace plan released by Trump this week demands that Hamas release all 20 living and 28 dead hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. It also calls for the disarmament of Hamas—a demand the group has said it would discuss at a later date—and would set up a "Board of Peace" headed by Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Hamas has said it would instead support the establishment of an administrative government of Gaza headed by "a Palestinian body of independents, based on Palestinian national consensus and with Arab and Islamic support."
Egypt's foreign ministry said it plans to host delegations from Israel and Hamas on Monday for indirect talks on the hostage and prisoner exchange.
The latest move toward ceasefire talks came as a new poll from The Washington Post showed that Israel appears to have lost considerable support from many Jewish Americans, with 61% saying Netanyahu's government is committing war crimes in Gaza and 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide.
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Doctors Without Borders Suspends Operations at Gaza City Clinics ‘Encircled by Israeli Forces’
"We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities,” said the humanitarian group's Gaza coordinator. "This is the last thing we wanted."
Sep 26, 2025
The humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders has been forced to suspend all its medical operations in Gaza City as its clinics have come under "escalating attacks from Israeli forces."
In a statement published Friday, the group—officially known as Médecins Sans Frontières—said "the relentless Israeli offensive in Gaza City, Palestine, has forced [MSF] to suspend vital medical activities in the area due to the rapidly deteriorating security situation.
"The situation includes continued airstrikes and advancing tanks less than one kilometer from our healthcare facilities," the group continued. "The escalating attacks from Israeli forces have created an unacceptable level of risk for our staff, forcing us to suspend lifesaving medical activities."
As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have pushed further into Gaza's largest city in recent days, hundreds of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced, and hundreds of thousands more have been trapped in the besieged city.
Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza has destroyed much of the strip's healthcare infrastructure and inflicted widespread disease and starvation.
Since it began in October 2023, MSF has provided over 1.1 million medical consultations, including in over 347,000 emergency cases, according to its website.
Just this week, even as Gaza City was pounded with airstrikes, the group says it carried out over 3,640 consultations and treated 1,655 people with malnutrition. They have also treated patients with severe trauma injuries and burns, as well as pregnant women and others who are unable to leave the city.
Earlier this month, Israel ordered everyone in Gaza City, over 1 million people, to evacuate or face the threat of military force. Hundreds of thousands have fled south. When the order was issued, MSF warned that it would be a "death sentence" for the many critically ill patients and newborn babies who'd be forced to abandon medical treatment.
"While large numbers of people have fled south due to evacuation orders, there are still hundreds of thousands in Gaza City, who are unable to leave and have no other option but to stay," MSF said. "Those who are able to leave face an impossible choice: either remain in Gaza City under intense military operations and the deterioration of law and order, or abandon what’s left of their houses, their belongings, and their memories, to move to areas where humanitarian conditions are rapidly collapsing."
The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 60 Palestinians have been killed and dozens more injured since dawn on Friday, bringing the official death toll since October 2023 to 65,549 people and the number of wounded to 167,518.
Meanwhile, at least seven hospitals have been forced to close due to heavy bombardment. Munir al-Bursh, the director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,723 healthcare workers and damaged 38 hospitals since the war began in October 2023.
“We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities, as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces,” says Jacob Granger, the emergency coordinator for MSF in Gaza. “This is the last thing we wanted, as the needs in Gaza City are enormous, with the most vulnerable people—infants in neonatal care, those with severe injuries and life-threatening illnesses—unable to move and in grave danger.”
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Israel Bombs Yemen as IDF Rolls Through Gaza City, Displacing Hundreds of Thousands
Dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, including many women and children, as IDF tanks and troops pushed deeper into Gaza City.
Sep 25, 2025
Israeli forces on Thursday resumed airstrikes on Yemen—whose Houthi rebels have been launching strikes targeting Israel in solidarity with Palestine—while pushing deeper into Gaza City, killing dozens of Palestinians, displacing hundreds of thousands of others, and trapping up to 1 million more.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said dozens of warplanes and air support units pounded alleged "command headquarters of the Houthi General Staff” and other buildings used by members of the rebel army also known as Ansar Allah.
Thursday's strikes followed last week's IDF bombing of a media complex in the Yemeni capital Sanaa that killed 31 journalists and four other people including a child in what the Committee to Protect Journalists called the world's deadliest single attack on media workers in 16 years.
This, after an IDF airstrike last month assassinated Houthi officials including Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi. US forces—which have been bombing Yemen since 2002 as part of the so-called War on Terror—have also carried out airstrikes in Yemen that have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians.
