Gaza

Israel’s military says it will call up 60,000 reservists and lengthen the service of an additional 20,000 reservists.

Israel will call up 60,000 reservists in the coming weeks as it pushes forward with a plan to seize Gaza City, the military has said, even as mediators pursue efforts to secure a ceasefire in the 22-month war.

The military said on Wednesday that Defence Minister Israel Katz approved plans to begin operations in some of Gaza’s most densely populated areas, and that it would call up 60,000 reservists and lengthen the service of an additional 20,000 reservists.

The announcement comes as human rights groups warn that a humanitarian crisis could worsen in Gaza, where most residents have been displaced multiple times, neighbourhoods lie in ruins, and starvation deaths continue to rise amid the threat of widescale famine.

An Israeli military official told journalists that the new phase of combat would involve “a gradual precise and targeted operation in and around Gaza City,” including some areas where forces had not previously operated.

The official said the military had already begun operating in the neighbourhoods of Zeitoun and Jabalia as part of the initial stages.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from central Gaza, said residents are bracing for the worst as Israel pursues its plan to seize Gaza’s largest city, in an operation that could displace hundreds of thousands of people to concentration zones in the south of the territory.

Abu Azzoum said Israeli artillery has flattened rows of homes in eastern Gaza City as attacks intensified across densely populated areas.

“Last night was completely sleepless as Israeli drones and warplanes filled the skies, attacking and destroying homes and makeshift camps,” Abu Azzoum said.

He also described how a father in al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated so-called safe zone in southern Gaza, lost his children in an overnight strike. “He told us his children were sleeping peacefully when the Israeli missile tore through the tent and ripped their bodies apart.”

At least 35 Palestinians, including 10 people seeking aid, were killed in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, according to medical sources.

Israel’s plan to escalate its assault coincides with renewed mediation efforts led by Qatar and Egypt, with backing from the United States. The latest framework calls for a 60-day truce, a staggered exchange of captives and Palestinian prisoners, and expanded aid access.

While Qatar said the proposal was “almost identical” to a version Israel had previously accepted, Egypt stressed that “the ball is now in its (Israel’s) court.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not publicly commented on the proposal. Last week, he insisted any deal must ensure “all the hostages are released at once and according to our conditions for ending the war”.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said his movement “opened the door wide to the possibility of reaching an agreement, but the question remains whether Netanyahu will once again close it, as he has done in the past”.

The truce push comes amid mounting international criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war and growing domestic pressure on Netanyahu.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has said at least 62,064 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza started on October 7, 2023, most of them civilians. The United Nations regards the ministry’s figures as credible.

The Israeli military, which styles itself as the “most moral army in the world”, may be routinely committing war crimes, according to analysts in Israel and doctors who have worked in Gaza.

While killings, beatings and the arbitrary arrest of Palestinians are not new to the Israeli army, a long process of dehumanisation, the infiltration of far-right ideologies in the army and a lack of accountability have led to a scenario where Israeli soldiers can do as they please without even needing an operational reason, analysts said.

“As far as I can see, this is a new phenomenon,” Erella Grassiani of the University of Amsterdam, who has written on what she referred to as the moral “numbing” of Israeli soldiers during the second Intifada of 2000.

“It’s not as if Israeli soldiers haven’t beaten and arrested children for throwing stones before, but this is new,” she said.

“Previously, there were some kind of rules of engagement, even if they were loosely followed, but they were there. What we’re seeing now is completely different,” she said.

War as sport

Accusations of casual brutality by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, and the occupied West Bank, are longstanding.

Israeli soldiers have posted social media videos of themselves wearing the dresses of women whose homes they have raided, or playing with their underwear.

And there are accounts of soldiers shooting civilians for “target practice” or simply to stave off boredom.

In early August, the BBC investigated the cases of Israeli soldiers killing children in Gaza. Of the 160 cases examined, 95 children had been shot in the head or the chest – shots that could not be claimed as “intended to wound only”.

In addition to killing children, there are accounts suggesting that Israeli soldiers have been using the civilians who gather around aid distribution sites run by the self-styled GHF for target practice.

“The GHF sites are set up as death traps,” British surgeon Nick Maynard, who returned in July from his third trip to Gaza since the war began, told Al Jazeera.

“They’re compounds containing enough food for a family to eat for a few days, but not for all of the thousands of people they keep waiting outside. They then open the gates and let the chaos, fighting and even rioting happen, which they then use as a justification to fire into the crowd,” he said.

The nature of the shooting became clear to the doctors and emergency room medics at nearby Nasser Hospital, where Maynard was working.

“I was operating on a 12-year-old boy, who later died,” Maynard said.

“He’d been shot at one of the GHF sites. I had a conversation about it with a colleague in the Emergency Room later, who told me that he and other medics had seen repeated and strong patterns of wound grouping,” he explained.

Wound grouping refers to the phenomenon where several patients present with an injury to the same part of their body. The following day, many patients come in with a wound on a different part of the body, suggesting to Maynard that Israeli snipers were either playing or using civilians to improve their aim, as he told Sky News previously.

No accountability, no control

An investigation by the Israeli magazine +972 in July 2024 painted a bleak picture of Israeli soldiers with no restrictions on their ability to shoot at civilians in Gaza.

