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As Israel’s military moves forward with the initial stage of an operation that could forcefully eject nearly one million Palestinians from Gaza City, it has increased its air strikes on densely populated areas.

Six people, including four children, were among the victims of the Israeli assault on Gaza City on Thursday, according to a source at the nearby al-Ahli Hospital, according to Al Jazeera.

The bodies of the dead and seriously hurt were scattered across the street amid flames and wreckage from one of the attacks east of Sheikh Radwan, according to footage from the scene.

According to hospital sources in Gaza, at least 40 Palestinians have been killed since dawn in Gaza City, with eight of them reportedly seeking medical attention.

Five Palestinians were among the injured when an Israeli drone strike northwest of Khan Younis and at least three were killed by Israeli forces close to a refugee camp north of Rafah, according to sources who spoke to Al Jazeera. Emergency sources told Al Jazeera that in the north of the enclave, four people died and ten others were hurt as a result of Israeli shelling of Jabalia al-Balad, and that five people, including two children, died while waiting for help near the so-called Netzarim axis, according to a source at Al-Awda Hospital.

In Gaza City, where Israeli troops are stationed on the outskirts, thousands of Palestinians fought back from their homes to stop the offensive from spreading quickly, as a result of heavy shelling in densely populated Sabra and Tuffah.

As long as this war continues, our survival is uncertain, according to Rabah Abu Elias, a 67-year-old father of seven, to the Reuters news agency.

They mention a potential truce in the news. Only explosions and deaths are visible on the ground. It’s not simple to decide whether to leave Gaza City.

Hani Mahmoud, a reporter for Al Jazeera from Gaza City, claimed that the Israeli military was “targeting densely populated neighbourhoods to depopulate them” in response to a report from the country.

He claimed that Israeli troops had previously used the same tactic in the Tuffah and Shujayea neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City and were now using it in the Zeitoun and Sabra districts in the city’s southeast.

Nowhere is safe.

Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, claiming that those who had fled the Israeli offensive on Gaza City had been repeatedly targeted in areas that had been supposedly safe by the Israeli military.

They believe they have been hunted without a place to hide, he said.

Abu Azzoum was close to the city’s al-Aqsa Hospital on Thursday when an Israeli bombardment struck a makeshift camp for Palestinian refugees in Deir el-Balah. The images he captured at the site of the attack revealed spooky scenes as huge smoke plumes erupt from the area.

He claimed that the Israeli military is already launching attacks in Gaza at 9am.

Despite widespread international condemnation, some domestic opposition, and warnings that the offensive will worsen the humanitarian crisis and force hundreds of thousands of people to concentration camps in southern Gaza, Israel’s military has announced it will call up 60 000 reservists as it continues to seize Gaza City.

Nearly one million Palestinians are reportedly in Gaza City, where Israeli tanks have been advancing this week closer to the city’s center.

According to Christian Cardon, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s chief spokesman, “the intensification of hostilities in Gaza means more killing, displacement, destruction, and panic.”

He claimed that Gaza is a closed space where no one can escape and where there are fewer opportunities for access to safe water, food, and healthcare. This is unacceptable.

At a Geneva briefing, UNRWA’s head, Philippe Lazzarini, reported that since March, child malnutrition in Gaza City has increased by sixfold.

He declared, “We have a population that is extremely underdeveloped and will be the subject of a new significant military operation.” Many people will not have the strength to go through a new displacement, according to the statement.

The territory’s Ministry of Health announced on Thursday that two more deaths were caused by malnutrition in the region over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of famine and malnutrition victims during the war to 271, including 112 children.

According to the figures released to hospitals in Gaza, it claimed that a total of 70 people had been killed and 356 were hurt in the enclave during the same time, while further more victims were still buried beneath rubble.

Beginning of ethnic cleansing

Despite renewed efforts to end a ceasefire, including the most recent ceasefire proposal that Hamas has approved, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to advance the Gaza City offensive.

According to Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the Israeli government has “no intention to put an end to the war.”

He claimed that there is no other way to explain it. Israel hasn’t even discussed it, according to the statement from Hamas.

So either they [Israel] want to put more pressure on Hamas, which is not entirely certain, or they’re really serious about regaining control of Gaza City, forcing everyone there, and offering them to leave the Gaza Strip.

