Northern Gaza continues to wait for even the most basic amount of aid

Throughout the day we’ve been getting questions from people asking about the aid trucks, if they’re coming to the northern parts of Gaza, when the bakeries are going to start operating here.

Because people here are simply hungry, they are thirsty, they are traumatised, and they’ve been displaced for the last 18 months.

They’ve spent most of the past days, and since the blockade intensified, queueing for many hours just to get a bowl of soup, waiting with empty hands and empty pots. And all the while they are keeping their eyes on the sky, worried about the unpredictable falling bombs.

But the reality on the ground is that the northern parts of Gaza are not receiving any aid trucks allowed into the central and southern parts of the Strip.

And when we talk about aid trucks, we’re talking about fewer than 100 trucks filled with flour and other basic supplies, that are not enough to feed a population that has been hungry for 18 months or so since the genocide started.

Just in the past couple of weeks we’ve seen many cases of malnourishment at hospitals, we’ve seen hospitals unable to provide treatment due to the lack of medical supplies, and we’ve seen children dying inside the hospitals due to a lack of antibiotics for treatable infections.

Palestinians search for casualties after Israeli attack on Jabalia


_{People search at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in northern Gaza’s Jabalia}

Israel inceased attacks on Gaza hospitals by some 400 percent this week: UN

The United Nations says Israel stepped up its attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system by about 400 percent over the last week, with nearly all hospitals in Gaza now damaged or destroyed.

“Over the past week alone, four major hospitals have had to suspend medical services because of hostilities, attacks or displacement orders in their areas. That’s Kemal Adan, Indonesia Hammad and European Gaza hospitals,” Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, said.

“[The World Health Organization] tells us that 4 percent of nearly 700 attacks on health care in Gaza since October 2023 were recorded over the past week alone. That’s 28 attacks, or four times the average number of attacks per day.

“At least 94 percent of the hospitals in Gaza are now damaged or destroyed, and half of them are no longer operational.”

Israeli acts in Gaza point to ethnic cleansing, genocide: European rapporteur

Saskia Kluit, a Dutch senator and rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the need to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, has denounced the “man-made massacre” under way in the Palestinian territory.

“Children are the first victims of this systematic violence. Without food, clean water, medical care and safe shelter, their right to life is being denied,” Kluit said in a statement.

“It is clear that the Israeli government is not respecting international humanitarian law, which requires that humanitarian aid be delivered unconditionally, unhindered and in sufficient quantities to sustain the health of a population,” she said.

Kluit also noted that Palestinians in Gaza have been “confined to an ever-shrinking space” while “so-called safe zones offer no safety at all”.

“All this – combined with the declarations on the Gazans by members of the Israeli government – makes it very hard to ignore that these acts point in the direction of ethnic cleansing and genocide,” she said.

"#Gaza: acts point in the direction of ethnic cleansing and genocide" says PACE rapporteur Saskia Kluit.

Read her full statement:https://t.co/i61niV6Bsb pic.twitter.com/7JgQd1BcgC

— PACE (@PACE_News) May 23, 2025

Palestinians collapsing from hunger as limited aid fails to meet Gaza’s needs

Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reiterates that the limited humanitarian aid that has been allowed into the enclave so far falls far short of what’s needed to meet the needs of residents.

“This amount might only meaningfully help just a fraction of Gaza’s population,” he said.

Abu Azzoum explained that Palestinians have been gathering outside bakeries in hopes of getting some bread to feed their families. But these “bakeries can’t cover the entire population and cannot stop the spread of famine”, he said.

“People are collapsing because they are unable to get any sort of food,” he added.

Military intervention must be used to stop the genocide in Gaza

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/23/military-invervention-israel-gaza-war

In Kosovo, Nato intervened in 1999 after mass killings and the threat of further ethnic cleansing. Why aren’t Gazans being protected in the same way?

On 20 May, the secretary-general for humanitarian affairs at the United Nations stated that 14,000 babies would be dead unless the blockade was lifted immediately. The day before, the former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin said: “Every child in Gaza is the enemy.” And now, world leaders in the UK and France threaten vague “concrete actions” if Israel “does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid”. But undefined “concrete actions” are woefully insufficient. To those leaders I say: Gaza’s children cannot eat statements.

Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, declared last week: “We are destroying everything in Gaza, the world isn’t stopping us.” So let’s say what must be said, without apology: military intervention to defend Gaza is not only justified – it is required. It is humanitarian. It is overdue. Israel must be stopped.

A no-fly zone must be set up around Gaza to prevent further aerial bombing; and a coalition of willing states should come together to form a corridor to 1) end Israel’s colonial mechanism that is set to take 65% of Gaza’s land and 2) allow for the immediate dispersal of humanitarian aid. Military intervention should not merely be aimed at pausing the killing – it should be used to protect Palestinians’ right to exist as a people, with dignity, sovereignty and full unconditional control over their land and futures.

The latest UN announcement about the risk to Gazan babies follows others from the Israeli prime minister’s office that make Israel’s intention to destroy Gaza unmistakably clear. On the recommendation of the Israeli army, they said they would allow in a “basic amount of food” to the south of Gaza – but not out of mercy, not to save lives. The stated reason: to prevent famine from undermining the coming ground invasion, to clear space for “intense fighting”. In other words, aid would be permitted only to fuel further ethnic cleansing. Food not as relief, but as relocation. Nutrition as a tool for displacement. Netanyahu claimed that international pressure, including from pro-Israel Republican senators and the White House, required the appearance of humanitarian intervention. “Our best friends in the world – senators I know as strong supporters of Israel – have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge,” he said.

...

We have tried the petitions. We have written the letters. We tried peaceful protests and encampments. We have submitted the evidence. We have watched the Geneva conventions recited like prayer, while their every clause is violated. We have waited for the ICC to act while the United States rushes more weapons to the border. We have watched food convoys bombed, aid workers executed, newborns starved. We are not unreasonable. We are simply not willing to die politely.

Military intervention is not some imperial fantasy we borrow from the west. It is a mechanism built into the very structure of international law. Article I of the genocide convention requires states not only to punish genocide but to prevent it. The responsibility to protect doctrine (R2P), adopted in 2005 by every member of the United Nations, asserts that when a state is “manifestly failing” to protect its population – or, as in our case, actively trying to destroy it – other states are obligated to intervene, not encouraged, obligated.

And yes, there is precedent. In Kosovo, Nato intervened in 1999 after mass killings and the threat of further ethnic cleansing. In East Timor, a multinational force deployed to halt atrocities committed by militias supported by the Indonesian army. In Libya, security council resolution 1973 authorized military action “to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack”. Each time, the world acknowledged that force was the only viable form of protection. That sovereignty could not shield slaughter. That delay meant graves.

So why not now? Why not for Palestinians? Is it that our children starve too quietly? That our bodies do not make for good television? Is it because the bombs are labeled “Made in America”?

No one is asking for occupation. No one is asking for invasion in the name of oil, democracy or flags. We are asking for survival. We are asking for the same intervention that has been carried out for others when the death toll passed a certain threshold. Gaza is not asking to be exceptional. Gaza is asking not to be abandoned.

Military intervention is not violence – it is what stops violence. It is not the failure of law – it is its fulfillment. And it is the last remaining form of aid Israel has not managed to bomb, blockade or twist into a weapon of war. Airdropping rice into craters is not aid. Aid is removing the cause of the starvation. Aid is opening the checkpoints, not filming them. Aid is armored vehicles securing corridors for ambulances that no longer have to lie about their destinations to avoid being blown apart. Aid is ending the killing – not watching it with subtitles.

...

‘It's Bisan From Gaza, This is What Months of Starvation Looks Like’

Bisan is surviving on just one meal a day. She’s one of millions in Gaza facing a deepening hunger crisis on the brink of famine. More than 87 Palestinians have died from starvation – most of them are children. One in five Palestinians in Gaza is experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger. Even as starvation spreads, Israel is intensifying its ground invasion, pushing forward with its stated goal of a full siege on Gaza.

