Israel pushes Gaza to the verge of famine – War on Gaza Day 569

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff

At least 53 people were killed in Israeli attacks in the enclave in the last 24 hours, according to medical sources.

The ministry said that the names of 697 people have also been added to the registry after their data had been completed and approved.

NOTE: The Gaza Health Ministry’s daily casualty figures are based on the number of dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals, and does not include victims that are under the rubble or elsewhere, where ambulance and civil defense crews can not reach them.

Also on Sunday, a Palestinian worker, Arafat Qadous, collapsed and died while being chased by Israeli forces in the town of al-Ram, near occupied East Jerusalem.

An Israeli drone strike killed one person in southern Lebanon on Sunday, in the latest violation of a ceasefire agreement, the Health Ministry said.

Lebanese authorities have reported more than 2,765 Israeli violations of the November truce, including the deaths of at least 194 victims and injuries to 486 others.

In Yemen, US strikes on the Bani al-Harith district north of Sanaa and killed eight people, including children, Al Masirah TV reported.

Displaced Palestinians crowd to receive hot meals distributed by aid organizations at the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in northern Gaza City, Gaza on April 24, 2025.

Gaza on the verge of famine

Aid agencies in Gaza are warning of “full-scale famine conditions” across the Gaza Strip as Israel has blocked the entry of all goods, including food, water and medicine, since March 2.

According to the UN’s food agency’s latest update:

All World Food Program (WFP) stocks inside Gaza have now been fully depleted.
All WFP-supported bakeries have shut down, cutting off bread access for 800,000 people.
All regular distributions, including food parcels, have ceased, and the last remaining supplies have been delivered to hot-meal kitchens, which are expected to run out within days.
In the markets, basic items like meat, eggs and dairy products are largely unavailable. Prices have soared, with flour up by 450 percent, and overall food costs up by as much as 1,400 percent.
Markets are operating at less than 40 percent capacity, with stocks likely to endure for up to two weeks longer.
More than 116,000 metric tonnes of WFP food – enough to feed one million people for up to four months – is positioned outside Gaza and ready for delivery.

“Aid is being weaponized through its denial.” – @_jwhittall to journalists in #Gaza City.

Israel has imposed a nearly 2 month long blockade.

Nothing has entered. People are desperate and hungry.

It’s not only a humanitarian crisis, “there is an assault on people’s dignity”. pic.twitter.com/htk0mdeeGx

— UN Humanitarian (@UNOCHA) April 27, 2025

Gaza authorities say Israel is deliberately killing civilians

The Gaza Government Media Office accuses Israel of systemically targeting civilians in Gaza as part of its “war of extermination” against Palestinians.

The office provided new details about the numbers of people killed by Israel:

18,000 children
12,400 women
1,400 medics
212 journalists
750 security officers who guarded aid convoys

Bodies of Palestinians who were killed in Israeli attacks, are brought to Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, Gaza on April 26, 2025.

Israel PM calls security chief ‘liar’, in court filing

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an affidavit before the Supreme Court on Sunday, described as a “liar” the country’s internal security chief, whom the government is trying to fire.

Netanyahu’s response came almost a week after Shin Bet head Ronen Bar himself made a sworn statement to the court. It accused the prime minister of demanding personal loyalty and ordering him to spy on anti-government protesters.

Bar’s dismissal, announced by the government last month but frozen by the country’s top court, triggered mass protests.

The unprecedented move to fire the head of the Shin Bet security agency has been contested by the attorney general and the opposition, which appealed Bar’s firing to the Supreme Court (continue reading here).

RELATED: Netanyahu dismisses idea of Palestinian state – again

West Bank: Illegal Israeli settlers attack Palestinian school

Illegal Israeli settlers heavily damaged a Palestinian school in the southern West Bank on Sunday, in their latest attack in the occupied territory, a local official said.

According to the official news agency Wafa, the settlers rampaged through the Zanuta School east of Al-Dhahiriya, south of Hebron city, and stole its contents.

Municipal chief Fayez Al-Tal said the school had been renovated by villagers in preparation for receiving students.

“Illegal settlers had previously attacked and destroyed the school multiple times and assaulted villagers and attacked their homes,” he added.

The facility serves about 40 children from remote communities in the area.

“This school provides essential humanitarian services to citizens in marginalized areas,” he said, calling on human rights organizations, especially UNICEF, to “ensure that this and other schools in remote areas can continue their vital work.”

A group of Jewish settlers under the protection of Israeli soldiers raids the Old City area of Hebron, West Bank on September 14, 2024

Israel faces legal pressure at UN’s top court over UNRWA ban

Israel will come under sustained legal pressure this week at the UN’s top court when lawyers from more than 40 states will claim the country’s ban on all cooperation with the UN’s Palestinian rights agency UNRWA is a breach of the UN charter.