The Israeli and US strikes came in retaliation for Houthi missile and drone attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping. The Houthis and Iran have been the only actors in the world that have answered Israel's genocidal war on Gaza with military force.
The latest Israeli bombing of Yemen came as IDF tanks and troops pushed deeper into Gaza City as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, an offensive aimed at conquering, occupying, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the embattled coastal exclave.
Gaza officials said dozens of Palestinians have been killed since dawn Thursday, including 25 aid-seekers. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that "intensified strikes on Gaza City, including on tents, residential buildings, [and] infrastructure continue to inflict heavy casualties."
The relentless Israeli airstrikes that hit multiple areas across Gaza City today; forcing thousands of Palestinian families to flee their homes into overcrowded and unsafe areas with no shelter, food, or medical care. pic.twitter.com/5Oj9VqtDFY
— Daniella Modos - Cutter -SEN (@DmodosCutter) September 25, 2025
Among the victims of Thursday's IDF strikes were at least 10 children and three women killed when the houses and tents in which they were sheltering were bombed, according to The Associated Press.
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher said Thursday that Palestinian children are being “killed while sleeping, playing, queuing for food and water, [and] seeking medical care."
“They’ve been bombed, maimed, starved, burned alive, buried in the rubble of their homes, separated from their parents... scraping through the rubble for food, enduring amputations without anesthetic,” Fletcher added.
More than 300,000 Palestinians have fled for their lives amid Israel's onslaught and engineered famine, while as many as 1 million others remain trapped in Gaza.
At least 65,419 Palestinians have been killed by US-backed Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—although experts caution that the actual death toll is likely much higher. More than 167,100 others have been wounded, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where the International Criminal Court last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
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'The Howl That the World Doesn't Hear': A Gaza Teacher in Her Own Words
At 28, Reham Khaled has lived through eight wars of varying intensity. The current war has been the most brutal she's known.
Sep 20, 2025
So begin the words of a Gaza teacher's recent post after being forced to flee her home in the Al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City and the school she'd set up in a tent. A bomb tore apart the tent next to the one where Reham Khaled taught her students. Two were killed:
Pain is not a passing sensation, but a being that resides within. It has fangs and fingers. It presses on the heart, weighs down the chest, and makes the breath hesitate like a hole in the air. There is a moment, just one moment, when all the internal walls we have tried to build crumble and we reach what is called the threshold of pain. At this threshold, pain is no longer just an echo or a tremor. It turns into a howl.
Skilled at weaving the horror that is war-torn Gaza with evocative imagery of far sweeter things, Khaled says that before the bomb tore apart the tent, she and her father-in-law were dreaming of eating mangoes and chicken. “And then the rocket exploded. One moment. A collective scream. A small lake of blood begins with two children whose greatest ambition was to eat chicken and mango. It is a moment, but inside me it is years.”
Born in Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp, her grandparents were displaced from the Palestinian village of Najd which was ethnically cleansed in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. The Israeli town of Sderot was later constructed over the site of the village, as well as the nearby village of Huj, according to Working Class History.com.
Her goal, other than giving as many students as possible the right to education, is to instill one idea in the children of Gaza “so that they may travel the world and spread peace one day."
In Gaza, Khaled studied in UNRWA schools, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, established by the UN in December 1949, to provide relief and humanitarian assistance to Palestine refugees displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
At 28, she has lived through eight wars of varying intensity. The current war has been the most brutal she's known. She and her extended family have been displaced 15 times.
The howl is “not a loud, audible scream”, explains Khaled, “but the howl of the soul, that subtle sound that the ear cannot pick up but shakes the entire body from within. It's like the wind sweeping through an empty house, or the emptiness exploding in the head. In Gaza, this howl has become the secret language of everyone. The child who smiles so as not to cry in front of his mother, the mother who hides her tears from her child, the man who stands silently before the corpse of his son. They all howl from within, with a voice the world does not hear.”
A teacher of language and literature, Khaled is not overtly political and shies away from assigning blame for what is happening to her people once again. All she knows, she tells me when we exchange more messages, is that “the language of killing and violence is the biggest mistake that my people have been paying the price for two years or more.... The world is mean, cruel, and dull to the point of melting the nerves. I try to keep up with it, but I break. I try to look at it, but I find its eyes devoid of any glimmer of humanity.”
At this writing, Israeli forces have destroyed an estimated 70% of Gaza City. Airstrikes have turned entire apartment blocks and tent encampments into rubble. The Israel Defense Forces claim, without evidence, that Hamas has been using the buildings for surveillance; justifying collective punishment of Gaza City's entire population. While collective punishment is a war crime and prohibited under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, this has done nothing to protect innocent civilians throughout Gaza from October 2023 to the present. An estimated 65,000 have been killed to date, with upwards of ten thousand trapped under the rubble.
