Israel-Palestine conflict

Israel announces 22 new illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, fuelling fears of further annexation and erasure.

The Israeli government says it will establish 22 illegal settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, including the legalisation of some so-called “outposts” already built without government authorisation, in a move decried by Palestinian officials and rights groups.

Defence Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the decision on Thursday, with Katz saying that it “strengthens our hold on Judea and Samaria,” using an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank.

He added it was also “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”.

Smotrich, himself a settler on illegally occupied Palestinian-owned land and an advocate for Israeli annexation of the West Bank, hailed the “historic decision”.

In a statement, the Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the move as a “once-in-a-generation decision”, emphasising its strategic value in fortifying Israel’s hold along the eastern border with Jordan.

Israel has already built more than 100 illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank that are home to some 500,000 settlers. The settlements range from small outposts to larger communities with modern infrastructure.

The West Bank is home to more than three million Palestinians, who live under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority governing in limited areas.

The Palestinians see the territory as an integral part of a future state, along with occupied East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Palestinians slam ‘dangerous escalation’

Palestinian officials and rights groups slammed the Israeli government’s decision, warning that the expansion of illegal settlements would further harm the prospects for a future Palestinian state.

Palestinian presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh condemned the decision, calling it a “dangerous escalation” and a “challenge to international legitimacy”.

He accused Israel of fuelling instability in the region and warned the move breaches international law. “This decision violates all international resolutions, especially UN Security Council Resolution 2334,” he said, adding that all settlement activity remains illegal and illegitimate.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri condemned called on the United States and the European Union to take action.

“The announcement of the building of 22 new settlements in the West Bank is part of the war led by Netanyahu against the Palestinian people,” Abu Zuhri told the news agency Reuters.

The Israeli NGO Peace Now said the move “will dramatically reshape the West Bank and further entrench the occupation”.

“The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise: the annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal,” it said in a statement.

“This is the largest batch of illegal Israeli settlements to be approved in one decision,” reported Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim from the occupied West Bank.

“Israeli settlements are strangling Palestinian communities inside the West Bank,” said Ibrahim. “These new settlements fill the gaps, making a future Palestinian state almost impossible on the ground. Israel is using this moment – while global attention is fixed on Gaza – to cement its occupation.”

The settlement announcement comes just weeks ahead of a high-level international conference, jointly led by France and Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, aiming to revive the long-dormant process to agree a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

US president says Harvard must ‘show us their list’ of foreign students to make sure they are not ‘troublemakers’.

United States President Donald Trump has intensified his dispute with Harvard University, saying the college should cap foreign enrolments and share information with the government about its international students.

“Harvard has to show us their lists. They have foreign students, almost 31 percent of their students. We want to know where those students come from. Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come from?” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. According to university enrolment data, foreign students make up 27 percent of Harvard’s student body.

“I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15 percent, not 31 percent,” Trump said, adding that he wants universities to accept “people who are going to love our country”.

The Trump administration has sought to pressure Harvard into compliance on a number of demands, including greater control over the university’s curricula, information about foreign students and further steps to crack down on pro-Palestine student activism, which the administration has characterised as anti-Semitic.

“Harvard has got to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The university has resisted what it says is an effort to erode its independence from the government and commitment to academic freedom.

The Trump administration has severed grants worth billions of dollars to Harvard and announced that it would revoke Harvard’s ability to enrol international students entirely. The Department of Homeland Security said that order was a response to Harvard “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

The university said in a statement at the time that the order was part of a “series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body”.

The university swiftly challenged the order in court, and it was temporarily blocked by a judge on Friday.

Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, said on Wednesday that Trump’s actions against foreign enrolment at US universities “makes no sense”.

“It’s so irrational because higher education is one of the top US exports to the world and the international students who come to this country enrich American universities immensely and take their knowledge back to all of their countries around the globe for the improvement of their countries and their populations,” McGuire told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC.

However, McGuire said Trump’s actions are consistent with “an administration that has literally snatched students off the street and taken them to detention centres”, referring to Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was forcibly taken into custody by masked federal agents in broad daylight on a street near her Massachusetts home in March.

