Israeli Defense Minister says half a million Palestinians in Gaza City will be considered ‘terrorists’ if they don’t evacuate.

One of the most devastating aspects of the ongoing Israeli campaign has been the phenomenon of what locals call the use of remote-controlled “robots” rigged with explosives and sent into dense built-up areas to be detonated, causing widespread destruction………….. each of these explosions equals the explosive force of two heavy air missiles. 

With at least half a million people still left in Gaza City, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a “final warning” for residents to evacuate, saying those who remain will soon be regarded as “terrorists or terrorist supporters.”

By Qassam Muaddi  October 1, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/israeli-defense-minister-says-half-a-million-palestinians-in-gaza-city-will-be-considered-terrorists-if-they-dont-evacuate/

The Israeli army just announced that it won’t allow Palestinians in central and southern Gaza to travel north to Gaza City. Movement will only be allowed to leave the city for the south, the Israeli army said in a statement. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also said that this was the Palestinians’ “last warning” to leave Gaza City, adding that anyone who remains will be considered “terrorists or terrorist supporters.”

An estimated 500,000 Palestinians remain in Gaza City, who are now officially cut off from any provisions coming from the south, including food, water, fuel, and medicine. To the north, Gaza City is completely sealed off from northern Gaza, including the cities of Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun, where the Israeli army is operating and has emptied of most of its inhabitants.

The announcement comes two days after the Trump administration announced its new plan for the end of the war on Gaza, amid an intensification of Israel’s campaign in Gaza City ahead of its planned occupation in the coming days or hours. According to the Israeli army, some 700,000 Palestinians have left, leaving at least 500,000 Palestinians still within the city. As of last Monday, September 29, half a million Palestinians remain trapped there, occupying a space of less than 8 square kilometers, UNRWA spokesperson Adnan Abu Hasna said.

The slow pace of evacuations from the city for the central and southern parts of the Strip had forced the Israeli army to delay sending in the third of its three military divisions (the 36th division), finally pushing it into Gaza last week.

Israel’s Channel 12 quoted military sources saying that the occupation would take up to three months, according to a report airing on September 16. The Israeli channel had reported earlier in August of disagreements between the Israeli army and the Israeli cabinet on the timing of the scheduled invasion. The cabinet insists on a faster operation, while the army prefers to conduct operations at a slower pace.

According to the Israeli daily Maariv, the Israeli army is avoiding combat with Palestinian resistance fighters, concentrating on air and artillery strikes to increase pressure on residents before sending in ground troops. Yet armored Israeli vehicles have still reached several areas, including the vital Jalaa street and the vicinity of the al-Shifa Hospital.

Despite the slow advance of ground forces, aerial and artillery bombardment has been relentless, sowing overwhelming destruction. Already, the iconic Shuja’iyya district in eastern Gaza City has been completely flattened, 90% of the Tuffah district has been destroyed, and 300 buildings have been demolished in Gaza’s largest neighborhood, Zeitoun.

In addition to entire residential blocks, Israeli strikes have targeted universities, where thousands of displaced Palestinians have taken shelter. 

Remote-controlled ‘robots’ rigged to explode

One of the most devastating aspects of the ongoing Israeli campaign has been the phenomenon of what locals call the use of remote-controlled “robots” rigged with explosives and sent into dense built-up areas to be detonated, causing widespread destruction.

The deadly weapon is essentially an outdated Israeli armored personnel carrier (APC), which is retrofitted with large amounts of explosives and sent into neighborhoods. According to a report by Israeli army radio reporter Doron Kadosh, aired on September 21, each of these explosions equals the explosive force of two heavy air missiles. 

The report pointed out that each APC explosion sends fragments across 500 square meters, turning the sky red for several seconds and pulverizing anything — including bodies — in its perimeter. The report confirmed that the Israeli army has been using these weapons “at an industrial scale,” detonating dozens of APCs in Gaza City every day, especially at night.

Meanwhile, Nibal Farsakh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), told Al-Araby TV on Wednesday that the only two hospitals still operating in Gaza City are the al-Ahli Arab Hospital and the al-Quds Hospital, which is also owned by PRCS. Both hospitals are running without essential medical supplies, and access to al-Quds Hospital has been cut off by Israeli forces for the past nine days, Farsakh said, adding that the hospital can only treat the patients already inside it.

Farsakh said that the hospital is using its last stock of oxygen canisters, which are about to run out at any moment, warning that today’s blockade on the only way into the city puts thousands of patients at risk. Farsakh noted that as large numbers of wounded individuals have continued to require treatment, most essential medicines and medical supplies have run out.

