Gaza’s “Peace Plan” Is Written in Blood
the recorded toll since October 7, 2023, has reached 73,375 Palestinians killed and 174,220 wounded. Since October 11, the first full day of the nominal ceasefire, Israeli forces have reportedly killed at least 1,250 Palestinians and injured 4,110, while recovery crews have retrieved another 804 bodies from beneath the rubble.
August 4, 2026, Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/04/gazas-peace-plan-is-written-in-blood/
President Donald Trump calls his Gaza agreement a “major milestone” toward peace. For Palestinians living beneath Israeli aircraft and beside an ever-advancing military boundary, that triumphal language bears little resemblance to reality. Israel killed 18 Palestinians on Sunday in one of the deadliest days since the supposed ceasefire began, while survivors described attacks striking the enclave from north to south. Gaza health authorities say at least 1,230 Palestinians—most of them civilians—have been killed since the Trump-backed agreement was reached in October.
Nor has the ceasefire produced the promised Israeli withdrawal. Israeli forces have instead expanded their control from 53 percent of Gaza to as much as 70 percent, pushing more families from their homes and confining nearly two million people to an increasingly narrow strip of devastated coastline. Israeli officials now insist that no withdrawal will begin until Hamas has completely disarmed and its tunnels have been destroyed, while omitting the continuing attacks and territorial seizures that Palestinian factions say violate the agreement.
Reuters reporters Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Dawoud Abu Alkas document the chasm between the diplomatic spectacle and Gaza’s grim reality: civilians killed under the banner of peace, military occupation expanding beneath the language of withdrawal, and displaced families watching Israel’s “yellow line” move steadily closer to their tents. As one Palestinian woman told Reuters, “Our entire life is gone, our entire future is gone, our children’s future is gone.” In Gaza, the peace being celebrated in Washington looks increasingly like war conducted under a new name.Israel Escalates Gaza Attacks as Trump Celebrates a ‘Historic’ Ceasefire Deal
What a stark contrast—and a reminder that Israel is not on board with any meaningful ceasefire. Much like Washington’s other wars fought on Israel’s behalf, the Trump administration’s plan appears focused on disarming Israel’s opponents while imposing few visible restraints on the Israeli military.
On Monday, Nikolay Mladenov, Trump’s Gaza envoy to the so-called Board of Peace, held what the board described as a “constructive and detailed” meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The board declared that its unquestioned objective was the “complete decommissioning of weapons” in Gaza and a transition to civilian government.
But Palestinians experienced a very different reality. “It was as if the war has resumed,” Gaza resident Aya Mohammad Zaki told Reuters, describing attacks occurring nearly every hour across northern, central and southern Gaza. Among those killed Sunday were a couple and their child in an Israeli strike on a Gaza City apartment. While Trump’s board discusses disarming Gaza, Israeli bombs continue falling on Palestinian families.
According to Drop Site News, Israeli attacks have killed at least 34 Palestinians and wounded 134 across Gaza since President Donald Trump announced what he called a “historic agreement” and Hamas conditionally accepted the ceasefire plan’s second phase. Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported that 19 Palestinians were killed and 35 injured during the latest 24-hour period.
The ministry says the recorded toll since October 7, 2023, has reached 73,375 Palestinians killed and 174,220 wounded. Since October 11, the first full day of the nominal ceasefire, Israeli forces have reportedly killed at least 1,250 Palestinians and injured 4,110, while recovery crews have retrieved another 804 bodies from beneath the rubble.
A ceasefire is supposed to mean safety. For displaced Palestinians sheltering beside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, it brought another night of terror, destruction and forced flight.
Footage reported by Drop Site contributor Abdel Qader Sabbah documents the aftermath of an Israeli strike that destroyed a central medical warehouse containing essential dialysis supplies and shredded nearby tents. Families who had gone to sleep believing conditions might finally improve awoke to evacuation orders, fled barefoot and returned to find their shelter, food, water and bedding buried beneath the wreckage.
“We went to sleep under a ceasefire… thinking that the situation would get better.”
Washington calls this peace while Israel continues bombing homes, destroying medical supplies, displacing families and expanding the territory under its military control. Palestinians are being asked to surrender their weapons and trust a political process that has yet to protect them from Israeli attacks—or require Israel to surrender anything in return.
A ceasefire cannot be measured by statements from Trump’s Board of Peace, meetings with Netanyahu or promises of some future withdrawal. It must be measured by whether Palestinians can sleep without being bombed, receive medical treatment, return home and live without an occupying army steadily closing in around them. By that standard, Gaza does not have peace. It has an occupation and a continuing war concealed beneath the language of diplomacy.
Huge Uptick In Israeli Airstrikes On Gaza Since Trump Hailed ‘Historic’ Hamas Deal
by Tyler Durden, Aug 04, 2026 , https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/huge-uptick-israeli-airstrikes-gaza-trump-hailed-historic-hamas-deal
Middle East regional media has reported a huge uptick in Israeli military attacks in the Gaza Strip since President Trump announced a “historic” agreement which Hamas finally signed on to.
The agreement would result in a phased complete disarmament of Hamas and the handing over of governance to newly proposed National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) – a body designed to replace both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
However, fighting has persisted, with Al Jazeera reporting that at least 19 Palestinians killed on Saturday in Israeli attacks and that the total deal toll from the weekend is now 26 people, including women and children.
srael continues to express skepticism in the face of Washington’s recent optimism:
Despite Hamas agreeing to a phased disarmament, Israel’s government says it has “serious security concerns” about the plan, and there has been strong resistance from Israeli politicians to the deal.
The continued bombardment of Gaza, contributing to Israel’s continued breaches of October’s “ceasefire” agreement, will likely threaten Trump’s peace plan and exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation for Palestinians in the enclave.
Reuters had on Sunday reported an entire day of fresh IDF bombardment on Gaza.
“Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza for a second straight day on Sunday, killing at least 18 Palestinians, medics said, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a breakthrough in efforts to implement last year’s ceasefire agreement,” Reuters wrote.
“From dawn, Israeli warplanes hit Gaza City in the north, the central city of Deir al-Balah and the southern area of Khan Younis, causing the biggest daily death toll in weeks, according to Palestinian health officials,” it added.
Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen issued the Netanyahu government’s view on Sunday: “In the deal we signed with the United States, our stance is that Hamas must be dismantled. This is the first thing that must happen.”
Cohen expressed that Israeli is “very skeptical” that Hamas would actually disarm. And PM Netanyahu’s office said: “The most important concern for Israel is that nothing can happen before Hamas completely and truly disarms.”c
So while the US and regional leaders are busy celebrating and hailing the plan, the proverbial devil will be in the details and in the process – and needless to say a lot could go wrong.
On pro-Palestinian advocate and author worries that Gaza will continue to be destroyed, but that international coverage and cameras have in effect moved on: “There was a time when every explosion in Gaza flashed across my phone – horrible images of children being pulled from rubble, medical workers trying to help patients as the hospital itself gets bombed, and families howling in grief as Israeli bombs obliterated entire Palestinian lineages,” Vijay Prashad observes.
Prashad adds: “Israel’s attacks continue as families flee from one temporary shelter to another and children search through shattered concrete for fragments of lives they once knew. But the world’s attention has shifted elsewhere as the genocide has become routine. We have become comfortably numb.”
Israel’s Ghoulish Settlers Eye Up Gaza, As Netanyahu Kills Trump’s Board of Peace
ANTIWAR.COM by Andy Worthington | Jul 29, 2026
On Sunday evening (July 19), a group of some of the most repulsive, ghoulish people on the face of the earth marched towards the perimeter fence separating the Gaza Strip from the rest of the world to declare their intention to re-colonize Gaza, to re-establish three Israeli settlements that were dismantled in 2005 when, under Ariel Sharon, 21 settlements in total were abandoned, occupied, at the time, by 8,000 Israeli settlers.
These fanatical Israeli settlers, on what was billed as the “March of Thousands”, although only a few hundred people attended, were led by the two far-right ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government — Itamar Ben Gvir, the Minister for National Security, who is in charge of Israel’s prisons, which, for Palestinians, have become a gulag of torture facilities since October 7, 2023, and Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance, and also the minister in charge of settlement affairs within the Defense Ministry, who has played a huge role in the ever-growing, and ever more violent expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Speaking at the rally, Ben Gvir said, “If someone had said three years ago that we would control 70% of the Gaza Strip, no one would have believed it. So today I say: there will be Jewish settlement throughout Gaza. We are returning home. Gaza is ours.”
Smotrich, meanwhile, warned that a change of government in the forthcoming elections in October, could “roll back all the Zionist and national settlement revolution” undertaken over the last four years.
The two men were accompanied by more than two dozen ministers and legislators, as well as the 80-year old settler fanatic Daniella Weiss, who told the crowd, “They ask me, ‘What will happen to the Arabs in Gaza?’ There will be no Arabs in Gaza, unequivocally.”
Netanyahu’s reticence in the face of selective western outrage about the West Bank
Although Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party was listed as a sponsor of the rally, Netanyahu was noticeably silent about it. This, undoubtedly, wasn’t because he fundamentally opposes the settlers’ aspirations to re-colonize Gaza, but because, while western countries have been and continue to be largely indifferent to the almost immeasurable military slaughter and destruction in Gaza, they have been far more outspoken about settler activities in the West Bank.