This month, a court ordered the release of the 30-year-old Turkish doctoral student from the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“This is, in my view, completely anti-American values, and I think many academics are horrified by the fact that students are now being censored for their viewpoints,” McGuire said.

Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – Jehad Al-Assar left his tent in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah early in the morning on a new and exhausting journey to get food for his family.

His destination on Wednesday: an aid distribution point in Rafah, in the far south of Gaza, run by the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Jehad walked a “gruelling” 10km (6.2 miles) to reach the site, driven along primarily by the weight of responsibility for his pregnant wife and two hungry daughters.

With starvation spreading throughout Gaza, a direct result of Israel’s months-long blockade on the territory, the GHF site was Jehad’s only hope.

This is despite the controversy surrounding the organisation, whose own head resigned on Sunday, saying that the GHF could not adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence”.

The GHF’s lack of experience in dealing with aid distribution was highlighted on Tuesday, when at least three Palestinians were killed in the chaos that surrounded the relief effort.

But in Gaza, people are hungry and desperate. Jehad is among them.

After walking for 90 minutes, the 31-year-old reached the iron gates of the distribution centre, alongside thousands of others, before they suddenly opened.

“Crowds surged in – thousands of people. There was no order at all,” Jehad told Al Jazeera. “People rushed towards the yard where aid boxes were stacked and moved into the inner hall, where there were more supplies.”

“It was chaos – a real struggle. Men, women, children, all crammed together, pushing to grab whatever they could. No queues, no system – just hunger and disorder,” Jehad added.

Inside the hall, people snatched whatever they could carry. “Anyone who could lift two boxes took them. Sugar and cooking oil were the priorities. They grabbed what they wanted and rushed out.”

“There was no trace of humanity in what happened,” he said. “I was nearly crushed by the crowd.”

Just a short distance away, armed foreign forces stood watching without intervening. Jehad said he approached one of them and confronted him.

“I told them, ‘You’re not helping – you’re overseeing a famine. You should leave. You’re not needed here.’”

Jehad managed to retrieve only a few items: cans of tuna, a small bag of sugar, some pasta and a packet of biscuits scattered on the ground. He carried them in a plastic bag slung over his shoulder and made the long journey back home.

“I only got a little. I was afraid to stay longer and get trampled in the stampede – but I had to bring back something. My girls need to eat. I have no choice,” he said.

When he returned to the tent, his daughters greeted him joyfully – even for the little he had brought.

“My wife and I divide the food we bring home so the kids can eat over several days. We often skip meals. The children can’t endure this… and I bear the full responsibility for feeding them,” he said.

Apocalyptic

Awad Abu Khalil was also among the desperate crowds on Wednesday. The 23-year-old described the crowds rushing to get to the food as “apocalyptic”.

“Everyone was running. It was chaos. The aid was piled up and everyone just attacked it, grabbing what they could.”

Awad said he heard gunfire in the distance, likely targeting young men trying to bypass the designated routes.

He expressed deep frustration with the staff. “I expected the American staff to distribute aid at tables, handing each person their share – not this madness.”

The images that emerged on Tuesday and Wednesday have added fuel to international criticism of the GHF, with representatives from several countries denouncing Israel’s decision to prevent the United Nations and international humanitarian organisations from bringing aid into Gaza.

Israel stopped the entry of aid into Gaza in early March, while a ceasefire was still ongoing. It has since unilaterally broken the ceasefire, and doubled down in its war on Gaza, with the official death toll now more than 54,000 Palestinians.

“We used to receive aid from international agencies and the UN,” said Jehad. “It was delivered by name, in an organised way – no chaos, no humiliation.”

By the end of Wednesday, Gaza’s Government Media Office reported that at least 10 Palestinians desperately seeking aid had been killed by Israeli forces in the previous 48 hours.

Humiliation

Awad and Jehad were both able to return home with some food.

Jehad said that his wife and mother made bread from the pasta, soaking it and then kneading it into dough. His wife used the sugar to make a simple pudding for the children. He will return on Thursday, he said.