If Gaza City falls

Amid the offensive, Palestinians are practically trapped in the city. Moving south is only possible through vehicles that charge up to 8,000 shekels per trip (about $2,420), with long delays due to the high volume of requests. For thousands of families, the only alternative is to flee on foot, which is impossible for the elderly, the sick, and the wounded. Many of them have already fled Israeli strikes numerous times.

Although most Palestinians from north Gaza have already fled the cities of Jabalia and Beit Lahia, which have been completely destroyed, most of them moved a short distance south to Gaza City. 

The majority of them had fled during the Israeli operation between October and December of 2024, dubbed “the Generals’ Plan.” The majority of these displaced Palestinians returned to the destroyed north during the ceasefire between January and March of this year. After Israel broke the ceasefire, most Palestinians remained in the north, exhausted by the displacement they had already experienced since October 2023, especially after Israel bombed places to which they had fled in the south that the army designated as “safe zones.”

The Palestinians who have already fled Gaza City have concentrated in the central Gaza Strip, in and around the cities of Deir Al-Balah, Khan Younis, and the coastal Mawasi area. These areas have been crowded with tent encampments for almost two years.

A Palestinian displaced from Gaza City in Mawasi, who asked not to be named, told Mondoweiss that “there is no place left in Mawasi, not even for a needle.” He noted that “people are expanding the tent encampments into the areas in Khan Younis controlled by the Israeli army, which is putting their lives at risk.” 

“They’ve been removing the rubble of other people’s homes with their bare hands for days, just to make some room for another tent,” he said.

Another Palestinian who remains in Gaza City told Mondoweiss that “we had a difficult and long discussion inside my family over moving out or not, and decided to split.” 

“My mother and two sisters left to the south, and my father and I remained,” they said. “The moment we said goodbye was the most difficult of my entire life. I hugged my mother for several minutes, and we both wept, as neither of us knew if we were going to see each other again.”

Gaza City is the largest urban center in the Strip, and is 5,000 years old. It has been an economic and cultural hub for a millennia. 

Now Palestinians fear that Israel plans on wiping it out entirely, the same way it did with Rafah, which has now been completely leveled. If Gaza City meets the same fate, it would be the end of the Gaza Strip as we know it.

October 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Israel has officially moved on from destroying Hamas to erasing Palestine

By Murad Sadygzade, President of the Middle East Studies Center, Visiting Lecturer, HSE University (Moscow), 5 Sept 25, https://www.rt.com/news/624181-israel-hamas-erase-palestine/

Despite objections from across the world, Netanyahu’s government is redrawing the map with tank tracks.

In early August, Benjamin Netanyahu dispelled any lingering ambiguity. In a direct interview with Fox News, he made explicit what had long been implied through diplomatic euphemisms: Israel intends to take full military control of the Gaza, dismantle Hamas as a political and military entity, and eventually transfer authority to a “non-Hamas civilian administration,” ideally with Arab participation.

“We’re not going to govern Gaza,” the prime minister added. But even then, the formula of “seize but not rule” read more like a diplomatic veil for a much harsher course of action.

The very next day, Israel’s security cabinet gave formal approval to this trajectory, initiating preparations for an assault on Gaza City. The UN secretary-general responded swiftly, warning that such an operation risked a dangerous escalation and threatened to normalize what had once been an avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.

August exposed the war in its most unforgiving clarity. Strikes on Zeitoun, Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and operations in the Jabalia area became a part of the daily rhythm. The encirclement of Gaza City tightened slowly but relentlessly. Brigadier General Effi Defrin confirmed the launch of a new phase, with troops reaching the city’s outskirts. At the same time, the government called up tens of thousands of reservists in a clear signal that Israel was prepared to take the city by force, even if the window for a negotiated pause technically remained open.

In this context, talk of “stabilization” rings hollow. Infrastructure lies in ruins, the healthcare system is on the verge of collapse, aid lines often end under fire, and international monitoring groups are recording signs of impending famine. The conflict is no longer a conventional war between armies. It is taking on the contours of a managed disintegration of civilian life.

But Gaza is not the whole picture. On the West Bank, the logic of military control is being formalized both legally and spatially. On July 23, the Knesset voted by majority to adopt a declaration advocating the extension of Israeli sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley. While framed as a recommendation, the move effectively normalizes institutionalizing the erosion of previously drawn red lines.

