Israel-Palestine conflict

According to Oxfam, nearly 150,000 people in the Netherlands called for the government to do more against the war in Gaza.

Tens of thousands of pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered in the Netherlands to oppose Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and to call on the government to take a stronger stance, as nearly 55,300 Palestinians have now been killed in the more than 20-month-long war.

On Saturday, huge crowds of people marched through the streets of The Hague for the second time in four weeks towards the International Court of Justice.

Rights groups, who were among the organisers of the rally, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, said the demonstration aimed to create a symbolic “red line” that they say the government has failed to set to halt Israel’s war on Gaza and its Palestinian population.

Demonstrators sang, delivered speeches and marched past the courthouse, which is hearing a case by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide during its war on the besieged enclave.

Michiel Servaes, director of Oxfam Novib, said “more than 150,000 people” attended the protest calling for “concrete sanctions to stop the genocide in Gaza”.

Reporting from The Hague, Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen said that the large turnout was proof that more people in the Netherlands reject their government’s support for Israel.

“While there is much frustration about the lack of action, protesters here say the focus should remain on the continuing genocide in Gaza despite Israel’s efforts to distract attention,” Vaessen said, adding that protesters also called for Israel to stop its attacks on Iran.

Prime Minister Dick Schoof said that the “unprecedented” thousands of people in The Hague raised their voices with “concerns, anger and frustration”.

“The Netherlands remains committed to stopping the violence and ending the humanitarian blockade. We are constantly looking at how we can be most effective with our efforts, both in front of and behind the scenes, to improve the situation on the ground,” Schoof wrote on X.

“To all those people in The Hague, I say: ‘We see you and we hear you.’ Our goal is ultimately the same: to end the suffering in Gaza as soon as possible,” he added.

Salih el Saddy, a medical doctor protesting, told Al Jazeera that as a doctor, it’s “very painful to watch” the scenes from Gaza.

Pro-Palestine protests also were taking place in Belgium, Turkiye, Brazil, and Greece, all calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza.

“We are in an existential war” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the site of the Iranian missile strike that targeted a residential block in Bat Yam, Israel. Netanyahu called the attacks an existential threat and warned of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Israel pounds Iran – and Iran strikes back, hitting Tel Aviv.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, Israel has damaged Iran, not just at home, but also outside its territory – by striking its allies.

Hezbollah‘s leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in Beirut, the Houthis in Yemen have taken hits, as well as militias in Iraq.

Israel struck Iranian interests in Syria and Tehran’s ally, former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, was deposed.

Hamas’ leadership has also been decimated, including in assassinations carried out in Tehran.

So is Iran now fighting from a weakened position?

Presenter: Cyril Vanier

Guests:

Ronnie Chatah, Political commentator, writer and host of The Beirut Banyan podcast.

Setareh Sadeqi – Professor at the University of Tehran’s Faculty of World Studies.

David DesRoches, Professor of National Defense University and former Pentagon director of Arabian Peninsula Affairs.

Israeli fire and air strikes have killed at least 58 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, many of them near an aid distribution site operated by the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to local health authorities, the latest deaths of people desperately seeking food for their hungry families.

Medics at al-Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals in central Gaza, where most of the casualties were moved to, said at least 15 people were killed on Saturday as they tried to approach the GHF aid distribution site near the so-called Netzarim Corridor.

The rest were killed in separate attacks across the besieged and bombarded enclave, they added. Since the GHF started operations last month, at least 274 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded near aid distribution sites, according to a statement by the Gaza Ministry of Health.

The GHF said they were closed on Saturday. But witnesses said thousands of people had gathered near the sites anyway, desperate for food as Israel’s punishing 15-week blockade and military campaign have driven the territory to the brink of famine.

‘Execution sites’

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Palestinians are starting to see GHF distribution hubs as “execution sites,” considering the repeated attacks there. But people in Gaza “have run out of options, and they are forced to travel to these dangerous humanitarian spaces to get aid”.

Israel imposed a full humanitarian blockade on Gaza on March 2 for 11 weeks, cutting off food, medical supplies and other aid.

It began allowing small amounts of aid into the enclave in late May following international pressure, but humanitarian organisations say it is only a tiny fraction of the aid that is needed.

There has been no immediate comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s incidents.

The GHF – a United States and Israel-backed organisation led by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical Christian who advised US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – began distributing food packages in Gaza on May 27, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral.

Israel and the United States say the new system is intended to replace the UN-run network. They have accused Hamas, without providing evidence, of siphoning off the UN-provided aid and reselling it to fund its military activities.

Israel has also admitted to backing armed gangs in Gaza, known for criminal activities, to undermine Hamas. These groups have been blamed for looting aid.

UN officials deny Hamas has diverted significant amounts of aid and say the new system is unable to meet mounting needs. They say it has militarised aid by allowing Israel to decide who has access and by forcing Palestinians to travel long distances or relocate again after waves of displacement.