Even that is better than it is for most people in Gaza.

Walaa Abu Sa’da has three children. Her youngest is only 10 months old.

The 35-year-old could not bear watching people return to the displacement camp in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis carrying food while her children starved, so she decided to go to Rafah by herself.

“I fought with my husband who refused to go out of fear of the [Israeli] army. I swore I would go myself,” Walaa told Al Jazeera.

Entrusting her children to her sister, she joined the crowd heading towards the distribution site.

“My children were on the verge of starving. No milk, no food, not even baby formula. They cried day and night, and I had to beg neighbours for scraps,” she said. “So I went, regardless of what my husband thought.”

But by the time Walaa made it to Rafah, it was too late.

“People were fighting over what little remained. Some were carrying torn parcels,” she said.

Walaa left the distribution site empty-handed. On the way back, she saw a man drop a bag of flour from his torn parcel.

“I picked it up and asked if I could have it,” she said. “He shouted, ‘I came all the way from Beit Lahiya in the far north [of Gaza] to get this. I have nine children who are all starving. I’m sorry, sister, I can’t give it away,’ and he walked off.

“I understood, but his words broke me. I wept for what we’ve become.”

Walaa described the experience as deeply humiliating. She was filled with shame and inferiority.

“I covered my face with my scarf the whole time. I didn’t want anyone to recognise me going to get a food parcel,” Walaa, who is a teacher with a bachelor’s degree in geography, said.

Despite her sorrow, Walaa says she will do it again if needed.

“There’s no dignity left when your children are crying from hunger. We won’t forgive those who allowed us to reach this point.”

A United States federal judge has said that an effort by the administration of President Donald Trump to deport pro-Palestine student activist Mahmoud Khalil is likely unconstitutional.

District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey wrote on Wednesday that the government’s claim that Khalil constituted a threat to US national security and foreign policy was not likely to succeed.

“Would an ordinary person have a sense that he could be removed from the United States because he ‘compromise[d]’ American ‘foreign policy interests’ — that is, because he compromised US relations with other countries — when the Secretary has not determined that his actions impacted US relations with a foreign country?” Farbiarz wrote. “Probably not.”

Farbiarz did not immediately rule on the question of whether Khalil’s First Amendment rights to free speech were violated. He also did not order Khalil’s immediate release, citing unanswered questions about his permanent residency application.

The judge is expected to order further steps in the coming days.

A ruling against the government would be the latest legal setback for the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to crack down on pro-Palestine activism across the US in the name of national security and combating anti-Semitism.

But critics have accused the Trump administration of violating basic constitutional rights in its efforts to do so.

Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the US, was the first high-profile arrest made in the Trump administration’s push to expel student protesters involved in demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza.

A former graduate student, Khalil had served as a spokesperson for the antiwar protests at Columbia University. But on March 8, the 30-year-old was arrested in the hall of his student housing building in New York City, while his wife, Dr Noor Abdalla, filmed the incident.

He was then transferred from a detention centre in New Jersey to one in Jena, Louisiana, while his lawyers struggled to ascertain his location. He remains imprisoned in the Jena facility while the US government seeks his deportation.

In public statements, Khalil has said that his detention is part of an effort to chill dissent over US support for Israel’s war, which has been described as a genocide by human rights groups and United Nations experts.

Civil liberties organisations have also expressed alarm that Khalil’s detention appears premised on his political views, rather than any criminal acts. Khalil has not been charged with any crime.

In Louisiana, Khalil continues to face an immigration court weighing his deportation. But in a separate case before the US federal court in Newark, New Jersey, Khalil’s lawyers are arguing a habeas corpus petition: in other words, a case that argues their client has been unlawfully detained.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, acting on behalf of the Trump administration, has cited the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as the legal basis for Khalil’s detention.

That Cold War-era law stipulates that the secretary of state can deport a foreign national if that person is deemed to pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences”.

But that law has been rarely used and raises concerns about conflicts with the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech regardless of citizenship.

Judge Farbiarz appeared to echo that concern, warning that the Trump administration’s rationale appeared to meet the standards for “constitutional vagueness”.

