Israel-Palestine conflict

Eyewitness video captured an Israeli airstrike hitting west Khan Younis in Gaza as people flee tents amid gunfire. Israel had warned of an “unprecedented attack” and ordered evacuations. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to control all of Gaza, despite global pressure and famine fears.

Washington, DC – A measure known as the “nonprofit killer” has been removed from an enormous tax bill being advanced in the United States Congress, according to the bill posted online by the House of Representatives.

The provision, which no longer appeared on the President Donald Trump-backed “One Big, Beautiful Bill” on Monday, would have given the executive branch the authority to strip the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that it deems supportive of “terrorism”.

Advocates have warned that the legislative effort – which failed to pass as a stand-alone bill last year – could be abused to crack down on groups that the administration does not agree with, particularly nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that support Palestinian rights.

Israel has given little indication that it is relenting after more than 19 months into its war on Gaza. The past week has seen an intensification of violence across the besieged Palestinian territory, which has killed hundreds of people.

The reason for the disappearance of the NGO provision remains unclear, and experts warned it may yet reappear in the bill before the final vote in the House, expected later in the week.

The office of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

With a razor-thin majority in the House, Republicans need every vote to pass the tax bill, which Trump has put at the top of his agenda in Congress.

Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the section may have been removed to avoid putting the must-pass bill at risk, especially because the House parliamentarian, a nonpartisan office that oversees procedures, may have rejected it for violating the rules.

“It’s possible that this is a hiccup that they didn’t want, given that it wasn’t even likely to go through,” Hamadanchy told Al Jazeera.

“I can’t tell you that is the reason for sure. What I can tell you is that we continue to be very vigilant in case it comes back, either later this week or in the future.”

For weeks, Trump has been calling on Congress to pass the bill, which extends his 2017 tax cuts, a key component of his economic plans.

But the proposal has faced some opposition from conservative budget hawks, who have argued it does not cut spending enough and would add to the nation’s $36.2 trillion debt. So Republicans can ill-afford unnecessary issues that could derail the passage of the legislation.

‘Chill free speech’

Rights groups have been rallying against the “nonprofit killer”, saying it violates free speech and the right to due process.

The proposal would have granted the secretary of state power to unilaterally declare an NGO “terrorist supporting” and make it ineligible for tax exemptions.

It also said the government would not have to reveal the reason behind the designation if “disclosure of such description would be inconsistent with national security or law enforcement interests”.

Under the current rules, organisations certified to be nonprofits by the government get breaks on their federal income taxes. The status also makes donations to such groups tax deductible for donors.

While the withdrawn measure would have allowed a targeted NGO to challenge the secretary of state’s decision in court, losing the tax exempt status, even if temporarily, could have proven costly for nonprofits, especially smaller organisations.

Hamadanchy said being accused of supporting terrorism could also have prompted banks to close down the accounts of the groups.

“And then you have legal costs fighting off the designation because even if you might win in court, it’s going to take time to get there, and it’s going to cause a lot of damage to your organisation through that process,” he said.

“And that’s sort of the point because they want to chill speech.”

Hamadanchy noted that existing laws already make material support for a designated “terrorist” group a criminal offence with severe penalties.

The legislative push coincided with the Trump administration’s crackdown on Palestinian rights supporters, especially on college campuses.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked the student visas of several Palestine advocates – who have not been charged with a criminal offence – over allegations of “support for terrorism”.

Some advocacy groups have portrayed the “nonprofit killer” as part of a broader push to muzzle voices critical of Israel.

“This bill is designed to silence dissent, especially from Muslim, Palestinian and civil rights organizations that speak out against injustice and genocide,” the Council on American Islamic Relations said in a statement last week.

“It threatens every nonprofit that engages in advocacy, educates the public, or challenges government policy.”

The apparent setback for the nonprofit provision came nearly two weeks after House leaders cancelled a vote on a bill to restrict boycotts of Israel after a backlash from right-wing legislators who voiced opposition to the measure on free speech grounds.

Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said it would be “interesting” to see how Republican leaders would deal with staunchly pro-Israel measures like the “nonprofit killer” going forward.

“They on the one hand likely see this as a fun opportunity to embarrass Democrats – whose opposition will be framed as anti-Israel or enabling terror and antisemitism – and on the other hand they have to worry about principled opposition from within their own ranks,” Friedman told Al Jazeera in a statement.

Gaza’s Nasser Hospital is “suffering immensely” from a shortage of medical supplies after an Israeli attack hit a medical warehouse early Monday morning. The entire area of Khan Younis is now also under a forced displacement order by the Israeli military.

Britain’s top football host will not front 2026 World Cup coverage and is ‘bowing out by mutual agreement’ after backlash to a social media post about Zionism.

Gary Lineker, a former England captain and the face of football on British television for more than two decades, will leave the BBC, the public broadcaster said in a statement on Monday.

Lineker, 64, had been due to cover the 2026 FIFA World Cup for the BBC, but his early departure comes after he apologised last week for sharing a social media post about Zionism which featured a picture of a rat, historically used as an anti-Semitic insult.

Lineker said that he deleted the posts after learning of the offensive references.

According to multiple British media reports, the high-profile host is “bowing out by mutual agreement”.

He rose to become the BBC’s highest-paid star after presenting its Match of the Day (MOTD) highlights show for 25 years. The BBC announced last November that he would step down from MOTD this year, but carry on working for it until 2026.

“Gary has acknowledged the mistake he made. Accordingly, we have agreed he will step back from further presenting after this season,” BBC director general Tim Davie said in a statement.

Lineker repeated his apology on Monday, saying he would never consciously repost anything anti-Semitic.

“I recognise the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am,” he said. “Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”

Voicing Palestinian support

In recent years, Lineker’s desire to put forward his political views on social media has caused headaches for the BBC, which has strict rules on impartiality.