He claimed that that was the start of an ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Rory Challands of Al Jazeera claimed that Netanyahu had “demanded” the operation despite military opposition.

“His generals didn’t really want it,” he said. They retaliated, saying it was a military trap, that the military was worn out and unprepared for it after nearly two years of fighting. However, it was desired by Netanyahu.

He claimed that Israel had a chance of losing because the army was “not prepared for it,” the reservists wouldn’t show up, or would show up late, and it simply didn’t have the resources to carry out this operation.

As global plastic treaty talks end in failure, with no agreement, all is not lost in the global momentum to cut plastic pollution. United States lawmakers recently introduced the Microplastics Safety Act, for example, mandating the Department of Health and Human Services to study microplastics exposure and health impacts. The bill reflects growing concern in Congress about the plastics health crisis and the broad bipartisan support to address it.

However, given that plastic production, use, and hence exposure, continue to increase every year, we should not wait idly for the US report’s findings or more failed global plastic treaty talks. There is enough evidence to take action now. Below, we highlight three areas that can help reduce everyone’s exposure to microplastics: culture, business and policy.

In culture, there are many default behaviours that we can rethink and re-norm. What if we saw more people bringing their own metal or wooden cutlery to the next barbecue, more shoppers bringing home whole fruit instead of plastic-wrapped pre-cut, and more kids and employees bringing their own refillable water bottles and coffee mugs to school and work? The more we see it normalised, the more we’ll do it. That’s how social norming works.

And having Hollywood in on this would certainly help. Two years ago, Citywide, a feature film shot in Philadelphia was Hollywood’s first zero-waste film, which is a great start. More of this is welcome, including walking the talk within movie, television and advertising scenes by swapping in refillable and reusable containers where single-use plastics would otherwise be the default or showcasing repeat outfits on characters to decentre environmentally harmful fast fashion, much of which is made from plastic.

In business, thankfully, some local grocers allow shoppers to go plastic-free. More grocers should make this shift because consumers want it. Providing staples like cereal, oats, nuts and beans in bulk bins and letting shoppers bring their own containers is a good start. Buying in bulk tends to be more affordable but unfortunately, few stores offer that option, especially stores that target shoppers with lower incomes. Even shoppers with higher incomes lack options: Whole Foods, for example, has bulk bins but in most of its locations requires customers to use the provided plastic containers or bags, which defeats the purpose.

More low-hanging fruit for grocers: try using the milk bottle approach. In some grocery stores, milk is still available in glass bottles, which is good, albeit it comes with a steep deposit. Let’s extend that model of returnable containers to other products, and at a more affordable rate. Take yoghurt, for example. Stores could have an option to buy it in returnable glass containers, since the current plastic containers aren’t recyclable. This is not a fantasy but a possibility: a newly opened grocery store in France offers all of their items plastic-free.

For restaurants, more and more businesses across the US are supporting the use of returnable containers and cities like the District of Columbia offer grants to help ditch disposables. This is exactly what we need more of. People want the option to bring their own containers or use a returnable container so that they can have take-out without risking their health and the environment with exposure to plastic. Let’s give the people what they want.

Policy is arguably the hardest of the three paths to tackle since culture and business track more closely and immediately with consumer demand. To be clear, most Americans, in a bipartisan way, are sick of single-use plastics, which is why plastic bag bans are popping up across the US, and state capitals are seeing more legislative proposals to hold producers of plastic responsible for the life cycle of plastic. What makes policy the more difficult space is the petrochemical lobby that often stands in the way, keeping policymakers mum about the human health and environmental impacts while encouraging industry subsidies: the US has spent $9bn in tax subsidies on the construction of new plastics factories over the past 12 years.

Given the health and environmental harms associated with plastics production, the obvious policy fix is to make the producers responsible for the pollution, forcing them to clean up in places locally like Beaver Creek, Pennsylvania, where the local economy suffered after an ethane cracker plant started operating there. And then to clean up globally for the harm done, since governments are left with the tab of $32bn while the public is left with the costs of health impacts from endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastic.

The industry, meanwhile, is fighting tooth and nail to keep selling its harmful products, misleading the public into thinking recycling is an effective solution to plastic waste. It’s not, of course, which is why California is suing ExxonMobil for deception about plastics recycling. Meanwhile, the industry continues to interfere with United Nations global plastics treaty negotiations.

