Israeli paratroopers operating in Gaza. Image by IDF spokesman Unit, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Israel launched a ground offensive into Gaza City on September 16, 2025, after hours of air and artillery strikes that residents described as among the most intense of the war against Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces said troops were moving deeper into dense neighborhoods, describing this as the main phase of a long-signaled campaign to dismantle remaining units and tunnel nodes. The assault now sits in the period before the ceasefire announced on October 10, 2025. That announcement reduced the scale of violence. Killings, displacement, access constraints and legal disputes nevertheless continued, leaving the September operation as a reference point for judging both battlefield conduct and the adequacy of later relief arrangements.
Early accounts stated that armor and infantry entered multiple sectors, and that planners assessed up to 3,000 fighters remained embedded in urban terrain. The escalation followed a week of evacuation orders that directed civilians toward the coastal strip of Al-Mawasi, designated by the military as a humanitarian area, with instructions to use the coastal road and assurances of improved services in that zone. Those orders were issued city-wide on September 9, prompting panic movements from high-rise districts, and were paired with warnings to vacate specific buildings ahead of strikes. The opening sequence has three linked anchors: the launch of the ground assault, the September 9 evacuation push, and the route designation to Al-Mawasi.
On the same day, a commission mandated by the UN Human Rights Council concluded that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. The commission detailed patterns of killing and serious bodily harm. The report cited conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction and instances of direct and public incitement by senior officials as part of the same evidentiary frame. The legal setting is shaped by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which on January 26, 2024 indicated provisional measures. The ICJ measures require Israel to prevent genocidal acts, enable humanitarian assistance and punish incitement as the case on the merits proceeds. The Court maintains a provisional-measures docket, and on May 24, 2024 it reaffirmed and expanded its orders in light of conditions in Gaza. The provisional-measures orders impose immediate obligations that apply regardless of battlefield turns. Israel rejects the genocide characterization and maintains that its campaign targets Hamas and seeks to free hostages.
The humanitarian context was already severe when the Gaza City operation began, and later IPC analysis shows why the ceasefire did not erase the crisis. On August 22, 2025, UN agencies confirmed that famine existed in Gaza Governorate. That governorate includes Gaza City. The same alert projected that by late September more than 640,000 people would face “Catastrophic” food insecurity (IPC Phase 5). A further 1.14 million were projected to be in “Emergency” (IPC Phase 4), with 396,000 in “Crisis” (IPC Phase 3). Technical materials published that month set out the statistically defined thresholds behind a famine determination: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and hunger-related mortality. In December 2025, the IPC reported that famine conditions had been offset after reduced hostilities and improved aid and commercial flows, but the entire Gaza Strip remained classified in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) through mid-April 2026. The same analysis projected about 1.6 million people in Crisis or worse through that period. Within that group, 571,000 were expected to be in Emergency and about 1,900 in Catastrophe. Those categories matter because the IPC scale is not a rhetorical device: each step signals a narrower margin between household coping, acute malnutrition and preventable death.
Funding has not kept pace with need. As of September 10, 2025, contributions to the 2025 response plan for the occupied Palestinian territory totalled roughly $985 million against $4 billion requested, forcing rationing of programmes as indicators deteriorate. The financing gap, sectoral impacts and rising malnutrition-related mortality are documented in the September 10 humanitarian situation update. That update records a cumulative Palestinian death toll of 64,656 since October 7, 2023, as reported by Gaza’s health ministry. The update records 163,503 injuries and 404 deaths attributed to malnutrition, including 141 children. These tallies cannot be independently verified under current access constraints and are contested by Israeli authorities, but they provide the baseline used by the coordination system to plan and advocate. For responders, the gap is operational rather than abstract: fewer funded pipelines mean fewer reserve stocks, thinner staffing and less ability to shift supplies when an evacuation order, border closure or local security incident suddenly changes where people can be reached. The financing shortfall therefore shapes triage before any truck moves, since planners must decide which kitchens, clinics and water systems can be kept open under unstable access conditions. The combination of underfunding and insecurity has driven a “hyper-prioritised” posture across operations, limiting surge capacity precisely as conditions breach famine thresholds.
Access and security remain the principal brakes on relief. Coordination snapshots showed low approval and high cancellation rates for aid missions due to insecurity and denials, particularly around Gaza City. For the week of September 3–9, the system recorded that 42% of 120 planned movements were facilitated. After the ceasefire announcement, the access problem shifted rather than disappeared: OCHA’s 25 May 2026 situation report said Kerem Shalom and Zikim remained the only operational entry points for humanitarian and commercial goods. Water, sanitation and hygiene services were still being disrupted by fuel and equipment shortages. OCHA reported that about 1.7 million people were hosted in displacement sites across Gaza, most in makeshift locations. The access figures therefore describe a capacity ceiling, not simply a logistics delay. If convoys are approved unpredictably and entry points remain narrow, agencies cannot easily convert pledged money or stored supplies into regular household-level relief. The effect is cumulative: a missed fuel delivery can slow water pumping, a missed equipment delivery can delay repairs, and a delayed food convoy can push families deeper into negative coping. Those delays accumulate across days, not just across individual missions.
