It may be that after so many months and so many similar stories of conflict and violence, the U.S. public has grown inured to the suffering in Gaza, but in recent weeks humanitarian officials have been frantically trying to get the message across that conditions there, already wretched after more than 17 months of war, have grown markedly worse.
Israel cut off all humanitarian aid into the strip on March 1 at the conclusion of the first phase of a cease-fire agreement with Hamas. United Nations officials have warned repeatedly that the aid embargo will cause new hunger, sanitation and health catastrophes in Gaza.
Anton Asfar is the secretary general for Caritas Jerusalem. He described apocalyptic conditions in Gaza on April 10. “Nothing is entering into Gaza,” he said—no food, clean water, medical supplies or even flour for baking bread. The World Food Program has closed the 25 remaining bakeries across the strip that it had been supporting.
“Electricity is totally cut off from Gaza, so the water destination stations are not working, and there’s no clean water,” Mr. Asfar said. “After the collapse of the society, the people are returning back to a [daily] search for clean water, for food and their own basic necessities for their families and children.”
In a press briefing on April 2, the acting U.N. chief for humanitarian affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jonathan Whittall, described the situation in Gaza as “a war without limits” that “defies decency, humanity and…the law.”
He called Gaza “a death trap,” where 2.1 million people are “trapped, bombed and starved.”
A cease-fire that had allowed a period of eight weeks of relative calm ended spectacularly on March 18 when Israeli forces launched a shock wave of devastating airstrikes. More than 400 people, including many women and children, were killed, according to Gaza health officials.
Israeli officials blamed the end of the cease-fire on Hamas after its leadership declined to make changes to the previous agreement demanded by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said last month, “If Hamas does not release all [its Israeli] hostages, the gates of hell will open in Gaza.” Few in Gaza would likely argue with him, as the intensity and frequency of airstrikes and ground operations conducted by Israel have escalated sharply.
The breakdown of the cease-fire was deplored last month by Alistair Dutton, secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, the Catholic Church’s global humanitarian and relief network. “Conditions in Gaza were already an extreme humanitarian catastrophe, with people living in famine, without food, water, shelter, sewage removal or any reliable basic services,” Mr. Dutton said.
“The blockade of aid and renewed attacks will exacerbate the situation dramatically. Caritas is pleading for an immediate cease-fire and unfettered humanitarian access, and urges all parties in the conflict and the entire international community to make this an immediate priority.”
“Every moment that passes without action costs more innocent lives,” he said. More than 300 children have so far perished in the renewed fighting.
The Israeli military has begun perhaps its most aggressive ground offensive so far in the war in an attempt to root out what is left of Hamas, maintaining an almost daily pace of incursions and airstrikes. The new offensive may or may not be putting an end to Hamas—its militants managed a barrage of rockets against targets in southern Israel on April 6—but it is surely piling on the misery among everyday Palestinians attempting to survive the war.
A new deadly offensive
This latest Israel Defense Forces offensive in Gaza, dubbed “Operation Strength and Sword,” has proved excessively bloody and has included the kinds of attacks that critics of Israel allege are violations of international law. Israeli airstrikes killed at least 100 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on April 4, including 27 or more sheltering at a school, according to Palestinian authorities. The bodies of 14 children and five women were recovered from the school.
On April 9 an Israeli strike on a residential site, targeting what Israel called a senior Hamas militant, killed 23 people, including eight women and eight children. On March 23, I.D.F. forces wiped out several teams of Palestinian Red Crescent and emergency services who had been responding to the scene of a previous Israeli strike that resulted in civilian casualties.
And on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, I.D.F. soldiers shot three teenagers alleged to have been throwing rocks toward a highway on April 6, killing a 14-year-old Palestinian-American boy from New Jersey. On the same day, the I.D.F. launched an attack on a tent sheltering sleeping journalists in front of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Israeli military officials explained the target was a Palestinian photojournalist accused of functioning as a Hamas propagandist and terrorist. That person was wounded in the strike, but three other journalists were killed—one burning to death.
In February the Committee to Protect Journalists in its annual survey found that 70 percent of a record 124 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2024 had died in Gaza or the West Bank.
Mr. Asfar reports that humanitarian and emergency responders in Gaza operate under increasingly dangerous conditions. He said the humanitarian notification system, intended to alert I.D.F. troops to the presence of medical and other emergency teams, is no longer functioning. “We are really very concerned about our aid workers [and] medical teams’ safety,” he said.
Caritas was forced to close one of its medical sites in the Ash Shuja’iyyeh area, east of Gaza City, “because it has been ‘hot’ over there, and a clinic was bombarded with 18 people killed.”
And he reports that I.D.F. military operations and Israeli settler attacks are making life impossible on the “turbulent” West Bank. Mr. Asfar said his Caritas team members have been unable to continue their work in the occupied territories, cut off by curfews and I.D.F. raids.