It is within this framework that the E1 plan of Israeli settlements in the West Bank must be understood as a critical link in the eastern belt surrounding Jerusalem. On August 20, the Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration gave the green light for the construction of over 3,400 housing units between East Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim. For urban planners, it’s about “filling in the gaps” between existing developments. For policymakers and military officials, it represents a strategic pivot.

First, E1 aims to create a continuous Jewish presence encircling Jerusalem and to merge Ma’ale Adumim into the city’s urban fabric. This reinforces the eastern flank of the capital, provides strategic depth, and secures Highway 1 – the vital corridor to the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley.

Second, it severs East Jerusalem from its natural Palestinian hinterland. E1 physically blocks the West Bank’s access to the eastern part of the city, cutting East Jerusalem off from Ramallah in the north and Bethlehem in the south.

Third, it dismantles the territorial continuity of any future Palestinian state. Instead of a unified space, a network of isolated enclaves emerges – linked by bypass roads and tunnels that fail to compensate for the loss of direct access to Jerusalem, both symbolic and administrative.

Fourth, it seeks to shift the debate over Jerusalem’s status from the realm of diplomacy into the realm of irrevocable facts. Once the eastern belt is built up, the vision of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state becomes almost impossible to realize.

Finally, E1 embodies two opposing principles: for Israelis, a “managed continuity” of control; for Palestinians, a “managed vacuum” of governance. One side gains an uninterrupted corridor of dominance, the other is left with a fragmented territory and diminished prospects for self-determination.

It is no surprise, then, that international reaction was swift and unambiguous from the UN and EU to London and Canberra. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, commenting on the launch of E1, said out loud what the maps had already suggested: the project would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.

In an August broadcast on i24News, Netanyahu said he feels a “strong connection” to the vision of a “Greater Israel.” For Arab capitals this was a confirmation of his strategic maximalism. The military campaign in Gaza and the planning-led expansion in the West Bank aren’t two parallel tracks, but parts of a single, integrated agenda. The regional response was swift and uncompromising from Jordanian warnings to collective condemnation from international institutions.

The broader picture reveals deliberate design: In Gaza, forced subjugation without any credible or legitimate “handover of keys”; in the West Bank, a reconfiguration of political geography via E1 and its related projects, translating a diplomatic dispute into the language of roads, zoning, and demography. The language of “temporariness” and “no intention to govern” functions as cover, in practice, the temporary hardens into permanence, and control becomes institutionalized as the new normal.

As the lines converge in Gaza’s shattered neighborhoods, in the  planning documents for East Jerusalem, and in statements from Israeli leadership, the space for any negotiated outcome narrows further. What began as a pledge to dismantle Hamas is increasingly functioning as a mechanism to erase the word ‘Palestine’ from the future map. In this framework, there is no “day after.” What exists instead is a carefully prearranged aftermath designed to leave no room for alternatives. The map is drawn before peace is reached, and in the end, it is the map that becomes the decisive argument, not a treaty.

The current military operation, referred to as Gideon’s Chariot 2, has not been officially declared an occupation. However, its character on the ground strongly resembles one. IDF armored units have reached Sabra and are engaged in ongoing combat at the Zeitoun junction, a strategic point where fighting has continued for over a week. Military descriptions of these actions as operations on the periphery increasingly resemble the opening phase of a full assault on Gaza City. In the last 24 hours, the pattern has only intensified. Artillery and airstrikes have been systematically clearing eastern and northern districts, including Zeitoun, Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and Jabalia, in preparation for armored and infantry advances.

The military effort is now reinforced by a large-scale mobilization of personnel. A phased conscription has been approved. The main wave, composed of 60,000 reservists, is expected to report by September 2, with additional groups to follow through the fall and winter. This is not a tactical raid but a prolonged urban combat campaign that will be measured not by military markers on a map but by the ability to sustain logistical flow and personnel rotations under intense conditions.

Diplomatic efforts are unfolding alongside the military campaign. On August 18, Hamas, through Egyptian and Qatari intermediaries, agreed to the outline of a ceasefire known as the Witkoff Plan. It proposes a 60-day pause, the release of ten living hostages, and the return of the remains of eighteen others in exchange for Israeli actions concerning Palestinian detainees and humanitarian access. The Israeli government has not officially agreed to the plan and insists that all hostages must be included. Nonetheless, Hamas’s offer is already being used by Israel as leverage. It serves more as a tactical pressure point than a genuine breakthrough.