“Howling,' writes Khaled, “doesn't always manifest in screams or tears. Sometimes it manifests as cold dullness. Evacuation notices drop on doors like inane announcements, read by people with blank eyes and then go on with their lives: a man arguing with his neighbor over a gallon of water, women fighting over a turn at the oven, a young man fixing a crack in the wall. It's as if the announcement of the city's destruction means nothing, as if the preordained mass exodus is just another rumor.”
“This isn't true indifference,” she believes, “but another form of howling: a hidden protection against total collapse. When a person is unable to face the naked truth, they hide in the small details, clinging to crumbs to prevent their souls from disintegrating. Politics isn't content with killing bodies; it seeks to break the inside, to make people treat their end as secondary news. It wants evacuation itself to become a habit, a weightless piece of paper, part of the daily noise.”
Israel has ordered everyone in Gaza City to evacuate to the al-Mawasi tent encampment in the south. But the camp is severely overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced people from Rafah, Khan Younis, and other areas and there is no available land. Nor is it rent free, as others I am in touch with tell me. The entirety of Gaza's most southern city, Rafah, once home to 250,000 people, was razed to the ground earlier this year. Khan Younis was razed in part, but some neighborhoods remain.
As for Khaled and her family, refusing to be broken or adhere exactly to Israeli orders, they moved to Deir al-Balah, a city about 10 miles south of Gaza City. They're not safe there, but at least they found land to set up tents. Khaled has already started looking for a new place to establish a school. This morning she reposted a link for the school, which is backed by the Chuffed Project, a nonprofit whose goal is to support children's education in Gaza
Her goal, other than giving as many students as possible the right to education, is to instill one idea in the children of Gaza “so that they may travel the world and spread peace one day. Plant a rose on the tip of every gun. Prevent killing. Spread love and peace and never allow war to continue for long.”
It doesn't mean she's not always hungry or trying to recover her voice or understand why such hell has been unleashed on her people. But that she refuses to surrender to the “twisted logic that turns life into a farce. My voice has been extinguished, not because it disappeared, but because the echo no longer returns. And my being? I've scattered like dust, like a ravening beast that isn't satisfied with flesh and bones, but burrows deep within me in search of something I no longer know the name of. Yes, I'm hungry, but not just for bread. I'm hungry for the security that has become a myth, for the meaning that has become a mirage, for a slice of life that resembles life, not this mockery I live.”
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With Genocide Confirmed and Gaza City a 'Lifeless Wasteland,' US Vetoes Another UN Ceasefire Resolution
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens," said Algeria's UN ambassador. "Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens."
Sep 18, 2025
Against a backdrop of Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza City and a worsening man-made famine throughout the embattled Palestinian exclave, the United States on Thursday cast its sixth United Nations Security Council veto of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.
At its 10,000th meeting, the UN Security Council voted 14-1 with no abstentions in favor of a resolution proposed by the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members demanding "an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, the "release of all hostages" held by Hamas, and for Israel to "immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid" into the besieged strip.
Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump's deputy special envoy to the Middle East, vetoed the proposal, saying that the move "will come as no surprise," as the US has killed five previous UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolutions under both the Biden and Trump administrations, most recently in June.
Ortagus said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas or affirm Israel's right to self-defense and “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council."
The US has unconditionally provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover since October 2023 as the key Mideast ally wages a war increasingly viewed as genocidal, including by a commission of independent UN experts this week.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said the torpedoed resolution represented the "bare minimum" that must be accomplished, adding that “it is deeply regrettable and painful that it has been blocked.”
“Babies dying of starvation, snipers shooting people in the head, civilians killed en masse, families displaced again and again... humanitarians and journalists targeted... while Israeli officials are openly mocking all of this," Mansour added.
Following the UNSC's latest failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama asked Gazans to "forgive" the body for not only its inability to approve such measures, but also for failing to stop the Gaza famine, in which at least hundreds of Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands more are starving. Every UNSC members but the US concurred last month that the Gaza famine is a man-made catastrophe.
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens," Bendjama said. "Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happens. And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”
Benjama also asked Gazans to "forgive us" for failing to protect children in the strip, more than 20,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade over the past 713 days. He also noted that upward of 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 doctors and nurses, 500 aid workers, and 250 journalists “have been killed by Israel."
Condemning Thursday's veto, Hamas accused the US of “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide," which Israel is accused of committing in an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by around two dozen nations.
Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and is believed to be holding 20 hostages left alive out of 251 people kidnapped that day—implored the countries that sponsored the ceasefire resolution to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, to accept an agreement to halt hostilities.
Overall, at least 65,141 Palestinians have been killed and over 165,900 others wounded by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures have not only been confirmed by former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, but deemed a significant undercount by independent researchers. Thousands more Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of the flattened strip.
UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward stessed after Thursday's failed UNSC resolution that "we need a ceasefire more than ever."
“Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza," Woodward said.
Thursday's developments came as Israeli forces continued to lay waste to Gaza City as they push deeper into the city as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the strip's capital. Israeli leaders have said they are carrying out the operation in accordance with Trump's proposal to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
In what some observers said was a bid to prevent the world from witnessing fresh Israeli war crimes in Gaza City, internet and phone lines were cut off in the strip Thursday, although officials said service has since been mostly restored.
Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces since dawn, including 40 in Gaza City, which Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum said is being pummeled into "a lifeless wasteland."
Azzoum reported that tens of thousands of Palestinians "are moving to the south on foot or in carts, looking for any place that is relatively safe—but with no guarantee of safety—or at least for shelter."
Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it advised Palestinians were "safe zones," including a September 2 airstrike that massacred 11 people—nine of them children—queued up to collect water in al-Mawasi.
"Most families who have arrived in the south have not found space," Azzoum added. "That’s why we’ve seen people setting up makeshift tents close to the water while others are left stranded in the street, living under the open sky."
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Nearly 100 (and Counting) Dead as Israel Launches Large-Scale Ground Invasion of Gaza City
"The only way to halt this devastation," said one advocate, "is to end the flow of weapons that Israel relies on to fuel its genocide."
Sep 16, 2025
The Jewish-led rights group IfNotNow was among those condemning Israel's ground invasion of Gaza City on Tuesday, warning that the Israel Defense Forces have left more than 1 million people in the northern city and its surrounding towns with an "impossible choice": "flee once more without anywhere safe to go or face indiscriminate bombs and bullets from Israeli forces."
At least 91 people in Gaza City were killed by the latter on Tuesday as two divisions of the IDF launch ground attacks across the city, with a third expected to join them in the coming days.
Israeli forces have ordered people in the city to leave for the so-called "humanitarian zone" of al-Mawasi in the south, but the area has also been bombarded repeatedly—including an attack two weeks ago, when eight children as young as 3 years old were killed while lining up for water, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The Israeli government last month approved the takeover of Gaza City, with the aim of taking control of all of Gaza and ethnically cleansing the entire exclave, and since then about 150,000 people have been forced to flee south while the IDF has stepped up aerial and artillery attacks, destroying whole neighborhoods.
At Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Tareq Abu Azzoum described "relentless bombardment from military operations that are leaving the landscape completely uninhabitable" in Gaza City.
"The Israeli military has deployed different military tactics to force people to leave Gaza City to the south—most notably excessive firepower, seen in the deliberate destruction of high-rise buildings," said Abu Azzoum.
“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children battered and traumatized by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict to flee one hellscape to end up in another."
Israeli human rights groups including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Physicians for Human Rights called on officials to lift the mass evacuation order and said it constitutes ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.
Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said the mass displacement of families is a "deadly threat for the most vulnerable."
“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children battered and traumatized by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict to flee one hellscape to end up in another,” she said, adding that the IDF's escalation in Gaza City forced nutrition centers in the city to shut down this week, "cutting off children from a third of the remaining treatment sites that can save their lives."
Abu Azzoum described "tragically consistent" scenes of Palestinians—almost 70,000 in the past few days—loading whatever belongings they have left into vehicles and donkey carts to flee their homes:
Many people said in the initial days of the ground operation that they would not leave Gaza City. But, right now, Israel is burning the ground. They’re destroying every kind of civilian infrastructure and have cut off aid deliveries to the city, all for one clear purpose—to relocate them into the southern part of Gaza.
Some people are unable to afford the cost of transportation. We see exhausted faces, mothers carrying their babies, elderly people on foot.
What is so devastating to see is the vulnerability of children who have lost their parents and found themselves on the move again. They’re struggling to find any patch of land where they can stay in the absence of their parents and are completely reliant on strangers to survive.
At IfNotNow, executive director Morriah Kaplan called the ground assault on Gaza City "a chillul hashem, a desecration of God's name."
"With just days until Rosh Hashanah, we watch in horror as the Israeli military bombs and invades Gaza City, putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in mortal danger," said Kaplan, adding that the invasion "spells almost certain death for the remaining hostages" who were kidnapped by Hamas from Israel on October 7, 2023.
