News investigations fuel calls for a Gaza cease-fire

The United Nations World Food Program released a report this week warning that a quarter of Gaza's 2.3 million population was starving because food supplies getting through during the Israel-Hamas war were "woefully insufficient." Israel says its military has nearly cleared Hamas fighters out of northern Gaza, but will continue fighting in the south for months, according to The Associated Press. And U.N. officials warned the humanitarian crisis was getting worse as fighting intensified more than two months after Hamas' Oct. 7 deadly surprise attack in southern Israel ignited the war. "I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed," said Arif Husain, chief economist for the U.N. agency.

The report came as the health officials in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the Palestinian enclave had reached 20,000, including 8,000 children, and pressure mounted on Israel to do more to avoid civilian casualties. PBS reported that experts were calling the Israeli military campaign "among the deadliest and most destructive in history." Investigations by news outlets fueled calls from the Biden administration and others for the Israeli Defense (IDF) to shift to "precision" attacks on Hamas militants. 

A New York Times analysis of video evidence concluded that "Israel routinely used one of its biggest and most destructive bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians." The Times reported that Israel dropped 2,000-pound bombs, which can blast craters 40 feet wide, in an area of southern Gaza where it had instructed Palestinian civilians to go for safety. Munitions experts told the Times bombs that powerful "are almost never dropped by U.S. forces in densely populated areas anymore."

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A Washington Post analysis published Thursday concluded that evidence provided by the Israeli government "falls short" of proving the Israeli Defense Forces' claim that Hamas was running a command and control center in Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital. Before and after Israeli forces stormed the complex on Nov. 15, Israel said it had "concrete evidence" Hamas was operating in tunnels and bunkers under the hospital. "Terrorists came here to command their operations," Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Nov. 22. But the Post found no connections between a tunnel the IDF found and buildings Hagari said Hamas militants used.