“There was total freedom,” a soldier who served in Gaza for months told +972. “If there is [even] a feeling of threat, there is no need to explain – you just shoot … it is permissible to shoot at their centre of mass [their body], not into the air”, the anonymous soldier continued.

“It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.”

Of the 52 probes that the Israeli army said it carried out into crimes it has been accused of committing in Gaza or the West Bank between October 2023 and June 2025, 88 percent were stalled or were closed with no action taken, according to a study by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

Only one had resulted in a prison sentence against the accused.

According to AOAV, the 52 cases they examined involved the killing of 1,303 people, the wounding of 1,880 people and the reported torture of two more.

Even when there was footage of an incident, such as what appeared to be the gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman Israeli prison facility, public pressure, including from members of the Israeli cabinet, led to the accused’s eventual release.

Accusations that the Israeli army routinely tortures Palestinians date back to at least 1967, when the Red Crescent documented the systematic torture of prisoners in Nablus Prison in the West Bank.

There has also been an increase in the dehumanising language used to refer to Palestinians that researchers now say is commonplace within the army.

As far back as 1967, Israeli figures such as David Hacohen, one-time Israeli ambassador to Burma, now Myanmar,, were recorded denying that Palestinians were even human.

In 1985, a survey of 520 books in Hebrew children’s literature found that 86 depicted Palestinians as “inhuman, war lovers, devious monsters, bloodthirsty dogs, preying wolves, or vipers”.

Twenty years later, when many of those now deployed to Gaza were likely at school, 10 percent of a sample batch of Israeli children who were asked to draw Palestinians depicted them as animals.

“The dehumanisation of Palestinians is a process that goes back decades,” Grassiani of the University of Amsterdam said. “But I’d say it’s now complete.

“We’ve seen incredibly cruel acts from the first day to now, with Israeli soldiers seeking revenge for [the Hamas-led attack of] October 7,” she said.

“It’s like a snowball running down a hill to which there’s no bottom,” Haim Bresheeth, author of An Army Like No Other, a book about the Israeli military.

“Every year, the violence is ratcheted up,” he said. “The idea of using civilians as target practice is the logical outcome.

“It’s a new sport, a blood sport, and these sports always develop from the bottom up,” he said of Israel’s infantry.

“It’s twisted, murderous, and it’s sick.”

With nearly 3 million Twitch followers, Hasan Piker is one of the internet’s biggest political streamers. He blends humour, culture and masculinity talk with sharp political commentary, drawing young men away from the US alt-right. And on Gaza, he has become one of the loudest US voices for Palestine.

Israel is ethnically cleansing the central neighborhood of Zeitoun in Gaza by bombing homes and displacement centres.

Since announcing plans to invade northern Gaza and expel Palestinians again to the south, Israel has attacked displacement shelters in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Zeitoun, according to an investigation by Sanad, Al Jazeera’s verification unit.

Since August 13, Sanad has found that Israel stepped up the bombardment and shelling of Zeitoun, and often directly hit displacement shelters.

The siege and ongoing violence have compelled thousands of Palestinians to close their tents in the camps and flee further south, according to satellite imagery obtained by Sanad.

The indiscriminate bombardment of civilian homes and displacement shelters is part of a broad pattern of Israeli war tactics that make no distinction between civilians and fighters.

Human rights groups, United Nations experts and numerous legal scholars believe Israel’s nearly two-year war on Gaza amounts to genocide.

Israel’s Western allies – who have long defended it from criticism by claiming it has the “right to defend itself” – are becoming increasingly alarmed at the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the enclave.

Many are calling on Israel to end the war and warning that its plan to seize northern Gaza could further exacerbate the suffering of civilians. The mass displacement and bombardment of Zeitoun encapsulate the atrocities resulting from Israel’s invasion.

Attacking shelters

There are about 11 displacement shelters in Zeitoun, each sheltering 4,000 to 4,500 besieged and hungry Palestinians.

Most live on just 3.2sq km (1.2sq miles), which makes up just 32 percent of the pre-war size of Zeitoun.

At the start of the war, Israel dug trenches in and around the neighbourhood, claiming it was creating a ‘buffer zone”, and built the Netzarim Corridor, which has split Gaza into two zones.

Israel’s recent bombardment of the neighbourhood is terrifying civilians into fleeing south, leading to another cycle of forced displacement that may amount to ethnic cleansing due to Israel’s attempt to destroy all livable facilities and structures.

An Al Jazeera journalist on the ground recently captured footage of Israel firing a missile directly at a home in Zeitoun.

While it is unclear whether anyone was inside, it is clear that all structures are being levelled, possibly to make it more difficult for any survivors to try to relocate to the area.

According to Sanad, there is clear evidence that Israel is pursuing that policy in and around Zeitoun. Between August 11 and 16, sources documented Israel’s attack on al-Falah School in Zeitoun and a tent camp on al-Lababidi Street.

Both the Majida al-Wasila school in the Nassr neighbourhood and tents in the Sheikh Ajilin neighbourhood were also hit.

This pattern of direct attacks on tents and school shelters – the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, since these structures are protected under international humanitarian law.

