Hospitals in Gaza City are already “operating at nearly 300% over capacity with a constant influx of complex trauma injuries,” the World Health Organization said. Israel’s evacuation orders, “combined with massively escalating violence, have forced people into ever smaller areas, piling unbearable pressure onto hospitals,” it said in a post on X.
The United Nations body for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that nearly one in three children in Gaza City is now malnourished.
And the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said Thursday that that two people had died due to malnutrition in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 271 since Israel launched its assault on the besieged enclave.
Israel has repeatedly denied that widespread starvation is taking place.
Hamas said earlier this week that it had accepted a ceasefire proposal from Arab mediators, but Israel has yet to say whether it will accept the deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been publicly making the case for pressing ahead with military action.
In a 40-minute sit down with the Triggernometry podcast, Netanyahu rejected allegations from human rights groups that Israel was carrying out a genocide in Gaza, telling the podcast those claims were a fraud. “If we wanted to commit genocide, we would have done it in one afternoon. We have the capacity, but we don’t do that,” he said.
Netanyahu said that he was aware Israel had “work to do” to win over people across the West, citing young people in particular.
“We Jews have been fighting and losing the propaganda war for about 2,500 years. What’s different now is that we’re winning the ground war,” he said.
In recent days his diplomatic approach has involved a war of words with the leaders of Australia and France over their decisions to recognize a Palestinian state.
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