Later on Saturday, the Israeli military ordered residents of Khan Younis and the nearby towns of Abasan and Bani Suheila in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and head west towards the so-called humanitarian zone area, saying it would forcefully work against “terror organizations” in the area.

More than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip is now within the Israeli-militarised zone, under forced displacement orders, or where these overlap, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The UN estimates that nearly 665,000 people have been displaced yet again since Israel broke the ceasefire in February.

Israel’s war on Gaza and its population has killed more than 55,290 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the densely populated Strip, which is home to more than two million people. Most of the population is displaced and malnutrition is widespread.

Despite efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to restore a ceasefire in Gaza, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, including that Israel implement a permanent ceasefire and not restart the war.

The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Friday after Israeli attacks on Iran. China and Russia condemned the bombings, while Israel’s allies, including France, doubled down on support for Israel.

Authorities in both Egypt and Libya have stopped activists seeking to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza, protest organisers have said, with reports of more detentions and deportations taking place.

“Forty participants of the Global March to Gaza have had their passports taken at a checkpoint on the way out of Cairo,” the organisers of the Global March to Gaza said in a statement on Friday.

“They are being held in the heat and not allowed to move,” they continued, adding that another “15 are being held at hotels”.

The activists are from France, Spain, Canada, Turkiye and the United Kingdom, it said, adding, “We are a peaceful movement and we are complying with Egyptian law.”

The group urged embassies to help secure their release so they could complete their voyage.

Activists arrived in Egypt this week for the Global March to Gaza, a grassroots initiative aiming to pressure Israel to allow the delivery of aid and humanitarian supplies to Gaza’s starving population.

Organisers said that participants from 80 countries were set to begin their march towards Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza, with about 4,000 activists expected to take part.

The overland protest was to coincide with other solidarity efforts, including a boat carrying aid and activists that was intercepted by the Israeli military earlier this week as it attempted to reach Gaza.

Detentions and deportations

According to plans outlined by organisers, participants were to travel by bus to El Arish, a city in the heavily securitised Sinai Peninsula, before walking the final 50km (30 miles) to Rafah. Protesters intended to camp near the border before returning to Cairo on June 19.

However, Egyptian police stopped several groups of foreign nationals en route, forcing vehicles to pull over roughly 30km (20 miles) from Ismailia, just outside the Sinai. Activists said police ordered passengers with non-Egyptian passports to disembark, blocking their passage to Rafah.

Paul Murphy, an independent Irish member of parliament, who has travelled to Egypt to take part, said in a post on X, “We have had our passports confiscated and are being detained. It seems Egyptian authorities have decided to crack down on the Great March To Gaza.”

Mo, a member of the protest march from the Netherlands, said that his group had headed in taxis to Ismailia, but that at a checkpoint near the city foreigners were told to hand over their passports, with only Egyptians allowed through. He also described riot police who came to clear the road of protesters.

Now back in Cairo, Mo and the group from the Netherlands are deciding what to do next.

“We are trying to regroup,” he told Al Jazeera. “A lot of our group is splintered, some have been beaten up by the police… so they’re coming back battered and bruised and broken.”

“It seems like the Egyptian authorities are determined to stop us from reaching anywhere near the border.”

Security sources told the Reuters news agency that at least 88 individuals had been detained or deported from Cairo airport and other locations across the country.

Three airport sources told Reuters that at least 73 foreign nationals were deported on a flight to Istanbul for violating entry protocols, with about 100 more still awaiting deportation at the airport.

Officials at Cairo International Airport said new directives were issued to airlines requiring all passengers travelling to Egypt between June 12 and 16 to hold confirmed return tickets, Reuters reported.

Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that any visits to the Rafah border area must be coordinated in advance with Egyptian embassies or official bodies, citing security concerns in the Sinai.

Organisers of the march maintain they coordinated the trip with authorities and called on the government to release those detained.

Convoy blocked in Libya

Separately, a land convoy known as “Soumoud”, which had departed Tunisia carrying activists from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania, was stopped on Friday morning at the entrance to Sirte, a city in Libya under the control of forces loyal to military commander Khalifa Haftar.

“The caravan was barred from passing through at the entrance to the city of Sirte,” Tunisian organiser Wael Naouar said in a video posted on Facebook.

Naouar said the convoy needs Egyptian authorisation to reach Gaza but had received mixed messages from local security officials. “Some told us we could cross in a few hours. Others insisted that ‘Egypt has denied [passage] and therefore you will not pass,’” he said.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to block demonstrators from entering Gaza from Egypt, claiming people involved were “jihadist protesters”.

“I expect the Egyptian authorities to prevent them from reaching the Egypt-Israel border and not allow them to carry out provocations and try to enter Gaza,” he added.

