Middle East

Officials say more than one million Muslim pilgrims from around the world have already arrived in the country.

Saudi Arabia has announced that the annual Hajj pilgrimage will begin on June 4 after observatories confirmed the sighting of the crescent moon.

The announcement was made on Tuesday by the kingdom’s Supreme Court in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

At a news conference on Monday, Saudi Hajj Minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah said more than one million pilgrims from around the world had already arrived in the country.

The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and must be undertaken at least once by all Muslims who are able to.

The pilgrimage occurs annually between the eighth and 13th days of Dhul-Hijjah, the 12th and final month on the Islamic lunar calendar.

Worshippers take part in four days of ceremonies with the high point coming on the second day with mass outdoor prayers on Mount Arafat, the hill where the Prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon.

Around the world, many Muslims choose to fast on this day.

Many pilgrims also visit the city of Medina, home to the Prophet Muhammad’s tomb and the second holiest site in Islam. While not an official part of the Hajj, visiting Medina remains a significant spiritual experience for many Muslims.

This year, the day of Arafat will fall on June 5, followed by Eid al-Adha on June 6, according to Saudi authorities.

Last year, 1.8 million people took part in the pilgrimage, according to official figures.

During the 2024 Hajj, temperatures soared to 51.8 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit), and more than 1,300 pilgrims died, raising concerns about the growing risks of extreme heat during the Saudi summer.

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.”

Water treatment stations attacked by RSF can no longer provide clean water in Khartoum state, which reported 90 percent of the cases.

Sudan’s Ministry of Health has reported a spike in cholera cases in the war-torn country, with 2,700 infections and 172 deaths in the past week.

In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said 90 percent of cases were reported in Khartoum state, where water and electricity supply have been severely disrupted in recent weeks by drone strikes blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the army since April 2023.

Cases were also reported in the south, centre and north of the country.

Cholera is endemic to Sudan, but outbreaks have become far worse and more frequent since the war broke out, wrecking already fragile water and sanitation and health infrastructure.

Last Tuesday, the ministry said 51 people had died of cholera out of more than 2,300 reported cases over the past three weeks, 90 percent of them in Khartoum state.

The RSF this month launched drone strikes across Khartoum, including on three power stations, before being completely pushed out of their last holdout positions in the capital last week.

Water treatment stations out of service

The strikes knocked the electricity – and subsequently the local water network – out of service, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), forcing residents to turn to unsafe water sources.

“Water treatment stations no longer have electricity and cannot provide clean water from the Nile,” Slaymen Ammar, MSF’s medical coordinator in Khartoum, said in a statement.

Cholera, an acute diarrhoeal illness caused by ingesting contaminated water or food, can kill within hours if untreated. Yet, it is easily preventable and treatable when clean water, sanitation and timely medical care are available.

Sudan’s already fragile healthcare system has been pushed to the “breaking point” by the war, according to the World Health Organization.

Up to 90 percent of the country’s hospitals have at some point been forced to close because of the fighting, according to the doctors’ union, with health facilities regularly stormed, bombed and looted.

The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.

More aid distribution sites are being set up in Gaza with US support, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He described “some loss of control” after Palestinians desperately swarmed a new aid hub in Rafah following nearly three months of Israeli blockade.

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.

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.

Chaos erupted in Rafah as thousands of desperate Palestinians swarmed a new aid distribution site, set up by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Live ammunition was fired to disperse the large crowds.

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.

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.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the US president ‘wants peace’ but will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Washington, DC – United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem says she delivered a message from President Donald Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the two countries should be aligned on how to approach Iran.

Noem, who concluded a visit to Israel on Monday, told Fox News that her talks with Netanyahu were “candid and direct”. Her comments come days after US and Iranian officials held their fifth round of nuclear talks in Rome.

“President Trump specifically sent me here to have a conversation with the prime minister about how those negotiations are going and how important it is that we stay united and let this process play out,” she said.

On Sunday, Trump suggested that the talks were progressing well.

“We’ve had some very, very good talks with Iran,” the US president told reporters. “And I don’t know if I’ll be telling you anything good or bad over the next two days, but I have a feeling I might be telling you something good.”