“The settlers, they are out of control,” Mr. Asfar said, noting that even Israeli police cars have been destroyed or damaged by settler youths.
In Gaza the accelerating I.D.F. campaign has resulted in almost continuous bombardment across the strip. People are told to evacuate by the Israeli military, Mr. Asfar said, but moving is dangerous and “there is no safe zone in Gaza.” As fighting around Gaza City resumes, Caritas Jerusalem staff, according to Mr. Asfar, are concerned about the hundreds of people who remain sheltered at the Holy Family and Porphyrios Greek Orthodox Church compounds.
Demand for humanitarian aid on the West Bank has also grown acute, according to Mr. Asfar. The West Bank economy, heavily reliant on tourism in Bethlehem and other communities near Jerusalem, has ground to a halt. Almost 200,000 Palestinians have lost labor permits, and many thousands have been displaced by military operations. Caritas Jerusalem, he said, is responding to emergency needs while creating a plan to address what will be long-term economic, educational and social needs on the West Bank.
Restoring attention to the crisis
A new effort by Christian Holy Land leaders to restore drifting world attention to the crisis in both Gaza and the West Bank began on April 1. A Jerusalem Voice for Justice describes itself as an ecumenical witness for equality and a just peace in Palestine/Israel.
The leaders of the effort, which include America contributor David Neuhaus, S.J., the former Latin patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah and the former Lutheran bishop of the Holy Land Munib Younan, write: “As the war in Gaza continues, Israel has launched a war in the West Bank, hidden from the eyes of the world. The Israeli army is carrying out the largest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank from their homes since 1967. According to [U.N. officials], already over 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced, and are currently living without shelter, essential services, and healthcare.”
Citing the parable of the good Samaritan, these Christian leaders say they refuse to pass by the suffering of the Palestinian communities of the West Bank in silence.
U.S. President Donald Trump, they also note, has promised “vital announcements about the future of our homeland.”
“We fear that the annexation of Palestinian territories by Israel may be imminent. Increasing use of the names ‘Judea and Samaria’ (instead of the occupied West Bank), exploiting Biblical terminology to confuse present political realities, manifests a desire to wipe Palestine and the Palestinians off the map, claiming we do not exist,” Voice for Justice writes. “Now is the time to insist that Palestinians have the right to live in their homeland, and to join with those calling all over the world for equality, justice and peace for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
With the world distracted by rollercoastering financial markets because of Mr. Trump’s lurching tariffs strategy, it is hard to say if their message will get across to Christians in the United States. But speaking to that community directly, “those Jews and Christians who have been led to believe that God wants Israel to annex our homeland,” these Christian leaders say: “We want to state clearly that you have been misguided. All, Palestinians and Israelis, are created in the image and likeness of God. They are all equal in dignity and rights. Furthermore, our God is a God of love who abhors violence and loves all God’s children. The Palestinians are your ‘neighbor,’” they conclude.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu traveled to Washington on April 8 for what he called “a very good visit” with Mr. Trump. In their public statements, the two leaders offered sympathy for the plight of the hostages but shed little light on any emerging deal to suspend the fighting.
Mr. Trump has said he wants the war to end. But his postwar vision for Gaza—taking it over and relocating its population—has stunned Middle East allies of the United States, who say any talk of transferring the Palestinian population, by force or voluntarily, is a nonstarter. Nevertheless, Israel has embraced the idea.
Mr. Netanyahu, under pressure from his far-right political coalition and cabinet members, has also vowed to continue the war until Hamas is utterly defeated, an aim Israel has yet to achieve 18 months into the conflict.
With the firm support of the Trump administration, Mr. Netanyahu has been “unshackled” by the humanitarian constraints pressed on him by the Biden administration, according to an analysis in The New York Times. The rising violence appears evidence of Mr. Netanyahu’s new freedom.
Mr. Asfar said that however unshackled Mr. Netanyahu may feel, the Israeli public strongly desires a restoration of the cease-fire with the hope of saving the remaining hostages.
“The situation is really terrible on the ground, whether it’s in Gaza or in the West Bank,” Mr. Asfar said. After more than a year and half of war, he said, “the Palestinian community, especially in Gaza, have lost hope in the international community to intervene and make a change and put pressure on the parties to end this cruel war.” All the same, he joins other members of the Holy Land’s faith and humanitarian communities in imploring international intervention to “put an end to this devastating war.”
The war, which was sparked by Hamas in coordinated attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has seen the deadliest fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in their history. More than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in the conflict, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count but says more than half of the dead are women and children. Virtually all of Gaza’s more than 2 million residents have been displaced by the fighting, and Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, education sites and housing have been obliterated.
Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people during its attack, mostly civilians, and took 250 people captive, many of whom have been freed in cease-fire deals. Only 24 of the remaining 59 hostages still held by Hamas are believed to be alive.
With reporting from The Associated Press
The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past us each week. For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches.
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