That, in turn, means Khalil’s petition is “likely to succeed on the merits of his claim” that the government’s actions were unconstitutional, the judge wrote on Wednesday.

Khalil’s legal team applauded the judge’s order, writing in a statement afterwards, “The district court held what we already knew: Secretary Rubio’s weaponization of immigration law to punish Mahmoud and others like him is likely unconstitutional.”

Khalil is one of several high-profile students whose cases have tested the constitutional bounds of the Trump administration’s actions.

Other international students detained for their involvement in pro-Palestine politics, such as Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk and Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, have been released from detention after legal challenges.

But Khalil remains in detention. The government denied a request for Khalil’s temporary release that would have allowed him to witness the birth of his son in April.

It also sought to prevent him from holding his newborn son during visitation sessions at a Louisiana detention centre.

“I am furious at the cruelty and inhumanity of this system that dares to call itself just,” Abdalla, Khalil’s wife, said in a statement.

She noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had denied the family “this most basic human right” after she flew more than 1,000 miles to visit him in Louisiana with their newborn son.

A judge blocked those efforts by ICE last week, allowing Khalil to hold his son for the first time more than one month after he was born.

At least 10 Palestinians desperately seeking aid from a contentious and heavily criticised United States-backed organisation have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the last 48 hours, according to the besieged enclave’s Government Media Office.

The updated toll on Wednesday comes a day after a harrowing video showed thousands of starving Palestinians rushing to get aid, with many of them herded into cage-like lines, from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution point in Rafah in southern Gaza.

In a statement, the Government Media Office said Israeli forces “opened direct fire on hungry Palestinian civilians who had gathered to receive aid” at the distribution site, wounding at least 62 people.

It was not immediately clear exactly how many incidents of gunfire occurred or on which days the 10 Palestinians were fatally shot, but there were deaths on both days.

“These locations were transformed into death traps under the occupation’s gunfire,” the media office said, decrying the killings as a “heinous crime”.

For its part, the GHF said it had opened a second of a planned four aid distribution sites in Gaza on Wednesday.

The centres are part of an aid delivery scheme that has been roundly condemned by United Nations officials and the humanitarian community, who have repeatedly said that life-saving aid could be adequately and safely scaled up in Gaza if Israel would allow access to aid and let those organisations that have decades of experience handle the flow.

Speaking earlier in the day, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, decried the US-backed delivery model as a “distraction from atrocities” and called on Israel to allow the UN-backed humanitarian system to “do its life-saving work now”.

The message was echoed by several members of the UN Security Council during a meeting in New York discussing the conflict, with Algeria, France and the United Kingdom among those appealing for Israel to allow unfettered aid deliveries.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, said Israel was using “aid as a weapon of war”.

Reporting from UN headquarters, Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey said that Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s special coordinator for Middle East peace, and Feroze Sidhwa, a surgeon who recently went on a humanitarian mission to Gaza, were among those who addressed the council.

“The message from both of these experts was again calling for a ceasefire and the full resumption of aid into the Gaza Strip,” she said.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, criticised the UN for what he said were “attempts to block access to aid” and demanded a retraction from Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian chief, for accusing Israel of committing genocide.

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said the attacks levied by Danon should come as no surprise.

“They are on the defensive, knowing all too well that they lost their public relations campaign and that their reputation around the world is in the mud,” he said, referring to Israel’s near-daily bombardment and siege of Gaza.

The alternate US representative at the UN, John Kelley, said that the UN should “work with the GHF and Israel to reach an agreement on how to operationalise this system in a way that works for all”.

He maintained that the GHF was “independent” and developed to “provide a secure mechanism for the delivery of aid to those in need”.

Relentless Israeli attacks

As the debate over aid access raged, Israel’s punishing attacks continued across Gaza, with rights observers warning of an even worsening humanitarian situation.

At least 63 people were killed in Israeli attacks since the early hours of Wednesday, according to medical sources speaking to Al Jazeera Arabic, bringing the death toll since October 7, 2023, to at least 54,084 Palestinians, with more than 123,308 wounded.