It comes as Israel continues its relentless air strikes on Gaza, while severely restricting the flow of aid, including food, water, and medical supplies, as humanitarian experts warn that the enclave could fall into full-scale famine unless Israel lifts the blockade.

The Trump administration has argued that Khalil, a Columbia University student, did not disclose past affiliations.

A United States federal judge has allowed the administration of President Donald Trump to keep student protester Mahmoud Khalil in custody based on allegations of immigration fraud.

On Friday, Judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, ruled that Khalil’s legal team had not adequately shown why his detention on the charge would be unlawful.

It was a major setback for Khalil, who had been a negotiator for the student protesters at Columbia University demonstrating against Israel’s war on Gaza. He was the first high-profile protester to be arrested under Trump’s campaign to expel foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Just this week, Farbiarz appeared poised to order Khalil’s release, on the basis that his detention under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was unconstitutional.

That law stipulates that the secretary of state – in this case, Marco Rubio – has the power to remove foreign nationals who have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”. But Farbiarz ruled that Rubio’s use of the law violated Khalil’s freedom of speech.

Still, the Trump administration filed additional court papers saying it had another reason for wanting to deport Khalil.

It alleged that Khalil, a permanent US resident, had omitted information from his green-card application that would have otherwise disqualified him from gaining residency.

The Trump administration has long accused Khalil of supporting terrorism through his protest-related activities, something the former graduate student has vehemently denied.

In the case of his green-card application, it argues that Khalil failed to disclose his work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a humanitarian organisation. Politicians in Israel and the US have accused UNRWA of ties to the armed group Hamas, an allegation reportedly made without evidence.

Khalil, however, has denied he was ever an “officer” in UNRWA, as alleged. Instead, his legal team points out that he completed a United Nations internship through Columbia University.

The Trump administration also argues that Khalil did not accurately identify the length of his employment with the Syria Office of the British Embassy in Beirut. Khalil and his legal team, meanwhile, say he accurately identified his departure date from the job as December 2022.

Judge Farbiarz had set Friday morning as a deadline for the Trump administration to appeal Khalil’s release on bail. But that deadline was extended to give the government more time to challenge Khalil’s release.

Ultimately, Farbiarz allowed the Trump administration to continue its detention of Khalil. He advised Khalil’s lawyers to seek release on bail from the immigration court where his deportation trial is being held in Louisiana.

Farbiarz had been weighing a separate habeas corpus petition from the Khalil team that called into question the constitutionality of his continued detention.

Marc Van Der Hout, a lawyer for Khalil, told the Reuters news agency that immigration fraud charges are exceedingly rare, and the Trump administration’s use of such charges was simply a political manoeuvre to keep Khalil in lock-up.

“Detaining someone on a charge like this is highly unusual and frankly outrageous,” said Van Der Hout. “There continues to be no constitutional basis for his detention.”

Another lawyer representing Khalil, Amy Greer, described the new allegations against his green-card application as part of the government’s “cruel, transparent delay tactics”. She noted that Khalil, a new father whose child was born in April, would miss his first Father’s Day, which falls this Sunday in the US.

“Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians,” Greer said in a statement.

“It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”

Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear and military sites mark a significant escalation in regional tensions, and may reshape Tehran’s nuclear calculus.

The coordinated strikes killed several senior military and security officials, including the head of Iran’s military Mohammad Bagheri, and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Salami.

“One of the concerns in attacking the nuclear sites has been that setbacks could lead Iran to reconstitute their operations with a more determined effort to obtain a nuclear deterrent,” said Ali Vaez, an expert on Iran for the International Crisis Group (ICG).

Sceptics validated

Iran has long had an internal debate among reformers and hardliners about whether to reach an agreement with the United States on its nuclear programme.

“[The attacks] likely confirmed the position of hardliners and ultra hardliners who said that Iran was wasting its time to try and negotiate with the West … they said Iran can never negotiate from a position of weakness and appeasement,” said Reza H Akbari, an analyst on Iran and the Middle East and North Africa Programme Manager at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

Talks between Iran and the US have suffered from a large trust deficit after President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear deal between Iran and several Western nations, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), during his first term in 2018.

The JCPOA was orchestrated by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council in 2015.

It aimed to monitor Iran’s nuclear programme to ensure it did not approach weaponisation levels. In exchange, some sanctions were lifted from Iran.

While the deal was lauded as an achievement of diplomacy, Israel disapproved of the JCPOA. Ten years later, the US and Iran appeared interested in striking another similar deal.

The former ostensibly did not want to get dragged into a regional war as tensions mounted across the Middle East, while the latter was again looking for much-needed sanction relief.

But Israel’s strikes on Iran, which were reportedly planned months in advance and with US approval, have scuttled any diplomatic solution in the short term, said Akbari.