On May 28 this year, the EU imposed sanctions on three individuals and four violent settler movements, including Daniella Weiss and her Nachala Settlement Movement, which, as they described it, “encourages and facilitates coercive acts that lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians”, and whose “outposts obstruct access to Palestinian agricultural and grazing land and have been persistent sources of settler violence.”
Netanyahu is also aware that both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were sanctioned last June by the governments of the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway “for their repeated incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians” in the West Bank, followed by Slovenia and the Netherlands in July, and Spain in September, even though neither man has yet been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court — for war crimes and crimes against humanity — as is the case with Netanyahu himself, and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant……………………………..
Psychotic indifference to genocide — from Israel to Jared Kushner
What was particularly sickening about Sunday’s rally was the gleeful indifference of those gathered — as a beautiful sunset incongruously lit up the sky — to the fact that they were overlooking a vast concentration camp, the size of east London, which is littered with the buried corpses of at least 10,000 Palestinians………………………….
Kushner’s vision was also devoid of Palestinians, as, of course, is the settlers’ vision.
Israel strangles Trump’s Board of Peace
When it comes to Jared Kushner’s grandiose, heartless, profit-driven visions of a futuristic “New Gaza”, the realities of dealing with the Israelis seem to have made it evaporate, as Julian Borger reported for the Guardian in an article last week, entitled, “Trump’s Board of Peace drops full Gaza recovery plan in favour of tiny pilot scheme.”…………………………………………………..
As Borger described it, “The Gaza recovery plan being pursued by Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) has shrunk dramatically from an ambitious blueprint for the reconstruction of the whole territory to a small pilot project in the south of the strip……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Is there a way forward?
Most noticeably, however, what Borger’s discussions with those on the ground in Israel reveal is how the Israeli government itself retains so much control over the Board of Peace’s plans, and can, as it has with the ceasefire deal in general, fail to fulfil its obligations as and when it wishes, and can also provide further obstruction simply by refusing to deal with requests for cooperation………………………………………………………
Will any leaders in the west wake up, and see that, beyond the grim settler violence in the West Bank, which they are so ready to criticize, they have allowed Trump’s largely empty contributions to Gaza’s future to enable them to pretend that something far, far worse isn’t happening right next to the West Bank, in the grotesque, ongoing death camp depravity of the Gaza Strip? https://original.antiwar.com/worthington/2026/07/28/israels-ghoulish-settlers-eye-up-gaza-as-netanyahu-kills-trumps-board-of-peace/
Stillborn Peace Plans: Israel, Hamas and the Question of Disarmament
Another peace plan, celebrated by its proponents yet doomed to a stillborn reality.
5 August 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark , https://theaimn.net/stillborn-peace-plans-israel-hamas-and-the-question-of-disarmament/
Another trumpeted achievement, another heralded occasion of momentous significance. Or it may be nothing of the sort. US President Donald J. Trump is again on the stage pulling on the strings of history. This time, attention has shifted to whether Hamas and other armed groups in the Gaza Strip will disarm, something conditional on Israel withdrawing its forces from the war-torn enclave. And there, we are presented with the first, insoluble problem.
The latest roadmap published by the US-led Board of Peace is intended to advance the rest of Trump’s 20-point peace plan signed by Hamas and Israel in October 2025. It involves the respective cessation by Israel, Hamas and relevant Palestinian factions of “all military operations in accordance with Sharm Sheikh Protocol and the Peace Plan.” According to Nickolay Mladenov, chief envoy of the Board, “intense efforts” involving Egypt, Türkiye, Qatar and the US had been brought to bear on “the Palestinian factions in Gaza to agree to a Roadmap on the full implementation of President Trump’s plan, to hand over civilian governance and to decommission their weapons.”
Once approved by the parties, a timetable and the implementation phase will be prepared within a fortnight, to be extended as necessary by the International Verification Committee (IVC). On completion, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) is to enter the Strip to assume its responsibilities. According to the plan, Hamas and the other factions are to yield control over civilian governance and security in Gaza to the National Committee in accordance with Trump’s Comprehensive Peace Plan. The NCAG is to “enjoy full independence in carrying out its responsibilities and the factions shall not interfere in NCAG affairs during the transitional period, in accordance with UNS Resolution 2803 (2025).”
The NCAG is also tasked with pursuing “a comprehensive audit of the financial and administrative affairs in Gaza, and protect, recover and administer public assets and resources.” Claims from suppliers, contractors and other parties, up to a total of US$400 million, will be assessed by the Committee, with unresolved financial rights, liabilities or claims addressed “within the context of a wider national process later.”
The Committee will apparently operate “according to the principle of One Authority, One Law, One Weapon,” though the plan, without giving much by way of detail, is clear that “Palestinian laws, relevant international standards and the principles of good governance” shall apply. Police personnel shall be added to “existing police structures” and “undergo a comprehensive vetting.” Those not cutting the mustard can still find themselves in civilian employment “consistent with their earlier experience or retire in accordance with Palestinian law. None of those shall be deprived of their financial rights, particularly due to financial affiliation.”
Once the remaining commitments of the Sharm Sheikh Protocol are completed, along with the entry of NCAG and the International Stabilisation Force (ISF), decommissioning and storing “heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels” will take place, supervised by the authority “in a gradual, sequential and time-bound manner.” The proviso here is that Israel shall withdraw “in phases, from areas under its control in Gaza” as armed militias are decommissioned.
The weapons of the militias are to be decommissioned and stored under NCAG authority in accordance with a timetable. Foolishly, and unrealistically, the deal is weakened by the requirement that no one from those militias is to “be integrated in the security and police services.” Shadows of post-invasion Iraq in 2003, when the US-led forces engaged in an extravagant removal and purging of Baathist personnel, thereby leaving them ripe for future insurrection, are cast.
The ISF is to eventually be deployed in the Strip “to separate the Israeli forces from NCAG-controlled areas.” (At this point, that force will draw upon the reserves of Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania.) The force will not be in the business of policing “or missions related to the Palestinian society.” Its role, it would seem, is more one of monitoring compliance with the ceasefire, training the Palestinian police complement, and ensuring the protection and delivery of humanitarian aid and essential supplies into the Strip. NCAG is to be supported, at its request, in other non-policing missions. Israeli forces will then complete a phased withdrawal from the Strip in accordance with Trump’s peace plan, “which includes a commitment not to force anyone to leave the Strip.” From then on, NCAG will handle “internal security incidents.” At that stage, reconstruction of the enclave, to be supervised by the Board of Peace and NCAG, is to take place.
The plan, as with previous iterations on peace regarding Gaza, remains incurably brittle. Since last year’s October ceasefire, Palestinian deaths have risen to 73,000. (The number stood at 67,000 at the commencement of the ceasefire.) The slaughtering approach of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) towards those clinging to the Strip has been only slightly moderated. The IDF has also hungrily extended its control to almost 70% of the territory well beyond the Yellow Line stipulated by the ceasefire and destroyed, according to a BBC verify report published last November, upwards of 1,500 buildings.
On August 3, Mladenov met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what he described as a “[l]ong day in Jerusalem.” This heralded “the start of the hard phase and I have never pretended otherwise.” From here on, the work would be “slow, grinding and technical.” During the course of conversations Mladenov is said to have requested a halt to attacks by Israel on the Strip, which he had lamented in a post the previous day. The weekend following the announcement of the roadmap saw the killing of 25 Palestinians and given the usual justifications: a strike on Deir-al-Balah which left four dead had targeted two Hamas commanders; the strikes on Gaza City and Jabalia had been against “military operatives.”
The Israeli attitude to the latest plans is one of profound and sabotaging scepticism. Doron Spielman, spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office, stated the position on August 2: “Our assessment is that if we redeploy before Hamas is truly disarmed, it will quickly expand its presence throughout Gaza, rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, once again threaten Israeli communities, and seek to carry another October 7-style attack.” In a statement from the same office released on July 30 is clear: the onus is entirely on Hamas to effectively will itself into impotence and subservience through disarming, “including the removal of the weaponry from Gaza and the complete demilitarization of the Strip as a condition for any process.”
Members of the Israeli cabinet are also pre-empting any move on the part of the ISF to move into Gaza. An August 3 letter from the patriotically rabid Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Settlements Minister Orit Strock demanded that Netanyahu convene the security cabinet to bar the entry of ISF troops. The roadmap from the Board of Peace was “dangerous to Israel and completely contradicts the disarming of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza.” The plan should be blocked, and the outline amended by the Peace Council “so that it aligns with the goals of the war and the commitments made to Israel.” Another peace plan, celebrated by its proponents yet doomed to a stillborn reality.
Israel Is Erasing Entire Gaza Families From The Civil Registry
July 25, 2026,SCHEERPOST, Nora Barrows-Friedman The Electronic Intifada
The following is from the news roundup during the 23 July livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
Israel has carried out massacres on multiple families this week in Gaza, killing Palestinian children, men and women, as the army encroaches on more land and squeezes Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas.
On Wednesday, an Israeli drone strike on a tent sheltering displaced people killed a Palestinian and injured several others west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to medical sources.
Thirteen Palestinians were killed in a series of Israeli attacks on Tuesday, including a strike on a home in the pre-dawn hours that killed six members of a family in Gaza City.