The five days of hearings at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague have been given a fresh urgency by Israel’s decision on 2 March to block all aid into Gaza, but the hearing will focus on whether Israel – as a signatory to the UN charter – acted unlawfully in overriding the immunities afforded to a UN body. Israel ended all contact and cooperation with UNRWA operations in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem in November, claiming the agency had been infiltrated by Hamas, an allegation that has been contested.*

UNRWA supplies food, schooling and medical services to 2 million people in Gaza. The UN World Food Program said on Friday it had run out of stocks for kitchens serving hot food inside Gaza. The UNRWA commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, accused Israel of engineering a human-made famine.

A total of 45 countries and organizations, including the UN itself, have requested an advisory opinion from the 15-strong judging panel on Israel’s actions. The only countries likely to defend Israel in court are the US and Hungary.

Israel has submitted a written defense, but is not due to make an oral submission this week.

The hearings represent the biggest test of Israel’s defiance of international law since the ICJ’s landmark rulings in January, March and June of 2024 that ordered it to take immediate steps to allow aid to enter Gaza unhindered. In July 2024, the ICJ also found Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories was unlawful.

Israel has largely refused to comply with the advisory orders attached to these rulings, adding to the crisis of confidence in the credibility of the international legal system.

The Palestinian rights group Al-Haq said it was “imperative” that Israel’s seat at the UN general assembly be withdrawn if Israel ignored another ICJ advisory opinion, saying the public’s faith in international law “hangs in the balance”.

*NOTE: “Contested” is not an accurate word choice here. Better choices would have been “fraudulent,” “fabricated,” or at least “unproven.”

An Independent Review Group has pointed out that Israel’s serious allegation was never proven – in fact Israel did not respond to repeated requests for names and supporting evidence. Nevertheless, powerful nations withdrew $450 million in funding from UNRWA (most of them have resumed funding, but the US has not).

UNRWA serves around 5.6 million Palestinian refugees.

Gazan children gather at the distribution site in hope of obtaining food for their families, on April 24, 2025 in Jabaliya, Gaza.

Israel extends compulsory service as manpower crisis plagues army

The Israeli army has announced that it will extend mandatory service by four months due to a growing manpower crisis, coinciding with an intensification of battles in Gaza and the resurgence of deadly resistance operations against invading troops.

The additional four months will be classified as reserve duty, allowing soldiers to complete a total of three years of military service.

The military will also cancel pre-release leave for soldiers. Troops will have to serve a full three years before being discharged.

This decision follows months of intense fighting and rising casualties, which have strained troop levels.

The extra four months will provide benefits for the soldiers, given that reserve duty is usually compensated by the Israeli government. The army states that its decision is temporary and aims to help alleviate the current troop shortages.

“At the moment, we are short 10,000 troops, 7,000 of them in combat units,” the army said.

RELATED: Israeli premier accuses Shin Bet head of intelligence failure over October 2023 Hamas attacks

Israeli occupation soldiers move through agricultural lands of Tulkarm Refugee Camp, West Bank, on February 05, 2025

US universities find ‘backbone’ against Trump’s assault on education – but…

Americans anxious about their country’s slide into authoritarianism found some solace in the past week over what appears to be growing pushback by American universities against Donald Trump’s assault on higher education.

A statement denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” was signed by more than 400 university presidents, and the list is growing. Another, signed by more than 100 former university heads, called for a coalition of local leaders, students, labor unions and communities, across party affiliation, to “work against authoritarianism”.

And Harvard became the first university to sue the administration over its threats to cut $9bn in federal funding should it not comply with a set of extreme demands to combat alleged antisemitism. 86 universities joined with amicus briefs.

But even as universities reposition themselves as defenders of free and independent inquiry, many are stepping up their measures to suppress pro-Palestinian discourse, issuing a flurry of warnings and punishments meant to avert a repeat of the mass protest encampments that sprung up across US campuses a year ago (continue reading here).

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BuY28CC7Qpg

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IMEMC Daily Reports

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – APRIL 27, 2025:

At least 53,280 Palestinians killed, 126,185 injured – including:
at least 52,314 killed in Gaza (~15,600 children)
at least 966 killed in the West Bank (~187 children)
at least 117,792 injured in Gaza
at least 8,393 injured in the West Bank

According to Palestinian authorities, during the ceasefire Jan. 19- March 18 2025, Israeli attacks killed at least 150 Gazans, and Israel committed at least 962 ceasefire violations.

Thousands of those killed in Gaza have yet to be identified, and an estimated 11,000 more are still buried under rubble.

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – April 27, 2025: ~1,595 – including ~1,139 on October 7, 2023 (~36 children), 410 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza, 46 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers. Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org