The death toll in Gaza on the weekend has passed 50,000, local health authorities have reported. What started the carnage was the Hamas-led attack on the Israel-Gaza border on 7 October 2023 which killed nearly 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, and resulted in the capture of 251 people as hostages.

"Local health authorities confirmed that the Palestinian death toll from the Israeli onslaught since October 7, 2023 has risen to 50,021 documented fatalities, with an additional 113,274 individuals sustaining injuries. The majority of the victims are women and children," the WAFA news agency, which covers the entire Palestinian territories said Sunday.

"According to the same sources, emergency services are still unable to reach many casualties and dead bodies trapped under the rubble or scattered on roads across the war-torn enclave, as Israeli occupation forces continue to target ambulance and civil defense crews."

"Israel's genocidal onslaught continues unabated despite calls from the United Nations Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and directives from the International Court of Justice urging measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza," the WAFA agency said.

Israel has described the 7 October attack as the largest massacre since the Holocaust. Since then however the Israeli military has inflicted in Gaza, more than forty times the number of people killed in Israel that day. More than 100,000 people in Gaza have suffered injuries, almost all of them severe, making Gaza now the most-populated location for children missing limbs. The destruction of infrastructure, homes, shops, hospitals, roads power plants, TV stations, schools, and universities has been extraordinary. While Hamas, and other groups captured 251 people, the Israeli military has detained more than 10,000 Palestinians since 7 October 2023, not only in Gaza, but in the West Bank, most of them on 8 October 2023.

The Gaza Strip has been all but destroyed. More than half the population comprise children, 55 percent according to the UN. They have borne the brunt of the so-called war, with more than two hundred having been killed in just the past few days, according to Rosalia Bollen, a communications specialist from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

It is difficult to describe the events of the past 17 months as a war with the mutli-billion dollar Israeli military stacked with an army of 600,000 including reservists, naval warships, submarines, fleets of hundreds of planes, including F-35s (30), F-16s (196), and F-15s (83); over 2,200 tanks, and heavily backed by the U.S. military which has sent billions of dollars worth of munitions to bomb the Gazan population - up against around 20,000 to 25,000 Hamas fighters, according to Israeli military estimates. Fighters equipped with only rockets, most of which cause no damage, and civilians armed with rocks.

Israel has called Hamas, savages, and described the attack on 7 October 2023 as horrific, as we and most of the world have. However what has followed has been barbaric. The sheer savagery clearly aimed at the annihilation of Gaza is all but complete, and yet the massive Israeli war machine this last week has roared once more, shattering a ceasefire the Israeli government delayed and delayed, for months on end, and finally reluctantly agreed to, only to begin breaking it from the time the country entered into it. 

Tens of thousands of people in Israel meantime protested the return to 'war' on Sunday, congregating outside the Knesset, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's home. On Sunday the Israeli cabinet voted to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. This followed the unanimous Knesset decision through the week to terminate the Director of the Shin Bet Ronen Bar.

The cabinet has also approved the establishment of a committee to oversee the migration of Palestinians from Gaza in line with U.S.  Donald Trump's plan to de-populate the enclave. On Friday night Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he had instructed the Israeli military to begin permanently occupying parts of Gaza. "I have instructed the IDF to seize additional areas in Gaza while evacuating the population and to expand the security zones around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities and IDF soldiers," he said in a statement.

"The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel," the Israeli defense minister said.

The turmoil in Israel has spread to financial markets with the Tel Aviv stock exchange recording sharp falls on Sunday. The TA-90 dived 4.5 percent, the TA-35 dropped 3.3 percent, while the TA-125  declined 3.4 percent. Hardest hit were bank stocks with the banking index  plummeting more than 6.5 percent.