"The Israeli government’s willingness to sacrifice their own citizens to continue its campaign of destruction is devastatingly clear," said Kaplan. "It is critical that we say loudly and unequivocally: This invasion won’t make a single Jew anywhere in the world safer."
She called on international funders of the Israeli military—including the largest, the United States—to take immediate action to stop Israel's assault on Gaza, which a United Nations commission said Tuesday is a genocide.
"The only way to halt this devastation," said Kaplan, "is to end the flow of weapons that Israel relies on to fuel its genocide."
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'It Is Clear': UN Commission Finding Confirms Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza
“To do nothing is not neutrality,” said the head of the commission. “It is complicity.”
Sep 16, 2025
A commission of independent experts at the United Nations on Tuesday said Western countries must stop providing military aid to Israel as it released an extensive report confirming that the Israeli government is carrying out a genocide in Gaza—joining international and Israeli human rights groups and numerous genocide experts that have come to the same conclusion in recent months.
"The commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit the following actus reus of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip," said the UN Commission of Inquiry, citing four of the five "genocidal acts" defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
In its bombardment of Gaza, the three-member panel found, Israel has killed members of a group, caused serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicted conditions to destroy the group, and acted to prevent births.
The only genocidal act classified under the Genocide Convention that the commission did not find evidence of in Gaza was the forcible transfer of children from one group to another.
Under the Convention, committing just one or more genocidal act constitutes a genocide.
The report cited an Israeli attack on Gaza's largest fertility clinic in December 2023, which reportedly destroyed 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples and fertilized eggs, as evidence that Israel has acted to prevent Palestinian births in Gaza. More than 18,000 Palestinian children have also been killed in Israel's assault.
Navi Pillay, the commission chair and former UN high commissioner for human rights, emphasized the key finding that Israeli officials have demonstrated their "intent" to commit genocide.
"It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention," said Pillay in a statement.
The commission report cited comments by former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in October 2023, when he said Israel would impose "a complete siege" on Gaza with "no electricity, no water, no food, no fuel" entering the exclave in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.
"We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly," said Gallant at the time. The near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that resulted from his order has killed more than 400 people including at least 145 children so far, with many dying in recent months.
Gallant's comments were just one example of Israeli officials' intent to hold Gaza's entire population of 2.2 million Palestinians accountable for the actions of Hamas in October 2023. Israeli President Isaac Herzog explicitly said that the entire group was "responsible" and said there were no "civilians who were not aware and not involved" in the attack on southern Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also called on Israeli soldiers to "remember what Amalek did to you," a reference to the Amalekites in the Hebrew Bible, whom God commanded the Israelites to exterminate.
"The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza,” Pillay said in a statement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 65,000 Palestinians since beginning the assault on Gaza—attacking hospitals, schools, and refugee camps while claiming that Hamas operates out of civilian infrastructure. Doctors have reported operating on many children who have gunshot wounds to the head and chest—suggesting they were deliberately targeted. Israeli soldiers have also described being ordered to shoot civilians.
Pillay said in an interview with Zeteo that, under the Genocide Convention, countries are legally obligated to step in and take action to stop Israel from continuing the genocide.
"It's not a choice," said Pillay. "It's an obligation that states have under the Genocide Convention, and they are all parties to that."
In an op-ed at The New York Times, Pillay wrote: "Every state has an obligation to prevent genocide wherever it occurs. That obligation requires action: halting the transfer of weapons and military support used in genocidal acts, ensuring unimpeded humanitarian assistance, stopping the mass displacement and destruction, and using all available diplomatic and legal means to stop the killing."
"To do nothing is not neutrality," she said. "It is complicity."
The report was released as the IDF launched a ground offensive to take control of Gaza City, killing at least 68 Palestinians in the city on Tuesday.
Forty percent of the city's residents have been forced to flee south to a coastal encampment in al-Mawasi, which has repeatedly been struck by Israeli forces despite being declared a "safe zone." Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are living in the tent encampment without access to sanitation, safe water, or basic services.
"They have to run out of their homes in the middle of the night with nothing other than the clothes that they’re wearing, seeking shelter towards the coast of Gaza City," reported Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud in a dispatch from Gaza City on Tuesday. "Fighter jets are hovering at a very dangerously low level in the past hour or two. The sky remains filled with the constant hum of drones, leaving residents unable to rest."
"What we are witnessing is a systematic, unfolding terror inflicted on this population," said Mahmoud. "They live in constant fear that their building will be next and they will lose everything and find themselves on the road again to displacement."
The offensive in Gaza City comes weeks after Netanyahu confirmed that his government is planning a full takeover of the Gaza Strip, defying international law.
