Gaza

Vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down an ‘unsafe road’, local officials tell WAFA news agency.

At least 20 Palestinians have been killed and many injured after a truck carrying humanitarian aid overturned onto a crowd of people in central Gaza, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave.

The incident occurred on Wednesday as large numbers of Palestinians gathered in central Gaza in search of food and basic supplies, amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.

Local officials quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down what they described as an “unsafe road”.

Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the incident while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid, the AFP news agency reported.

“Despite the recent limited allowance of a few aid trucks, the occupation deliberately obstructs the safe passage and distribution of this aid,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement.

“It forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities. This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks and forcibly seizing their contents.”

The incident comes as humanitarian organisations warn of famine and disease spreading across the enclave, while deaths from starvation and malnutrition continue to rise.

At least three people died from malnutrition on Wednesday, medical sources told Al Jazeera. A source at al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza confirmed that Hiba Yasser Abu Naji, a child, died from malnutrition. An infant also died from malnutrition, according to the source. An adult from Jabalia was also reported to have died as a result of malnutrition.

On Monday, the Israeli military permitted 95 aid trucks to enter Gaza – a figure far below the 600 trucks a day needed to meet basic requirements, according to UNRWA. The current daily average is 85 trucks.

Meanwhile, Palestinians approaching aid distribution sites run by the notorious GHF have frequently come under Israeli fire since the organisation launched operations in late May. Such shootings have become near-daily occurrences near its sites in central and southern Gaza.

Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for OCHA, said that while some aid was entering the enclave, “there should be hundreds and hundreds of trucks entering Gaza every day for months or years to come.

“People are dying every day. This is a crisis on the brink of famine,” he said, adding that tonnes of life-saving aid remain stuck at border crossings due to bureaucratic delays and a lack of safe access.

Elsewhere in Gaza, several Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave.

Al-Awda Hospital reported that five people – including a woman and two children – were killed, and others wounded, in an Israeli raid on a house north of the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Four more people were killed in an Israeli raid on two homes in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City.

US president’s comments come amid warnings that expanding Israeli operations would be ‘catastrophic’ for Palestinians.

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has suggested that he will not block possible Israeli plans to take over Gaza.

When asked on Tuesday about reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to occupy the entire Palestinian territory, Trump said he is focused on getting “people fed” in Gaza.

“As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” the US president told reporters.

Washington provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually, assistance that significantly increased following the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.

Israel has used forced displacement orders to squeeze Palestinians into ever-shrinking pockets in Gaza, turning 86 percent of the territory into militarised zones.

But increased military operations in the remaining part of the territory would further endanger the lives of Palestinians, who already endure daily bombardment and Israeli-imposed starvation.

Netanyahu’s purported plans to conquer Gaza have also raises concerns about the safety of the remaining Israeli captives held in the enclave by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

Top United Nations official Miroslav Jenca said on Tuesday that a complete occupation of Gaza would “risk catastrophic consequences”.

“International law is clear in the regard. Gaza is and must remain an integral part of the future Palestinian state,” Jenca told the UN Security Council.

Israel withdrew its forces and settlements from the Palestinian territory in 2005, but legal experts have said that the enclave remained technically under occupation, since the Israeli military continued to control Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters and ports of entry.

Since the start of the war in 2023, right-wing Israeli officials have called for the re-establishment of Israel’s military presence and settlements inside Gaza.

Netanyahu has also suggested that Israel aims to remove all Palestinians from the enclave, in what would amount to ethnic cleansing, a plan that Trump himself echoed in February.

Trump, at the time, proposed clearing Gaza of its people to construct a “riviera of the Middle East” in its stead.

The recent reports about Israel’s intention to expand its ground operations in Gaza come amid growing international outcry over the deadly hunger spreading across the territory.

Israel has blocked nearly all aid from entering Gaza since March, making US-backed GHF sites almost the only places for Palestinians to get food.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been shot by the Israeli military while trying to reach GHF facilities deep inside Israel’s lines of control. Nevertheless, the US has continued to support the organisation, despite international pleas to allow the UN to distribute the aid.

In recent days, Israel has allowed some food trucks and air drops to distribute aid to Gaza, but the assistance is still far from meeting the needs of the population.

The Israeli military has also been accused of targeting aid seekers trying to reach assistance trucks away from GHF sites in northern Gaza.

On Tuesday, Trump reiterated his often-repeated claim that the US has provided $60m in aid to Gaza. His administration had provided $30m to GHF.

“As you know, $60m was given by the United States fairly recently to supply food – a lot of food, frankly – for the people of Gaza that are obviously not doing too well with the food,” he told reporters.

“And I know Israel is going to help us with that, in terms of distribution and also money. We also have the Arab states [which] are going to help us with that in terms of the money and possibly distribution.”

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 61,000 people and flattened most of the territory in what rights groups and UN experts have called a genocide.

Labour activist Chris Smalls is back in the US after imprisonment and abuse by Israeli forces for joining the Handala Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. He tells us about his time in detention, the silence from the US, and what the flotilla movement means for worldwide solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide.

Israeli attacks have killed at least 83 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip amid a deepening Israel-induced hunger crisis, medical sources have told Al Jazeera, as hospitals in the besieged territory have recorded eight more deaths from starvation and malnutrition.

Among those killed on Tuesday were 58 aid seekers who were shot by Israeli forces as they approached aid distribution sites operated by the US- and Israeli-backed GHF.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said the “same exact scenario plays out in Gaza every single day” since GHF distribution sites began operating in May.