UN Relief Chief Slams Global Inaction on Atrocities

UN Relief Chief Tom Fletcher issued a grave warning to world leaders, decrying global inaction on humanitarian atrocities and warning that the system built to protect humanity is collapsing.

HALF of Israelis back EXTERMINATING ALL PALESTINIANS

Palestine’s UN envoy says ‘tears, outrage’ not enough for Gaza

It’s been a busy day at the UN in New York, with the Security Council also holding an open debate earlier on the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

The meeting’s focus often shifted to Gaza, with the Palestinian ambassador to the UN delivering a powerful call to action to end Israel’s war on the enclave.

“The whole world chants for Gaza, weeps for Gaza, aches for Gaza, is outraged by what is happening in Gaza,” Majed Bamya said.

“But the people in Gaza, the children of Gaza, have no use for our chants, for our tears and for our outrage – if they are not accompanied by actions that could actually stop the killing, feed the hungry, heal the wounded, save those who can still be saved.”



Bamya, the Palestinian UN ambassador, has also urged the international community to ask questions of itself as Israel’s war on Gaza continues unabated.

“What are we going to say?” Bamya asked the Security Council.

“That the whole world was opposed to mass indiscriminate killing, but it continued anyways? The whole world was opposed to wanton destruction, but stayed until all of Gaza was flattened? The whole world was outraged by the use of starvation as a method of war and the declared blockade, but could not lift it?

“That it’s ultimately for Israel to decide who lives and who dies? If that’s our plan, God have mercy over the 2 million people in Gaza.”

Seventy percent of Gaza’s water, sanitation system damaged or destroyed: UNICEF

Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director, says more than 70 percent of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed since Israel’s war began.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on water in armed conflict, Chaiban said that “repeated blockades have prohibited the entry into the Gaza Strip of fuel and critical components to run water facilities.”

“Currently, the desalination plant in southern Gaza is working at reduced capacity on backup generators,” he said.

“We urgently need the power supply to the desalination plant to be switched back on to provide at least 600,000 internally displaced Gazans in the south of the Strip with access to safe water.”

_{A boy carries water in a pot in Jabalia in northern Gaza}


People in Gaza traveling 25km to reach aid points: WFP

A spokesman for the UN’s World Food Programme tells Al Jazeera that Palestinians are travelling roughly 15.5 miles to get life-sustaining aid, two days after Israel allowed the first trucks into the Strip in months.

The aid, however, the spokesman said, is not nearly enough. Gaza requires at least 500 trucks per day to adequately feed and care for the population.

Israel ‘flattened vast areas of Rafah’, research group says

Forensic Architecture, a research group that documents rights abuses globally, says an analysis of conditions in Gaza shows that the Israeli military “has flattened vast areas of Rafah” in southern Gaza since March.

“The area that is being destroyed corresponds to a reported new ‘aid distribution area’ between the Morag and Philadelphi Corridors,” the group said in a post on X, referring to two tracts of land that the Israeli military has taken control of.

“To force the two million civilians still in Gaza towards the rubble of Rafah, since 18 March the Israeli military has been attacking civilians throughout the Strip – including the former ‘humanitarian zone’ in al-Mawasi.”

As we’ve been reporting, Israel has touted the creation of an alternative aid distribution plan – backed by the US – that would bypass the UN and other humanitarian agencies that have traditionally worked in Gaza.

The UN has rejected any proposed aid schemes that do not respect international law or humanitarian principles, such as independence and neutrality, and said it will not take part.

https://t.co/2SghSl3J0U

— Forensic Architecture (@ForensicArchi) May 23, 2025

UN expert calls for end of Gaza blockade in Cannes

UN expert Francesca Albanese at the Cannes Festival called for Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza completely instead of allowing aid to trickle into the war-torn territory.

“They must lift the blockade,” the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories said.

The Israeli defence ministry said 107 humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza on Thursday, whereas the United Nations used to bring in 500 to 600 lorry-loads per day on average during a six-week ceasefire that broke down in March.

But Albanese said even that amount would not be enough, after UN agencies warned a two-month siege had left its population of more than two million people on the brink of famine.

“Even if we return now to the 500 trucks per day… it wouldn’t be sufficient because there are no stocks and the people in Gaza have nothing,” she told AFP on the sidelines of the festival.

“Israel needs to get out of Gaza,” she added.

Gaza children suffer as malnutrition crisis worsens after weeks of blockade

Doctors at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza are overwhelmed by a surge in the number of malnourished babies and children in urgent need of life-saving treatment.

Israel’s months-long blockade has left medicine, food and baby formula critically scarce.

Main events on May 23rd

Neighbourhoods in northern Gaza ‘now completely empty of people’

Earlier this morning, the same site was relentlessly bombed twice by F-16s, forcing many of the people in the vicinity of the area [out of] makeshift tents that they set up in past weeks, as they were forced out of their homes and temporary shelters in the northern parts of the Strip.

For the past month or so, Palestinians have been on the move as evacuation orders have been issued on a daily basis – evacuating and forcing many of the people in the northern part of the Strip [to move].

Close to 14 neighbourhoods, now, in the northern part of Gaza are now completely empty of people. That includes areas where three major health facilities were rendered non-operational as they are in the line of fire of the Israeli military.

These air strikes have caused further civilian casualties, and the sheer level of destruction is quite visible everywhere.

Irish band Kneecap says ‘they are trying to silence us’ over activism against Gaza war

A member of Irish rap trio Kneecap said the terror charge he faces in the United Kingdom is an attempt to “silence us”, as the group appeared onstage for a gig they claimed was nearly “pulled”, the Press Association reports.

Liam O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, spoke to thousands of people in Brockwell Park, south London, as the group headlined the Wide Awake Festival on Friday in London. O hAnnaidh has been charged with a terror offence by UK police over the alleged display of a Hezbollah flag at a gig the band played in November last year.

_{Members of Kneecap pose on the red carpet at the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards in Dublin, Ireland, in February 2025}

CNN Pushes Narrative That "Free Palestine" Is Antisemitic

"Saying that in 2025 "Free Palestine" is antisemitic is like saying that in 1860 "End slavery" was anti-American."

Israel: "Gaza will be entirely destroyed" | The Listening Post

The images coming out of Gaza are apocalyptic, depicting the latest - and perhaps final - chapter in a genocide. Under an operation called Gideon’s Chariots, the Israeli military is forcing Palestinians into tiny corners of the besieged enclave. Its next phase: another full-scale invasion aimed at taking complete control of the territory.

Israel’s unending bombing campaign against Gaza’s civilians



Smoke and dust rise over destroyed and heavily damaged residential areas of northern Gaza as Israel continues to bombard the Palestinian territory on Friday, 19 months into Israel’s war on the enclave that has killed at least 53,822 people so far.

UN chief says Israel is still blocking aid as Gaza families starve

The UN secretary-general gave very stark words saying families are being starved in Gaza and being denied the very basics all while the “world is watching in real time”.

The secretary-general also said the UN would not participate with the Israeli and US-backed so-called Gaza humanitarian foundation that would essentially take aid distribution away from the United Nations and put it in the hands of private contractors. The secretary-general said the UN will not take part in any scheme that fails to respect international law and humanitarian principles, such as impartiality, independence and neutrality.

The secretary-general also said that the UN has 160,000 pallets of food – enough to fill 9,000 trucks – ready to be sent into Gaza if Israel would approve it. He said Israel is still blocking things such as fuel, shelter, cooking gas and water purification supplies. All things the UN has and wants to get into Gaza to those who need it the most.

Lastly, the secretary-general again reminded Israel that it – as the occupying power – is bound under humanitarian and international law provide to aid to the people that it is occupying.

Something that Israel has not been doing.

Israel has clear obligations under international humanitarian law.

It must treat civilians humanely.

It must not forcibly transport, deport or displace the civilian population of an occupied territory.

And as the occupying power, it must agree to allow & facilitate the aid…

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) May 23, 2025