He was temporarily taken off air in 2023 after he criticised the previous government’s immigration policy on social media. In 2018, he opposed Brexit and called for a second referendum.

But it was Lineker’s support for the Palestinians affected by the war on Gaza that most recently brought him into conflict with the BBC.

Lineker had already caused friction at the public broadcaster when he recently said Israel was to blame for the origins of the Gaza conflict, because it turned the occupied territory into an “outdoor prison”.

Speaking on May 9 in an interview with The Telegraph at the Football Business Awards, just days before he was accused of the anti-Semitic social post on X, Lineker expressed that his issues are with the Israeli government rather than Jewish people.

“Obviously, October 7 was awful, but it’s very important to know your history and to study the massacres that happened prior to this, many of them against the Palestinian people,” he said in the interview with The Telegraph, which was published last Thursday, on May 15.

“Yes, Israelis have a right to defend themselves. But it appears that Palestinians don’t – and that is where it’s wrong. Palestinians are caged in this outdoor prison in Gaza, and now it’s an outdoor prison that they’re bombing,” Lineker added.

In the same interview, the TV host also disputed whether Israel could justifiably argue that it was still acting in self-defence. “I understand that they needed to avenge, but I don’t think they’ve helped their own hostage situation at all,” Lineker said.

“People say it’s a complex issue, but I don’t think it is. It’s inevitable that the Israeli occupation was going to cause massive problems, and I just feel for the Palestinians.”

The former striker played for England for eight years until 1992 and had been a top scorer for Leicester City, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur in the 1980s and early 1990s.

He is also the co-founder of a podcasting production business, Goalhanger, which makes series such as the podcasts The Rest Is History and The Rest Is Football.

Lineker will leave his role at the BBC on Sunday after his final episode of Match of the Day.

I was always told as a child that breakfast is the most important meal. It gives you the energy to keep going the whole day. And so, in my family, we would regularly eat a scrumptious breakfast.

That was in the past, of course. For weeks now, we have had hardly anything to eat. I myself have been dreaming of having a slice of cheese and a warm loaf of bread dipped in thyme and oil.

Instead, I start yet another day of genocide with a cup of tea and a tasteless, nearly expired “not-for-sale WFP fortified biscuit”, which I bought for $1.50.

I have been following the news recently and have started to feel that my wish for something other than a World Food Programme (WFP) biscuit may soon be fulfilled.

Apparently, the United States has grown tired of hearing Palestinians in Gaza say they are starving. So now, it has decided to end the hunger, or at least the annoying complaints about it.

And so, with unshakeable confidence and pride in its own ingenuity, the US government has announced a new mechanism for delivering food to Gaza. The “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”, an extraordinary name now added to our genocide vocabulary of NGOs and charities, is supposedly set to restart food distribution by the end of May and hand out “300 million meals”. Israel, for its part, has volunteered to secure the “humanitarian” process, while maintaining its killing activities.

While this new feeding “mechanism” is being set up, the Israeli government, “under US pressure”, announced that it will let in “a basic quantity of food” in order to prevent “the development of a hunger crisis”, international media reported. The resumption will reportedly last only a week.

Here in Gaza, where the hunger crisis is already “well-developed”, we are hardly surprised by these announcements. We are well used to Israel – with foreign backing – turning on and off the “food button” as it pleases.

For years, we have been kept in a 365-square-kilometre prison, where our Israeli jailers control our food, rationing it so that we can never go too far beyond the level of survival. Long before this genocide, they openly declared to the world that they were keeping us on a diet, our calories carefully counted to ensure we did not die but just suffer. This was not a fleeting penalty; it was an official government policy.

Anyone driven by basic humanity who dared challenge the blockade from the outside was attacked, even killed.

Some say we should have been grateful that trucks were being allowed to enter at all. True, they were. But just as often, they weren’t, especially when we, the prisoners, were deemed to have misbehaved.

Countless times, I would find my neighbourhood bakery shut down because there was no cooking gas, or I would fail to find my favourite cheese because our jailers had decided it was a “dual-use” item and could not enter Gaza.

We were good at growing our own food, but we could not do much of that either because much of our fertile soil was near the prison fence, and hence out of reach. We loved fishing, but that too was closely monitored and restricted. Venture beyond the shore and you would get shot.

All of this humiliating, calculated blockade was taking place well before October 7, 2023.

After that day, the amount of food allowed into Gaza was drastically reduced. In the days that followed, I felt the shackles of the Israeli blockade on Gaza more tangible than ever, even though I had lived under it since I was born. For the first time, I found myself struggling to secure something as basic as bread. I remember thinking: surely the world will not allow this to last.

And yet here we are, 19 months later, 590 days in, the struggle has only gotten worse.

On March 2, Israel banned all food and other aid from entering Gaza. The situation since then has grown from bad to worse, leaving us nostalgic for previous phases of the crisis, when the suffering felt slightly more bearable.

A few weeks ago, for example, we could still have some tomatoes alongside our canned beans that rotted our stomachs. But now, vegetable vendors are nowhere to be found.

Bakeries have also closed, and flour has all but disappeared, leaving me wishing to re-experience the slight disgust at the sight of worms squirming through infested flour because it would mean my mother could make bread again. Now, finding non-expired fava beans is all I could realistically wish for.

I recognise that others still have it much worse than I do. For parents of young children, the struggle to find food is an agony.

Take my barber, for example. When I last went to him for a haircut two weeks ago, he looked exhausted.

“Can you imagine? I haven’t eaten bread in weeks. Whatever flour I manage to buy every few days, I save for my children. I eat just enough to survive, not to feel full. I just don’t understand why the world treats them like this. If we are not worthy of life in their eyes, then at least have mercy on our hungry children. It’s OK if they want to starve us — but not our children,” he told me.

This may seem like a cruel sacrifice, but it is what parenting has become here after 19 months of nonstop Israeli killing. Parents are consumed by fear, not just for their children’s safety, but for the possibility that their children might be bombed while hungry. This is the nightmare of every household and every tent-hold in Gaza.

