Palestine

This summer in Western Europe, there is constant talk of “unprecedented heatwaves”. According to the media, authorities are working hard to help people cope with and protect themselves from the adverse effects of sweltering temperatures.

As someone in Gaza, it is hard not to be grimly amused by this panic.

After all, as temperatures began to rise, my homeland – at least what remains of it – has been transformed into an open-air furnace.

Now, in the middle of another hot, humid Mediterranean summer, we don’t even have the bare minimum to shield ourselves from the heat. I read report after report advising Europeans to stay indoors, stay hydrated, use sun cream and avoid strenuous outdoor activity. Meanwhile, we in Gaza have no homes, no water, no shade and no escape.

We cannot “limit outdoor activity” because everything we need to survive is outside: water trucks that may come twice a week if we’re lucky, food distributions, firewood to scavenge. We cannot “stay hydrated” because water is scarce, rationed and often polluted. And sunscreen? We would sooner find medicine on Mars.

Summer in Gaza used to be a season of joy with beach days, courtyard gardens, a breeze under the trees. But the ongoing Israeli onslaught has turned it into a season of torment. The beaches are blockaded. The courtyards are rubble. The trees are ash. Israel has flattened most of Gaza, turning soil into dust, parks into deserts and cities into graveyards. Gaza is now a shadeless city.

The heat itself has become a silent killer. But Gaza’s deadly summer is not natural. It is not just another consequence of climate change either. It is Israel’s making. The endless bombing has created greenhouse gas emissions and thick layers of dust and pollutants. Fires burn unchecked. Garbage piles rot in the sun. Farmland is razed. What was once a climate crisis is now climate cruelty, engineered by military force.

The irony is bitter: Europe blames its heatwaves on a meteorological “heat dome”, a bubble of trapped hot air. But Israel has trapped us in another kind of dome: overcrowded nylon tents that act like ovens in the sun. These camps are not shelters – they are slow-cooking chambers. They trap heat, stink, fear and grief. And we, the displaced, have nowhere else to go.

Summer is no longer a season I look forward to. It is a dilemma I endure. The sun hangs overhead like a sentence. It scorches the ground beneath my feet so that even my slippers burn. I cannot stay inside the tent during the day. It is too hot to breathe. But I cannot be outside for long either. I must go. I must wait in long lines for water, then again for food – under a sun so punishing I fear sunstroke as much as starvation.

We are told to queue with discipline, but how can you queue when your body is faint and your child is hungry? I push forward through crowds, not out of greed, but desperation. I scavenge for fuel – wood, plastic, anything to burn. I return to my tent only to collapse into more heat.

The nights offer no mercy. With most of Gaza’s population now crammed near the coastline, the tents radiate heat back at each other. Unlike the earth, they do not cool after sunset. They store the suffering. I feel my neighbours’ breath, their sweat, their sorrow as if the heat itself is contagious. Insects swarm us in waves, drawn to the warmth. My mother and sister swat them away as if they were the bombs we can still hear in the distance.

Living in a tent for a second summer should make it easier. It doesn’t. It makes it worse.

Last summer, after being displaced from our home in eastern Khan Younis, we at least had some food variety. There were still deliveries of aid. We could still cook. But since March 2 when Israel blocked humanitarian aid again, we have descended into engineered starvation.

The United States and Israel now stage a grotesque theatre called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” to distribute flour. They place sacks of flour inside metal cages as if we are livestock. People are forced to queue for hours under an open sky, stripped of shade and dignity. Soldiers scream at them to take off their hats, lie face down on blazing asphalt, crawl for food. After all that, you might still leave empty-handed – if you’re not shot first.

They have lowered the bar of our existence. We no longer ask for safety or shelter. We ask only: Do we have enough food to last the day?

Israel has combined every tool of deprivation: heat without shade, thirst without water, hunger without hope. There is no electricity to run desalination or pumping stations. No fuel to chill the little water that comes. No flour, no fish, no markets. For many of us, this summer could be our last.

This is not a climate crisis. This is weather used as a weapon – a war waged not only with bombs and bullets but also with heat, thirst and slow death. Gaza is not just burning – it is being suffocated under a man-made sun. And the world watches, calls it a “conflict” and checks the forecast.

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

At least 21 Palestinians were killed at a US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution site. GHF blamed armed “agitators” for the crush. Footage shows scores of people being rushed to the hospital, including numerous children.

Sayfollah Musallet was a brother, a son and an ambitious young man who was just at the beginning of his life.

That is the message his family has repeated since July 11, when the 20-year-old United States citizen was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the village of Sinjil in the occupied West Bank.

That message, they hope, will prevent the Florida-born Sayfollah from becoming “just another number” in the growing list of Palestinian Americans whose killings never find justice.

That’s why his cousin, Fatmah Muhammad, took a moment amid her grief on Wednesday to remember the things she loved about Sayfollah.

The two united over a passion for food, and Muhammad, a professional baker, remembers how carefully Sayfollah would serve the delicate knafeh pastry she sold through the ice cream shop he ran in Tampa.

