We’ll open the “Gates of Hell” in Gaza City.  That’s what Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened last week. 

After all the slaughter, starvation, devastation, and unbearable heartbreak the Palestinian people have suffered through over 700 days of Israel’s genocidal onslaught—now Israel is poised to make things even worse by unleashing even more hell on Gaza City, where close to a million Gazans are sheltering. 

Did Katz’s blatantly criminal threat draw a rebuke from the fascist Trump regime?  No! Just more and more military, financial and political support for Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza.  In addition to postwar plans for a U.S.-Israeli takeover of Gaza displacing all 2.2 million Palestinians, the U.S. sanctioned three Palestinian human rights groups for calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate charges that Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza.¹

Some of the main developments in Gaza over the past week include:

• Deeper into Gaza City: Israel drove deeper and more violently into Gaza City and has now taken control of at least 40 percent of the city.  Israel is pursuing a  scorched-earth strategy—destroying everything in its military’s path, reducing  whole neighborhoods to rubble, and demolishing iconic high-rise apartment buildings including the 12-story Mushtaha Tower. Israel claims that 100,000 have already fled the city.

• Escalating Slaughter. In July and August Israel killed 5,295 people, overwhelmingly civilians and nearly double the number it killed in April and May. Over 70 Palestinians were killed on average every day in August. Think about this: 70 people a day!  Like a grinding machinery of death crushing dreams, stories, and hopes, leaving behind families broken and children orphaned.

  “Most were killed by airstrikes or artillery shelling that hit displaced persons' tents, homes, and people standing in the streets,” Haaretz reports, and “about 30% were killed by gunfire near food distribution centers or aid convoys.” 

• “The catastrophic impact of famine in the Gaza Strip is accelerating.” Over 500,000 in Gaza are now facing “catastrophic” levels of hunger due to Israel’s blockade, according to international hunger monitoring organizations, and Israel’s Gaza City offensive is making this dire situation even worse.² The Palestinian health ministry warns of a sharp rise in famine-related deaths. In August, over 185 Palestinians died from malnutrition, the highest toll in months. Overall, at least 367 people, including 131 children, have died from malnutrition since October 2023. In response to a global outcry against its policy of deliberate starvation, Israel claims to be letting more food aid into Gaza.  But the reality is that Gaza is receiving only 10 to 20 percent of the food it needs. More than 430 kinds of essential food items required by children and the sick are still banned, including eggs, meat, fish, cheese, dairy products, fruits and vegetables, and nutritional supplements.

• Forced Displacement with Nowhere to Go—Again and Again. Israel is issuing new evacuation orders, including in Gaza City, seemingly by the day. Palestinians who have moved from one end of Gaza to the other numerous times, are now being asked to leave their homes in Gaza City—again. Yet Israel’s evacuation orders now designate 86.5 percent of Gaza as active war zones and off limits for Palestinians, leaving less than 14 percent left for people to shelter—without even space for new waves of displaced people to pitch tents. And even in so-called safe areas like Al-Mawasi, thousands have been bombed and burned alive in tents.

  This past week Israel said it was designating a large new safe zone near Khan Younis, which would supposedly have “field hospitals, water pipelines, and desalination facilities, along with the continued supply of food, tents, medicines, and medical equipment.” And last week Netanyahu said Israel will  build a new humanitarian city in Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt. These aren’t “humanitarian” steps—they’re genocidal steps, designed to pack Palestinians into southern Gaza, as a prelude to their possible expulsion. In fact, Netanyahu is again demanding that Egypt open its borders to Palestinians.

  One Palestinian told Haaretz that Al-Mawasi "doesn't even have a vacant plot of land to stand on…. It is suffocatingly crowded, while the slaughter just keeps going and going."  A woman living in Gaza City described the situation as “taking people in a prison cell and telling them, 'we are going to make the cell even smaller.'… Now they tell us to evacuate south to an area that's already destroyed, and we have no way of knowing where they are leading us to—death from bombs, death from hunger or death from disease."

• At least 64,300 people killed, with 162,005 injured since October 2023, likely a vast under count. “To mark 700 days of genocide, Gaza’s health ministry released an updated breakdown of the death toll in Gaza: more than 19,000 children have been killed—among them over 4,800 under the age of five and more than 1,000 infants,” Drop Site News reports. 

  The numbers are staggering: 1,000 precious babies, with their whole lives ahead of them—slaughtered!

  “For nearly two years, on average, a child has been killed every 52 minutes.” Meanwhile, the United Nations warned of a “lost generation” of Palestinian children—over 660,000 who have not been able to attend school for a third straight year.³ 

• 60,000 Israeli army reservists mobilized for Gaza City attack. The situation is ever more ominous for the people of Gaza.  The Israeli military estimates that at least 200,000 residents in Gaza City—roughly 20 percent of those now sheltering there—“would refuse to evacuate and would stay in the combat zone, even if it would endanger their lives.”  These are people, desperate amidst the rubble, risking their lives to not—once again—be ripped from their homeland.  And they will be met with a genocidal army, armed to the teeth by American high-tech weaponry.

Everyone with any heart for humanity should speak out and resist the bloodbath that’s looming in Gaza City—and the entire U.S.-Israel genocide of the Palestinian people!

End the Siege on Gaza Now!

Stop the U.S.-Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinian People!