In the few barely functioning hospitals, the landscape of famine is even more harrowing. Babies and children looking like skeletons lie on hospital beds; malnourished mothers sit by them.

It has become normal to see daily images of emaciated Palestinian children. We may ourselves be struggling to find food, but seeing them leaves our hearts shattered. We want to help. We think maybe a can of peas might make a difference. But what can peas do for an infant suffering from marasmus, for a child who looks like a fragile shell of skin and bones?

Meanwhile, the world sits in silence, watching Israel block aid and deliver bombs and asking questions in disbelief.

On May 7, the Israeli army bombed al-Wehda Street, one of the busiest in Gaza City. One missile hit an intersection full of street vendors, another – a functioning restaurant. At least 33 Palestinians were killed.

Images of a table with slices of pizza soaked in the blood of one of the victims appeared online. The scene of pizza in Gaza captivated world attention; the bloodbath did not. The world demanded answers: how can you be in a famine when you can order pizza?

Yes, there are vendors and restaurants amid genocidal famine. Vendors that sell a kilogramme of flour for $25 and a can of beans for $3. A restaurant where the smallest and most expensive pizza slice in the world is served — a piece of bad-quality dough, cheese, and the blood of those who craved it.

To this world, we are required to explain the presence of pizza in order to convince we are worthy of food. To this world, the outline of an abstract US plan to feed us sounds reasonable, all while tonnes of life-saving aid wait at the border crossings to be allowed in and distributed by already fully functional aid agencies.

We in Gaza have seen PR exercises masked as “humanitarian action” before. We remember the airdrops that were killing more people than they were feeding. We remember the $230m pier that barely got 500 truckfuls of aid into Gaza from the sea: a feat that could have been accomplished in half a day via an open land crossing.

We in Gaza are hungry, but we are no fools. We know that Israel can only starve and genocide us because the US allows it to. We know that stopping the genocide is not among Washington’s concerns. We know that we are hostages not just of Israel, but also of the US.

What haunts us isn’t just famine; it is also the fear of outsiders arriving under the guise of aid, only to start laying the foundations of colonisation. Even if the US plan is enforced and even if we are allowed to eat before Israel’s next bombing, I know my people will not be broken by the weaponisation of food.

Israel, the US, and the world should understand that we will not trade land for calories. We will liberate our homeland, even on an empty stomach.

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

Israel has said it will allow limited supplies of food into Gaza as it announced the launch of an intensified ground offensive into the battered Palestinian enclave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that pressure from allies was behind the move. Late the previous evening, his office had said Israel would open the way for some food to enter the Gaza Strip following a “recommendation” from the army.

The announcement came shortly after the Israeli military launched “extensive ground operations” that are reported to have killed more than 150 people in the last 24 hours.

“Israel will allow a basic amount of food for the population to ensure that a hunger crisis does not develop in the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement late on Sunday.

Pressure from allies

The announcement comes amid mounting international pressure on Israel to lift a two-month-long siege that threatens widespread famine in the besieged territory.

Netanyahu said in a video address on Monday that the move came after “allies” had voiced concern about “images of hunger”.

Israel’s “greatest friends in the world”, he said without mentioning specific countries, had said there is “one thing we cannot stand. We cannot accept images of hunger, mass hunger. We cannot stand that. We will not be able to support you.”

“Therefore, to achieve victory, we need to somehow solve the problem,” Netanyahu said.

The aid that would be let into Gaza would be “minimal”, he said, without specifying precisely when supplies would resume.

A spokesperson for the United Nations aid chief, Tom Fletcher, confirmed the agency had been approached by Israel to “resume limited aid delivery”, adding that discussions are ongoing about the logistics, “given the conditions on the ground”.

Munir al-Bursh, the director-general of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, said Palestinian authorities had not been informed when the border would be opened, Al Jazeera Arabic reported.

Netanyahu’s far-right allies remain opposed to allowing any supplies into Gaza, insisting that military might and hunger will secure victory over Hamas.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir described the decision to allow limited food into the enclave as a “grave mistake”.

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, from Ben-Gvir’s party, denounced the plan as a “tragedy”, saying it directly harms the “war effort to achieve victory” in Gaza.

Israel has been accused of weaponising hunger and using the blockade to try to ethnically cleanse the enclave.

Despite the blockade and intensified military offensive, sources on both sides told the Reuters news agency there has been no progress in a new round of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas in Qatar.

Netanyahu said the talks included discussions on a truce and a deal on the captives, as well as a proposal to end the war, in return for the exile of Hamas and the demilitarisation of the enclave – terms Hamas has previously rejected.

The Israeli military suggested in a later statement that it could still scale down operations to help reach a deal in Doha, Qatar.

However, Netanyahu stressed in his video address that the aim of the intensified offensive is for Israel’s forces to “take control of all” of Gaza.

“The fighting is intense and we are making progress. We will take control of all the territory of the Strip,” he said. “We will not give up. But in order to succeed, we must act in a way that cannot be stopped.”

Over the past week, Israel’s military said it had conducted a preliminary wave of strikes on more than 670 Hamas targets in Gaza. It said it killed dozens of Hamas fighters.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said in the week to Sunday, at least 464 Palestinians were killed, many of them women and children.

On Monday morning, sources told Al Jazeera that at least 23 Palestinians had been killed across Gaza since dawn, including five near al-Faluja market in Jabalia and six in Khan Younis.

There have also been reports of Israeli attacks in and around Nasser Medical Complex, and the targeting of the intensive care unit at the Indonesian Hospital, where at least 55 people are trapped, including four doctors and eight nurses.

In its latest assault on Gaza’s decimated healthcare system, Israel has once again targeted the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, this time with drones, as its forces are also carrying out a ground offensive in the north and south of the bombarded territory.

