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Forums - Politics - Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

SvennoJ on 17 July 2025

Israel refuses to renew visas of at least three UN agency leaders in Gaza

Israel has refused to renew visas for the heads of at least three UN agencies working on Gaza, UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman has confirmed.

Visas for the local leaders of the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA), the human rights agency OHCHR, and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, have not been renewed in recent months, Stephane Dujarric confirmed.

Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian chief, told the UN Security Council this week that the United Nations’ humanitarian mandate is not just to provide aid to civilians in need and report what its staff witnesses, but to advocate for international humanitarian law.

“Each time we report on what we see, we face threats of further reduced access to the civilians we are trying to serve,” he said. “Nowhere today is the tension between our advocacy mandate and delivering aid greater than in Gaza.”

Fletcher added: “Visas are not renewed or reduced in duration by Israel, explicitly in response to our work on protection of civilians.”



UN expert calls for end of Israel’s ‘femi-genocide’ against Palestinian women, girls

The UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls says Palestinian women and girls in Gaza face “the intentional destruction of their lives and bodies, for being Palestinian and for being women”.

“There is more than one way to subject a people to genocide. Destroying them in whole or in part psychologically is one of them,” Reem Alsalem said.

“The horrors that Palestinian mothers, in particular, continue to endure – watching their children slowly starve, killed, maimed, and buried alive – is killing them repeatedly in a single day. The psychological trauma they, and all Palestinians in Gaza, are suffering knows no boundaries.”

Alsalem added that Israel is using reproductive violence in its bombardment and blockade of Gaza, including via the destruction of the enclave’s health system. She noted that 150,000 pregnant and lactating women do not have access to essential care.

“An estimated 17,000 of these women and 60,000 children under five now suffer from acute malnutrition. At least 60 children have died from starvation since March 2025, following Israel’s blockade on food, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid,” she said.



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SvennoJ on 17 July 2025

Main events on July 17th

  • Israeli attacks across Gaza killed 56 people on Thursday, including dozens of aid seekers, according to health officials.
  • In a rare move, Israel issued a statement stating it “deeply regrets” targeting Gaza’s only Catholic Church in an attack that killed three people, after widespread international condemnation.
  • UN chief Antonio Guterres’ spokesperson said Israel has refused to renew visas for the heads of at least three UN agencies working on Gaza.
  • According to US news outlet Axios, sources close to the ongoing ceasefire negotiations said they believed a ceasefire deal could be reached soon following an updated offer presented to Hamas and Israel by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
  • The foreign ministers of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkiye called Israel’s attacks on Syria a “flagrant violation of international law”.
  • White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said US President Trump continues to support “Syria’s pathway to a peaceful and prosperous country”, and will continue to work on de-escalation as violence there continues.
  • According to the Syrian state news agency SANA, Israel carried out an air strike in the vicinity of Syria’s Suwayda. These reports are unconfirmed.
  • At least 84 parliamentarians across nine political parties called on the British government to impose widespread sanctions on Israel over its repeated violations of international law.
  • Slovenia said it will blacklist far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as “persona non grata”, accusing them of inciting violence against Palestinians.

MASS Arrests Of Pro-Palestine Protesters In The U.K.!


The UK government has been dramatically cracking down on pro-Palestinian activists, journalists, and protesters under counterterrorism laws, a clear and disturbing erosion of free speech principles.

Guest hosts Russell Dobular and Keaton Weiss of the Due Dissidence show highlight the hypocrisy of politicians like JD Vance, who condemned censorship abroad but ignored the UK’s repression of dissent regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza. The two share footage of peaceful protesters being arrested for holding signs and Palestinian flags, arguing that vague "suspicion" standards are now being used to criminalize political expression.

"I'm a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It": Prof Omer Bartov on the Growing Consensus on Gaza


We speak with leading Israeli American historian Omer Bartov about his latest essay for The New York Times, headlined "I'm a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It." Bartov cites the United Nations definition of "genocide," which includes an intent to destroy a group of people that makes it impossible for the group to reconstitute itself. "This is precisely what Israel is trying to do," he says. "Israel is trying to concentrate the population of Gaza in the southernmost parts of the strip, to enclose them and to enforce, eventually, either that they would just die out there or that they would be removed from the Gaza Strip altogether."

