As we’ve been reporting, there are more than 200 Palestinian children currently at risk of dying due to malnutrition.

Now, the director-general of Gaza’s Health Ministry tells Al Jazeera that goods and nutritional supplements for children have not entered the besieged Strip for two months.

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While hunger and the risk of famine have been present in northern Gaza for months, the situation is deteriorating in the south due to Israel expanding its military operations and an emerging public health crisis, says Carl Skau, deputy director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP).

“We had stocked up before the operation in Rafah so that we had put food into the hands of people, but that’s beginning to run out, and we don’t have the same access that we need, that we used to have,” Skau said after a two-day trip to Gaza, Reuters news agency reported.

“It’s a displacement crisis that brings a protection catastrophe really, that a million or so people who have been pushed out of Rafah are now really crammed into a small space along the beach,” he added.

“It’s hot. The sanitation situation is just terrible. We were driving through rivers of sewage. And it’s a public health crisis in the making.” Skau said that while more food is now reaching northern Gaza, basic healthcare, water and sanitation are still needed to “turn the curve in the north on famine completely”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, the WFP’s chief operating officer, Carl Skau, says he had just returned from a trip across the Gaza Strip. He recounts “massive destruction” and a “sense of tiredness or exhaustion”.

“Frankly, people just want this to end. They are at the end of their rope, and and they’ve had enough,” he said. Safety remains a “serious concern” for aid workers, he said, adding that two rockets have hit WFP routes in recent weeks.

“Our colleagues spend many hours a day waiting at checkpoints,” he added. “It takes time for clearances, and we’re also struggling with looting in parts of Gaza. “So it is a very, very difficult operating environment.”

The video shows World Food Programme official Carl Skau’s visit to the enclave, and details the shortage of food, medical supplies and clean water. “We find nothing to eat,” Um Mohammed, a Palestinian resident of Gaza, tells Skau in the video. “We find no bed to sleep in.”

The WFP has said increased fighting has hindered aid delivery, with its warehouses hit twice by attacks in June.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, UN World Food Programme official Skau also warned that preventing deaths from famine and acute malnutrition goes beyond just delivering basic food supplies, as is the UN agency’s purview.

“It’s a broader set of needs in terms of having a diversified nutritional intake of food, but also to have access to water and to basic healthcare,” he said. “Often when children die of hunger-related reasons, it’s because they have been sick and have been also malnourished at the same time as not having access to water,” he said.

He said it is important to make a “strong push for water and sanitation” across the enclave. “Although for WFP, that’s not our line of work, we’re still making a strong push for water and sanitation, because that’s really where we see some critical needs now, both in the north, but not least among these displaced people in the south,” he said.

UNOSAT [the UN Satellite Centre] has identified about 1,100km [700 miles] of destroyed roads, 350km [200 miles] of severely affected roads and 1,470km [900 miles] of moderately affected roads, the UN agency says on X. UNOSAT said it used satellite imagery in this assessment.

The pier will again be moved to Ashdod, Israel, a Defense Department official told several US media outlets, citing high tides and rough seas in the coming days.

The relocation is the third time within a month that operations at the pier have been stopped. Meanwhile, aid that has been delivered in recent days has been held up at facilities near the pier after the UN paused deliveries last week, citing security concerns.

Aid deliveries from the US constructed pier began in mid-May but were halted by the end of that month when parts of the structure became unmoored during rough seas.

Officials have said more than 3,500 tonnes of aid have so far been delivered via the pier although the deliveries often face delays and other obstacles within Gaza.

UN experts have again condemned what they described what the organisation described as the “umpteenth massacre by Israeli forces in Gaza”, this time referring to a raid on Nuseirat that rescued four Israeli captives, but left at least 274 Palestinians dead.

“According to survivors, the streets of Nuseirat were filled with bodies of dead and injured people, including children and women, lying in pools of blood. Walls were covered in body parts scattered by multiple explosions and bombed houses,” the experts said in a statement.

“While we are relieved by the safe return of four Israeli hostages captured by Palestinian armed groups eight months ago, Israel’s attack on the Nuseirat camp is obnoxious in its excessive violence and devastating impact,” they said.

Speaking at the G7 summit in Italy, Jordan’s King Abdullah II has called the greatest threat to his region the continued occupation of Palestine.

As the latest attempt to reach an agreement that could lead to a full ceasefire remains stalled, he said the international community had not done enough to bring about peace. “The international community has failed to achieve the only solution that guarantees the security of the Palestinians, Israelis, the region and the world,” he said.

Israel’s targeting of educational institutes across Gaza is “shameful as we consider the global education crisis where we see that more than 250 million children are out of school globally”, according to Talal al-Hathal, Director of the Al Fakhoora Programme at Education Above All foundation in Qatar.

Hundreds of educational institutes in Gaza, including schools run by the UN, have been bombed, and students and teachers killed. The attacks have ravaged educational infrastructure and caused mental trauma to thousands of beleaguered students.