“Just in the way he plated my dessert, he made it look so good,” Muhammad, 43, recalled. “I even told him he did a better job than me.”

“That really showed the type of person he was,” she added. “He wanted to do things with excellence.”

‘The love he gave all of us’

Born and raised in Port Charlotte, a coastal community in south central Florida, Sayfollah – nicknamed Saif – maintained a deep connection to his ancestral roots abroad.

He spent a large portion of his teenage years in the occupied West Bank, where his two brothers and sister also lived. There, his parents, who own a home near Sinjil, hoped he could better connect with his culture and language.

But after finishing high school, Sayfollah was eager to return to the US to try his hand at entrepreneurship. Last year, he, his father and his cousins opened the dessert shop in Tampa, Florida, playfully named Ice Screamin.

But the ice cream shop was just the beginning. Sayfollah’s ambition left a deep impression on Muhammad.

“He had his vision to expand the business, to multiply it by many,” she said, her voice at times shaking with grief. “This at 20, when most kids are playing video games.”

“And the crazy thing is, any goal that he set his mind to, he always did it,” she added. “He always exceeded everyone’s expectations, especially with the love he gave all of us.”

Sayfollah’s aunt, 58-year-old Samera Musallet, also remembers his dedication to his family. She described Sayfollah as a loving young man who never let his aunts pay for anything in his presence – and who always insisted on bringing dessert when he came for dinner.

At the same time, Samera said he was still youthful and fun-loving: He liked to watch comedy movies, shop for clothes and make late-night trips to the WaWa convenience store.

One of her fondest memories came when Sayfollah was only 14, and they went together to a baseball game featuring the Kansas City Royals.

“When we got there, he could smell the popcorn and all the hot dogs. He bought everything he could see and said, ‘We’re going to share!’” she told Al Jazeera.

“After he ate all that junk food, we turned around, and he was sleeping. I woke him up when the game was over, and he goes: ‘Who won?’”

‘I really want to get married’

Another one of his aunts, 52-year-old Katie Salameh, remembers that Sayfollah’s mind had turned to marriage in the final months of his young life

As the Florida spring gave way to summer, Sayfollah had announced plans to return to the West Bank to see his mother and siblings. But he confided to Salameh that he had another reason for returning.

“The last time I saw him was we had a family wedding, and that was the weekend of Memorial Day [in May],” Salameh told Al Jazeera.

“I asked him: ‘Are you so excited to see your siblings and your mom?’ He said, ‘Oh my god, I’m so excited.’ Then he goes, ‘I really want to get married. I’m going to look for a bride when I’m there.’”

To keep the ice cream shop running smoothly, Sayfollah had arranged a switch with his father: He would return to the West Bank while his father would travel to Tampa to mind the business.

But that decision would unwittingly put Sayfollah’s father more than 10,000 kilometres away from his son when violent Israeli settlers surrounded him, as witnesses and his family would later recount.

Israeli authorities said the attack in Sinjil began with rock-throwing and “violent clashes … between Palestinians and Israeli civilians”, a claim Sayfollah’s family and witnesses have rejected.

Instead, they said Sayfollah was trying to protect his family’s land when he was encircled by a “mob of settlers” who beat him.

Even when an ambulance was called, Sayfollah’s family said the settlers blocked the paramedics from reaching his broken body. Sayfollah’s younger brother would ultimately help carry his dying brother to emergency responders.

The settlers also fatally shot Mohammed al-Shalabi, a 23-year-old Palestinian man, who witnesses said was left bleeding for hours.

“His phone was on, and he wasn’t responding,” his mother, Joumana al-Shalabi, told reporters. “He was missing for six hours. They found him martyred under the tree. They beat him and shot him with bullets.”

Palestinians cannot legally possess firearms in the occupied West Bank, but Israeli settlers can. The Israeli government itself has encouraged the settlers to bear arms, including through the distribution of rifles to civilians.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has recorded the killings of at least 964 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023.

And the violence appears to be on the rise. The OHCHR noted that there was a 13-percent increase in the number of killings during the first six months of 2025, compared with the same period last year.

‘Pain I can’t even describe’

An Al Jazeera analysis also found that Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least nine US citizens since 2022, including veteran reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

None of those deaths have resulted in criminal charges, with Washington typically relying on Israel to conduct its own investigations.

So far, US President Donald Trump has not directly addressed Sayfollah’s killing. When asked in the Oval Office about the fatal beating, Trump deferred to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We protect all American citizens anywhere in the world, especially if they’re unjustly murdered or killed,” Rubio replied on Trump’s behalf. “We’re gathering more information.”

Rubio also pointed to a statement issued a day earlier from the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. The ambassador called on Israel to “aggressively investigate” the attack, saying “there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act”.

It was a particularly jarring sentiment from Huckabee, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and has even denied the very existence of a Palestinian people.

Nevertheless, no independent, US-led investigation has been announced.

