Tehran – More than 700 days after Israel’s war with Gaza, Palestinian civilians continue to bear the brunt of merciless airstrikes, sieges and starvation.
Gaza’s health ministry reported Saturday that over 80 people have been killed and hundreds have been injured in the last 24 hours as Israeli bombings destroyed the besieged enclave.
Among the dead were nearly 20 Palestinians, desperately trying to gather the help they needed.
The ministry also confirmed that six people, including children, died of hunger on Saturday alone. This brings the death toll from starvation in Israeli hunger to 382 in Gaza, since the start of the war. Overall, the Israeli attacks have killed 64,231 Palestinians and injured 161,583 since October 7, 2023.
At the same time, Israel is stepping up its push to seize Gaza city. On Saturday, Israeli forces struck two residential towers in the western part of the city. Israeli forces claimed that the building was used by Hamas to plant explosive devices at the Intelligence Agency. But it provided no evidence.
The government media office in Gaza firmly rejects these allegations and calls them “systematic deceptions” aimed at justifying attacks on civilians and infrastructure. “We make a clear assertion based on the testimony of residents that these towers are civilian-only spaces,” the office said it was labeling strikes as an act of forced evacuation in violation of international law.
The destruction of housing is seen as part of Israel’s broader strategy to pressure Palestinians to leave Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday raised concerns by proposing that there were “different plans for how to rebuild Gaza” and “half of the population wants to leave,” but he argued that it was “not a mass expulsion.”
Almost two years after the war, Israel failed to achieve its stated goal of defeating Hamas. Instead, critics say that its military campaign shifted towards targeting civilians and driving away the population, but Palestinian resistance remains unbroken.