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“DEPRIVATION BY DESIGN”: ISRAEL INTENSIFIES MASS KILLING CAMPAIGN
IN GAZA WITH STARVATION AND DAILY STRIKES  
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Rasha Abou Jalal and Sharif Abdel Kouddous
April 30, 2025
Drop Site News
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_ The scale of killing in Gaza is almost impossible to track as the
Israeli military bombs and starves Palestinian civilians with
impunity. _

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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.”

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.”

_Rasha Abu Jalal is a journalist from the Gaza Strip. He works in
several media outlets covering Palestinian political, humanitarian and
social issues and is a permanent member of the judging committee for
the annual Press House Award._

_Sharif Abdel Kouddous is a journalist and editor at Drop Site News._

_Drop Site is not simply another non-partisan news organization. It is
completely independent journalism dedicated to principles of accuracy
and accountability. We are never afraid to take a stand for truth,
regardless of the partisan consequences or the risk of political or
personal unpopularity._

* Gaza
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* Israel bombing
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* hunger
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