This context gives meaning to Netanyahu’s latest directive calling for a shortened timeline to capture Hamas’s remaining strongholds. The accelerated ground campaign aims to pressure Hamas into making broader concessions under the framework of the proposed deal. If Hamas refuses, Israel will present a forceful seizure of Gaza City as a justified action to its domestic audience.

Observers close to the government interpret the strategy in exactly these terms. The objective is not only to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure but also to escalate the stakes and force a binary choice between a truce on Israeli terms and a full military entry into the city. Even the most carefully designed military strategy eventually confronts the same dilemma: the challenge of the day after. Without a legitimate mandate and without a coherent administrative framework, even a tactical victory risks resulting in a managed vacuum. In such a scenario, control shifts hands on the map, but the underlying threat remains unresolved.

Ideology also plays a central role in shaping this campaign. . In August, Netanyahu publicly affirmed his strong personal identification with the vision of the Promised Land and Greater Israel. This statement provoked strong reactions in Arab capitals and further discredited Israel’s narrative that it seeks to control Gaza without governing it. The on-the-ground reality is more complex and sobering. After nearly two years of conflict, the IDF has not eliminated the threat. It has suffered significant losses, and there is no clear consensus within the officer corps on launching another ground offensive in Gaza.

According to reports by Israeli media, Israel’s top military leadership had warned that a complete takeover of Gaza would come with heavy casualties and heightened risks to hostages. For this reason, earlier operations deliberately avoided areas where hostages were likely being held. Leaked assessments suggest that the General Staff had proposed a strategy centered on encircling Gaza City and applying incremental pressure over time. However, the political leadership opted instead for speed and direct assault. The casualties already number in the hundreds, and major urban combat has yet to begin.

The domestic opposition has made its stance clear. After a security briefing, opposition leader Yair Lapid stated that a new occupation of Gaza would be a grave mistake and one for which Israel would pay a high price. Pressure on the government is mounting both internally, through weekly demonstrations demanding a hostage deal, and externally. Countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Malta are preparing to take steps toward recognizing Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly in September. In the language of international diplomacy, this move signals a counterbalance to both Hamas’s hardline stance and Israel’s rightward territorial ambitions. The more forcefully Israel insists on capturing Gaza at all costs, the stronger the global response becomes in favor of formalizing Palestine’s status.

However, the situation now transcends local dynamics. Against the backdrop of worldwide instability, including regional conflicts, disrupted global trade routes and rising geopolitical risk, the Gaza campaign increasingly appears to be part of a broader, long-term war of attrition. Within Israel’s strategic thinking, the ultimate objective seems to be the closure of the Palestinian question altogether. This entails dismantling all political structures and actors that might, in any combination, threaten Israeli security. Under this logic, humanitarian consequences are not considered constraints.

A recent UN report illustrates the magnitude of the crisis. For the first time, the Food and Agriculture Organization officially declared catastrophic hunger in Gaza, reaching the fifth and highest level of the Integrated Food Security Classification, or IPC. By the end of September, more than 640,000 people are expected to face total food deprivation. Yet even this alarming assessment has not shifted the current trajectory. Western European declarations of intent to recognize Palestinian statehood have also failed to become decisive turning points.

Israel now faces a rare and difficult crossroads. One path leads through diplomacy. It includes a 60-day pause, an initial exchange of captives, and a broader acknowledgment that lasting security is achieved not only through military force, but also through institutions, legal rights, and legitimacy. The other path leads into a renewed spiral of urban warfare. It involves the deployment of more reservists, increasingly severe military orders, and objectives that grow less clearly defined with each passing day. In Sabra, the physical tracks of tanks are already visible before any clear political statement has been made. Ultimately, though, the outcome will be determined not by battlefield reports, but by legal, diplomatic, and institutional formulas. These will decide whether the fall of Gaza marks the end of the war or simply the beginning of a new chapter.

As assault plans are finalized, mobilization lists expand, and ideological rhetoric intensifies, the sense of inevitability grows stronger. This operation resembles less an isolated campaign and more a component of a much longer-term project to reconfigure geography and status. If that logic continues to dominate, the day after will already be written, and it will allow no room for alternatives. In that scenario, the map will carry more weight than any agreement. Facts on the ground will become the ultimate authority, overshadowing diplomatic recognitions, international reports, and humanitarian data alike.

September 10, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

The World Has Failed to Stop Israel. Our Only Choices Now: Leave or Die.

I soon face the possibility of never being able to return to Gaza City.

