The Israeli army launched a series of airstrikes on Wednesday targeting numerous sites in different parts of the Gaza Strip. The strikes included civilian targets in Gaza City and Khan Younis in urban neighborhoods and tent encampments.
In a statement on Thursday morning, the Gaza Ministry of Health said that 33 Palestinians had been killed, including 12 children and 8 women, and over 88 were injured in the past 24 hours. The Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement that an entire family had been “wiped off the civil registry” during one of the strikes.
The statement added that the Israeli army also carried out a ground assault in eastern Gaza City in a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire agreement, adding that the army had effectively redrawn the “yellow line” — which cuts Gaza in half — roughly 300 meters deep into al-Sha’af, Nazzaz, and Baghdad streets, areas from which Israel had agreed to withdraw as part of the ceasefire’s first phase.
The Media Office added that the Israeli army “surrounded dozens of families living in those areas, who were unable to leave after being caught off guard as the tanks arrived.”
“The fate of many of these families remains unknown, as the area was targeted by heavy shelling,” the statement added.
Hamas condemned Israel’s resumption of hostilities, asserting that the round of attacks constitutes “a dangerous escalation through which the war criminal Netanyahu seeks to resume the genocide against our people.”
The Israeli army claimed that the airstrikes were in response to alleged gunfire from Palestinians against Israeli soldiers near Khan Younis, a claim that Hamas denied, calling it a “flimsy and blatant pretext to justify [Israel’s] ongoing crimes and violations.” The statement added that over 300 Palestinians had been killed since the ceasefire first went into effect.
Israeli sources reported that the airstrikes killed the commander of Hamas’s Zeitoun Brigade, and one of the leaders of its naval forces. According to field testimonies from journalists working in Gaza, the airstrikes killed several Qassam Brigades commanders, including Nahid Abu Shahla, the intelligence chief; Abdullah Abu Shamala, the naval forces commander; and Tawfiq Hammad, a field commander.
Israel is imposing a new equation in Gaza: whenever the army has an opportunity to assassinate a Hamas leader, it claims there are alleged “violations” that cannot be verified.
Ahmad Barakat, a journalist from Gaza City, tells Mondoweiss that the Israeli army is imposing a new equation in Gaza following the captive exchange: whenever the army has an opportunity to assassinate a Hamas leader, it claims there are alleged “violations” inside parts of Rafah that no Palestinian can reach and where no one knows what’s happening, being under the full control of the Israeli army.
Barakat adds that the army is updating its list of potential Hamas targets around the clock, and whenever a high-level target is identified, it eliminates them. He said that reports from the field indicate Wednesday’s airstrike in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood targeted the neighborhood’s battalion commander, Imad Isleem, which was reiterated by Israeli media reports.
‘They decided to kill him for returning to his home’
Hala Abu Samra, 13, a Gaza City resident, was living with her family in the Awqaf building in al-Zaytoun, which sheltered a large number of homeless families.
In video testimony for Mondoweiss, the 13-year-old girl sits among her relatives as she cries. They try to hold and comfort her as she talks about how her mother was killed and her other family members were injured. “My whole family is now lying on the floor of the hospital. They’re all bleeding. I’m the only one who survived,” she said.
“They tricked us and said war was over; they made us feel safe,” she sobbed. “Then they killed my mother.”
Hala’s family was transferred to the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City after being targeted in their displacement center.
“Haven’t they had enough of killing us for two-and-a-half years? Haven’t they had enough of us dying every day? When will all this end?” Hala exclaimed.
Among the families who were targeted was also that of Dr. Sabri Abu Sabt. They had returned to their home just beyond the yellow line in Khan Younis’s Bani Suheila region. It was their first night back. When their home was targeted at 2 a.m., they were asleep. Three family members were killed: Abu Sabt’s son, his daughter, and his granddaughter.
Abu Sabt’s family is one of dozens in Gaza who have been targeted by Israeli forces in areas near the yellow line. A majority of them were targeted inside the zone from which the Israeli army had withdrawn, according to local authorities and reporting from Mondoweiss based on eyewitness testimony.
“We are a peaceful family. We went home because there was nowhere else for us to go,” Dr. Abu Sabt says at Nasser Hospital in video testimony for Mondoweiss. “We were just sleeping in our home. No one else was there. They bombed us while we were sleeping, instead of warning us. They killed my son, my daughter, and my granddaughter.”
The injured doctor, whose head shows signs of wounds, said that his son had just begun his first semester at university last week, the first time higher education had resumed in Gaza in two years. “He was so happy to start university. But the Israeli army decided to kill him for returning to his home.”
Re Israel’s general lawlessness and human rights violations, Human Rights Watch came out with this report today:
On January 21, just two days after a temporary ceasefire was announced between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, the Israeli military launched “Operation Iron Wall,” a large-scale operation in the West Bank that also involved Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, and Border Police. Senior officials claimed the operation targeted militants in refugee camps in the northern West Bank governorates of Jenin and Tulkarem….The operation emptied the camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams of virtually all its residents, making it the largest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank in one operation since the 1967 war. Ten months later, the camps remain empty with approximately 32,000 residents displaced. Since then, the Israeli military has demolished 850 homes and other buildings across all three camps….This report examines the Israeli government’s conduct of Operation Iron Wall from its start in January 2025 through July 2025, and the resulting mass displacement of Palestinians from three refugee camps in the northern West Bank. Human Rights Watch found that Israeli forces committed forcible displacement in violation of the law of occupation under international humanitarian law that amount to war crimes. Human Rights Watch also found that Israeli forces committed the forcible transfer of population and other inhumane acts as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, which are crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Israel’s actions also violated international human rights law, which remains in effect in the West Bank.
“All My Dreams Have Been Erased”: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank | HRW
To state the obvious, I’m continually amazed at how Israel can kill and kill and kill, and the world pretty much frames it as self defense, or an unfortunate side effect of war, or unavoidable civilian casualties, or something to do with the Holocaust and centuries of discrimination against the Jews, or references to the Jewish State in 800 B.C, or how the Arabs rejected the U.N. partition plan, or some other total nonsense.
Israel needs to face accountability for our genocide. And so does the US…Genocide is a process, not an event. When genocide happens, its roots, and the conditions that allowed it, often become visible only in retrospect. If those conditions remain unchanged and there is no accountability, there’s every reason to believe the violence will return, perhaps even worse, especially if it was never fully halted. This is exactly what we are seeing in the case of Gaza. Demanding accountability from Israeli leaders isn’t just about the past, it’s the only way to challenge a system designed to repeat such violence.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/18/israel-accountability-gaza-genocide