According to Israeli media, three Israeli settlers, including a military reservist, were taken into custody following the deadly attack, but all were subsequently released.

It has only been four days since Sayfollah’s killing, and his family told Al Jazeera the initial shock has only now begun to dissipate.

But in its place has come a flood of grief and anger. Muhammad still struggles to accept that he “died because he was on his own land”. She sees Sayfollah’s death as part of a broader pattern of abuses, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza, where Israel has led a war since 2023.

“I see it on the news all the time with other people in the West Bank. I see it in Gaza – the indiscriminate killing of anybody in their way,” she said.

“But when it happens to you, it’s just so hard to even fathom,” she added. “It’s pain I can’t even describe.”

Israel is ploughing ahead with a plan to build what critics have described as a “concentration camp” for Palestinians on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza, in the face of a growing backlash at home and abroad.

The suggestion, first mooted by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier this month, anticipates an area that could accommodate an initial group of some 600,000 already displaced Palestinians in Gaza, which would then be expanded to accommodate all of the enclave’s pre-war population of some 2.2 million people. It would be run by international forces and have no Hamas presence.

Once inside Katz’s self-styled “humanitarian city”, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave to other areas in Gaza, but would instead be encouraged to “voluntarily emigrate” to other unspecified countries, the minister said.

Katz’s plan has already received significant criticism. Labelled a “concentration camp” by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and illegal by Israeli lawyers, it has even been criticised by the military that will be responsible for implementing it, with the military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, reportedly calling it “unworkable” with “more holes in it than cheese”.

Internationally, a British minister said he was “appalled” by the plan, while Austria and Germany’s foreign ministers expressed their “concern”. The United Nations said it was “firmly against” the idea.

But members of the Israeli government have defended the idea, and leaks continue to emerge in the Israeli media over the debate surrounding it within the government – with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asking only for a plan that was speedier and less costly than a plan presented by the Israeli army.

An Al Jazeera investigation has found that Israel has recently increased the number of demolitions it is conducting in Rafah, possibly paving the way for the “humanitarian city”.

Long planned

Depopulating Gaza has long been an ambition of some of Israel’s more hardline settler groups, who believe themselves to have a divine mandate to occupy the Palestinian territory. The Israeli far-right was encouraged to press ahead with the idea when United States President Donald Trump suggested in February that Palestinians in Gaza could be displaced and moved elsewhere.

Since then, both Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have backed calls for displacement.

When Netanyahu announced in May the creation of the controversial US-backed GHF, a body intended to deliver limited aid into the enclave his forces had been besieging since early March, Netanyahu referred to a future “sterile zone” that Gaza’s population would be moved into, where they would be allowed aid and food.

Later the same month, Smotrich, who has criticised the current plan as too costly but is not opposed to the idea in principle, also suggested that plans were under way to push Gaza’s population into a camp.

Addressing a “settlement conference” in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich told his audience that what remained of Gaza would be “totally destroyed” and its population pressed into a “humanitarian zone” close to the Egyptian border, foreshadowing the language used by Katz.

Part of the Israeli plan

Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flashenberg told Al Jazeera that – for the Israeli government – there was merit to the plan, both from a security perspective, and “from the perspective of ethnically cleansing” Gaza, and providing an end goal that Israel’s leaders could define as a success.

“As I understand it, parts of the military regard removing civilians from the [non-Israeli controlled parts] of Gaza and concentrating them in a single space as an ideal first step in locating and eliminating Hamas,” Flashenberg said of the Palestinian group that Israel has failed to eliminate in 21 months of conflict, despite the killing of more than 58,000 people.

Flashenberg added that the plan would effectively create an “ethnic cleansing terminal”, from which, once people were separated from their original homes, “it makes it easier to move them elsewhere”.

“Of course it complicates ceasefire negotiations, but so what?” Flashenberg said, referring to the ongoing talks aimed at bringing about an initial 60-day ceasefire. “Nothing has really changed. It’s possible, of course, that with work on the concentration camp under way, Hamas might still accept the ceasefire and hope that things might change.”

“It’s part of their entire mentality,” Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the Hadash-Ta’al party, said. “They really do believe that they can do anything: that they can move all of these people around as if they’re not even humans. Even if imprisoning just the first 600,000 people suggested by Katz is inconceivable. How can you do that without it leading to some kind of massacre?”

“That they’re even talking about criminal acts without every state in the world condemning them is dangerous,” she added.

But lawyers in Israel have questioned the legality of the move. Military lawyers are reported to have “raised concerns” that Israel might face accusations of forced displacement, and an open letter from a number of Israeli legal scholars is more explicit, slamming the proposal as “manifestly illegal”.

‘Nothing humanitarian’

According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people, about 90 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population, have been displaced as a result of Israeli attacks. Many have been displaced multiple times.

Earlier this month, Amnesty concluded that, despite the militarised delivery of limited aid into the strip, Israel is continuing to use starvation as a weapon of war. According to the rights agency, the malnutrition and starvation of children and families across Gaza remain widespread, with the healthcare system that might typically care for them pushed to breaking point by Israel.