By Shahad Ali , Truthout, September 5, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/the-world-has-failed-to-stop-israel-our-only-choices-now-leave-or-die/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=8f0fef14a2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_09_05_06_10_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-78c28ffcdf-650192793

s the Israeli army launches the first phase of its latest military operation in Gaza City — aimed at fully occupying the area and displacing its roughly 1 million residents to the south — the city has descended into unending hell. Night after night, relentless and terrifying explosions rob us of sleep. Entire neighborhoods are being invaded and demolished, forcing families to flee toward an uncertain fate, while bloody massacres have become a grim part of daily life.

For a moment, these cruel scenes harken back to the first months of the war, when Israeli forces, for the first time, compelled residents of the city to flee south under threat of ground invasion. The sky then looked the same as it does now — gray and thick with billowing smoke, signaling imminent danger. The people’s faces reflected the same unbearable anxiety and fear, only now the worry is sharper: We fear that this time we may be forced to leave Gaza City forever, without ever being allowed to return.

The Israeli forces began their operation by intensifying military pressure along multiple axes in the north, east, and south of the city, including neighborhoods such as Al-Zaitoun, Tel al-Hawa, Al-Sabra, and Sheikh Radwan, with the seeming aim of fully encircling the city and confining its residents to a specific area to compel them to move southward.

These neighborhoods have witnessed heavy shelling from artillery and airstrikes, as well as the destruction of entire residential blocks by Israeli robots carrying tons of explosives, in addition to intense gunfire from Israeli tanks and drones. This has caused a large wave of displacement of residents toward the central and western parts of the city, which are already overcrowded and still considered dangerous war zones by the Israeli military. The threat of invasion looms at any moment.

The forced displacement has further exacerbated the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, who are already drained mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially after enduring 23 months of ongoing genocide. Most families in Gaza City had been displaced to the south for more than 15 months and were only able to return during the ceasefire in January 2025. They have not forgotten what it was like to live in tents without basic necessities. They still vividly remember being displaced, bombed, and starved in areas that Israel claimed were safe. Moreover, their longing for their homes and neighborhoods remains unfulfilled.

Many of those families tried to resist by staying in their homes, but this time the Israeli forces have left them with no choice: either be killed or leave — though leaving is almost as dreadful as death. Within the past week, many have evacuated under heavy bombardment, and their focus on mere survival meant they were unable to take even the most basic necessities, such as food, clothes, and mattresses. They were later forced to repurchase these items at exorbitant prices within the informal economy. Those considered “lucky” enough to salvage a few belongings from their homes faced steep transportation costs — up to $150 for a donkey cart and $250 for a vehicle.

Adding to this suffering is the exhausting struggle of homelessness. Most families in Gaza City were forced to venture into the unknown, many ending up in the streets with nowhere to go. A single tent now costs $1,000 — an amount far beyond the reach of most families, as the war has destroyed livelihoods and driven poverty to unbearable levels. Even when a tent is secured, finding space to set it up is another challenge, since the central and western parts of Gaza City are already overcrowded with tents of displaced families from Gaza’s northern governorates, as well as from the eastern neighborhoods of Gaza City, following the start of the Israeli military operation Gideon’s Chariots, which was launched in May 2025.

Some families went directly to the south, driven by Israeli army threats and its claims of available space, tents, and aid, only to find the situation even worse. Israeli forces are now taking over two of the largest cities in the south — Khan Younis and Rafah — while people there are crammed into the Central Governorate and al-Mawasi near Khan Younis, with no sufficient space left to set up tents for the displaced from Gaza City.

Abed Abo Laban, 19, said he and his family initially refused to leave their Al-Zaitoun home despite the danger. “The artillery shelling was heavy, and shrapnel scattered across our roof. Quadcopters fired randomly and even burned neighboring tents, but we stayed because we had nowhere else to go,” he said.

Abo Laban recounted that they left only after an Israeli drone targeted their home, killing his brother and father. “We realized that if we hadn’t left, we would all have been killed like them,” he said.

Abo Laban and his family fled south to Al-Mawasi in Khan Younis but found no place to set up their tent. “The Israelis claim there is space in the south, but that is the biggest lie I have ever heard. There was absolutely no space; we just sat on the sand of Al-Mawasi Beach, helpless and exhausted, with nowhere to put our tent,” he said. “The area was cramped, with tents set up right next to each other. There was no privacy, no clean water, no sewage system, and it was infested with insects and flies.”