The UN commission's findings on Tuesday could be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court, which has a warrant out for the arrests of Netanyahu and Gallant and has accused them of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the International Court of Justice, which is hearing a genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel.
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'No Safe Place Left' as Israel Moves to Ethnically Cleanse Nearly 1 Million Gazans
"This is the latest chapter in the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing engulfing the entire Gaza Strip," said Oxfam International.
Sep 11, 2025
Israel's US-backed campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza City has left nearly 1 million people—half of them starved by design—with nowhere to seek refuge, United Nations agencies and other humanitarian groups warned Wednesday.
"We are witnessing a dangerous escalation in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have stepped up their operations and ordered everyone to move south. This comes two weeks after famine was confirmed in the city and surrounding areas," said the UN Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), a strategic forum of UN agency heads and over 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
"While Israeli authorities have unilaterally declared an area in the south as 'humanitarian,' it has not taken effective steps to ensure the safety of those forced to move there and neither the size nor scale of services provided is fit to support those already there, let alone new arrivals," HCT continued.
"Nearly 1 million people are now left with no safe or viable options—neither the north nor the south offers safety," HCT added.
One elderly woman caring for an injured 8-year-old girl who is one of tens of thousands of children orphaned by Israeli attacks told Amnesty International Wednesday that "she's all that I have left, and I have tried everything I can to protect her."
"We have been displaced twice just in the last week," the woman added. "We don't have the means to go to the south, and we are tired of being forced to relive this ordeal all over again."
An elderly disabled woman living in a makeshift refugee camp in southern Gaza City told Amnesty that "we were displaced from Sheikh Radwan three weeks ago; my son had to carry me on his shoulders because I have no wheelchair and no transportation could reach our area."
"Now we are ordered to evacuate again. Where do we go?" she asked. "To secure transportation to the south, you have to pay close to 4,000 shekels ($1,200) and to buy a tent, you have to pay at least 3,000 shekels and we don't know if we'll find any land to pitch our tent on."
"We had already spent all our savings to survive this war, looking for food and basics," the woman added. "Every day is like the war is starting all over again, only far worse, but we are totally depleted, we have no will or strength to carry on."
Photos showing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—including some with donkey-drawn carts—slowly streaming southward from Gaza City evoked images from the Nakba, when more than 750,000 Arabs were ethnically cleansed from Palestine by Zionist terror militias during the establishment of modern Israel.
The World Health Organization (WHO), a UN body, warned Wednesday that "starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at the highest levels ever since the conflict began almost two years ago," and that "deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives."
"After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution, and death," the agency added. "Another 1.07 million people (54%) are in 'emergency' (IPC Phase 4), and 396,000 people (20%) are in 'crisis' (IPC Phase 3)."
WHO also cited overall casualties in Gaza—now approaching at least 65,000 deaths, mostly women and children—and 164,000 injuries, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM)—and noted that "as of September 5, 2025, there have been 2,339 reported fatalities among aid-seekers near militarized distribution sites and along convoy routes since May 27."
Oxfam International—a coalition of over 20 independent NGOs focused on alleviating poverty—echoed the UN experts, asserting that "Israel's intent to displace around 1 million civilians, half of whom are living in famine, is impossible and illegal."
"Displacement orders, on leaflets thrown from the sky, or posted on social media, signal grave next steps, a scene all too familiar in Gaza where every order has preceded new waves of destruction and mass casualties," Oxfam said. "This is the latest chapter in the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing engulfing the entire Gaza Strip, where nothing and no one has been spared."
Heba Morayef, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said Wednesday that Israel's mass displacement order for Gaza City residents "is cruel, unlawful, and further compounds the genocidal conditions of life that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians."
"Gaza City... is now facing complete obliteration," Morayef added. "It is evident that Israel is determined in pursuing its goal to physically destroy Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It is unconscionable that states with leverage over Israel continue to provide it with arms and diplomatic support to destroy Palestinian lives."
Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—Israel's plan to "conquer, cleanse, and stay" in Gaza and "annihilate everything" there—as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently put it—has ramped up in recent days, with intensified Israeli air and artillery strikes and ground troops pushing deeper into Gaza City.
According to GHM, at least 72 Palestinians were killed and a minimum of 356 others were wounded by Israeli forces across Gaza on Thursday, including children and infants. At least 53 of the victims were killed in Gaza City. Israeli strikes reportedly targeted homes, tents housing refugees, and aid distribution points.
Additionally, GHM said that seven Palestinians including a child died from starvation over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of famine-related deaths in Gaza to at least 411, 142 of them children.