“Humanitarian city? I despise all these euphemisms. There’s nothing humanitarian about this. It’s utterly inhumane,” Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said. “There would be nothing humanitarian about the conditions that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be pushed into or about the idea you can only leave by going to another country.”

“This has to be condemned and there has to be consequences,” he continued.  “It’s not true when people say there’s no international community any more. If you trade with Israel, cooperate militarily or diplomatically with it, you have leverage. The US has leverage, the EU [European Union] has leverage. All these actors do.”

“By shrugging your shoulders and saying it’s just anarchy,” he concluded, “you’re handing the keys to Smotrich, Katz and Netanyahu and saying there’s nothing you can do.”

The Al-Jaleel Society for Care and Community-based Rehabilitation has provided essential services to disabled Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp for decades. But now, after repeated Israeli attacks, the centre has been destroyed, and its staff have discovered that it sits in an Israeli-designated demolition zone.

Al-Jaleel’s staff have received no official notice, but in early June, the Israeli army published an aerial map showing several buildings in the area that were set to be destroyed, including the rehabilitation centre.

Zaid Am-Ali, senior advocacy officer for Palestine operations at Humanity and Inclusion, Al-Jaleel’s partner organisation, told Al Jazeera the reason the organisations were given was that the area was being secured for military and security purposes.

“This is not the first time the centre has been targeted, the Israeli military has destroyed parts of it during previous acts of demolition in the refugee camp and has breached and ransacked the centre and tampered with assistive devices meant for persons with disabilities,” Am-Ali said.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli military but has not received a response at the time of publication.

Supporting thousands of Palestinians

Al-Jaleel is a “critical lifeline”, Am-Ali said, describing how the demolition of the centre would deprive vulnerable communities in Jenin and the wider northern West Bank of its essential services.

It was established in 1991 as the Local Rehabilitation Committee, which became an independent NGO in 2010 under the name Al-Jaleel.

Since it first opened its doors, Al-Jaleel has provided thousands of Palestinians with a wide range of support and services, especially to those with mobility impairments resulting from injury, illness, or conflict-related trauma.

As well as prosthetics, orthotics and physical and occupational therapies, Al-Jaleel also offers psychological support for those affected by disability and continuing violent assaults perpetrated by the Israeli military, which has been attacking Jenin on a regular basis for years, but has intensified operations since the start of 2025.

“This is the same area that has been subject to an ongoing Israeli military operation for years now, causing a lot of casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure,” Am-Ali said.

Al-Jaleel’s ability to function and provide care was severely compromised in April when an Israeli attack damaged the building.

Although staff have since relocated and started operating from another location due to their displacement from the camp, they have not yet been permitted to re-enter the organisation’s original building to retrieve any equipment that was spared during the April attack.

Staff were told they would be allowed to evacuate their equipment on July 12, but were then not allowed to do so by the Israeli military.

It is unclear when or if staff will be able to collect Al-Jaleel’s belongings before the demolition takes place. With the area now declared a closed military zone, Al-Jaleel’s staff are being denied information about the building’s status.

At the time of writing, the centre has not been demolished, but other buildings in its vicinity have been torn down.

Violence in Jenin

Violence in Jenin has escalated significantly since January 21, when the Israeli military launched “Operation Iron Wall” in the city and the nearby refugee camp.

According to Israeli forces, the operation is an “antiterrorism” offensive, attempting to crush Palestinian resistance efforts in the area.

The Israeli military has for years attempted to root out any form of armed resistance in the occupied West Bank, conducting raids that have escalated in severity since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023. At least 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in that period.

“Operation Iron Wall” – targeting Palestinian fighters in the northern West Bank – started in Jenin, but has since spread to Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and al-Fara refugee camps.

On March 22, just 60 days after the beginning of the offensive, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported that 40,000 Palestinian refugees had been displaced from refugee camps in the northern West Bank.

In addition, earlier this year, Israeli authorities announced that they planned to wipe out the Jenin refugee camp completely.

Since then, Israeli bulldozers have been tearing down commercial buildings and homes at an alarming rate.

Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported on June 30 that more than 600 homes and 15 roads in Jenin camp had been demolished.

On June 17, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by Adalah, a legal centre for Palestinian minority rights in Israel, on June 12 to halt the demolition of Jenin refugee camp.

The Supreme Court authorised the Israeli military to proceed with the destruction of nearly 90 civilian buildings that housed hundreds of Palestinian families.

“The Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to uphold these operations, including its 7 May 2025 rejection of Adalah’s petition against the mass demolitions in Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps, provides a false legal cover for policies of forced displacement and entrenched impunity,” said Adalah.

Bigger picture

The potential demolition of Al-Jaleel fits into a wider pattern of Israeli attacks on Palestinian healthcare institutions.