The highest number of attacks on aid workers was in Palestinian territory, followed by Sudan, the UN says.

United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has issued a “shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy” as he has shared statistics on the killing of 383 aid workers last year worldwide, nearly half in Gaza.

Marking World Humanitarian Day on Tuesday, Fletcher said the killings rose by 31 percent from the year before, “driven by the relentless conflicts in Gaza, where 181 humanitarian workers were killed, and in Sudan, where 60 lost their lives”.

“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” Fletcher said. “Attacks on this scale with zero accountability are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy.”

The UN said most of those killed were local staff and were either attacked in the line of duty or in their homes.

“As the humanitarian community, we demand – again – that those with power and influence act for humanity, protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account,” said Fletcher, who is the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

This year’s toll

The Aid Worker Security Database, which has compiled UN reports since 1997, said the number of killings rose from 293 in 2023.

Provisional figures from the database for this year show 265 aid workers have been killed as of August 14.

One of the deadliest attacks this year took place in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when Israeli troops opened fire before dawn on March 23, killing 15 medics and emergency responders travelling in clearly marked vehicles.

The Israeli army drove bulldozers over the bodies and the emergency vehicles and buried them in a mass grave. UN and rescue workers were able to reach the site only a week later.

The UN reiterated that attacks on aid workers and their operations violate international humanitarian law and damage the lifelines sustaining millions of people trapped in war and disaster zones.

“Violence against aid workers is not inevitable. It must end,” Fletcher said.

Elsewhere

Lebanon, which Israel battered in a war with Hezbollah last year, saw 20 aid workers killed, compared with none in 2023.

Ethiopia and Syria each had 14 killings, about double their numbers in 2023, and Ukraine had 13 aid workers killed in 2024, up from six in 2023, according to the database.

Meanwhile, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) said it verified more than 800 attacks on healthcare in 16 territories so far this year with more than 1,110 health workers and patients killed and hundreds injured.

“Each attack inflicts lasting harm, deprives entire communities of lifesaving care when they need it the most, endangers healthcare providers and weakens already strained health systems,” the WHO said.

World Humanitarian Day marks the day in 2003 when UN rights chief Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other humanitarians were killed in a bombing of UN headquarters in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.

When I heard about the killing of Mohammed Noufal and his colleagues from Al Jazeera, my first thoughts were with his sister, Janat. I knew her vaguely in university; she is a polite girl with a beautiful smile, who was studying digital media at the Islamic University of Gaza and ran an online shop where she sold girls’ accessories.

She had already lost several members of her family when she received the news of her brother’s martyrdom. I thought of her and the devastating pain she must be in. I thought of how her story reflects the fate of so many Palestinian families who, over the past almost two years, have faced slow death, member by member.

On October 30, 2023, just three weeks after the start of the war, a missile struck Janat’s family house in Jabalia. She and her sisters and brothers survived, although Mohammed had serious injuries. Their aunt and uncle were killed.

A year later, on October 7, 2024, Omar, Janat’s eldest brother, was martyred while he was trying to rescue the injured from a bombed house; the Israeli army hit the same spot again, killing him.

Then, on June 22 of this year, her mother, Muneera, passed away. She was visiting relatives when the Israeli army bombarded the area. Muneera was hit by shrapnel; she arrived at the hospital still alive but passed away 39 hours later.

On August 10, Israel bombed a media tent near al-Shifa Hospital, killing Janat’s brother Mohammed and six other journalists.

Now, Janat has only her father Riyad, her brother Ibrahim and her sisters Ola, Hadeel, Hanan left.

“[When] my older brother Omar passed away, we heard our father groan and say, “You’ve broken my back, oh God,” Janat told me when I reached out to her.

“When we lost my mother Muneera, my father said in a hoarse voice, ‘We have been struck down’,” she continued.

“When my brother Mohammed, the journalist, was martyred, he said nothing. He didn’t scream, he didn’t cry, he didn’t utter a word. And that’s when fear began to creep into my heart … I feared that his silence might break him forever. I feared his stillness more than I feared his grief.”

After Mohammed was martyred, Janat tried to convince her brother Ibrahim to leave his work as a journalist, because she was afraid for him. He was the last one left to support her, their father, and her sisters. But he refused, saying that nothing would befall them except what God had written for them. He told her that he wanted to follow the legacy of their martyred brother and his colleagues.

For Janat, the pain of losing her loved ones has become unbearable. “Whenever we thought we could breathe a little, the next loss would bring us back to the same darkness. Fear is no longer a passing feeling, but a constant companion, watching us from every corner of our lives. Loss has become part of our existence, and grief has settled into the details of daily life, in every paused smile and every prolonged silence,” she told me.

Her words echo the suffering of so many families here in Gaza.

According to the Government Media Office, as of March this year, 2,200 Palestinian families were completely wiped out from the civil registry, all of their members killed. More than 5,120 families had only one member left.

Palestinian families are constantly under the threat of extinction with each wave of bombing.

My own relatives have also been erased from the civil registry. My father, Ghassan, had eight cousins – Mohammed, Omar, Ismail, Firas, Khaled, Abdullah, Ali, and Marah – who formed a large branch of our extended family. After the outbreak of war, we began losing them one after another. Each loss left a new void, as if we were being pulled into a spiral of recurring grief.

