AMY GOODMAN: For more, we are going right now to Gaza. We are joined right now by Abubaker Abed. He is in Deir al-Balah, which has been hit hard. We’ll see if we can keep this connection going.

Abubaker, thank you so much for being with us. Abubaker is a 22-year-old journalist. He used to be a soccer commentator, but now, as he says, he’s an accidental war correspondent. Describe the scene in Deir al-Balah, Abubaker.

ABUBAKER ABED: Yeah, there are very chaotic and hectic scenes coming out from every place. We’re talking about several bombardments that have happened since the very, very early morning, and particularly here in this place, where we talk about the casualties and how we were hearing people’s screams, people’s wails. I could hear my neighbors wailing in pain over their loved ones and over their children. It was [inaudible] —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re having trouble keeping that line going, but we absolutely thought it was worth attempting.

ABUBAKER ABED: — something we’ve never imagined. And you can tell [inaudible] this is — this has been [inaudible] the attacks started to happen. The —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to try to reconnect with him. You can see it’s extremely difficult. Israel has shattered the ceasefire, is bombing all through Gaza.

But we’re going to turn right now to Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Diana, you heard, a moment, Abubaker. Before that, you heard Dr. Feroze. And, of course, you’re getting reports since Israel shattered the ceasefire. Can you describe what has taken place, the shattering of these negotiations, and what it means?

DIANA BUTTU: It’s really important, Amy, to keep in mind that what Israel is doing is it’s actually just uniformly bombing Palestinians because it can. Over 90% of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have already been bombed. And so, what Israel claims that it’s doing is that it’s targeting structures, and yet there’s nothing there any longer.

So, this is not — it’s not at all surprising that we’ve seen the death toll reach 413, with over 560 Palestinians who are injured. We’re expecting that this death toll is going to rise substantially over the next few hours. And it’s because Israel used over a hundred airplanes to attack all throughout the Gaza Strip.

And the reason that they’re doing so is because there’s been nobody that has stopped Israel. All that we’ve seen over the course of the past 15 months is a demand that Palestinians somehow negotiate with the Israelis, and there’s been absolutely no guarantee that Israel is going to stop the bombing, that it’s going to allow humanitarian aid, that it’s going to rebuild Gaza, and that it’s going to have Palestinians lead a normal life. And so, we’re seeing this because Israel knows that it can get away with it. And it knows that it can get away with it because it got away with it during the previous administration, and it’s certainly going to get away with it under the Trump administration.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Diana, what kind of a notice did the residents in Gaza receive before these attacks happened? Israel is claiming that the negotiations reached a dead end, but did they really negotiate at all?

DIANA BUTTU: No, they never negotiated at all. That was also another one of the problems. We had the first phase of the negotiations, which Israel both halted and, as well, was violating. And then it never entered into any earnest negotiations over the second phase. And that second phase was going to lead to Israeli withdrawal and, of course, reconstruction and so on, and so much so that the Israelis failed to send their negotiators most of the times. So it was clear that what Israel wanted was that it wanted to continue to resume the attacks on the Gaza Strip, that this pause was simply a pause in order to change the different U.S. administrations, and that’s it.

And once again, it goes back to this issue of whether it is that Israel can get away with committing these massive war crimes. And it’s clear to Israelis and to Israel that it can. Unless there is some international action to actually bring Israel to a halt, to stop the weapons flow, to put sanctions on Israel, to hold these criminals to account, I’m afraid we’re going to continue to see this. And we knew this when the ceasefire agreement was signed.

AMY GOODMAN: Diana, I want to try once again, because it is so rare — as people who watch corporate media know, they almost get nothing out of Gaza directly. We spoke to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa. We are continuing to try to get a comprehensible line to Abubaker Abed, journalist in Deir al-Balah. Abubaker, what is it most important for people to understand? And were you surprised by these airstrikes right now?