Health officials said late on Sunday that fighting around the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza and an Israeli military “siege” forced it to shut down.

It was the main medical facility in the north after Israeli air strikes last year also forced the Kamal Adwan and Beit Hanoon hospitals to stop providing health services.

“There is direct targeting on the hospital including the intensive care unit,” Indonesian Hospital director Dr Marwan al-Sultan said in a statement, adding that no one could reach the facility, which had about 30 patients and 15 medical staff inside.

Israel has repeatedly targeted hospitals during its 19-month war on Gaza. Human rights groups and United Nations-backed experts have accused Israel of systematically destroying Gaza’s healthcare system.

Earlier, Dr Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Hospital in the besieged enclave’s north, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the latest strikes – which have been ongoing since Saturday – indicate that Israeli attacks on Gaza’s hospitals are intensifying.

“The medical teams are really suffering, and we have a few numbers of medical teams and staff … and a lot of people are in need [of] more medical care,” Abu Salmiya said by phone from the hospital on Sunday.

Thousands of sick and wounded people could die, he warned. Blood donations are urgently needed.

This has been underscored by Gaza’s Health Ministry, which confirmed that Israeli forces besieged the facility in Beit Lahiya, adding that “a state of panic and confusion is prevailing”.

The ministry later said that Israel had cut off the arrival of patients and staff, “effectively forcing the hospital out of service”.

With “the shutdown of the Indonesian Hospital, all public hospitals in the North Gaza Governorate are now out of service”, it said.

Gaza’s healthcare facilities have been targeted repeatedly throughout Israel’s deadly assault that began 18 months ago.

Other facilities in the north that have been bombed, burned, and besieged by the Israeli military since the start of the war include Kamal Adwan Hospital, al-Shifa Hospital, al-Ahli Hospital, and al-Awda Hospital. Dozens of other medical clinics, stations, and vehicles have also come under attack.

The targeting of health facilities, medical personnel and patients is considered a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention.

Israel has also battered several hospitals in Gaza’s central and southern areas, including Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital and the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

Earlier this week, Israel struck two hospitals in Khan Younis. Nine missiles slammed into and around the courtyard of the European Gaza Hospital, killing at least 16 people, while an attack on the Nasser Medical Complex killed two people, including a wounded journalist.

Incessant attacks on Gaza’s healthcare sector have left it reeling, devastating its ability to function, while doctors say they are out of medicine to treat routine conditions.

Hospitals have also been on the verge of total collapse amid a brutal and ongoing blockade, where Israel continues to bar the entry of much-needed medical supplies, fuel, and other humanitarian aid including food and clean water.

The crisis in Gaza has reached one of its darkest periods, humanitarian officials warn, as famine also looms.

Israeli air strikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the last 72 hours.

Strikes over the weekend have also put the European Hospital, the only remaining facility providing cancer treatments in Gaza, out of service.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said dozens of Palestinians have been wounded, and doctors say “they’re facing numerous challenges in treating injuries because of a lack of medical supplies”.

“Israeli air strikes in Gaza are still escalating as drones and fighter jets hover in the sky,” Khoudary said.

The death toll has reached the same level of intensity as the earliest days of the war, said Emily Tripp, executive director of Airwars, an independent group in London that tracks recent conflicts.

She says preliminary data indicate the number of incidents where at least one person was killed or injured by Israeli fire hovered around 700 in April. It’s a figure comparable only to October or December 2023 – one of the heaviest periods of bombardment.

In the last 10 days of March, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates, an average of 100 children were killed or maimed by Israeli air strikes every day.

Almost 3,000 of the estimated 53,000 killed by Israel since October 7, 2023, have lost their lives since Israel broke a fragile ceasefire on March 18, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

Among those killed in recent days include a volunteer pharmacist with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, who was killed with her family in a strike on Gaza City on May 4.

A midwife from Al Awda Health and Community Association was also killed with her family in another strike on May 7.

A journalist working for Qatar-based television network Al Araby TV, along with 11 members of his family, was also killed.

The US-Israeli plan to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, amid the use of starvation as a weapon of war, enables Israel to “force the ethnic cleansing of a huge part of Gaza’s population”, argues Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy.

United States President Donald Trump visited the Middle East, which saw a shift in US policy on Yemen, Iran, and Syria.

Duss tells host Steve Clemons that the Democratic Party would be wise to learn from Trump’s foreign policy. “The Democrats have completely left the antiwar, pro-diplomacy, pro-peace lane open for Donald Trump to fill,” he says.

Israel’s intensified attacks on Gaza have killed more than 130 Palestinians in a matter of hours, as ceasefire negotiations continue. Horrific videos show people in pieces and on fire following strikes on tents sheltering displaced civilians.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied across the world in solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and to mark the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Jewish militias, remembered as the Nakba, or catastrophe.

The Nakba resulted in the permanent mass displacement of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948. Activists say that history is repeating itself today in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

In Stockholm, thousands assembled at Odenplan Square, responding to calls from various civil society organisations to protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza. Participants waved Palestinian flags, displayed photographs of children killed, and carried banners stating: “Stop the Zionist regime’s genocide in Palestine”.

Many demonstrators bore placards listing the names of civilians killed in Gaza, seeking to highlight the ongoing massacre.

Meanwhile, in London, United Kingdom, hundreds of thousands marched towards Downing Street, demanding an end to what they described as Israel’s genocide in Gaza, 77 years on from the Nakba. Protesters, some dressed in keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags, chanted slogans such as “Stop the genocide in Gaza”, “Free Palestine”, and “Israel is a terror state”.

The demonstrators denounced the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, accusing it of deliberately starving more than two million Palestinians, and criticised the UK government for its political and military backing of Israel, alleging complicity in the humanitarian crisis.

In Berlin, Germany, people gathered at Potsdamer Platz to protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza. Demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and held signs reading: “Your silence is complicity” and “You cannot kill us all”. Women in traditional dress carrying Nakba-themed visuals were also present.

