UN Secretary-General António Guterres has renewed urgent calls for an immediate Gaza ceasefire, warning the humanitarian crisis has reached “horrific proportions.” Guterres said the level of death and destruction in Gaza has “no parallel in recent times.”
Published On 14 Jul 202514 Jul 2025
Israeli forces have continued to pound the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least 72 Palestinians, including several aid seekers, as ceasefire talks stall amid a deepening fuel and hunger crisis.
An Israeli attack near an aid distribution point in Rafah in southern Gaza killed at least five people who were seeking aid on Monday, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
The killings raised the death toll of Palestinians killed near aid sites run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to 838, according to Wafa.
In Khan Younis, also in southern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a displacement camp killed nine people and wounded many others. In central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp, four people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a commercial centre, Wafa said.
Israeli forces also resumed stepping up attacks in northern Gaza and Gaza City. Israeli media reported an ambush in Gaza City, with a tank hit by rocket fire and later, with small arms. A helicopter was seen evacuating casualties. The Israeli military later confirmed that three soldiers were killed in the incident.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Israeli forces responded with “massive air strikes in the vicinity of [the] Tuffah and Shujayea neighbourhoods, levelling residential buildings”.
The Wafa news agency said at least 24 Palestinians were killed in Gaza City and dozens more were wounded.
The attacks come as UN agencies continue to plead for more aid to be allowed into Gaza, where famine looms and a severe fuel shortage has brought the already battered healthcare sector to its knees.
Gaza’s water crisis has also intensified since Israel blocked nearly all fuel shipments into the enclave on March 2. With no fuel, desalination plants, wastewater treatment facilities and pumping stations have largely shut down.
Egypt’s foreign minister said on Monday that the flow of aid into Gaza has not increased despite an agreement last week between Israel and the European Union that should have had that result.
“Nothing has changed [on the ground],” Badr Abdelatty told reporters ahead of the EU-Middle East meeting in Brussels.
The EU’s top diplomat said on Thursday that the bloc and Israel agreed to improve Gaza’s humanitarian situation, including increasing the number of aid trucks and opening crossing points and aid routes.
When asked what steps Israel has taken, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar referred to an understanding with the EU but did not provide details on the implementation.
Asked if there were improvements after the agreement, Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Safadi told reporters that the situation in Gaza remains “catastrophic”.
“There is a real catastrophe happening in Gaza resulting from the continuation of the Israeli siege,” he said.
Meanwhile, stuttering ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with mediators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas.
The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear to still remain deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of captives and a 60-day ceasefire.
An official with knowledge of the talks said they were “ongoing” in Doha on Monday, the AFP news agency reported.
“Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza,” the source reportedly said.
“Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,” the source added on condition of anonymity.
Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he wants to see the Palestinian group destroyed, of being the main obstacle.
“Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,” the group wrote on Telegram.
Netanyahu is under growing pressure to end the war, with military casualties rising and public frustration mounting.
He also faces backlash over the feasibility and ethics of a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” from scratch on the ruins of southern Gaza’s Rafah to house 600,000 Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold.
Israel’s security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said amounts to plans for a “concentration camp”.
Displaced Palestinians and several Israeli politicians alike slam the Israeli government’s plans for what it calls a “humanitarian city” in Rafah. Critics say forcing Palestinians into the zone would amount to a “concentration camp.”
Published On 14 Jul 202514 Jul 2025
We, the presidents of Gaza’s three non-profit universities— Al-Aqsa University, Al-Azhar University-Gaza, and the Islamic University of Gaza — together accounting for the vast majority of Gaza’s students and faculty members, issue this unified statement to the international academic community at a time of unprecedented devastation of higher education in Gaza.
Israel’s ongoing genocidal war has brought about scholasticide—a systematic and deliberate attempt to eliminate our universities, their infrastructure, faculty, and students. This destruction is not collateral; it is part of a targeted effort to eradicate the foundations of higher education in Gaza—foundations that have long stood as pillars of resilience, hope, and intellectual freedom under conditions of occupation and siege. While academic institutions across Palestine have faced attacks for decades, what we are witnessing today is an escalation: a shift from repeated acts of destruction to an attempt at total annihilation.
Yet, we remain resolute. For more than a year, we have mobilised and taken steps to resist this assault and ensure that our universities endure.
Despite the physical obliteration of campuses, laboratories, libraries, and other facilities, and the assassination of our students and colleagues, our universities continue to exist. We are more than buildings — we are academic communities, comprised of students, faculty, and staff, still alive and determined to carry forward our mission.
As articulated in the Unified Emergency Statement from Palestinian Academics and Administrators issued on May 29, 2024, “Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings, but our universities live on.”
For over a year, our faculty, staff and students have persisted in our core mission — teaching — under unimaginably harsh conditions. Constant bombardment, starvation, restrictions on internet access, unstable electricity, and the ongoing horrors of genocide have not broken our will. We are still here, still teaching, and still committed to the future of education in Gaza.
We urgently call on our colleagues around the world to work for:
We appeal to the international academic community — our colleagues, institutions, and friends — to:
Last year, we formally established the Emergency Committee of the Universities in Gaza, representing our three institutions and affiliated colleges — together enrolling between 80 and 85 percent of Gaza universities’ students. The committee exists to resist the erasure of our universities and offer a unified voice for Gaza’s academic community. It has since established subject-focused subcommittees to serve as trusted and coordinated channels for support.
We call upon academic communities around the world to coordinate themselves in response to this call. The time for symbolic solidarity has passed. We now ask for practical, structured, and enduring partnership.