“It’s hard to imagine that someone in the shoes of Iran’s supreme leader [Ali Khamenei] is not taking the side of hardliners after this,” he told Al Jazeera.

No other options

In response to Israel’s strikes, Iran has launched drones and ballistic missiles at Israel, with some hitting targets on the ground.

In the past, Iran’s deterrence against external aggression relied primarily on its self-described “Axis of Resistance”.

The axis consisted of powerful armed groups across the region, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as well as Syria under former President Bashar al-Assad.

However, Hezbollah’s capabilities were degraded significantly during the peak of its recent war with Israel, which lasted from September to late November last year.

Al-Assad’s fall in December, the culmination of a more than decade-long civil war in Syria, also compromised Iran’s ability to resupply Hezbollah through Syria, as it used to do.

Trump is now exploiting Iran’s weakness by urging it to capitulate to a deal that would see it give up its nuclear programme, said Michael Stephens, an expert on regional response to Iran’s nuclear programme with the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI), a defence think tank.

On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran must make a deal before there is “nothing left” of the country and that the next Israeli attacks will be even “more brutal”.

Later that evening, Israel carried out more air strikes on Iran’s military sites and nuclear facilities.

“There are no good options for [Iran] really,” said Stephens.

“Either Khamenei … orders his negotiators to compromise on the nuclear file or … he holds firm [and] more sites are hit and further targeted assassinations of high-level officials take place,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Either way, if Iran decides to sprint towards a bomb, it’s going to be very, very difficult to do that now,” he added.

Last stand

Despite Iran’s military weakness compared with the US and Israel, it is wary of giving up its nuclear programme, analysts told Al Jazeera.

Negar Mortazavi, an expert on Iran with the Centre for International Policy (CIP), said Iranian officials have long referred to the fate of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who agreed to give up his nuclear weapons programme in exchange for US sanction relief in 2003.

The deal came after the US President George W Bush had launched his so-called “War on Terror” after the September 11, 2001, attacks, which led to the invasion and prolonged occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the time, Bush warned his partners and foes in the region that they were either “with us or against us”.

Eight years after Gaddafi gave up his nuclear programme, the US backed a pro-democracy uprising in Libya, which spiralled into an armed rebellion and led to Gaddafi’s overthrow and eventual death.

“The [Libya] scenario is something that Iran has taken notice of, and they don’t want to go down that path,” Mortazavi explained.

She added that Iran may likely pull out from the JCPOA and try to quickly expand its nuclear programme in reaction to Israel’s ongoing assault.

“Just how far and how soon Iran will expand its nuclear programme is unclear,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.

UN spokesman says Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is not delivering supplies safely to those in need.

The United Nations says the Israeli- and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is a “failure” from a humanitarian perspective.

Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said aid operations have stalled because the GHF is not delivering supplies safely to those in need.

“GHF, I think it’s fair to say, has been, from a principled humanitarian standpoint, a failure,” Laerke told reporters in Geneva on Friday. “They are not doing what a humanitarian operation should do, which is providing aid to people where they are, in a safe and secure manner.”

The UN and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, citing concerns that it prioritises Israeli military objectives over humanitarian needs.

The newly formed private organisation began operations on May 26 after Israel had completely cut off supplies into Gaza for more than two months, sparking warnings of mass famine.

It says it has distributed more than 18 million meals since then.

On Friday, more than 30 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera’s Tariq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said Israeli forces were targeting parts of Khan Younis in southern Gaza with artillery fire and ground attacks.

“The Israeli military is deepening its ground operations,” Azzoum said, saying there were clashes in the eastern part of the city.

The besieged territory remained under a communications blackout for a second day on Friday. Hamas has denounced what it described as an Israeli decision to cut communication lines in Gaza, calling it “a new aggressive step” in the country’s “war of extermination”.

Israel continues to force civilians into what it calls the “safe zone” of al-Mawasi, a barren coastal strip with no infrastructure, which it has repeatedly bombed. A drone strike on a tent there killed at least two people on Friday.

The attack left “everyone on the ground quite confused about where they can go in order to find safety”, Azzoum said.

Israel locks down occupied West Bank

In the occupied West Bank, Israel sealed all crossings and checkpoints between Palestinian towns and cities early on Friday, shortly after it launched a wave of air strikes on targets in Iran.

Sources told Al Jazeera the closures were imposed without any indication of when they might be lifted.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its ambulances were being denied access to patients, including those in urgent need of medical care.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces closed Al-Aqsa Mosque, preventing Palestinians from attending Friday prayers.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa held an emergency cabinet meeting in response and activated crisis committees across the West Bank.

Israel’s far-right finance minister says he wants to cut Palestinian banks off from the global financial system.

Bezalel Smotrich’s plan has not yet been approved by the Israeli government.

But if it does happen, what could the consequences be?

