Medical sources in Gaza reported that 28 Palestinian citizens have been killed because of the occupation’s airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday, May 19, including 16 from Khan Yunis. Yesterday evening, the Israeli occupation forces announced the launch of a new ground invasion of several areas inside the Gaza Strip, a dangerous escalation in the ongoing war of extermination that has been ongoing for nearly 19 months.
Palestinians mourn the death of relatives killed in an Israeli airstrike outside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 18, 2025 (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
In addition, medical sources in the Gaza Strip announced the deaths of 140 citizens in intensive Israeli airstrikes yesterday, 69 of them in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip. The ongoing Israeli war on Gaza since October 2023 has so far resulted in at least 53,339 documented Palestinian fatalities, with over 121,043 others injured.
On Sunday evening, around 500 Israeli peace activists marched from the southern city of Sderot toward the Gaza border near Kibbutz Nir Am protesting the genocide in the Strip. Demonstrators wore shirts reading “Stop the atrocities in Gaza” and carried signs with images of infants killed in Israeli airstrikes. Protesters attempted to block the Nir Am junction, and ten were detained by police.
In a call to join the demonstration – under the slogan “Drop everything and come to the Gaza border” – organizers warned that “within hours or days, Smotrich, Ben Gvir and Netanyahu are planning to send tens of thousands of soldiers to occupy Gaza, starve more children, kill more Palestinian civilians, displace more families, and sacrifice the lives of the hostages and the security of us all to settle the Strip.”
Lecturer’s movement “Academic for Israel Democracy” (AID) also called “the academic community and the public at large to oppose the continuation of war. The never-ending war in Gaza is an integral agenda of the Netanyahu government and members of the coalition have openly encouraged war crimes.” AID announced today that protests rallies against war in Gaza will be held this week in campuses across the country: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Tel-Aviv University, Haifa University and Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan.
Speaking some 20 minutes later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video defending the resumption of aid to Gaza, explaining the continuing the deadly military offensive and “occupation of all Gaza territories,” far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says today that humanitarian assistance is going into Gaza — after Israel has okayed last night the resumption of aid, will oversee the entry of the “minimum necessary supply of food and medicines” for population, which will ensure “that the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes.” “What will come in the coming days is a little bit to the bakeries that distribute pitas to people and public kitchens that provide a daily ration of cooked food. Civilians in Gaza will receive a pita and a plate of food and that is it.”
He hails the newly expanded occupation forces campaign in Gaza, saying that the army is now operating “with unprecedented power” and “they are destroying what is left of the Strip,” adding that after the population of Gaza is expelled to the south of the Strip, it will be “relocated abroad as part of President Trump’s plan.”
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=32673