 



SvennoJ on 18 July 2025

Israel’s deadly attack on Catholic church in Gaza ‘not an isolated incident’

New details are emerging about the congregation of Gaza’s only Catholic church that was targeted on Thursday by Israel.

More than 600, mostly women and children, were sheltering there. We now know at least three people have died and at least 10 have been injured. We also are aware that the pope had been contacting members of the congregation on a nightly basis to check on the wellbeing of those sheltering there.

Asked about the incident, Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, said the president was not happy when he heard about what had happened.

Still, this is not an isolated incident. In fact, the Israeli military has targeted at least half a dozen churches in Gaza since just October 7, 2023, using precision-guided munitions.

Still, the Israeli military maintains this latest attack was purely accidental.

Israeli strike on Gaza tent camp kills 3 women, child

At least five people, including three women and a child, have been killed following an Israeli bombardment that hit tents sheltering people forcibly displaced by the Israeli military in southern Gaza, our colleagues from Al Jazeera Arabic report.

Citing sources from Nasser Hospital, the strike on the so-called al-Mawasi “safe zone” also injured at least 20 people.

Israel’s nonstop destruction of the Gaza Strip


An Israeli tank manoeuvres near heavy machinery with the destruction of northern Gaza evident in the background


Four Palestinians killed in latest Israeli attack on northern Gaza

At least four people have been killed in an Israeli air attack in Jabalia an-Nazla, northern Gaza, sources at al-Shifa Hospital told our colleagues from Al Jazeera Arabic.

Earlier, sources and officials from Gaza said at least 10 people have already been killed across the besieged territory since dawn on Friday.



SvennoJ on 18 July 2025

Israeli forces using drone missiles packed with nails to kill people in Gaza

Doctors say they are doing everything possible to save the lives of many of the children who were transferred to hospital today after they sustained severe burns and injuries from flying shrapnel.

These drone missiles are packed with nails, and when they explode, pieces of metal fly at a very high speed, piercing bodies, causing internal injuries that lead to severe bleeding, which causes the majority of deaths among those attacked by drone missiles.

For the past 40 days or so, drone attacks have been on the rise – they target people in large crowds, whether they are in market streets or queueing for water or a community kitchen to pick up food.

These attacks are happening despite all the claims by the Israeli military that prides itself on using sophisticated, advanced weapons.

But when we look at what’s happening on the ground, and we see the number of casualties and the kind of targets being hit, it contradicts what the Israeli military is marketing.


‘Unprecedented numbers’ of starving Palestinians turning up at hospitals: Health Ministry

Starving Palestinians are arriving in emergency departments across Gaza in “unprecedented numbers”, the territory’s Health Ministry says.

In a statement, the ministry said emaciated people of all ages were turning up at hospitals in the Strip in states of “extreme exhaustion and fatigue”. It warned that hundreds of them were at risk of dying of starvation.

Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic that the hospital did not have enough beds or medical supplies to treat the huge number of people suffering from severe malnutrition.

He said 17,000 children in Gaza were suffering from severe malnutrition.


A malnourished Palestinian boy lies in a bed receiving treatment at the ICU of Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis

The warning comes just days after UNRWA said one in 10 children screened in Gaza clinics run by the agency is malnourished.

Israel’s punishing prevention of aid entering Gaza has led to “severe shortages of nutrition supplies”, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Tuesday, describing the situation for starving children as “engineered and man-made”.

UNRWA’s communication director, Juliette Touma, told reporters that “medicine, nutrition supplies, hygiene material, fuel are all rapidly running out”.

“Our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza, especially since the siege was tightened more than four months ago on the second of March,” Touma said.

“One nurse that we spoke to told us that in the past, he only saw these cases of malnutrition in textbooks and documentaries,” she said.


Child dies of malnutrition in Deir el-Balah, Gaza

A one-year-old girl has died of malnutrition in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, a medical source at the city’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital has confirmed to Al Jazeera.

A total of 69 children have died from malnutrition in the territory since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, Gaza’s Government Media Office says.

News of the latest death comes as Gaza’s Health Ministry warns that “unprecedented numbers” of starving Palestinians are presenting with severe malnutrition in states of “extreme exhaustion and fatigue” at the territory’s hospitals.