Only the wives of Omar and Ismail and their two children remain now. My father carries this immense pain quietly, holding his sorrow deep inside.

Today, we face another Israeli offensive on northern Gaza. Last year, the Israeli onslaught killed tens of thousands. Those who defied forced displacement to the south paid a heavy price.

Many of us who have lost loved ones do not want to live through the horror again. Last year, my family stayed in the north, but we are now exhausted. We are worn out from the bombing, death, and terror we experienced. We will leave this time. Janat’s family, who proudly held on to their half-destroyed home in Jabalia, will also leave.

We have experienced atrocities that no human being can endure. We cannot take any more death.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

RAFAH, Egypt — Hamas said Monday it has accepted a new proposal from Arab mediators for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as Israel indicated its positions haven’t changed, while Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from 22 months of war has passed 62,000.

U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to cast doubt on the long-running negotiations that Washington has mediated as well. “We will only see the return of the remaining hostages when Hamas is confronted and destroyed!!! The sooner this takes place, the better the chances of success will be,” he posted on social media.

Israel announced plans to reoccupy Gaza City and other heavily populated areas after ceasefire talks appeared to break down last month, raising the possibility of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which experts say is sliding into famine.

Plans to expand the offensive, in part aimed at pressuring Hamas, have sparked international outrage and infuriated many Israelis who fear for the remaining hostages taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that started the war. Hundreds of thousands took part in mass protests on Sunday calling for their return.

Egypt says Witkoff invited to join talks

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said mediators are “exerting extensive efforts” to revive a U.S. proposal for a 60-day ceasefire, during which some of the remaining 50 hostages would be released and the sides would negotiate a lasting ceasefire and the return of the rest.

Abdelatty told the Associated Press they are inviting U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff to join the ceasefire talks.

Abdelatty spoke to journalists during a visit to Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza, which has not functioned since Israel seized the Palestinian side in May 2024. He was accompanied by Mohammad Mustafa, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, which has been largely sidelined since the war began.

Abdelatty said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani had joined the talks, which include senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, who arrived in Cairo last week. Abdelatty said they are open to other ideas, including for a comprehensive deal that would release all the hostages at once.

Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told the AP that the militant group had accepted the proposal introduced by the mediators, without elaborating.

An Egyptian official, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, said the proposal includes changes to Israel’s pullback of its forces and guarantees for negotiations on a lasting ceasefire during the initial truce. The official said it is almost identical to an earlier proposal accepted by Israel, which has not yet joined the latest talks.

Diaa Rashwan, head of the Egypt State Information Service, told the AP that Egypt and Qatar have sent the Hamas-accepted proposal to Israel.

An Israeli official said Israel’s positions, including on the release of all hostages, had not changed from previous rounds of talks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until all the hostages are returned and Hamas has been disarmed, and to maintain lasting security control over Gaza. Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal.

Netanyahu said in a video addressing the Israeli public that reports of Hamas’ acceptance of the proposal showed that it is “under massive pressure.”

Palestinian death toll surpasses 62,000

Hamas-led militants abducted 251 people and killed around 1,200, mostly civilians, in the attack that ignited the war. Around 20 of the hostages still in Gaza are believed by Israel to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefires or other deals.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from the war had climbed to 62,004, with another 156,230 people wounded. It does not say how many were civilians or combatants, but says women and children make up around half the dead.

The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties. Israel disputes its toll but has not provided its own.

The ministry said 1,965 people have been killed while seeking humanitarian aid since May, either in the chaos around U.N. convoys or while heading to sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-backed American contractor.

Witnesses, health officials and the U.N. human rights office say Israeli forces have repeatedly fired toward crowds seeking aid. Israel says it has only fired warning shots at people who approached its forces. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired into the air on rare occasions to prevent deadly crowding.

More deaths linked to malnutrition

Experts have warned that Israel’s ongoing offensive is pushing Gaza toward famine, even after it eased a complete two-and-a-half-month blockade on the territory in May. Gaza’s Health Ministry said Monday that five more people, including two children, died of malnutrition-related causes.

It says at least 112 children have died of malnutrition-related causes since the war began, and 151 adults have died since the ministry started tracking adult malnutrition deaths in June.

Amnesty International on Monday accused Israel of “carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation.”

Israel has rejected such allegations, saying it allows in enough food and accusing the U.N. of failing to promptly deliver it. U.N. agencies say they are hindered by Israeli restrictions and the breakdown of law and order in the territory, around three-quarters of which is now controlled by Israel.

Eastwood, Magdy and Lidman write for the Associated Press. Magdy reported from Cairo and Lidman from Tel Aviv. AP writer Rod McGuirk contributed from Canberra, Australia.

A Hamas source told Al Jazeera the group has agreed terms for a ceasefire in Gaza, as a step towards ending the war. The plan calls for a 60-day pause in fighting and the release of half of Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Al Jazeera’s Hamda Salhut reports.

More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in its nearly two-year genocidal war on Gaza, with the population suffering relentless bombardment with nowhere safe in the besieged enclave, Israeli-induced starvation and the daily killing of people desperately seeking food for their families.