The Cradle reports that Feras al-Masri, his wife Salsabil, and their four children – Naim, 13 years old, Feryal, 11, Salma, 9, and Amira, 6 – were killed while they were sleeping. The Israeli drone strike engulfed the entire home in flames, and rescue crews say they found the bodies so completely burned that identification efforts were extremely difficult.
The explosion also forced residents in surrounding areas to flee in search of safety, while shrapnel reportedly reached nearby displacement camps, piercing tents housing displaced Palestinians, The Cradle added.
Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal reported from the wreckage of the home, holding a piece of the loitering munition, a so-called “suicide drone,” that hit the building.
He said the residents were burned alive, and added that rescuers could hear them screaming and begging to be pulled out, but all attempts had failed.
The Civil Defense has warned repeatedly that Israel’s deliberate targeting of its vehicles and equipment, along with the scarce amount of fuel and lack of spare parts to repair damaged or worn-out vehicles has made rescue efforts like these nearly impossible.
Videos circulated on social media show Civil Defense crews pulling the charred remains of bodies, some of them small, out of the building in the aftermath of the strike.
Four Palestinians were killed in a separate strike on Tuesday, also in Gaza City, when an Israeli missile targeted the entrance to the Muslim Young Women’s Association building……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Gaza’s stolen landscape
In addition to the massacres, airstrikes and sniper attacks on people across Gaza this week, the Israeli army continues to carry out heavy demolitions of entire neighborhoods on the eastern side of the so-called yellow line.
The United Nations high commissioner for human rights’ office said this week that more than nine months after the announcement of a so-called ceasefire, “still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Israeli army, settlers kill Palestinians in West Bank
Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers shot and killed two Palestinians during a raid on the village of Deir Jarir near Ramallah on the night of 19 July.
The Palestinian health ministry said that Awda Farakhna, 53, and Ahmed Abdul Abu Mukh, 26, were killed and several others were injured in the attack.
Local sources told the Wafa news agency that Israeli occupation forces also opened fire at an ambulance transporting one of the injured Palestinians to the hospital.
The Guardian newspaper reports that Israeli settlers from a nearby colony outpost arrived after 9 pm, “claiming that they were searching for stolen livestock. Israeli soldiers and police soon joined them, protecting them as they sought to take several villagers’ sheep by force.”
But when people in the village “raised the alarm and a crowd gathered, soldiers shot two men, beginning a night of three successive raids by settlers from nearby outposts and Israeli soldiers that lasted until after 2 am, according to Palestinian residents of Deir Jarir.”
In interviews with The Guardian, as they buried their relatives, “family and friends of the dead Palestinian men described several attacks each month in which they said settlers, backed by Israeli forces, arrived in houses on the outskirts of the village and then stole livestock.”
“It’s a partnership between the army and the settlers,” Adel Rashid, the father of the younger victim, Ahmed Abu Mukh, told the newspaper……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/25/israel-is-erasing-entire-gaza-families-from-the-civil-registry/
‘Gaza Is One Giant Graveyard’
SCHEERPOST, July 21, 2026, Marah Abdel Jaber Prism
A seasoned humanitarian aid worker directing distributions to Gaza since the start of Israel’s genocide in October 2023 went on their first mission to the Strip last winter. During the two-week mission, they conducted a ground assessment: testing the efficacy of aid, recording field interviews with residents, and surveying the functionality of local hospitals. They have requested anonymity in order to share what they learned publicly, and minimize the risk of retaliation from Israeli officials.
In a Q&A with Prism in February, they reflected on the direct role of global humanitarian aid organizations in escalating the dehumanization of Palestinians under Israel’s genocide, the lack of a true ceasefire, and the world’s abandonment of Palestinians.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Marah Abdel Jaber: What were the conditions of Gaza upon your arrival?
Humanitarian Aid Worker: When entering, we crossed through the Karem Abu Salem border and drove straight across the militarized yellow zone through Rafah. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t think that it was an actual city before. It’s almost entirely flattened, and most of it has been bulldozed. As we made our way up towards Khan Younis, we saw some demolished buildings and rubble. You would never think that there were people living there before. It was obvious that the Israeli forces were bulldozing away evidence of war crimes, the genocide, and the dead. That was all I could think about while driving through it.
Abdel Jaber: What was a typical day in the field for you?
HAW: My role required visiting different programs that [a medical NGO] was running and giving feedback. I also looked into some of their pilot programs or their areas of interest for launching new programs. I visited a lot of different clinics, hospitals, a school, and even an orphanage. I spoke with different parts of the population dealing with orphaned or unaccompanied separated children, the elderly, amputees, or those receiving therapy. I had quite a diverse exposure to the issues that the population is facing there, in addition to the aid situation and the distribution.
Abdel Jaber: What was most striking about the reality on the ground?
HAW: The living conditions are horrendous. Many people don’t know about the reality on the ground because mainstream media is pushing the narrative of a ceasefire to distract from the next phase of the colonial project: to build on top of a cemetery. Gaza is essentially one giant graveyard. Airstrikes are happening in the dozens, day and night; the Israeli military ships would still shoot out from the sea; and fighter jets and drones were everywhere. Oftentimes people would tell me that I should have visited Gaza before the genocide, because it was heaven. It would stop me. I couldn’t bear the thought of that. It was still occupation, injustice, and apartheid, but they would say it was better than now. They want the Palestinian people to choose which level of oppression they have. You can have minimal or maximum oppression, because you will never have absolute freedom. These are your options. Genocide, or apartheid and occupation.
“People would tell me I should have visited Gaza before the genocide, because it was heaven. … I couldn’t bear the thought of that. It was still occupation, injustice, and apartheid, but they would say it was better than now.”
Abdel Jaber: How would you qualify the ceasefire in Gaza during your mission?
HAW: There was nothing that would indicate an actual ceasefire. People outside of Gaza view this as a successful ceasefire for two reasons. First, the idea that aid is flowing in daily. It is, but it is still incredibly minimal while being distributed inefficiently and ineffectively. Israeli forces are also allowing in consumer goods. This signals that residents can now purchase goods, but the vast majority in Gaza have been without work for two and a half years. And a lot of people lost their money in the banks because the [Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)] destroyed them, so they could no longer access the systems.
The secondary narrative being pushed is that, before the ceasefire, we would hear of hundreds upon hundreds of Palestinians being killed every day. Now you don’t hear as much of that. People assume that there isn’t any more killing, when really dozens will get killed in a day. That’s not a ceasefire…………………………………………………………………………………………..
HAW: Everything that we’re seeing in this genocide in Gaza, everything that the Israeli forces have implemented, is intentional. It is by design. There is nothing coincidental about it. The intentional deprivation and inhumane conditions are meant to squeeze every ounce of hope out of Palestinians in Gaza. They signaled to people that if they want to stay in Gaza, they would have to get their aid in this way. The killing was intentional to serve as a warning for everyone else watching that they either starve or die trying to access essential aid. They don’t want them to have options. At first, it seemed like the only option was to leave. Now it looks like what is being done with this Board of Peace, and building this Riviera on a graveyard, is to use Palestinians as cheap labor………………………………………………………………………………………
HAW: Someone asked me the other day, if Israel is hellbent on getting rid of the Palestinian population, why not just drop a bomb and get it over with? Why are they torturing them? Everyone knows the IOF is killing them. Why not just do it? Well, first of all, that would make the genocide too obvious. But what a lot of people miss, and we really have to stress this as often as we can, is that genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, occupation, injustice—and everything all within that realm—is not only physical, it’s psychological. The psychological aspect is crucial. You can control a population through psychological torture. It explains why, even before the genocide, Israel denied the entry of chocolates, wedding gowns, construction paper, and other menial things into Gaza. Cutting off food and medication, not allowing a catheter to come in for a dialysis patient, banning menstrual pads, and more—they want to remind you at every opportunity that they are in control of everything. There is a psychological toll that has detrimental, long-term impacts. The trauma, the lack of education, the epigenetic changes that are going to happen over the years, birth defects, and mental health will take forever to deal with. They want to ensure every aspect of Palestinian society, physical and psychological, has been damaged…………………………………………………………………………………………… https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/21/gaza-is-one-giant-graveyard/
Hamas’s Governance Exit Exposes Israel’s Real Objectives
Abbas Hashemite, July 15, 2026, https://journal-neo.su/2026/07/15/hamass-governance-exit-exposes-israels-real-objectives/
Hamas’s decision to relinquish governance of the Gaza Strip appears to be derived from domestic and international strategic needs, and to further weaken the Israeli propaganda.
Hamas’s Administrative Withdrawal Amid Gaza’s Humanitarian Catastrophe
After ruling Gaza for around two decades, Hamas recently announced that it was prepared and willing to hand over the Strip’s governance to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the technocratic administration set up under US President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace. According to the spokesperson of Hamas, the decision was made to “remove any pretexts for the [Israeli] occupation.” Indeed, the Israeli genocide, war crimes, occupation, and war of extermination against the Palestinian people persist despite the ceasefire, which took effect in October 2025.
According to a UNOCHA report, “nearly all of Gaza’s current population of 2.1 million people has been displaced, lacking access to sufficient shelter, food, life-saving medical services, clean water, education, and livelihoods.” According to some reports, the IDF has butchered more than 80000 Palestinians from October 7, 2023, to January, 2025; the actual figure is estimated to be much higher, as many bodies are still buried under rubble. The Israeli Defense Forces have also committed many other war crimes, such as raping Palestinian women and intentionally bombing hospitals, mosques, churches, and educational institutions, along with targeting journalists and welfare workers.