“Palestinians are approaching these distribution sites, waiting for food, but the Israeli forces are opening fire,” Khoudary said.

She quoted sources at al-Shifa Hospital as saying the number of injured people who have been transferred from the distribution point near northern Gaza’s Zikim crossing “is very large”.

“Injuries are coming with bullets in parts of their bodies that are very hard to treat, including their heads, necks and also their chests,” Khoudary said. “The cycle of violence is the same in all three distribution locations.”

The GHF has been heavily criticised by the United Nations and other humanitarian organisations for failing to provide enough aid and for the dire security situation at and around its aid distribution sites.

So far, more than 1,560 Palestinians seeking aid have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to receive food amid the Israeli-induced starvation crisis.

The attacks come as aid agencies and health officials warn of a sharp rise in starvation, particularly among children and the elderly.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, eight more people have died of starvation or malnutrition in the latest 24-hour reporting period, including a child. This brings the total number of Palestinians who have died from hunger or malnutrition since Israel’s war began to 188, including 94 children.

On Monday, Israel allowed 95 aid trucks into the Strip, far below the 600 trucks per day needed to meet minimum survival needs, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). The daily average now stands at 85 trucks.

Gaza’s Government Media Office has once again warned of an intensifying humanitarian catastrophe and in a statement said most of the limited aid has been looted due to “security chaos being sowed by the Israeli occupation as part of a systematic policy of engineering chaos and starvation”.

Full Israeli takeover?

Despite intense international pressure for a ceasefire to ease hunger and the appalling conditions in the besieged Palestinian enclave, efforts to mediate a truce between Israel and Hamas have collapsed.

Instead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks poised to announce plans to fully occupy the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli media reports.

Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Tuesday that he had held a “limited security discussion” lasting about three hours, during which military Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir “presented the options for continuing the campaign in Gaza”.

An Israeli official told the Reuters news agency that Defence Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, an aide of Netanyahu, would attend a meeting later this week to decide on a strategy to take to the cabinet. Israeli media reported that the cabinet is to convene on Thursday.

Israel’s Channel 12, quoting an official from Netanyahu’s office, said the prime minister was leaning towards taking control of the entire territory, which the Israeli army has mostly reduced to rubble.

The United Nations on Tuesday called reports about a possible decision to expand Israel’s military operations throughout the Gaza Strip “deeply alarming” if true.

“International law is clear in the regard, Gaza is and must remain an integral part of the future Palestinian state”, UN Assistant Secretary-General Miroslav Jenca told a UN Security Council meeting.

On Tuesday, Israeli tanks pushed into central Gaza, but it was not clear if the move was part of a larger ground offensive.

Palestinians living in the last quarter of territory where Israel has not yet taken military control via ground incursions or forced evacuations said any new push would be catastrophic.

“If the tanks pushed through, where would we go? Into the sea? This will be like a death sentence to the entire population,” said Abu Jehad, a Gaza wood merchant.

More than 61,020 Palestinians, including at least 18,430 children, have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to Gaza health authorities.

Forty-nine captives, including 27 who are believed to be dead, are still being held by Hamas, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s deadly assault has also forced nearly all of Gaza’s more than 2 million people from their homes and caused what a global hunger monitor last week called an unfolding famine.

Israel’s war on Gaza has injured more than 150,000 Palestinians.

Many with life-changing injuries need specialist long-term care, but face devastation and blockade by Israel.

What’s the impact of all this on Gaza’s people now – and into the future?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Dr Khamis Elessi – Neurorehabilitation and pain medicine consultant at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza

Dr Samah Jabr – Palestinian psychiatrist and psychotherapist and former head of the Mental Health Unit at the Ministry of Health in Palestine; author of the book Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The global reverberation of Palestinian historical trauma

Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah – Served as a war surgeon in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East; professor of Conflict Medicine at the American University of Beirut

Hundreds rally near Downing Street as delegation delivers letter to UK government calling for sanctions on Israel.

Leading Jewish figures in Britain have signed a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper denouncing the government’s decision to proscribe the activist group Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation.

The delivery of the letter on Tuesday coincides with a protest organised under the slogan Proscribe Genocide, Not Protest. The rally outside Downing Street is expected to draw hundreds of participants, including figures from Britain’s Jewish community.

The letter, signed by about 300 Jewish British citizens, condemns the ban as “illegitimate and unethical” and calls for urgent government action against Israel over its conduct of the war in the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip and over escalating violence engulfing the occupied West Bank.

Among the signatories are human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, filmmaker Mike Leigh, author Michael Rosen and writer Gillian Slovo. Jenny Manson, chairperson of Jewish Voice for Labour and one of the lead organisers, said the group was acting both as human beings and as Jews with a moral obligation to oppose genocide.

“We are Jews horrified by the genocide being carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people,” Manson said in a statement. “For us, ‘Never again’ does not mean only crimes against Jews but never again by anyone to anyone.”

Speakers at the rally include Andrew Feinstein, son of a Holocaust survivor and former South African MP; historian Joseph Finlay; documentary filmmaker Gillian Mosely; and comedian and author Alexei Sayle.

Hundreds of thousands of people in the United Kingdom have been protesting weekly against Israel’s genocidal war since October 2023, making it clear they feel their voices aren’t being heard.

