While the fragile newborn escapes in his mother’s arms, Yussuf al-Najjar’s parents fear that he leaves the world as fast as he came to him.
“His condition is deteriorating,” said Nagia Al-Najjar on his baby on Monday in the Intensive Care Room at the Nasser Hospital of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Born prematurely, Yussuf now suffers from acute malnutrition, and the family cannot obtain formula or medicines such as the blockade of Israel aid and goods that Gaza reaches enters its third month.
After Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he would give an order to increase the military offensive in Gaza with a plan to seize the entire strip, Yussuf’s future is increasingly uncertain. Palestinians and observers fear fresh bombings and displacements, and help groups warn about a spiral humanitarian crisis marked by few food supplies.
Yussuf is among the 9,000 children in Gaza who were admitted or treated for acute malnutrition since the war began, and UNICEF said in March that he had seen an increase in cases. Dr. Ahmed al-Farrah, head of the Pediatrics and Obstetrices Room at Nasser Hospital, told NBC News last week that more than 50 children had died “for hunger.”
“Isn’t it a sin that a child dies like this?” Al-Najjar, 30, told the NBC News crew on the ground, his face was filled with pain.
Through Gaza, the Palestinians expressed anxiety As they found out the plan approved unanimously by Israel’s security cabinet to confiscate the entire territory in what Netanyahu described as an effort to defeat Hamas.
“We expected and wait for a decision for Israel to end the war against us, not the decision to occupy Gaza and displace its people,” said Walid Abu Muhsin, a street vendor of Khan Younis, to the NBC News crew on Monday.
Within Gaza and abroad, the humanitarian and help groups condemned the government plans led by Netanyahu to control Gaza indefinitely and distribute help to Gaza through “Israeli centers under conditions established by the Israeli army” once Israel lifts its blockade.
The two goals “will inevitably lead to innumerable more dead civilians and the additional destruction of Gaza,” said the UN Vice President Farhan Haq, in an informative session on Monday in New York.
More than 52,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the local Ministry of Health, since Israel launched its offensive in the enclave after the terrorist attacks led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which marked a great escalation in a decades conflict.
Around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken as hostages to Gaza in the attacks, with more than 50 people, both dead and lively, which are believed to remain in the captivity of Hamas, according to Israeli officials.
The families of the hostages that remain retained in Gaza have warned that an accelerated offensive will only put the lives of their loved ones at a greater risk.
Meanwhile, right -wing ministers in the fragile coalition of the Netanyahu government celebrated the plans for an extended offensive, having advocated such a movement before and after the last high fire between Israel and Hamas, which remained for two months from January 19 to March 18.
Before that high fire, the Israeli army had taken control of about a third of Gaza.
Even so, hopes remained in Gaza and Israel for a resumption of that truce before a visit by President Donald Trump planned for next week.
While Trump has repeatedly promoted a proposal for the United States to eventually take possession of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians there implored that he took measures to stop Israel’s plans for an expanded offensive.
The resident of Khan Younis, Abu Muhsin, 55, asked “where is Trump who asks for freedom and democracy?”
Meanwhile, in Israel, the cabinet minister, Ze’ev Elkin, said on Monday there was a “window of opportunity” for conversations to resume.
From outside his cabinet, Netanyahu has faced growing criticism for resuming and expanding Israel’s offensive in Gaza. The last complaint came from were Duvdevani, an outstanding retired colonel who led an ex and reserved Israeli paratrooper campaign who requested the end of the war.
Duvdevani told NBC News that a growing number of reservists already rejected calls to return to the service in a war that they consider increasingly politically motivated.
He added that without a new truce between Israel and Hamas, Trump’s intervention was probably the only thing that could stop an expanded offensive.
“This is the only press form of Netanyahu,” Duvdevani said in a telephone interview on Early Tuesday. “Nothing will happen if Trump will not press it.”
Meanwhile, an audience for Netanyahu’s testimony in his ongoing public corruption trial ended on Tuesday, according to the Israeli newspaper The Times of Israel. It occurred when the Israeli army issued an evacuation warning for the Sanaa de Yemen airport before what appeared to be a pending attack.
