Good morning. Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza City has begun, with missiles flattening neighbourhoods and families fleeing on foot – more on that below, along with the coming federal budget and Robert Redford’s cinematic legacy. But first:

• Chrystia Freeland will leave her cabinet post to serve as Canada’s special representative for Ukraine
• The suspect in the killing of Charlie Kirk is charged and prosecutors will seek the death penalty
• Washington was hoping for a ‘bigger’ deal with Canada than USMCA, the U.S. ambassador says
• Britain prepares for Trump’s arrival with pomp and protests

After weeks of warnings, military encroachment into the suburbs and stepped-up aerial assaults, Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza City early yesterday morning, with troops and tanks pressing deeper into the densely populated streets. Palestinians there described the most intense bombardment they’ve faced in nearly two years of war: Apache helicopters fired continuously into the city, while dropped missiles flattened entire residential blocks. People clambered over dislocated concrete to pry bodies out of the wreckage. At least 75 people were killed yesterday, local health officials said, most of them in Gaza City, with another 16 killed overnight.

“Gaza is burning,” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz posted on social media. A spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces said the Gaza City offensive could take several months to complete. “We will act until the war objectives are achieved. We are not limited by time,” Effie Defrin told reporters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted yesterday that “Israel is at a crucial stage.” He was speaking at a hearing of his long-running corruption trial, and argued that the ground incursion would prevent him from appearing in court.

Shortly after the tanks began moving in, a United Nations commission investigating the war in Gaza found that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. To back up its findings, the UN report cited the scale of the killings, including targeted attacks on civilians; forced displacement and aid blockages; the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and main fertility clinic; and widespread attacks on its schools, cultural sites and mosques. The result, it concluded, is the erasure of Palestinian identity.

Headed by Navi Pillay, a former International Criminal Court judge, the commission produced 72 pages of legal analysis to show that Israel has committed four of the five genocidal acts defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention, which was adopted in the wake of the Holocaust. According to Gaza’s health ministry, nearly 65,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, when 251 hostages were taken and 1,200 Israelis killed. Israel has displaced almost the entire population of 2.3 million people and repeatedly blocked humanitarian aid from reaching the enclave. More than 100 international NGOs, including Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders, described the situation in Gaza as “engineered mass starvation.”

Israel vehemently denies accusations of genocide against Palestinians, and yesterday, Dan Meron, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, called the commission’s report a “libellous rant” authored by “Hamas proxies.” Asked to respond to his comments, Pillay said: “I wish they would tell us where we went wrong on these facts.” Her commission isn’t the only one that has reached this conclusion. Amnesty International, two leading Israeli human rights groups and hundreds of international genocide scholars have also said Israel is committing genocide.

But legal designations provided only so much comfort on the ground in Gaza City, where the Israeli military allowed civilians to use just one road to evacuate. “They talk about genocide?” 32-year-old Ola Al Hessi asked Hasan Jaber, a contributing reporter at The Globe, as she left the city yesterday. “I say we are already being destroyed. Not only by bombs, but by hunger, thirst, fear and global silence.” She and her family started their journey south at dawn. They carried a small bag with water and some food.

At least 350,000 people have fled Gaza City since Israel issued evacuation orders a week ago, leaving in donkey carts, rickshaws or beat-up cars heavy with belongings if they could avoid travelling by foot. A spokesperson for UNICEF told The Guardian yesterday that more than 800,000 Palestinians remain in the city, including 450,000 children. It’s hard to leave when renting a small truck costs roughly 3,000 shekels ($1,200) and a tent with room for five runs for 4,000 shekels ($1,650). There are few places for people to go anyway: Most of Gaza is under its own evacuation orders or part of an Israeli military zone.

Qatar and France condemned the ground invasion in Gaza City, while Irish President Michael D. Higgins suggested Israel should be excluded from the UN. Families of the remaining hostages in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive, protested outside Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem yesterday, accusing him of sacrificing their loved ones. UN Secretary General António Guterres said it was clear Netanyahu was “not open to a serious negotiation for a ceasefire, with dramatic consequences from Israel’s point of view.”

But how dramatic, exactly? Israel continues to enjoy steadfast U.S. backing. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who left Jerusalem yesterday after a 48-hour visit, pledged the White House’s “unwavering” support. He added that “time is running out” for a negotiated deal in Gaza, and that there were “maybe a few weeks” left to reach a ceasefire. For his part, President Donald Trump – once so keen to play peacemaker – mostly now seems to be a bystander. Asked yesterday if he supported the Gaza City offensive, Trump told reporters, “I have to see. I don’t know too much about it.” He said earlier that any ground invasion was “pretty much up to Israel.” It’s hard not to think that this war only ends when Netanyahu says it does.

Hollywood icon, Sundance kid and indie-film champion Robert Robert died yesterday at the age of 89. The Globe’s Barry Hertz offers an appreciation for the impossibly handsome screen legend and his wide-ranging career.