Last week, CNN reported, citing unidentified US officials, that Israel was preparing for strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, despite the US-led talks.

Iran has promised to respond forcefully to any Israeli attack, and accused Netanyahu of working to undermine US diplomacy.

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi said last week that the Israeli prime minister is “desperate to dictate what the US can and cannot do”.

Israel has been sceptical about the nuclear negotiations, and Netanyahu has been claiming for years that Iran is on the cusp of acquiring a nuclear bomb. Israeli officials portray Iran – which backs regional groups engaged in armed struggle against Israel – as a major threat.

On Monday, Noem said that the US understands that Netanyahu does not trust Iran.

“The message to the American people is: We have a president that wants peace, but also a president that will not tolerate nuclear Iran capability in the future. They will not be able to get a nuclear weapon, and this president will not allow it,” she said.

“But he also wants this prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to be on the same page with him.”

A major sticking point in the talks has been whether Iran would be allowed to enrich its own uranium.

US officials have said they want Iran not just to scale back its nuclear programme, but also to completely stop enriching uranium – a position that Tehran has said is a nonstarter.

Enrichment is the process of altering the uranium atom to create nuclear fuel.

Iranian officials say enrichment for civilian purposes is a sovereign right that is not prohibited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Tehran denies seeking a nuclear weapon, while Israel is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal.

During his first term, in 2018, Trump nixed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which had seen Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against its economy.

Since then, the US has been piling sanctions on Iran. Tehran has responded by escalating its nuclear programme.

On Monday, Iran ruled out temporarily suspending uranium enrichment to secure an interim deal with the US.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei stressed that Iran is not buying time with the talks.

“We have entered the course of talks seriously and purposefully with the intention of reaching a fair agreement. We have proved our seriousness,” Baqaei was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency.

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.

Some Israelis chant, ‘Death to Arabs’ and ‘May your village burn,’ as they march through Jerusalem’s Old City.

Right-wing Israelis in Jerusalem have stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and a United Nations facility for Palestinian refugees as an annual march took place marking Israel’s conquest of the eastern part of the city.

Some Israelis chanted, “Death to Arabs” and “May your village burn,” as they marched through the alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City on Monday, going through the Muslim quarter to mark “Jerusalem Day”, which commemorates the Israeli occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 war.

Thousands of heavily armed police and border police were dispatched in advance because settlers regularly assault, attack and harass Palestinians and shops in the Muslim quarter. The settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in settlements and outposts, which are illegal under international law.

Groups of young people, some carrying Israeli flags, were seen on Monday confronting Palestinian shopkeepers, passers-by and schoolchildren as well as Israeli rights activists and police, at times spitting on people, lobbing insults and trying to force their way into houses.

Police detained at least two youths, according to AFP journalists at the scene.

A small group of those rallying, including an Israeli member of parliament, stormed a compound in East Jerusalem belonging to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.

Israel has banned the agency from working in occupied Palestinian territory and in Israel, impacting the life-saving work that it has been carrying out for more than 70 years in areas that include the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip.

UNRWA West Bank coordinator Roland Friedrich said about a dozen Israeli protesters, including Yulia Malinovsky, one of the legislators behind an Israeli law that banned UNRWA, entered the compound, climbing its main gate in view of Israeli police.

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

Earlier on Monday, Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and other politicians were among more than 2,000 Israelis who stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and surrounding areas.

Ben-Gvir released a video on his X account from the site – Islam’s third holiest – saying he “prayed for victory in the war, for the return of all our hostages, and for the success of the newly-appointed head of the Shin Bet – Major General David Zini”.

Negev and Galilee Minister Yitzhak Vaserlauf and Knesset member Yitzhak Kreuzer were among those accompanying the ultranationalist minister.

Backed by armed police, Ben-Gvir has carried out similar provocative moves in the compound before, often at sensitive junctures in Israel’s war on Gaza, to advocate for increased military pressure and to block all humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

The Jerusalem Waqf – the Islamic authority that oversees the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) – decried the storming of the compound by Ben-Gvir and other members of the Israeli Knesset and called for a halt to all “provocative activities” in the area.