The targeting of health facilities, medical personnel and patients has been widespread during Israel’s war on Gaza. These actions are considered war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Convention. Israel has justified the attacks as being part of its fight against Hamas and other armed groups, accusing them, without any overwhelming evidence, of using health facilities as cover for their bases and operations.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 94 percent of all hospitals in Gaza are damaged or destroyed.

Between October 7, 2023, and July 2, 2025, WHO recorded 863 attacks on healthcare in the West Bank. These attacks affected 203 institutions and 589 health transports

In a statement to Al Jazeera, WHO reported that, of the 476 government health service delivery units assessed by WHO and partners in the West Bank in June 2025, only 345 are fully functional, 112 are partially functional, nine are non-functional, and 1 has been destroyed.

That, Am-Ali believes, is being overlooked amid the understandable focus on Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians. And it is allowing Israel to get away with its devastation of Palestinian life in the West Bank, and its destruction of vital centres like Al-Jaleel.

“These developments are not isolated incidents and are in clear violation of international law, including the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force under the UN Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he said.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says tear gas was fired on Wednesday at crowds of Palestinians at aid facility in Khan Younis.

At least 21 Palestinians have been killed in the latest carnage at the GHF aid distribution centre in southern Gaza, with most of the victims reported to have died in a stampede.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health has disputed the allegation from the controversial United States- and Israel-backed organisation that armed agitators were responsible for the incident on Wednesday morning at the site in Khan Younis.

In an earlier statement, the GHF had said 19 victims were trampled and another was stabbed “amid a chaotic and dangerous surge”.

Without providing any evidence, it said the stampede had been provoked by “elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas”.

The statement also claimed that GHF staff saw multiple weapons in the crowd and that one of its US contractors was threatened with a gun.

However, Palestinian authorities and witnesses have vehemently contested the GHF’s version of events.

Gaza’s Health Ministry released a statement saying 21 Palestinians had been killed at the GHF site on Wednesday. It noted that 15 of the victims died as a result of a stampede and suffocation after tear gas was fired at crowds of aid seekers.

“️For the first time, deaths have been recorded due to suffocation and the intense stampede of citizens at aid distribution centres,” the ministry added.

Speaking from Gaza City on Wednesday, Al Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud said a witness had confirmed that tear gas was fired on the crowd, “causing mayhem and chaos”, which led to a stampede.

Meanwhile, a medical source at Nasser Hospital told the AFP news agency that the desperate and starving victims had been trying to receive food, but the main gate to the distribution centre had been closed.

“The Israeli occupation forces and the centre’s private security personnel opened fire on them, resulting in a large number of deaths and injuries,” they said.

Since the GHF started operating in the enclave in late May, at least 875 people have been killed trying to get food, according to the United Nations, which said on Tuesday that 674 of these deaths had occurred “in the vicinity of GHF sites”.

Speaking last week, UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said most of the casualties had suffered “gunshot injuries”.

Both the Israeli army and GHF contractors have been accused of carrying out the killings.

The UN has described the GHF sites as “death traps”, calling them “inherently unsafe” and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards.

Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, said on Wednesday that the GHF was guilty of gross mismanagement.

“People who flock in their thousands (to GHF sites) are hungry and exhausted, and they get squeezed into narrow places, amid shortages of aid and the absence of organisation and discipline by the GHF,” he said.

The latest deaths near aid distribution centres came as an Israeli attack on a camp of displaced people in al-Mawasi killed nine people.

In total, at least 43 Palestinians, including 21 people who were seeking aid, have been killed since dawn on Wednesday, according to medical sources.

Israel’s war on Gaza has wiped out cropland and trees, creating food shortages and exacerbating environmental degradation and climate change.

The Destruction of Gaza’s Cropland is part of a series called Climate & War, commissioned by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), which tells personal stories to reveal how war exacerbates climate change.

Learn more at: Climate and War | ARIJ

US nurse tells of Israeli authorities confiscating supplies of baby formula being brought into Gaza by medical workers.

One in every 10 children screened in clinics in Gaza run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is malnourished, as child hunger surges across the territory amid the continuing Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid.

Israel’s punishing prevention of aid entering Gaza has led to “severe shortages of nutrition supplies”, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday, describing the situation for starving children as “engineered and man-made”.

Lazzarini said the UN must be allowed to do its work in Gaza, particularly bringing in “humanitarian assistance at scale, including for children”.

“Any additional delay to a ceasefire will cause more deaths,” he said, noting that more than 870 starving Palestinians had been killed so far while trying to access food from the highly criticised distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is backed by Israel and the United States.

UNRWA’s communications director, Juliette Touma, told reporters in Geneva via a videolink from Amman, Jordan, that “medicine, nutrition supplies, hygiene material, fuel are all rapidly running out”.

“Our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza, especially since the siege was tightened more than four months ago on the second of March,” Touma said.

“One nurse that we spoke to told us that in the past, he only saw these cases of malnutrition in textbooks and documentaries,” she said.

“As malnutrition among children spreads across the war-torn enclave, UNRWA has over 6,000 trucks of food, hygiene supplies, medicine, medical supplies outside of Gaza. They are all waiting to go in,” Touma added.