Work alongside us to ensure that Gaza’s universities live on and remain a vital part of our collective future.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
An American doctor has told Al Jazeera that Israeli troops confiscated formula for starving babies.
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BBC/Amjad Al Fayoumi/Hoyo FilmsA BBC documentary about Gaza breached editorial guidelines on accuracy by failing to disclose the narrator was the son of a Hamas official, the corporation’s review has found.
BBC director general Tim Davie commissioned the review into Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, after it was pulled from iPlayer in February when the boy’s family connections emerged.
The review found that the independent production company, Hoyo Films, bears most of the responsibility for the failure. But it also said the BBC bore some responsibility and should have done more in its oversight.
The BBC said the programme should not have been signed off, and it was taking appropriate action on accountability.
The review found three members of the independent production company knew of the father’s position as deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-run government in Gaza, but no-one within the BBC knew this prior to broadcast
However, the report criticised the BBC team for not being “sufficiently proactive” with initial editorial checks, and for a “lack of critical oversight of unanswered or partially answered questions” ahead of broadcast.
The review also said it had seen no evidence “to support the suggestion that the narrator’s father or family influenced the content of the programme in any way”.
It added the narrator’s scripted contribution to the programme did not constitute a breach of due impartiality.
However, the report concluded that the use of the child narrator for this programme was “not appropriate” in the circumstances.
Speaking after its publication, BBC News CEO Deborah Turness told Radio 4’s The World at One: “We are owning where we have made mistakes, finding out what went wrong, acting on the findings, and we’ve said we’re sorry.”
She said the BBC figures overseeing the documentary should have known about the boy’s position before transmission, “because their questions should have been answered by the independent production company”.
The BBC said it was taking a number of steps to prevent a similar breach being repeated:
The review found the production company did not intentionally mislead the BBC, adding: “They made a mistake, and should have informed the BBC about it. The BBC does also bear some responsibility for this failure.”
Hoyo Films said it took the reviews findings “extremely seriously” and said it “apologises for the mistake that resulted in a breach of the editorial guidelines”.
The company said it was pleased the report had found there was “no evidence of inappropriate influence on the content of the documentary from any third party”.
It said it welcomed the report’s recommendations and “hope they will improve processes and prevent similar problems in the future”.
Hoyo Films said it would work closely with the BBC to explore the possibility of using some material for re-edited and re-versioned shorter films for archive on iPlayer.
The BBC’s director general Tim Davie apologised, saying the report “identifies a significant failing in relation to accuracy”.
“We will now take action on two fronts,” he continued. “Fair, clear and appropriate actions to ensure proper accountability and the immediate implementation of steps to prevent such errors being repeated.”
The corporation did not name any individuals facing disciplinary action.
A financial examination as part of the review found that a fee of £795 was was paid for the narrator, paid to his adult sister, an amount which was not “outside the range of what might be reasonable in the context”.
The boy also received a second-hand mobile phone and gift card for a computer game. Together with the fee, that amounted to a total value of £1,817.
The review also found there was “significant resource strain within both the production company and the BBC” ahead of the programme’s broadcast.
Following the review’s publication, when asked if she still had confidence in Davie, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “It’s not for the government to say who should and shouldn’t work at the BBC.
“My job is to make sure that we uphold the highest standards and that the public and parliament can have confidence in the BBC.
“I think, given the recent events, that has been called into question, but the BBC in recent weeks has made big strides to try to reset that relationship with the public, and show that they have grip on the very very serious issues.”
Nandy said she had met Davie and BBC chair Samir Shah last week. She added: “It is important that the BBC has acknowledged that there have been a series of catastrophic failures over recent weeks.”
The review was conducted by Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews.
The team who worked on the review identified and considered 5,000 documents from a 10-month production period, as well as 150 hours of material filmed during production, to inform Mr Johnson’s conclusions, the BBC said.
The BBC Board said: “Nothing is more important than trust and transparency in our journalism. We welcome the actions the Executive are taking to avoid this failing being repeated in the future.”
But the campaign Against Antisemitism launched a scathing attack on the BBC after the report was published, saying its recommendations were “frankly insulting”.
“The report says nothing we didn’t already know: paying licence fee money to a Hamas family was bad,” the CAA said. “The report yields no new insight, and almost reads like it’s trying to exonerate the BBC.”
More than 40 Jewish television executives, including former BBC content chief Danny Cohen and JK Rowling’s agent Neil Blair, previously wrote to the BBC with questions about editorial failings surrounding the film.
Separately, 500 media figures including Gary Lineker, Anita Rani, Riz Ahmed and Miriam Margolyes signed an open letter in February in support of the film.
Dame Melanie Dawes, CEO of broadcast regulator Ofcom, said the BBC had been slow to get a grip on recent scandals such as the Gaza documentary as well as the broadcast of Bob Vylan’s controversial set at Glastonbury.
Speaking to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she said there was a “real risk” recent events could lead to “loss of confidence” in the broadcaster, adding: “It’s very frustrating that the BBC has had some own goals in this area.”
In June, the BBC pulled another documentary titled Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, due to impartiality concerns it had surrounding the production. That film was then broadcast by Channel 4.
A new Freedom Flotilla ship, the Handala, has departed from Italy for an attempt to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza and deliver essential aid. The last vessel to make the journey, the Madleen, was seized by Israeli forces in international waters in June.
Published On 14 Jul 202514 Jul 2025
The death toll in Israel’s war on Gaza passed the grim milestone of 58,000 on Sunday as relentless attacks killed nearly 100 Palestinians since dawn.