Under the management of the Jordan-appointed Waqf, only Muslims are allowed to pray at the compound.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said the march is aimed at asserting Israeli dominance over the city.

“Videos show Israeli citizens inside the Old City of Jerusalem attacking Palestinian shops and throwing objects at them,” Ibrahim said, reporting from Doha, Qatar as Al Jazeera has been banned from reporting in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem.

“This is again a reminder that no one has immunity.”

After a long fight against leukaemia, three-year-old Ali Asaf Demir is now cancer-free. Thousands of people in Istanbul heeded his father’s call on social media to gather to release balloons in celebration of his return to health.

Beirut, Lebanon – As southern Lebanon continues to suffer from sporadic Israeli attacks despite a ceasefire signed in November between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, establishment parties have emerged as the biggest winners of municipal elections.

Voting took place over four weeks, starting in Mount Lebanon – north of the capital, Beirut – followed by the country’s northern districts, Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley, and concluding on Saturday in southern Lebanon.

While Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim political and armed group, suffered setbacks to its political influence and military capabilities during 14 months of war with Israel, the group’s voter base was still intact and handed it and Amal, its closest political ally, victories across dozens of municipalities.

“The Hezbollah-Amal alliance has held firm and support among the Shia base has not experienced any dramatic erosion,” Imad Salamey, a professor of political science at the Lebanese American University, told Al Jazeera.

Despite establishment parties winning the majority of seats across the country, candidates running on campaigns of political reform and opposition to the political establishment also made inroads in some parts of the country, even winning seats in municipalities in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah historically has enjoyed strong support.

In Lebanon, there is no unified bloc of reformists although political actors and groups that emerged during the 2019 antigovernment protests over the economic crisis are referred to locally as “el-tagheyereen”, or change makers.

“Alternative Shia candidates in some localities were able to run without facing significant intimidation, signalling a limited but growing space for dissent within the community,” Salamey said.

The fact the elections were held at all will be seen as a boon to the pro-reform government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who came to power in January, say analysts. The polls, initially set for 2022, were delayed three times due to parliamentary elections, funding issues and the war with Israel, which started in October 2023.

Critics, however, argued the elections favoured established parties because the uncertainty over when they would be held meant candidates waited to build their campaigns. As recently as March, there were still proposals to delay the elections until September to give candidates a chance to prepare their platforms after Lebanon suffered through the war and a two-month intensification by Israel from September to November, which left the country needing $11bn for recovery and reconstruction, according to the World Bank.

The war left Hezbollah politically and militarily battered after Israel killed much of its leadership, including longtime Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his successor Hachem Safieddine.

The war reordered the power balance in Lebanon, diminishing Hezbollah’s influence. Many villages in southern Lebanon are still inaccessible, and Israel continues to occupy five points of Lebanese territory that it has refused to withdraw from after the ceasefire. It also continues to attack other parts of the south, where it claims Hezbollah still has weapons.

With their villages still destroyed or too dangerous to access, many southerners cast ballots in Nabatieh or Tyre, an act that recalls the 18-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. During the occupation, elections for southern regions under Israeli control were also held in other cities still under Lebanese sovereignty.

Hezbollah has given up the majority of its sites in the south to the Lebanese army, a senior western diplomat told Al Jazeera and local media has reported.

The recent post-war period also brought to power a new president, army commander Joseph Aoun, and the reform camp’s choice for prime minister, Salam, former president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Hezbollah remains ‘strong’

Municipal elections are not seen as an indicator of the country’s popular sentiment due to low voter interest and local political dynamics differing from those at the national level. Some analysts dismissed the results, calling them “insignificant” and added that next year’s parliamentary elections would more accurately reflect which direction the country is headed.

Voter turnout was lower in almost every part of the country compared with 2016, the last time municipal elections took place. The places it fell included southern Lebanon, where 37 percent of the population voted. In 2016, 48 percent of its voters cast ballots. This was also true in most of the Bekaa Valley, an area that also was hit hard during the war and where Hezbollah tends to be the most popular party. In the north, voter turnout dropped from 45 percent in 2016 to 39 percent in 2025. In Beirut, the turnout was marginally higher – 21 percent in 2025 compared with 20 percent in 2016.

