The campaign of genocide and expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza by US imperialism and Israel continued with intensity on Tuesday, one day after the war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump in the White House.

In the past 48 hours, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed at least 38 Palestinians and wounded 55, including children. Many casualties occurred in the Shujaiya area of Gaza City due to a strike on a residential building. Shujaiya is one of the largest neighborhoods of Gaza, which once held as many as 100,000 people, and is in the southern quarter of the Old City of Gaza and outside of the city walls.

The dense population and overcrowding by refugees living in tents near the residential building were certainly known by the Israeli military. This was the reason the four-story structure was targeted. The building was right next to the al-Hawashi mosque. A total of eight homes were destroyed, along with significant damage done to nearby structures.

Israel justified its murderous targeting of civilians, as it has done continuously over the past 18 months, by claiming it was seeking to “eliminate” a senior Hamas militant who was in the area. While no name or evidence was provided, at least 23 people, including eight women and eight children, were killed.

A report by Al Jazeera described the scene:

Emergency responders and neighbours who narrowly escaped death have been digging with their bare hands to get through the rubble amid an absence of equipment.

Anas el-Titr, who lived in one of the homes that was hit by the Israeli warplanes, said:

They have nothing to do with the fighting. They are children, they are innocent. ... They are women staying at their homes. They have nothing to do with the fighting. Why would they hit them?

With ambulances full, many of the victims had to be transported using donkey carts. Emergency workers, who are being killed by Israeli attacks at an alarming rate, are overwhelmed.

The ongoing conflict has severely impacted various regions within Gaza, leading to significant civilian casualties and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.

After his private meeting with Trump on Monday, Netanyahu took questions from the press in the White House and said that a plan was being developed for “enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want,” and that the US and Israel were working with several countries who will agree to take Palestinians. This was, of course, a blatant articulation of the goal of the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, since staying there without being bombed and starved was not one of the “free choices” being offered to Palestinians.

In another strike, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said an Israeli attack hit close to its clinic in the so-called safe zone of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza. Meanwhile, a strike on a home in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza killed 11 people, including five children as young as two, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies. Four more people were killed in a separate strike that hit a house in Deir al-Balah, it said.

A strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya flattened a home and killed a family of seven, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. A separate strike hit a group of people in an open area northwest of Gaza City, killing four people, including one who was planning to get married next week, the ministry said.

Six weeks have now passed since Israel imposed a total blockade of Gaza impacting 2.3 million people there. Food that was stockpiled during the short-lived ceasefire is running out, while emergency meal distributions are ending, bakeries have closed down, and markets are empty.

The international farmers organization La Via Campesina issued a press release on Tuesday urging emergency action to prevent “extermination by starvation and collapse of life in Gaza.” The statement denounces the Israeli-engineered famine in Gaza, with 93 percent of Palestinians facing acute food insecurity, bringing Gaza to Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Phase 5—extermination by starvation—the highest level of food insecurity, which indicates widespread death due to starvation, extremely critical acute malnutrition and collapse of livelihood systems.

The statement goes on:

Bread has disappeared from markets; Palestinians are dying from dehydration and untreated wounds; all bakeries and flour mills have been destroyed; fuel, water, electricity and medical supplies remain blockaded.

These acts clearly satisfy the elements of genocide as defined under Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention, namely, the “deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part.”

Because every mechanism to date—including diplomatic pressure, legal proceedings and even declared ceasefires—has failed to stop Israel’s genocide and engineered starvation in Gaza, we issue this urgent call for immediate action to pressure and mobilize for multilateral State-led humanitarian aid corridors and protective forces to halt the escalated extermination in Gaza.

On Monday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published its Humanitarian Situation Update #278 on the Gaza Strip. The statement said Gaza Strip is experiencing a worsening humanitarian crisis as water, sanitation and food shortages intensify due to severe restrictions and infrastructure damage.

A drastic reduction in water supply, combined with power outages and fuel shortages, has significantly affected access to safe drinking water. Of the three Mekorot water pipelines from Israel, only one remains functional, while the main desalination plant has reduced its output by 85 percent. UNICEF reports that drinking water availability has dropped to six liters per person per day and could fall even further, increasing the risk of disease outbreaks, especially among children.

The sanitation conditions in Gaza are deteriorating, the OCHA report states, placing immense strain on healthcare facilities. Over 250 medical centers lack essential infection prevention supplies; and hospitals, already overwhelmed with casualties, are struggling with dwindling medical resources. The ongoing blockade on aid since early March has further exacerbated the crisis.

Malnutrition is rising sharply, with infant nutrition supplies nearly gone, forcing families to use unsafe alternatives mixed with contaminated water. UNICEF has warned that thousands of pallets of lifesaving aid remain blocked from entering Gaza, emphasizing that this is not a matter of charity but an obligation under international law.

The collapse of food production has added another layer of life-threatening hardship. Farmers face irrigation shortages, herders are losing livestock at alarming rates, and fishers struggle with security risks and equipment shortages. The destruction of agricultural infrastructure and the continued restrictions on movement have made access to food increasingly difficult. With essential resources dwindling and humanitarian space shrinking, the people of Gaza, particularly children and vulnerable groups, are facing an escalating crisis that threatens their survival.