An Israeli air raid hit a bustling market in Gaza City, killing 12 people. Among the victims was prominent medical consultant Ahmad Qandil, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported. The Israeli military has not commented on the strike.
Gaza’s Government Media Office also accused Israel and security contractors working at aid distribution points of intentionally attacking civilians. In a statement, it called United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites “death traps” and described the situation as “genocide engineering under US sponsorship”.
At least 805 people have been killed and 5,250 wounded while attempting to collect aid since the GHF started operating in May.
One of Israel’s deadliest attacks on desperate Palestinians occurred in the Nuseirat refugee camp, where a missile strike killed at least 10 people, most of them children, as they queued to collect drinking water. Seventeen others were wounded, according to Dr Ahmed Abu Saifan at al-Awda Hospital.
Israel’s military said it had targeted a Palestinian fighter, but the missile veered off course because of a technical failure. The Israeli claim could not be independently verified.
Gaza has suffered from chronic water shortages, worsened in recent weeks as desalination and sanitation plants shut down due to the ongoing Israeli blockade of fuel. Many residents now rely on dangerous journeys to limited water collection points.
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, the number of people killed has risen to at least 58,026, with more than 138,500 wounded. More than half of those killed have been women and children.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said hundreds have died while attempting to access humanitarian aid from GHF-controlled points.
“People travel up to 15km [9 miles] from the north to Rafah – many on foot, some overnight – just to get one food parcel,” he said. “But even then, they’re met with live fire from Israeli forces.”
Eight United Nations agencies – including UNICEF, WHO, WFP and UNRWA – warned on Sunday that without immediate fuel access, critical services in Gaza could collapse. Hospitals, sanitation centres and food distribution operations face imminent shutdown.
“Without fuel, these lifelines will vanish for 2.1 million people,” the agencies said in a joint statement. “Fuel must be allowed into Gaza in sufficient quantities and consistently to sustain life-saving operations.”
Attempts to end the fighting received a cautious boost on Sunday when US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said he remained “hopeful” about the ceasefire talks. He was expected to meet Qatari officials on the margins of the FIFA Club World Cup Final.
But optimism appears to be fading. A US-backed proposal for a 60-day ceasefire remains bogged down in disagreements, with both sides blaming each other for delays.
An Israeli official confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to convene cabinet ministers late on Sunday to discuss the talks, which are focused on ending hostilities, a troop withdrawal and the release of captives held in Gaza.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s deputy leader Muhammad al-Hindi said Israel has resisted committing to key conditions before moving on to the topic of prisoners.
“We’re discussing a framework agreement. It includes three points: ending aggression, withdrawal from Gaza and safe aid distribution,” he said. “Israel wants to skip straight to the prisoners’ file without guarantees on the main issues.”
Al-Hindi accused Israel of seeking to control southern Rafah and force civilians into overcrowded, bombed-out areas under the guise of aid distribution.
“We cannot legitimise these aid traps that are killing our people. The resistance will not sign any agreement that amounts to surrender.”
Meanwhile, in Israel, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said that Netanyahu’s close adviser, Jonatan Urich, is facing possible indictment over allegations he leaked classified military information to the German newspaper Bild.
Urich and another aide are accused of passing on secret intelligence to influence public opinion after six Israeli captives died in Gaza last August. The deaths sparked mass protests in Israel and deepened public anger at the government’s handling of ceasefire efforts.
Netanyahu has dismissed the investigation as politically motivated, calling it a “witch-hunt”. Urich has denied any wrongdoing.
The Bild article, published shortly after the captives’ bodies were discovered, aligned closely with Netanyahu’s narrative of blaming Hamas for the collapse of earlier ceasefire talks.
A previous two-month truce, which began in January, saw the release of 38 captives before Israel broke the ceasefire and resumed its devastating military assault.
Israeli columnist Gideon Levy says Israel has ‘no clue’ about dealing with Gaza, besides ongoing death and destruction.
Israeli columnist Gideon Levy tells host Steve Clemons that almost all Israelis believe their country “has the right to do whatever it wants”. This includes war crimes and plans to create concentration camps for Palestinians in Gaza, in preparation for expulsion.
Levy argues that it makes no difference if a Republican or Democratic administration were in power in the United States or if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or a different politician were in power in Israel.
“The same war might have taken place, and the same crimes of war would have been committed,” he said.
At least 10 Palestinians have been killed at a water collection point in central Gaza, six of them children, as famine spreads in the besieged enclave and food and water supplies remain at critically low levels.
Israeli forces on Sunday killed at least 59 Palestinians, 28 of them in Gaza City, as they targeted residential areas and displacement camps across Gaza, medical and local sources told Al Jazeera.
The attack on the water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, which also wounded 16 people, came as the Israeli military steps up attacks as it prepares to force the entire population of Gaza into a concentration zone in the south.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said there is a water crisis across the Gaza Strip.
“Even though water is not suitable for drinking as most of the time it’s contaminated, thirst is pushing people to these areas,” he said, referring to Nuseirat.
“This is not the first time it’s happening. This is close to 10 times and just in the past few months when people were directly and deliberately targeted as they were trying to get water.”
Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza killed at least 110 Palestinians on Saturday, including 34 people waiting for food at the Israeli- and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution site in Rafah.
Mahmoud said nearly 800 Palestinians have been killed since the GHF began distributing food parcels in Gaza at the end of May through its “monopoly of humanitarian aid distribution”, pushing aside other efficient, more organised and trusted organisations, including the United Nations.
“A person can pick up a food parcel for their family, but that is not nearly enough to feed hungry children and hungry family members, and that’s the tragedy,” he said.