Presenter: 

Cyril Vanier

Guests: 

Raja Khalidi – Director-general at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute

Shahd Hammouri – Lecturer in international law at the University of Kent

Mustafa Barghouti – Secretary-general at the Palestinian National Initiative

On June 9, Israeli forces seized the Madleen ship in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea as it attempted to break the suffocating siege on Gaza.

The 12 activists on board – who belong to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition – were abducted in international waters and taken to Israel.

One day after their capture, four of them were swiftly deported after waiving their right to see an Israeli judge and signing a deportation order that claimed they had “illegally” entered Israel. Well-known Swedish climate and human rights activist, Greta Thunberg, was among those deported.

The other eight refused to sign and remained in detention. On Thursday, six of them were deported, including Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament.

Another two French nationals remain in Israeli custody awaiting deportation on Friday, according to Adalah, a nonprofit legal association in Israel.

This is everything you need to know about their treatment.

Who are the 12 activists?

On Tuesday, Israel deported Thunberg (Sweden), Sergio Toribio (Spain), Baptiste Andre (France) and Omar Faiad (France). Faiad is a reporter with Al Jazeera Mubasher.

On Thursday, six more were deported, including Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, Mark van Rennes (Netherlands), Suayb Ordu (Turkiye), Yasemin Acar (Germany), Thiago Avila (Brazil) and Reva Viard (France), according to Adalah, cited by Turkish news agency Anadolu.

French nationals Pascal Maurieras and Yanis Mhamdi remain in detention and are expected to be released on Friday, according to Adalah. Mhamdi is a journalist for The Blast, a French left-wing outlet.

Where were the activists held?

In Givon prison in Ramla, a city between West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Two of the activists, Hassan and Avila, were placed in solitary confinement, according to Adalah.

Hassan was taken there after first writing “Free Palestine” on the prison walls. Adalah later reported that Avila began a hunger and water strike to protest Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which has led to widespread starvation.

Hassan was later returned to Givon, said Adalah.

After Thursday’s release of Hassan and Avila, along with four others from the Madleen, Adalah released a statement saying that “volunteers were subjected to mistreatment, punitive measures and aggressive treatment, and two volunteers were held for some period of time in solitary confinement”.

Did Israel violate international law by arresting the activists on the Madleen?

According to Luigi Daniele, a legal scholar at the University of Molise, Italy, Israel has no right to intercept a boat in international waters or to deny aid to starving civilians in Gaza.

On the contrary, Israel has an international legal obligation as an occupying power to facilitate aid into Gaza.

He told a local Italian outlet that Israel, above all, has no legal right to use force or permanent aggression on occupied Palestinian territory, including against the activists who were sailing to Gaza on the Madleen.

Adalah has also argued that the activists were not trying to enter Israel illegally, but were sailing to Gaza, which is occupied Palestinian land.

Israeli courts dismissed the legal arguments made by Adalah.

How long will the remaining two activists remain in detention?

The Madleen activists are supposed to serve 72 hours in the Israeli prison before being deported back to their home countries, according to Israeli law.

This indicates all activists should have been released at some point on June 12, yet it is unclear if the remaining detainees – Maurieras and Mhamdi – will face additional charges that could keep them longer in prison.

Have embassies lobbied for their release?

Some have, while others have been curiously silent.

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, said earlier this week that he expected the four French activists who were on board the Madleen to return to France on Thursday or Friday. As of Thursday, two remained in detention.

Brazil had also demanded the release of Brazilian activist, Avila. When the activists were first abducted from international waters, Brazilian diplomats reportedly visited Givon prison to assist with legal proceedings.

In addition, Turkiye called Israel a “terrorist state” after the Madleen was intercepted.

Germany and the Netherlands, however, did not issue public statements to demand the release of their nationals.

The Madleen’s captain, Mark van Reenes, deported on Thursday, is a Dutch national who filmed himself just before Israel seized the ship.

In the video, he called on his country to urgently demand his release.

UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, also posted on X that “the silence of [European Union] institutions over the unlawful detention and punitive conditions imposed on EU citizens including [Hassan] speaks volumes to the deep roots of Israelism in European institutional culture”.

At least 26 people were killed in Israeli drone strikes while waiting for basic aid distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Israeli attacks have killed at least 42 people across Gaza since dawn, medical sources told Al Jazeera, as the United Nations General Assembly prepares for a vote urging an unconditional ceasefire in the besieged enclave.

Sources told Al Jazeera that at least 26 of the people killed on Thursday died in Israeli drone attacks while waiting for food and basic supplies being distributed by the controversial United States and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Gaza civil defence official Mohammed el-Mougher told AFP news agency that al-Awda Hospital received at least 10 bodies and about 200 others who were wounded “after Israeli drones dropped multiple bombs on gatherings of civilians near an aid distribution point around the Netzarim checkpoint in central Gaza”.