There are several indications that the Zionist regime may resume its full-scale genocidal operations in Gaza, using the resistance group’s refusal to surrender its arms and weapons as a pretext. Nonetheless, it appears that the Western nations have put the onus of honoring the deal only on Hamas, and Tel Aviv enjoys the freedom to violate the ceasefire at its will. This is evident from the fact that the IDF continues to kill Palestinian civilians, including women and children, despite the ceasefire. Moreover, it continues to control around 70 percent of the Gaza Enclave.
Why Relinquishing Governance Is a Strategic Calculation, Not a Defeat
Considering these developments, Hamas, in a strategic move, has decided to dissolve the Government Emergency Committee in Gaza. However, considering it as a surrender or defeat would be erroneous. In the current regional and domestic scenario, this was the most accurate move that Hamas could make. Through this move, the resistance group has reaffirmed its commitment to implementing the ceasefire deal and fulfilling Hamas’s objectives.
Even after one of history’s most horrific wars, the Zionist occupational regime has failed to achieve its primary objective: eliminating Hamas. The resistance’s decision to relinquish Gaza’s administration allows Hamas to reorganize its operational and institutional structures, minimize its institutional exposure, and focus on its fundamental objective, the struggle of Palestinian national liberation from the Zionist occupation. The Israeli government has long leveraged on the political, geographical, and ideological division between the West Bank and Gaza. This move would end this leverage and allow the two sides to unite.
A New Test for Israel and International Mediators
Despite this decision, the new administration would not mean complete foreign control over the Strip or exclusion of native Palestinians from politics, as Gaza belongs to its native population, not to any foreign-backed administration. Therefore, the most crucial challenge for the Western mediators will be to rebuild a representative and deeply rooted Palestinian leadership capable of raising the genuine concerns of the native people in the West Bank and Gaza. Otherwise, this new administrative structure will lose its credibility and domestic acceptance.
Another significant point to understand is that resisting and governing are two distinct functions. Therefore, this move must not be mistaken for a withdrawal from resistance. Hamas took this decision to advance its broader strategic objectives. For years, the Zionist regime of Israel has justified its war crimes, genocidal operations, and blockade of the Strip under the pretext of Hamas’s so-called threatening presence for the state.
After the resistance group’s complete compliance with the terms of the ceasefire and its announcement to transfer the administration of the Strip, the Zionist regime now seeks to hinder the implementation of the deal and hamper the National Committee from assuming the administrative responsibilities, to amplify the sufferings of the Palestinian people. This further exposes the propaganda of the Israeli government. It demonstrates that the actual ambition of the occupational regime was never to eliminate Hamas from the government; it was to deprive the Palestinians of their fundamental rights and resistance.
According to the Israeli government, the objective of this recent war was to end Hamas’s government in Gaza. After the recent decision by Hamas, the Israeli government has no reason left to blockade or bomb the Strip. Through this strategic move, Hamas is now confronting all the mediators and actors with their responsibilities. Moreover, this decision has further increased complications for the Zionist regime to legitimize its military aggression and genocidal operations in Gaza. It has been revealed once again that Hamas’s government was never the actual problem, but the refusal of the Palestinians to submit to the Israeli occupation. Through this decision, Hamas has not only gained strategic leverage but also achieved an opportunity to reorganize and restructure itself.
Аbbas Hashemite is a political observer and research analyst for regional and global geopolitical issues. He is currently working as an independent researcher and journalist
What ceasefire? People still being killed and Gaza still under siege
by Cathy Peters | Jul 11, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/what-ceasefire-gaza-still-under-siege/
As Jillian Segal denied the undeniable at the Bondi Royal Commission this week, not much is changing in Gaza, and Trump’s Board of Peace stands by idly. Cathy Peters with the latest.
In a move that’s been largely unreported here, Hamas announced earlier this week that it would dissolve its governing Emergency Committee with the resignation of its acting leader.
This move has been recognised as an attempt to hasten the transfer of administrative authority to the Trump-appointed Board of Peace’s National Committee for the Management of Gaza (NCAG), a body of Palestinian technocrats, assembled and waiting in Cairo to manage public administration, security, recovery and transition throughout the Gaza Strip as part of the agreed ceasefire plan.
However, despite being established in January this year, the NCAG has not yet been given access to enter Gaza by the Board of Peace or Israel.
Trump’s controversial Board of Peace predictably dismissed Hamas’ move, stating that the NCAG is not yet in a position to take on this role while Hamas retains control of weapons. Hamas maintains that while Israel is still killing Palestinians, it will not disarm.
Nine months since the Gaza ceasefire and Trump’s 20-point peace plan of October 2025, conditions throughout the Strip have remained unlivable and deadly for Palestinians, with more than 1000 killed by Israeli forces and more than 3,500 injured.
“Parents stay awake all night in their tents to stop rats feeding on their children”
The amount of humanitarian aid is far short of what is required, and there is a trickle of medical evacuations despite some 16,500 Palestinians needing urgent medical transfer out of Gaza.
A Board of inaction
The UN Security Council supported the establishment of the Board of Peace in November last year, noting that it would be temporary and transitional, although Trump subsequently declared it would address other world conflicts beyond Gaza.
The composition of the Board of Peace Executive and the Gaza Executive Board includes a number of Trump’s leadership team, plus other Republican operatives, wealthy U.S.businessmen and real estate magnates, as well as Tony Blair.
Donald Trump – Chairman for life
Marco Rubio – U.S. Secretary of State
Jared Kushner – U.S. presidential advisor and son-in-law
Steve Witkoff – U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East
Tony Blair – Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Marc Rowan – CEO of Apollo Global Management
Ajay Banga – President of the World Bank Group
Qatar and the UAE and more Republican government appointees. Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff and former Trump campaign adviser. and Robert Gabriel, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor.
According to the UN Security Council Resolution 2803, this body has UN support to ‘set the framework and coordinate funding for the redevelopment of Gaza’ until the Palestinian Authority has ‘satisfactorily reformed’. It also authorised the Board to deploy a temporary International Stabilisation Force in Gaza; however, this has not occurred.
Israel has moved some of the anti-Hamas Palestinian militias it’s been arming and funding for three years now into the area it has occupied behind the yellow line. These various militias, led by factional gangs, drug lords and criminals, pose additional threats to Hamas disarming and the transition of power to a Palestinian-led reconstruction committee and the ultimate withdrawal of the IDF.
Yellow and orange lines
The Israeli-defined ‘yellow line ’, according to Israel’s legal NGO Gisha, pushes more than two million people into less than half of the Strip’s territory, exacerbating unbearable overcrowding that is harming public health, including outbreaks of disease and infestation of rats and other pests.
Israel’s seizure of such vast areas also prevents Gaza residents from returning to their homes and lands. Most of Gaza’s agricultural lands lie east of the Yellow Line, meaning they are within areas controlled by Israel. Continued denial of access for farmers to their lands prevents the rehabilitation of vital food sources.
From March 2025, Israel instituted the ‘orange’ line, a line that delineates almost 48% of Gaza’s land mass where any international organisations are prohibited from moving with prior coordination with Israeli authorities. Gisha reports that this orange line is now a new border that has expanded the area that Israel now directly controls.
While negotiations have stalled for 9 months on the initial implementation of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF, following on from Netanyahu’s call in May, has now occupied almost 70% of Gaza, with the yellow cement perimeter markers defining an ever-shrinking area where 2.1 million war-wounded and dispossessed Palestinians are helplessly surviving.
Remote-controlled machine guns
Everyone in Gaza is constantly monitored by drones, and now occupying the eastern perimeter of this dystopian landscape are 23 massive military cranes equipped with remote-controlled machine guns and high-tech surveillance cameras inside the Israeli IDF-defined yellow line. Gaza journalist Tamar Nahed posted this description of Israel’s latest killing apparatus,
“These cranes have turned the entire city into an open field. The latest military technologies are directed at civilians. We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons. The horror is not just in the sound… it is the constant feeling of being an exposed target at all times.”
In the first week of July, the Board of Peace declared that there was no role for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, which is a continuation of the Israeli ban on this aid organisation, which has supported Palestinians with essential humanitarian and educational aid in Gaza since 1948.
This announcement negates the Charter of the United Nations, international law principles and fundamental human rights standards.
Shelters or camps?
Despite the Board’s apparent refusal to allow the Palestinian committee of bureaucrats (NCAG) into Gaza, the Israeli news outlet Israel Hayom just reported on plans aimed at relocating Palestinian residents into barbed wire fenced designated areas. This will allow the IDF to ‘deepen its grip on areas outside of the yellow line’.
“Surviving Palestinians will be herded into fenced “humanitarian shelters” policed by foreign forces,” as reported by Israel Hayom on July 2.
Images of a camp that’s been described as a concentration camp have emerged in Tel Al-Sultan, an area near Rafah where a pilot project of ‘humanitarian shelters’ will be established. Civilians will be channelled into Tel Al-Sultan, which was a densely populated area of Rafah from which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ordered to flee in April last year.