Protest despite police warning

The rally comes as the rights group Defend Our Juries confirmed that more than 500 people have committed to “risking arrest” by participating in a related demonstration on Saturday aimed at overturning the ban on Palestine Action.

Those taking part are expected to hold placards reading, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

The Metropolitan Police Service has warned that expressing support for Palestine Action could lead to arrest under the Terrorism Act 2000.

“Anyone showing support for the group can expect to be arrested,” a police spokesperson said.

Defend Our Juries, which coordinated the campaign, rejected claims that the demonstration is intended to overwhelm law enforcement or the courts. “If we are allowed to protest peacefully and freely, then that is no bother to anyone,” a spokesperson said.

More than 200 people were arrested in protests across the UK last month for displaying the same message.

The letter being delivered on Tuesday urges the UK government to move beyond “handwringing” over the situation in Gaza and take meaningful action.

It calls for the immediate recognition of the State of Palestine and the imposition of sanctions on Israel, including suspension of the UK-Israel trade agreement, an end to all exports used by the Israeli military and the termination of UK military and intelligence collaboration with Israel.

It also calls for a ban on all Israeli imports, legal accountability for UK citizens serving in the Israeli military and the summoning of Israel’s ambassador to the UK for her public support of military actions.

The letter states that opposing genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing in Palestine is not anti-Semitic and should not be criminalised.

“Criticising Israel and opposing the brutality … including taking direct action, are not terrorism,” it reads.

Palestine Action was banned in July after a high-profile incident in which the group claimed responsibility for damaging two Voyager aircraft at the Brize Norton air force base, causing an estimated 7 million pounds ($9.3m) of damage.

Last week, the High Court ruled that a legal challenge against the ban by Palestine Action cofounder Huda Ammori could proceed, citing several “reasonably arguable” grounds for review. However, the court declined to pause the ban before a three-day hearing set for November.

If upheld, the proscription means membership in or support for Palestine Action is a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Aug. 5 (UPI) — A special session of the U.N. Security Council was set to convene Tuesday morning at the request of Israel to discuss the dozens of its citizens being held in Gaza after Hamas released footage of starving hostages over the weekend.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called for an urgent meeting of the 15-member council after shocking videos of hostages Evyatar David, 24, and Rom Braslavski, 21, in which they appear severely emaciated, were circulated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“The international community must make it not worthwhile for the terrorists. The world must put an end to the phenomenon of kidnapping civilians. It must be front and center on the world stage,” he said at a news conference Monday.

He thanked the United States and Panama for seconding his call for the special session meeting in New York.

The Israeli consulate in New York upped the pressure by uploading the video of David for all to see on a giant screen in Times Square in midtown Manhattan.

“Hamas kidnapped him. Hamas tortures him. Hamas is starving him. This is what real hunger looks like. This is what truth looks like. Evyatar David is being starved by a Nazi terrorist organization that dares, with the backing of parts of the media, to spread the blood libel that Israel is starving the people of Gaza,” Consul General Ofir Akunis said in a post on X.

“We will continue to expose, everywhere and at all times, the lies of these vile terrorists and their collaborators. Now his face is on Times Square — because the world can’t look away anymore.”

Hamas insisted that the same provisions were provided to the hostages as those available to its members and ordinary people in Gaza and that it did not purposely starve them, stressing that the enclave was in the depths of the hunger crisis.

World leaders joined in the condemnation of the images of the hostages released after Hamas said it would not lay down its arms until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy led the criticism, calling what he described as hostages being paraded for propaganda “sickening” and demanding their release without conditions.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Hamas stood for “abject cruelty,” while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was left shocked by the images and reiterated that no cease-fire could be reached without the hostages’ release.

Calling the videos “appalling,” the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a post on X that the images provided “stark evidence of the life-threatening conditions in which the hostages are being held,” and demanded it be allowed to visit them.

“We know families watching these videos are horrified and heartbroken by the conditions they see their loved ones held in. We reiterate that all hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally. This dire situation must come to an end now.”

Israel said David and Braslavski are among 22 hostages who remain alive out of 49 still being held captive.

In its latest update posted to social media Tuesday morning, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said the number of malnutrition deaths recorded by hospitals in the Palestinian enclave in the past 24 hours had risen to 188 martyrs, including 94 children.

Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong has told the country’s media that “there is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise”, amid Israel’s devastating war on Gaza and increasing violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Wong, who did not indicate that Australia plans to change its stance and recognise Palestinian statehood, made her comments in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ( ABC) on Tuesday morning, where she responded to questions about a mass protest in Sydney attended by hundreds of thousands of people rallying against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Organisers said that between 200,000 and 300,000 people joined the protest across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday. Police had initially estimated that about 90,000 people took part.

Wong said the Australian government shared the protesters “desire for peace and a ceasefire”, and that the huge turnout reflected “the broad Australian community’s horror” and the “distress of Australians, on what we are seeing unfolding in Gaza, the catastrophic humanitarian situation, the deaths of women and children, the withholding of aid”.

However, asked if Australia was considering taking any more concrete actions, such as imposing sanctions on Israel, Wong said: “We don’t speculate on sanctions for the obvious reason that they have more effect if they are not flagged.”

She noted that Australia had already imposed sanctions on two far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, in June this year, as well as “extremist” Israeli settlers.

On Australia’s position regarding Palestinian statehood, Wong said: “In relation to recognition, I’ve said for over a year now, it’s a matter of when, not if.”

Wong’s interview came as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is reportedly seeking to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of Sunday’s protest.