El-Mougher said that Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital also received six bodies after Israeli attacks on aid queues near Netzarim and in the as-Sudaniya area in northwestern Gaza.

Since the GHF began its operation in Gaza in late May, dozens of Palestinians have been killed while trying to reach the aid distribution points, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency.

The previously unknown GHF has come under intense criticism from the United Nations, which says its distribution model is deeply flawed.

“This model will not address the deepening hunger. The dystopian ‘Hunger Games’ cannot become the new reality,” Philippe Lazzarini, the chief of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), wrote on X.

“The UN including @UNRWA has the knowledge, expertise & community trust to provide dignified & safe assistance. Just let the humanitarians do their jobs,” he added.

Separately, a medical source at al-Shifa Hospital told Al Jazeera that two Palestinians were killed as a result of Israeli shelling targeting the Bir an-Naaja area west of Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas condemned on Thursday the decision of Israel to cut off communication lines in Gaza, describing it as “a new aggressive step” in the country’s “war of extermination”.

“We call on the international community to assume its responsibility to stop the aggression and ensure the protection of civilians and humanitarian and civilian facilities.”

The disruption of communications has resulted in the UNRWA losing contact with its colleagues in the agency in Gaza, the UN’s main humanitarian provider in Gaza said.

The latest developments come as the UN General Assembly is set to vote on a draft resolution that demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza.

The 193-member General Assembly is likely to adopt the text with overwhelming support, diplomats say, despite Israel lobbying countries this week against taking part in what it called a “politically motivated, counterproductive charade”.

Last week, the United States vetoed a similar effort in the Security Council.

“Food has become an opportunity for killing, I’ve never heard of such a thing”

Former UN aid chief Martin Griffiths slammed Israel’s killing of Palestinians seeking aid. In an interview with Al Jazeera, he said the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was luring people to their deaths.

In a speech to Israel’s parliament, the Argentinian leader criticised Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s advocacy for Palestinian rights.

Argentinian President Javier Milei has announced that his country will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem next year, as the populist leader signalled his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly isolated government.

Argentina’s embassy is currently located in Herzliya, just outside Tel Aviv. But in a speech to Israel’s parliament on Wednesday, staunchly pro-Israel Milei said he was “proud to announce” his country will move its “embassy to the city of west Jerusalem” in 2026.

“Argentina stands by you in these difficult days,” Milei said.

“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about a large part of the international community that is being manipulated by terrorists and turning victims into perpetrators,” he told the Knesset.

The Argentinian leader, currently on his second state visit to Israel since taking office in 2023, said Buenos Aires will continue to demand that Israeli captives held in Gaza be released, including four with Argentinian citizenship taken during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack.

Milei also criticised Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was detained and deported by Israeli authorities this week after being taken with other activists from a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza.

Thunberg has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and deliberate starvation of the territory’s Palestinian population.

“[Thunberg] became a hired gun for a bit of media attention, claiming that she was kidnapped when there are really hostages in subhuman conditions in Gaza,” Milei said, according to a translation of his remarks from Spanish provided by the Knesset.

Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, with the overall death toll after more than 20 months of war surpassing 55,000 Palestinians.

Delicate issue

Milei had pledged to move Argentina’s embassy during his first visit in February 2024, in which he also prayed at the Western Wall, a revered religious site for Jews in Jerusalem.

Speaking in advance of Milei’s address to parliament this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu said “the city of Jerusalem will never be divided again”.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most delicate issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, with Israel claiming the entirety of the ancient city as its capital, while Palestine claims its occupied eastern sector as the site of any future Palestinian state.

Israel first occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, before unilaterally annexing it in 1980 in a move rejected by the United Nations Security Council. Due to its disputed status, the vast majority of the 96 diplomatic missions present in Israel host their embassies in the Tel Aviv area to avoid interfering with peace negotiations.

Currently only six countries – Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and the United States – have embassies located in West Jerusalem.

During his first term in 2017, President Donald Trump made the shock decision to unilaterally recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital before moving the US embassy there a year later, prompting Palestinian anger and the international community’s disapproval.

This status was not revoked under the Biden administration and Washington continues to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital today.

A Palestinian man in a red cap walks down the narrow alleyway in Nablus’s old city towards a group of Israeli soldiers, clearly unarmed.

He attempts to talk to the soldiers, who had flooded into the occupied West Bank city in the early hours of Tuesday as part of Israel’s latest military raid – believed to be the largest carried out in Nablus in two years.

The soldiers immediately kick and shove the man – 40-year-old Nidal Umairah – before his brother walks over, attempting to intervene. Gunfire follows, and soon the two brothers are lying dead.