This image of stark, freshly flattened land surrounded by barbed wire fences and covered with masses of metal box shelters and no evidence of any permanent cement structures (as directed by Israel) appears to be a horrific precursor to
“a very grim future for Palestinians in Gaza.“
It recalls Israel Defence Minister Katz’s plan of a year ago of a ‘humanitarian city’ on the ruins of Rafah, where the goal was to screen people before they were allowed to enter to ensure they were not Hamas and then refuse any exits except to third countries.
Legal immunity
The Board of Peace convened in Cyprus at the end of June for 3 days to “reset” after “the Iran war has completely shifted the attention in the last several months,” according to an official source. It sought to address the funding shortfalls, logistical delays and security challenges.
One of the more controversial draft resolutions was the Board’s plan to grant legal immunity to its members, contractors, and security forces; therefore
“shielding the whole enterprise from potential legal proceedings”.
As reported widely, human rights lawyers are highly critical of this proposal, including Palestinian American lawyer and academic, Noura Erakat, “They are basically saying there’s no external oversight, including applicable international law regarding occupation. It’s creating a legal system unto itself.”
At the same time, the IDF has reportedly called for fighting to resume as senior officers in the IDF claim that Hamas’ military wing is rebuilding. Hamas has maintained that it will only disarm under the auspices of the Palestinian NCAG and when Phase 1 of the ceasefire agreement is achieved, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces to agreed positions, full implementation of humanitarian measures and a complete end to Israel’s military attacks.
The nightmare on the ground in Gaza for Palestinians continues. The machinations of Trump’s Board of Peace appear to be
“stymying any chance for genuine reconstruction of Gaza“
led by Palestinians for Palestinians. The available evidence at this point is that the 1000-day-plus Israeli genocide in Gaza continues apace behind the veneer of Trump’s ‘peace’ plan and the continuing indifference of world powers.
Cathy Peters
Cathy Peters is a former ABC RN producer/executive producer and Greens councillor on the former Marrickville Council. She also worked for a state Greens MP and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights. In 2014, she co-founded PSNA / BDS Australia. She has Jewish heritage, has travelled and volunteered in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
How Israel planned the Gaza genocide decades ago
Jonathon Cook, 12 June 2026
In October 2023, Israel found an excuse to breathe new life into an old story of slaughter and expulsion. The chief differences this time have been of scale and duration
The truth slowly comes to light: Israel‘s genocide in Gaza was planned decades ago.
Listen to the testimonies of four Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza.
Soldier 1: “Human lives didn’t matter. You could kill, there was no law. No one would say a word to you. But it’s not a good feeling. It mainly kills your humanity.”
Soldier 2: “At first I wasn’t willing to execute Arabs who weren’t resisting [that is, civilians]. Then we came to the conclusion that we had to kill. We went through the process of ceasing to see them as human beings.”
Soldier 3: “We caught guys, lined them up and eliminated them. In retrospect, it looks like murder.”
Soldier 4: “We would roam through refugee camps in Gaza and carry out purges… Every soldier who was there created a ‘concentration camp’, and they didn’t hesitate to kill people who caused a slight disturbance.”
No, these testimonies are not new. The whistleblowers did not serve in Gaza during the current, ongoing genocide there. These accounts are nearly 60 years old, published last week by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline “We were ordered to kill”.
Israeli soldiers interviewed shortly after the 1967 war – often referred to as the Six-Day War – not only confessed that they and others routinely committed war crimes but they pointed out that they did so under orders from their commanders.
The accounts were compiled into a book, The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six-Day War, by Avraham Shapira, though many testimonies were not included because they were too shocking.
None of this should be simply of historical interest. These accounts are a vivid reminder that what Israel has been doing during its current, near three-year destruction of Gaza – levelling all homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries and government offices; murdering tens of thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands, of Palestinian civilians; and blocking aid and starving the population – is part of a decades-old pattern of Israeli military conduct.
Nothing “started” on 7 October 2023, when Hamas broke out for a single day of the Gaza “concentration camp” – the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians noted 59 years ago by Soldier 4.
Rather, Israel found an excuse that day to breathe new life into an old story, one in which it has been slaughtering and expelling Palestinians for decades. The chief difference this time is simply one of scale and duration.
Washington and other western capitals have given Israel the time and space to finish in Gaza what, earlier, it had only been able to achieve in part. Israel’s much greater firepower today, provided by modern munitions supplied by the United States, has allowed Israel to realise what before it could only dream of doing: wiping Gaza off the map.
Starvation policy
The whistleblowing soldiers of 1967 admitted their job was not to “fight the enemy” – or “eradicate the terrorists”, as Israeli leaders now term it. It was to kill and terrorise Palestinian civilians under cover of war.
Few soldiers were shy of saying why they were committing atrocities. Their task was to create a reign of terror, integral to Israel’s efforts to expel as many Palestinians as possible from the last remaining parts of the Palestinian homeland, the territories captured by the Israeli military in 1967 and then illegally occupied.
This was seen as a new opportunity to complete the ethnic cleansing campaign begun by Zionist militias in earnest in 1947 and 1948 as the British Mandate authorities withdrew from Palestine. By the end of that campaign, some 80 percent of Palestinians had been expelled from their homes inside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state.
Many ended up in refugee camps in neighbouring states such as Lebanon and Syria. But some fled into the surviving pockets of historic Palestine in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza – the 22 per cent of their homeland that had been shielded from further Israeli advances in 1948 by Jordan and Egypt.
The 1967 war was seen by the Israeli leadership as a second bite of the cherry: a chance both to seize and colonise all of historic Palestine through military occupation and the establishment of Jewish militia settlements, and to expand the ethnic cleansing operation to rid historic Palestine of its native inhabitants.
Weeks after Israel seized the Palestinian territories, the prime minister of the time, Levi Eshkol, told his cabinet where the expulsions must begin. “We are interested in emptying out Gaza first,” he said.
Given international pressures, he was clear that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza would need to proceed by stealth, so as to attract less attention. Foreshadowing Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza that started in 2007, he proposed that Palestinians could be forced out of Gaza “precisely because of the suffocation and imprisonment” Israel was imposing there.
The ethnic cleansing programme could be hastened, he suggested, by depriving the population of essentials like water. “Perhaps if we don’t give them enough water, they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.”
In this spirit, 40 years later, Israel would go on to calculate the minimum number of calories to allow into Gaza so that the people there would grow steadily more malnourished. Or as senior government adviser Dov Weisglass explained in 2006: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
Seventeen years after Gaza was forced on to its “diet”, when Hamas briefly broke out of the enclave, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals seized their moment.
They destroyed those “orchards” and transformed the “diet” into a full-blown starvation blockade – a crime against humanity for which Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Targeting innocents
The crimes of 1967 were understood long ago by Palestinian historians, who were, of course, not listened to. Israeli historians took much longer to start piecing together the story as they gained access to parts of Israel’s military archives.
Haaretz’s new investigation, based on research by the Akevot Institute, provides details of the ruthlessness of the mass expulsions of Palestinians beginning in 1967.
As the paper reports: “The historical inquiry shows that Israel expelled and drove out some 300,000 Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and the [Syrian] Golan Heights. And as in 1948, the expulsion included killing civilians, sowing terror in Arab communities, looting and ultimately, destruction.”
Having managed in 1967 to again expel large numbers of Palestinians, the next task – as in 1948 – was to prevent their return.
Uri Avnery, a journalist and member of the Israeli parliament, recorded testimonies from soldiers stationed at the borders with Jordan and Egypt, into which Palestinians had been expelled. The soldiers’ job was to murder any Palestinian families trying to get back to their homes.
Here is one soldier’s testimony, reported by Haaretz, that Avnery noted in his autobiography:
We blocked these crossings and received orders to shoot to kill, without prior warning. Indeed, such shots were fired every night at men, women and children, even on moonlit nights when it was possible to identify those crossing. That is, to distinguish between men and women and children.
In the morning, we would go out to scan the area, and we would kill, by explicit order of the officer present, those who were alive, including those hiding and the wounded. After the killing was over, we would cover the bodies with dirt until a tractor arrived.
Today’s Israeli whistleblowers warn that this military doctrine is unchanged…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Erasing context
As the US cosmologist Carl Sagan famously observed: “You have to know the past to understand the present.”
Which is precisely why western politicians and media have been so careful to strip out the past, excising the context and background, such as Israel’s violent ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1948 and 1967, that explain Israel’s behaviour in the present – in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon.
Western audiences, deprived of the region’s history, have been more easily manipulated into believing that Israeli atrocities are a response – and a supposedly “proportionate” one, at that – to Hamas’ one-day attack on Israel in late 2023.
An obvious truth has been obscured: that for at least eight decades, Israel has been exploiting any opportunity it could find to expel the Palestinians from their homeland……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Prisons of complicity
Gaza is not an aberration. It is fully in accord with an eight-decade-long Israeli military strategy. Westerners aren’t aware of that only because their political and media class have worked strenuously to stop them from learning about it…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2026-06-12/israel-gaza-genocide-planned/
Gaza’s 1000-Day Siege: A Catastrophic Humanitarian Collapse Across Health, Food, and Human Life
Lee Siu Hin – Palestine Watch, Global South News, July 6, 2026
As the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip marks its 1000th day on July 2, 2026, the enclave of over 2.1 million Palestinians stands on the brink of total humanitarian collapse. 70 % The Gaza Strip is under occupation control following the expansion of the “Yellow Line,” amid ongoing displacement of border communities The Israeli Occupied Forces (IOF) siege has systematically dismantled every foundational pillar of human survival: healthcare infrastructure, food security, clean water access, educational systems, and psychological well-being.