Israel is intensifying strikes on Gaza City, the territory’s largest – and now destroyed – urban centre, as it plans to seize it and forcibly displace tens of thousands of people to concentration zones in the south. At least 26 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday, including 14 seeking aid.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, says, “Israeli attacks are still ongoing, unabated, in the eastern part of Gaza City. The scale of attacks illustrates how Israel’s current strategy is shaping the geography and demography of Gaza.”

“We can see how Israel is using heavy artillery, fighter jets and drones, in order to destroy what’s left of residential homes there. The scale of destruction is extremely overwhelming,” he said.

“This current military tactic ensures that Israel will enable its forces to operate on the ground and will also ensure residential areas turn into zones of rubble. People there say Israeli attacks are happening day and night.”

Many who have already been displaced multiple times during the war by Israeli bombardment are on the move again from Gaza City. Others are staying put.

The city was the main target of air attacks on Sunday that killed nearly 60 people, and Israel is also targeting the few remaining healthcare centres there.

But while many Palestinians who remain in the devastated city are forced to survive in the ruins of buildings, makeshift shelters, or tents, some people have told Al Jazeera that it would be impossible for them to leave.

“How am I supposed to even get there? How can I go? I need nearly $900 to move – I don’t even have a dollar. How am I supposed to reach the south?” asked displaced Palestinian man Bilal Abu Sitta.

Others do not trust Israeli promises of aid and shelter. “We don’t want Israel to give us anything,” Noaman Hamad said. “We want them to [allow] us back to the homes we fled – we don’t need more than that.”

Slight hope emerged as Hamas said it approved a Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward yesterday by mediators Qatar and Egypt. An informed source told Al Jazeera that the draft deal would ensure a 60-day truce that would see the release of half of the Israeli captives held in Gaza as well as an unspecified number of Palestinian captives imprisoned by Israel.

But Palestinians in Gaza have seen countless false dawns before, and after a brief ceasefire in January was shattered by Israel in March, the war then entered its most grim phase of human misery.

‘Israel carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation’

Gaza’s Health Ministry says five more Palestinians have died from malnutrition as a result of Israel’s punishing monthslong blockade in the past 24 hours, including two children.

As of August 18, the known number of people who have starved to death in Gaza, according to the ministry, reached at least 263 people, including 112 children.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) warned that as of July 2025, more than 320,000 children – the entire population under the age of five in Gaza – are at risk of acute malnutrition.

Families are surviving on the bare minimum of basic foods, with almost no dietary diversity, WFP said. The agency called for an immediate ceasefire to allow large-scale delivery of humanitarian aid.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says children in Gaza should be preparing for the new school year, but instead are searching for water, queuing for food, and living in classrooms turned into overcrowded shelters.

UNRWA warned that children in the enclave have already lost three years of schooling, risking becoming a “lost generation”, and renewed its call for an immediate ceasefire.

Amnesty International has condemned Israel “systematically destroying the health, wellbeing and social fabric of Palestinian life”. In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

In the meantime, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says its staff in Gaza are witnessing a surge in mass casualties linked to Israel’s ongoing siege and its oversight of limited distribution of aid by the controversial, US- and Israel-backed aid organisation GHF.

“The indiscriminate killings, and the counts of mass casualties we still [see] on a daily basis right now, hasn’t stopped, but only increased in its scale,” said Nour Alsaqqa of MSF.

She said one MSF facility in Rafah, located near an aid distribution centre, has been overwhelmed with wounded Palestinians, including children.

“We are receiving baby injuries and killings from the distribution sites. People who are coming with gunshots, with different injuries, related to the distribution sites and they go only seeking food,” she said.

“They go out of desperation and they risk their lives to access aid, which is still inaccessible due to Israel’s siege.”

Since the establishment of the GHF aid sites at the end of May, nearly 2,000 people have been killed while trying to access aid, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Hamas has agreed to the latest proposal from regional mediators for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Israel, a source in the Palestinian armed group has told the BBC.

According to a Palestinian official familiar with the talks, the proposal from Egypt and Qatar is a comprehensive two-stage plan based on a framework advanced by US envoy Steve Witkoff.

It would see Hamas free around half of the 50 remaining Israeli hostages – 20 of whom are believed to be alive – in two stages during a 60-day temporary truce. During that time, there would be negotiations on a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli troop withdrawal.

There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials.

On Sunday night, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv to demand that Israel’s government agree a deal with Hamas to return the hostages.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the demonstrators of hardening the negotiating position of Hamas.

The latest development comes two days after Netanyahu’s office said Israel would “agree to a deal on condition that all the hostages are released in one go”.

Meanwhile Israel’s cabinet is expected later this week to approve the military’s plans to expand its offensive in Gaza and occupy Gaza City.

Netanyahu announced Israel’s intention to do so after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire deal broke down last month.

Hamas said at the time that it would only free the remaining hostages if Israel agreed to end the 22-month war. But Netanyahu said that would only happen once Hamas was disarmed and released all the hostages.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 62,004 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Previous indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, facilitated by mediators, ended without any results to end the Israel-Palestine war.

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani has held talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to discuss a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, as Israel intensifies its offensive to seize Gaza City.