Nidal and his brother 35-year-old brother Khaled were the latest victims of Israel in the West Bank, after they were killed late on Tuesday. It is unclear which brother had initially been detained, but witnesses were adamant that the behaviour of the Israeli soldiers was an unnecessary escalation that led to the deaths of yet more Palestinians.

Ghassan Hamdan, the director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Nablus, was at the scene of the killings.

“There were at least 12 soldiers and they all fired their automatic machine guns at once,” said Hamdan.

After the two men fell to the ground [medics] asked the soldiers if we could treat their wounds. They answered by firing at all of us.”

“We all took cover behind the walls of the old city,” he told Al Jazeera.

Hamza Abu Hajar, a paramedic at the scene, said that the Umairah brother who had initially approached the Israeli soldiers had been trying to go to his house to move his family out and away from the Israeli raid.

“They lifted his shirt up to prove he was unarmed,” Abu Hajar said. “They then started shooting at him, and at us as well.”

The Israeli army said it acted in self-defence after one of the Umairah brothers tried to seize a weapon from a soldier. It said that four soldiers had been injured in the incident.

West Bank raids

The raid in Nablus, which lasted more than 24 hours, is the latest Israel has conducted in the West Bank.

Israel has taken advantage of the world’s focus on its own war on Gaza since October 2023 to escalate its land theft and violence in the West Bank.

During that span, Israel has killed at least 930 people in the West Bank, 24 of whom were from Nablus, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Many of these deaths are the result of violent Israeli raids ostensibly aimed at clamping down on Palestinian fighters in the West Bank, but which have resulted in mass destruction and thousands of Palestinians fleeing their homes.

According to Hamdan, Israeli troops mainly targeted Nablus’s old city by storming into hundreds of homes in the middle of the night. Dozens of people were also reportedly arrested.

Young people in the city protested by burning tyres and throwing rocks at Israeli troops, yet they were met with heavy tear gas, injuring at least 80 Palestinians in the raid.

In the past, Palestinian protesters have been imprisoned on “terrorism” charges or shot and killed for simply resisting Israel’s occupation by throwing rocks or defying Israeli soldiers.

This time around, the Israelis classified the entire old city in Nablus as a closed military zone for 24 hours. No ambulances or medics were allowed inside to aid distressed residents, said Hamdan.

“Nobody was allowed in or out. Nobody was allowed to make any movement at all. We [as medics] could not enter the area during the entire raid to try and help people in need,” he told Al Jazeera.

Assault and vandalism

During the raid, Israeli troops stormed into several apartments after blowing off door hinges with explosives.

Umm Hassan, a 58-year-old resident who did not want to give her full name, recalls feeling terrified when several Israeli soldiers broke into her home.

About five months ago, her husband passed away from cancer, an illness that also claimed two of her children years ago.

Umm Hassan is also battling cancer, yet she said Israeli soldiers showed her no mercy. They flipped her television on the ground, broke windows and tossed her paintings off the walls and onto the living room floor.

They even vandalised her books by throwing them on the ground, including the Quran.

“I told them to leave me alone. I was alone and so scared. There was nobody to protect me,” Umm Hassan told Al Jazeera.

Another woman, Rola, said that Israeli soldiers stormed into her home two times in the span of six hours during the raid.

When Israeli soldiers returned the second time, Rola said that they attacked her elderly father, hitting him on the head and chest with the butts of their guns.

Rola described her three nieces and nephews – all small children – cowering with fear as Israeli soldiers vandalised and destroyed their home.

“The second time they came to our home, they put us all in a room and we weren’t able to leave the room from 8am until 3:30pm,” said Rola.

“We [Palestinians] always talk about being resilient. But the reality is when Israeli soldiers come into your private home, then you get very scared. It’s natural. We are humans and humans get scared,” she told Al Jazeera.

Psychological warfare

More than 80 Palestinians received treatment from the Palestine Red Crescent Society during the raid, 25 of them as a result of gunshot wounds.

While Israel says its raid was “precise”, inhabitants of Nablus say that the attack on the city was the latest attempt to intimidate and frighten Palestinians.

“Honestly, what were Israeli soldiers searching for in my home? What did they think they were going to find?” asked Rola. “The reason for their raids [violence] is to uphold the [illegal] occupation.”

While the ruling does not order Khalil’s immediate release, it does undermine the US government’s case against Khalil.

A federal judge in New Jersey has ruled the administration of United States President Donald Trump cannot use an obscure law to detain Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil for his pro-Palestine advocacy.

The ruling from US District Judge Michael Farbiarz on Wednesday cut to the core of the Trump administration’s justification for deporting Khalil, a permanent US resident. But it came short of ordering Khalil’s immediate release from detention.

Instead, Judge Farbiarz gave the administration until 9:30am local (13:30 GMT) on Friday to appeal. After that point, Khalil would be eligible for release on a $1 bail.

