Seeking funds to rebuild, Lebanon government works to regain donor trust


_{Members of a family sit in front of their destroyed house in the southern Lebanese village of Wazzani after Israeli forces pulled out, on February 19, 2025}

More than five years into an economic crisis that sent inflation spiralling and saw the Lebanese lira plummet, Lebanon’s government is facing its biggest infrastructure project in years: Post-war reconstruction.

After 14 months of war with Israel, Lebanon needs $11bn to rebuild, according to World Bank estimates.

But, experts say, donors do not trust the Lebanese political class, which has a track record of funnelling construction contracting money to politically connected businessmen.

The needs

In addition to more than 4,000 deaths, the war took a vast material toll on the country already reeling from a multi-year economic crisis. About 10 percent of the homes in Lebanon – some 163,000 units – were damaged or destroyed, to say nothing of the more than $1bn in infrastructure damage.

Most observers, and the new government formed in February, say Lebanon will again need foreign aid, as it did after a previous war with Israel in 2006.

But that aid has been slower to arrive than in 2006, with donor attention divided between Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, and major donors like the United States pushing for the Hezbollah group’s disarmament as a precondition.

Hezbollah, until recently the most powerful political and military force in the country, suffered severe blows during the war and has seen its power curtailed, although many Lebanese continue to support it.

The country’s south, east, and Beirut’s southern suburbs bore the brunt of Israel’s offensive. Together, they are home to most of Hezbollah’s constituents, so restoring their homes and livelihoods is a priority for the party.

That translates into leverage for foreign donor states.

The problem

Politically connected companies overcharged the state’s main infrastructure buyer, the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR), by 35 percent between 2008 and 2018, a 2022 study by local think tank The Policy Initiative found.

And the primary contracting regulation was so riddled with exceptions that as little as 5 percent of tenders were under the Central Tenders Board’s oversight.

All that came to a head in 2020, when a huge blast in Beirut’s port tore through much of the capital and donors decided they wanted nothing to do with the state, according to Khalil Gebara, economist and former World Bank consultant who previously advised the Lebanese government.

“Donors stopped transferring money to national authorities or to the treasury,” he said, because they had “a total lack of trust in national mechanisms”.

Instead, donors controlled spending directly or via a World Bank-managed trust fund, or worked through NGOs, Gebara added.

That year, the state, which was stalling on implementing International Monetary Fund conditions in exchange for a partial bailout, spent just $38m on its physical investments, down from more than $1.1bn in 2018, the year before the economic collapse, according to Ministry of Finance data.

Trying for solutions

A year later, Lebanon passed what many considered a landmark reform to state contracting, one of the few reform laws passed in recent years

It dragged virtually the entire public sector into one unified framework, abolished a classification system that had frozen out contractors without political connections, and created a new regulator – the Public Procurement Authority (PPA).

As crisis-ridden state agencies were corralled into the new system, public investment continued to fall, hitting below $10m in 2022.

“Procurement is going to be a big thing … and absolutely the test for the procurement system and for the regulatory authority,” said Lamia Moubayed, head of an in-house research and training institute at Lebanon’s Finance Ministry.

Rana Rizkallah, a procurement expert at the same institute, says the law is solid, but it’s up to the government to implement what it promised, adding that a crucial part of that is staffing the regulator.

The PPA is supposed to be a board of five members backed by a team of 83 staffers but, three years after the law went into effect in 2022, it has a single member and five employees overseeing 1,400 purchasing bodies.

A four-member complaints board that the law established also has yet to be formed, so complaints still go to Lebanon’s slow, overburdened courts.

Jean Ellieh, the regulator’s president and sole member, says the state doesn’t have the “logistical capacity” to recruit dozens of regulators in one fell swoop, but he’s put in a request for new hires.

“We will work with determination and resolve, regardless of our capabilities,” Ellieh told Al Jazeera. “We will not give anyone an excuse to evade the application of the law.”

He added that donors have expressed “satisfaction” with the PPA’s abilities.

