Nearly 900,000 Palestinians Trapped In Gaza City As Hospitals Collapse Under Israeli Assault.

GAZA CITY — Nearly 900,000 Palestinians remain trapped inside Gaza City, hemmed in by Israeli tanks and bombardment, as the enclave’s last functioning hospitals shut down under relentless fire. Health officials and aid groups warn the besieged population faces “certain death” without urgent intervention, as Israel intensifies its campaign that rights groups and UN investigators say amounts to genocide.

Hospitals Bombed Out Of Service:

On Monday and Tuesday, Gaza’s Health Ministry confirmed that Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital and the Eye Hospital, the only public eye-care facility in northern Gaza, were forced to close after repeated Israeli strikes. Both had been providing specialised care unavailable elsewhere in the Strip.

“There are no safe routes to reach hospitals and medical facilities, preventing patients and the wounded from accessing care,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. “The occupation is deliberately and systematically targeting the healthcare system in Gaza City as part of its policy of genocide.”

A senior doctor at Al-Rantisi, speaking to Haaretz before the shutdown, described the hospital as “a graveyard for children who should have lived”, citing three patients who died in intensive care last week after generators failed.

Local residents say ambulances can no longer reach many neighbourhoods. “We called for an ambulance when our neighbour’s house was hit,” said Mahmoud Abu Rmeileh, a resident of Tel al-Hawa. “It never came. They told us it was impossible to cross Jalaa Street because tanks are firing at anything moving.”

Relentless Bombardment:

Since dawn Tuesday, at least 29 Palestinians have been killed across Gaza, according to hospital records. Strikes in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa, al-Sabra, and Shati refugee camp destroyed residential buildings and left dozens trapped under rubble.

Eyewitnesses described the aftermath of one strike in Shati camp, where five people,  including three children, were killed when their home was levelled. “We dug with our bare hands,” said Um Basel, a surviving relative. “The bodies of the children were in pieces. They tell us to leave, but where do we go?”

In central Gaza, Israeli artillery hit a tent sheltering displaced families in Al-Zawayda, killing at least two, while warships opened fire on fishermen near Khan Yunis, killing two brothers.

Israel has advanced ground forces closer to al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, raising fears of another storming. Tanks were reported to be massing near the Jordanian field hospital and along Al-Sudaniya in the north.

“No Safe Place”

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that at least 12 of its facilities, including nine schools, were struck between September 11 and 16. More than 11,000 displaced people had been sheltering inside.

“People in Gaza City are facing daily bombardment, famine and compromised access to the means of survival,” UNRWA said. “Israeli forces placed the entire city under a displacement order, but people have nowhere to go. There is no safe place in Gaza.”

Municipal officials issued a desperate appeal for international intervention, warning of an “unfolding humanitarian catastrophe” for hundreds of thousands who cannot or will not flee south. Many families fear they will never return if they leave, echoing the historic trauma of the 1948 Nakba.

The Numbers Behind the Siege:

• 900,000: Palestinians still trapped in Gaza City.
• 100,000+: Palestinians killed since October 2023, including at least 20,000 children.
• 440: Deaths from malnutrition, including 147 children, as famine deepens.
• 80%: Civilian share of the dead, according to leaked Israeli military data.

International health officials say the death toll is set to rise sharply as famine and disease spread. “We are watching an entire population starve, sick and die in plain sight,” said Dr Rick Brennan, WHO’s regional emergencies director.

International Outcry, Limited Action:

On Tuesday, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the EU issued a rare joint appeal urging Israel to reopen medical evacuation corridors and allow aid convoys into Gaza. Several countries offered to treat patients in West Bank hospitals.

But rights groups say appeals are meaningless without enforcement. “Words without accountability embolden impunity,” said Amnesty International’s Middle East director, Heba Morayef. “The systematic targeting of hospitals and denial of aid are not accidents; they are deliberate acts to erase a people.”

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is already examining genocide charges against Israel, while the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior military leaders. Yet, military operations continue unabated, backed by U.S. weapons and diplomatic cover.

Siege As Strategy:

Military analysts and human rights lawyers argue that Israel’s strategy is no longer simply about degrading Hamas’ capacity. By flattening hospitals, schools, and civilian infrastructure, the campaign appears designed to make Gaza City uninhabitable.

“Destroying the healthcare system is not collateral damage, it’s a weapon of war,” said Michael Lynk, former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine. “When hospitals shut down, when famine is engineered, when civilians are trapped without escape, you are seeing a blueprint of ethnic cleansing through attrition.”

Israel insists it warns civilians and offers evacuation routes. But aid agencies say these “routes” are either unsafe or lead to overcrowded, bombed-out camps with no food or shelter.

“The message is clear: leave or die,” said a senior Palestinian analyst in Ramallah. “But most people cannot leave. And those who stay are being starved and bombed into submission.”

Conclusion: Siege As A Tool Of Erasure.

What is happening in Gaza City is not the fog of war; it is the clear, methodical dismantling of a society. Hospitals are being eliminated, not accidentally but systematically, as every remaining medical corridor is cut off. Food, fuel, and water are not absent by chance but by design, as Israel enforces a blockade described by aid groups as a “man-made famine.” Nearly 900,000 civilians are trapped in a death trap of deliberate construction.

The Israeli government justifies its assault by pointing to Hamas’s military infrastructure. Yet, the evidence shows a pattern where civilian life is targeted as much as, if not more than, military assets. Children dying in intensive care because generators are bombed out, fishermen shot in their boats, and families crushed in their homes point not to military necessity but to a strategy of civilian destruction.

Investigators at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have already raised the spectre of genocide. The elements are visible: the intent to destroy a national group, the infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction, the targeting of children, and the starvation of a people. Each new hospital closure, each body pulled from rubble, tightens the evidentiary chain linking military operations to crimes against humanity under international law.

Equally damning is the complicity of those who enable it. The United States and European powers continue to supply weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic cover even as their own rights groups and courts warn of atrocities. Their recent calls for medical corridors, absent enforcement or consequences, amount to little more than humanitarian theatre and political theatre.

What emerges is a dual catastrophe: a humanitarian collapse within Gaza and a moral collapse of the international system meant to prevent such crimes. If Gaza City is turned into a place unfit for human life, it will not be because the world lacked information. It will be because the world looked, documented, condemned, looked away and then allowed it to continue.

As one exhausted nurse told a journalist outside the ruins of Al-Rantisi hospital:“The genocide is not only here in Gaza. It is also in every silence outside that lets it happen.”