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by IMEMC News
April 28, 2025

Comprehensive Sunday Update: On Day 41 since the resumption of the genocide in the devastated, starved and besieged Gaza Strip, the Israeli army continued the bombing and shelling, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, while critical food shortages continued to ravage the coastal enclave.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has called for urgent humanitarian access to the region, as its food supplies have been completely depleted and drinking water has become scarce.

With flour stocks exhausted and all bakeries shut down, nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza face the dire threat of slow death from starvation and dehydration, amid a systematic policy of deprivation imposed by Israeli occupation authorities.

Medical sources in the Gaza Strip since at least 70 Palestinians have been killed, and dozens injured, including many women and children, across the Gaza Strip, Sunday.

Israeli soldiers from the Givati Brigade invaded a UN school, used as shelter by displaced families in Gaza, and threw grenades at the tents, laughing as they watched the flames consume them.

On Sunday evening, 14 Palestinians, including children, were killed and many others injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a café and a home in central and southern Gaza.

According to reports, seven civilians were killed, and many others were injured after an Israeli airstrike hit Safatwi Café on Salahuddin Street, near the entrance of the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza.

The slain Palestinians have been identified as:

Ahmed Al-Saafin.
Mohammed Nahid Al-Jadi.
Hashim Hisham Safatwi.
Salama Safatwi.
Ibrahim Weshah.
Wadi’ Ziyada.

In a separate attack, seven more Palestinians, including children, were killed, and others injured when Israeli forces targeted the Kaware’ family home, south of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The slain Palestinians have been identified as:

Amjad Mohammed Kaware’ (Child).
Anas Mohammed Kaware’ Child).
Leen Jihad Kaware’ Child).
Hiba Kaware’ (Majayda).
Ahmed Hamdan Kaware’.
Ayman Mohammed Kaware’.
An unidentified woman.

Palestinian resistance factions carried out multiple operations against Israeli forces. This comes alongside a sharp increase in civilian casualties due to ongoing Israeli airstrikes since dawn.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, announced that its fighters targeted an Israeli military post with a guided missile.

The post, located inside a house where several soldiers were stationed, was struck in the eastern Al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. The Brigades stated that the operation was a direct response to the ongoing massacres against Palestinian civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was speaking at a conference in Jerusalem on Sunday, addressed topics ranging from Israel’s relations with the Arab world to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the situation in Lebanon—particularly Hezbollah—and what he described as U.S. pressures regarding the ongoing onslaught in Rafah, in southern Gaza.

Netanyahu claimed, “The Arab world has gradually come to terms with the fact that Israel is an irreversible reality. However, there remains a segment of the Arab world that clings to the principle of not recognizing a ‘Jewish state’ with defined borders—this continues to be an obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. They want to eliminate Israel. They say it, and they act on it. They say it in Ramallah and Gaza.”

He went on to argue that there is no meaningful distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, stating, “Hamas openly declares its intent to destroy us militarily. The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, says it will first push us back to the 1967 borders using international tools, and then occupy us militarily.”

Netanyahu dismissed the notion that a Palestinian state could bring peace, calling it “absurd.” He added, “We tried this experiment in Gaza, and it failed.”

Concluding his remarks, Netanyahu vowed, “We will crush Hamas and will not allow the Palestinian Authority [in the West Bank] to take its place. We will not replace one regime that seeks to destroy us with another that aims to do the same.”

Netanyahu’s statements not only reject the idea of a Palestinian state but also stand in direct violation of international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention.

This convention, adopted in 1949, explicitly prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into occupied territory.

Yet, Israel has continues the expansion of its illegal colonies across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, despite widespread international condemnation. These colonies are not merely physical structures—they are a deliberate strategy to entrench the occupation and render Palestinian sovereignty unattainable.

Israeli colonies in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem constitute war crimes under International Law.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.

The occupation itself is also illegal under international law. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, passed in 1967, calls for Israel to withdraw from territories it seized during the Six-Day War. However, instead of ending the occupation, Israel has entrenched it further, tightening its grip on Palestinian land and systematically undermining efforts toward a lasting peace.

Netanyahu’s rejection of a Palestinian state is not a new stance. Since the early 1990s, when “peace talks” first began, Israel has consistently refused to withdraw from occupied East Jerusalem or recognize Palestinian sovereignty.

Negotiations have often served as a diplomatic smokescreen, allowing Israel to continue expanding settlements and confiscating Palestinian land.

East Jerusalem remains a flashpoint; recognized under international law as part of the occupied Palestinian territories, its unilateral annexation by Israel has been deemed illegal by the United Nations. By refusing any compromise over East Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s government not only violates international law but also ensures that peace remains an elusive goal.

At its core, Netanyahu’s rhetoric and policies reflect a broader strategy of denying Palestinians their fundamental rights while consolidating Israel’s control over occupied land. These actions flagrantly disregard international legal frameworks designed to protect the rights of occupied populations, leaving millions of Palestinians in a state of perpetual dispossession and despair.

While Israeli leadership continues to avoid making decisive moves, Hamas has made its position clear: “It’s either a comprehensive deal or nothing at all.”

A senior Palestinian official, speaking to Israel’s Channel 14, reiterated the unwavering stance of Palestinian factions, including Hamas: “A comprehensive deal that guarantees an end to the genocide, or no deal whatsoever.”

The official stated, “There is nothing new in the negotiations. It’s either an all-encompassing package or nothing—because only a comprehensive agreement ensures the war’s end.”

He explained that Hamas firmly believes partial solutions are doomed to fail, as “Israel ultimately seeks to ensure the release of the captives in Gaza, grant us a few days of ceasefire, and then resume the war.”

For this reason, the central demand remains unchanged: “We want one thing—the war to end.”

In addition to calling for an end to the war, Hamas maintains its firm stance on other critical issues. The senior official emphasized, “We will not surrender our weapons under any circumstances,” adding, “We will not accept the exile of any leaders from Gaza—this is a red line.”

The official also dismissed the notion that Israeli military pressure could force Hamas to back down.

The Gaza Government Media Office has reported that over 65% of those killed by Israeli forces are women, children, and the elderly.

Israeli attacks have claimed the lives of more than 52,243 Palestinians, including 18,000 children and over 12,400 women. Entire families have been wiped out, with over 2,180 families losing both parents and all their children. Additionally, more than 5,070 families have been reduced to a single surviving member.

The toll on healthcare workers has also been devastating, with over 1,400 doctors and medical staff killed, alongside 113 members of civil defense teams.

These figures remain incomplete, as many victims remain under rubble or on the streets, inaccessible to emergency and rescue teams in various parts of the destroyed Gaza Strip.

Updated From – Sunday: Israeli Airstrikes Continue in Besieged Gaza Strip – Apr 27, 2025 at 10:53

Israeli forces continued their ongoing assault on the entire population of the Gaza Strip on Sunday, beginning with an airstrike just after midnight by an Israeli drone, which targeted a group of people in the Al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

Three Palestinians, including a child, were killed and others injured on Sunday morning in Israeli shelling of Khan Yunis city, south of the Gaza Strip.

WAFA News correspondents reported, citing medical sources, that a fisherman was killed by Israeli naval gunfire off the coast of Khan Yunis.

The same sources added that two civilians, one of them a child, were killed when the occupation forces bombed a tent sheltering displaced people in the town of Khuza’a, east of the city of Khan Younis.

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation forces are destroying a number of residential buildings north of Rafah.

Children in Gaza are searching for firewood through the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings to cook food, as the ongoing Israeli blockade continues to prevent cooking gas from entering the war-ravaged region.

Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation has been committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 168,000 dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing.

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