UK arms exports to Israel press ahead despite licence suspension: Study

British pro-Palestinian activist groups found that since September the government had sent ‘8,630 separate munitions’ to Israel.

A new report has found that United Kingdom firms have continued to export military items to Israel despite a government suspension in September last year, amid allegations that the British parliament has been deliberately “misled”.

A report by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Progressive International and Workers for a Free Palestine revealed on Wednesday that the UK sent “8,630 separate munitions since the suspensions took effect, all in the category ‘Bombs, Grenades, Torpedoes, Mines, Missiles And Similar Munitions Of War And Parts Thereof-Other’.

“Despite [Foreign Minister] David Lammy, Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds MP and other Ministers repeatedly reiterating in the House of Commons that the Government has ended this direct supply of F-35 [fighter jets] parts, the evidence indicates that they have continued to send direct shipments of components for lethal F-35 jets to Israel after September 2024 – and that these shipments are ongoing,” it added.

In September, Lammy announced the suspension of 29 arms export licences, out of 350, that were used during Israel’s war on Gaza.

Lammy said the government had found there had been a “clear risk” that the licences “might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. He said the ongoing licences covered items such as “goggles and helmets for use by one of the UK’s closest allies”.

‘Parliament misled’

The report used data from the Israel Tax Authority and concluded that Lammy had “misled” Parliament and the public about arms exports to Israel. Former Labour shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said the government has a lot of “explaining to do” in response to the report.

“If Parliament has been misled by the Foreign Secretary or any minister it is a resigning matter and more importantly it attracts potentially a charge of complicity in war crimes. The Government has shrouded its arms supplies to Israel in secrecy,” McDonnell said.

Former leader of the Labour Party and independent MP, Jeremy Corbyn, said the report could explain why the government has not responded to a call for a public inquiry into the UK’s role in Israel’s military assault.

“When will the UK government come clean about the reality of military cooperation with Israel? The public deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity – and we are not going anywhere until we have established the truth,” he said.

The Foreign Office told Al Jazeera that the government has suspended the “relevant licences” that might be used to “commit or facilitate serious violations of International Humanitarian Law in Gaza.”

“Of the remaining licences for Israel, the vast majority are not for the Israeli Defence Forces but are for civilian purposes or re-export, and therefore are not used in the war in Gaza. The only exemption is the F-35 programme due to its strategic role in NATO and wider implications for international peace and security,” the ministry said.

“Any suggestion that the UK is licensing other weapons for use by Israel in the war in Gaza is misleading.”

“The UK totally opposes an expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. We urge all parties to return urgently to talks, implement the ceasefire agreement in full, secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas, and work towards a permanent peace,” it added.

Did the UK finally stop reconnaisance flights for the IDF?

UK military breaking the spirit, if not the word, of the Gaza ceasefire agreement

https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/23391/

The Royal Air Force (RAF) has operated surveillance flights near Gaza on all five days of the ceasefire that Hamas released hostages, Declassified has found. No spy planes were sent towards the strip on the other 20 days of the ceasefire.

The latest flight, by a Shadow R1 spy plane, occurred on 8 February when three Israeli men – Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami – became free from captivity. Evidence found by Declassified suggests the spy plane was in the air at the same time.

Other hostages were released on 1 February and 19, 25 and 30 January as part of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Among them was the British-Israeli, Emily Damari.

RAF aircraft were also in the air when these hostages were released, data indicates. The planes take off from Britain’s air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, and head in the direction of Gaza, when they turn their transponders off.

Prior to the ceasefire, such flights were an almost daily occurrence with the UK government claiming they were helping Israel find hostages.

How much of that intelligence gathering was used when Israel broke the ceasefire and killed over 150 people that day.

Yemen’s Houthis say attacks on Israel not in US ceasefire deal in ‘any way’

The US and Yemen’s Houthis agreed to an Oman-mediated deal to cease trading attacks after weeks of air strikes.