“El-Sisi and the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Qatar stressed the importance of efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement in Gaza,” according to a statement by the Egyptian presidency on Monday.

The two leaders “affirmed their rejection of the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and the displacement of Palestinians”, as Israel plans to seize Gaza City and force Palestinians from the enclave’s main urban centre. They also insisted that establishing a Palestinian state is “the path to peace”.

A source told Al Jazeera that “intensive discussions” are currently taking place in Egypt between a Hamas delegation and mediators. Hamas, which governs Gaza, has been calling for a ceasefire, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rebuffed the offer.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been mediating between Israel and Hamas since the beginning of the war in Gaza that has killed 62,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children.

Efforts by mediators have so far failed to secure a lasting ceasefire in the ongoing war, which over more than 22 months has created a dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

A truce brokered by Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators that came into force in January was broken by Israel in March. Since then, it has imposed a total blockade, causing famine and starvation. More than 260 Palestinians have died due to the Israeli-induced starvation crisis.

The latest round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, facilitated in Doha by mediators, lasted for several weeks before ending on July 25 without any results.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, visiting the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Monday, said that Qatar’s prime minister was visiting “to consolidate our existing common efforts in order to apply maximum pressure on the two sides to reach a deal as soon as possible”.

Alluding to the dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip, where United Nations agencies and aid groups have warned of a humanitarian crisis, Abdelatty stressed the urgency of reaching an agreement.

“The current situation on the ground is beyond imagination,” he said.

Thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee again from Gaza City ahead of an impending Israeli offensive.

‘Genocides don’t end through negotiated solutions’

Commenting on the Qatari prime minister’s trip to Egypt, Abdullah Al-Arian, an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, said it was important to remember that similar negotiations have occurred before, but it is “a lack of Israeli political will” that has ultimately stalled them.

Israel “has continued to pursue this genocide and taking it to new, horrific, unprecedented levels”, he told Al Jazeera, adding that there has been a lack of international pressure to secure a ceasefire agreement.

“Historically, genocides don’t end through negotiated solutions … They end usually because the party that committed the genocide is forced to end it, usually through external pressure, external intervention of some kind, and that has not happened yet,” the academic stressed.

On Monday, human rights group Amnesty International accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza as the UN and aid groups continued to warn of famine in the Palestinian enclave.

In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

The UN and the international community have been slamming Israel for blocking necessary aid from entering the war-torn enclave.

The human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza as the United Nations and aid groups warn of famine in the Palestinian enclave.

In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

The group accused Israel of “systematically destroying the health, wellbeing and social fabric of Palestinian life”.

“It is the intended outcome of plans and policies that Israel has designed and implemented, over the past 22 months, to deliberately inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction – which is part and parcel of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” Amnesty said.

Israel has killed nearly 62,000 Palestinians and turned Gaza into rubble since it launched its military offensive on October 7, 2023. Campaigners and rights organisations have called it a war of vengeance and identified Israeli actions as a genocide.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes .

The report is based on interviews conducted in recent weeks with 19 displaced Palestinians in Gaza sheltering in three makeshift camps as well as two medical staff members in two hospitals in Gaza City.

“I fear miscarriage, but I also think about my baby. I panic just thinking about the potential impact of my own hunger on the baby’s health, its weight, whether it will have [birth defects] and, even if the baby is born healthy, what life awaits it, amid displacement, bombs, tents,” Hadeel, 28, a mother of two who is four months pregnant, was quoted as saying in the report.

A 75-year-old woman told Amnesty International that she wishes to die. “I feel like I have become a burden on my family. … I always feel like these young children, they are the ones who deserve to live, my grandchildren. I feel like I’m a burden on them, on my son,” Aziza said.

Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty International, said in a statement: “As Israeli authorities threaten to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza City, the testimonies we have collected are far more than accounts of suffering, they are a searing indictment of an international system that has granted Israel a license to torment Palestinians with near-total impunity for decades.”

Nearly one million Palestinians in Gaza City, many of whom have been displaced multiple times in the past two years, face forced displacement as Israel has intensified its attacks on the enclave’s main urban centre.

Call for truce

Rosas called for “an immediate, unconditional lifting of the blockade and a sustained ceasefire” for reversing “the devastating consequences of Israel’s inhumane policies and actions” in Gaza.

Rosas concluded: “The impact of Israel’s blockade and its ongoing genocide on civilians, particularly on children, people with disabilities, those with chronic illnesses, older people and pregnant and breastfeeding women is catastrophic and cannot be undone by simply increasing the number of aid trucks or restoring performative, ineffective and dangerous airdrops of aid.”

The Israeli military and Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not make statements about Amnesty’s findings at the time of publication.

Israel, while heavily restricting aid allowed into the Gaza Strip, has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation.

More than 250 Palestinians, including 110 children, have died of malnutrition during the war due to the Israeli blockade. The enclave – home to 2.1 million people – had already been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007, but since the war began, Israel has tightened it, at times stopping all aid from entering and now allows only a trickle of supplies into the Strip.

In a report issued last week, the Israeli military body overseeing civil affairs in Palestinian territory rejected claims of widespread malnutrition in Gaza despite widespread condemnation from the UN and the international community in general.

