International Glance
The Israeli military carried out one of the deadliest attacks on Gaza since the “ceasefire” took effect last month, killing over 30 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, and wounding dozens more in a series of airstrikes late Wednesday and early Thursday. The dead and wounded arrived at hospitals in an endless stream, children were covered in dust and blood, men carried small bodies wrapped in shrouds, and wails of grief rose in the air
These horrific scenes, a daily feature of the past two years of Israel’s acute genocidal assault, had returned again. “The war has returned to the Gaza Strip,” Mahmoud Bassal, spokesperson for the Civil Defense in Gaza, told Drop Site inside a hospital tent at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City as the casualties were being brought in. The wounded arrived every few minutes, brought in by ambulances, cars, motorized rickshas—or carried on foot. The dead were wrapped in blankets and sheets.
Most of the casualties came from multiple Israeli airstrikes targeting a tent encampment sheltering the displaced in Khan Younis that killed 17 people, including five children, and from a pair of airstrikes on a building belonging to the Awqaf (Religious Endowments) Ministry sheltering the displaced that killed 16, including seven children, according to hospital officials.
“What is happening in Gaza is something no mind could have imagined,” Bassal said later in the evening as he knelt in front of the bodies of three young children wrapped in one body bag. “It’s madness. These children are being killed—their only crime is that they are children…So to the world, to the nations, to the mediators, to those who oversaw the ceasefire, to those who contributed to stopping the war—now the occupation returns to kill our children—what are you going to do?” He added, “Who will cry for these children? The entire family is gone. The mother died, the children died, the father died—who will cry for them? The world must understand what is happening in Gaza and the gravity of what is taking place.”
Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.
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.
The World Health Organization has said its workforce will shrink by nearly a quarter – or over 2,000 jobs – by the middle of next year as it seeks to implement reforms after its top donor, the United States, announced its departure.
The Trump administration’s blueprint to secure and govern Gaza won strong approval at the United Nations on Monday, a crucial step that provides international support for U.S. efforts to move the devastated territory toward peace following two years of war.
On Thursday morning, a chartered plane carrying 153 Palestinians from war-torn Gaza – many without the required travel documents – landed at an airport near Johannesburg, leaving South African officials “blindsided”.
Ukraine and Greece signed an agreement in Athens on Sunday for the provision of US-supplied liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Kyiv throughout the winter months.
