• Evacuation of Gaza’s largest city ‘inevitable’, says Israeli army spokesman
• Save the Children chief says starving children are too weak to even cry

GAZA CITY: The Israeli military pressed operations around Gaza City on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump prepared to host a White House meeting on post-war plans for the shattered Palestinian territory.

Israel is under mounting pressure both at home and abroad to end its almost two-year campaign in Gaza, where the military is preparing to conquer the territory’s largest city and the United Nations has declared a famine.

Mediators have circulated a draft ceasefire and prisoner deal that has been accepted by the Palestinian group Hamas, but Israel has yet to give an official response. Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari on Tuesday said that mediators were still “waiting for an answer” from Israel.

On the ground, the Israeli military said its troops were “operating on the outskirts of Gaza City to locate and dismantle terror infrastructure sites above and below ground”.

Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, wrote on X that the evacuation of Gaza’s largest city was “inevitable”.

The vast majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during the war, and aid groups working in the territory consider the plan “unrealistic and dangerous”.

The UN estimates that nearly a million people currently live in Gaza City and its surroundings in the north of the territory.

Residents of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood spoke of heavy Israeli bombardment overnight. “Warplanes struck several times, and drones fired throughout the night,” said Tala al-Khatib, 29.

“Several homes in Zeitoun were blown up. We are still in our house — some neighbours have fled, while others remain. But wherever you flee, death follows you,” she said.

AFP footage on Wednesday showed thick smoke rising into the sky following air strikes on the Abu Iskandar and Sheikh Radwan neighbourhoods in the north of Gaza City.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz last week announced that the forces would destroy the city if Hamas did not agree on terms acceptable to Israel. The announcement was made after the ministry approved the military’s plan to seize the city.

‘Comprehensive plan’

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the US president was hosting top officials at the White House on Wednesday to thrash out a detailed plan for post-war Gaza.

“We’ve got a large meeting in the White House, chaired by the president, and it’s a very comprehensive plan we’re putting together on the next day,” Witkoff said on Fox News, without disclosing more details.

Trump stunned the world earlier this year when he suggested the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip, clear out its inhabitants and redevelop it as seaside real estate, which sparked an outcry in Europe and the Arab world.

As Israel’s security cabinet convened on Tuesday evening, tens of thousands of protesters massed in Tel Aviv to demand an end to the war.

Death toll nears 63,000

Since October 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 62,895 Palestinians, including hundreds of journalists, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.

At least 51 more Palestinians, including 12 waiting for aid, were killed on Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera. Gaza’s health ministry the total number of deaths due to famine and malnutrition has reached 313, 119 of whom were children, over past two months.

The head of Save the Children described in horrific detail on Wednesday the slow agony of starving children in Gaza, saying they are so weak they do not even cry.

Addressing a Security Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the president of the international charity, Inger Ashing, said famine in Gaza was not just a dry technical term. “When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully. This, in simple terms, is what famine is,” said Ashing.

She insisted aid groups have been warning loudly that famine was coming as Israel prevented food and other essentials from entering Gaza over the course of two years of war. “Yet our clinics are almost silent. Now, children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony. They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away,” said Ashing.

“Everyone in this room has a legal and moral responsibility to act to stop this atrocity,” she said.

The UN officially declared famine in Gaza on Friday, blaming what it called systematic obstruction of aid by Israel during more than 22 months of war.

A UN-backed hunger monitor, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative, said famine was affecting 500,000 people in the Gaza governorate, which covers about a fifth of the Palestinian territory. The IPC projected that the famine would expand by the end of September to cover around two-thirds of Gaza.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2025