“The world cannot continue to look away.”

“1 in 10 children screened by UNRWA in #Gaza is now malnourished,” UNRWA @JulietteTouma briefs the press at @UNGeneva.

Before the war, such cases were almost unheard of.

Now, Gaza’s shattered health system is overwhelmed — and aid is being blocked by the Government of Israel.… pic.twitter.com/3b8S2qONef

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 15, 2025

Since January 2024, UNRWA said it had screened more than 240,000 boys and girls under the age of five in its clinics, adding that before the war, acute malnutrition was rare in Gaza.

Andee Clark Vaughan, an emergency nurse with the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association (PANZMA) based in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday how Israeli authorities had confiscated baby formula from medical workers entering the territory.

“Immune systems are so compromised here because of the malnutrition,” Vaughan said, describing how Palestinian mothers are so malnourished that they are unable to produce breast milk to feed their infants and forced to make difficult decisions to keep their children alive.

“What we’ve been seeing here is moms trying to do their utmost best, mixing water – which is often contaminated – with beans or lentils just to make something of sustenance to get these kids fed and get them nutrients,” Vaughan added.

On Monday, UNICEF said that last month, more than 5,800 children were diagnosed with malnutrition in Gaza, including more than 1,000 children with severe, acute malnutrition.

It said it was an increase for the fourth month in a row.

Francesca Albanese addresses delegates from 30 countries to discuss ways nations can try to stop Israel’s offensive.

The United Nations’s special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian Territories has said that it is time for nations around the world to take concrete actions to stop Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.

Francesca Albanese spoke to delegates from 30 countries meeting in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, on Tuesday to discuss Israel’s brutal assault and ways nations can try to stop the offensive in the besieged enclave.

Many of the participating nations have described Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide against the Palestinians.

More than 58,000 people have been killed since Israel launched the assault in October 2023, according to Palestinian health authorities. Israeli forces have also imposed several total blockades on the territory throughout the war, pushing Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to the brink of starvation.

“Each state must immediately review and suspend all ties with the State of Israel … and ensure its private sector does the same,” Albanese said. “The Israeli economy is structured to sustain the occupation that has now turned genocidal.”

The two-day conference organised by Colombia and South Africa is being attended mostly by developing nations, although Spain, Ireland and China have also sent delegates.

The conference is co-chaired by South Africa and Colombia, which last year suspended coal exports to Israeli power plants. It includes the participation of members of The Hague Group, a coalition of eight countries that earlier this year pledged to cut military ties with Israel and comply with an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For decades, South Africa’s governing African National Congress party has compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank with its own history of oppression under the harsh apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Black people to areas called “homelands”, before ending in 1994.

The gathering comes as the European Union weighs various measures against Israel, which include a ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements, an arms embargo and individual sanctions against Israeli officials who are found to be blocking a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Colombian Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Mauricio Jaramillo said on Monday that the nations participating in the Bogota meeting, which also include Qatar and Turkiye, will be discussing diplomatic and judicial measures to put more pressure on Israel to cease its attacks.

The Colombian official described Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as an affront to the international order.

“This is not just about Palestine,” Jaramillo said in a news conference. “It is about defending international law and the right to self-determination.”

Special rapporteur Albanese’s comments echoed remarks she made earlier on Tuesday addressed to the EU. The bloc’s foreign ministers had been meeting in Brussels to discuss possible action against Israel.

In a series of posts on X, Albanese wrote that the EU is “legally bound” to suspend its association agreement with Israel, citing its obligations under international law.

Albanese said the EU is not only Israel’s top trading partner but also its top investment partner, nearly double the size of the US, and “trade with an economy inextricably tied to occupation, apartheid and genocide is complicity”.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the 27-member bloc was leaving the door open to action against Israel over its assault on the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip if the humanitarian situation does not improve.

Kallas put forward 10 potential options on Tuesday after Israel was found to have breached a cooperation deal between the two sides on human rights grounds.

The measures range from suspending the entire accord or curbing trade ties to sanctioning Israeli ministers, imposing an arms embargo and halting visa-free travel.

Despite growing anger over the devastation in Gaza, EU states remain divided over how to tackle Israel, and there was no agreement on taking any of the moves at a Tuesday meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

“We will keep these options on the table and stand ready to act if Israel does not live up to its pledges,” Kallas told journalists. “The aim is not to punish Israel. The aim is to really improve the situation in Gaza.”

The meeting in Brussels came in the wake of the deal largely forged by Kallas and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar. Saar met with EU leaders on Monday after agreeing last week to allow desperately needed food and fuel into the coastal enclave of 2.3 million people who have endured more than 21 months of Israel’s deadly assault amid a crippling blockade.

“The border crossings have been opened, we see more trucks going in, we see also operations of the electricity network, but it’s clearly not enough because the situation is still untenable,” Kallas said.

Details of the deal remain unclear, but EU officials have rejected any cooperation with the Israeli-backed GHF over ethical and safety concerns.

