On November 26, 2025, the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced a grim milestone: the death toll from Israeli military operations since October 7, 2023, had reached 69,775, with 170,965 wounded. This staggering figure, reported by the Gaza Health Ministry and cited by multiple outlets including the AhlulBayt News Agency and The New Arab, underscores the relentless toll exacted on Palestinian lives and the territory’s very survival.
The past 24 hours alone saw hospitals in Gaza receiving the bodies of 17 more martyrs—three killed by direct fire from Israeli forces and 14 recovered from beneath the rubble of destroyed homes. Sixteen additional people were admitted with injuries, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The majority of these deaths occurred despite a ceasefire agreement that was supposed to take effect on October 11, 2023. Since that date, 345 Palestinians have been killed and 889 wounded, with 588 bodies recovered from the ruins, as reported by the Ministry.
The violence has not abated. On November 24, 2025, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians in Gaza, including a man targeted in a drone strike in Bani Suheila and a child who died when unexploded ordnance detonated in northern Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera. Several more children were critically injured in similar explosions. Israeli attacks continued throughout the day, with artillery, air raids, and helicopter strikes reported in both northern and southern parts of the enclave. In central Gaza’s Maghazi camp, civil defense teams, with support from the police and the Red Cross, recovered the bodies of eight members of one family from the rubble of their home, which had been destroyed in an earlier attack, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
Despite the ceasefire, Israeli forces have repeatedly bombed civilian areas and fired at civilians, violating the agreement nearly 500 times in the six weeks since it was enacted, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. At least 339 Palestinians have been killed and another 871 wounded during this period. The Israeli authorities have also failed to meet their obligations under the ceasefire, including allowing the entry of heavy machinery crucial for removing the tons of rubble and recovering bodies still trapped beneath. As a result, approximately 9,500 Palestinians remain missing, either buried under debris or unaccounted for, the Government Media Office estimates.
The devastation is not limited to physical destruction and loss of life. The United Nations Trade and Development agency (UNCTAD) warned in a report released on November 25, 2025, that Israel’s military actions have brought Gaza’s economy to the brink of collapse and threaten the very survival of its people. "The military operations have significantly undermined every pillar of survival, from food to shelter to healthcare, and plunged Gaza into a human-made abyss," the report stated. Rebuilding the territory is expected to cost more than $70 billion and could take several decades, even under optimistic scenarios of double-digit economic growth and substantial foreign aid. The UNCTAD report described the situation as an "unprecedented collapse across the Palestinian economy," with Gaza’s infrastructure, social fabric, and environmental stability all but destroyed.
The UN’s special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, has gone further, describing Israel’s ongoing destruction of homes—even during the ceasefire—as "part of an act of genocide." In an interview with Anadolu, Rajagopal said, "Actually, Israel has continued to kill individuals and to demolish homes and then also to deny any aid to come in insufficient quantities. So, the ceasefire process has been not at all fully implemented, and unfortunately, there is no mechanism so far for ensuring that the ceasefire that was agreed to would be fully complied with, and that there would be consequences for monitoring." He emphasized that the destruction of housing is often justified by Israel as targeting "military objectives," but in nearly all cases, no evidence has been provided to support these claims. Instead, the pattern observed is "arbitrary and widespread destruction of all housing without any distinction."
Compounding the humanitarian crisis, severe rainfall and strong winds since mid-November have battered the makeshift tents sheltering displaced families. According to Amjad al-Shawwa, a leading civil society figure in Gaza, Israel has permitted only 30,000 tents to enter the enclave, despite current weather conditions requiring ten times that amount—about 300,000. The result has been the flooding and destruction of what little shelter many families have left, worsening an already dire situation.
International voices are increasingly alarmed. The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, one of Europe’s most prominent research bodies, estimated in a new analysis that more than 100,000 Palestinians had likely been killed in Gaza by October 6, 2025—a figure significantly higher than official counts. The UN has called for "immediate and substantial" international intervention, warning that the "sustained, systematic destruction casts significant doubt on the ability of Gaza to reconstitute itself as a liveable space and society."
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts continue but with limited success. Delegations from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States met in Cairo on November 25 to discuss the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, focusing on overcoming obstacles and limiting violations to ensure the truce holds. Yet, as The New Arab reported, both Israel and Hamas have repeatedly accused each other of violating the agreement, and violence persists on the ground.
Elsewhere in the region, Israeli settlers established a new outpost on November 25 in the Bedouin community of Shallal al-Auja in the West Bank, raising the number of settler outposts in the area to four, according to the Wafa news agency. This expansion has heightened fears among local Bedouin communities about further displacement and loss of land.
Against this backdrop, international scrutiny of Israel’s actions is mounting. The UN human rights office has called for "prompt and impartial" investigations into Israeli attacks in Lebanon, including a deadly strike on the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp that killed 13 people—11 of them children—last week. Thameen Al-Kheetan, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated, "There must be prompt and impartial investigations … those responsible must be brought to justice." Since the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel nearly a year ago, at least 127 civilians have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes, according to UN figures.
Meanwhile, access for independent journalists remains severely restricted. Israel’s High Court has once again delayed ruling on whether to grant journalists unrestricted access to Gaza, approving another government request for more time to respond to a petition by the Foreign Press Association. The FPA accused the government of "stalling tactics" and said the repeated delays have "made a mockery of the legal process."
As the world watches, Gaza’s humanitarian disaster deepens. With tens of thousands dead, many more wounded, and the territory’s infrastructure in ruins, the road to recovery—if one is even possible—looks long and uncertain. Calls for international intervention grow louder, but for the people of Gaza, immediate relief remains heartbreakingly out of reach.
