Israeli strikes killed at least two Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday, hours after the military issued evacuation orders for four areas and then hit those same locations, according to Al Jazeera. Israeli air strikes destroyed homes in the Bureij and Jabalia refugee camps and in Gaza City’s Zeitoun and Tal al-Hawa neighborhoods. In contrast, a separate strike on a building in Zeitoun injured several people, a source at al-Ahli Hospital said. The Israeli military says such strikes target militant infrastructure and accuses Hamas of embedding fighters and weapons among civilian sites.
This is not an isolated pattern. The UN Human Rights Office has said Israel’s evacuation-order practice raises serious concerns that it intends to permanently clear civilian populations from parts of Gaza to create a buffer zone, which would amount to forcible transfer, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, according to OHCHR. The strikes come despite a US-brokered “ceasefire” that took effect in October 2025; local health authorities say more than 1,185 people have been killed in Gaza since it began.
The humanitarian picture beneath the ceasefire remains fragile. A new IPC food security analysis projects that 1.4 million people, 67% of Gaza’s population, will face crisis-level or worse food insecurity through December, up from 1.2 million in the prior reporting period, and found that 83% of households now report no source of income, leaving most families entirely dependent on external aid, according to Middle East Monitor. Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories rejected the IPC’s findings as methodologically flawed and blamed Hamas for obstructing aid delivery.
Deployment of the US-backed International Stabilization Force, meant to help secure Gaza and oversee Hamas’s disarmament, remains stalled months after the UN Security Council authorized it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Israel holds an effective veto over which countries’ forces can join the mission and has used it to object to Turkish participation, according to Gulf News.
Britain’s Foreign Office separately demanded Israel lift restrictions on humanitarian aid, saying the curbs are “driving disease, water scarcity and decimating health services,” per Al Jazeera’s reporting of the department’s statement.