Responding to questions about what he plans to discuss with Netanyahu, Albanese said he would again express his support for a two-state solution.

Rawan Arraf, the executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, said that the “only business” that Albanese should be discussing with Netanyahu is cancelling the “two-way arms trade between Australia and and Israel, new sanctions measures, and Netanyahu’s one-way trip to the [International Criminal Court] to face war crimes and crimes against humanity charges“.

Albanese “must not give legitimacy to an accused war criminal”, Arraf wrote in a post on X.

While both Albanese and Wong have continued to emphasise the importance of a two-state solution, Australia has yet to follow other countries, including France and Canada, that have recently announced their plans to recognise Palestinian statehood, and join the vast majority of countries which already do so.

Albanese also had a phone call with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, the first publicly recorded call between the pair since November 2023, according to the ABC.

Responding to questions about the Sydney protest rally, Albanese said: “It’s not surprising that so many Australians have been affected in order to want to show their concern at people being deprived of food and water and essential services.”

But the state government in New South Wales, which is led by Albanese’s Labor Party, had sought to prevent the march from crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the week leading up to the protest.

The protest only went ahead after State Supreme Court Justice Belinda Rigg ruled that “the march at this location is motivated by the belief that the horror and urgency of the situation in Gaza demands an urgent and extraordinary response from the people of the world”.

“The evidence indicates there is significant support for the march,” Rigg added.

A number of state and federal Labor ministers also took part in the march, in an indication of a growing divide within Albanese’s party.

Independent journalist Antony Loewenstein told Al Jazeera that Sunday’s march showed that Australians are “frustrated that our government is doing little more than talk at this point”.

“People are so outraged, not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also the Australian government’s complicity,” said Loewenstein, who spoke at the march on Sunday.

Australia “is part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, which Israel is using over Gaza every day, and the parts that are amongst those parts in the plane are probably coming from Australia”, he said.

Netanyahu’s war cabinet set to approve military operations across entire enclave, according to Israeli media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to announce plans to fully occupy the Gaza Strip, Israeli media have reported.

Netanyahu’s decision will see the Israeli military expand its operations across the entire enclave, including areas where Hamas’s captives are being held, i24NEWS, The Jerusalem Post, Channel 12 and Ynet reported on Monday.

“The decision has been made,” Amit Sega, chief political analyst with Channel 12, quoted an unnamed senior official in Netanyahu’s office as saying.

“Hamas won’t release more hostages without total surrender, and we won’t surrender. If we don’t act now, the hostages will starve to death and Gaza will remain under Hamas’s control.”

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the reported plans and called on the international community to “intervene urgently to prevent their implementation, whether they are a form of pressure, trial balloons to gauge international reactions, or genuinely serious”.

Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The reports come as Netanyahu is set to convene his war cabinet on Tuesday to discuss the next steps for Israel’s military in Gaza as its war in the besieged enclave nears the two-year mark.

Netanyahu is facing growing international pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza and halt the war amid mounting Palestinian deaths due to malnutrition and Israeli attacks.

At least 74 Palestinians, including 36 aid seekers, were killed in Israeli attacks on Monday, according to medical sources in Gaza.

The Israeli leader is also facing mounting domestic pressure to secure the release of Hamas’s remaining captives in Gaza, following the release of footage of detainees Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appearing emaciated.

Netanyahu on Monday doubled down on his war goals, including eliminating Hamas and securing the release of the remaining captives.

“We must continue to stand together and fight together to achieve all our war objectives: the defeat of the enemy, the release of our hostages, and the assurance that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu said at the start of a regular cabinet meeting on Monday.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan on Monday accused the United States and other Western countries of turning a blind eye to Israeli atrocities, and said that Netanyahu’s government bore “full responsibility” for the lives of the captives “due to its stubbornness, arrogance, and evasion of reaching a ceasefire agreement, and the escalation of the war of extermination and starvation against our people”.

More than 60,930 Palestinians, including at least 18,430 children, have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza health authorities.

Forty-nine captives, including 27 who are believed to be dead, are still being held by Hamas, according to Israeli authorities.

As Israel’s forced starvation tightens its grip on Gaza’s entire population, an increasing number of Palestinian families are frantically searching for news of relatives who undertook perilous journeys to get food from aid distribution points, never to return.

Khaled Obaid has been searching for his beloved son, Ahmed, for two months, scanning every passing vehicle on the coastal road in Deir-el-Balah, hoping against all odds that one of them might bring him home.

The boy had left the displaced family’s tent in the central town to find food for his parents and sister, who had lost her husband during the war, and headed to the Zikim crossing point, where aid trucks enter northern Gaza.

“He hasn’t returned until now. He went because he was hungry. We have nothing to eat,” the distraught father told Al Jazeera, breaking down in tears with his wife under the blue tarpaulin where they are sheltering.

Khaled reported his son’s disappearance to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and every official body he could reach, to radio silence. To this day, he has received no answers on Ahmed’s whereabouts.

Khaled’s story is all too common under Israel’s ongoing punishing blockade of Gaza, where the largely displaced population faces a stark choice between starvation and braving the bullets fired by Israeli soldiers and United States security contractors in a bid to get food from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites. These distribution points have been dubbed “death traps” and “human slaughterhouses” by the United Nations and rights groups.