The event took place amid heavy security measures, with at least three people reportedly detained.

A solidarity march was held in Athens, Greece, where protesters, adorned in keffiyehs and carrying Palestinian flags, marched first to the embassies of the United States and Israel.

Protests have erupted after hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the past few days as Israel intensified its attacks, with the announcement of a new ground offensive.

Globally, May 15 was observed as the 77th anniversary of the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes following the establishment of Israel in 1948.

The Israeli military has killed 53,272 Palestinians and injured 120,673 since it launched an offensive on October 7, 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The Government Media Office updated the death toll to more than 61,700, noting that thousands still missing beneath the rubble are presumed dead.

The Israeli military has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the past several days as it expands its ground invasion.

The Israeli military has killed at least 125 Palestinians, including children sleeping in tents, as it unleashed a wave of air strikes across the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Sunday.

At least 36 people were killed and more than 100 wounded after Israeli warplanes bombed a tent camp sheltering displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Horrific verified videos from the scene showed many bodies, including some on fire. The dead and wounded were taken to a nearby field hospital and the Nasser Medical Complex.

At least 125 people were killed on Sunday morning, including 42 in the heavily-bombarded northern parts of Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera Arabic. Three journalists were also among the victims.

The death toll has been rising sharply in the past four days, with hundreds massacred as the Israeli military prepares to significantly intensify its ground invasion of the Palestinian territory despite international criticism.

Hamas said in a statement early on Sunday that the attacks on displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis marked a “brutal crime” that was a flagrant violation of international laws and norms.

“By granting the terrorist occupation government political and military cover, the United States administration bears direct responsibility for this insane escalation in the targeting of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, including children, women, and the elderly,” the Palestinian group said.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has condemned Israel’s expanding operation in Gaza. “I am alarmed by reported plans by Israel to expand ground operations and more.”

On Saturday, both Israel and Hamas confirmed that more mediated talks were under way in Qatar.

Israel emphasised that the talks are being held with no conditions, including the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has been completely blocked since March 2 despite looming famine.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Sunday called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull the negotiating team back from Doha talks and refrain from signing any deal with Hamas.

The Israeli military has also been systematically targeting hospitals across the enclave and putting them out of commission, including two hospitals in the past week.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health announced in a statement on Sunday that the Israeli army had laid siege to the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza since dawn.

This meant that “a state of panic and confusion has prevailed among patients, the wounded, and medical staff” as a result of the attacks, hindering medical care with very limited resources still available, it added.

The talks in the Qatari capital have begun without any conditions for Israel to allow aid into Gaza or a ceasefire.

Israel and Hamas have confirmed a new round of Gaza truce talks is under way in Qatar as the Israeli military expanded its ground offensive on the besieged Palestinian territory, despite growing international calls for a ceasefire.

Israel Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Saturday that the Hamas delegation in Doha returned to negotiations “on a hostage deal”.

Israel had entered the talks without any conditions, according to Katz.

Taher al-Nono, the media adviser for the Hamas leadership, confirmed to the Reuters news agency that a new round of indirect talks had begun without any conditions.

“The Hamas delegation outlined the position of the group and the necessity to end the war, swap prisoners, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and allowing humanitarian aid and all the needs of the people of Gaza back into the Strip,” he added.

Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 54 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on Saturday, as Israel launched a new offensive in Gaza.

Israel’s army said on social media that it was intensifying attacks and exerting “tremendous pressure” on Hamas across Gaza, and wouldn’t stop until the captives are returned and the armed group is dismantled. Katz said that Operation Gideon Chariots was being led with “great force.”

The ground offensive comes after Israel escalated its air attacks on Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians in the past three days. Many of the victims were killed in northern Gaza, including in Beit Lahiya and Jabalia, which have received forced displacement orders by the Israeli army in recent days.

As leaders of the Arab League held a Gaza-focused summit in Iraq’s Baghdad and called for international funding to rebuild Gaza, Hamas asked the international community to impose sanctions on Israel.

In a statement on its Telegram channel, the armed group described the situation in Gaza as a “full-blown genocide committed before the eyes of a world that stands helpless, while more than two and a half million people are being slaughtered in the besieged Strip”.

The group also reported continued fighting with invading Israeli forces, claiming on Saturday that its fighters killed and wounded two Israeli soldiers using machineguns in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City in the northern part of the enclave.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said he was “alarmed” by Israel’s moves to expand its ground operations in Gaza and called for an immediate ceasefire.

UN relief chief Tom Fletcher said a joint plan by the United States and Israel to replace international aid mechanisms in Gaza was a “waste of time” as more than 160,000 pallets of aid are “ready to move” at the border, but blocked by Israel.

Nevertheless, Washington has remained adamant in its full support for Israel, with Trump saying on Friday that Gaza must become a “freedom zone”.

Last week, Hamas released Israeli-American soldier Edan Alexander, who, along with families of remaining captives in Gaza, called for the release of all still held in the Palestinian territory.

Arab leaders have urged the international community to fund their plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip after United States President Donald Trump reiterated a proposal to take over the Palestinian territory.

An Arab League summit held on Saturday in Baghdad said in its final statement that it urged “countries and international and regional financial institutions to provide prompt financial support” to back its Gaza reconstruction plan.

“This genocide [in Gaza] has reached a level of ugliness unparalleled in all conflicts in history,” Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in his opening speech at the 34th Arab Summit, which was dominated by Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

He said Iraq backed the creation of an “Arab fund to support reconstruction efforts”, adding that Iraq will contribute $20m towards the fund and another $20m for Lebanon, which has also been in conflict with Israel.

The Iraqi prime minister said Baghdad rejects “the forced displacement of Palestinians”, calling for an end to “the massacres in Gaza, the attacks on the West Bank and the occupied territories”.

