Gaza City — Israel’s air war pounded Gaza City again today, tearing into civilian shelters and apartment blocks as families scrambled between triage bays and stairwells while fires burned through the afternoon. The day’s battlefield reality — frequent explosions, fresh evacuation edicts and mounting casualty lists — collided with a diplomatic turn at the United Nations, where member states condemned Israel’s strike on Qatar and rallied support for a time-bound two-state track. Inside Gaza, the pattern held: schools and clinics overrun, “safe” routes unsafe, and people drifting back to shattered neighborhoods because the camps are full and food lines are longer than the warnings.
Residents described a rolling series of blasts across Gaza City that left stairwells collapsed and courtyards cratered. Medical sources said fatalities rose through the day as rescue crews worked through smoke and live power lines, with women and children again making up a grim share of the victims. A school run by the UN relief agency and sheltering displaced families was hit, puncturing the fiction that classrooms are protected when the bombardment intensifies. This was not an isolated misfire but an extension of a months-long pattern in which every place that becomes a refuge eventually becomes a target.
Israel’s latest orders to empty northern districts drove thousands toward already overloaded southern zones, but many turned back. People spoke of queues that stretched around blocks for bread and water, of tents pitched cheek-by-jowl in squalid encampments, and of strikes that landed near, or inside, areas repeatedly labeled “safer.” Earlier in the week, the immediate aftermath of one such order was chaos — carts stacked with mattresses, oxygen tanks balanced on wheelchairs, families splitting at intersections with no certainty about where to sleep. Our running explainer on the panic after evacuation orders in Gaza City tracks how this cycle keeps pushing civilians back into harm’s way.
The diplomatic map moved. The UN’s most representative chamber endorsed a plan for time-bound steps toward a two-state solution, further isolating Israel and its patron states that keep defending a war savaging civilians. In parallel, the Security Council condemned Israel’s strike on Doha — a brazen violation of a partner capital that hosts American forces — while Qatar leveraged its ties to Washington to keep mediation channels open. That shuttle overlaps with Europe’s hardening stance; Brussels is now weighing penalties that were unthinkable a few months ago, with the Commission signaling it will move on EU sanctions and a partial trade freeze if Israel keeps scorching civilian space.
Beyond Gaza’s shoreline, a civilian convoy sailed from Tunisia. The Global Sumud Flotilla — a banner stitched together by trade unionists, students, doctors, and clergy — aims to challenge the blockade and deliver symbolic relief. Days earlier, activists reported a drone attack on one of their vessels off Tunisia, a warning shot that only widened the coalition; our coverage of the Flotilla’s reported drone strike documents the incident and the movement’s resolve to continue.
Israel’s leadership is betting that unrelenting force, exported assassinations, and forced displacement will deliver capitulation. The evidence cuts the other way. Strikes on shelters and schools are corroding Israel’s diplomatic defenses, and the Doha hit has angered capitals that once muted their criticism. Even within the West, the resolve looks brittle: alliance messaging keeps fraying, as our analysis of the NATO Articles 4 and 5 debate shows, with public arguments over deterrence and bandwidth that Moscow is happy to exploit. In Europe, a slow-motion policy turn is becoming explicit, reflected in the Commission’s appetite for targeted sanctions and trade measures if civilian harm continues.
An UNRWA school shelter taking a direct hit, as Al-Jazeera Noted, recurrent evacuation orders that leave families bouncing between overcrowded camps and ruined homes; a Security Council statement that condemned Israel’s strike on Doha; Qatar’s diplomatic push with Washington; and the Global Sumud Flotilla’s departure from Bizerte, Tunisia. For the detailed sourcing — including on Friday’s death toll, the school strike, the evacuation-order panic, Qatar’s Washington meetings, the UN’s two-state vote, and the flotilla’s launch.
