The 15-story Mushtaha Tower in Gaza City collapses after being hit by an Israeli air strike on 5 September 2025
Levent Kemel – Middle East Eye Sept 19, 2025
Israel announced on Monday that it had launched a ground offensive on Gaza City. In fact, this operation is nothing more than one link in a chain.
The northern Gaza Strip, where the city is located, was already under blockade and attack.
Since the end of March, around 800,000 civilians in Gaza City have endured bombardment, starvation and medical deprivation.
And though Israel- and US-run aid centres in the south have been the scene of nearly 2,000 Palestinians being killed, such facilities have not even been operating in the north.
Wary of attracting too much international attention, orders were given to the Israeli military in late March to keep operations at a lower intensity.
“There was a lower-level operational posture, but the operations never stopped,” an Israeli army colonel told Middle East Eye, noting that attacks on Gaza City had been ongoing for months before the latest ground offensive.
According to UN data, between March and the end of June, more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza per month.
Since 11 August, when Israel ramped up attacks in anticipation of its ground offensive, more than 3,500 Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
More than 44 percent of those were in Israeli-designated “safe zones” that Palestinians in the north are being forced to flee to.
The Israeli tanks rolling into Gaza City today are nothing more than an intensification of attacks that had never ceased.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims the new offensive is necessary to rid the area of Hamas fighters, who he claims are holding captives there.
However, a second Israeli army colonel told MEE it remains uncertain whether there is indeed a significant Hamas presence in Gaza City.
A third Israeli military officer, who was involved in planning intelligence-based operations in the north, told MEE that Israel does not have precise intelligence on Hamas or the captives.
“Is Hamas there? Are we sure? They could be anywhere. Are the hostages there? We don’t know,” he said.
“For a long time, we have combed through the city with low-intensity manipulative strikes and intelligence channels. We targeted every suspicious vehicle, every person. Even if they are there, it is becoming harder by the day to say they have revealed themselves.”
Depopulation
It is clear that Israel’s true aim in Gaza City is to drive the population south.
Since August, the military has used more than 180 booby-trapped robots or explosive-packed remote-controlled vehicles to devastate the city.
Tel al-Hawa, Sheik Ridwan, Tuffah, Jabal Nazla, and the Saftawi Street area are among the main places where Israel has demolished civilian buildings.
In these areas, Israeli officers said, more than 200 buildings containing civilian homes have been destroyed.
To capitalise on the operation’s destructive effect, the Israeli army is also deploying armoured units into Gaza City, which is already largely devastated.
Israel’s 162nd and 98th Paratrooper Divisions are advancing through the city accompanied by armoured units.
So far, contrary to earlier Israeli claims, the troops have not been met with intense confrontations with Hamas. The 36th Division will move into Gaza City within days, signalling an expanded offensive.
Click to enlarge
Israeli officers approach the situation with a mindset of collective punishment.
“It’s fair to assume that most of the men and young people who stay in Gaza City are working for Hamas,” one of the officers told MEE, repeating a false Israeli narrative that has been used to justify the killing of thousands of civilians.
Roughly half the residents of Gaza City remain. For the Israeli military officers in charge, that entire remaining civilian population of 400,000 people is seen as a target.
Israeli officers say the army intends to fully encircle the city within a week.
The coastal al-Rashid Street and Salah al-Deen Street to the east will be sealed off, while the Netzarim corridor that bisects the Gaza Strip will be reinforced as a de facto border.
“From then on, we’ll have no reason not to treat everyone in the north as Hamas,” the first Israeli colonel said.
This month, Israel has issued 13 expulsion orders, almost all of which were aimed at emptying the north of its inhabitants.
Operation Gideon’s Chariots II, as the new offensive is known, is a calculated campaign of territorial reconfiguration coordinated with the United States.
Ahead of the United Nations General Assembly summit that begins on Monday, Israel is preparing to bring the north fully under its control.
According to the Israeli officers, behind the scenes there is a belief that, if the Gaza City operation goes according to plan, Netanyahu plans to declare victory at the UN on 26 September.
““It’s fair to assume that most of the men and young people who stay in Gaza City are working for Hamas,””
How very convenient and how very jew. And they wonder why they are hated the world over !!!
(Unrelated to article)–at the Spectator article, Gabreal Jones said I was dying four days a week in hospital, as if I were like the other patients, who do have a short life-span. I see them close up and would not expect anything else. They are not serious about life or anything else. Yesterday I wrote an explanation of one reason I am still alive to give to a doctor or two, even though I know they are clueless like the patients. Four days a week, by the way, I am free of the hospital and go out somewhere. When I am in a difficulty, that difficulty gets studied properly for the first time
Since 1948 they’ve ERASED Palestine, their take-over almost complete, on to the Greater IsraHELL project….coming to your backyard!!!
Genocidal entity of occupiers and imposters of israehell leave the real Semitic Palestinians alone. Imposters return to where you originated from which is Turkey and Babylon.
Yet we’ve been hearing on here for months from the variou cia-kgb assrags (Macgregor/Ritter/Johnson etc) how ‘Israel is losing’…lol
The demolition of old condemned buildings from the 1940s/50s must go on behind the facade of ‘war’.
@ Winston..
The spooky Colonels are all part of the operation ‘trust the plan’ post Q anon psy-op…they are the lol retired intel crowd that spin out the hopium to the hard of thinking..
They provide narrative that supports the ‘good guys script’..which seems under inspection, to be a load of jewish gangsters and spooks..
Everything they have ever said going back years now, has been laughably wrong..and you can only be that consistently wrong if you are running cover for something..and that of course is what’s really happening..
the really funny thing is that, in spite of this ..the common imbecile continues to hang on every dollop of click bait they shit out..
lol.. Mac egregore is a fucking hero to them..yet the guy couldn’t be trusted to give you the right fucking time…
but that doesn’t seem to matter ..because they’ve already forgotten just about everything they know, so they have to go back to the colonel to get the next installment of forgettable nonsense..
and on and on..that way you see..nobody ever asks..hey! what the fucks going on here?…
when they are done with Gaza they will push
the palestinians out of westbank .
no power in the world hinders them . and after
Ukraine they will do the same with europa
with help of our Nato/EU traitors .
stupid jews they have bombed their own hostahes
solomon black said after jordan egypt and turkey
the world, it will all be ours
nobody does a damn thing except yemen
thankyou yemen
chesterton
‘the next installment of forgettable nonsense.’
good one
STARMER CAVES IN
starmer caves in to public pressure
pver palestine
Ordinary people deserve to live in peace’
PM Starmer announces UK will recognise a Palestinian state.
against more threats of israeli terrorism
kosher hotel in Davos, Switzerland, received death threats and antisemitic insults in a letter, Jonathan Kreutner, the secretary-general of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG), told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
so how does this equate to the jews mass murders and genocides ?