Israel resumed heavy airstrikes across the Gaza Strip after two weeks of systematic Israeli violations of the terms of the ceasefire and the stalling of negotiations over the agreement’s second phase. The Israeli army began bombing numerous targets in the Gaza Strip early on Tuesday past midnight, including civilian homes and tents for the displaced. As of the time of writing, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that over 404 people have been killed in Gaza and 562 were injured in multiple massacres carried out by Israeli forces since the early morning hours. According to the Health Ministry, among the slain are 174 children, 89 women, and 32 seniors.
After nearly two months of relative calm, the airstrikes resumed overnight without prior warning or evacuation orders, with local sources reporting that bombs dropped over Gaza City, northern Gaza, Khan Younis, Rafah, al-Bureij, and several other parts of the Strip.
Familiar scenes of mass killing returned to Gaza as hundreds of families gathered at hospitals throughout the Strip, carrying the remains of their loved ones.
“We were sleeping when suddenly a volcano descended on my children’s heads,” Muhammad al-Sakani, 42, told Mondoweiss in front of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, standing over the bodies of his two slain children. “This is the bank of targets of Netanyahu, Trump, and all the other cowards.”
“They are not to blame,” he added. “Their only crime is that our enemy is a criminal who assassinates children and women as they sleep.”
The Israeli military announced that it had carried out extensive strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza, adding that it was “prepared to continue attacks against Hamas leaders and infrastructure in Gaza for as long as necessary.” The army said that the attack would expand beyond airstrikes, signaling the likelihood of the return of a ground invasion. After the airstrikes had already begun and claimed hundreds of casualties, the Israeli military spokesperson warned several areas, such as Beit Hanoun and the Khuza’a and Abasan areas in Khan Younis, that they needed to be evacuated.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office announced in a statement that the Prime Minister had instructed the army to “take strong action” against Hamas and that Israel would act “with increased military might from now on.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the resumed fighting was due to “Hamas’s refusal” to release Israeli captives and “its threats to harm” Israeli soldiers and communities near Gaza. Katz added that Israel would not stop fighting until all captives were returned and “all the war’s aims” were achieved.
In an interview with Fox News, White House spokesperson Caroline Leavitt said that “the Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight.”
“President Trump has made it absolutely clear that Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, and all those who seek to spread terror, not only against Israel but also against the United States, will pay a price for their actions,” Leavitt added.
Hamas remains committed to implementing ceasefire
Despite the Israeli aggression, Hamas continues to call on the international community to intervene and put an end to the bombing taking place in Gaza, reaffirming the movement’s commitment to completing the ceasefire deal.
Hamas spokesperson Abdul Latif al-Qanou told Mondoweiss that Israel was “resuming its war of genocide and committing dozens of massacres against our people,” adding that Israel’s “prior coordination with the American administration confirms [U.S.] partnership in the war of extermination against our people.”
Al-Qanou stressed that Netanyahu resumed the war on Gaza to escape his internal crises and impose new negotiating conditions on the Palestinian resistance, referencing Netanyahu’s battle against corruption charges and his attempts to revive his right-wing government coalition. Qanou pointed out that Hamas adhered to all the terms of the ceasefire agreement and remains keen on moving on to its second phase.
“All the mediators are aware of Hamas’s commitment to the terms of the agreement, despite Netanyahu’s procrastination,” Qanou added. “His reversal requires them to reveal this to the world.”
The Israeli raids have killed several Hamas leaders across Gaza, specifically those holding civilian positions, such as Ayman Abu Teir, director of the nutrition department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, who was assassinated by Israel in his home in Khan Younis along with 13 members of his family.
Haaretz reported on Tuesday that the targeting of Hamas’s civil leadership in Gaza was part of a new strategy meant to undermine Hamas’s ability to govern in Gaza. A source “familiar with cabinet discussions” told the Israeli newspaper that Netanyahu “believes the mode of fighting in Gaza needs to change, and Israel should target not only the military leadership of Hamas, but also its civil leadership.” The source also told Haaretz that Israel hopes this strategy will lead to social breakdown and chaos and that criminal gangs would take over instead.
Hamas announced that several members of the civil leadership in Gaza were killed, including Issam al-Da’alis, head of Government Operations in the Gaza Strip, Ahmad al-Hatta, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Major General Mahmoud Abu Watfa, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior, and Major General Bahjat Abu Sultan, Director-General of the Internal Security Service.
Local media sources affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also revealed that the military spokesperson of the PIJ’s armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Known by his nom de guerre, “Abu Hamza,” the spokesperson’s real name was revealed to be Naji Abu Saif, according to media reports. The PIJ did not officially confirm the news as of the time of writing.
Systematic Israeli ceasefire violations
Since the signing of the ceasefire agreement on January 17, which stipulated three consecutive 42-day phases under Egyptian, Qatari, and American sponsorship, Hamas has largely adhered to the terms of the first phase, while Israel has systematically violated it by suspending the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and progressively resuming the targeting and killing of civilians in Gaza’s border areas.
Hamas released 33 Israeli captives during the first phase as stipulated in the agreement, but Israel did not comply with its end of the deal, including the delay or prevention of the entry of reconstruction material, tents, and prefabricated mobile homes. More importantly, Israel has consistently attempted to walk back its commitments to engage in talks over the permanent end of the war and the full withdrawal of its forces from Gaza. Israel was supposed to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor along the Egyptian border during the first phase of the ceasefir, while it was supposed to have entered into talks over the second phase of the deal in mid-February — ahead of the end of the first phase. Israel did neither, instead shifting the goalposts for the agreement by insisting that Hamas continue to release more Israeli captives without entering into negotiations over withdrawing or ending the war.