The ministry added that only 17 hospitals in Gaza remained partially functioning, with critical shortages of essential medicines and oxygen supplies.

Separately, the Red Cross reported that its field hospital in southern Gaza’s al-Mawasi area came under Israeli fire early on Wednesday, causing panic and injuries among patients there.

In an open letter, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), Oxfam and other nonprofit groups called for “full, independent and international investigations into the attacks on healthcare in Gaza as violations of international humanitarian law”.

The UN’s World Food Programme, meanwhile, reported that its warehouse in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah had been broken into by hungry people “in search of food supplies”. Preliminary reports indicate that at least four people were killed amid the stampede and gunfire, though the cause of the latter was not immediately clear.

The agency said that increasing aid was “the only way to reassure people that they will not starve”.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported from Gaza City that the search for food has proven deadly, even away from crowded distribution areas.

“For example, in the past couple of hours, two people were reported killed in the Shujayea neighbourhood [of Gaza City]. They were killed trying to get to their homes,” he said.

“They were forced to evacuate in the past few weeks. They left everything behind. All of their belongings, all of their food supplies that they managed to get … [were] inside the house.”

Ceasefire remains elusive

As the attacks have continued, a breakthrough for a more lasting agreement to end the fighting has remained elusive.

Still, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, on Wednesday said he had “very good feelings” about soon reaching a long-term solution.

That came shortly after Hamas said it had reached an agreement with Witkoff on a general framework for a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the unhindered entry of humanitarian aid.

The framework appears at odds with the position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said the Israeli military would remain in Gaza indefinitely, continuing to control aid access and pursuing the complete defeat of Hamas.

Speaking to Israel’s parliament on Wednesday, Netanyahu listed top Hamas officials killed throughout the war. The list included Mohammed Sinwar, the brother and successor of killed Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar.

Hamas has not yet confirmed Mohammed Sinwar’s death.

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.

Authorities are investigating the fatal shootings outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, as hate crimes and ‘terrorism’.

Following the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, DC, last week, some social media users claimed the incident was a “false flag” because of when and where it happened.

“So you’re telling me two Israeli diplomats got killed across the street from an FBI field office outside a Jewish museum that had *closed* 4 hours earlier,” said a May 22 X post. “And one day after Israel fired at European diplomats and Europe was talking sanctions and you don’t think it’s a false flag?”

Other X posts similarly speculated about the deadly shooting on May 21.

The “false flag” phrase stems from the misuse of literal flags. Historically, a false flag operation referred to a military force or a ship flying another country’s flag for deception purposes.

Some confirmed false flag operations have occurred throughout history. But they have been outpaced in recent years by conspiracy theories that label real events as “false flags,” or an attack that’s designed to look like it was perpetrated by one person or party, when in fact it was committed by someone else.

Unfounded false flag claims often follow mass violence incidents, including Israel’s war on Gaza, the 2022 Uvalde school shooting and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Historians warn that social media rumours alleging that big news events are “false flags” should be viewed sceptically. Real false flag operations are logistically complex and tend to involve many people.

PolitiFact found no credible evidence to support the claim that the Israeli embassy employees’ shooting is a false flag.

What we know about the shooting

The X post said the shooting, which happened on a Wednesday, is a “false flag” because the museum had closed four hours earlier. The museum usually closes at 5pm on Wednesdays, except for the first Wednesday of each month, when it closes at 8pm.

However, the American Jewish Committee hosted an event on May 21 at the museum, scheduled to end at 9pm.

Preliminary investigations say the shooting happened after 9pm local time when the two victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, were exiting an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, said Pamela A Smith, the Metropolitan Police Department police chief, at a May 21 press conference.

Police identified the suspect as Elias Rodriguez, a 31-year-old man from Chicago, Illinois. Rodriguez chanted, “Free, free, Palestine” after he was arrested, Smith said. The Justice Department charged him with the murder of foreign officials and other crimes.

The shooting, which has widely been criticised, came as Israel’s actions in Gaza has caused a global outrage and protests calling for ceasefire.