“People are forced to make these dangerous trips from northern Gaza, from Gaza City, all the way to Rafah city. They walk for 12 to 15km [7.5 to 9 miles], and it takes them a whole day. Some do that at night, sleeping inside bombed-out buildings, to get there as early as possible. Despite all of these efforts to get there as early as possible, they are met with live ammunition and deliberate shooting by Israeli forces.”
At least 67 children have died of hunger in Gaza since October 2023, Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Saturday.
Furthermore, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, warned of a sharp rise in malnutrition cases as Israel’s blockade of the coastal enclave entered its 103rd day.
In a statement, the agency said one of its clinics in Gaza has seen an increase in the number of malnutrition cases since March when the Israeli siege started. “UNRWA hasn’t been allowed to bring in any humanitarian aid since,” it said.
The warnings came as Israeli forces continued to target starving Palestinians.
On Sunday, an Israeli warplane struck a house in the al-Sawarkah area west of the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 10 people.
In the northern Gaza Strip, six Palestinians were killed and others injured when an Israeli warplane bombed a house in the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City.
Five others were killed and several more injured in a separate air strike that hit a house on Hamid Street in western Gaza City.
In the al-Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City, a girl and another person were killed and several injured when Israeli forces bombed a home there.
In southern Gaza, Nasser Medical Complex medics confirmed the deaths of three people after an Israeli strike on a displacement tent in the al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis city.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces blew up several residential buildings in the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.
The strikes came amid an apparent deadlock in a week of indirect talks in Qatar between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas for a ceasefire to halt the 21-month war.
Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a genocidal offensive on Gaza since October 7, 2023, killing more than 58,000 Palestinians so far, most of them women and children.
Almost the entire population of more than 2 million people in Gaza have been forcibly displaced at least once during the war, which has created dire humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Demolition operations being conducted by Israel in Gaza’s southern Rafah Governorate have been stepped up sharply, an investigation by Al Jazeera’s Sanad investigations unit has found.
Israel’s defence ministry has announced a plan to relocate 600,000 people into what observers say would be “concentration camps” in the area in southern Gaza, with plans to expand this to the Strip’s entire population.
Sanad’s analysis of satellite imagery up to July 4, 2025, shows the number of demolished buildings in Rafah rising to about 28,600, up from 15,800 on April 4, 2025, according to data from the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
This means that approximately 12,800 buildings were destroyed between early April and early July alone – a marked acceleration in demolitions that has coincided with Israel’s new push into Rafah launched in late March 2025.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, told reporters on Monday that an initial 600,000 Palestinians living in the coastal al-Mawasi area would be transferred to Rafah, the location for what he called a new “humanitarian city” for Palestinians, within 60 days of any agreed ceasefire deal.
According to Katz, the entire civilian population of Gaza – more than 2 million people – will eventually be relocated to this southern city.
A proposal seen by Reuters carrying the name of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) detailed plans for a “Humanitarian Transit Area” in which Gaza residents would “temporarily reside, deradicalise, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so”.
The minister said Israel hopes to encourage Palestinians to “voluntarily emigrate” from the Gaza Strip to other countries, adding that this plan “should be fulfilled”.
He also stressed that the plan would not be run by the Israeli army, but by international bodies, without specifying which organisations would be implementing it.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) – which has been banned by Israel – warned against the latest mass forced displacement plan.
“This would de facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations,” he said, adding that it would “deprive Palestinians of any prospects of a better future in their homeland”.
Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg told Al Jazeera that the plan was “for all facts and purposes a concentration camp” for Palestinians in southern Gaza, meaning that Israel is committing “what is an overt crime against humanity under international humanitarian law”.
“It should be taken very seriously,” he said, and questioned the feasibility of the task of “concentrating the Palestinian population in a locked city where they would be let in but not let out”.
For now, Rafah, which was once home to an estimated 275,000 people, lies largely in ruins. The scale of Israeli destruction since April this year is particularly apparent when examining specific neighbourhoods of Rafah.
Since Israel breached the last ceasefire agreement with Hamas on March 19, its forces have directly targeted several institutions.
Sanad has identified six educational facilities that have been destroyed, including some located in the Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood, west of Rafah City.
However, satellite data shows that several key facilities have been spared; 40 educational institutions – 39 schools and one university – are intact. Eight medical centres also remain standing.
Sanad has concluded that this noticeable pattern of selective destruction strongly suggests that the preservation of these facilities in Rafah is unlikely to be a coincidence.
Rather, it indicates that Israel aims to use these sites in the next phase of its proposed plan to displace the entire population of Gaza to Rafah.
The spared educational and medical buildings already serve as critical humanitarian shelters for tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians.
The war’s initial wave of displacement from northern to southern Gaza resulted in an overwhelming influx of people into the 154 UN facilities across all five governorates of the Gaza Strip, including schools, warehouses and health centres.
According to UNRWA’s Situation Report in January 2024, these facilities were by then sheltering approximately 1.4 million displaced people, an average of 9,000 people per facility, while an additional 500,000 people were receiving support from other services.
The report also notes that in some shelters, the number exceeds 12,000, four times their intended capacity.
According to UNRWA’s latest report on July 5 this year, 1.9 million people remain displaced in Gaza.
Satellite imagery analysis of the Rafah area from May 2024 to May 2025 reveals that Israeli forces carried out a two-phase operation in Rafah, including in areas which had been designated for humanitarian aid distribution.
Phase One began with the launch of a military offensive in May 2024, during which most buildings in targeted zones in most of eastern Rafah and parts of western Rafah were demolished.