‘Famine unfolding before our eyes’

Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan and several of their European allies have called on Israel to allow unrestricted aid into Gaza, stressing that the humanitarian crisis has reached “unimaginable levels”.

“Famine is unfolding before our eyes. Urgent action is needed now to halt and reverse starvation,” the foreign ministers of about two dozen countries and the European Union’s top diplomat said in a joint statement last week.

In April, Amnesty accused Israel of committing a “livestreamed genocide” against Palestinians by forcibly displacing Palestinians in Gaza and creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged territory, claims that Israel dismissed at the time as “blatant lies”.

A group of between 30 to 50 critically ill and injured Palestinian children will be evacuated from Gaza to the UK for medical treatment in the coming weeks, the BBC understands.

They would be the first children brought to the UK for treatment as part of a government operation being coordinated by the Foreign Office, Home Office and Department of Health.

The children will be selected by the World Health Organization and will travel with family members via a third country, where biometric data will be collected.

It comes after some MPs wrote a letter to the government urging them to bring sick and injured children from Gaza to the UK “without delay”.

In a letter last week, a cross-party group of 96 MPs warned that children were at risk of imminent death due to the “decimation” of the healthcare system in Gaza and any barriers to evacuation should be immediately lifted.

Some Gazan children have already been brought privately to the UK for medical treatment through an initiative by the organisation Project Pure Hope (PPH), but the government has so far not evacuated any through its own scheme during the conflict.

Earlier in August, the government said that plans to bring more children to the UK for medical treatment were being carried out “at pace”.

It is unclear which third country the children will transit through on their way to the UK, exactly how many children will be involved or whether further groups will follow.

Given the challenge of returning children to Gaza, it is understood some may enter the asylum system after completing treatment.

More than 50,000 children have been killed or injured since the war in Gaza begun in October 2023, according to the UN charity Unicef.

Since the start of the war, the UK has provided funds so that injured Gazans can be treated by hospitals in the region and has also been working with Jordan to airdrop aid into the territory.

Children brought to the UK under the government scheme will be treated on the NHS. At the beginning of August, the government said that a cross-party taskforce was working to establish a plan to “evacuate children from Gaza who require urgent medical care… as quickly as possible”.

The Home Office previously said biometric checks would be carried out before children and carers before they travel.

Severely ill Palestinians have been evacuated from Gaza to other countries since the start of the war, including more than 180 adults and children to Italy.

The UN has warned of widespread malnutrition in Gaza, with experts backed by the organisation warning in a report last month that the “worst-case scenario” of famine is playing out in Gaza.

Israel has insisted there are no restrictions on aid deliveries into Gaza, and has accused the UN and other aid agencies of failing to deliver it.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel launched its offensive in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

WASHINGTON — A day after conservative activist Laura Loomer, an advisor to President Trump, posted videos on social media of children from Gaza arriving in the U.S. for medical treatment and questioning how they got visas, the State Department said it was halting all visitor visas for people from Gaza pending a review.

The State Department said Saturday the visas would be stopped while it looks into how “a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas” were issued in recent days. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday told “Face the Nation” on CBS that the action came after ”outreach from multiple congressional offices asking questions about it.”

Rubio said that there were “just a small number” of the visas issued to children in need of medical aid but that they were accompanied by adults. The congressional offices reached out with evidence that “some of the organizations bragging about and involved in acquiring these visas have strong links to terrorist groups like Hamas,” he asserted, without providing evidence or naming those organizations.

As a result, he said, “we are going to pause this program and reevaluate how those visas are being vetted and what relationship, if any, has there been by these organizations to the process of acquiring those visas.”

Loomer on Friday posted videos on X of children from Gaza arriving this month in San Francisco and Houston for medical treatment with the aid of an organization called Heal Palestine. “Despite the US saying we are not accepting Palestinian ‘refugees’ into the United States under the Trump administration,” these people from Gaza were able to travel to the U.S., she said.

She called it a “national security threat” and asked who signed off on the visas, calling for the person to be fired. She tagged Rubio, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Trump has downplayed Loomer’s influence on his administration, but several officials swiftly left or were removed shortly after she publicly criticized them.

The State Department on Sunday declined to comment on how many of the visas had been granted and whether the decision to halt visas to people from Gaza had anything to do with Loomer’s posts.

Heal Palestine said in a statement Sunday that it was “distressed” by the State Department decision to stop halt visitor visas from Gaza. The group said it is “an American humanitarian nonprofit organization delivering urgent aid and medical care to children in Palestine.”

A post on the organization’s Facebook page Thursday shows a photo of a boy from the Gaza Strip leaving Egypt and headed to St. Louis for treatment and said he is “our 15th evacuated child arriving in the U.S. in the last two weeks.”

The organization brings “severely injured children” to the U.S. on temporary visas for treatment they can’t get at home, the statement said. After treatment, the children and any family members who accompanied them return to the Middle East, the statement said.

“This is a medical treatment program, not a refugee resettlement program,” it said.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly called for more medical evacuations from Gaza, where Israel’s 22-month war against Hamas has heavily destroyed or damaged much of the territory’s health system.