ABUBAKER ABED: People have to understand, Amy, that the corpses of people are now piled up in the morgues of the hospitals. Here at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, we’ve been seeing children, babies killed and taken to the hospital, and mothers wailing over the bodies of their loved ones.

People have not yet recovered from the endless trauma they have been through during the past 15 months. We haven’t taken a breath from what we have been enduring. And it’s just happened all out of a sudden. We were harshly awakened. We couldn’t really understand what was happening. I’m talking to you, and I’m literally shaking.

People have to understand that the people of Gaza cannot really go into any more seconds of this war. This is just indiscriminate, unbearable, unsurmountable, inconceivable. I don’t know what else, what more ways I can tell you to describe the scenes at the moment. People don’t know.

We have right now over [inaudible], a scarcity of food items. People don’t know people have spent their days, the past 24 hours, without a single meal at all. I know families in pain, [inaudible] family. And for me personally, I just had some bread along with some cheese. The prices are insane.

Everything is going right now is absolutely insane. It’s just about, like, you are hearing your neighbors screaming in pain. That kind of screams and that kind of several bombings that has happened over time has just reawoke a lot of painful memories that I’ve been through and that I’ve had during the past 15 months.

And we needed our time to take some rest. We needed — we said that the ceasefire would secure some peace for us or some tranquility, some rest from what we have been enduring, but, unfortunately, seems otherwise. Now we came back to it. We’re talking about more than 400 people have been killed, mostly children. Here in Deir al-Balah, at least 20 people have been killed. We’re talking about a family that lives near us that has been wiped out, more than seven people, and another family almost wiped out, with more than five members. That is literally unbearable. We cannot really have a genocide rolling back again.

We cannot really allow the world — I don’t know why the world — we wanted the world to do us a favor and lift the blockade, the current blockade. But the world allowed Israel to continue and resume the genocide. This is literally unbearable. I can’t tell you how we’re feeling, how the children are feeling.

Now, in Deir al-Balah, we’ve gone away right now. We visited one of the nearby centers, the desalination plants. And they’ve told us that they don’t have a single drop of potable water. So Deir al-Balah is devoid of a single drop of water, of potable water for the population. So, how can we cope? We cannot really brace ourselves for starvation again, for bombardments again. We cannot really blot out our pain, because we don’t have the means to live.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask Diana Buttu: The reports from the AP, press reports in recent days, that the United States and Israel have reached out to three African governments — Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland — for possibly hosting Palestinians who would be removed from Gaza, your reaction to that?

DIANA BUTTU: It’s not at all surprising. This is exactly what Israel has been wanting to do, which is to commit genocide, as well as ethically cleanse Gaza. And the fact that we’re seeing these plans go ahead, despite the fact that both of them are illegal under international law, shows you the state of the world. And so, it’s not at all surprising that they have been doing this, because from the beginning of the genocide, since October of 2023, Netanyahu made it clear that he wanted the Gaza Strip to be smaller in size and thinner in population. What that means is that he wants to see ethnic cleansing, he wants to see genocide, and he wants to see the takeover of the land of the Gaza Strip. And with President Trump, this is precisely what they’re implementing.

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to ask you, Diana Buttu, about Israeli prosecutors agreeing to cancel a planned hearing today in the prime minister, in Netanyahu’s corruption trial due to his launching this major assault on Gaza. Do you think that’s what’s motivating it?

DIANA BUTTU: Absolutely. Look, a lot of what Israel has been doing lately and what Netanyahu has been doing lately is in order to save his own political career. He’s a deeply unpopular prime minister. Israelis are looking at him and blaming him for not only corruption, but for everything that’s going on in the country. And in order to save his hide, to prevent himself from going into prison, he’s been doing everything to try to prolong this genocide. He’s been doing everything so that Palestinians are the ones who are paying the price, with their bodies, literally, in order to prevent Netanyahu from going into prison.