“We have called, and continue to call, for serious and responsible Arab action to save Gaza and reactivate the UNRWA,” he said, referring to the UN body for Palestinian aid.

Saturday’s talks in the Iraqi capital came only a day after Trump completed his Middle East tour, triggering hopes of a ceasefire and the renewal of aid delivery to Gaza.

‘Carnage unfolding in Gaza’

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez – who have sharply criticised Israel’s genocide in Gaza – were guests at the summit.

“We need a permanent ceasefire now, the unconditional release of the hostages now, and the free flow of humanitarian aid ending the blockade now,” Guterres said.

Spain’s Sanchez said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza must end “immediately and without delay”.

“Palestine and Spain are working on a new draft to be presented to the United Nations, where we are demanding Israel to end the unjust humanitarian siege laid to Gaza and to allow for the unconditional delivery of relief aid into Gaza”, he said.

He also said there must be “more pressure on Israel to end the carnage unfolding in Gaza by all the conceivable means, namely the tools available under the international law.”

“And here, I would like to announce that Spain will present a proposal to the General Assembly for the International Criminal Court to examine Israel’s compliance with the delivery of relief aid into Gaza,” the Spanish prime minister added.

In March, Israel ended a ceasefire reached with Hamas in January, renewing deadly attacks across Gaza and forcing a blockade of food and other essential items. In recent days, Israel has intensified its offensive, as tens of thousands of Palestinians are forced to starve.

At a preparatory meeting of the Arab League summit, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said they will try to endorse decisions that were made at their meeting in Cairo in March to support Gaza’s reconstruction as an alternative to Trump’s widely condemned proposal to take over the enclave.

During his visit to Qatar, Trump on Thursday reiterated that he wanted the US to “take” Gaza and turn it into a “freedom zone”. Earlier this year, he caused an uproar by declaring that the US would turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, prompting Arab leaders to come up with a plan to rebuild the territory, at a summit in Cairo.

The Arab plan for Gaza proposes rebuilding the Palestinian enclave without displacing its 2.4 million residents.

Besides Gaza, Arab officials also discussed Syria, which only six months ago entered a new chapter in its history after the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.

Earlier this week, Trump in Riyadh met Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose group spearheaded the offensive that toppled al-Assad last December. Prior to their meeting, he also announced that US sanctions on Syria will be lifted in a huge boost to the government in Damascus.

Al-Sharaa, who was imprisoned for years in Iraq on charges of belonging to al-Qaeda following the 2003 US-led invasion, however, missed Baghdad’s summit after several powerful Iraqi politicians voiced opposition to his visit. The Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani represented Damascus instead.

Saturday’s summit also came amid Iran’s ongoing nuclear talks with the US. Trump has pursued diplomacy with Iran as he seeks to stave off a threatened military strike by Israel on Iran, a desire shared by many of the region’s leaders.

On Thursday, Trump said a deal was “getting close”, but by Friday, he was warning that “something bad is going to happen” if the Iranians do not move fast.

Iraq has only recently regained a semblance of normalcy after decades of devastating conflict and turmoil, and its leaders view the summit as an opportunity to project an image of stability.

Reporting from Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed said the summit was “very crucial” for Iraq.

“This is the first time the summit has been held in Iraq since 2012 and Iraq takes it as a credit to regain its rule as a player to bridge the gap between member states of the Arab League,” he said.

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s political and military leaders are pointing the finger back at Donald Trump after the United States president sharpened his rhetoric during his first major tour of the Middle East.

In a speech to a group of teachers gathered for a state ceremony in Tehran on Saturday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said some of Trump’s comments were not even worth responding to.

“The level of those remarks is so low that they are a disgrace for the one who uttered them and a disgrace to the American nation,” he said, to chants of “Death to America” and others from the crowd.

Khamenei added that Trump “lied” when he said he wants to use power towards peace, as Washington has backed “massacring” Palestinians and others across the region. He called Israel a “dangerous cancerous tumour” that must be “uprooted”.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also told a gathering of navy officers on Saturday that Trump is extending a message of peace while threatening destruction at the same time as backing Israel’s “genocide” in the Gaza Strip.

“Which one of this president’s words should we believe? His message of peace, or his message of massacre of human beings?” the Iranian president said, pointing out that Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) in a move that was internationally criticised.

The statements came after Trump used his Middle East tour – during which he signed huge deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – to heap praise on Arab leaders neighbouring Iran and blasting the leadership in Tehran.

The US president told Arab leaders they were developing their infrastructure while Iran’s “landmarks are collapsing into rubble” after its theocratic establishment replaced a monarchy in a 1979 revolution.

He said Iran’s leaders have “managed to turn green farmland into dry deserts” as a result of corruption and mismanagement, and pointed out that Iranians are experiencing power outages several hours a day.

The blackouts, a result of a years-long energy crisis that is hurting Iran’s already strained economy, are expected to linger for the rest of this year as well, according to Iranian authorities.

The largest associations of the mining, steel and cement industries in Iran on Saturday wrote a joint letter to Pezeshkian, urgently requesting him to review a 90 percent electricity use restriction imposed on the critical sectors.

Trump, who hailed Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and lifted sanctions on Damascus, also took aim at Iran’s regional policy.

He described Tehran’s support for the fallen establishment of President Bashar al-Assad as a cause of “misery and death” and regional destabilisation.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the US president’s remarks as “deceptive”, telling state media on Friday it was the US that hampered Iran through sanctions and military threats while backing Israel and attacking Syria.

Parliament chief Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who was addressing an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) conference in Indonesia, said Trump’s remarks showed he was “living in a delusion”.

Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), addressed Trump directly on Friday and said even though Iran has beautiful landmarks, “we take pride in the elevation of character, identity, culture, and Islam”.

The sharp rhetoric in response to Trump’s latest controversial comments come days after he teased that he may start calling the “Persian Gulf” the “Arabian Gulf” soon.