“More than 14,800 patients still need lifesaving medical care that is not available in Gaza,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday on social media, and called on more countries to offer support.

A WHO description of the medical evacuation process from Gaza published last year explained that the organization submits lists of patients to Israeli authorities for security clearance. It noted that before the war in Gaza began, 50 to 100 patients were leaving the territory daily for medical treatment, and it called for a higher rate of approvals from Israeli authorities.

The United Nations and partners say medicines and basic healthcare supplies are low in Gaza after Israel cut off all aid to the territory of over 2 million people for more than 10 weeks earlier this year.

“Ceasefire! Peace is the best medicine,” Tedros added Wednesday.

The US State Department has stopped all visitor visas for Palestinians arriving for urgent medical treatment from Gaza while it ‘reviews’ how approvals are handled. Aid groups have slammed the decision saying it blocks critically ill children from receiving life-saving treatment in the US.

Aug. 17 (UPI) — A nationwide strike on Sunday commenced in Israel as several hundred thousand people protested, demanding the government secure the release of 50 hostages still held by the militant group Hamas in Gaza.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum and October Council, which represents family members of hostages or relatives of those killed, organized the strike and demonstrations.

The council wanted nearly one million people to go through Hostages Square in Tel Aviv and others to join in activities at cities throughout the nation.

“Today, we stop everything to remember the supreme value of the sanctity of life,” Anat Angrest, mother of hostage Matan Angrest, said at Hostage Squae. “Today, we stop everything to join hands — right, left, center and everything in between.”

The largest demonstrations were in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where they blocked major roads and closed businesses. They passed out yellow ribbons at intersections and protested outside the homes of government ministers.

The demonstrations are among the largest ones since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023.

They started at 6:29 a.m., the exact time when Hamas launched its attack on Israel.

Israeli police said 38 protesters were arrested in Israel for disturbing the peace as of early Sunday afternoon. They deployed a water cannon to disperse the crowd who sat inside a tunnel along a road that leads to the capital in Jerusalem.

Families of hostages announced in Tel Aviv an “emergency break” until they are released.

“Today, we stop everything to save the lives of 50 hostages and soldiers,” Anat Engrest, whose son, Matan, is held hostage in Gaza, during a news conference Sunday with October Council. “Today, we stop everything to remember the supreme value of the sanctity of life.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, during a visit to Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, voiced his support for the families.

“We want them back home as soon as possible,” Herzog said. “The world should want them back home as soon as possible. Stop being a bunch of hypocrites. Press — because when you know how to press, you press — press and tell Hamas, ‘No deal, no nothing, until you release them,’ ”

He said the hostages are the “most important issue on world affairs.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the demonstrations.

“Those who are calling today to end the war without defeating Hamas not only harden Hamas’ stance and delay the release of our hostages — they are also ensuring that the horrors of Oct. 7 will repeat themselves again and again,” he said at a cabinet meeting.

The strike was a “cynical political maneuver on the backs of the hostages,” Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right Minister of National Security, said.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said: “You can continue to hide behind spins and political calculations, but you cannot escape responsibility.”

The group plans to set up an encampment on the Gaza border. “Waypoint 50” will represent the 50 hostages to pressure the government to get their release.

“I know firsthand what it’s like to be in captivity. I know that military pressure doesn’t bring hostages back — it only kills them,” released hostage Arbel Yehoud, whose boyfriend, Ariel Cunio, is still held captive, said. “The only way to bring them back is through a deal, all at once, without games.”

“We are united in one simple demand directed at the Israeli government: Put an Israeli proposal on the table today for a comprehensive deal — to end the war in exchange for the return of the last hostage,” Vicky Cohen, whose son, Nimrod, is a hostage, said. “No slogans, no sabotage, no demands that we know the other side won’t accept. “It’s time to end the horrific nightmare the entire country has been living in for 22 months.

It wasn’t disclosed how long the strike would last.

Histadrut, Israel’s largest labor organization, didn’t join the strike, though they encouraged employers to allow their workers to participate.

“If I knew that a strike — not just for one day but longer — would end the matter, stop the war and bring back the hostages, I would go for it with full force,” Histadrut chair Arnon Bar-David, senior representatives of the business sector, said to the Times of Israel. “Unfortunately, and although my heart is bursting with anger, it has no practical outcome.”

Technology companies, law firms, academic institutions and others in the public and private sector plan to take the day off or refrain from business transactions.

Last week, the strike was announced after they said the hostages’ lives are in danger when Israel’s security cabinet voted to expand the war and take over Gaza City.

An estimated 90% of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced, the Agency for Palestinian Refugees said in May.

There was a cease-fire between Jan. 19 to March 1, during which 25 Israeli living hostages and 1,737 Palestinian prisoners were released. Israeli believe 20 hostages are still alive.

In late March, Hamas agreed to release five hostages, including the American-Israeli Edan Alexander, as part of a 50-day cease-fire proposal from Egypt and Qatar. Alexander was released in May, but there was no cease-fire.

A 60-day ceasefire was later proposed by the United States.

In July, the last round of negotiations ended without any deal when Israel and the United States withdrew their teams in Doha, Qatar. They accused Hamas of not negotiating in good faith.