It’s time we diverted those billions of dollars that taxpayers spend subsidising deadly plastics production and, instead, develop products, companies and systems that make the low-plastic life the default option for everyone. That’s the healthier future we want to live in.

London, United Kingdom – Jonathon Porritt, a 75-year-old Oxford-educated environmentalist, is among the hundreds of people that the UK has cracked down on over their support of Palestine Action.

He was arrested and charged earlier this month, under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, for holding up a sign at a rally decrying the government’s decision to outlaw the protest group.

“I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action,” read the cardboard placard that he, and many of the 520 others arrested, raised.

His bail hearing is scheduled for late October.

But Porritt is not a hardened criminal.

He spent 30 years advising the king on environmental issues when the monarch held the Prince of Wales title. He has also chaired a sustainable development commission set up by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and throughout his career has worked in politics, academia and directed Friends of the Earth. In 2000, he was awarded a CBE, a high-ranking order, for services to environmental protection.

Al Jazeera spoke to Porritt about his activism, Palestine, the role of business and the effect of weapons manufacturing on climate change.

Al Jazeera: As the crisis in Gaza worsens, you have urged the UK to take action to stop Israel’s onslaught. With more than 700 other business leaders, you recently called for targeted sanctions against those accused of violating international law, including war crimes. Does that include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, since he is wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court?

Jonathan Porritt: It would certainly include members of his cabinet who have been very forthright in the comments that they’ve made, which clearly breach any understanding of the rights of people to exist … and indicate a readiness to ethnically cleanse Gaza and indeed to prepare to do the same in the West Bank.

It’s very clear that those sanctions do now need to be brought forward, and I think it is important that it’s business leaders that are suggesting that you just can’t allow those kinds of blatant attacks on the Palestinian people to continue.

Al Jazeera: On an individual level, many people appalled at Israel’s conduct in Gaza have joined a campaign to boycott Israeli goods, in an attempt at hitting the economy that fuels the war. Is this an effective way to stem the violence?

Porritt: It is something I do on an individual level. And this is purely personal, but I would be deeply unhappy buying anything exported into the UK from Israel. I feel that the government of Israel at the moment and its track record in terms of the way it’s dealt with the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is so repugnant to me personally that I feel uncomfortable supporting the economic standing of that country, so that’s my own personal choice.

I don’t go out of my way to suggest that everybody needs to do that.

I think lifestyle decisions are really important, ethical decisions are really important, but do they actually change very much? Probably not, is the reality, and an awful lot of people simply don’t know the issues behind these choices.

Al Jazeera: Your arrest earlier this month made headlines. What do you think figures such as King Charles and Tony Blair, who you’ve worked with, would make of your radical activism?

Porritt: I was comfortable taking on establishment roles as chair of the commission [launched by Blair], for instance, [and] helping to set up the Prince of Wales’s business and sustainability programme, all that kind of stuff. But my life started as an activist in the Green Party and in Friends of the Earth, so they probably always knew that I was more predisposed to that tactical route than to the inside track that I nonetheless spent 30 years pursuing.

Al Jazeera: With several wars raging, is the link between militaries and weapons companies, which are major carbon polluters, and climate change being talked about enough?

Porritt: No, and this really bugs me a lot.

The investment in nuclear weapons of one kind or another, upgrades going on all over the world, and increasing the number of warheads again – this is just crazy, and on the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima you think, how can that possibly be?

And then, then you look at the environmental impacts of all of that, of course, including the CO2 footprint of vast increases in expenditure on arms, and it’s just the worst possible way of trying to increase security for people in their own country – to make these hugely carbon-intensive and destructive investments and yet more weapons of mass destruction.

Al Jazeera: The UK has proscribed Palestine Action as a terror organisation, but its backers say outlawing the group is a way to silence dissent as Israel wages war in Gaza. It is now legally challenging the proscription. What does Palestine Action stand for, in your view?

Porritt: What Palestine Action actually stands for is a readiness to use violence against property as part of its campaigning tactics against, in particular, those arms companies [that are] deeply complicit in the continuing genocide in Gaza. They see as being proportionate when set against the devastation going on in Gaza.

That choice about tactics is morally based, wholly defensible … and in no way indicative of a formally designated terrorist organisation.

In the last few years, there’s been an astonishing legal crackdown on basic rights in this country, particularly the right to the freedom of speech and the right to freedom to protest