_{Members of the media take pictures of a destroyed plane at Sanaa International Airport, in the aftermath of an Israeli air strike, in Sanaa, Yemen}

A ceasefire deal between Yemen’s Houthis and the United States does not include any operations against Israel, the group’s chief negotiator has announced.

Mohammed Abdulsalam told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday that attacking Israel was not included in “any way, shape or form” in the agreement mediated by Oman.

The announcement of the deal came hours after Israeli warplanes targeted Yemen’s Sanaa airport. Airport director Khaled al-Shaief told Al Masirah on Wednesday that “around $500 million in losses were caused by the Israeli aggression” on the airport.

The deal was announced a day earlier by US President Donald Trump, who said attacks on Yemen against the Houthis would stop, effective immediately, after the group agreed to stop targeting vessels in the Red Sea.

In a statement on Tuesday, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said that “following recent discussions and contacts … with the aim of de-escalation, efforts have resulted in a ceasefire agreement between the two sides”.

“Neither side will target the other … ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping” in the Red Sea, he added.

Abdulsalam told Houthi-affiliated news outlet Al Masirah TV that any US action would result in a response following the deal.

“If the American enemy resumes its attacks, we will resume our strikes,” he said. “The real guarantee for the accord is the dark experience that the United States has had in Yemen,” he added.

Houthi political leader Mahdi al-Mashat also said attacks on Israel “will continue” and go “beyond what the Israeli enemy can withstand”.

Meanwhile tensions between India and Pakistan have also flared up:
Another conflict made by the UK with similarities to how the UK exited Palestine.

More fallout from tensions in the ME and general destruction of diplomacy / international law?
All the familiar language (actors) and targets are there.

Missiles fired into Pakistan

Biggest peacetime missile attack ever

The strikes are the most extensive missile attacks by India on Pakistan and the territory it controls outside the wars the nuclear-armed neighbours have fought.

In 2019, Indian fighter jets bombed Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province after a suicide bomber killed 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir.

This time, Pakistan claims India hit three cities while India says it struck nine sites. Either way, the attack is unprecedented.

India briefed US after missile attack on Pakistan

Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval briefed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio shortly after the attacks against Pakistan, the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC, says.

“India’s actions have been focused and precise,” the embassy said in a statement.

It added that Rubio, who is also Trump’s acting US national security adviser, had been briefed “on the actions taken”.

A simple guide to India, Pakistan and Kashmir

The end of British colonial rule and the partition of British India in August 1947 led to the creation of Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. At the time, princely states such as Jammu and Kashmir, situated in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, were given the option to accede to either country.

The maharaja of Kashmir initially sought independence from both countries, but later chose to join India after Pakistan invaded, triggering the first war from 1947 to 1948. Two more full-scale wars over the region – in 1965 and 1971 – followed.

Today, Pakistan administers the northern and western portions of Kashmir, namely Azad Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan. India administers the southern and southeastern parts, including the Kashmir Valley and its biggest city, Srinagar, as well as Jammu and Ladakh.

All told, the region spans 222,200 square kilometres (85,800sq miles). About 4 million people currently live in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and 13 million in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The population is mostly Muslim.

What is ‘Operation Sindoor’?

Operation Sindoor is the military codename for what India described as a “precision strike” on Pakistan, and carried out in what New Delhi said was a response to the April 22 attack on Indian tourists by suspected rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Mosque, government buildings damaged in India’s attack on Pakistan


_{Destruction at the Bilal Mosque in Shawai, Muzaffarabad}

World must have ‘zero tolerance for terrorism,’ Indian foreign minister says

Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has made his first public comments on New Delhi’s attacks on Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

“The world must show zero tolerance for terrorism,” Jaishankar said in a post on his official X account.

How did we get here?

Today’s escalation follows weeks of anticipation in the wake of the April 22 attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir in which 26 people were killed. India has implied Pakistan may have been involved in the attack, a claim Islamabad has denied.

The two countries have long been at odds over the status of Kashmir, a picturesque valley that both claim in full.

Relations between the pair have tanked since the attack. They have scaled back diplomatic engagement, suspended their participation in bilateral treaties, and effectively expelled each other’s citizens.