Phase Two, which began in April this year, involves the continued demolition of remaining residential buildings. This phase also included land levelling and the construction of access roads to facilitate the operation of these aid centres.
British Israeli analyst Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera that Israel intends to use Rafah “as a staging post to ethnically cleanse, physically remove, as many Palestinians as possible from the landscape”.
The distribution of aid, which is now under the monopoly of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is run by private US contractors guarded by Israeli troops, is also “a premeditated part of a plan of social-demographic engineering to move Palestinians – to relocate, displace and kettle them,” Levy said.
Katz’s announcement came a day after Netanyahu arrived in the US to meet US President Donald Trump, as the latter pushes for a deal to end the war in Gaza and bring back the remaining Hamas-held captives.
Netanyahu stressed his opposition to any deal that would ultimately leave Hamas in power in Gaza. “Twenty living hostages remain and 30 who are fallen. I am determined, we are determined, to bring back all of them,” he told reporters before boarding his plane. He added, however: “We are determined to ensure that Gaza will no longer constitute a threat to Israel.”
“That means one thing: eliminating Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. Hamas will not be there,” he said.
An Israeli negotiating team was in Doha this week for indirect talks with Hamas. Trump said on Tuesday that Israel had accepted the latest ceasefire proposal, which provides for the release, in five separate stages, of 10 living and 18 dead captives, in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire, an influx of humanitarian aid to the Strip and the release of many Palestinian detainees currently held in Israeli prisons.
Hamas gave what it called a “positive” response to the proposal, stressing its reservations about the temporary nature of the proposed truce and making some demands.
Netanyahu’s office called Hamas’s stipulations, concerning aid mechanisms and Israel’s military withdrawal, “unacceptable”.
A sticking point remains Israel’s control of the Morag Corridor, just north of Rafah, which would allow Israel to control and isolate Rafah, facilitating the implementation of the mass expulsion plan.
In his remarks on Monday, Katz said Israel would use a potential 60-day ceasefire to establish the new “humanitarian zone” south of the corridor, and that the army would hold nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s territory.
Gideon Levy, Israeli columnist for Haaretz, told Al Jazeera negotiations were unlikely to result in more than a temporary ceasefire, whith the release of Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners, as “Netanyahu doesn’t want an end to the war.”
While Trump could pressure his ally into a permanent deal, the US president does not seem inclined to pull his weight, observers say.
“The end game is an ethnic cleansing,” Levy said. “Will it be implemented? I have my doubts.
“But they are already preparing the area, and if the world is passive and the US gives its green light, it might work.”
Ten people, including six children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike while waiting to fill water containers in central Gaza on Sunday, emergency service officials say.
Their bodies were sent to Nuseirat’s al-Awda Hospital, which also treated 16 injured people, seven of them children, according to a doctor there.
Eyewitnesses said a drone fired a missile at a crowd of people queuing with empty jerry cans next to a water tanker in the heart of the al-Nuseirat refugee camp.
The Israeli military has been asked to comment.
Unverified footage shared online after the strike showed bloodied children and lifeless bodies, with screams of panic and desperation.
Residents rushed to the scene and transported the wounded using private vehicles and donkey carts.
The strike came as Israeli aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip have escalated.
A spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency said 19 other Palestinians had been killed on Sunday, in three separate strikes on residential buildings in central Gaza and Gaza City.
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 57,882 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced multiple times.
More than 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed. The healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.
This week, for the first time in 130 days, 75,000 litres of fuel was allowed into Gaza – “far from enough to meet the daily needs of the population and vital civilian aid operations”, the United Nations said.
Nine UN agencies warned on Saturday that Gaza’s fuel shortage had reached “critical levels”, and if fuel ran out, it would affect hospitals, water systems, sanitation networks and bakeries.
“Hospitals are already going dark, maternity, neonatal and intensive care units are failing, and ambulances can no longer move,” the UN said.
Israeli forces have been bombarding the northern half of the Gaza Strip.
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Washington, DC – The family of Sayfollah Musallet, a 20-year-old United States citizen from Florida who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, is calling on Washington to launch its own probe into the incident and to hold the perpetrators accountable.
Musallet’s family said in a statement that Israeli settlers surrounded him for three hours during the assault on Friday and attacked medics who were attempting to reach him.
The slain young man, known as Saif, was a “kind, hard-working, and deeply-respected young man, working to build his dreams”, the family said.
“This is an unimaginable nightmare and injustice that no family should ever have to face,” the statement added.
“We demand the US State Department lead an immediate investigation and hold the Israeli settlers who killed Saif accountable for their crimes. We demand justice.”
Washington has previously resisted calls to investigate the killing of US citizens by Israeli forces. Instead, US officials say that Israel is capable of probing its own abuses.
But Israeli investigations rarely lead to criminal charges against settlers or soldiers, despite their well-documented violations against Palestinians.
The State Department said late on Friday that it “has no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas”.
“We are aware of reports of the death of a US citizen in the West Bank. When a US citizen dies overseas, we stand ready to provide consular services,” a department spokesperson told Al Jazeera, declining to provide further details, citing the privacy of the victim’s family.
Israeli settlers lynched 20-year-old Palestinian American Sayfollah Musallet, while U.S. officials stayed silent.
Sayfollah was born and raised in Florida. He was visiting family for the summer in the West Bank when settlers beat him to death while he protested illegal land… pic.twitter.com/W4zG8OFD9b
— ADC National (@adc) July 12, 2025
Israeli forces have killed at least nine US citizens since 2022, including veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.