Jeanine Pirro, interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, said on May 22 that the incident is being investigated as a hate crime and “terrorism”.

The Capital Jewish Museum is diagonally across the street from the FBI’s DC field office. FBI Director Kash Patel and the Israeli government have condemned the shooting.

There is no evidence that the shooting was a false flag. We rate this claim False.

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:

United Nations

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.”

Palestine

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.”

Israel

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.”

United States

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.”

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

“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.

Refugees International

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.”

Norwegian Refugee Council

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.”

Israel is applying many of the tactics used in its war on Gaza to seize and control territory across the occupied West Bank during its Operation Iron Wall campaign, a new report says.

Israel launched the operation in January. Defending what the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) termed “by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s”, the Israeli military claimed its intention was to preserve its “freedom of action” within the Palestinian territory as it continued to rip up roads and destroy buildings, infrastructure, and water and electricity lines.

The report by the British research group Forensic Architecture suggested Israel has imposed what researchers call a system of “spatial control”, essentially a series of mechanisms that allow it to deploy military units across Palestinian territory at will.

The report focused on Israeli action in the refugee camps of Jenin and Far’a in the northern West Bank and Nur Shams and Tulkarem in the northwestern West Bank. Researchers interviewed and analysed witness statements, satellite imagery and hundreds of videos to demonstrate a systematic plan of coordinated Israeli action intended to impose a network of military control in refugee camps across the West Bank similar to that imposed upon Gaza.

In the process, existing roads have been widened while homes, private gardens and adjacent properties have been demolished to allow for the rapid deployment of Israeli military vehicles.

“This network of military routes is clearly visible in the Jenin refugee camp and evidence indicates that the same tactic is, at the time of publication, being repeated in the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps,” the report’s authors noted.

Israeli ministers have previously stated that they planned to use the same methods in the West Bank that have destroyed the Gaza Strip, leading to more than 54,000 Palestinians killed and the majority of buildings damaged or destroyed.

In January, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would apply the “lesson” of “repeated raids in Gaza” to the Jenin refugee camp. The following month, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has control over much of the administration of the West Bank, boasted that “Tulkarem and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujayea. Nablus and Ramallah will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis,” comparing refugee camps in the West Bank to areas in Gaza that have been devastated by Israeli bombing and ground offensives.

“They will also be turned into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries,” Smotrich said.

Hamze Attar, a Luxembourg-based defence analyst, told Al Jazeera these tactics are not new in Palestinian territory, having first been deployed by the British during their mandate over historic Palestine, which preceded Israel’s foundation in 1948.

“It’s part of the “counterinsurgency” strategy,” he said. “Bigger roads [mean] easy access to forces – bigger roads, less congested battle management; bigger roads, less ability for fighters to escape from house to house.”

Displacing the displaced

About 75,000 Palestinians live in the Jenin, Nur Shams, Far’a and Tulkarem refugee camps. They were either displaced themselves or descended from those displaced during the Nakba (which means “catastrophe”) when roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist forces from 1947 to 1949 as part of the creation of Israel.

Now, at least 40,000 of those living in the West Bank refugee camps have been displaced as a result of Operation Iron Wall, according to the United Nations.

As in Gaza, many of these people were forced from their homes on orders from the Israeli military, which researchers said have been “weaponised” against the local population.

Once an area had been cleared of its buildings and roads, it becomes a kill zone and the Israeli military is free to reshape and build whatever it likes without interference from residents, the report said.

“Such engineered mass displacement has allowed the Israeli military to reshape these built environments unobstructed,” the report noted, adding that when Palestinian residents did try to return to their homes after Israeli military action, they were often obstructed by the continued presence of troops.

Destroying infrastructure

Forensic Architecture researchers said Israeli attacks on medical facilities in Gaza have also spilled over into the West Bank.

“Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in the West Bank have included placing hospitals under siege, obstructing ambulance access to areas with injured civilians, targeting medical personnel, and using at least one medical facility as a detention and interrogation centre,” the report said.