It is a life-or-death gamble that has taken the lives of nearly 1,400 people, shot dead mainly by the Israeli army, at the aid sites since they started operations in late May and along food convoy routes, according to figures released by the UN last week. That is, without counting the untold numbers of missing aid seekers, like Ahmed.

Human rights monitors have been collecting harrowing firsthand accounts of people who have gone missing in Gaza, only to be found later, killed by Israeli forces.

“In many cases, those who went missing are apparently killed near the aid distribution points, but due to the Israeli targeting, their bodies remained unreachable,” Maha Hussaini, the head of media at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera.

“Many Palestinians left home with empty hands, hoping to return with a bag of flour. But many never came back,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir-el-Balah. “In Gaza, the line between survival and disappearance is now heartbreakingly thin.”

As the number of missing aid seekers mounts, famine stalks the enclave, with more than 80 adults reportedly dying of starvation over the past five weeks alone, and 93 children succumbing to man-made malnutrition since the war began.

Authorities in Gaza say an average of 84 trucks have entered the besieged enclave each day since Israel eased restrictions on July 27. But aid organisations say at least 600 aid trucks are needed per day to meet the territory’s basic needs.

‘Death circle’

On Monday, amid growing international condemnation over the mass starvation, seen by many as being deliberately engineered by Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to double down on his war goals.

Netanyahu announced that he would convene a meeting of his cabinet on Tuesday to ensure that “Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel”. Israel’s Channel 12 cited an official as saying that Netanyahu was tending towards expanding the offensive.

The announcement came on another bloody day in the Strip, with at least 74 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since dawn on Monday, including 36 aid seekers, according to medical sources.

Among the attacks, at least three people were killed by an Israeli strike on a house in Deir el-Balah, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

A source at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City reported that seven people were killed in Israeli shelling on multiple areas in the Shujayea neighbourhood, east of Gaza City.

Emergency services said that two were killed in an Israeli bombing of Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

It also emerged on Monday that a nurse at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah was killed when he was hit by an airdropped box of aid.

This week, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the dangerous airdrops as a “distraction” and smokescreen.

On Monday, UNICEF warned that 28 children – essentially an entire “classroom” – are dying each day from Israeli bombardment and lack of aid.

“Gaza’s children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a ceasefire, NOW,” said the UN agency on X.

Death by bombardments.
Death by malnutrition and starvation.
Death by lack of aid and vital services.
In Gaza, an average of 28 children a day – the size of a classroom – have been killed.

Gaza’s children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a… pic.twitter.com/7QIQQ6IAoG

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) August 4, 2025

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to “assume its responsibilities” by enforcing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, conducting an official visit to the territory and implementing calls at a recent UN conference in New York for a two-state solution.

In a statement posted on social media on Monday, the ministry warned that more than two million Palestinians in Gaza are “living in a tight death circle of killing, starvation, thirst, and deprivation of medicine, treatment, and all basic human rights”.

Video shows gunfire hitting the ground near a group of Palestinians seeking aid in the vicinity of a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution site in Gaza. More than 1,000 people have been killed trying to receive aid in Gaza since the GHF began operating in May 2025.

Al-Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City has been left in ruins after a 45-day Israeli military operation that flattened entire residential blocks. Residents of the area in northern Gaza described it as the most destructive incursion yet. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reports amidst the wreckage.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has compared newly released images of two captives in Gaza to Nazi starvation of Jews in the Holocaust. But Netanyahu is himself accused of committing war crimes by starving Gaza’s population. Warning: This video contains distressing images.

On July 17, I was in a market in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza looking for any affordable food item to buy when I saw a crowd of people gather in front of some shops. The people were angry about the exorbitant prices that the shop owners were charging for goods that had clearly been looted from aid convoys.

Two weeks later, I was at the same market and witnessed another angry protest. People were chanting, “You thieves!” and cursing the merchants.

Having no fear of God, shop owners are exploiting the famine without mercy, selling aid as if it were rare luxury items when in fact it is supposed to be distributed for free. The greed and exploitation have gone too far, and the people are taking things into their own hands. Across Gaza, there are protests against price speculation. In some places, shops are being forcibly closed.

Indeed, the prices of essential goods have soared to unimaginable levels, beyond anything dictated by the forces of supply and demand. People cannot understand why goods cost so much despite their minimal purchasing power. The prices I saw while walking at the market were insane: a kilo (2.2lb) of flour – 40 shekels ($12), a kilo of rice – 60 shekels ($18), a kilo of lentils – 40 shekels ($12), a kilo of sugar – 250 shekels ($73), a litre (1 quart) of cooking oil – 200 shekels ($58).

Since Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza in March, the normal aid distribution through the United Nations – something that has to happen unabated in any warzone – has ceased.

To stave off global criticism, Israel set up humanitarian hubs to supposedly distribute aid. But they have been nothing more than death traps. Many of those who come to collect aid are shot at, and thousands have been killed or wounded.

In parallel, the Israeli government started allowing in a very small quantity of aid trucks, but a large portion of those are looted once they enter Gaza. The goods are then resold at outrageous prices.

Those who control this supply of looted food are powerful merchants and brokers, often protected by local influential actors or benefitting from indirect coordination with Israel. These actions are not spontaneous. They take place within a deliberately created atmosphere of chaos. With the collapse of state institutions and absence of legal accountability, exploitation has become the rule, not the exception.

It is clear to the Palestinians that the occupation doesn’t merely aim to show that Gaza is weak. It actively seeks to prove that it is ungovernable. To achieve this, closing the borders isn’t enough. The people of Gaza must be pushed into a state of constant chaos and friction.