SvennoJ on 18 July 2025

Patriarchs of Jerusalem visit bombed church in Gaza

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, has entered Gaza to visit the Holy Family Church that was bombed by Israel on Thursday, Vatican News has reported.

A shell fired from an Israeli tank struck the Catholic church, the only one in the Strip, killing three people and wounding 10, including the parish priest Gabriel Romanelli.

Pizzaballa conducted his visit along with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III. As they entered the enclave, Pope Leo XIV called Pizzaballa to “express his closeness, care, prayer, support, and desire to do everything possible to achieve not only a ceasefire but also an end to this tragedy”, the report said.

According to a statement from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch will assess the “humanitarian and pastoral needs of the community to help guide the Church’s continued presence and response”.

As part of the visit, tonnes of food supplies, first aid kits and medical equipment were delivered to Gaza, it added.


Pizzaballa and Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, visit the Church of the Holy Family, which was hit in an Israeli attack on Thursday


Pope receives call from Netanyahu after Gaza church attack, urges ceasefire talks

Pope Leo XIV received a call from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this morning, with the head of the Roman Catholic Church renewing his appeal to revive negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the war on Gaza.

The call comes after an Israeli tank struck Gaza’s only Catholic church on Thursday, killing at least three people and injuring 10.

The pope expressed “concern for the dramatic humanitarian situation of the population in Gaza, the excruciating price of which is being paid in particular by children, the elderly, and the sick”, according to remarks carried by Vatican News.

Leo also “reiterated the urgency of protecting places of worship and, above all, the faithful and all people in Palestine and Israel”.


‘You are not forgotten,’ church leader tells Palestinians in Gaza

Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa says his visit to Gaza aims to show Palestinians they “are not neglected, not forgotten”, particularly after yesterday’s deadly Israeli bombing of the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.

As we reported earlier, Pizzaballa made a rare trip to Gaza today alongside Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III to support Palestinians following the attack.

“We will do everything in order to be all as close to you and to support all of you,” Pizzaballa said. “I can assure from you the prayer also of [His] Holiness Pope Leo XIV, that called today, knowing that we are going to enter [Gaza], and he brings also his blessing to all of us, to all of you.”

Three people were killed and 10 others were wounded in the Israeli attack on the Gaza church.



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SvennoJ on 18 July 2025

Gaza facing ‘famine-driven mass casualty scenario’

In Al-Aqsa Hospital, the emergency rooms are crowded with children and patients showing severe signs of malnutrition: sunken eyes, emaciated bodies and severe fatigue.

The medical teams are operating with very, very limited resources. They say that what is going on is not just a hunger crisis, it’s a full collapse of the human body under siege.

They say that if food does not reach the population soon, the situation will turn into a famine-driven mass casualty scenario.

People are saying that they have gone for days without getting anything to eat. Food is starting to run out from local markets and the only source of aid right now is the aid provided by the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Children are crying every single minute, calling for food, for bread, for flour. These products are no longer available in Gaza’s markets.


‘There is nothing’, says Gaza NGO boss amid acute aid shortages

The director of an umbrella group of Palestinian NGOs says that the reports of starving people arriving at hospitals in Gaza for treatment is further evidence of the abject failure of the controversial GHF to fulfil humanitarian needs.

Speaking from Al Jazeera from Gaza City, Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, said that Gaza was facing dire shortages of aid. “Today there is nothing,” he said. “Everything is run out.”

He said it was clear that the GHF, tasked with distributing aid in the territory, was serving Israel’s “political-military agenda” rather than a humanitarian one.

The GHF’s model meant it was forcing desperate Palestinians to its distribution hub in the south, making a perilous journey in hope of being one of the few to receive a food parcel. There have been frequent killings of aid seekers around the GHF distribution point.

Shawa said that, rather than feeding Gaza’s population, the GHF had been a “mechanism for killing”. “It’s become very risky for people to go [there],” he said.


Desperate crowds jostle for food amid critical shortages in Gaza

Footage circulating on social media shows dramatic scenes as crowds of hungry Palestinians shove and scramble at a food station in Gaza.

The video clip, posted on Instagram and verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, showed a dangerous crush as large crowds of people, each carrying cooking pots, jostled to access food at a food station.