But none of the incidents have resulted in criminal charges.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said the US “must stop treating Palestinian American lives as expendable”.
“Israeli settlers lynched 20-year-old Palestinian American Sayfollah Musallet, while US officials stayed silent,” the advocacy group said in a statement.
“Sayfollah was born and raised in Florida. He was visiting family for the summer in the West Bank when settlers beat him to death while he protested illegal land seizures.”
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) questioned whether Trump will stay true to his pledge to prioritise US interests.
“Will he uphold his ‘America First’ promise when it’s a Palestinian-American whose life was taken? Or will he once again bow his head to Israel, no matter the cost in blood?” AMP said in a statement.
But the group stressed that US citizenship should not be a condition for justice. Another Palestinian was killed in the same settler attack as Musallet on Saturday.
“And let’s be unequivocally clear: whether a Palestinian holds American citizenship or not, every single murder committed by this regime must be explicitly prohibited, punished, and condemned,” AMP said.
The US provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. It also protects its ally diplomatically at international forums, often using its veto power to block United Nations Security Council proposals critical of Israeli abuses.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on supporters on Saturday to contact their lawmakers and urge them to condemn the killing of Musallet.
“This was not an isolated incident. It was part of a long, unpunished pattern of violence against US citizens by Israeli soldiers and settlers,” the group said in a statement.
Sarah Leah Whitson, the head of rights group DAWN, said the US has tools to pursue accountability in the Musallet case, noting that Washington is pursuing criminal charges against Hamas officials for the killing of US citizens during the October 7, 2023 attack in Israel.
“What is really missing [in the current case] is the political will from the United States government to protect American citizens of Palestinian origin or Americans protesting Israeli actions in the West Bank,” Whitson told Al Jazeera in a TV interview.
“What it really does is it sets a precedent of encouragement and sets a precedent for open season on Americans just as there is open season on Palestinians.”
The Nasser hospital in southern Gaza has said 24 people have been killed near an aid distribution site.
Palestinians who were present at the site said Israeli troops opened fire as people were trying to access food on Saturday.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said there were “no known injured individuals” from IDF fire near the site.
Separately, an Israeli military official said warning shots were fired to disperse people who the IDF believed were a threat.
The claims by both sides have not been independently verified. Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, into Gaza.
Footage seen by the BBC later on Saturday showed what appeared to be a number of body bags at Nasser hospital’s courtyard surrounded by nurses and people in blood-stained clothes.
In another video, a man said people were waiting to get aid when they came under targeted fire for five minutes. A paramedic accused Israeli troops of killing in cold blood.
The videos have not been verified by the BBC.
Reuters said it had spoken to witnesses who described people being shot in the head and torso. The news agency also reported seeing bodies wrapped in white shrouds at Nasser hospital.
There have been almost daily reports of people being killed by Israeli fire while seeking food in Gaza.
Israel imposed a total blockade of aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip in March, and later resumed its military offensive against Hamas, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on the Palestinian armed group to release Israeli hostages.
Although the blockade was partially eased in late May, amid warnings of a looming famine from global experts, there are still severe shortages of food, as well as medicine and fuel.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, says there are thousands of malnourished children across the territory, with more cases detected every day.
In addition to allowing in some UN aid lorries, Israel and the US set up a new aid distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), saying they wanted to prevent Hamas from stealing aid.
On Friday, the UN human rights office said that it had so far recorded 798 aid-related killings, including 615 in the vicinity of the GHF’s sites, which are operated by US private security contractors and located inside military zones in southern and central Gaza.
The other 183 killings were recorded near UN and other aid convoys.
The Israeli military said it recognised there had been incidents in which civilians had been harmed and that it was working to minimise “possible friction between the population and the [Israeli] forces as much as possible”.
The GHF accused the UN of using “false and misleading” statistics from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Earlier this month, a former security contractor for the GHF told the BBC he witnessed colleagues opening fire several times on hungry Palestinians who had posed no threat. The GHF said the allegations were categorically false.
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 57,823 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
July 11 (UPI) — Employees of the U.S. State Department could receive a layoff notice via email very soon as part of the Trump administration’s plan to downsize the government, according to an in ternal memo.
The Washington Post reported late Thursday night it had obtained a memo from Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Michael Rigas that informed State Department employees to be on the lookout for an email “in the coming days” in regard to layoffs. CNN reported Thursday that the email would come from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that will say “Soon, the Department will be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force,” and that firings could begin as soon as Friday. A draft reduction-in-force notice acquired by CBS News said the objective is “streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities,” and that the terminations “have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions.”
The State Department had told Congress in May it planned to fire more than 1,870 people within its domestic workforce of 18,730, and over 1,570 have said they would voluntarily exit.
More than 300 offices and bureaus would be impacted and will include members of the foreign and civil service whose offices are being either retooled or outright eliminated.
Uncertainty over the status of the plan has negatively impacted morale at the department, as workers wait to see if they are to receive the axe, some of which have worked there for years or even decades, The Washington Post reported.
CBS also reported that the department told reporters it intends to conduct the reductions-in-force over a single day.
One State Department employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Washington Post last month that the move showed the department’s leadership “either doesn’t appreciate or just doesn’t care” about its workforce.
“We will continue to move forward with our historic reorganization plan at the State Department, as announced earlier this year,” Rubio said in a X post Tuesday.
“When you reorganize the State Department, there were certain bureaus we wanted to empower, the regional bureaus, and there were certain bureaus, these functional bureaus, that were closed,” he told reporters Thursday.
The State Department officially told Congress in May that it planned to eliminate around 3,400 U.S.-based jobs and will either close or merge nearly half of its domestic offices.
However, those working at overseas posts are reportedly safe from termination.
American Foreign Service Association President Thomas Yazdgerdi told CNN Wednesday that the expected layoffs are coming at “a particularly bad time.”
“There are horrible things that are happening in the world that require a tried-and-true diplomatic workforce that’s able to address that,” he continued. “The ability to maintain a presence in the areas of the world that are incredibly important, dealing with issues like Ukraine, like Gaza, like Iran right now that require great diplomatic attention.”
The plan will also integrate the functions of the U.S. Agency for International Development into the State Department.
The State Department had told Congress it planned to complete its reorganization by July 1, but those plans were temporarily paused by rulings from a lower court until earlier this week, when the Supreme Court cleared a path for the Trump administration to begin mass firings and changes at 19 departments and agencies.
The lower court had blocked the layoffs, as the administration did not first consult with Congress.
I live near Nasser Hospital in the west of Khan Younis city. Almost every day, I hear desperate calls for blood donations made on loudspeakers out of the hospital. It has been like that for more than a year.
The hospital, like other barely functioning health facilities in Gaza, has been regularly overwhelmed with victims of continuing Israeli air attacks. Since the end of May, it has also received many victims shot by Israeli soldiers at aid distribution sites.
I had donated blood before, and I felt it was my duty to do it again. So one morning last month, I headed to Nasser Hospital.
While the blood was being drawn from my arm, I felt severe dizziness, and I thought I was going to faint. My friend, Nurse Hanan, who was one of the workers in the blood donation campaign, rushed to me and raised my legs to increase the blood flow to my brain until I felt better. She went to test my blood, and after 10 minutes returned to tell me that I was suffering from severe anaemia and malnutrition. My blood did not contain the minimum nutrients necessary for donation.
Hanan told me that my case was not an exception. She explained that most of the people who visited the hospital to donate blood suffer from anaemia and malnutrition as a result of the ongoing Israeli blockade and the absence of nutritious food, such as meat, milk, eggs and fruits. Two-thirds of the blood units donated at the hospital have extremely low haemoglobin and iron levels, which makes them unusable for blood transfusions.
In early June, Dr Sofia Za’arab, director of the Laboratory and Blood Bank, told the media that the severe shortage of donated blood units has reached “critical” levels, threatening the lives of patients, many of whom require urgent blood transfusions. The whole of Gaza needs 400 units daily.
“Despite contacting the Ministry of Health in the West Bank to transfer blood units, the occupation authorities prevented their entry [into Gaza],” Dr Za’arab said.
After the failed blood donation, I returned home crushed.
I knew the famine was affecting me. I have lost a lot of weight. I suffer from constant fatigue, chronic joint pain, headaches, and dizziness. Even when I write my journalistic articles or study, I need to take short breaks.
But the revelation of how bad my health condition is really struck me.
For months now, my family and I have been eating only pasta and rice, due to the astronomical cost of flour. We eat one meal a day, and sometimes even half a meal to give more food to my younger siblings. I worry about them being malnourished. They have also lost a lot of weight and are constantly asking for food.
We have not seen meat, eggs, or dairy products since Israel imposed the full blockade on March 2, and, even before that, we rarely did.
The Gaza health authorities have said at least 66 children have died from starvation since the start of the Israeli genocidal war. According to UNICEF, more than 5,000 children were admitted to health facilities across the Strip for treatment of acute malnutrition in May, alone.
Even if some of these children are miraculously saved, they will not have the opportunity to grow up healthy, to develop their full potential, and enjoy stable, secure lives.
But beyond the anxiety I felt about the toll starvation has taken on my body and on bodies of my family members, I also felt pain because I had failed to help the wounded.
I wanted to help those who are suffering from war injuries and fighting for their lives in the hospital because I am a human being.
After all, the urge to help another person is one of the most human instincts we have. Solidarity is what defines our humanity.
When you want to save a life but are prevented from doing it, it means a whole new horizon of despair has opened. When you want to help with whatever little you have – in this case, part of yourself – but are denied, this leaves a deep scar on the soul.
For 21 months now, we have been denied all our human rights inscribed in international law: The right to water and food, the right to healthcare and housing, the right to education, the right to free movement and asylum, the right to life.
Now, we have reached a point where even the urge to save others’ lives, the right to show human solidarity, is being denied to us.
All this is not by chance, but by design. The genocide is not only killing people; it is also targeting people’s humanity and solidarity. From charities and food kitchens being bombed, to people being encouraged to carry knives and form gangs to rob and steal food, the strong solidarity that has kept the Palestinian people going through this genocide – through 75 years of suffering and dispossession – is directly under attack.
Cracks may be appearing in our communal bonds, but we shall repair them. We are one big family in Gaza, and we know how to heal and support each other. The humanity of the Palestinian people has always stood victorious.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
At least 79 Palestinians have been killed since dawn in Israeli attacks across Gaza, with dozens of children dying from malnutrition during Israel’s punishing months-long blockade, as ceasefire talks reportedly stall.
Among the victims on Saturday, 14 were killed in Gaza City, four of them in an Israeli strike on a residence on Jaffa Street in the Tuffah area, which injured 10 others.
At least 30 aid seekers were killed by Israeli army fire north of Rafah, southern Gaza, near the one operating GHF site, which rights groups and the United Nations have slammed as “human slaughterhouses” and “death traps”.
According to Al Jazeera Mubasher, Israeli forces fired directly at Palestinians in front of the aid distribution centre in the al-Shakoush area of Rafah.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli army opened fire indiscriminately on a large crowd during one of the attacks.
“Many desperate families in the north have been making dangerous journeys all the way to the south to reach the only operating distribution centre in Rafah,” he said.
“Many of the bodies are still on the ground,” Mahmoud said, adding that those who were wounded in the attack have been transferred to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Amid relentless daily carnage rained upon starving aid seekers and the ongoing Israeli blockade, Gaza’s Government Media Office said 67 children have now died due to malnutrition, and 650,000 children under the age of five are at “real and immediate risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks”.
“Over the past three days, we have recorded dozens of deaths due to shortages of food and essential medical supplies, in an extremely cruel humanitarian situation,” the statement read.
“This shocking reality reflects the scale of the unprecedented humanitarian tragedy in Gaza,” the statement added.
Israel is engineering a “cruel and Machiavellian scheme to kill” in Gaza, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Friday, as the world body reported that since May, when GHF began its operations, some 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
“Under our watch, Gaza has become the graveyard of children [and] starving people,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.
As the Israeli military announced on Saturday that its forces attacked Gaza 250 times in the last 48 hours, Israeli officials have continued to push a plan to forcibly displace and eventually expel Palestinians.
Earlier this week, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” which will house 2.1 million Palestinians on the rubble of parts of the city of Rafah, which has been razed to the ground.
But Palestinians in Gaza have rejected the plan and reiterated that they would not leave the enclave. Rights groups, international organisations and several nations have slammed it as laying the ground for “ethnic cleansing”, the forcible removal of a population from its homeland.
Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera on Saturday that the majority of Israelis are “really appalled” by Katz’s plan, which would be “illegal and immoral”.
“Anybody who will participate in this disgusting project will be involved in war crimes,” Elder said.
The message underlying the plan, he said, is that “there can’t be two people between the river and the sea, and those who deserve to have a state are only the Jewish people.”
As Israel announces its intention to force the population of Gaza into Rafah, Middle East professor at the University of Turin, Lorenzo Kamel, told Al Jazeera that the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and their concentration in restricted areas is nothing new.
In 1948, 77 years ago to this day, 70,000 Palestinians were expelled from the village of Lydda during what became known as the “march of death”.
“Many of them ended up in the Gaza Strip,” Kamel said, adding that the Israeli authorities have been forcing Palestinians into spaces similar to concentration camps for decades.
“This is not something new, but it has accelerated in the past months,” he said. The plan to gather the Gaza population on the ruins of Rafah is therefore “nothing but another camp in preparation for the deportation from the Gaza Strip”.
Negotiations taking place in Qatar to cement a truce are stalling over the extent of Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the Strip, according to Palestinian and Israeli sources familiar with the matter, the Reuters news agency reported on Saturday.
The indirect talks are expected to continue, despite the latest obstacles in clinching a deal based on a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire.
A Palestinian source said Hamas has not accepted the withdrawal maps which Israel has proposed, as they would leave about 40 percent of the territory under Israeli occupation, including all of Rafah and further territories in northern and eastern Gaza.
Matters regarding the full and free flow of aid to a starving population, and guarantees, were also presenting a challenge.
Two Israeli sources said Hamas wants Israel to retreat to lines it held in a previous ceasefire, before it renewed its offensive in March.
Delegations from Israel and Hamas have been in Qatar since Sunday in a renewed push for an agreement.
As Netanyahu courts Trump with peace prizes and platitudes, divisions over Israel in the MAGA media space are deepening.
Contributors:
Laura Albast – Fellow, Institute for Palestine Studies
Mitchell Plitnick – Author, Except for Palestine
Mouin Rabbani – Co-editor, Jadaliyya
Jude Russo – Managing editor, The American Conservative
Since the US-Israeli GHF took over the distribution of aid, more than 800 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to collect it. New reporting uncovers the foundation’s links to plans for Gaza’s ethnic cleansing. Meenakshi Ravi reports.
Mass protests, a tightening grip on media and a creeping authoritarianism; eight months on, the struggle over Georgia’s democracy is intensifying.
Elettra Scrivo reports from Tbilisi on the mounting crackdown on journalists and independent voices.
Featuring:
Irakli Rukhadze – Owner, Imedi TV
Nestan Tsetkhladze – Editor, Netgazeti
Nino Zautashvili – Former host, Real Space
July 11 (UPI) — Protesters rallied outside the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem Friday, calling for an end to American support of Israel amid that country’s continued war against Hamas in Gaza.
Demonstrators chanted and banged drums while “protesting the U.S. funding and support of the genocide,” the group Voice Against War posted on Instagram.
“Today in Jerusalem, activists demonstrated the genocide in Gaza in front of the US consulate, protesting the US funding and support of the genocide,” it said on X.
The protests come the same day an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza killed at least 15 Palestinians, including 10 children and two women.
Earlier this week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz unveiled plans to eventually move all Palestinians in Gaza into a closed “humanitarian city.”
Katz said the plan was for the Israel Defense Force to construct the camp near the site of Rafah, in the southern tip of the Palestinian enclave, with the hope that Palestinians would then “voluntarily emigrate” from there to other countries.
The plan drew immediate criticism, with critics calling it a “crime against humanity.”
The same day, U.S. State Department officials sanctioned the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza.
Francesca Paola Albanese recently authored a report, describing Israeli actions as “genocide” of the Palestinian people, calling for punitive measures.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu this week met with U.S. officials while on a visit to Washington, D.C.
Netanyahu continues to try and orchestrate a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas with the assistance of President Donald Trump.