Main events on August 1st
- At least 82 more Palestinians were killed by Israel in Gaza, with three more people, including two children, among those who died of starvation as Israel blocks needed aid to the enclave.
- Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir visited invading troops in Gaza and said they will know “in the coming days” whether there will be a ceasefire or the fighting will continue without halting.
- The Israeli military allowed three European nations to join the limited air drops of aid over Gaza, but the UN and international agencies warned that this is highly insufficient.
- US envoy Steve Witkoff and Washington’s ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee made a choreographed visit to an aid site run by the notorious GHF, as Hamas rejected Donald Trump’s claim that it is systematically looting food and medicine.
- The Houthis in Yemen confirmed they launched a ballistic missile at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, with the Israeli army saying the projectile was intercepted.
- Israeli settlers launched more violent attacks on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank with support from soldiers, leading to clashes with local residents in Jenin and other places.
- Renowned Israeli writer and novelist David Grossman acknowledged with “immense pain and a broken heart” that Israel is currently committing “genocide” in Gaza.
Israel’s starvation of Gaza ‘will be felt for generations’, UN right to food rapporteur says
Michael Fakhri, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, has told Al Jazeera that if Israel’s bombing of Gaza ended tomorrow, the effects of hunger there would still be felt for “generations”, which makes it all the more pressing to end the conflict and flood the Strip with aid as soon as possible.
“The UN is ready – the UN and other international organisations can flood into Gaza with the necessary aid to help people, but the effects and impact of starvation will be felt for generations,” he said.
“So not only will children be stunted in their mental and physical development, and not only will adults carry the impact of starvation their whole lives, there will be social trauma felt by the Palestinian people in Gaza and beyond that will last for generations.
“So it will take a huge amount of resources to ensure that the survivors of this starvation campaign will be able to live with dignity in the future.”
He said that peacekeepers should enter Gaza to ensure security for humanitarian workers.
“What needs to happen is unfettered entrance by humanitarian convoys,” he said.
“Because the Security Council is being blocked by the US veto, this gives the General Assembly the authority to call for peacekeepers to accompany humanitarian convoys. And if this isn’t what peacekeepers are for, I don’t know what they are for.
“I mean, this is about preventing starvation and genocide.”