This angered Iranians across the board, prompting criticism of any attempt to rename the key waterway from average citizens online, authorities, local media, and even some pro-Trump Iranians outside the country who have been advocating for US sanctions and regime change.

Scepticism over Iran-US deal

Both Iran and the US say they would prefer an agreement that would serve to quickly de-escalate tensions surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme, despite the latest war of words.

But after four rounds of negotiations mediated by Oman, any prospective deal – which would lift sanctions in exchange for making sure Iran would not have a nuclear bomb – still appears to face significant hurdles.

Trump said Tehran has been handed a proposal to rapidly advance towards a deal, but Iran’s Araghchi on Friday said no written proposal was produced yet amid “confusing and contradictory” rhetoric from Washington.

“Mark my words: there is no scenario in which Iran abandons its hard-earned right to enrichment for peaceful purposes: a right afforded to all other NPT signatories, too,” he wrote in a post on X, in reference to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Kazem Gharibabadi, a senior nuclear negotiator, on Friday rejected reports by Western media outlets that Iran may agree to fully halt its enrichment of uranium for the remainder of the Trump presidency to build trust.

“The right to enrich is our absolute red line! No halt to enrichment is acceptable.”

Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew from a landmark nuclear accord signed between Iran and world powers three years earlier, imposing the harshest sanctions yet by the US that have only intensified during the latest negotiations.

The nuclear deal set a 3.67 percent enrichment rate with first-generation centrifuges for civilian use in Iran, in exchange for lifting United Nations sanctions. Iran is now enriching up to 60 percent and has enough fissile material for multiple bombs, but has made no effort to build one yet.

A group of seven European nations has called for an end to Israel’s military assault and blockade of Gaza, as the United Nations aid chief says time should not be wasted on an alternative United States-backed proposal to deliver aid to the Palestinian territory.

In a joint statement late on Friday, the leaders of Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, Spain and Norway said they “will not be silent in front of the man-made humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place before our eyes in Gaza” as Israel’s blockade has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid for two and a half months.

“We call upon the government of Israel to immediately reverse its current policy, refrain from further military operations and fully lift the blockade, ensuring safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian aid to be distributed throughout the Gaza strip by international humanitarian actors,” the statement read.

“More than 50,000 men, women, and children have lost their lives. Many more could starve to death in the coming days and weeks unless immediate action is taken,” it said.

Meanwhile, the Council of Europe, a body that works to safeguard human rights and democracy, also noted that Gaza was suffering from a “deliberate starvation” and warned that Israel was sowing “the seeds for the next Hamas” in the territory, referring to the Palestinian armed group.

“The time for a moral reckoning over the treatment of Palestinians has come – and it is long overdue,” said Dora Bakoyannis, rapporteur for the Middle East at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

The European calls came hours after UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said 160,000 pallets of relief and 9,000 trucks were ready to enter Gaza.

“To those proposing an alternative modality for aid distribution, let’s not waste time. We already have a plan,” he said in a statement.

“We have the people. We have the distribution networks. We have the trust of the communities on the ground. And we have the aid itself – 160,000 pallets of it – ready to move. Now,” he said.

“We demand rapid, safe, and unimpeded aid delivery for civilians in need. Let us work.”

Israel has halted the entry of food, medication and all other essentials into Gaza since March 2. UN agencies and other humanitarian groups have warned of shrinking food, fuel and medicine supplies to the territory of 2.4 million Palestinians facing acute starvation.

Earlier, the US and Israel said they were preparing a plan that would allow the resumption of aid by an NGO, while keeping supplies out of Hamas’s hands.

Under the heavily criticised alternative aid plan, the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aims to start work in Gaza by the end of May.

It intends to work with private US security and logistics firms to transport aid into Gaza to so-called secure hubs where it will then be distributed by aid groups, a source familiar with the plan told the Reuters news agency. It is unclear how the foundation will be funded.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has also asked Israel to allow humanitarian deliveries by the UN and aid groups to resume now until its infrastructure is fully operational, saying this is essential to “alleviate the ongoing humanitarian pressure”.

The UN, however, said it would not work with the foundation because the distribution plan is not impartial, neutral or independent. Israel says the blockade, alongside “military pressure”, is intended to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.

On Thursday, senior Hamas official Basem Naim reiterated the group’s position that the entry of aid into Gaza is a prerequisite for any truce talks with Israel.

“Access to food, water and medicine is a fundamental human right – not a subject for negotiation,” he said.

In August 2005, the Israeli government officially withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian coastal enclave it had occupied continuously since 1967. Apart from pulling back its armed forces, it had to undertake the dismantlement of 21 illegal settlements housing 8,000 Jewish settlers.

Israeli troops were deployed to begin the process, which pulled at the heartstrings of international media outlets like The New York Times. The paper reported on the sobbing settlers affected by Israel’s “historic pullout from the Gaza Strip”, some of whom had to be carried “screaming from their homes in scenes that moved a number of the soldiers to tears”.

To be sure, there is nothing quite so tragic as illegal colonisers being uprooted from one section of land that does not belong to them and transferred to another section of land that does not belong to them. It bears mentioning that a majority of the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip are themselves refugees from Israel’s blood-drenched conquest of Palestine in 1948, which killed 15,000 Palestinians, expelled three-quarters of a million more, and destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages.

Since 2005, the myth of a unilateral Israeli “withdrawal” from Gaza has stubbornly persisted – and has been repeatedly invoked as alleged evidence of Israel’s noble willingness to occasionally play by the rules.

And yet objectively speaking, what happened in August of that year was not much of a “withdrawal” at all, given that the Israeli military continued to control Gaza’s borders while subjecting the territory to a punishing blockade and periodic wanton bombardment.