Data compiled from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO), UN humanitarian bodies, and Medics Worldwide’s periodic reports, compiled by Doban AI analysis, paints a harrowing portrait of sustained destruction, mass mortality, and intergenerational trauma. This article analyzes the multifaceted humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza after 1000 days of siege, integrating empirical statistical data, healthcare operational maps, and crisis trend charts to document the scale of human suffering and structural collapse.
Overall Demographic and Casualty Catastrophe After 1000 Days
The 1000-day IOF genocide and siege has inflicted unprecedented human loss, turning Gaza into a graveyard for ordinary civilians, with women and children bearing the brunt of the violence. According to the 2026 genocide repercussion report, the cumulative death toll since October 2023 has reached 73,066 fatalities, with total injuries soaring to 173,514. Among the victims, civilian children account for the most devastating proportion of casualties, highlighting the targeted destruction of Gaza’s future generations.
Child-specific mortality and injury data reveal a relentless humanitarian tragedy: 21,730 children have been killed, 45,113 children injured, and 59,054 children orphaned over the 1000-day period. On average, one child dies every 52 minutes in Gaza’s ongoing conflict. The crisis has also left permanent physical disabilities on thousands of young lives, with 1,134 children suffering amputations. Alarmingly, 565 infants have been born and killed amid the war, while 1,078 infants under one year old have lost their lives, reflecting the total breakdown of maternal and infant care systems across the strip.
Beyond direct violence, the siege has triggered a public health disaster for women and their reproductive health. Official statistics show the genocide had created 28,224 widows, 57% of pregnant women in Gaza suffer from severe anemia, while over 900 spontaneous abortions are recorded monthly, driven by environmental pollution, rodent infestations, and rampant epidemic outbreaks. The maternal mortality rate has surged dramatically in recent years, rising from 13.5 per 100,000 live births in 2022 to 33.4 per 100,000 live births in 2025, a more than twofold increase that underscores the collapse of reproductive healthcare services.
Systematic Collapse of Gaza’s Healthcare System
After 1000 days of targeted destruction and resource blockade, Gaza’s healthcare system is inches away from total standstill, with systematic attacks on medical infrastructure, severe drug shortages, and massive attrition of medical personnel. IOF have targeted every formal medical facility in the strip, with 40 out of 40 hospitals and 158 out of 158 primary healthcare centers (PHCs) subject to deliberate attacks. Of Gaza’s core medical facilities, only 29 Ministry of Health hospitals remain partially operational, while 11 are completely out of service; 94 PHCs function at reduced capacity, and 64 have been fully disabled.
The scale of medical infrastructure destruction extends far beyond building damage. Official records document 216 targeted attacks on ambulances, 825 overall violations of healthcare facility; 1,723 heath personal were killed, 362 were detained by Israel; and the destruction of critical medical equipment essential for life-saving care. Key destroyed assets include 25 of 35 oxygen stations, 61 of 110 power generators, all 7 MRI machines, and 13 of 17 CT scanners. Compounding equipment losses, the sector faces catastrophic supply shortages: 87% of laboratory consumables and diagnostic assays are completely depleted, eliminating the ability to conduct routine medical testing and disease diagnosis. Zero drug stock, a total depletion of medications for kidney, cancer, and hemophilia patients.
Dire Operational Situation of Gaza’s Regional Medical Facilities (June–July 2026)…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Catastrophic Food Insecurity and Malnutrition Crisis…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Environmental Degradation and Public Health Epidemics………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Mental Health Collapse and Lost Generational Futures……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Conclusion: A Century of Displacement and Unresolved Human Suffering
Since the October 2023 “ceasefire” agreements—largely unenforced paper promises—1,031 additional martyrs and 3,309 new wounded civilians have been recorded as of late June, proving that temporary truces have failed to curb civilian mortality and medical suffering.
After 1000 days of relentless siege, the Gaza Strip has transitioned from a state of humanitarian crisis to a state of structural societal collapse. The systematic destruction of healthcare, food, water, education, and economic systems has created an intergenerational catastrophe whose impacts will persist for decades. Gaza’s Palestinian refugee crisis, already the longest-running modern displacement crisis, has been exponentially exacerbated: 42% of Palestine’s total population are refugees, with 6.2 million UNRWA-registered Palestinian refugees worldwide, and over 9 million total displaced Palestinians globally.
Every statistical indicator, infrastructure assessment, and human story confirms that Gaza stands inches away from absolute ruin—on the brink of total famine, healthcare shutdown, environmental collapse, and generational psychological destruction. Despite international humanitarian efforts and temporary medical support from regional teams, the ongoing siege, infrastructure destruction, and resource blockades continue to kill civilians, medical staffs, humanitarian workers and journalists dare to speak, daily.
We need more aid, but more important, we need justice: Free Palestine, break the siege and end of the genocide.
Palestine Watch https://www.PalestineWatch.net
Panda Aid https://www.PandaAid.org
Refence:
1) August 22, 2025 IPC: Gaza Strip Acute Food Insecurity Malnutrition July- Sept 2025 Special Snapshot
2) July 3 2026: MWW-Periodic Report NO. 35
https://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/Gaza/July2026_1000Days/July_3_26–MWW-Periodic_Report_NO35.pdf
3) July 3 2026: Genocidal repercussions of the Israeli aggression 2026(1000 Day) English
The Zionist Plan for a Concentration Camp in Gaza
Israel moves to intern 600,000 Palestinians in the “most moral concentration camp in the world.”
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire Jul 10, 2026
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno. These should be destinations Israeli Jews remember and abhor, and yet we are told, by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (PDF), that a concentration camp in the works on the ethnic cleansed ruin of Rafah is somehow not only moral, but the most moral concentration camp in the world.
The support given by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the criminal plan being promoted by Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, involving the construction of a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah, which would incarcerate all the enclave’s residents, is a moral and historic nadir for the State of Israel and the Jewish people. No matter how they try in Israel to wrap this move with laundered epithets, they are talking about a concentration camp.
The Zionist state, according to Katz, plans to herd 600,000 Palestinians currently forced to shelter in tents and makeshift homes within the coastal al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza to an area in the ruins of Rafah city. “Eventually, the entire civilian population of over two million in Gaza would be confined to this small ‘city,’” the Middle East Eye reports.
Katz said that once concentrated in the new city, Palestinians would be encouraged to “voluntarily” leave the Gaza Strip for other countries, as part of an “emigration plan” he said “will happen”.
In July, 2025 the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) proposed a “Humanitarian Transit Area” where Gaza residents would “temporarily reside, deradicalise, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so,” Al Jazeera reported. GHF operated food distribution sites outside the United Nations system.
Humanitarian aid organizations and UN-affiliated experts say GHF previously violated humanitarian principles by directing civilians to hazardous militarized aid sites instead of establishing a neutral network. The BBC reported that more than 500 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid since the GHF began operating in May, 2025. Oxfam and Save the Children report Israeli forces and armed groups “routinely” fired on Palestinians seeking aid. GHF ended its operation in late 2025.
In March, the RAND Corporation published Pursuing Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration in Gaza: A Critical Pathway to a Durable Peace. The white paper follows a Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) three-stage strategy used by UN Peacekeeping to transition war-torn societies to peace.
The RAND report does not take into account Israeli policies of settlement expansion, collective punishment, arbitrary imprisonment, and periodically “mowing the grass,” that to say conducting violent raids into Gaza. Decades of Zionist mistreatment of Palestinians naturally perpetuates radicalization and determined resistance.
The Strategic Hamlet Program
In 1962, the administration of Ngo Dinh Diem, in collaboration with the Kennedy administration, initiated the counterinsurgency Strategic Hamlet Program in South Vietnam. This rural pacification initiative involved relocating South Vietnamese villagers into barbed-wired “protected hamlets,”…………………………………
The French constructed “protective villages” in Tonkin, later known as agrovilles,…………
The Malaysian strategic villages were established in the 1950s under the Briggs Plan, a British counterinsurgency population-control and resettlement program……………….
British Concentration Camps in South Africa………………………………
Violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s “New Rafah” plan is a high-tech version of previous concentration camps. In a similar fashion to the Strategic Hamlet Program and the Boer camps in South Africa, “New Rafah” is primarily intended to separate Palestinian civilians from Hamas and prepare for the forced migration of two million people (despite the fact few if any countries are willing to take ethnically cleansed Palestinians)……………………………………. https://anotherdayintheempire.substack.com/p/the-zionist-plan-for-a-concentration
Gaza: How We’re Learning to see the AI-Driven Genocide
“Indeed, this is the first genocide in history where artificial intelligence has been deployed as a primary tool for slaughter and devastation. Furthermore, this genocide is backed by a dedicated propaganda apparatus designed to instantly rationalize every atrocity.“
June 28, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/28/gaza-how-were-learning-to-see-the-ai-driven-genocide/
People can be consciously aware of atrocities without experiencing the moral outrage those horrors warrant. This emotional detachment is particularly pronounced when atrocities target “those who are different,” occur in seemingly “remote” lands, or repeat so frequently that they dissolve into a familiar, predictable monotony. Psychological frameworks explain this affective insularity through cognitive biases like the “just-world fallacy,” which blocks empathy in otherwise deserving cases to protect one’s own psychological comfort. Alternatively, it manifests as victim-blaming to rationalize aligning with the oppressor, or as compliance with propaganda narratives designed to dehumanize victims and render them unworthy of concern.
