LIVE: Israel Set to Take Gaza City, Displacing Thousands as Famine Deepens

Gaza City live updates: Israel’s cabinet authorizes “Operation Kinneret” (Sea of Galilee), its forces’ invasion of Gaza City and their “mop-up” of the besieged Palestinian enclave, as a full-blown famine crisis now grips the territory.

An official statement released by the Israeli government on Friday 29 March announced the approval by the nation’s security cabinet – headed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – of a new Israel military operation Gaza to take control of Gaza City, marking “the most significant Israel Gaza City occupation” of the war so far, according to an NPR analysis.

Fifty-thousand Gazans, the government says, will be “forcibly evacuated” from the northern parts of the territory and transferred to “satellite” camps in central Gaza, where most remaining Gazans live and where a government-imposed famine has already left hundreds starving to death and many thousands more suffering from acute malnutrition, including 12,577 children under the age of five.

“It’s a famine,” said spokesperson for the UN’s World Food Programme Mariz Tadros to NPR. “The warning signs are there. People are in a state of shock because of the movement of Israeli forces.”

Israel has previously cited “creating new space for displaced Palestinians” as a reason to greenlight a military “operation” to take over the southern city. Less than 15% of Gaza’s agricultural sector has remained functional throughout the Israel Palestine conflict 2025, and there is not enough food aid getting through to make up the difference.

Fears are rising that Gaza famine crisis will soon become a “staggering human catastrophe” unless a full ceasefire is implemented, sustained humanitarian crisis Gaza corridors are opened, and the Palestinian population is protected from further forced displacement.

Families in Gaza City are “terrified”

Mohammad Halabi, a spokesperson for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, told The Guardian that “we have to keep repeating ourselves that we are in a war… but this [news of Israel’s ‘operation’ in Gaza City] is shocking people even more.”