At the end of April, Pakistan said it had “credible intelligence” that India might launch a military strike against it within the next few days.

Earlier today, Pakistan blamed India after seven soldiers were killed in an improvised explosive device in the southwestern province of Balochistan.

What happened during the Pahalgam attack?

Pakistan will respond ‘at a time and place of its own choosing’

The spokesman for Pakistan’s armed forces says the military will respond to India’s strikes “at a time and place of its own choosing”.

“It will not go unanswered,” the spokesman said in the statement, carried by the Associated Press of Pakistan.

DG ISPR:

India has struck three places from air.
Bahawalpur, Kotli and Muzaffarabad

All planes of Pakistan Air Force are airborne. All strikes were made by India from its own airspace.

Pakistan will respond to it at a time and place of its own choosing. It will not go… pic.twitter.com/AdL6lIh0jr

— APP (@appcsocialmedia) May 6, 2025

Pakistani ground forces ‘engaged’ with Indian troops along Line of Control in Kashmir

Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar spoke to Al Jazeera earlier about India’s attack and the military response from Pakistan.

Pakistan puts death toll at 26

Pakistan’s military now says 26 people have been killed and 46 injured by India’s overnight attacks.

India reports at least eight people on its side have been killed from cross-border shelling from Pakistan.

Where did India hit Pakistan? Mapping Operation Sindoor and border strikes

Just after midnight on Wednesday, India’s army launched Operation Sindoor, hitting nine sites it described as “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Pakistan’s armed forces said India’s military attacked six different places in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, launching 24 strikes, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 35.

Since then, heavy shelling has taken place across the Line of Control between India and Pakistan.

Check out our explainer here to find out where India’s strikes took place, and where Pakistan has hit back.

India’s defence minister claims attacks did not affect civilians

Rajnath Singh has claimed that India’s overnight attacks on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir did not harm civilians, contradicting Pakistani government claims of civilian casualties.

“We only hit those who killed innocents,” the defence minister was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

“Under the guidance of PM Narendra Modi, our Indian armed forces have made us all proud,” he added.

As we previously reported, Pakistan’s National Security Committee issued a statement accusing India of “unjustified attacks” that “deliberately targeted the civilian areas, on the false pretext of presence of imaginary terrorist camps”.


_{One of the injured children brought to hospital in Indian-administered Kashmir}

Pakistan’s PM addresses parliament

“I want to congratulate all the honourable members that last night, our enemy thought that it would be a dark night, tried to attack us through the dark like how it has been in the past,” Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif says.

“By the grace of God, with the prayers of our people, this act of aggression has been befittingly answered,” he continued.

Here are some notable quotes from his speech:

Back to Gaza

How Israel’s ‘plan’ for Gaza could turbocharge ethnic cleansing

Israel has launched a new plan for Gaza which could induce ethnic cleansing and advance a genocide, say experts.



Israel’s far-right government has approved a “plan” to carve up and ethnically cleanse Gaza, analysts told Al Jazeera.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the plan, couching it in claims that its goal is to dismantle Hamas and retrieve the 24 or so living captives taken from Israel on October 7, 2023.

Asserting that the “powerful operation in Gaza” was necessary, he went on to emphasise that “there will be a movement of the population to protect it.”

What is this ‘plan’?

Israel will expel hundreds of thousands of hungry Palestinians from the north of Gaza and confine them in six encampments.

It says food will be provided to the Palestinians in these encampments, and that it will allow aid groups and private security contractors to distribute it. Palestinians will be forced to move – or starve.

Some 5,000 to 6,000 families will be pushed into each camp, according to The Washington Post. Each household will send someone to trek miles to pick up a weekly food parcel from what the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Jan Egeland called “concentration hubs”.

It is unclear how the rest of the population – possibly some 1.5 million people – will eat.

Israel says it will use facial recognition to identify people picking up food parcels, to deny aid to “Hamas” – yet Israel treats every fighting-age male as a Hamas operative.

The private security companies from the United States would also guard within the designated areas.