The chaotic scenes played out as officials in Gaza warned of critical food shortages amid an Israeli blockade on Gaza, with the Health Ministry saying unprecedented numbers of starving people were presenting at hospitals for help.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMPzk2VslBo

(Restricted in Canada, can't watch it here)



SvennoJ on 18 July 2025

Palestinians forced to eat expired food as starvation crisis worsens

Dr Ahmed Alfarra, director of paediatrics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, says the hunger crisis in the enclave is the worst he’s seen since Israel’s bombardment began nearly two years ago.

Alfarra said Palestinian families have come to the hospital suffering from serious health problems, including facial paralysis and respiratory failure, linked to consuming spoiled food.

“I asked the father and the mother, ‘Didn’t you smell the [foul] odour of the can [of food that you ate]?’ He said, ‘Doctor, what can we do? This is all we have,'” Alfarra told Al Jazeera.

Alfarra added that the US- and Israeli-backed GHF food distribution scheme, where hundreds of Palestinian aid seekers have been killed in the past weeks, has worsened an already dire situation.

“I will not send my son [to GHF-run aid sites]; I am afraid that he will go there and he will come back as a [dead] body. The GHF is a [trap] for killing, not for distributing food,” he said.

Infectious diseases spreading due to lack of clean water, food: Gaza doctor

We’ve spoken with Dr Khaleel al-Deqran, spokesperson of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, about the worsening starvation crisis in the Strip.

Al-Deqran told Al Jazeera that infectious diseases, such as meningitis, are spreading due to a lack of clean water, food and medicine.

“Survivors [of Israeli attacks] are living within the ruins of their destroyed homes amid unhealthy conditions and a total absence of hygiene. As a result, their immune systems have been deeply impacted,” he said.

“It is really dire, it is catastrophic,” al-Deqran said of the overall situation. “The whole world must act now to salvage what is left of the Gaza Strip.”


Nearly 1 in 3 Palestinians in Gaza not eating for days at a time: WFP

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has raised alarm as thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are on the “verge of catastrophic hunger”.

“Food aid is the only real way for people to eat,” the agency wrote on X.


Hundreds of Palestinians face ‘imminent death’, doctor warns

Dr Sohaib al-Hums, director of the Kuwaiti Field Hospital in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, has warned that the medical facility is “witnessing an unprecedented influx of displaced persons”.

“We are receiving cases suffering from extreme exhaustion and complete fatigue, in addition to severe emaciation and acute malnutrition due to prolonged lack of food,” he said in a statement.

“We warn that hundreds whose bodies have completely wasted away are now facing imminent death, as their physical endurance has been surpassed.”



SvennoJ on 18 July 2025

Israeli combat veteran raises alarm over increasing suicide of soldiers since October 7

An Israeli combat veteran has urged the government to quickly address concerns of soldiers returning from the war in Gaza, amid reports of increasing suicide rates.

In an interview with the Israeli public broadcaster, Kan, Tzachi Atedagi, an advocate for the protection of the mental health of soldiers, noted that 10 soldiers recently took their own lives in a span of less than two weeks.

“We are crying out. Enough is enough,” Atedagi told Kan Network B’s This Morning programme. “There are a lot of combat veterans roaming the streets, but it is very difficult for us [to get help] with all the bureaucracy around,” he said.

“Sometimes, a combat veteran doesn’t have 24 hours to wait,” he added, citing several reports of soldiers who killed themselves while waiting for health intervention from the government.

Earlier this week, The Times of Israel reported that a soldier was seriously wounded in an apparent attempted suicide while in training in southern Israel.

In January 2025, the Israeli army reported that 28 soldiers had taken their own lives since the start of the war, marking the highest toll in 13 years.

Since then, several more cases of suicide by soldiers have been reported, although an official tally will not be released by the Israeli military until the end of the year.


Israeli physicians’ group say GHF ‘must be removed’ from Gaza

Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said the continued presence of the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) “endangers Palestinian lives”.

Castigating the GHF’s methods after at least 19 people were crushed to death at one of its food distribution sites on Wednesday in the south of Gaza, the Israeli physicians’ group said “this is not what humanitarian aid looks like.

“This is what systematic harm to human beings looks like,” it said.

GHF “must be removed from the Strip immediately and replaced with systematic, independent international aid”, it added.