The rendering of atrocities into something ordinary through repetitive exposure systematically erodes the human capacity for a fittingly shocked response. This was vividly demonstrated as Israeli forces systematically targeted hospitals across the Gaza Strip one after another, until such strikes became routine footnotes in daily news cycles. A similar desensitization occurred regarding the targeted attacks on United Nations facilities. Once an initial war crime is permitted to pass, its predictable repetition fosters a form of emotional conditioning among the public—even alongside the abstract knowledge that a grave violation is occurring. The global public has grown accustomed to watching high-rise residential blocks collapse in seconds under Israeli bombardment. Consequently, this recurring crime no longer registers as an anomaly, so long as it remains confined to Gaza.
This shift can be measured by comparing the fierce global condemnation that followed the May 15, 2021, destruction of Gaza City’s 11-story al-Jalaa Tower with the relative apathy with which the systematic destruction of Gaza’s remaining residential high-rises through a series of Israeli airstrikes was met in September 2025. Breaking free from this paralyzing sense of desensitisation is a profound challenge if our world is to avoid acclimatizing to atrocities in the twenty-first century.
Another critical dilemma is that our perception of the gravity of such brutality can be disrupted when they are executed through modern, highly sophisticated tools.
“Human horror is easily triggered by the primal image of a vicious killer in ragged clothes holding a blood-dripping blade over a helpless victim. Yet, that killer becomes entirely invisible when stationed in a distant control room, calmly orchestrating mass slaughter against innocent civilians in Gaza by pressing glowing buttons while sipping American coffee in front of a screen—a method inherently more efficient than a primitive blade.“
This dilemma deepens when the act of killing is fully outsourced to technology, such as unmanned drones or autonomous AI-driven targeting systems, both of which the Israeli occupation military relied upon to perpetrate genocidal atrocities in Gaza. While this modern machinery is faster, deadlier, and vastly more devastating than primitive butchery, it acts as a powerful buffer, inducing a profound emotional numbness toward the horrors being inflicted.
Modern brutality often wears friendly masks that shield the observer from immediate shock or revulsion. It does not slit children’s throats with knives; instead, it obliterates their bodies entirely. At times, children literally vaporize under the impact of advanced, multi-ton munitions dropped onto impoverished refugee camps. The viewer is ultimately presented with nothing but a massive crater, concealing the gruesome details of mass slaughter and vast destruction. Despite this, numerous Israeli officers and soldiers have refused to suppress their appetite for hunting humans, abusing captives, and indulging in primal cruelties—frequently filming their actions to boast about them on social media.
It is vital to recognize how this genocide has operated on a scale that completely caught contemporary generations off guard. Many believed that such staggering atrocities belonged strictly to a black-and-white past, assuming that fascism and war crimes would only reappear alongside the vintage, recognizable imagery of defunct regimes. The human psyche was unprepared to comprehend that a twenty-first-century genocide could be so highly organized, technologically advanced, and meticulously targeted.
“Indeed, this is the first genocide in history where artificial intelligence has been deployed as a primary tool for slaughter and devastation. Furthermore, this genocide is backed by a dedicated propaganda apparatus designed to instantly rationalize every atrocity.“
It deploys tightly woven narratives delivered by leaders, spokespersons, and commentators skilled in rhetorical evasion and body language, all working in tandem to divert global attention away from the killing fields of the Gaza Strip.
Awakening the human conscience to the reality of the horrific genocide perpetrated in the Gaza Strip for at least two years demands an unrelenting effort to expose its chapters, re-open its cases, and launch intensive, coordinated initiatives. These efforts must elevate field testimonies and documented facts from independent international reports into the active domain of human awareness. It is only fair to acknowledge that significant journalistic, creative, and grassroots efforts have been made worldwide in this regard, but the sheer duration of this genocide demands increasingly creative and unyielding approaches.
Consider the profound impact of reimagining the scenes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, total destruction, and manufactured starvation through diverse literary, artistic, and cinematic works. Such creative interventions can produce world-class, brilliant pieces, even if Hollywood and mainstream institutions maintain their traditional indifference toward Palestine. Imagine visual works depicting this modern genocide in stark black-and-white, a stylistic choice that emotionally and intellectually links Gaza to past mass killings and crimes against humanity already solidified in the global conscience. This framing positions Gaza’s horrors as a logical continuation of historical brutality, which they undeniably are. This approach has already been successfully championed by highly conscious grassroots movements. For instance, in the Basque Region of Spain, highly artistic public demonstrations have repeatedly linked the atrocities in Gaza to the horrors of Guernica, famously immortalized by Pablo Picasso in 1937. Such initiatives are indispensable to confronting and exposing the deep-seated tendency of genocide denial pushed by prominent global leaders and elites.
“Humanizing the victims is an indispensable entry point; they must be given recognizable faces, familiar names, and stories to be told. This begins by invoking individuals like the child Hind Rajab, the academic and poet Refaat Alareer, or the abducted physician Hussam Abu Safiye, among countl“
We must unearth the latent human symbolism embedded within this landscape of tragedy and profound moral fortitude. We also need the symbolism of the place itself. The crowded sites of destruction and resilience throughout Gaza must move the human conscience through uncovering of stories currently buried beneath the rubble.”
Presenting these faces, names, and details with the dignity they deserve is capable of stirring a global sense of shared humanity and moral alignment with those targeted by this genocide—an atrocity the world has watched live on mobile screens for at least two full years. We must collectively internalize that the displaced, starving child is everyone’s child. The grandmother whose frail body was crushed beneath collapsing walls, left trapped until her final breath, is everyone’s grandmother. The same holds true for the mothers, the sick, and the disabled. It is no exaggeration to recognize that the victims are us. An assault on them is an assault on the very fabric of human life and dignity. The dismantling of international law and universal values means that every one of us is directly affected by these horrific violations, regardless of how they are spun by sophisticated propaganda or sustained through international complicity. Transforming an overwhelming statistical body of victims into deeply personal stories and recognizable symbols is an urgent necessity if we are to escape the trap of statistical reductionism, which reduces human beings to mere numbers devoid of feeling.
Awakening this human consciousness is the ultimate key to compelling individuals worldwide to honour their ethical commitments, translating empty slogans into concrete action. It is the catalyst needed to pressure the enablers of genocide and challenge those political discourses that insult public intelligence and moral decency. When these deeper human impulses are awakened, people will naturally discover their roles in confronting this pervasive injustice and aggression. This emotional awakening will pave the way for sustained mobilization, converting raw sentiment into tangible pressure, accountability, and justice—ensuring that the horrific genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza remains at the centre of global consciousness for generations to come.
The Gaza Ethnic Cleansing Agenda Continues To Roll Forward
Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 03, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-gaza-ethnic-cleansing-agenda?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=204779474&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
As both US and Israeli leaders openly contemplate attacking Iran again, it’s easy for the world to miss the fact that the genocidal alliance has also dramatically reinvigorated its ethnic cleansing agendas in Gaza.
The Adelson-owned pro-Netanyahu outlet Israel Hayom reports that in the coming weeks the so-called “Board of Peace” overseeing life in the Gaza Strip is planning to relocate Palestinians to “humanitarian shelters” that are not under Hamas control.
Israel Hayom reports that an area near the destroyed city of Rafah is the first location where such camps will be set up. This is noteworthy because one year ago defense minister Israel Katz stated that there was a plan to construct a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah, where “the emigration plan” for the Palestinians would then be implemented, adding that Benjamin Netanyahu was working on finding foreign nations to accept the population of Gaza.
It’s hard to ignore the similarities. Both accounts even state that the plan is to police the displaced Palestinians using an international force. The 2026 Israel Hayom report states that the camps will be overseen by “multinational forces under the Board of Peace’s management”, and Israel Katz stated in 2025 that Israel is seeking international partners to manage the zone.
So to be clear, in July of last year Israeli officials were publicly stating that they were going to build a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah to house the Palestinians under international supervision while working to relocate them from their homeland to other countries, and in July of this year we learn that we will soon see Palestinians in Gaza relocated to “humanitarian shelters” near Rafah overseen by international forces.
So it sounds like the same plan. If it is, then it’s a plan for ethnic cleansing.
Israel has already expanded its control over Gaza from 53 percent to 70 percent of the Strip, concentrating the survivors of the genocide into a mere 30 percent of the Palestinian territory. And now, according to Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen, the plan is to expand control to 100 percent.
Israel National News quotes Cohen as saying during a recent radio interview that “our control of the territory will only continue to expand until we reach 100%,” adding, “two months ago we controlled 53% of the Strip, about a month ago around 60%, and today we’re approaching 70% of the Strip’s area.”
This comes amid other reports we discussed recently which strongly indicate that the Trumpanyahu administration is renewing its push to remove all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The other day we learned from the Israeli press that Israel’s national security agencies had been instructed to rebrand the ethnic cleansing plan as a “plan for free movement” in order to mitigate international resistance to the agenda. A few days before that, we learned that Israel’s new national security chief had convened a meeting with officials from the IDF and Shin Bet to discuss the plan to displace the Palestinians of Gaza to other countries.