Experts and UN agencies are decrying the plan as impractical and inhumane.

What does this mean for the people of Gaza?

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continues, and Palestinians will continue to suffer.

Since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it has cloaked its mass expulsions in what it claims are humane “advance warnings” in which families have mere hours to pack their belongings and flee to a zone Israel determines. Israel often bombs those safe zones anyway.

“If you are viewing this plan through aid distribution, it makes no sense,” Diana Buttu, legal scholar and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Al Jazeera.

“If you view it through a political project, which is ethnic cleansing and cantonisation by using food as a weapon of war, then this plan does make sense,” she said, adding that the “plan” is consistent with Israel’s aim of carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

What does Israel want?

They want to finish their genocide under the guise of facilitating food aid and rescuing Israeli captives, Omar Rahman, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, said.

“Israel has been telegraphing its real intentions from the start of this campaign: Destroy Gaza and eliminate its population both by starvation and mass killing,” he said.

Israel’s “plan” signals its intent to starve Palestinians who resist being expelled from north Gaza, said Heidi Matthews, a legal scholar at York University, Canada.

“It is inconceivable that the population can be adequately provided for … whilst being crowded into southern Gaza,” she said.

This indicates the genocidal intent to inflict on the Palestinian population of Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Can Israel even manage this?

Israel plans to hire two US private security firms, Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, to provide security and possibly help with food distribution. The first is headed by Phil Riley, a former CIA intelligence officer. The second is run by Jameson Govoni, a former member of the US Army Special Forces.

These companies could give Israel plausible deniability if abuses or atrocities occur, said Mairav Zonszein, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group. [Remember Blackwater, Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad?]

She added that Israel will also call up thousands of reservists to maintain a physical occupation over northern Gaza, despite many soldiers being fatigued by war and financial troubles. “There is definitely a lower … turnout among reservists than at the start of the war. But that doesn’t mean there is actually a manpower shortage,” Zonszein told Al Jazeera.

In addition, she noted, despite Israeli society opposing expanding the war on Gaza without first retrieving the captives, Netanyahu is more concerned with appeasing far-right ministers in his coalition by fighting on. Netanyahu risks losing power and standing trial for corruption charges if the coalition collapses.

Israeli strikes kill 48 at Gaza shelters for displaced Palestinians, hospitals say, as military operation intensifies

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/middleeast/israel-gaza-airstrike-school-compound-intl



Forty-eight people were killed, including at least seven children, in Israeli airstrikes on school compounds sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza, hospital officials said. Dozens more were injured in the strike, they said.

At the site of one attack in the Al Bureij camp in central Gaza on Tuesday, video from the scene showed a large crater where people searched through the rubble of the school for survivors, the remnants of tents and belongings littering the ground.

According to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, 33 people were killed in the strike, including women and children.

A strike on a school in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood east of Gaza City on Wednesday killed at least 15 people sheltering inside and wounded 10 more, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense.

A pair of Israeli strikes near the Palmyra market in Gaza City killed 33 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and wounded at least 85 others. Video from the crowded market in the aftermath of the bombing showed a scene of chaos, with bodies slumped on the ground in what remained of a restaurant, clothing smeared in blood. Palestinians rushed to the scene, searching for survivors and rushing the injured into ambulances.

Among the dead was also journalist Yehya Sobeih, according to Sabaq 24, the outlet he worked for. Sobeih had just celebrated the birth of his daughter a day earlier, according to his Instagram account.

October 7 families demand to know the number of Gaza hostages still alive, after Trump said 3 more have died

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/07/middleeast/gaza-hostages-trump

Families of October 7 hostages held in Gaza demanded any new information from the Israeli government after US President Donald Trump said three more captives had died.

“As of today, it’s 21. Three have died. So, this is a terrible situation,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The remark was a shock to the families of the hostages. “We demand once again from the Israeli government - if there is new information that has been hidden from us, pass it on to us immediately,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said on Wednesday.

“The headquarters once again calls on the Prime Minister to stop the war until the last abductee is returned. This is the most urgent and important national task.”

