Reports are emerging that an expanded Israeli military ground campaign accompanied by heavy bombing and artillery shelling is underway in various parts of Gaza, including reports of Israeli tanks pushing into the center of the enclave, increased ground attacks in Khan Younis, and deepening operations in Gaza City.

Israeli media reported on Wednesday that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is favors a complete military takeover of Gaza, including in areas where Israeli captives are being held. Netanyahu is set to convene his war cabinet today to discuss next steps. As it stands, 88 percent of Gaza is already in a so-called “militarized zone” or under Israeli displacement orders.

Meanwhile, the genocidal assault continues. At least 87 Palestinians were killed over the last 24 hours, including 52 killed in aid massacres, bringing the confirmed death toll in Gaza to over 61,000—a number that is widely acknowledged to be a vast undercount. Nearly 650 people were injured over the past day as well, bringing the number of injured to more than 150,000—many of those injuries are life altering.

Eight Palestinians died of famine and malnutrition over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number who have died as a result of hunger to 188, including 94 children—many of them in the past 2 weeks alone as Israel’s deliberate starvation campaign in Gaza has reached what food experts are calling an irreversible tipping point.

On this week’s Drop Site news livestream, Sharif Abdel Kouddous speaks to the prominent Palestinian scholar and historian Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and the author of many books, his latest is "The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.”

Khalidi recently published an article in the Guardian newspaper explaining why he is withdrawing from teaching a fall course at Columbia. This comes after Columbia University agreeing to pay a $200 million settlement to the Trump administration after it accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students during campus protests calling for the university to disclose and divest from any ties to Israel.

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