“Only neutral and internationally recognised humanitarian organisations can put an end to the bloodshed in Gaza.”


Members of a private US security company, contracted by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US-backed aid group which the UN refuses to work with, direct displaced Palestinians as they gather to receive relief supplies at a distribution centre in the central Gaza Strip on June 8



SvennoJ on 18 July 2025

Israeli military continues raid, arrest campaign in Nablus

Earlier, we reported that the Israeli military had shot and arrested a Palestinian man during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.

The hours-long military operation continues, the Palestinian Information Center reports, with Israeli forces launching a raid and arrest campaign on homes in the new Askar refugee camp, east of the city.


Israeli settlers steal and kill dozens of sheep in Jordan Valley

Israeli settlers have stolen and killed dozens of Palestinian-owned sheep in the northern Jordan Valley area of the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports.

Mahdi Daraghmeh, the head of al-Malih village council, told Wafa the settlers stole dozens of sheep belonging to families in the Palestinian community in the northern Jordan Valley, before killing 117 of the sheep.

The armed settlers also attacked Palestinian-owned tents in the area and assaulted the occupants, according to Daraghmeh.


Settler attacks, displacement: West Bank under attack

The UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) has released its latest figures on casualties and violence in the occupied West Bank, which has experienced a surge in Israeli army and settler attacks amidst the Gaza war.

At least 14 Palestinian deaths were recorded in the West Bank last month, OCHA said, while 355 others were also injured. In the same month, at least 129 Israeli settler attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties or property damage were reported.

According to OCHA figures, between the beginning of 2024 and the end of June, more than 2,200 Israeli settler attacks were reported, resulting in more than 5,200 Palestinian injuries.

In that same period, nearly 36,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced across the West Bank due to Israeli military operations, Israeli settler violence or home demolitions carried out by the Israeli government.


Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces near Jenin

Amr Ali Qabha was killed after Israeli forces opened fire in Ya’bad, south of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli troops fired live ammunition at the 13-year-old as he was walking down the street and prevented ambulances from reaching him to provide medical treatment.

Qabha’s father also tried to reach him, but he was severely beaten and detained by Israeli forces, Wafa said.

The child was pronounced dead at the hospital after an ambulance was finally able to bring him in.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed across the occupied West Bank since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023. Of that, at least 204 were children.



SvennoJ on 18 July 2025

Pro-MAGA news network airs segment criticising Israeli settler attacks on US citizens

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/in-sign-of-shift-far-right-us-news-network-airs-segment-on-unchecked-israeli-settler-violence/

The far-right One America News Network has aired a segment critical of Israeli settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, in the latest signal of an apparent shift within America’s right-wing.

Posting the segment on X, which is hosted by former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, the pro-MAGA network asked: “How many Americans do Israeli settlers have to kill before we care?”

Gaetz – President Trump’s original pick for attorney general before he withdrew his candidacy over mounting scandals – discussed the killing of Palestinian American Sayfollah Musallet by Israeli settlers last week. He said the 20-year-old Florida-born man was “peacefully” in the occupied West Bank visiting family before he was “murdered” by a mob of Israeli settlers.

“Truth is this isn’t an isolated tragedy in the West Bank, it’s part of a pattern of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian communities, including the torching of homes, farms and lives, all while protected by Israeli forces who are funded by US tax dollars,” Gaetz said.

“Israel rarely holds these killers accountable,” he added.


Israeli police reopen settler attack probe after press investigation revelations

Israeli police have reopened an investigation into an Israeli settler attack on a peace activist in the occupied West Bank, following a damning report into failures to investigate the case.

Israeli outlet Haaretz reported on Thursday that authorities had closed their probe into the assault – which took place in village of Mughayyir al-Deir – claiming they were unable to identify the suspects.

In May, settlers attacked a group of Palestinians and Israeli peace activists accompanying them in Mughayyir al-Deir. Among the peace activists was Avishay Mohar, who had his cameras, cellphone, wallet and other items stolen.

Mohar filed a police complaint which included a picture of several of the attackers and the name of one assailant. His stolen computer’s GPS tracker was also active in the weeks after the attack, showing it was moving between illegal outposts in the West Bank.

But Israeli police closed the case, claiming they had been unable to identify the perpetrators.

Following Haaretz’s report this week, police said they had reopened it.