Nevertheless, the judge wrote that the administration was violating Khalil’s right to free speech by detaining and trying to deport him under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. That provision allows the secretary of state to remove foreign nationals who bear “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

Judge Farbiarz has previously signalled he believes that provision to be unconstitutional, contradicting the right to free speech.

“The petitioner’s career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled,” Farbiarz wrote on Wednesday. “This adds up to irreparable harm.”

Khalil was arrested on March 8 after immigration agents showed up at his student apartment building at Columbia University in New York City. After his arrest, the State Department revoked his green card. He has since been held at an immigration detention centre in Louisiana.

The administration has accused Khalil, a student protest leader, of anti-Semitism and supporting Hamas, but officials have offered no evidence to support their claims, either publicly or in court files.

Critics have instead argued that the administration is using such claims to silence all forms of pro-Palestine advocacy.

Like other student protesters targeted for deportation, Khalil is challenging his deportation in immigration court, while simultaneously challenging his arrest and detention in federal proceedings.

The latter is called a habeas corpus petition, and it asserts that the Trump administration has violated his civil liberties by unlawfully keeping him behind bars.

While students in the other high-profile cases — including Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk and Badar Khan Suri — have all been released from detention as their legal proceedings move forward, a ruling in Khalil’s case has been slower coming.

In April, an immigration judge had ruled that Khalil was deportable based on the State Department’s interpretation of the 1952 law, despite a written letter from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio providing no further evidence for the allegations made against him.

Immigration judges fall under the executive branch of the US government and are generally considered less independent than judges in the judicial branch.

Also that month, immigration authorities denied Khalil’s request for temporary release for his son’s birth.

In the case before the New Jersey federal court, meanwhile, the Trump administration has argued that Khalil was not fully transparent in his green card application, something his lawyers deny. But Judge Farbiarz indicated on Wednesday that it was unusual and “overwhelmingly unlikely” for permanent residents to be detained on such grounds.

Cameron told ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan that applying for arrest warrants for Israeli officials would be like ‘dropping hydrogen bomb’, media report says.

Several United Kingdom lawmakers have criticised the previous government over allegations in a recent media report that former Foreign Secretary David Cameron “privately threatened” to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its plans to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The report, published on Monday by the UK-based outlet Middle East Eye (MEE), cited sources with knowledge of a phone call Cameron allegedly made to ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan on April 23, 2024, after he had given advance notice of his intention to apply for the warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

MEE’s report cited unnamed sources, including former staff in Khan’s office, and had seen minutes of the conversation, claiming that Cameron warned the arrest warrants, which were issued in November that year, would be – in quotes reported by the sources – tantamount to “dropping a hydrogen bomb”, warning that if the ICC went ahead, the UK would “defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute”.

Khan reportedly stood his ground, with sources telling MEE that he said afterwards that he did not like “being pressurised”. “I won’t say if it rises to blackmail – I don’t like being threatened,” he reportedly said, adding that the government was “debasing” the UK with its clear attack on the independence of the court and the rule of international law.

Neither Khan nor Cameron, who was prime minister between 2010 and 2016, and now sits in the House of Lords as a life peer, has commented on the report.

Following the report’s publication, Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana said on X that Cameron “and every UK minister complicit in arming and enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza” should be investigated.

David Cameron — and every UK minister complicit in arming and enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza — must be investigated for war crimes. https://t.co/YYcsmFg1BN

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) June 9, 2025

Scottish National Party MP Chris Law said the allegations were “shocking”, but added the country was “not seeing much better under Labour”.

Shocking that the UK Tory govt tried to undermine the International Criminal Court for investigating those responsible for war crimes in Gaza. However not seeing much better under Labour #GazaGenocide‌ https://t.co/Wd3nK9UkhV

— Chris Law MP (@ChrisLawSNP) June 9, 2025

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a Labour MP, called for an “independent inquiry into the UK’s role in the Gaza genocide”.

Concerning new allegations, which suggest the last foreign secretary tried to shield Israeli leaders from facing justice for war crimes.

We need an independent inquiry into the UK’s role in the Gaza genocide.https://t.co/JROBHyqtDo

— Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (@BellRibeiroAddy) June 9, 2025

Zack Polanski, the deputy leader of the Green Party, was cited by MEE as saying: “It’s been clear for all to see that both the former and current government have stood with the oppressors, not the marginalised.”

When the ICC applied for the arrest warrants in May last year, the previous Conservative Party government, a strong backer of Israel, decried the move as “not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in”.

In July, the new Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, dropped the previous Rishi Sunak-led government’s bid to challenge the ICC’s power to seek the warrants, which were issued for Netanyahu, Gallant and three Hamas leaders in November.

The UK, Australia, Canada, Norway and New Zealand imposed sanctions on Israeli far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, over their incitement of violence against Palestinians. The US criticised the move as “unhelpful” to Gaza ceasefire efforts.