Again, Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza have always been about ethnic cleansing from the very beginning. Within days of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry was circulating a plan for the entire population of Gaza to be moved to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and an Israeli think tank had drawn up a strategy for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”
The goal has always been to remove the Palestinians from Gaza so their territory can be taken from them. This was never anything other than a blatant Israeli land grab. They’ve been framing it as a “war” so that after they seize and colonize Gaza they can say “the Arabs fought a war and lost, they deserved to lose territory” like they always do, but it was never actually a war.
Calling the Gaza genocide a “war” is like seeing a man beating up a toddler and calling it a “fight”. It’s one of the world’s most sophisticated military forces raining explosives on an area packed full of children with the backing of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, opposed only by a few thousand guys running around in sandals with homemade rockets and ancient Kalashnikovs.
That’s not a war. It’s an ethnic cleansing operation. That’s all this has ever been.
They’re Still Pushing The Ethnic Cleansing Of Gaza
Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 29, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/theyre-still-pushing-the-ethnic-cleansing?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=204102630&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel is still pushing for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They keep trying different angles and rebranding it under different names, but the end goal has remained the same since October 2023: the removal of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
From The Times of Israel:
“Israel is seeking to revive its moribund plan for the voluntary migration of Gazans out of the Strip, and has rebranded it in an effort to soften the blanket international opposition to it, Channel 13 news reports, citing unnamed Israeli officials.
“Security agencies have in recent days been told to abandon the “voluntary migration” title due to the global opposition, and it will from now on be officially referred to as a ‘plan for free movement,’ the report says.
“The network cites officials familiar with ties with countries that could potentially receive Gazans as voicing optimism that the terminology change will persuade them to drop their current refusal to cooperate with the plan, and recruit other countries.
“A senior Israeli official is quoted as saying Jerusalem wants as many Gazans as possible to leave the Strip, viewing this as contributing to any future plan implemented in the territory.”
From the early months of the Gaza holocaust, Israel apologists had been referring to the ethnic cleansing agenda as a plan for the “voluntary migration” of Gaza’s inhabitants. This framing conveniently ignored the fact that you cannot destroy a populated area and deliberately make it uninhabitable and then say the inhabitants of that area are leaving “voluntarily”.
According to a Haaretz report that was published last week, Israel’s new National Security Council chief convened a meeting of top national security officials to discuss the issue of “encouraging the voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
And now they’re rebranding the initiative as “a plan of free movement”, which is just so fucking Israeli. They never stop doing the evil thing, they just play around with the words people say about it, like how Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced last year that it was going to stop referring to its propaganda operations as “hasbara” due to the public revulsion that has developed around that label. They never say “It’s time to stop doing the things that cause people to hate us,” they just say “It’s time for a rebrand.”
And to be clear, the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza is already well underway. Israel now controls more than 60 percent of Gaza, and the IDF has been instructed to expand it to 70 percent. The survivors of the genocide have already been shifted and concentrated into a steadily shrinking thirty some-odd percent of the Strip, while Israel attempts diplomatic maneuvers to persuade foreign states to take them in.
Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza have always been about ethnic cleansing, from the very beginning. Within days of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry was circulating a plan for the entire population of Gaza to be moved to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and an Israeli think tank had drawn up a strategy for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”
They had these plans locked and loaded and ready to go because the elimination of Palestinians from the Palestinian territories has always been the goal.
Israel has been scheming to purge the Palestinians from the enclave and relocate them to other countries for generations. There’s a 1970 article from Life Magazine talking about how the Israelis see relocating Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula as the only viable path to peace, adding that “The problem is that the people of Gaza don’t want to go.”
historian Benny Morris writes that the agenda to “transfer” Palestinians to other countries has existed for as long as modern Zionism:
“The idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century. And driving it was an iron logic: There could be no viable Jewish state in all or part of Palestine unless there was a mass displacement of Arab inhabitants, who opposed its emergence and would constitute an active or potential fifth column in its midst. This logic was understood, and enunciated, before and during 1948, by Zionist, Arab and British leaders and officials.
“As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl, the prophet and founder of Zionism, wrote in his diary in anticipation of the establishment of the Jewish state: ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country … The removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.’”
So Israel was founded on the premise that the country’s previous inhabitants need to be eliminated in some way.
That’s all this has ever been about.
It was never about October 7.
It was never about Hamas.
It was never about hostages.
It was never about terrorism.
It was never about self-defense.
It was never about any of the countless excuses the hasbarists and imperial spinmeisters have offered up over the last three years to justify Israel’s monstrous abuses.
It was only ever about eliminating Palestinians because of their ethnicity and replacing them with Jews.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
Obliterating Gaza’s Children: The Damning UN Report
SCHEERPOST, June 27, 2026, Dan Steinbock Informed Comment
From Gaza and beyond, Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children. It is in line with the new Obliteration Doctrine and the topic of a new UN report.
When I was working on The Fall of Israel (2024) and particularly The Obliteration Doctrine (2025), what I found most repulsive was the targeting of children in the Gaza Strip.
By late 2024, the testimonies of health professionals on location indicated that the deaths of many children in Gaza were not just collateral damage, but outcomes of deliberate, targeted actions.
The testimony of Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a young American trauma and general surgeon who had volunteered in Palestine including the European Hospital in Khan Younis, was particularly compelling.
“I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones,” Sidhwa said. “But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die.”
The statement of Dr. Sidhwa, who subsequently became one of the endorsers of my book, The Obliteration Doctrine, was supported by dozens of other remarkable and courageous medical volunteers in Gaza. And these testimonies, in turn, have been supported by many reports of multiple international NGOs and multilateral organizations.
So, the latest report of the UN Independent International Commission is hardly new. Nonetheless, it is among the most consequential documents to emerge from the Gaza war. Its conclusion is stark: Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, actions that the Commission argues constitute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The Commission’s findings
The Commission’s report concludes that the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children is not incidental collateral damage but part of a recurring pattern of conduct. In line with the Genocide Convention, it argues that such actions are a key indicator of genocidal intent because they strike at the future existence of the Palestinian people.
According to the inquiry, more than 20,000 Palestinian children were killed between October 2023 and October 2025, representing roughly 30 percent of all fatalities, while over 44,000 were injured. Even since the October 2025 ceasefire, at least 265 children have been killed by Israeli military fire, and 400 more injured, many of them with “catastrophic” wounds.
Children and the logic of genocide
In The Obliteration Doctrine, I showed that modern warfare in Gaza evolved beyond traditional military objectives toward the destruction of the social foundations of Palestinian existence. The Commission’s findings reinforce this interpretation.
Historically, genocide scholars have emphasized that attacks on children occupy a unique place in genocidal campaigns. The 1948 Genocide Convention identifies not only direct killing but also the infliction of conditions calculated to destroy a protected group. In Gaza, famine served the same genocidal function as starvation in the Warsaw ghetto.
Children embody demographic continuity, cultural reproduction, and collective future. Consequently, systematic violence against children has appeared repeatedly in cases later recognized as genocide, from the Armenian genocide to Rwanda.
The Commission explicitly states that targeting children attacks “the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and determine their future.” Its findings connect killings to broader patterns: destruction of schools, hospitals, pediatric facilities, neonatal care units, food systems, and water infrastructure.
That’s the ultimate objective: the genocide and ecocide of Palestine, its culture and children. Israel’s devastation of Lebanon follows in the footprints.
From an empirical perspective, the cumulative effect is measurable. Public-health research consistently demonstrates that childhood exposure to mass violence produces lifelong deficits in physical health, educational attainment, psychological resilience, and economic productivity.
Israel did not triumph in Gaza. Moral darkness did.
Human cost beyond death statistics……………………………………………………………………
Hind Rajab, the voice that refuses to disappear…………………………………………………………………………….
High technology and moral decay……………………………………………………………….
The cost to Israeli society and soldiers………………………………………………………
If Gaza becomes the new norm
The broader international implications may be even more alarming. If the deliberate targeting of children becomes normalized, the consequences extend far, far beyond the Middle East.
International humanitarian law depends fundamentally on protecting civilians, especially children. If powerful states can openly disregard these norms without meaningful accountability, the deterrent effect of international law weakens everywhere.
Empirical evidence suggests that impunity encourages repetition. The failures to prevent atrocities in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur contributed to future violations by signaling weak enforcement. Conversely, successful accountability mechanisms have historically reduced recurrence.
The risks include greater regional radicalization, transnational terrorism, refugee flows, intensified great-power rivalry, erosion of international institutions, and the spread of increasingly unrestricted warfare.
In The Obliteration Doctrine, I warned repeatedly that what happened in Gaza won’t stay in Gaza. The Strip became a laboratory for new forms of warfare later exported elsewhere.
The Commission’s findings raise precisely that concern. If the systematic destruction of children, schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure becomes accepted in one conflict, future belligerents may invoke the precedent.
The ultimate question raised by the report is therefore not only what happened to Gaza’s children. It is whether the international community is willing to preserve the principle that children remain beyond the reach of war itself.
For if that principle fails in Gaza, it will not survive elsewhere.
Dan Steinbock is the author of The Obliteration Doctrine and The Fall of Israel, . He is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/27/obliterating-gazas-children-the-damning-un-report/
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