During Israel’s initial attacks on the Jenin refugee camp on January 21, multiple hospitals were surrounded by the Israeli military, including Jenin Government Hospital, al-Amal Hospital and al-Razi Hospital, researchers noted.

The following day, civilians and hospital staff reported that the main road leading to Jenin Government Hospital was destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers and access to the hospital was blocked by newly constructed berms, or land barriers,

On February 4, reports from Jenin said the Israeli military was obstructing ambulances carrying injured people from reaching the hospital.

Also carrying unmistakable echoes of Gaza was an UNRWA report in early February saying the Israeli military had forcibly co-opted one of the health centres at the UNRWA-run Arroub camp near Jerusalem as an interrogation and detention site.

The attacks on healthcare facilities were part of a wider campaign to damage civilian infrastructure in the West Bank, the Forensic Architecture report said, using armoured bulldozers, controlled demolitions and air attacks.

Researchers said they verified more than 200 examples of Israeli soldiers deliberately destroying buildings and street networks in all four of the refugee camps with armoured bulldozers reducing civilian roads to barely passable piles of exposed earth and rubble.

Civilian property, including parked vehicles, food carts and agricultural buildings, such as greenhouses, were also destroyed during Israeli military operations, they said.

Government escalates row with university over demands to curb pro-Palestine student activism and change racial diversity policies.

The administration of US President Donald Trump will move to sever remaining federal contracts with Harvard University, escalating a row centred on issues such as pro-Palestine student activism and racial diversity.

The New York Times and Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday that a draft letter from the General Services Administration (GSA) instructs all federal agencies to review and possibly cancel existing contracts with Harvard, worth an estimated $100m.

A copy of the draft letter shared by the Times states that Harvard has continued to engage in “race discrimination, including in its admissions process” and that the university’s failure to halt alleged acts of anti-Semitism suggests a “disturbing lack of concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students”.

The move would be the latest effort by the government to use federal funds to force universities to accept changes sought by the Trump administration, including greater control over curricula, harsher steps against pro-Palestine students, and an end to policies that encourage racial diversity and greater opportunities for racial minorities.

The Trump administration has portrayed efforts to encourage greater racial diversity at US universities as a form of discrimination that prioritises racial identity over merit. Supporters say that such efforts, such as using race as one factor of many in admissions decisions, are necessary to remedy long histories of racist discrimination and exclusion in US higher education.

“GSA understands that Harvard continues to engage in race discrimination, including in its admissions process and in other areas of student life,” the letter reads.

The administration has also taken an aggressive stance on pro-Palestine activism on university campuses, which erupted after the beginning of Israel’s most recent war in Gaza in October 2023.

Critics have portrayed those steps as part of a larger assault on US universities, which Trump has depicted as hotbeds of political dissent and radical ideas at odds with the goals of his administration.

“The Trump administration has gone after Harvard because of the pro-Palestinian protests, and also has made a list of demands that goes far beyond any of that,” Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane reported from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located.

“It wants detailed information on foreign students that Harvard is refusing to give. It wants basically a political audit to see where people’s ideologies are. So Harvard University has sued in court to stop many of these moves, and this will undoubtedly be the next one that goes before a judge.”

In March, the GSA and the Departments of Education (DOE) and Health and Human Services (HHS) announced an official review of $255.6m in Harvard contracts and $8.7bn in multi-year grants, stating that the review was part of an effort to combat alleged anti-Semitism on college campuses.

The administration also cut $400m in grants to Columbia University in New York City in March, despite a series of concessions to government demands.

The administration has said that campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and the US provision of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel are driven by anti-Semitism and create an unsafe environment for Jewish students on campus.

Several international students have been arrested and detained by the administration for their involvement in pro-Palestine activism, including a Turkish international student named Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University, who was arrested on the street by federal agents for co-signing an op-ed calling for an end to the war.

Trump has consistently threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and moved last week to block the university’s ability to accept international students, who currently make up about 27 percent of the university’s total enrolment.

A judge blocked that effort, which Harvard had called an act of retaliation for “our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body”.

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.

‘Reckless, inhumane plan’

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.

‘This is definitely not enough’

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?

