Six people, including a doctor, have been killed near the hospital in northern Gaza as Israeli attacks continue in the area, our colleagues on the ground report.

Last week, patients and medical staff were forced to flee Kamal Adwan Hospital due to Israeli attacks on it, including one that hit its emergency department.

Palestinians flee Rafah as Israeli tanks reach city centre

WHO says 723 Gaza health workers killed during war

Spain has formally recognised the State of Palestine in a decision approved by its cabinet, a government spokesperson says.

Pilar Alegria said the cabinet had “adopted an important decision to recognise a Palestinian state”, which had “one objective: to help Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace”.

Spain’s formal recognition of Palestine is enormously symbolic, enormously momentous. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said this is not a decision that is against anybody, it isn’t against Israel – it’s in favour of peace.

The substance of the proposals that Spain, Ireland and Norway are putting forward is a return to 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and the Palestinians. He also says that what they’re doing here is not outlandish; what they’re doing is in line with multiple UN resolutions, which have been formally recognised and adopted by the European Union as well.

Spain, Ireland and Norway are in no way outliers for European opinion; they are part of the majority of UN members – out of 193 of them, more than 140 of them now recognise Palestinian statehood as a reality.

Sanchez spoke about how important it is to support a viable Palestinian state. We earlier played a clip of a corridor running between Gaza and the West Bank to make the Palestinian state viable. We know how occupation in the West Bank has chopped up that occupied territory into little pockets that really isn’t viable as a statehood.

Spain and its allies are very clear that it needs to be returned to a kind of viable reality, so that Palestinian statehood can be made viable.

AFP is reporting that Norway’s government has also formally recognised a Palestinian state, with Ireland due to follow suit later.

“Norway has been one of the most fervent defenders of a Palestinian state for more than 30 years,” said the Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide as the move went into effect.

As we’ve reported, Spain has already formally recognised Palestinian statehood today, and Ireland is expected to do the same soon, joining 144 other countries worldwide that have already done so.

Norway’s recognition of Palestinian state ‘significant and long-overdue’

Ireland has officially recognised a Palestinian state, the government has said in a statement, defying Israel which had condemned the plan. The government approved the recognition in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, the statement said.

“The Government recognises Palestine as a sovereign and independent state and agreed to establish full diplomatic relations between Dublin and Ramallah,” it said.  “An Ambassador of Ireland to the State of Palestine will be appointed along with a full Embassy of Ireland in Ramallah.”

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris says officially recognising a Palestinian state is about keeping hope for peace alive.

“This decision of Ireland is about keeping hope alive. It is about believing that a two-state solution is the only way for Israel and Palestine to live side by side in peace and security,” he said in a statement.

“We had wanted to recognise Palestine at the end of a peace process however we have made this move alongside Spain and Norway to keep the miracle of peace alive.

“I again call on Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel to listen to the world and stop the humanitarian catastrophe we are seeing in Gaza.”

It’s one of the symbolic indications of Irish support for the Palestinian cause and Palestinian statehood, which is now being legally put into effect by the cabinet here over the last hour or so.

We’ve had a statement from the country’s deputy prime minister, also the foreign minister, Micheal Martin. He says that recognition of “Palestine is not the end of a process, it’s the beginning.”

He said that Ireland is “deeply committed to the pursuit of peace and support for Palestinian state-building”. This is something that Ireland, of course, has supported for many decades.

Denmark’s Parliament has voted down a bill to recognise a Palestinian state after its foreign minister said the necessary conditions for an independent country are lacking. The Danish bill was first proposed in late February by four left-wing parties.

“We cannot recognise an independent Palestinian state for the sole reason that the preconditions are not really there,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said when the bill was first debated in parliament in April. “We cannot support this resolution, but we wish that there will come a day where we can,” added Rasmussen, who was not present at the vote on Tuesday.

The vote followed Ireland’s, Spain’s and Norway’s formal recognition of a Palestinian state.

Israeli tanks and other army vehicles are advancing in central Rafah, according to witnesses speaking to Reuters. The tanks were spotted near al-Awda mosque, a central Rafah landmark, the witnesses told Reuters.

Residents said in Tal as-Sultan in western Rafah, the scene of Sunday’s deadly strike that killed about 45 people, was still being heavily bombarded. “Tank shells are falling everywhere in [Tal as-Sultan]. Many families have fled their houses in western Rafah under fire throughout the night,” one resident told Reuters over a chat app.

Rafah field hospitals forced to evacuate as Israeli offensive deepens

A group of 130 Israeli economists, including the former director-general of Israel’s finance ministry, have penned a letter to PM Netanyahu warning that lenient policies towards the ultra-orthodox community could push the economy into a “spiral of collapse”, reports Israel’s Channel 12.

The letter says that exempting ultra-orthodox Israelis from military service and allocating special government funding to their schools puts an undue strain on the rest of Israel’s tax-paying population. As a result, Israel could see the most “educated and productive” segments of its population leave the country, while the ultra-orthodox community, whose members devote their lives to Torah studies, grows, it adds.

The government’s policies are thus “leading the country towards an abyss” and “seriously endangering the Israeli economy and society”, according to the letter cited by Channel 12.

Israel has for months been deadlocked over efforts to pass a new law regarding ultra-orthodox military service, from which they have traditionally been exempt.

They're pushing Israel towards becoming a theocracy like Iran and Saudi Arabia...