Many people in southern Lebanon are still living through the war as Israel continues to carry out attacks on areas like Nabatieh. While some in and from the south have questioned Hezbollah’s standing and decision to enter into a war with Israel on behalf of Gaza when they fired rockets on the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms territory on October 8, 2023, others still cling to their fervent support for the group.

“The municipal elections confirmed that Hezbollah and the Amal Movement remain strong,” Qassem Kassir, a journalist and political analyst believed to be close to Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera. “The forces of change are weak, and their role has declined. The party [Hezbollah] maintains its relationship with the people.”

Although reform forces did win some seats, including in Lebanon’s third largest city, Sidon, they were largely at a disadvantage due to a lack of name familiarity, the short campaign time and misinformation circulated by politically affiliated media.

Claims of corruption and contested election results marred voting in parts of the north, where many candidates from traditional political parties dominated.

In Beirut, forces for change were dealt a heavy blow. After receiving about 40 percent of the vote in 2016, which still was not enough to earn them a municipal seat, the reformist Beirut Madinati (Beirut My City) list won less than 10 percent of this year’s vote.

The defeat took place despite the worsening living conditions in the capital, which critics blamed on establishment parties, including those running the municipality.

“The municipality lives on another planet, completely detached from the concerns of the people,” Sarah Mahmoud, a Beirut Madinati candidate, told Al Jazeera on May 18 on the streets of Beirut as people went out to vote.

Since an economic crisis took hold in 2019, electricity cuts have become more common, and diesel generators have plugged the gap. These generators contribute to air pollution, which has been linked to cardiovascular and respiratory ailments in Beirut and carries cancer risks.

Despite the criticisms and degraded living situation in the city, a list of candidates backed by establishment figures and major parties, including Hezbollah and Amal, but also their major ideological opponents, including the Lebanese Forces and the right-wing Kataeb Party, won 23 out of 24 seats.

This list ran on a platform that stoked fears of sectarian disenfranchisement and promised sectarian parity.

Municipalities, unlike Lebanon’s parliament, do not have sectarian quotas.

‘What are you fighting for?’

The unlikely coalition of establishment parties, which was similar to the successful list in 2016 that aligned establishment parties against reform candidates, puzzled some in the capital. In separate incidents, television reporters confronted representatives from Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces, drawing angry and confrontational reactions from them but little clarification as to why they’d align with an avowed enemy.

Bernard Bridi, a media adviser for the list, said its priority was to bring in a foreign consultancy that would advise the municipality on how to manage Beirut like other major international capitals. She added that the opposing parties decided to unify because the stakes are so high this year after years of economic suffering, particularly since the war.

Critics, however, accused the establishment parties of trying to keep power concentrated among themselves rather than let it fall to reformists who could threaten the system that has consolidated power in the hands of a few key figures and groups in the post-civil war era.

“The question is what are you fighting for,” Karim Safieddine, a political organiser with Beirut Madinati, said, referring to the establishment list. “And if they can tell me what they’re fighting for, I’d be grateful.”

Now the nation’s eyes will turn to May next year as parties and movements are already preparing their candidates and platforms for parliamentary elections.

In 2022, just more than a dozen reform candidates emerged from Lebanon’s economic crisis and subsequent popular uprising. Some speculated that the reform spirit has subsided since thousands of Lebanese have emigrated abroad – close to 200,000 from 2018 to 2021 alone – and others have grown disillusioned at a perceived lack of immediate change or disagreements among reform-minded figures.

Many Lebanese will also have last year’s struggles during the war and need for reconstruction in mind when heading to the polls next year.

Some have started to question or challenge Hezbollah’s longtime dominance after seeing the group so badly weakened by Israel. Others are doubling down on their support due to what they said is neglect by the new government and their belief that Hezbollah is the only group working in their interests.

“Taken together, these developments imply a future trajectory where Shia political support for Hezbollah remains solid but increasingly isolated,” Salamey explained, “while its broader cross-sectarian coalition continues to shrink, potentially reducing Hezbollah’s influence in future parliamentary elections to that of a more pronounced minority bloc.”

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.