In its latest update on Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warns that humanitarian supplies are nearing total depletion since Israel imposed a complete blockade on commercial goods and humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip on March 2. More than 2 million people remain trapped, bombed and starving inside the territory, while Israeli attacks on civilians, aid workers, UN personnel, hospitals and ambulances continue with impunity.
For eighteen months, an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe has been raging in Gaza, with people dying from widespread violence, lack of medical treatment, disease, dehydration and starvation. UN officials have previously described the situation in Gaza as "apocalyptic," "hell on earth," "beyond catastrophic," and said that the humanitarian community is "running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza."
UN officials have said that “Palestinian civilians are dehumanized to the point of being somehow unworthy of survival”, described the situation in Gaza as “a war without limits,” and noted that they “are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that show an utter disregard for human life.”
On Sunday, Israel's seven-week siege of the territory marked by far the longest period in history in which the Israeli government has blocked all aid and goods from entering Gaza, while hostilities continue and aid supplies dwindle. Now, life-saving services are on the verge of collapse.
"For example, in Gaza City, only three ambulances of the Palestine Red Crescent Society out of 30 are currently operational, and that is due to the lack of fuel to operate those ambulances," UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters on Thursday.
The water sector has been severely affected by the hostilities, with nearly 90 percent of water assets, including wells, pumping stations, and treatment plants, either destroyed or partially damaged. More than half of the water and sanitation facilities are inaccessible, drastically reducing access to drinking water, undermining basic hygiene and compromising public health.
Israel, as the occupying power, has clear obligations under international law, including to ensure the availability of food, medical supplies and public health services, and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid where it is not otherwise provided.
Meanwhile, OCHA reports that displacement continues on a massive scale. The UN humanitarian office stresses that civilians must be protected, whether they leave or stay. Those who flee must be allowed to do so safely and be able to return voluntarily when the situation allows.
Since Israel broke the ceasefire and resumed its attacks on Gaza on March 18, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,600 Palestinians and injured more than 4,300, bringing the total death toll since October 2023 to more than 51,000, with more than 116,000 injured.
At least 15,000 children are among the registered dead, with the vast majority of those killed being civilians. However, the actual death toll is estimated to be much higher. Thousands more remain buried under the rubble as a lack of heavy machinery and equipment impedes efforts to rescue the wounded and missing. Thousands more are estimated to have died from indirect causes such as lack of medical treatment, dehydration and starvation.
Among those killed are at least 417 aid workers, 294 UN staff, 1,300 health workers and 209 journalists. Gaza holds the dismal record of being the deadliest place in the world for aid workers. Each day, humanitarian workers are attacked, detained, obstructed, injured or killed.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said earlier this week that only 21 of Gaza's 36 hospitals remain partially functional. Almost all of them have suffered some damage in this conflict, while the latest attacks on hospitals further cripple Gaza's health system. WHO has reported at least 1458 attacks on health services in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) from October 7, 2023, to April 15, 2025, resulting in at least 938 deaths and 1523 injuries. Most of these attacks were recorded in the Gaza Strip.
For the past month, Israeli forces have escalated air, land and sea bombardments of the Gaza Strip and expanded ground operations, resulting in mass casualties, destruction of civilian infrastructure and large-scale displacement. Some 500,000 Gazans have been forcibly displaced since the collapse of the ceasefire.
The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate rapidly under a total siege, with no food, fuel, medicine, clean water or other essential goods entering the enclave since March 2. The blockade has forced some humanitarian organizations to cut their food distribution to just one meal a day.
On Thursday, the heads of 12 leading humanitarian organizations warned in a joint statement that the aid system in Gaza is facing "total collapse."
“This is one of the worst humanitarian failures of our generation. Every single person in Gaza is relying on humanitarian aid to survive. That lifeline has been completely cut off since a blockade on all aid supplies was imposed by Israeli authorities on 2 March,” the CEOs of the aid organizations said.
"We have supplies ready. We have trained medical staff. We have the expertise. What we don’t have is the access – or the guarantee by Israeli authorities that our teams can safely do their jobs."
The humanitarian leaders stressed that “the humanitarian system is at breaking point” and “survival itself is now slipping out of reach.”
The first phase of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which lasted until March 17, allowed for a relative scale-up of life-saving humanitarian aid between January 19 and March 1, 2025. Despite ceasefire violations, the cessation of Israeli attacks allowed the daily entry of large quantities of humanitarian supplies and a steady flow of fuel.
Prior to the Israeli government's total siege, humanitarian aid to Gaza had been obstructed by its authorities for more than a year, in gross violation of international humanitarian law and in apparent use as a method of warfare, a war crime.
Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity
Legal observers point out that the total blockade of humanitarian aid is a flagrant war crime and may be part of an alleged genocide against the population of Gaza, as the actions of the Israeli government appear to be aimed at deliberately inflicting living conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group or part of a group.
A growing number of independent legal experts, international commissions, and human rights organizations - including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Federation for Human Rights - have found that Israel's actions in Gaza against the Palestinians as a group amount to genocide.
At the same time, Israel's war in Gaza continues to be marked by serious war crimes and crimes against humanity by Israeli military and government officials. Despite the fact that Israeli officials have been accused of committing some of the worst crimes known to humankind, the Israeli government continues to receive financial, military, and political support from the United States government and a few other allies.
Senior officials in the current and the previous US administration are implicated, either by their actions or by their failure to act, in the ongoing atrocities committed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza and other actions by Israeli authorities that may amount to genocide.
Since the United States has been a party to the Genocide Convention since 1988, US officials can be held accountable under the Genocide Convention for complicity in genocide. According to the Genocide Convention, acts amounting to genocide include the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group or part of a group.
They may also be prosecuted for direct and public incitement to genocide based on their official statements, or for conspiracy to commit genocide based on their past and ongoing interactions with Israeli authorities.
Both incitement and conspiracy are prohibited by American law, and punishable in American courts. The legislation applies in particular if the perpetrator is a US citizen or is located in the United States, regardless of where the acts of genocide were committed.
However, except for the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, law enforcement authorities in the United States and other countries around the world that are parties to the Genocide Convention have failed to take decisive action, thereby allowing these crimes to continue to be committed with impunity.
Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the situation in Gaza, after the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu in November 2024.
Some of the worst crimes perpetrated by Israeli officials in Gaza include collective punishment of civilians, use of starvation as a method of warfare, denial of humanitarian aid, targeted killings of civilians, indiscriminate killings of civilians, targeted killings of aid workers, disproportionate attacks, forcible transfer, torture, enforced disappearances, and other atrocity crimes.