Starvation is a key instrument here. Hunger doesn’t only kill. It also changes human nature. A starving person, stripped of the bare minimum needed to survive and subjected to daily humiliation, slowly loses the ability to think clearly, to judge or to restrain themselves from turning against those they perceive – rightly or wrongly – as contributing to their suffering.

There are black markets and war profiteers in every conflict. But in this one, the occupying power is encouraging these criminal activities, not because it is earning money from them, but because it serves its overall goal. The Palestinians who choose to participate in this form of extortion are motivated by greed, blackmail or survival.

This slow unravelling is exactly what the occupation has aimed for. It wants chaos in the streets of Gaza so Israeli and international media can be quick to point a finger at the Palestinians and declare: “Look, the Palestinian people are imploding. They can’t govern themselves. They don’t deserve a state.” But the truth is, this is not a sign of a failed nation. It is evidence of the occupation’s success in dragging it to the brink.

It is not the people who have lost control. Control has been forcibly stripped from them – through starvation, the systematic destruction of healthcare and sanitary infrastructure, the dismantling of state institutions and the empowerment of criminals.

Yet Gaza will not break. People may grow angry and desperate, cry out and protest, but they still retain a moral compass. This collective outcry is not infighting. It is a clear warning that society will no longer tolerate betrayal. Those who raise prices mercilessly in times of siege are traitors, and they will be held accountable before institutions of justice when Gaza rebuilds.

The occupation may be revelling now in the unfolding collapse, but it would be wrong to think it has defeated the Palestinians. Every crisis breeds new awareness. Every betrayal gives birth to new resistance. The vast majority of Palestinians refuse to become tools in the hands of their torturers. They refuse subjugation and erasure. They refuse to exploit and harm their fellow citizens.

Palestinian national solidarity is still alive.

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

The warning comes as the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry registers more cases of paralysis due to malnutrition caused by Israeli blockade.

The United Nations has warned that all children of Gaza under the age of five are at risk of life-threatening malnourishment, amid growing reports of starvation-related deaths as Israel continues to block aid from entering the besieged Gaza Strip.

The UN’s World Food Programme said children in this age bracket – around 320,000 in number – have been affected by the collapse of nutrition services and are lacking access to safe water, breast milk substitutes and therapeutic feeding.

Paediatrician Seema Jilani told Al Jazeera that malnutrition “affects their entire body”, putting children at risk of multi-organ failure. She also said that starvation in Gaza is traumatic for children and that “developmental milestones will be missed”.

Hospitals in Gaza on Monday recorded six new deaths from famine and malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including one child, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The total number of people who died from hunger-related causes since the start of the war now stands at 181, including 94 children.

The ministry also sounded the alarm over a “serious escalation” in cases of acute soft paralysis among children as a result of “infections and acute malnutrition”.

In a statement, it said it has so far recorded three deaths from Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare condition that causes sudden numbness and muscle weakness in most of the body.

Entry of over 22,000 aid trucks blocked

Gaza’s government said Israel was deliberately blocking more than 22,000 humanitarian aid trucks from entering the territory as part of a systematic campaign of “starvation, siege and chaos”.  The Palestinian territory has been under total Israeli blockade since March 2, shortly before Israel ended a two-month ceasefire and resumed attacks.

Mosab al-Dibs, 14, has been at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for about two months after suffering a severe head injury when an Israeli air raid struck his family’s tent in May.

The boy is largely paralysed and severely malnourished because the facility no longer has supplies to feed him. “Mosab now suffers from severe malnutrition,” his mother, Shahinaz al-Dibs, said. “He suffers convulsions as a result of a hit that affected his brain. Even his nerves are stiff.”

The situation in Gaza was nothing short of catastrophic.

by Ahmad Alhendawi, Middle East director of Save the Children International

At a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza, Samah Matar said her sons – six-year-old Yousef and four-year-old Amir – have cerebral palsy and need a special diet.

Youssef weighed 14kg (31lb) before the war. Now, he weighs 9kg (20lb). Amir, who weighed 9kg (20lb), is now less than 6kg (13lb). “Before the war, their health was excellent,” she said. “Now, there is no baby formula or diapers, and I can hardly find flour for them. Sugar, the main ingredient in their meals, is unavailable.”

Ahmad Alhendawi, Middle East director of Save the Children International, told Al Jazeera that the situation in Gaza was “nothing short of catastrophic.”

“This is about almost four months of this blockade, of starvation that has built over weeks and months, and to come back from that point of extreme malnutrition and starvation requires a sustained supply of food and medical equipment and also food supplements for children in need,” he said.

“It’s possible to reverse some [of the damage done to children by hunger], but I’m afraid that some of this damage would be irreversible at this stage.”

The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced multiple times, and many are dying from Israeli-induced starvation. An unprecedented water crisis is also unfolding across the enclave, heaping further misery on its residents.

Gaza was already suffering a water crisis before nearly 22 months of Israeli bombardment and ground operations damaged more than 80 percent of the territory’s water infrastructure.

“Sometimes, I feel as though my body is drying from the inside. Thirst is stealing all my energy and that of my children,” said Um Nidal Abu Nahl, a mother of four living in Gaza City.

Water trucks occasionally reach residents, and NGOs install taps in camps for a fortunate few, but it is far from sufficient.

Israel reconnected some water mains in northern Gaza to the Israeli water company Mekorot after cutting off supplies early in the war, but residents said water still is not flowing.