Israel’s public and official position, reiterated on Tuesday by Israel’s Coordinator for the Captives and the Missing Gal Hirsch, is that 24 hostages are alive. “The Hamas terror organization is currently holding 59 hostages,” Hirsch said on social media several hours after Trump’s comments. “24 of them are on the list of living hostages.”

But there have been clear indications that Israel has reason to believe the true number is fewer, even beyond Trump’s comments. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published a video statement in which he made the clearest acknowledgement, yet that Israel believes not all 24 are alive.

“We know for certain that there are 21 alive. There’s no argument about this. There’s three where there is doubt about whether they are alive,” he said in the prerecorded video. “We’re not giving up on anyone.”

Netanyahu chooses war – and his political survival – as Israelis demand hostage deal

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/middleeast/analysis-netanyahu-war-over-hostage-deal-latam-intl

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept up appearances for nearly 19 months: Freeing the hostages and defeating Hamas, he insisted, stood equally atop the pyramid of Israel’s war goals.

Even as members of his right-wing governing coalition threatened to topple his government if he agreed to a ceasefire and hostage release deal. Even as he himself threw up eleventh-hour obstacles to reaching such a deal. And even as evidence mounted that Israel’s military operations had both directly and indirectly led to the killing of Israeli hostages. Amid all those contradictions, Netanyahu insisted both objectives were just as important.

But not anymore. Now, Netanyahu is unabashedly prioritizing war – and the survival of his government – over the fate of 59 hostages still in Gaza and the will of most Israelis.

UK government’s dramatic change in stand on Israel as MPs unite to register anger

This Tuesday, the UK government surprised everyone by making an extraordinary change in its position towards Israel as the minister, Hamish Falconer, condemned Benjamin Netanyahu’s move to ethnically cleanse Gaza. This followed a rare display of unity amongst MPs across party lines to demand the government to immediately recognise the independent State of Palestine. One Tory MP, Mark Pritchard, said he was wrong to have supported Israel for the last 20 years.

Gaza Will Be CONCENTRATION CAMP: Netanyahu

UN experts warn of ‘annihilation’ as Gaza deaths mount

International condemnation rises as Israel plans expanded Gaza offensive amid two-month aid blockade.


_{Palestinians mourn over the bodies of loved ones at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, also known as the Baptist Hospital, following an Israeli strike in Gaza City.}

United Nations experts have demanded action to avert the “annihilation” of Palestinians in Gaza, after rescuers said Israeli strikes across the territory killed dozens of people.

More than 20 independent experts mandated by the UN’s Human Rights Council said on Wednesday that the world faced a “stark decision” to “remain passive and witness the slaughter of innocents or take part in crafting a just resolution”.

The experts implored the international community to avert the “moral abyss we are descending into”.

Israel’s broader offensive, approved by its government amid a two-month aid blockade on Gaza, would include displacing “most” of its residents, the military has said. The plan proposes seizing Gaza, holding on to captured territories, forcibly displacing Palestinians to southern Gaza and taking control of aid distribution along with private security companies.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called the situation in Gaza “the most critical we have ever seen”.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Madrid would present a draft resolution at the UN General Assembly aimed at “proposing urgent measures to stop the killing of innocent civilians and ensure humanitarian aid” in Gaza.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told parliament the situation in Gaza and the occupied West Bank was “increasingly intolerable”.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that Brussels had made an offer to Israel “to distribute the humanitarian aid if they don’t trust the other actors there”.

More than a dozen Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza on Thursday, after 100 people were killed on Wednesday.

A significant number of those killed and injured in Gaza City on Wednesday were children, rescuers said.

Meanwhile, the World Central Kitchen (WCK), which ran one of the last bakeries still operating in Gaza, has announced it no longer has the supplies to cook meals or make bread in Gaza.

“Additional food and equipment are ready to be shipped to the border from Jordan and Egypt. Our vital work cannot continue without permission from Israel for this aid to enter,” the charity said in a statement.