Missile attack damages ship in the Red Sea near previous Houthi assaults

Israeli jets have targeted al-Faluja area, west of Jabalia camp, killing and injuring a number of civilians who had just started to return to the area after Israeli forces withdrew.

“Since the early hours of the morning, when people began to return, Israeli forces have been targeting them,” one rescuer on the scene told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic. “We have recovered a number of bodies.

“We, the paramedics and ambulance crews, are also targeted by armed drones. A minutes ago, artillery shells fell in the area, killing more people.”

The air raid targeted al-Mawasi in western Rafah, an area where tents have been set up to house displaced Palestinians. It is also a designated humanitarian area to which Israeli authorities told Palestinians to flee.

“Among them are 13 females were killed. Israeli forces targeted another makeshift tent [area] where most of the people were women and children,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said, reporting from Deir el-Balah.

“There are no hospitals in Rafah. All the injured and the dead bodies have been transferred to the International Medical Corps filed hospital. There are no ambulances.”

“It’s catastrophic and horrifying being injured and not being able to get transferred from one place to another because of lack of fuel. For more than three weeks now, nothing has entered the Gaza Strip,” she said.

The United States military has suspended aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip by sea after bad weather damaged the temporary pier it had set up on the enclave’s coast, NBC News has reported, citing unnamed officials.

The US military is expected to make the announcement later on Tuesday, NBC said in its report, which cited a United Nations official, a US official and an Israeli official.

Aid groups have criticised the $320m floating pier as a costly and ineffective distraction from the fact that land deliveries are the most efficient way to help Gaza. The US has failed to pressure Israel into opening the land crossings, however.

The chancellor says the [self] investigation into the attack is “both right and necessary”. “We have repeatedly spoken out against a ground offensive. The civilian population cannot be adequately protected in this way,” Olaf Scholz posted on X.

In 2023, Germany approved arms exports to Israel worth 326.5 million euros ($354.5m), a tenfold increase compared to the previous year, providing 30 percent of the Israeli military’s weapons, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Researchers also found that 99 percent of Israel’s arms come from the United States and Germany, with the latter being the second-biggest supplier.

US Department of State spokesperson Matthew Miller said the United States will continue to emphasise to Israel its obligation to comply fully with international humanitarian law, minimise the impact of its operations on civilians and maximise the flow of humanitarian assistance.

The tent camp incident, which killed at least 45 people, has drawn widespread international outrage, including from some of Israel’s closest allies, over the military’s expanding offensive into Rafah.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life in Rafah over the weekend,” Miller told reporters. The Israeli military “has promised that its investigation will be swift, comprehensive and transparent. We will be watching those results closely”, he added.

Yeah sure you'll be watching the results closely and collaborate on excuses and making it go away. How's that maximizing the flow of humanitarian assistance going with your 320 million dollar tax payer joke of a pier.

US Vice President Kamala Harris says “the word ‘tragic’ doesn’t even begin to describe” an Israeli air strike on Sunday that triggered a fire in a tent camp in Rafah, killing 45 Palestinians.

The remarks came in response to a reporter’s question after subsequent Israeli tank shelling of a tent camp in an evacuation area west of Rafah that killed at least 21 people on Tuesday, according to Gaza health authorities.

This further tested US President Joe Biden’s promise to withhold weapons from Israel if the US ally made a major invasion of Rafah that put displaced Palestinian civilians at risk.

Harris, speaking at a ceremonial event in Washington, DC, did not respond to a follow-up question about whether attacks in Rafah crossed a “red line”.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned Israel’s deadly May 26 air strikes on Rafah and called for “the horror and suffering to stop immediately”.

“The Israeli authorities must allow, facilitate and enable the immediate, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance to those in need and all crossing points must be open,” Guterres spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

Gaza’s health ministry said 45 people – including 23 women, children and the elderly – were killed in the attack, while 249 others were wounded.

Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares says recognition of a Palestinian state is for “justice” for the people of Palestine.

“We have recognised the state of Palestine as a full nation among the international community – with all the rights of statehood within international law,” he told Al Jazeera from Madrid.

“Of course, this is the first step. Next, we have to put in place a real and viable Palestinian state that will have Gaza and the West Bank under one single Palestinian Authority that will have continuity of the territory and, therefore, [be] connected by a corridor with an exit to the sea and a port in Gaza, and the capital in East Jerusalem,” Albares added.

“The recognition today is for justice for the Palestinian people. They cannot be condemned to be eternally refugee people.”

Asked whether some might see the recognition of a Palestinian state as largely symbolic because it won’t change the reality on the ground, Jose Manuel Albares says there are three points to consider:

Israeli strikes on the tents of displaced Palestinians in Rafah is evidence of the ongoing genocide, Gaza’s media office says.

“The Israeli occupation army has committed three crimes against humanity by killing 72 displaced persons in the last 48 hours,” it said in a statement, noting the attacks targeted civilian encampments in areas declared a “safe zone” by Israel.

“It confirms the occupation’s insistence on committing the crime of genocide with premeditation and deliberation.”

At least 21 people were killed in Israeli shelling of tents in al-Mawasi area west of Rafah on Tuesday. The media office urged the International Criminal Court to pursue “war criminals” involved in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza.

It's like their on a loop, 'Hamas compound', 'tragic mistake', 'deny', repeat.

Israel denies hitting displaced people camp in Rafah