AMY GOODMAN: Breaking news —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to — 

AMY GOODMAN: Breaking news, Juan: The Otzma Yehudit, Jewish Power party, led by the far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir, is returning to Netanyahu’s coalition government. The hard-line party, which opposed a ceasefire with Hamas and pressed for Israel to cut off aid to Gaza, had left the coalition in January. Now the return strengthens Netanyahu’s position, before a crucial budget vote expected next week. Your response to that, Diana?

DIANA BUTTU: Yes, this was also not at all surprising, because what Ben-Gvir — this is a man who’s racist, fascist, who’s called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — what he was saying at the beginning was that he never wanted to see a ceasefire, that he wants to see Palestinians from Gaza ethnically cleansed from Gaza. He withdrew from the coalition over the idea of a ceasefire agreement. And now that Israel has resumed the genocide, he’s come back into the fray in order to make Netanyahu’s coalition even stronger, so that he can then not only pass the budget, but continue to be able to put into place these genocidal policies.

One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that Ben-Gvir is also the person who’s been pushing for Israeli settlers to come and take over the Gaza Strip. So, what we’re now seeing is a combination of the continuation of genocide, as well as pushing forward — we’re probably going to see pushing forward plans for Israeli settlers to take over the Gaza Strip, something that they were talking about from the very beginning.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abubaker Abed, if you can still hear us, I wanted to know what the — even before Israel resumed bombing, what was the situation in terms of receiving aid or water for the people in Gaza?

ABUBAKER ABED: For 16 days, consecutive 16 days, there hasn’t been a single aid truck allowed into the territory, and it has exacerbated the situation. And even during the ceasefire, we’re talking about more than 150 that have been killed. Now Israel, in just 10 hours, has killed double this number — over double this number, in fact. And we’re now just seeing markets run out of food. Like, I’ve gone out to see if markets have food items at the moment, but they don’t have.

And now what is the situation? When we talk about the hospitals here, they are calling out people to come and donate blood, because they don’t have blood units. I’ve talked to a doctor from Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, and he told me that the hospital is devoid of literally every basic necessity. They’re dealing with the bare minimum in their hands, less than the bare minimum in their hands. They’re trying to treat patients with almost nothing. That is absolutely barbaric, because Israel hasn’t been allowing aid into Gaza, hasn’t been allowing medical supplies, the needed medical supplies to treat the influx of injuries that have been left because of the war, because of the genocide now. More than 600, 700 souls have been wounded in the past 10 hours, while 400 have been killed — more than 400 have been killed.

And we don’t know when this will end. But we are hearing, while Israeli copters invade, [inaudible] few meters away, having to [inaudible] all night, [inaudible] until now. So, when can we have some kind of relief? When can we stay, like, calm and have our rights as a human? We are still in the same bubble. Palestinians dream to live. The whole world [inaudible] to dream. We want to go out of that zone and still have dreams. No dreams. Even this dream that we want to live is no longer feasible. That is the peak of dehumanization. That is millions, many dreams in Gaza have been destroyed. Many dreams have been crushed. Many families are still under the rubble. We haven’t even recovered the bodies from under the rubble, because Israel hasn’t been allowing heavy vehicles into Gaza, the bulldozers and the Caterpillars. People wanted to build a new life. Israel didn’t allow that. Israel wants clearly to erase every sign of hope inside Gaza. But we continue to hope. We will continue to carry that. And even if it’s not our time, the next generations will carry that hope, until we make sure that we live the life we want, because we are humans, and we deserve to live, and we teach life.

AMY GOODMAN: Abubaker Abed, speaking to us from Gaza, from Deir al-Balah, which has been very hard-hit. He also reports for Drop Site News. Diana Buttu, we want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

And this news from Haaretz: The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said today, following the resumption of Israel’s attack on Gaza, that “The greatest fear of the families, the hostages and the citizens of Israel has come true — the Israeli government has chosen to give up on the hostages,” they said.

Coming up, we look at Yemen, where at least 53 people have been killed after President Trump ordered U.S. airstrikes targeting the Houthis. Back in 30 seconds.