Local authorities said this is due to war damage to Gaza’s water distribution network with many main pipes destroyed.

Gaza City spokesman Asem Alnabih said the municipality’s section of the network supplied by Mekorot has not functioned for nearly two weeks.

Wells that provided water for some needs before the war have also been damaged, and some are contaminated by sewage that is going untreated because of the conflict.

Many wells in Gaza are simply inaccessible because they are located within combat zones, too close to Israeli military installations or in areas subject to forced evacuation.

Wells usually run on electric pumps, and energy has been scarce since Israel cut Gaza’s power.

Generators could power the pumps, but hospitals are prioritised for the limited fuel deliveries.

Gaza’s desalination plants are out of operation except for a single site that reopened last week after Israel restored its electricity supply.

Alnabih said the situation with infrastructure was bleak.

More than 75 percent of wells are out of service, 85 percent of public works equipment has been destroyed, 100,000 metres (62 miles) of water mains have been damaged and 200,000 metres (124 miles) of sewage lines are unusable.

Pumping stations are out of action, and 250,000 tonnes of rubbish are clogging the streets.

To find water, hundreds of thousands of people are still trying to extract groundwater directly from wells.

However, coastal Gaza’s aquifer is naturally brackish and far exceeds salinity standards for potable water.

In 2021, UNICEF warned that nearly 100 percent of Gaza’s groundwater was unfit for consumption.

With clean water almost impossible to find, some Palestinians mistakenly believe brackish water to be free of bacteria.

Aid workers in Gaza have had to warn repeatedly that even if residents can become accustomed to the taste, their kidneys will inevitably suffer.

Although Gaza’s water crisis has received less media attention than the ongoing hunger crisis, its effects are just as deadly.

“Just like food, water should never be used for political ends,” UNICEF spokeswoman Rosalia Bollen said. While it is very difficult to quantify the water shortage, she said, “there is a severe lack of drinking water.”

“It is extremely hot, diseases are spreading, and water is truly the issue we are not talking about enough,” she added.

Hamas has said it is open to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering aid to Israeli captives in Gaza after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he requested the Geneva-based international organisation to step in.

The statements from Hamas and Netanyahu came after Palestinian groups last week released videos showing two emaciated Israeli captives held in Gaza, where some 2 million Palestinians are struggling to survive the Israeli-induced starvation crisis.

Netanyahu said on Sunday he had spoken to Julian Larson, the head of the ICRC delegation to Israel, requesting the group’s “immediate involvement” in providing food and medical treatment to captives still held in Gaza.

In a post on X, Netanyahu wrote in Hebrew that he told Larson that Hamas was propagating a “lie of starvation” in the enclave, but the reality was that “systematic starvation is being carried out against our hostages”.

Later on Sunday, the spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, said in a statement that Israeli captives held in Gaza “eat what our fighters and all our people eat”.

“They will not receive any special privilege amid the crime of starvation and siege,” the spokesman, known as Abu Obeida, said.

But, he added, the group is “ready to act positively and respond to any request from the Red Cross to deliver food and medicine to enemy prisoners”.

In order for requests to aid captives to be accepted, “humanitarian corridors must be opened in a normal and permanent manner for the passage of food and medicine to all our people in all areas of the Gaza Strip”, Abu Obeida said.

Israeli attacks “of all forms must cease during the receipt of packages for the prisoners”, he added.

The ICRC said in a statement on Sunday that it was “appalled by the harrowing videos” of the captives held in Gaza and reiterated its call to be “granted access to the hostages.”

“These videos are stark evidence of the life-threatening conditions in which the hostages are being held,” the ICRC said in the statement shared on X.

“We know families watching these videos are horrified and heartbroken by the conditions they see their loved ones held in,” the ICRC added.

On its website, the ICRC says that “securing access requires the cooperation of all parties involved”. The ICRC also says on its website that it “has not been able to visit any Palestinian detainees held in Israeli places of detention since 7 October 2023.”

In a separate statement on Sunday, the ICRC said it was also “appalled” that a Palestine Red Crescent Society staff member had been killed in a “clearly marked Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) building” in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

The PRCS had earlier said the attack was perpetrated by Israeli forces, but the ICRC statement did not refer to who was responsible.

One million women and girls starving

Meanwhile, the families of Israeli captives held in Gaza said on Sunday that Netanyahu’s continued insistence that a “military resolution” was the only solution was “a direct danger to the lives of our sons, who live in the hell of tunnels and are threatened by starvation and immediate death”.

“For 22 months, the public has been sold the illusion that military pressure will bring back the hostages, and today, even before reaching a comprehensive draft agreement, it is said that an agreement is futile,” the families said in a statement.

There are about 50 captives still in Gaza. Fewer than half are believed to be still alive.

The latest developments come as the Government Media Office in Gaza said that Israeli authorities allowed just 36 aid trucks to enter the Gaza Strip on Saturday, while 22,000 aid trucks continue to sit outside the Strip waiting to bring much-needed food to Palestinians there.

The United Nations office in Geneva on Sunday also warned that 1 million women and girls in Gaza are now starving.

In a post on X, the UN said: “One million. That’s how many women and girls are starving in Gaza. This horrific situation is unacceptable and must end.

We continue to demand the delivery of lifesaving aid for all women and girls, an immediate ceasefire, and the release of all hostages.”