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Palestinians Recount Night 'Like Hell' After Israel Pounds Gaza City
"It was a scorching night of fire from every side, from the explosions, to the dropping of incendiary bombs over our heads, to the aerial and artillery bombardment," said one local journalist. "We can't believe how we survived!"
Sep 03, 2025
Residents of Gaza City on Wednesday described an infernal night of relentless Israeli aerial and artillery attacks preceding the official launch of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the "decisive stage" of the 698-day assault and siege on the embattled strip.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warplanes, drones, and artillery unleashed a ferocious wave of attacks on Gaza's largest city Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, killing dozens of Palestinians and obliterating neighborhoods including Sheikh Radwan, where residents described their utter terror as drones dropped incendiary bombs and panicked families attempted to flee.
Gaza officials said later on Wednesday that at least 113 Palestinians were killed in the strip over the past 24 hours.
"Gaza is being erased," Hadi, a 27-year-old from Sheikh Radwan, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "Artillery everywhere, airstrikes everywhere, helicopters everywhere. Even quadcopters are firing at people in the streets, like they are being hunted down. No one knows where to go. We are fleeing to the unknown."
Journalist Mohammed Haniya posted on social media: "The bloody, explosive, Earth-shaking night of Gaza! How did we survive this morning? I can't believe it."
"It was a scorching night of fire from every side, from the explosions, to the dropping of incendiary bombs over our heads, to the aerial and artillery bombardment," he added. "We can't believe how we survived!"
Madleen Abu Saif, a 29-year-old Gaza City resident, told the Emirati newspaper The National that "it was very difficult; the shelling came with all kinds of weapons from quadcopters, tanks, warplanes—from everywhere. It was like hell."
"We tried to stay away from the windows and the street, and we stayed close to the house door so that we could evacuate immediately if necessary," she added.
The Israeli occupation launched intense bombardment on Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, accompanied by a heavy deployment of illumination flares across the area pic.twitter.com/5F5AL9B8o5
— TRT World (@trtworld) September 3, 2025
Around 60,000-80,000 of the approximately 1 million Palestinians in Gaza City are believed to have fled over the past 72 hours. IDF officials—who are proven frequent liars—claimed Wednesday that Hamas, whose political arm rules Gaza and whose militant wing led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, is blocking civilians from leaving.
Hadi told Haaretz that "the war machines are closing in, but there's no official declaration of any invasion. Still, the feeling is that the occupation of Gaza has already begun."
That declaration came Wednesday morning, as IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir conducted a field visit to Gaza and said that Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—the campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse the strip—had officially begun.
"We will continue operating against Hamas' main strongholds until its defeat; we are instilling in them a sense of being constantly pursued everywhere," Zamir vowed.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, responded by announcing a series of operations it called "Moses' Staff." Qassam Brigades said its fighters blasted an IDF bulldozer with a rocket near Salah al-Din Mosque in al-Zaytoun and fired mortar shells at Israeli troops gathered at Haj Fadel.
Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity—and IDF commanders told reservists Wednesday that the assault on Gaza was entering its "decisive stage."
More than 365 of the 60,000 IDF reservists being mobilized to invade Gaza said Tuesday that they would not report for duty.
A group of Israeli reservist soldiers declared they will not report for duty because of plans to take over Gaza City.
The group of over 365 reservists say the assault puts the lives of Israeli hostages at risk while also 'killing, maiming and starving' Gazan civilians.
Israel… pic.twitter.com/edbyl1sUMH
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) September 2, 2025
"We refuse to take part in Netanyahu's illegal war, and we see it as a patriotic duty to refuse and to demand accountability from our leaders," IDF reservist Max Kresch explained at a press conference.
"Netanyahu's ongoing war of aggression needlessly puts our own hostages in danger, and has wreaked havoc on the fabric of Israeli society, while at the same time killing, maiming, and starving an entire population of Gazan civilians," Kresch added.
Israel's nearly 23-month assault and siege on Gaza—which is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case—has left more than 235,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and hundreds of thousands of others starving in what is now officially an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification-designated famine that has killed at least hundreds of people.
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'Colossal Level of Destruction' as Israel Ethnically Cleanses Gaza City Neighborhoods
"The widespread destruction in Zeitoun," said one group, "is part of a deliberate Israeli policy: completing a campaign of genocide and erasing Palestinian urban life."
Aug 19, 2025
Israeli forces continued bombing, shelling, and shooting civilians and systematically demolishing homes in Gaza City Tuesday as part of a US-backed plan to ethnically cleanse 1 million Palestinians from large parts of the embattled enclave so that Israel can reoccupy the coastal strip.