Positions on intent and responsibility diverge sharply. Israeli officials state that the offensive aims to destroy military infrastructure and pressure for hostage releases, and they say harm is mitigated through evacuation corridors and targeted strikes. During the opening hours of the new push, a spokesperson insisted there would not be “a situation of starvation” in Gaza even as residents fled under shelling and aid organisers struggled to keep community kitchens open. The same morning, battlefield updates reported forces operating “deeper” in Gaza City and warned of intensifying urban combat. Humanitarian organisations counter that evacuation routes are unsafe, that designated areas lack water, sanitation and shelter, and that the combined effect of access restrictions and hostilities has made sustained large-scale delivery impossible. The famine confirmation described the crisis as “man-made” and linked outcomes directly to the collapse of public health, market systems and agricultural access.
The evacuation regime illustrates the strategic and humanitarian bind. In early September, the military issued city-wide orders and building-specific warnings ahead of strikes, and directed civilians to Al-Mawasi via the coastal road with promises of improved services in that zone. Field teams and medical staff warned that a mass movement on short notice would overwhelm any existing infrastructure, citing a lack of potable water and sanitation in tented areas and the risk of air and artillery fire along the route. The September 9 public order to evacuate triggered panic in high-rise districts. The route designation to Al-Mawasi set up predictable bottlenecks at checkpoints and choke points. The operational result was serial displacement that eroded coping capacity, pushed families into areas without shelter or services, and complicated the logistics of food and health delivery. In that setting, evacuation is not a single movement from danger to safety; it becomes a repeated transfer of risk from bombardment to exposure, scarcity and uncertain onward access.
Inside Gaza City, the new assault reopens battlefields devastated in late 2023 and early 2024. Commanders have identified tunnel nodes and command sites as priority targets, arguing that renewed pressure is necessary to degrade military capacity. Independent analysts have warned that urban clearing could endanger captives, impose heavy costs on troops and still deliver uncertain strategic gains. For civilians who remained or returned in recent months, survival has depended on ad-hoc markets, informal kitchens and overstretched clinics. Coordination data show repeated closures and relocations of kitchens and medical points under fire. That pattern reflects the difficulty of maintaining operations at the scale required by a population where a significant share has now crossed famine thresholds. The agencies responsible for food, nutrition and health laid out the quantitative thresholds behind the determination. The agencies projected spread beyond Gaza Governorate without a rapid, sustained increase in access. Those benchmarks are detailed in the IPC technical materials and the famine confirmation. Earlier damage left Gaza City with a thinner civilian service map before this assault began. Each renewed round of clearing makes that map more improvised and more dependent on negotiations that can fail at the exact moment need rises. The pattern helps explain why a military operation framed around tunnels and command sites can still reshape food access, clinical capacity and displacement conditions far outside the immediate target area.
The genocide finding continues beyond the Gaza City operation itself. The commission’s conclusion carries political weight because it is the first such determination by a UN-mandated investigative mechanism during this war; court rulings still control the formal judicial process. States read the finding alongside the ICJ’s provisional measures, which require steps to prevent genocide and enable assistance. Those measures are accessible on the Court’s case page and were formalized in orders of January 26, 2024 and May 24, 2024. They create obligations that can inform national export-control decisions, sanctions policy and judicial review. Government choices on military or political support hinge on domestic politics, alliance management and interpretations of legal risk. The commission’s documentation of alleged incitement raises additional questions about individual criminal responsibility that sit within the remit of ongoing investigations by international and domestic prosecutors. The practical stakes are visible in procurement reviews, arms-transfer debates and domestic litigation that may use the same public record to test state conduct. For diplomats, that record can turn humanitarian access data into a matter of treaty compliance and coalition risk.
Funding and access determine civilian outcomes more directly than legal argument. OCHA reported on May 25, 2026 that Gaza’s health ministry had recorded 881 fatalities and 2,621 injuries since the ceasefire announcement on October 10, 2025. The same update described severe shortages affecting water, sanitation and hygiene services and said humanitarian actors were still dependent on negotiated entry and offloading conditions. The December IPC analysis projected 101,000 children aged six to 59 months and 37,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women would require treatment for acute malnutrition by mid-October 2026. That timing turns relief access into a test of post-assault governance and its capacity to keep emergency conditions from becoming the normal baseline for displaced families. The timing narrows the distance between battlefield choices, donor decisions and legal exposure, since the same facts used to plan aid convoys may later be used to evaluate the seriousness of civilian protection. The question affects hospitals, kitchens and households before it reaches courts. The post-offensive question is concrete: can the ceasefire and entry arrangements support predictable food, fuel, water, health and shelter systems at the scale required by displaced families?
The September 2025 assault joined urban combat, mass displacement, famine analysis and genocide litigation. A ground offensive began on September 16; a UN-mandated body alleged genocide; the International Court of Justice’s binding interim obligations require preventing atrocities and enabling aid; and famine was confirmed in the city’s governorate. Later IPC and OCHA updates record improvement from the worst famine classification but still describe an emergency food-security profile, large-scale displacement and continuing deaths after the ceasefire announcement. Any political settlement can be measured by civilians’ ability to move safely and obtain food, water, medical care and shelter. Accountability after the battle leaves the headlines is part of that measure as well, because the same access rules that decide daily survival will shape later judgments about civilian protection.