Malnutrition is spreading in Gaza, medics and aid workers in the devastated Palestinian territory are warning, as a total Israeli blockade of all supplies enters its fourth week.
There has been no sign that Israel will open entry points to allow essential aid to flow or ease its new offensive in Gaza, which started on Tuesday with a wave of airstrikes that killed 400 people, mostly civilians, ending two months of relative calm. On Sunday, Palestinian officials said the total death toll from nearly 18 months of conflict had passed 50,000.
An airstrike in the city of Khan Younis on Sunday killed Salah Bardawil, a member of Hamas’s political leadership bureau, and the Israel Defense Forces (issued new evacuation orders to Palestinians in areas west of the city of Rafah on the border with Egypt, the target of a major offensive about a year ago, and where the IDF is pressing ground operations.
The orders specified that movement in vehicles would not be permitted. There have been many reported incidents of civilians being killed or badly injured in attacks by Israeli forces on cars in Gaza in recent days. “The IDF has launched an operation to dismantle terrorist organisations. You are currently in a dangerous combat zone. Distance yourself from the combat zone immediately,” the orders said.
At least 19 Palestinians were killed overnight, according to medical officials on Sunday. Two hospitals in southern Gaza said they had received 17 bodies from strikes, including those of several women and children. The toll did not include the Hamas official and his wife.
Later on Sunday, Israel’s military said troops had encircled Tal al-Sultan refugee camp in Rafah, adding that their objective was to “dismantle terrorist infrastructure and eliminate” militants there.
To date in the war – triggered by an attack by Hamas militants into Israel in October 2023 in which they killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages – more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, also mostly civilians, and about 113,000 wounded, say officials.
Israel, which has accused Hamas of systematically looting aid, cut off supplies to Gaza hours after the first phase of a supposed three-stage ceasefire expired. Hamas denies the charge.
Aid officials said distributions would be reduced gradually if possible, while the provision of community kitchens that feed about a million people would get progressively more difficult.
“At some point we will just run out and things will get desperate … but even if we had supplies it would be very difficult to distribute them because the security environment means we can’t operate,” said one UN official based in Gaza.
Six out of 23 bakeries operated by the UN World Food Programme have already been shut due to a lack of cooking gas, while Unrwa, the main UN agency with responsibility for Palestinians’ welfare, had stocks of about 60,000 bags of flour on Friday, enough for just six days of distribution.
Prices for the limited amount of food still available in shops and markets have soared and are now unaffordable for almost everyone. Potatoes cost the equivalent of $6 (£4.60) a kg, five times more than a month ago, while cooking gas cylinders are selling for $60 a kg, four times higher than before the end of the fragile pause in hostilities three weeks ago.
“It is very clear that people are underweight. The population is very young, and children need nutritious food,” said Khamis Elessi, a senior consultant doctor in Gaza City.
Feroze Sidhwa, a US-based volunteer emergency doctor in Gaza, said the consequences of 18 months of poor diet were very evident among his patients. “We see very clearly that everyone has lost weight … I can see my surgical incisions are not healing well,” he said.
Aid distribution has been hindered by displacement. “There is a lot of anxiety about what will happen, especially parents for their children. It is non-stop: evacuation orders, explosions, the hospitals are filled with casualties, we are now seeing food scarcity. It is very unpredictable,” said Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson in Gaza for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
“We can hear massive explosions most of the day. Reports of casualties are received every hour but the first responders cannot reach all the sites of attacks because it is too dangerous or they have not enough fuel for ambulances.”
In the southern city Rafah on Sunday, Palestinian men, women and children could be seen walking along a dirt road and carrying their belongings in their arms. Most of Gaza’s population have had to flee within the territory, often multiple times. “It’s displacement under fire,” said Mustafa Gaber, a local journalist on the move with his family. “There are wounded people among us. The situation is very difficult.”
Israeli media questioned on Sunday whether the aims of the new offensive were limited to destroying Hamas and returning the hostages held in Gaza – the two goals often cited by the Israeli government.
On Friday, Israel Katz, Israel’s defence minister, said in a statement that he had “instructed the IDF to seize additional territories in Gaza, evacuate the population, and expand the security zones around Gaza in order to defend the Israeli towns and IDF troops”.
“The longer Hamas continues to refuse to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose that will be added to Israel,” Katz said.
On Saturday, Israel’s cabinet approved a proposal to set up a new directorate tasked with advancing what it framed as the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians, in line with Donald Trump’s proposal to depopulate Gaza and rebuild it as the “riviera of the Middle East”. Legal experts said any such policy would almost certainly be a violation of international law.
Katz said the new body would be “subject to Israeli and international law” and coordinate “passage by land, sea and air to the destination countries”.
Israel has been roiled by massive protests, with more than 100,000 demonstrating against efforts by Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, to fire both the head of the internal security service, Ronen Bar, and the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara.
Bar as the head of the Shin Bet has been investigating Netanyahu’s close aides for alleged breaches of national security, including allegations of leaking classified documents to foreign media and allegedly taking money from Qatar, which is known to have given significant financial aid to Hamas. Baharav-Miara, who has frequently clashed with the government, warned the prime minister he could not fire domestic intelligence’s chief before her office had reviewed his motives for doing so.
In an unprecedented step on Sunday, after accusing her of blocking the government’s policies, Israel’s cabinet voted unanimously in favour of a no-confidence motion against Baharav-Miara.
The cabinet’s decision was condemned by opposition parties and thousands of protesters who took to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the sixth day in row, who described Netanyahu’s move as an attempt to undermine Israel’s democratic system.
During clashes with the police, three protesters were arrested outside Netanyahu’s residence in central Jerusalem.
There are also widespread calls for the return of the hostages to be prioritised over the offensive against Hamas.
On Friday, 40 freed hostages who were in Hamas captivity and 250 family members of Israeli soldiers and civilians still held in Gaza signed a letter calling on Netanyahu to halt Israel’s “endless war”.
In the agreed ceasefire’s first phase, 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others were released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Israeli forces pulled back to a buffer zone – allowing hundreds of thousands of people to return to what remained of their homes – and there was a surge in humanitarian aid.
The sides were supposed to begin negotiations in early February on the scheduled second phase of the truce, in which Hamas was to release the remaining 59 hostages – 35 of whom are believed to be dead – in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a permanent end to hostilities and a full Israeli withdrawal.
Israel backed out of the ceasefire agreement, offering instead to extend the first phase by between 30 and 60 days if Hamas released more hostages.