What are human shields, and how has Israel used them?

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.”

How has Israel responded to allegations?

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.

Who issues the orders to use human shields?

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.”

Palestinian groups slam the raids targeting exchanges in several cities in a widespread operation in the territory.

Israeli forces have raided money exchanges across the occupied West Bank, using live fire and tear gas as they stormed the city of Nablus, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding more than 30.

Exchange shops in the cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron Arrabeh, el-Bireh, Bethlehem, Jenin and Tubas were attacked on Tuesday, residents said.

In the northern city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers raided a foreign exchange belonging to the Al-Khaleej company and a gold store, according to local media reports. They also fired smoke bombs in the centre of Jenin, and streets were closed in Tubas and Bethlehem in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Ramallah-based Ministry of Health said one man was killed and eight injured by live ammunition during a raid in Nablus.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it treated 20 people for tear gas inhalation and three injured by rubber bullets.

The raids on foreign exchanges came as Israel continued its intensified military campaign in Gaza, killing more than 54,000 Palestinians since the war began on October 7, 2023, as tens of thousands of people starve in the besieged enclave.

Israeli Army Radio on Tuesday said Israel conducted the raids on foreign exchanges on suspicions that the shops supported “terrorism”. The radio station also said the operation resulted in the confiscation of large amounts of money designated for “terrorism infrastructure” in the West Bank.

“Israeli forces are taking action against Al-Khaleej Exchange Company due to its connections with terrorist organisations,” a leaflet left by Israeli forces at the company’s Ramallah location read.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said Israeli authorities have not released an official statement yet but an official talked to the Israeli media about the raids.

“This official said earlier that Israel ‘believes’ – not that it has any evidence or proof – but ‘believes’ that these cash exchange places are funnelling money to what they call terror organisations,” said Salhut, who was reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Israel has banned Al Jazeera from reporting from Israel and the West Bank.

“The people who own these shops say they were not given any sort of proof by the Israeli military,” she added.

Salhut said it was the fourth time such raids have taken place since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

“The first time was in December of 2023 when five different cash exchange places were raided by the Israeli military and they seized nearly $3m,” she said. “It happened again in August 2024 and again in September of that same year.”

Hamas slams raids

Hamas denounced the Israeli raids, saying they “constitute a new chapter in the occupation’s open war against the Palestinian people, their lives, their economy, and all the foundations of their steadfastness and perseverance on their land”.

“These assaults on economic institutions, accompanied by the looting of large sums of money and the confiscation of property, are an extension of the piracy policies adopted by the [Israeli] occupation government,” the Palestinian group said in a statement, adding that the targeted companies were “operating within the law”.

Hamas urged the Palestinian Authority to take measures against the Israeli attacks.

Separately, the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement said the raids are “part of the open war against our people, targeting their very existence and cause”. The group also urged the Palestinian Authority to “defend” Palestinians from such attacks and “halt its policy of security coordination” with Israel.

This documentary short explores the life and times of the filmmaker’s Palestinian grandparents, Naim Azar and Wadee’a Aghabi , and the consequences they suffered in Jaffa because of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Zionists in 1948.

Their lives are recounted through the oral testimonies of the couple’s three daughters and other relatives. The film weaves together personal memories to depict a couple’s life before their expulsion—and the lasting impact of displacement on their family.
A film by Najwa Najjar.

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”.

New red lines

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.

‘All eyes on Doha’

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.

Thousands of right-wing Israelis have marched through occupied East Jerusalem to celebrate Israel’s occupation of the city in 1967 following the Six-Day War.

They made their way through Palestinian neighbourhoods, chanting “death to Arabs” and anti-Islamic slogans.

Police forces were dispatched in advance, as the settlers regularly assault and harass Palestinians in the Muslim quarter.

Right-wing Israelis also stormed the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

Last year’s procession, held during the first year of the Gaza war, saw ultranationalist Israelis attack a Palestinian journalist in the Old City and call for violence against Palestinians. Four years ago, the march contributed to the outbreak of an 11-day war in Gaza.

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

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.

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.