At least 175 people, including 93 children, have now been confirmed dead from forced starvation, according to the territory’s Ministry of Health, including 17-year-old Atef Abu Khater, whose weight had dropped to just 25kg (55lbs) before he died on Saturday.

Australia may join more than a dozen other nations in recognising the state of Palestine.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia, calling for peace and aid deliveries in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, where a humanitarian crisis of man-made starvation has been worsening as a result of Israel’s punishing blockade.

Pro-Palestinian protesters braved heavy winds and rain on Sunday to march across the bridge, chanting “Ceasefire Now” and “Free Palestine”. Some of those attending the march, which the organisers dubbed the “March for Humanity”, carried pots and pans as symbols of the forced starvation wracking Gaza.

The protest came less than a week after a joint statement by Australia and more than a dozen other nations expressed the “willingness or the positive consideration … to recognise the state of Palestine as an essential step towards the two-State solution”.

France, Britain and Canada have in recent weeks voiced, and in some cases qualified, intentions to diplomatically recognise a Palestinian state as international concern and criticism have grown over the hunger crisis in Gaza.

At least 175 people, including 93 children, have died of starvation and malnutrition across the territory since Israel launched its war on Gaza after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023, according to the latest Gaza Health Ministry figures.

Australia has called for an end to the war in Gaza, but has so far stopped short of a decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

Police said that up to 90,000 people had attended the protest while the organiser, Palestine Action Group Sydney, said in a Facebook post that as many as 300,000 people may have marched.

Marchers ranged from the elderly to families with young children. Among them was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who did not address the crowd or speak to the media.

Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, addressed the crowd gathered at central Sydney’s Lang Park, calling for the “harshest sanctions on Israel”, accusing its forces of “massacring” Palestinians.

Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on the Israeli arms and surveillance industry, who spoke at the rally, told Al Jazeera that protesters are “outraged” not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also by the Australian government’s “complicity”.

Loewenstein said that Australia has, for many years, including since the start of the war, been part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jets that Israel has been using in attacking the besieged territory.

“A lot of Australians are aware of this,” he said. “We are deeply complicit, and people are angry that their government is doing little more than talk at this point.”

A Palestinian teenager, shot in the eye by Israeli forces while desperately seeking food for his family near a United States and Israeli-backed GHF site in Gaza, is unlikely to regain sight in his left eye, doctors treating him have said, as the population of the besieged and bombarded enclave suffers from forced starvation.

Fifteen-year-old Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar told Al Jazeera that Israeli soldiers kept shooting at him even after he was struck by a bullet, making him think “this was the end” and “death was near”.

Relaying the harrowing chain of events from a hospital bed with a white bandage covering one eye, Abu Jazar said he went to the site around 2am (23:00 GMT).

“It was my first time going to the distribution point,” he said. “I went there because my siblings and I had no food. We couldn’t find anything to eat.”

He says he moved forward with the crowd until he reached al-Muntazah Park in the Gaza City environs about five hours later.

“We were running when they began shooting at us. I was with three others; three of them were hit. As soon as we started running, they opened fire. Then I felt something like electricity shoot through my body. I collapsed to the ground. I felt as though I had been electrocuted … I didn’t know where I was, I just blacked out. When I woke up, I asked people ‘Where am I?’”

Others near Abu Jazar told him he had been shot in the head. “They were still firing. I got scared and started reciting prayers.”

A doctor at the hospital held a phone light near the boy’s wounded eye and asked him if he could see any light. He could not. The doctor diagnosed a perforating eye injury caused by a gunshot wound.

Abu Jazar underwent surgery and said, “I hope my eyesight will return, God willing.”

Hospitals receive bodies of more aid seekers

Gaza’s Health Ministry reported on Sunday that 119 bodies, including 15 recovered from under the rubble of destroyed buildings or other places, and 866 wounded Palestinians have arrived at the enclave’s hospitals over the past 24-hour reporting period.

At least 65 Palestinians were killed while seeking aid, and 511 more were wounded.

Israeli forces have routinely fired on Palestinians trying to get food at GHF-run distribution sites in Gaza, and the United Nations reported this week that more than 1,300 aid seekers have been killed since the group began operating in May.

Gaza’s famine and malnutrition crisis has been worsening by the day, with at least 175 people, including 93 children, now confirmed dead from the man-made starvation of Israel’s punishing blockade, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

More than 6,000 Palestinian children are being treated for malnutrition resulting from the blockade, according to the Global Nutrition Cluster, which includes the UN health and food agencies.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah, says, “There’s a very, very small amount of trucks coming into Gaza – about maybe 80 to 100 trucks every single day – despite the fact that this “humanitarian pause” was for more aid to enter the Gaza Strip.

“Palestinians are struggling to get a bag of wheat flour. They’re struggling to find a food parcel. And this shows the fact that this pause and all the Israeli claims are not true because on the ground, Palestinians are starving, ” she added.

Khoudary noted that the entire population had been relyiant on UN agencies and other partners to distribute food.

“More Palestinians die every single day due to the forced starvation and malnutrition … Since the blockade started, those distribution points have not been operating, and now nothing’s back to normal. Palestinians are still struggling, and not only that, they’re being killed now for the fact that they’re approaching trucks, the GHF, because they want to eat,” she said.

US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Israeli families, as outrage grew over a new video of an emaciated captive held by Hamas. Relatives demanded Netanyahu’s government agree to a ceasefire, which would also bring relief to starving Palestinians in Gaza.