Mohamed Alkateeb, 46, who lives in the heart of Gaza City, said he has begun packing his belongings, preparing for an evacuation order at any moment. “The thought of leaving my home, fearing I might never return, and venturing into the unknown — without anywhere to go, not even a tent, and with winter approaching — is unbearable. If it were up to me, I would stay; I would prefer death over displacement, which feels like dying slowly. But when you have children, everything changes. I am now forced to leave to protect them as best I can,” he said.

The Israeli army is moving forward with its plan, and it seems nothing can stop it from erasing Gaza City, massacring its people, and displacing us. Now, Israel wants to push us south, but no one knows what the next destination will be. We have pleaded with the world in every way possible — to intervene, to protect us, to recognize our right to live in dignity — but it seems all our efforts have failed. We are left helpless and in despair, awaiting the next chapter of torture and suffering in exile, with no end in sight.

September 6, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Entire UN Security Council Except US Says Gaza Famine ‘Man-Made’ as 10 More People Starve to Death

While acknowledging that “hunger is a real issue in Gaza,” the US ambassador to the UN repeated a debunked claim that the world’s leading authority on starvation lowered its standards to declare a famine.

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Aug 27, 2025

Every member nation of the United Nations Security Council except the United States on Wednesday affirmed that Israel’s engineered famine in Gaza is “man-made” as 10 more Palestinians died of starvation amid what UN experts warned is a worsening crisis.

Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members issued a joint statement calling for an immediate Gaza ceasefire, release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas, and lifting of all Israeli restrictions on aid delivery into the embattled strip, where hundreds of Palestinians have died from starvation and hundreds of thousands more are starving.

“Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately,” they said. “Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course.”

“Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately,” they said. “Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course.”

“This is a man-made crisis,” the statement stresses. “The use of starvation as a weapon of war is clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law.”

Israel, which is facing a genocide case at the UN’s International Court of Justice, denies the existence of famine in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Court of Justice for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation.

The 14 countries issuing the joint statement are: Algeria, China, Denmark, France, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia, and the United Kingdom.

While acknowledging that “hunger is a real issue in Gaza and that there are significant humanitarian needs which must be met,” US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea rejected the resolution and the IPC’s findings…………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.commondreams.org/news/un-security-council-gaza-famine

August 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Report: Smotrich Told IDF Chief That Anyone Who Doesn’t Evacuate Gaza City Can ‘Die of Hunger or Surrender’

Israel’s Channel 12 also reported that Netanyahu has said he has Trump’s full support for the planned offensive to take over Gaza City but has limited time

by Dave DeCamp | August 24, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/24/report-smotrich-told-idf-chief-that-anyone-who-doesnt-evacuate-gaza-city-can-die-of-hunger-or-surrender/

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has told the head of the Israeli military that anyone who remains in Gaza City after an IDF evacuation order can “die of hunger or surrender,” The Times of Israel reported on Saturday, citing a TV report from Israel’s Channel 12.

“We ordered you [to carry out] a quick operation. In my opinion, you can besiege them,” Smotrich reportedly told IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. “Whoever doesn’t evacuate, don’t let them. No water, no electricity, they can die of hunger or surrender. This is what we want and your capable [of doing it].”

The Channel 12 report said that during the same meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said that President Trump fully supports Israe’s plans to conquer Gaza City, which involves the forced displacement of over 1 million civilians amid a famine in the area, but that the US president wants a quick and decisive operation.

Thousands of Palestinians have fled Gaza City amid ramped-up Israeli attacks in the area, but there’s been no sign of a mass evacuation despite Israel’s orders to leave. Palestinians in Gaza City have rejected the idea of another displacement since most of them have been forced to move many times, and they don’t believe the area they’re being told to flee to will be much safer since the IDF continues to bomb the south.

The Palestinians in Gaza City are also likely aware that Israel’s plans involve the complete destruction of the city, which means they almost certainly won’t be able to return. The IDF has told the Israeli government that it will likely take months or possibly over a year to demolish the city.

The Channel 12 report said that Zamir clashed with Smotrich and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir over the length of time the plan to take over Gaza City will take. Smotrich’s call to starve the remaining Palestinians to death aligns with previous comments he has made.

In April of this year, about a month after Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, Smotrich said Israel wouldn’t allow a “grain of wheat” to enter the Strip. Last year, Smotrich said at a conference that it may be “justified and moral” for Israel to starve two million Palestinians to death, but that the world wouldn’t allow it to happen.

“We are bringing in aid because there is no choice,” Smotrich said in August 2024. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.”

August 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment