On World Hunger Day, Palestinians continue to starve in Gaza, a day after a chaotic rush on an Israeli- and US-backed distribution point delivering the first aid since Israel’s March blockade. Some Israelis oppose even this minimal relief. Here’s what they’ve been saying.
Published On 28 May 202528 May 2025
May 28 (UPI) — The Trump administration ordered a hold on any new interviews of foreign student visa applications as it expands the vetting of applicants’ social media accounts.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday in a social media post that he is “announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans.”
Politico, NBC News and CBS News previously reported that Rubio issued a cable to all U.S. Embassies and consular agencies Tuesday to request the hold, in which he wrote that “Effective immediately, in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting, consular sections should not add any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued septel, which we anticipate in the coming days.”
“Septel” is State Department shorthand for “separate telegram.”
The cable also states that “consular sections will need to take into consideration the workload and resource requirements of each case prior to scheduling them going forward,” and that the main concern should be in regard to “services for U.S. citizens, immigrant visas, and fraud prevention.”
Politico said the cable alluded to the search for anti-Semitism and material that would indicate potential terrorist activity.
In a speech Rubio recorded for the Foreign Minister’s Conference on Combating Antisemitism, held Wednesday at the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, he spoke on behalf of the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.
“Those who call to boycott Israel are calling for the boycott of their Jewish neighbors and classmates,” Rubio said. “We have implemented a vigorous new visa policy that will prevent foreign nationals from coming to the United States to foment hatred against our Jewish community.”
Rubio further posted online Wednesday that “Foreigners who work to undermine the rights of Americans should not enjoy the privilege of traveling to our country. Whether in Latin America, Europe, or elsewhere, the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.”
The Trump administration previously imposed requirements for screening the social media of returning students who participated in protests in support of Palestinians opposing Israel’s war in Gaza.
At least 3 people died when thousands of starving Palestinians rushed to an aid distribution point run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Aid agencies criticised the operation as Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to admit it is a tool to force Gaza’s population south.
Published On 28 May 202528 May 2025
Activists in Paris dyed a fountain red to symbolise what they called “the bloodbath” taking place in Gaza. The protesters said a lack of political will to confront Israel’s actions in Gaza was increasingly being seen as “a form of complicity” with genocide.
Published On 28 May 202528 May 2025
May 28 (UPI) — Israeli warplanes struck the Houthi-controlled Sanaa International Airport in Yemen on Wednesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces said, seemingly in response to missiles recently launched by the militant group toward Israel.
The IDF said in a statement on X that its airstrikes targeted unidentified aircraft belonging to the Houthis.
“The aircraft that were attacked were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to transport terrorists who promoted terrorist acts against the State of Israel,” it said.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the strike destroyed the last remaining planes used by the Houthis at the site that remained following the IDF’s previous attack on the airport on May 6.
“This is a clear message and a direct continuation of the policy we established: Whoever fires at the State of Israel will pay a heavy price,” Katz said in the statement, The Times of Israel reported.
“The ports in Yemen will continue to be struck heavily, and the airport in Sanaa will be destroyed again and again, as will other strategic infrastructures in the area used by the Houthi terror organization and its supporters.”
Houthis, an Iran-backed group, have repeatedly attacked Israel since early in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which began on Oct. 7, 2023, in response to Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw another 251 kidnapped.
The involvement of the Houthis, also an Iran-proxy militia, increased starting in mid-November when it started to enforce a military blockade of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, vowing to attack Israeli ships attempting to pass. It said the blockade was in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The rebels followed by broadening targets to include U.S. military ships.
Israel, with its allies, including the United States, have responded with conducting mass airstrikes in Yemen.
On May 6, Israel attacked the airport in Sanaa, and last week conducted similar airstrikes on ports in Hodeidah and al-Salif.
On Tuesday, the IDF said it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen.
“This is another example of the Houthi terrorist organization’s brutal use of civilian infrastructure for terrorist activities,” the IDF said Wednesday morning on X, seemingly in reference to the Sanaa airport.
“The IDF is determined to continue to act and strike with force anyone who poses a threat to the residents of the State of Israel, at whatever distance is required.”
At least three Palestinians have been killed in Gaza after the Israeli military opened fire on crowds of people who rushed to an aid distribution point set up by a controversial organisation backed by Israel and the United States.
The deadly incident in the southern city of Rafah on Tuesday left 46 others wounded and seven missing, according to authorities in Gaza.
The aid group behind the initiative, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) denied the report, while the Israeli military said its troops had fired warning shots in the area outside the distribution site and that control was re-established.
The incident has prompted criticism from the United Nations and aid groups, but Israel and the US have defended it.
Here’s a round-up of the reaction:
A spokesman for the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said the images and videos from the aid points set up by GHF were “heartbreaking, to say the least”.
“We and our partners have a detailed, principled, operationally sound plan supported by member states to get aid to a desperate population,” Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
“Humanitarian aid needs to be distributed in a way that is safe under principles of independence [and] impartiality – in the way we’ve always done it… We saw the plan that they’ve [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] published and that they presented to us, and it is not done with the parameters that we feel match our principles, which we apply across the board, from Gaza to Sudan to Myanmar, to anywhere you want to talk about.”
The Government Media Office in Gaza condemned the Israeli military’s actions in Rafah.
“The occupation forces, positioned in or around those areas, opened live fire on starving civilians who were lured to these locations under the pretense of receiving aid,” the office said in a statement.
“What happened today in Rafah is a deliberate massacre and a full-fledged war crime, committed in cold blood against civilians weakened by over 90 days of siege-induced starvation.”
The office added: “This incident provides undeniable evidence of the Israeli occupation’s total failure in managing the humanitarian catastrophe it has deliberately created.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the chaos at the GHF site, but said the disruption was brief.
“We worked out a plan with our American friends to have controlled distribution sites where an American company would distribute the food to Palestinian families,” he said. “There was some loss of control momentarily. Happily, we brought it back under control.”
He also claimed that there was no proof of malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, saying, “You don’t see one, not one emaciated [person] from the beginning of the war to the present.”
The US State Department also downplayed the rush at the GHF site and dismissed criticism of the aid programme as “complaints about style”.
“Hamas has been opposed to this [aid] dynamic. They have attempted to stop the aid movement through Gaza to these distribution centres, but they have failed,” said Tammy Bruce, the spokesperson for the State Department.
“In that kind of environment, it’s not surprising that there might be a few issues involved. But the good news is that those seeking to get aid to the people of Gaza, which is not Hamas, have succeeded.”
She added: “The real story is that aid and food is moving into Gaza in a massive scale. We’re looking at 8,000 boxes… This is a complicated environment, and the story is the fact that it’s working.”
“The needs on the ground are great. At one moment in the late afternoon, the volume of people at the [distribution site] was such that the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate,” the group said in a statement.
Operations have now returned to normal, the group claimed, adding that it has distributed approximately 8,000 food boxes, which it says will feed 5.5 people for 3.5 days, and adds up to about 462,000 meals.
Hardin Lang, the group’s vice president for policy and programmes, said the US-Israel-backed aid initiative is run by military, rather than humanitarian, logic.
“This is not the way in which you try to feed a population, much less a population that is on the verge of famine,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking from Washington, DC.
“The kind of operation that is required to prevent famine, or stop it if it’s already ongoing, is a tremendously large and complex logistical operation. And it’s not just food. You have to have access to medical facilities, access to acute malnutrition centres … which have not been factored into this plan.”
He added: “This is not set up to meet the needs of people. It very much feels like it’s been designed to locate people into the south of Gaza – into an area that’s been designated by the Israelis as ‘a humanitarian zone’, as opposed to trying to meet the needs of a very desperate population.”
Ahmed Bayram, spokesperson for the NRC, called on Israel and the US to cancel their initiative and let humanitarian organisations do their job.
“What we’re seeing is indeed a summary of the tragedy that the people of Gaza are living,” he said.
“This is not how aid is done; this is not how aid should be distributed, not least obviously an occupier doing that – a country that has destroyed and flattened Rafah, asking people to come back to Rafah, that has displaced people out of Rafah, and now tells them to come back and receive whatever they can get hold of.”
More aid distribution sites are being set up in Gaza with US support, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He described “some loss of control” after Palestinians desperately swarmed a new aid hub in Rafah following nearly three months of Israeli blockade.
Published On 27 May 202527 May 2025
In punishing midday heat, thousands of Palestinians have clambered over fences and pushed through packed crowds to reach life-saving supplies, laying bare the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe inflicted on Gaza by Israel’s three-month blockade of aid.
With the buzz of military helicopters overhead, Israeli military gunfire rattled in the background on Tuesday as desperate crowds struggled to reach an Israeli-United States food distribution point on its first day of operation.
TV footage from Rafah in southern Gaza showed long lines of people funnelling through a wired corridor into a large open field where aid packages brought by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) were stacked. Later, desperately hungry Palestinians, including women and children, were seen tearing down fences as people forced their way towards the GHF distribution point.
“We have been dying of starvation. We have to feed our children who want to eat. What else can we do? I could do anything to feed them,” a Palestinian father told Al Jazeera.
“We saw people running, and we followed them, even if it meant taking a risk and it was scary. But fear is not worse than starvation.”
After thousands of Palestinians stormed the aid distribution centre, the Israeli military said its forces did not direct gunfire towards them but rather fired warning shots in an area outside it. It said in a statement that control over the situation had been established and aid distribution would continue as planned.
But Gaza officials accused Israel of failing to manage the aid amid widespread hunger and relentless bombing of civilians, including children.
“What happened today is conclusive evidence of the occupation’s failure to manage the humanitarian crisis it deliberately created through a policy of starvation, siege, and bombing,” the Government Media Office in Gaza said in a statement after the mayhem.
The aid by GHF, a foundation backed by the US and endorsed by Israel, arrived in Gaza despite allegations that the new group did not have the experience or capacity to bring relief to more than two million Palestinians in Gaza.
The United Nations and aid groups say the organisation does not abide by humanitarian principles and could serve to further displace people from their homes as Palestinians move to receive aid from a limited number of distribution sites.
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said seeing thousands of Palestinians storming the aid site was “heartbreaking”.
“We and our partners have a detailed, principled, operationally sound plan supported by member states to get aid to a desperate population,” he told reporters. “We continue to stress that a meaningful scale-up of humanitarian operations is essential to stave off famine and meet the needs of all civilians wherever they are.”
The chaos underscored the staggering level of hunger gripping Gaza. According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report, 1.95 million people – 93 percent of the enclave’s population – are facing acute food shortages.
Aid groups have warned for months that starvation in Gaza is being used by Israel as a weapon of war.
“This is not how aid is done,” Ahmed Bayram, spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Al Jazeera, describing the scene in Rafah as the “inevitable consequence of a reckless and inhumane plan”.
“These are the scenes we have literally been warning about all month now. It spread chaos. It spread confusion. And this is the result,” he said.
“I think the best thing that can be done now is for this plan to be cancelled, to be reversed and for us professional humanitarians in the UN and NGOs to do our job. There are tonnes and tonnes of aid waiting across the border. [It’s a] very simple decision: open the gates and keep them open.”
The GHF, a Swiss-based entity formed in February through back-channel meetings between Israeli-linked officials and business figures, was made the lead distributor of aid by Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has blocked the UN and other international organisations from bringing in aid.
Despite being promoted as a neutral body, the GHF’s close ties to Israel and the US have prompted widespread condemnation. Its former head suddenly resigned this week, citing the foundation’s inability to uphold the core humanitarian principles of “neutrality, impartiality and independence”.
According to a report in The New York Times, the GHF emerged from “private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and businesspeople with close ties to the Israeli government”.
Israel has said its forces are not involved in the physical distribution of aid although it backs the system’s use of biometric screening, including facial recognition, to vet aid recipients. Palestinians fear it is another Israeli tool of surveillance and repression.
Critics have also warned that the GHF’s structure – and its concentration of aid in southern Gaza – could serve to depopulate northern Gaza, as planned by the Israeli military.
While the previous UN-led distribution network operated about 400 sites across the strip, the GHF has set up only four “mega-sites” for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.
In Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reported that many of the food parcels being handed out were inadequate to sustain families.
Khoudary described a typical food box with 4kg (8.8lb) of flour, a couple of bags of pasta, two cans of fava beans, a pack of tea bags and some biscuits. Other food parcels contained lentils and soup in small quantities.
Although the GHF said it distributed about 8,000 food boxes on Tuesday, which it claimed amounted to 462,000 meals, Khoudary said the rations would barely sustain a single family for long.
“This is definitely not enough, and it is not enough for all the humiliation that Palestinians are going through to receive these food parcels,” she said.
A recent report by The Associated Press that exposed the Israeli military’s “systematic” use of Palestinians as human shields has shone a light on an illegal practice that has become commonplace over the 19-month war in Gaza and parallel offensives in the West Bank.
The report, published on Saturday, featured the testimonies of seven Palestinians who had been used as human shields in Gaza as well as the occupied West Bank, with two Israeli military officers confirming the ubiquity of the practice, which is considered a violation of international law.
Responding to the allegations, Israel’s military told the news agency that using civilians as shields in its operations was strictly prohibited and that several cases were under investigation.
So what are human shields? How widely have they been used by the Israeli military? And is Israel likely to launch a crackdown any time soon?
Under international humanitarian law (IHL), the term “human shields” refers to the use of civilians or other protected persons, whether voluntary or involuntary, in order to shield military targets from attacks.
The use of human shields in warfare is prohibited under IHL, but Israeli soldiers have allegedly employed it widely during the Gaza genocide.
Earlier this year, Israeli newspaper Haaretz published the first-hand testimony of an Israeli soldier who said that the practice had been used “six times a day” in his unit and that it had effectively been “normalised” in military ranks.
Back in August, the newspaper had revealed that Palestinians used as human shields in Gaza tended to be in their 20s and were used for periods of up to a week by units, which took pride in “locating” detainees to send into tunnel shafts and buildings.
“It’s become part of [Israel’s] military culture,” said Nicola Perugini, co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, noting the “huge archive” of evidence provided, not only by human rights groups, but also by soldiers, who were until recently posting evidence of Palestinians being used as “fodder” on social media with an apparent sense of total impunity.
“Israeli army investigations have proven throughout the decades to be non-investigations,” Perugini said, noting that documentation of the practice, forbidden by Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions, started during the second Intifada of the early 2000s.
“What we have now in the live-streamed genocide is the most documented archive of human shielding in the history of the different wars between Israel and the Palestinians,” he said.
“What we have discovered is precisely that it is a systematic practice.”
Throughout the conflict, the Israeli military’s response to allegations has been to withhold comment, to point to a lack of details, or, when faced with undeniable proof, to announce a probe.
Last year, Israel declined to respond to a range of allegations put to it by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, which examined thousands of photos and videos – the bulk of them posted online by Israeli soldiers – and testimonies pointing to a number of potential war crimes, including the use of human shields.
Among the atrocities revealed by the team in the resulting documentary was the case of Jamal Abu al-Ola, a detainee forced to act as a messenger by the Israelis. Footage showed the young man dressed in a white hazmat suit, with hands bound and head wrapped in a yellow cloth, telling displaced people at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis to evacuate. His mother followed him out, and witnessed him being shot dead by a sniper.
Commenting on the case for the documentary, Rodney Dixon, an international law expert, said that al-Ola had been used as a “military asset”, which was “in many ways the definition of using persons as a human shield”.
This year, the military pushed back on calls to investigate a report on an 80-year-old man forced to act as a human shield in Gaza City, saying that “additional details” were needed.
The joint report from Israeli outlet The Hottest Place in Hell and +972 Magazine revealed a horrific new dimension of the so-called “mosquito procedure”, with anonymous Israeli soldiers recounting that a senior officer had placed an explosive cord around the man’s neck, threatening to blow his head off if he made any false moves.
Ordered afterwards to flee his home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, the man was shot dead with his wife by another battalion.
However, the military will acknowledge violations when confronted with undeniable evidence provoking widespread outrage, such as last year’s video of wounded Palestinian man Mujahed Azmi, strapped to the hood of an army jeep during a raid on the West Bank city of Jenin.
That particular case was described as “human shielding in action” by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territory.
In a statement, Israel’s military said its forces were fired at and exchanged fire, wounding a suspect and apprehending him. It added that the “conduct of the forces in the video” did not “conform to the values” of the military and that the incident would be investigated.
However, as Perugini observes, the very reason why the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza is because legal experts doubt Israel’s ability to investigate itself.
Despite vast evidence, the question of whether the military will be launching a crackdown aimed at banishing the apparently systematic practice is moot. Even so, pressure for accountability is growing.
Rights groups say the practice of using human shields has been going on in the occupied Palestinian territories for decades. Breaking the Silence, a whistle-blower group gathering testimonies of former Israeli soldiers, cites evidence of what one high-ranking officer posted to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank back in 2002 called “neighbour procedure”.
“You order a Palestinian to accompany you and to open the door of the house you want to enter, to knock on the door and ask to enter, with a very simple objective: if the door blows up, a Palestinian will be blown up, and soldiers won’t be blown up,” said the officer, ranked as a major.
In 2005, an Israeli Supreme Court ruling explicitly barred the practice. Five years later, two soldiers were convicted of using a nine-year-old boy as a human shield to check suspected booby traps in the Gaza City suburb of Tal al-Hawa.
It was reportedly the first such conviction in Israel.
But the military’s use of human shields appears to have been normalised since then, particularly over the past 19 months of war in Gaza.
Indeed, there are indications that orders may be coming from the very top.
Haaretz’s investigation from last August cited sources as saying that former Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi was among the senior officers aware of the use of Palestinians in Gaza as human shields.
And this week’s report by the AP cited an anonymous Israeli officer as saying that the practice had become ubiquitous by mid-2004 in Gaza, with every infantry unit using a Palestinian to clear houses by the time he finished his service, and with orders “to bring a mosquito” often being issued via radio.
The report also cited an anonymous Israeli sergeant as saying that his unit had tried to refuse to use human shields in Gaza in 2024, but was told they had no choice, a high-ranking officer telling them they shouldn’t worry about international humanitarian law.
Responding to claims in the AP report, the Israeli military told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that it would investigate the claims “if further details are provided”.
“In several cases, investigations by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division were opened following suspicions that the military was involving Palestinians in military missions. These investigations are ongoing, and naturally, no further details can be provided at this time,” it said.
In March, Haaretz reported that Israel’s military police were investigating six cases in which Israeli soldiers were alleged to have used Palestinians as human shields after the publication of a Red Cross report earlier in the year that highlighted the abuses.
In the face of growing evidence that Palestinians are systematically being used as fodder for the Israeli military machine, in a war that has already killed more than 54,000 people, the military may find it increasingly difficult to kick the biggest can of all down the road.
Said Perugini: “When you are in a genocide, then human shielding becomes a tool for something else. It becomes part of a different kind of crime, of the crime of crimes.”
AFPA controversial new aid distribution group backed by the US and Israel has begun working in Gaza.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said lorry loads of food had been delivered to secure sites on Monday and that distribution had begun. Hundreds of Palestinians collected food parcels from a site in southern city of Rafah on Tuesday.
The GHF, which uses armed American security contractors, aims to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to the 2.1 million people in Gaza, where experts have warned of a looming famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade that was recently eased.
A UN spokesman said the operation was a “distraction from what is actually needed” and urged Israel to reopen all crossings.
The UN and many aid groups have refused to co-operate with GHF’s plans, which they say contradict humanitarian principles and appear to “weaponise aid”.
They have warned that the system will practically exclude those with mobility issues, force further displacement, expose thousands of people to harm, make aid conditional on political and military aims, and set an unacceptable precedent for aid delivery around the world.
Israel says an alternative to the current aid system is needed to stop Hamas stealing aid, which the group denies doing.
In a statement sent to journalists on Monday night, GHF announced that it had “commenced operations in Gaza” and delivered “truck loads of food to its Secure Distribution Sites, where distribution to the Gazan people began”.
“More trucks with aid will be delivered [on Tuesday], with the flow of aid increasing each day,” it added.
Handout photos showed three lorries laden with pallets of supplies at an unspecified location and just over a dozen men carrying away boxes.
The BBC has asked the GHF how many lorry loads of aid got in and how many people were able to pick up aid, but it has not yet received a response.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said in a statement that two distribution sites located in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood of Rafah and the Morag Corridor, which separates the city from the rest of Gaza, had begun operating and distributing food to thousands of families.
Hundreds of Palestinians were seen queueing at the site in Tal al-Sultan, where food parcels were handed out by Palestinian workers.
“We stood in a long queue. We did not deal with the Israeli army or any American staff,” one recipient told a local journalist.
A Palestinian working with one of the local companies involved in the operation told the BBC that “dozens of Palestinian workers from three Palestinian companies are overseeing the distribution process, which runs daily from 09:00 to 19:00”.
The employee, who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media, added: “The distribution is co-ordinated with five American security personnel, who are present on-site, but there are no Israelis involved in the process.”
But many Palestinians stayed away from the sites.
A displaced woman from the neighbouring city of Khan Younis expressed concern about having to cross Israeli military lines to collect aid from the GHF’s sites.
“We have no idea what awaits us there – whether we will return or be lost forever. We are being forced to risk our lives just to feed our children,” she told BBC Arabic’s Middle East Daily radio programme.
A man who was still living in Khan Younis despite an Israeli evacuation order said he would “refuse to accept American aid under these terms”, and warned that it marked the beginning of a “broader strategy of displacement”.
When asked to comment on the GHF’s work by reporters in Geneva, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Jens Laerke, said: “We do not participate in this modality for the reasons that we have given.”
“It is a distraction from what is actually needed, which is the reopening of all the crossings into Gaza, a secure environment within Gaza, and faster facilitation of permissions and final approvals of all the emergency supplies that we have just outside the border,” he added.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation/Handout via ReutersUnder the GHF’s mechanism, Palestinians must collect boxes containing food and basic hygiene items for their families from four distribution sites in southern and central Gaza.
The sites will be secured by American contractors, with Israeli troops patrolling the perimeters. To access them, Palestinians were expected to have to undergo identity checks and screening for involvement with Hamas.
UN and other aid agencies have insisted they will not co-operate with any scheme that fails to respect fundamental humanitarian principles.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former UN humanitarian chief, has described the GHF as “militarised, privatised, politicised”.
“The people behind it are military – ex-CIA, ex-security people. There is a security firm that is going to work closely with one party to the armed conflict, the Israel Defense Forces,” he told the BBC on Monday. “They will have some hubs… where people will be screened according to the needs of one side in this conflict – Israel.”
“We cannot have a party to the conflict decide where, how and who will get the aid,” he added.
On Sunday night, Jake Wood resigned as the GHF’s executive director, saying the group’s aid distribution system could not work in a way that would be able to fulfil the principles of “humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence”.
The GHF’s board rejected the criticism, accusing “those who benefit from the status quo” of being more focused on “tearing this apart than on getting aid in”.
It said the system was fully consistent with humanitarian principles and would feed a million Palestinians – just under half the population – by the end of the week.
John Acree, a former senior manager at USAID – the US government agency responsible for administering foreign aid – has been named interim executive director.
Hamas has warned Palestinians not to co-operate with GHF’s system, saying it would “replace order with chaos, enforce a policy of engineered starvation of Palestinian civilians, and use food as a weapon during wartime”.
GHF’s statement alleged that Hamas had also made “death threats targeting aid groups supporting humanitarian operations at GHF’s Safe Distribution Sites, and efforts to block the Gazan people from accessing aid at the sites”.
ReutersIsrael imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza on 2 March and resumed its military offensive two weeks later, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.
It said the steps were meant to put pressure on the armed group to release the 58 hostages still held in Gaza, up to 23 of whom are believed to be alive.
On 19 May, the Israeli military launched an expanded offensive that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would see troops “take control of all areas” of Gaza. The plan reportedly includes completely clearing the north of civilians and forcibly displacing them to the south.
Netanyahu also said Israel would temporarily ease the blockade and allow a “basic” amount of food into Gaza to prevent a famine, following pressure from allies in the US.
Since then, Israeli authorities say they have allowed at least 665 lorry loads of humanitarian aid, including flour, baby food and medical supplies, into Gaza.
However, the head of the UN’s World Food Programme warned on Sunday that the aid was only a “drop in the bucket” of what was needed in the territory to reverse the catastrophic levels of hunger, amid significant shortages of basic foods and skyrocketing prices.
Half a million people face starvation in the coming months, according to an assessment by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 54,056 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 3,901 over the past 10 weeks, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
May 27 (UPI) — A new U.S.-Israeli mechanism for delivering humanitarian assistance into Gaza that bypasses the United Nations and other aid agencies in favor of armed private contractors was underway on Tuesday.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said Monday it had begun distributing food to residents after lorry loads of supplies had been unloaded at secure hubs in the besieged Palestinian enclave — but did not provide details of quantities or the areas where it was being distributed.
“More trucks with aid will be delivered Tuesday, with the flow of aid increasing each day,” it said in a statement.
However, only around a dozen men with boxes under their arms were shown leaving an unspecified site in accompanying photos, according to the BBC.
Sources, who told The Washington Post that the first shipments went to a facility called Secure Distribution Site One near the so-called Philadelphi Corridor close to the border with Egypt, confirmed that not many people came to receive the aid on offer but that the operation went off without incident.
Under the plan, private contractors will secure supply corridors feeding aid distribution sites, designated by Israel, where pre-security-cleared Palestinians will be handed boxes of food and basic hygiene items weighing as much as 44 pounds. No explanation has been provided on how the elderly or disabled would cope with such loads.
The U.N. and traditional aid agencies reject the scheme, which aims to prevent aid from allegedly being stolen and resold by Hamas to fund its military operations against Israel, saying it goes against humanitarian ethics and “weaponizes” the issue of aid.
GHF Chief Operating Officer David Burke resigned a day after the body’s Executive Director and former U.S. Marine, Jake Wood, resigned, saying the scheme fell short of the central humanitarian tenets of “humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.”
The board of GHF called Wood’s departure two months into the job “disappointing,” but vowed to press on with its work, with the goal of getting aid to more than 1 million people in Gaza by Sunday.
Burke did not immediately comment on his decision to resign from GHF, which is registered as a non-profit in both Switzerland and the U.S. state of Delaware.
GHF’s mission director in Gaza, John Acree, a former United States Agency for International Development official, has been appointed as Wood’s acting replacement.
The start of the GHF mission came a week after Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade after coming under intense international pressure amid warnings of an imminent famine in Gaza, including unprecedented threats of “concrete actions” from Britain, France and Canada.
Aside from practical issues facing the infirm, the injured or children fending for themselves, the international aid community said the scheme would cause more displacement, place thousands of people in harm’s way, link aid to political and military goals and establish an intolerable precedent.
Norwegian Refugee Council General Secretary Jan Egeland called for a return to the tried and tested system developed by the U.N. and international aid agencies over many decades.
He accused GHF of being “militarised, privatised, politicized” and “not in conformity with neutrality.”
Ahmed is a 16-year-old gymnast who lost both his legs in an Israeli attack on Gaza.
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Hamas has agreed to a ceasefire proposal put forth by the United States for Gaza, according to Al Jazeera’s sources, but an American official rejected the claim and said the deal being discussed was “unacceptable” and “disappointing”.
Israeli officials also denied that the proposal was from the US, saying on Monday that no Israeli government could accept it, according to the Reuters news agency.
The conflicting reports came as Israeli forces kept up their relentless bombardment of starving Palestinians in Gaza, and continued to severely restrict the entry of aid into the besieged enclave.
Medical sources say at least 81 people, including many children, were killed in Israel’s attacks on Monday alone.
Al Jazeera’s sources said Hamas and the US’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, agreed to the draft deal at a meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha. They said it includes a 60-day ceasefire, and the release of 10 living captives held in Gaza, over two stages.
US President Donald Trump would guarantee the terms of the deal and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The agreement would also allow for the entry of humanitarian aid, without conditions, from day one, the sources said.
Witkoff, however, rejected the notion that Hamas had accepted his offer for a captive and truce deal, telling Reuters that what he had seen was “completely unacceptable”.
A US source close to Witkoff also told Al Jazeera that Hamas’s claims were “inaccurate” and the deal from the Palestinian group was “disappointing”.
Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC, cited the US official as saying that the proposal on the table is only a “temporary ceasefire agreement” with Israel.
“What this would do is allow for half of the living captives, as well as half of the deceased, to be returned,” she said.
“In turn, the White House believes this would lead towards a diplomatic path of discussions that could result in a permanent ceasefire. And this is the deal that the source tells Al Jazeera is what Hamas should take,” she added.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
In Israel, meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a recorded message on social media, promising to bring back the 58 Israeli captives remaining in Gaza, of whom some 20 are believed to still be alive.
“If we don’t achieve it today, we will achieve it tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. We are not giving up,” Netanyahu said.
“We intend to bring them all back, the living and the dead,” he added.
The Israeli leader made no mention of the proposed deal.
Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from the Jordanian capital, Amman, said Netanyahu has long rejected Hamas’s calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and pledged to continue the war until “total victory” is achieved against the Palestinian group.
“The Israeli premier has even added new red lines for what to him would bring an end of the war,” Salhut said.
“That includes the return of the Israeli captives, the demilitarisation of Hamas [and] the exile of military and political leaders. And, also, the implementation of Trump’s plan for Gaza. This is a plan that has been widely condemned as ethnic cleansing, and the White House even walked it back several months ago,” she said.
“But Netanyahu says that’s what he wants if there is to be an end of the war.”
For its part, Hamas has said it is willing to free the remaining captives all at once in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. It has also said it is willing to cede control of the Gaza Strip to an interim government, as proposed in an Arab League-backed $53bn plan for the enclave’s reconstruction.
The Palestinian group, however, has refused to lay down arms or exile its leaders from Gaza, saying the demand is a “red line” as long as Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory continues.
In Gaza, Palestinians said they were desperate for any deal to bring an end to Israel’s relentless bombardment and blockade, which has left the enclave’s entire population on the brink of famine.
“All Palestinian eyes are on Doha,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
“Since Israel resumed the war, Palestinians have been attacked in their homes, schools, makeshift tents and also in so-called safe humanitarian zones… They are also saying they are not able to even secure one meal for their families,” Khoudary said.
“Palestinians here are saying they do not have any options left, and they are trying to survive the Israeli air strikes and the mass starvation that has been imposed on them.”
Israel resumed the war on Gaza on March 18, two weeks after imposing a total blockade on the enclave.
Health authorities in Gaza say at least 3,822 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s renewed offensive, and the confirmed overall death toll has now reached 53,977. Some 122,966 people have been wounded.
Israel eased its blockade last week, saying it has let in some 170 aid trucks into Gaza, but humanitarian officials say they are nowhere near the amount needed to feed the enclave’s two million people after 11 weeks of a total siege.
Spain hosts key European and Arab nations to pressure Israel to halt Gaza assault.
The Madrid Group has convened in Spain’s capital for a fifth time, in a meeting attended by major European and Arab nations.
Pressure on Israel this year has been ramped up, with Spain calling for an arms embargo on Israel and the imposition of sanctions on individuals who obstruct a two-state solution to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The United Kingdom has paused trade talks and sanctioned a number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Canada and France have also threatened punitive measures.
And the European Union – Israel’s biggest trade partner – is reviewing its landmark Association Agreement covering trade and political dialogue.
But after 20 months of Israel’s destruction of Gaza, why is this happening now?
And without changes on the ground for Palestinians, are these actions anything more than diplomatically symbolic?
Presenter: Tom McRae
Guests:
Lynn Boylan – Member of European Parliament, and chair of the delegation of relations with Palestine
Mouin Rabbani – Non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies
Saul Takahashi – Former deputy head of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in occupied Palestine
1 of 3 | An displaced Palestinian woman stands among the rubble of her destroyed family shelter after an Israeli airstrike in Al Jerjawi school in the Al Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City onMonday. Photo by Mohammed Saber/EPA-EFE
May 26 (UPI) — Dozens of Palestinians were killed overnight by further Israeli air strikes on the war-torn enclave amid a breakdown in a new cease-fire agreement.
An estimated 54 Palestinians sheltering at Fahmi Al-Jargawi School in Gaza City have been killed by airstrikes carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces, the BBC reported Monday.
The scores of dead refugees included children from Beit Lahia after fires were seen engulfing two classrooms fixed as living quarters in the school, which was housing hundreds of people, according to the Hamas-run civil defense authority.
At least 35 were reported to be killed when the school was hit.
Video footage depicted fire engulfing parts of the school and graphic images of severely burned victims, including kids.
On Monday morning, the IDF said it hit 200 “terrorist organizations” across the Gaza Strip in 28 hours as military ops carried on.
The IDF claimed it targeted a “Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control center” in an area used by “terrorists” to presumably “plan” attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops, accusing Hamas of using the Gaza population “as human shields.”
Meanwhile, a senior Hamas official told the BBC that the terror syndicate agreed to the latest cease-fire deal.
The proposal permitted the release in two phases of 10 Israel hostages in exchange for a 70-day truce, a gradual withdrawal of IDF troops out of the territory and release of an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas further demanded the entrance of 1,000 humanitarian aid trucks a day to aid the ailing population in Gaza.
However, a senior Israeli official said Monday that it had rejected the cease-fire proposal after reports that Israel had agreed to it in principle.
“The proposal received by Israel cannot be accepted by any responsible government,” the official told The Times of Israel without providing further detail, claiming that Hamas was setting “impossible conditions that mean a complete failure to meet the war goals, and an inability to release the hostages.”
On Sunday, IDF officials claimed that since its war began, Israel has “facilitated” the entry of over 1.7 million tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
On Monday, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories office — a unit of its Ministry of Defense — claimed that 107 humanitarian aid trucks transporting flour and food were transferred into Gaza “following inspection” via the Kerem Shalom Crossing.
But according to international human rights organizations, Gaza is at a “breaking point” while the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification has warned of imminent famine on top of reputable accusations of genocide by Israel against Palestinians.
Nearly 54,000 people, including at least 16,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its invasion, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Videos show right-wing Israelis attacking Palestinians, chanting anti-Muslim slogans and storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Israel’s “Jerusalem Day,” marking the occupation of the city in 1967.
Published On 26 May 202526 May 2025
Israeli attacks on land, wells and greenhouses are exacerbating the already critical risk of famine in Gaza, the FAO says.
Less than five percent of the Gaza Strip’s cropland is able to be cultivated, according to a new geospatial assessment from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
The FAO described the situation as “alarming” on Monday, warning that the destruction of agricultural infrastructure amid Israel’s war on Gaza is “further deteriorating food production capacity and exacerbating the risk of famine”.
The joint assessment found that more than 80 percent of Gaza’s total cropland has been damaged, while 77.8 percent of that land is now inaccessible to farmers. Only 688 hectares (1,700 acres), or 4.6 percent of cropland, remains available for cultivation.
The destruction has extended to Gaza’s greenhouses and water sources, with 71.2 percent of greenhouses and 82.8 percent of agricultural wells also damaged.
“This level of destruction is not just a loss of infrastructure – it is a collapse of Gaza’s agrifood system and of lifelines,” said Beth Bechdol, FAO’s deputy director-general.
“What once provided food, income, and stability for hundreds of thousands is now in ruins. With cropland, greenhouses, and wells destroyed, local food production has ground to a halt. Rebuilding will require massive investment – and a sustained commitment to restore both livelihoods and hope.”
The findings follow the release of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis earlier this month, which warned that Gaza’s entire population is facing a critical risk of famine after 19 months of war, mass displacement, and severe restrictions on humanitarian aid.
While Israel announced last week that it would allow “minimal” aid deliveries into Gaza, humanitarian organisations have warned that the trickle of supplies is failing to reach Gaza’s starving population.
Meanwhile, Israeli air attacks continue to kill dozens of Palestinians every day in Gaza.
On Monday, Israeli forces bombed a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, sparking a fire and killing at least 36 Palestinians, including several children.
More than 50 people were killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave since dawn, according to health officials.
A Palestinian child was filmed trying to escape a fire caused by an Israeli strike on a school housing displaced people.
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An NGO backed by Israel and the United States has announced that it is set to start distributing aid in besieged Gaza, despite its chief walking out, citing concerns over its independence.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said in a statement on Monday that it is set to launch direct aid delivery in the battered enclave, hours after its executive director, Jake Wood, announced his resignation.
GHF, which has been tapped to distribute food, medicine and other vital supplies that have been blocked by the Israeli military for two months, said that it aims to deliver aid to 1 million Palestinians in the territory by the end of the week.
The NGO said it then plans to “scale rapidly to serve the full population in the weeks ahead”.
Israel said last week it would allow “minimal” aid deliveries into Gaza, where aid agencies warn of widespread famine and multiple deaths from starvation, but reports suggest that the few supplies that have entered the enclave have reached Gaza’s starving population of 2.3 million.
The United Nations and other aid agencies have refused to work with GHF, warning that the conditions under which it will work, including requiring Palestinians to gather at centralised aid points, will put people at risk and undermine other aid efforts.
Wood announced his resignation on Sunday, citing concerns over GHF’s independence.
The organisation could not adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon,” he said in a statement, and called for Israel to allow the entry of more aid.
The GHF board, in a statement, said it was “disappointed” by the resignation but remained committed to expanding aid efforts across the Strip.
A spokesperson for the US State Department also said it remained supportive of the NGO.
Wood’s departure follows growing criticism of GHF’s operational structure and independence.
The NGO, which claims it has been based in Geneva since February, emerged from “private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government”, according to The New York Times.
The UN and major humanitarian organisations have raised concerns that the GHF’s operations could undermine existing relief efforts, as well as restrict food access to limited areas of Gaza, which would force civilians to walk long distances to access aid and cross Israeli military lines.
There is also a worry that the GHF’s distribution plans, which the US and Israel say are designed to prevent Hamas from controlling aid, could be used to advance an Israeli objective of depopulating northern Gaza by concentrating aid in the south.
The controversy over the GHF unfolds against a backdrop of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, 1.95 million people – 93 percent of Gaza’s population – are facing acute levels of food insecurity, or not having enough to eat.
Aid agencies have described the crisis as a man-made famine, and have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.
Robert Patman, a professor of international relations at the University of Otago in New Zealand, told Al Jazeera that Wood’s resignation reflected the lack of support from established humanitarian bodies for GHF.
“It’s no secret that major aid donors had not been convinced by this proposal, which is essentially a start-up,” he said.
Patman also noted that many humanitarian actors argue that there is “no need for a new humanitarian organisation”, stressing that the international community should instead focus on lifting the Israeli blockade on Gaza.
Joseph Neumeyer, who is also a German citizen, approached the building on May 19 with Molotov cocktails, officials say.
A dual United States and German citizen has been arrested on charges that he travelled to Israel and attempted to firebomb the branch office of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, federal prosecutors in New York have said.
Israeli officials deported Joseph Neumeyer to New York on Saturday and he had an initial court appearance before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Sunday. His criminal complaint was unsealed on Sunday.
Prosecutors say Neumeyer walked up to the embassy building on May 19 with a backpack containing Molotov cocktails, but got into a confrontation with a guard and eventually ran away, dropping his backpack as the guard tried to detain him.
Law enforcement then tracked Neumeyer down to a hotel a few blocks away from the embassy and arrested him, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York.
“This defendant is charged with planning a devastating attack targeting our embassy in Israel, threatening death to Americans, and [US] President [Donald] Trump’s life,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “The Department will not tolerate such violence and will prosecute this defendant to the fullest extent of the law.”
Neumeyer’s court-appointed attorney, Jeff Dahlberg, declined to comment.
The attack took place against the backdrop of Israel’s ongoing deadly war on Gaza, now in its 19th month. Nearly 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in the blockaded enclave, where a famine is now looming as Israeli forces continue to seal vital border crossings and uphold a crippling blockade on humanitarian aid including food, medicine, and fuel.
Neumeyer, 28, who is originally from Colorado and has dual US and German citizenship, had travelled from the US to Canada in early February and then arrived in Israel in late April, according to court records.
He had made a series of threatening social media posts before attempting the attack, prosecutors said.
During his first term, Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital despite Palestinian objections, in a move that has not been recognised by the international community. He also moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.