Calls to end ties with Israel

European nations like Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain have increasingly called for the EU’s ties with Israel to be reassessed in the wake of the war, which has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians – mostly women and children.

A report by the European Commission found “indications” that Israel’s actions in Gaza are violating human rights obligations in the agreement governing its ties with the EU, but the bloc is divided over how to respond.

Public pressure over Israel’s conduct in Gaza made the new humanitarian deal possible, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said, adding, “That force of the 27 EU member states is what I want to maintain now.”

Kallas will update EU member nations every two weeks on how much aid is actually getting through to Gaza, Irish Foreign Minister Thomas Byrne said.

“So far we haven’t really seen the implementation of it, maybe some very small actions, but there’s still slaughter going on, there’s still a denial of access to food and water as well,” he said. “We need to see action.”

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares Bueno said details of the deal were still being discussed and the EU would monitor results to see if Israel is complying.

“It’s very clear that this agreement is not the end – we have to stop the war,” he said.

There have been regular protests across the continent, including a small one on Tuesday outside the European Council, where the ministers were discussing the aid plan.

Dozens of protesters in Brussels called for more aggressive actions to stop Israel’s offensive in the largely destroyed Gaza Strip, where famine looms and the healthcare system is on the brink of collapse.

“It was able to do this for Russia,” said Alexis Deswaef, vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights. “It must now agree on a package of sanctions for Israel to end the genocide and for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.”

Human rights groups largely called the EU’s actions insufficient.

“This is more than political cowardice,” said Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International. “Every time the EU fails to act, the risk of complicity in Israel’s actions grows. This sends an extremely dangerous message to perpetrators of atrocity crimes that they will not only go unpunished but be rewarded.”

‘Moving towards the unknown’

Israel and Hamas have been engaged in indirect talks for two weeks over a new ceasefire deal, but talks appear to be deadlocked.

Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said negotiations have not stopped but are still in the early stages, adding that Israeli and Hamas delegations are both in Doha.

Meanwhile, Israeli attacks across Gaza resumed on Tuesday, killing at least 30 people, including two women who were shot near an aid distribution point run by the controversial Israel- and US-backed GHF.

Gaza’s civil defence said on Tuesday that its “crews have transported at least 18 martyrs and dozens of wounded since dawn”, most of them following Israeli air strikes on the northern Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have stepped up attacks in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, the army issued another forced evacuation threat for Palestinians living in 16 areas in northern Gaza.

Among them is Jabalia, a ravaged town where residents have been fleeing in fear and panic.

“People are using their cars and donkeys to evacuate the area, and all are moving towards the unknown; they don’t know where to go,” Al Jazeera’s Moath al-Kahlout said.

“They are also struggling with transportation as there is no fuel to move from here and other areas. So, the situation is very chaotic. Everyone living here is in a state of panic.”

One Israeli strike also hit a tent in Gaza City housing displaced Palestinians, killing six people, according to the civil defence agency.

In the southern area of Rafah, two women were killed by Israeli fire near an aid distribution point, the agency said, adding that 13 people were wounded in the incident.

The United Nations said that at least 875 have died trying to access aid in Gaza since late May, when the GHF began operating.

Meanwhile, health teams in Gaza for the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have warned that malnutrition rates are increasing, especially since the Israeli siege was tightened more than four months ago.

According to UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, one in 10 children screened is malnourished.

In a statement, the group called malnutrition in the Strip “engineered and man-made”.

Sue Parfitt is an 83-year-old retired priest who was arrested for protesting in solidarity with Palestine Action, a group designated as a terrorist organisation by the UK government.

In this Unmute, she talks about what led her to stand against the government’s decision.

Israeli forces have continued to pound the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least 72 Palestinians, including several aid seekers, as ceasefire talks stall amid a deepening fuel and hunger crisis.

An Israeli attack near an aid distribution point in Rafah in southern Gaza killed at least five people who were seeking aid on Monday, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

The killings raised the death toll of Palestinians killed near aid sites run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to 838, according to Wafa.

In Khan Younis, also in southern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a displacement camp killed nine people and wounded many others. In central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp, four people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a commercial centre, Wafa said.

Israeli forces also resumed stepping up attacks in northern Gaza and Gaza City. Israeli media reported an ambush in Gaza City, with a tank hit by rocket fire and later, with small arms. A helicopter was seen evacuating casualties. The Israeli military later confirmed that three soldiers were killed in the incident.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said Israeli forces responded with “massive air strikes in the vicinity of [the] Tuffah and Shujayea neighbourhoods, levelling residential buildings”.

The Wafa news agency said at least 24 Palestinians were killed in Gaza City and dozens more were wounded.

The attacks come as UN agencies continue to plead for more aid to be allowed into Gaza, where famine looms and a severe fuel shortage has brought the already battered healthcare sector to its knees.

Gaza’s water crisis has also intensified since Israel blocked nearly all fuel shipments into the enclave on March 2. With no fuel, desalination plants, wastewater treatment facilities and pumping stations have largely shut down.

