“Deprivation by Design”: Israel Intensifies Mass Killing Campaign in Gaza With Starvation and Daily Strikes
The scale of killing in Gaza is almost impossible to
track as the Israeli military bombs and starves Palestinian civilians with
impunity.
and
Apr 30, 2025
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-intensifies-mass-killing-gaza-starvation
GAZA CITY—Three generations of
the al-Khour family were wiped out when Israel bombed their family home in the
al-Sabra neighborhood in central Gaza at dawn on April 26. The elderly
patriarch of the family, Talal al-Khour, his wives, daughters, sons, and grandchildren
were all killed in the attack. A total of twenty-two people—including twelve
children—perished, their bodies blown apart and buried under the rubble.
"The airstrike occurred
at dawn while we were asleep. Suddenly, we woke up to a blast that felt like an
earthquake. We rushed into the street and found that the five-story home of the
Al-Khour family had turned into a pile of rubble,” Mohammad Al-Ajla, a
37-year-old neighbor who helped retrieve the bodies, told Drop Site News.
"As soon as the dust from the strike cleared, neighbors began trying to
rescue members of the family. The recovery operation continued for eight
straight hours. We saw bodies everywhere. There were children without
heads."
With the help of residents in
the area, Civil Defense teams were able to retrieve fifteen of the bodies,
which were later buried together in a mass grave. The remaining bodies remain
trapped under the debris. Emergency rescue crews were forced to dig through the
wreckage with their bare hands as a result of Israel denying the entry of
equipment into Gaza and deliberately targeting the little machinery available,
according to the Civil Defense spokesperson, Mahmoud Bassal.
"We could hear the cries
of the wounded trapped under the rubble, but we were helpless to reach them.
Over time, the screaming faded, and we no longer knew whether they were still
alive or had been killed,” Bassal told Drop Site. "Many lives could have
been saved, but the ongoing blockade and the denial of essential tools
eliminated every possible chance for rescue.”
Since Israel resumed its
scorched earth bombing campaign on March 18, Gaza has been transformed into a
desert of death, in which rubble and ruin form the backdrop for an unceasing
campaign of mass killing. The Israeli military has carried out multiple airstrikes
and shelling across the enclave on a daily basis, pounding homes, displacement
camps, cafes, hospitals, charity kitchens, so-called “humanitarian zones,” and
other civilian sites.
The scale of the attacks is
almost impossible to track. On Wednesday alone, three residential buildings in
the Nuseirat refugee camp were bombed; one of the strikes killed six members of
one family, including three siblings, all children. In a nearby building, eight
people in a single home were killed. In Jabaliya, at least three people from
the same family, including two young girls, were killed in Israeli artillery
fire. On the coast, west of Gaza City, a fisherman was killed while pulling his
boat ashore. In western Khan Younis, an overnight drone strike on a tent killed
six people, including children. This is not a comprehensive list and does not
even cover a 24-hour period.
Over two days last week, the
Israeli military also targeted and bombed over 30 bulldozers and other pieces
of heavy machinery. Some of them had been donated during the “ceasefire” to
clear rubble, repair critical infrastructure, and rescue people after airstrikes,
according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The scenes emerging from
across Gaza, from Rafah in the south to Beit Hanoun in the north, are
staggering in their horror. Children blown apart across rooftops or while
riding their bikes; dead bodies strewn across a cafe, some still seated,
slumped in their chairs; corpses wrapped in white body bags lined up alongside
one another; suicide drones crashing into tents housing sleeping families;
screaming parents and wounded children scattered in the streets.
“The massacres do not stop. We
are being slaughtered from vein to vein,” Al Jazeera correspondent Anas
al-Sharif said in a social media post.
At least 2,300 Palestinians
have been killed over the past six weeks alone—the equivalent of over fifty
people killed every day. Over 740 of the dead are children, the Director of the
Information Unit at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Zaher Al-Wahidi, told Drop
Site. Since the start of the war, more than 2,180 families have been entirely
annihilated—with all members killed—while more than 5,070 families have lost
all members except for one surviving individual, according to the Government
Media Office.
The relentless assault comes
as Israel has imposed a policy of forced starvation on Gaza’s two million
residents, sealing off Gaza completely and denying the entry of all food, fuel,
medicine and other humanitarian goods since March 2—by far the longest blockade
since the beginning of the war. More than 65,000 children in Gaza have been
hospitalized with severe malnutrition, according to a statement this week by
the Government Media Office.
Israel has made it clear that
the intensifying military assault and the ongoing blockade are explicitly aimed
at bringing Hamas to its knees. Negotiations for a ceasefire appear deadlocked
with Israel scrapping crucial elements of the original three-phase deal signed
by Hamas and Israel in January, and now pushing for Hamas to formally
surrender, disarm, and exile its leadership as a condition to end the genocide.
Israel’s defense minister has
reiterated that the denial of food, medicine, and other aid is being used to
collectively punish the Palestinians of Gaza. "No humanitarian aid is
about to enter Gaza,” Israel Katz said, announcing that “preventing humanitarian
aid from entering Gaza is one of the main pressure levers."
Using starvation as a weapon
of war has had a devastating effect. Last week, the UN warned that Gaza “is now
likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the
escalation of hostilities in October 2023.”
The World Food Program
recently announced that it had run out of food. “The situation is at a breaking
point,” the organization said in a statement. Food prices have risen by 1,400
percent. With no remaining supplies of flour or fuel, Gaza’s bakeries have
stopped functioning and remaining stocks of food are being rapidly depleted.
The flour that is available is often insect-infested. Families are increasingly
resorting to mixing crushed macaroni with flour to make bread and allocating
just one piece of bread per family member per day.
With shortages of cooking gas
and firewood, families are forced to burn plastic and other waste to cook the
little food they have. People are foraging for wild plants and eating sea
turtles that have washed ashore in order to survive. The UN last week said it
identified 3,700 children suffering from acute malnutrition in March—now up to
80% from the month before. A total of fifty-three children have died of
malnutrition since the war began.
The heads of twelve major aid
organizations issued a joint statement last week warning that “Famine is not
just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts of Gaza,” and
characterizing the situation in Gaza “one of the worst humanitarian failures of
our generation.”
The heads of twelve major aid
organizations issued a joint statement last week warning that “Famine is not
just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts of Gaza,” and
characterizing the situation in Gaza “one of the worst humanitarian failures of
our generation.”
Over the past few weeks, the
Israeli military has bombed the al-Ahli Hospital and the Al Durrah Paediatric
Hospital, both in Gaza City; the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis and the Kuwaiti
Field Hospital in Mawasi; and massacred fifteen emergency workers and first
responders. The hospitals that are still standing are barely functioning, with
severe shortages of medicine, equipment and doctors.
Meanwhile, the Israeli
military continues to squeeze Palestinians onto smaller tracts of land within
Gaza. About 70 percent of Gaza has been designated as “no-go” zones or placed
under displacement orders. Over the past six weeks, roughly 420,000 Palestinians
have been displaced yet again, with no safe place to go.
“This is deprivation by
design,” the acting head of office for OCHA, Jonathan Whittall, said in a
statement. “Land is being annexed from the north, from the east, from the south
of the strip as forces advance…Gaza is being starved, it’s being bombed, it’s
being strangled. This looks like the deliberate dismantling of Palestinian
life.”
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