Israeli officials themselves made no effort to hide what they were really up to. In 2004, while the plan was still being discussed in the Knesset, Dov Weisglass, a senior adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, stated point-blank: “The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”

By “freezing” the political process, Weisglass went on to explain, “you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem”. Thanks to “disengagement”, then, the whole issue of Palestinian statehood had been “removed indefinitely from our agenda” – and all with the “blessing” of the president of the United States of America “and the ratification of both houses of Congress”.

Since the so-called “withdrawal” from Gaza did not entail ceasing to make life hell for the Palestinian inhabitants of the territory, Israel remained ever-engaged on that front. On September 28, 2005 – the month following the drama of the sobbing settlers and soldiers – the late Dr Eyad El-Sarraj, founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, wrote on the Electronic Intifada website: “During the last few days, Gaza was awakened from its dreams of liberation with horrible explosions which have shattered our skies, shaken our buildings, broken our windows, and threw the place into panic.”

These were the effects of Israeli aircraft executing sonic booms in the skies over Gaza, a method El-Sarraj noted “was never used before the disengagement, so as not to alarm or hurt the Israeli settlers and their children”. And that was just the start of the “disengaging”.

In 2006, Israel launched Operation Summer Rains in the Gaza Strip, which scholars Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe would subsequently characterise as being thus far the “most brutal attack on Gaza since 1967”. This, of course, was before Gaza was awakened from its dreams of liberation with an all-out Israeli genocide, which has now killed nearly 53,000 Palestinians since October 2023.

But there was plenty of brutality in between, from Israel’s Operation Cast Lead – which kicked off in December 2008 and killed 1,400 Palestinians in a matter of 22 days – to Operation Protective Edge, which slaughtered 2,251 people over 50 days in 2014.

Along with periodic bouts of mass killing, the fluctuating Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip posed additional existential challenges. In 2010, for example, the BBC listed some of the household items that had at different times been blocked from entering Gaza, including “light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee, chocolate, nuts, shampoo and conditioner”.

In 2006, Israeli government adviser Weisglass – the same character who revealed the “formaldehyde” approach to disengagement – also took it upon himself to charmingly clarify the logic behind Israel’s restrictions on food imports into the Gaza Strip: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Now that Israel is literally starving Palestinians to death in Gaza with the full complicity of the United States, it seems the “idea” has undergone some revisions. Meanwhile, recent news reports citing unnamed Israeli officials indicate that Israel is also currently plotting the “conquest” and full military occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Two decades on from Israel’s withdrawal-that-wasn’t from Gaza, it’s safe to surmise that “disengagement” paved the way for conquest. And this time around, there’s no disengagement plan.

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

Thousands of Palestinians have been ordered by the Israeli forces to flee parts of northern Gaza as indiscriminate air strikes have killed at least 115 people in the territory.

Palestinians in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya area fled their homes with essential belongings on Friday, after intense Israeli air strikes hit the area.

More than 19,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza since Thursday afternoon, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). “Many with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” the organisation said in a post on X. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza.”

Nearly all of Gaza’s population has been displaced at some point during the genocide, with several forced to flee many times over. Israel has increasingly issued forced displacement orders as it escalates its attacks in the enclave.

In a statement in Arabic on Saturday, the Israeli military said it has launched the “initial stages” of what it calls Operation Gideon’s Chariots, a new offensive for “the expansion of the battle in the Gaza Strip, with the goal of achieving all the war’s objectives, including the release of the abducted and the defeat of Hamas”.

A separate statement in English said the army was “mobilising troops to achieve operational control in areas of the Gaza Strip”.

Israel has killed at least 115 Palestinians in Gaza since dawn on Friday as it intensifies bombardment of the enclave amid widespread forced starvation. More than 100 other Palestinians were killed on Thursday in similar attacks.

Since October 2024, Israel has killed at least 53,119 Palestinians and wounded 120,214 others, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The enclave’s Government Media Office updated the death toll to more than 61,700, saying thousands of people missing under the rubble are presumed dead.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promises more strikes if the group continues to launch attacks on Israel.

Israel says it has launched strikes on the Yemeni ports of Hodeidah and as-Salif in response to the Houthi rebels firing missiles towards Israel, days after the Yemeni group agreed a truce with the United States.

The Israeli military said it carried out strikes on “terrorist infrastructure” on Friday, saying on X that the two ports had been used by the Houthi rebel group to “transfer weapons”.

Al Masirah TV, a Houthi-affiliated outlet, also reported Israeli strikes on the two ports. The extent of any damage was not clear, and there no immediate reports of casualties.

The Houthis have carried out a campaign of attacks against Israel in self-proclaimed solidarity with Palestinians after Israel launched its assault on Gaza in October 2023.

Israel has carried out strikes in response, including one on May 6 that damaged Yemen’s main airport in Sanaa and killed several people.

Friday’s attacks were the first since US President Donald Trump agreed to a ceasefire deal with the Houthis earlier this month, with the US halting its attacks on Yemen and the group agreeing to end its attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea.

Israel was not included in that agreement, and its military said it intercepted several missiles fired from Yemen towards Israeli airspace this week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that the attacks are “just the beginning”, describing the Houthis as “just a tool”, alleging that Iran was “behind them”.

“We will not stand idly by and allow the Houthis to harm us. We will strike them with greater force, including at their leadership and all the infrastructure that enables them to attack us,” he said in a statement posted on the government’s social media account.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz pledged to “hunt down and eliminate” Houthi leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi if the rebel group continued “to fire missiles at the State of Israel”.

Alluding to recent Houthi attacks on Israel, Katz indicated leader al-Houthi would meet the same fate as Hamas commanders Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon – all killed in Israeli attacks over the last year.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Jordan’s capital Amman, said that since Israel broke a ceasefire agreement with Hamas back in March – killing almost 3,000 since then, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry – the Houthis had launched “at least 34 different projectiles” towards Israel.

She said that Israel’s policy “moving forward” would be to strike back. “For every missile that’s fired, they’re going to be conducting these types of air strikes,” she said.