In early March, Israeli officials threatened to completely close the crossings and prevent food, medicine, water, and electricity from reaching Gaza if more Israeli captives weren’t released. It implemented these threats during the past two weeks.
Moreover, without announcing the resumption of the war, Israel resumed bombarding various areas throughout Gaza starting in March, resulting in the death of dozens of Palestinian civilians. In the two days before the official resumption of the war, Israeli airstrikes killed more than 15 people across Gaza.
On 14 November 1940, the Luftwaffe bombed the English city of Coventry, in the most devastating raid on the UK in the Second World War, causing 568 deaths. That is the scale of what the IDF did against people with no air defences last night.
Israel Lied About Murdered Children To Justify Murdering Children
Caitlin Johnstone
Mar 18, 2025
“Israel resumed its genocidal campaign of annihilation in Gaza early Tuesday morning, killing hundreds in a matter of hours, including many children. As of this writing, the death toll from this assault is reportedly at least 413.
Israel is not even pretending that Hamas violated the ceasefire agreement it signed on to in January, saying instead that the decision to resume the onslaught was made because Hamas had been rejecting a significantly altered new agreement put forward by the Trump administration which would have allowed Israel to postpone moving toward a lasting peace.
“This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators,” reads a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” Netanyahu said.
Of course we all know Israel is not really acting against Hamas; Israel is acting against the entire population of the Gaza Strip. The plan to eliminate all Palestinians in Gaza has been openly confessed to by the president of the United States, who went as far as posting a freakishly disturbing AI-generated music video on social media about the future of Gaza after its US-backed ethnic cleansing. Israel is simply making the enclave as dangerous and uninhabitable as possible so that everyone who lives there will be forced to either leave or die.”
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-lied-about-murdered-children
A GOLDEN OLDIE!
■ How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas | By Andrew Higgins | The Wall Street Journal | Jan. 24, 2009
[EXCERPTS] Surveying the wreckage of a neighbor’s bungalow hit by a Palestinian rocket, retired Israeli official Avner Cohen traces the missile’s trajectory back to an “enormous, stupid mistake” made 30 years ago.
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” says Mr. Cohen, a Tunisian-born Jew who worked in Gaza for more than two decades. Responsible for religious affairs in the region until 1994, Mr. Cohen watched the Islamist movement take shape, muscle aside secular Palestinian rivals and then morph into what is today Hamas, a militant group that is sworn to Israel’s destruction.
Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. . .
. . . When Israel first encountered Islamists in Gaza in the 1970s and ’80s, they seemed focused on studying the Quran, not on confrontation with Israel. The Israeli government officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama Al-Islamiya, registering the group as a charity. It allowed Mujama members to set up an Islamic university and build mosques, clubs and schools. Crucially, Israel often stood aside when the Islamists and their secular left-wing Palestinian rivals battled, sometimes violently, for influence in both Gaza and the West Bank.
“When I look back at the chain of events I think we made a mistake,” says David Hacham, who worked in Gaza in the late 1980s and early ’90s as an Arab-affairs expert in the Israeli military. “But at the time nobody thought about the possible results.” . . . [CONTINUED]
ENTIRE ARTICLE – https://web.archive.org/web/20090129084905/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html
‘Terrorists eliminated’: How the Israeli media denies killings of Palestinian children
Israeli media label victims as terrorists and omit the toll of the military’s bombardment on civilians
By Nadav Rapaport in Tel Aviv, Israel
20 March 2025
“On one of the deadliest days in Gaza since the Israeli war began in 2023, air strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians on Tuesday, including more than 180 children and 90 women, in a matter of hours.
The attacks, which violated the ceasefire agreement, were carried out during the holy month of Ramadan. But they were covered differently in Israeli media compared with the rest of the world.
Avi Ashkenazi, a military correspondent for the right-wing Maariv newspaper, wrote that “Israel wanted to hit as many Hamas members as possible in the first strike of the attack”. He added that the Muslim fasting month “helped to carry out the mission”.
“The Shin Bet and Military Intelligence have prepared the addresses where Hamas members are supposed to be found and hold the night suppers,” Ashkenazi wrote.
Aside from the military perspective reported in Israeli media, the attack and its bloody results were covered without reference to the number of children killed. In some cases, all those killed were labelled as terrorists.
Three senior Israeli military correspondents reported the bombing similarly, saying the army targeted
“mid-level and senior Hamas commanders and officials”.
Orly Noy, a journalist from Israeli news site Local Call, told Middle East Eye that the biased Israeli coverage of the attacks is part of a broader phenomenon.
“The Israeli media has invented alternative jargon to describe Palestinian resistance actions,” Noy said. “For the Israeli media, there is no difference between attacking soldiers and attacking civilians.”
According to Noy, this terminology has expanded during the war. “The Israeli media has adopted the claim that there are no innocents in Gaza.”
Noy explained that the Israeli media fails to report the actual impact of the attack because “the media is mobilised so that [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and the army can continue to carry out the genocide in Gaza.” ”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/terrorists-eliminated-israeli-media-coverage-palestinian-children-killed
If Hamas had simply released the remaining hostages that it had so cruelly kidnapped and continues to incarcerate, this would never have happened.