Egypt’s foreign minister said on Monday that the flow of aid into Gaza has not increased despite an agreement last week between Israel and the European Union that should have had that result.

“Nothing has changed [on the ground],” Badr Abdelatty told reporters ahead of the EU-Middle East meeting in Brussels.

‘A real catastrophe’

The EU’s top diplomat said on Thursday that the bloc and Israel agreed to improve Gaza’s humanitarian situation, including increasing the number of aid trucks and opening crossing points and aid routes.

When asked what steps Israel has taken, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar referred to an understanding with the EU but did not provide details on the implementation.

Asked if there were improvements after the agreement, Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Safadi told reporters that the situation in Gaza remains “catastrophic”.

“There is a real catastrophe happening in Gaza resulting from the continuation of the Israeli siege,” he said.

Meanwhile, stuttering ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with mediators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas.

The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear to still remain deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of captives and a 60-day ceasefire.

An official with knowledge of the talks said they were “ongoing” in Doha on Monday, the AFP news agency reported.

“Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza,” the source reportedly said.

“Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,” the source added on condition of anonymity.

Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he wants to see the Palestinian group destroyed, of being the main obstacle.

“Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,” the group wrote on Telegram.

Netanyahu is under growing pressure to end the war, with military casualties rising and public frustration mounting.

He also faces backlash over the feasibility and ethics of a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” from scratch on the ruins of southern Gaza’s Rafah to house 600,000 Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold.

Israel’s security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said amounts to plans for a “concentration camp”.

Displaced Palestinians and several Israeli politicians alike slam the Israeli government’s plans for what it calls a “humanitarian city” in Rafah. Critics say forcing Palestinians into the zone would amount to a “concentration camp.”

We, the presidents of Gaza’s three non-profit universities— Al-Aqsa University, Al-Azhar University-Gaza, and the Islamic University of Gaza — together accounting for the vast majority of Gaza’s students and faculty members, issue this unified statement to the international academic community at a time of unprecedented devastation of higher education in Gaza.

Israel’s ongoing genocidal war has brought about scholasticide—a systematic and deliberate attempt to eliminate our universities, their infrastructure, faculty, and students. This destruction is not collateral; it is part of a targeted effort to eradicate the foundations of higher education in Gaza—foundations that have long stood as pillars of resilience, hope, and intellectual freedom under conditions of occupation and siege. While academic institutions across Palestine have faced attacks for decades, what we are witnessing today is an escalation: a shift from repeated acts of destruction to an attempt at total annihilation.

Yet, we remain resolute. For more than a year, we have mobilised and taken steps to resist this assault and ensure that our universities endure.

Despite the physical obliteration of campuses, laboratories, libraries, and other facilities, and the assassination of our students and colleagues, our universities continue to exist. We are more than buildings — we are academic communities, comprised of students, faculty, and staff, still alive and determined to carry forward our mission.

As articulated in the Unified Emergency Statement from Palestinian Academics and Administrators issued on May 29, 2024, “Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings, but our universities live on.”

For over a year, our faculty, staff and students have persisted in our core mission — teaching — under unimaginably harsh conditions. Constant bombardment, starvation, restrictions on internet access, unstable electricity, and the ongoing horrors of genocide have not broken our will. We are still here, still teaching, and still committed to the future of education in Gaza.

We urgently call on our colleagues around the world to work for:

• A sustainable and lasting ceasefire, without which no education system can thrive, and an end to all complicity with this genocide.
• Immediate international mobilisation to support and protect Gaza’s higher education institutions as vital to the survival and long-term future of the Palestinian people.
• Recognition of scholasticide as a systematic war on education, and the necessity of coordinated and strategic international support in partnership with our universities for the resilience and rebuilding of our academic infrastructure and communities.

We appeal to the international academic community — our colleagues, institutions, and friends — to:

• Support our efforts to continue teaching and conducting research, under siege and amidst loss.
• Commit to the long-term rebuilding of Gaza’s universities in partnership with us, respecting our institutional autonomy and academic agency.
• Work in partnership with us. Engage directly with and support the very institutions that continue to embody academic life and collective intellectual resistance in Gaza.

Last year, we formally established the Emergency Committee of the Universities in Gaza, representing our three institutions and affiliated colleges — together enrolling between 80 and 85 percent of Gaza universities’ students. The committee exists to resist the erasure of our universities and offer a unified voice for Gaza’s academic community. It has since established subject-focused subcommittees to serve as trusted and coordinated channels for support.

We call upon academic communities around the world to coordinate themselves in response to this call. The time for symbolic solidarity has passed. We now ask for practical, structured, and enduring partnership.

Work alongside us to ensure that Gaza’s universities live on and remain a vital part of our collective future.

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

A new Freedom Flotilla ship, the Handala, has departed from Italy for an attempt to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza and deliver essential aid. The last vessel to make the journey, the Madleen, was seized by Israeli forces in international waters in June.