For more than a week, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombing and shelling have pounded areas including the Zeitoun and Sabra neighborhoods of Gaza City, destroying hundreds of homes and also targeting displacement shelters in a bid to force Palestinians to flee to southern parts of the coastal enclave.
According to Al Jazeera, there are approximately 11 displacement centers in Zeitoun, each housing 4,000-4,500 Palestinians, as much of Gaza City's largest neighborhood had already been bombed and razed to the ground in order to create the Netzarim Corridor and "buffer zone."
Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told the Egyptian news site Mada Masr that the IDF is deliberately bombing inhabited apartment towers, wiping out large portions of extended families.
Heavy Israeli air strikes have hit a home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, where shrapnel from another attack wounded a child. Israel’s military is intensifying its bombardment following its plan to take over Gaza City and forcibly displace Palestinians south.
[image or embed]
— Al Jazeera English (@aljazeera.com) August 17, 2025 at 2:15 AM
On Tuesday, an IDF strike on the Hosary family home reportedly killed at least 28 people. Although many victims remain trapped in the rubble, rescuing them is impossible, according to Civil Defense officials, as Israeli forces are targeting people who attempt to do so.
"We are terrified because most of the airstrikes on homes came without warning," Zeitoun resident Shady Mohamed told Mada Masr. "The bombardment is everywhere around us."
In addition to massive bombs and artillery shells—many of them supplied by the United States—the IDF is using snipers and quadcopter drones armed with machine guns and explosives to target and forcibly expel Palestinian civilians from Zeitoun and other areas.
"The situation was terrifying," Zeitoun resident Sahar L. told Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor after fleeing. "I clutched my daughter as we walked over shattered glass and rubble, surrounded by smoke, flames, and explosions everywhere. I ran without knowing where to go. God help us. Enough, world, enough."
"... the military levelling buildings in controlled demolitions in multiple parts of Gaza city.. Israel destroyed 450 buildings in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza city in the last 9 days alone. That's almost 50 buildings destroyed every day. Its a colossal level of destruction"
[image or embed]
— Saul Staniforth (@saulstaniforth.bsky.social) August 19, 2025 at 6:11 AM
The tactic isn't new—in 1948, Jewish militias used massacres and the threat thereof to terrorize Arabs into fleeing Palestine as it was conquered by the nascent state of Israel during what Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe."
Current-day Israeli political and military leaders have called for a new Nakba, including former Gen. IDF Aharon Haliva, who recently said that for every Israeli killed during the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, "50 Palestinians must die," and it doesn't matter "if they're children."
Amid relentless IDF attacks, residents of northern and central Gaza are being pushed southward into the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people are being confined in an 11-square-mile area.
Among the dozens of Palestinians reportedly killed across Gaza within the past 24 hours are at least five people—including two children—who died of malnutrition amid what Amnesty International on Monday called a "deliberate campaign" of weaponized starvation caused largely by Israel's blockade on food, medicine, and other vital supplies. At least 266 Palestinians, including 122 children, have starved to death in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
IDF tanks and armored vehicles have faced sustained resistance as they attempt to achieve the objectives of Operation Gideon's Chariots, a US-backed plan to conquer and indefinitely occupy Gaza, ethnically cleanse its Palestinian residents, and open the strip for possible Israeli resettlement. US President Donald Trump has said that he wants to transform Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza City has prompted renewed calls for international action.
"The widespread destruction in Zeitoun... is part of a deliberate Israeli policy: completing a campaign of genocide and erasing Palestinian urban life through the total destruction of homes, infrastructure, and access to basic livelihoods," Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said Sunday.
"The international community, including the United Nations and global legal bodies, must intervene urgently to halt the massacres, protect civilians, and hold Israeli leaders accountable for these heinous crimes against the civilian population," the Geneva-based group added.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—has issued three provisional orders since January 2024 for Israel to prevent genocidal acts, allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and stop attacking Rafah. Israel has been accused of ignoring or violating all three orders.
The other Hague-based international tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who ordered the "complete siege" on Gaza—for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation.
Israel's 683-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 62,064 Palestinians dead, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Experts say the actual death toll is probably much higher, as thousands of people are missing and believed dead and buried beneath rubble. More than 156,500 Palestinians have also been wounded in Gaza.
Under tremendous domestic and international pressure, Israel said Tuesday that it would respond by Friday to a new ceasefire proposal approved by Hamas under which around half of the 20 remaining living Israeli and other hostages and bodies of some who were killed on October 7 or after would be released in a phased exchange deal. In return, approximately 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons would be freed.
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