“The war will undoubtedly leave educational institutions, access to critical infrastructure, and the regularity of the education process in Gaza in a worse state than before the war,” al-Hathal told Al Jazeera.

“With almost 400 school buildings in Gaza sustaining damage, the war has exacerbated the plight of the educational sector. This damage is compounded by the internal displacement with these schools now serving as shelters and hosting nearly four times their intended capacity, further burdening the already strained educational infrastructure.”

The US has added Tzav 9 to its sanctions list of specially designated nationals. The group has ties to Israeli army reservists and Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and has been sanctioned over activities including blocking, harassing and damaging aid shipments bound for Gaza, the US Treasury Department said.

On Thursday, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called it a “total outrage that there are people who are attacking and looting these convoys”. “It is completely and utterly unacceptable behaviour,” he said, specifically referring to an incident in which the group blocked aid as it went through the Tarqumiyah checkpoint near Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Democracy for the Arab World Now, a US-based human rights group, this week called for the US to take action against Tzav 9 and other groups it said have enjoyed impunity from Israeli authorities.

These are direct sanctions against a right-wing Israeli group which does have connections to the very top of the Israeli government, in particular the minister of national secretary, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is linked with nongovernmental organisations which are very close to Tzav 9.

Now Tzav 9 means “Order Nine”. This is a reference to the call-up papers that are given to Israeli military reserves. Now that indicates a link – informal as it may be – with Israeli security.

Now we do know that Ben-Gvir has ordered the police and army not to police aid convoys on their way from Jordan to Gaza. On the occasions in which “Order Nine” attacked these convoys, the police and army did not interfere.

So this is a warning shot, if you will, from the Biden administration, which has been concerned about some of the actions of the right-wing ministers within the Netanyahu government.

Order Nine has released a statement saying that this is a blow to those who are relatives of the kidnapped and that Israel has a right to defend itself. Now, this has been a group that has continuously not only been blocking aid, but assaulting Palestinian drivers of these aid trucks.

And while there has been no official response from the Israeli government, we have seen, in fact, support for this protest movement, even though it is by far-right activists and Israelis from illegal settlements. Previously, we’ve heard a member of Israel’s ruling Likud party saying that he would join these demonstrations.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the country’s national security minister, ultra-nationalist and settler himself, has said that he supports the protesters’ right to demonstrate. But it’s quite a contrast from the demonstrations we see every Saturday in Tel Aviv, where he calls those protesters anarchists.

The Israelis have previously not reacted very well to any sort of news of American sanctions on any sort of Israeli group. The United States is trying to show Israel that they are not going to tolerate certain actions and behaviours by individuals or groups like far-right Israelis.

Representatives from Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a US-based rights group, have hailed the US move to sanction the far-right Israeli group for blocking aid convoys bound for Gaza.

But Michael Omer-Man, the director of research for Israel-Palestine at the organisation, said Washington must go further in targeting similar groups and Israeli government officials who enable their actions.

“Recent revelations that Israeli Minister Itamar Ben Gvir ordered police to stand down and allow Tzav 9 to block humanitarian aid convoys show how this despicable strategy of starvation is coordinated from young settler activists all the way up to the highest levels of the Israeli government,” Omer-Man said in a statement.

“The US should not continue to ignore Israeli government involvement in these crimes and should apply sanctions to Ben Gvir next,” he said. Tzav 9 is affiliated with groups close to the far-right minister.

Added Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director, “Sanctioning Israeli settlers involved in attacks on humanitarian aid to Gaza is an important first step, but these settlers are not lone wolves.”

Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli cabinet minister who took part in negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords, says there is no need for Israel and Hezbollah to head into a full-blown war.

“I think that there is a gap between Hezbollah’s interests and the civilian interests of Lebanon,” he told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv. “And if we can work in order to put an end to this exchange of fire … I think that this is what both sides need more than anything else, to ever gain a war between us and them.”

Beilin added that he believes that Israel is willing to discuss the border issue with Lebanon to address differences between the two states.

“So if there is a solution for the border, there is no need for a war,” he said. “Who can tell me why should we fight Lebanon of all places? Why should they fight us of all places?”

Well maybe because you're still occupying part of Lebanon, Shebaa farms. But mainly because you're committing genocide in Gaza.

‘All signs are for’ regional escalation as Lebanon-Israel fighting flares

In a post on X, the aid organisation marked the anniversary of Hamas’s rise to power in Gaza on June 14, 2007, which was swiftly followed by an Israeli land, air and sea blockade that has defined a generation.

For 17 years “an entire generation has known nothing but the harsh reality of this blockade and multiple brutal wars,” the group said.

“Let this day serve as a powerful reminder to the world: The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza can only end by a permanent [ceasefire],” it said.

Today marks 17 years of blockade on #Gaza. An entire generation has known nothing but the harsh reality of this blockade & multiple brutal wars. Let this day serve as a powerful reminder to the world: The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza can only end by a permanent #CeaseFireNOW pic.twitter.com/tXPiczV4cC

— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) June 14, 2024

Israeli raids hit northern Gaza