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Forums - Politics - Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

US ambassador Huckabee describes visit to Gaza with Witkoff

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says he joined special envoy Steve Witkoff on a visit to Gaza today “to learn the truth” about the GHF’s aid distribution activities.

During the trip, Huckabee said they were briefed by the Israeli military and spoke to “folks on the ground”. Huckabee praised the GHF, which took over Gaza’s aid distribution in May, for what he claimed were more than one million meal deliveries per day.

As we’ve reported, Israeli forces have shot and killed more than 1,300 desperately hungry Palestinians seeking aid near the GHF sites or their distribution routes. Humanitarian officials say the amount of aid distributed at GHF-run sites falls far short of what’s needed to stem growing starvation in the strip.


Dunno how they calculate meals but many experts have questioned the amount and nutritional value of those meals. The GHF also said they were aiming for 60 trucks a day, 10% of what's needed. The math does not add up. Plus people need a lot more than 'meals', and 2 million people need 6 million 'meals' a day. 

Even if a million meals could somehow be made from the daily aid boxes, that's still half the population going without a single meal every other day, if it were distributed evenly and not taken by gangs. The GHF has much less scrutiny and no control over who picks up the aid, unlike the UN. 


Palestinians carry aid supplies from a GHF aid site in central Gaza, August 1


Witkoff’s visit offers no hope to ‘displaced, traumatised and hungry’ people in Gaza

As the day progresses, we hear people commenting on Witkoff’s visit [to a GHF distribution site in Gaza]. But people here are displaced, traumatised and hungry. Their hopes don’t rely on a visit of a prominent official to these centres.

The visit comes almost 150 days and close to 1,300 killings of aid seekers since the GHF started operations. People here wonder why he didn’t come on the first day and put an end to the ongoing atrocities at these centres.

It is quite shocking that since morning, no incident was reported at the GHF centres. The whole thing is staged; in the past days, the shooting would have started right away, the moment the gates opened and the crowds gathered.


Gaza death toll rises

At least 83 Palestinians, including 53 aid seekers, have been killed and 554 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

One body was also recovered from the rubble of previous Israeli attacks, the ministry statement said on Telegram.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed a total of 60,332 Palestinians and injured 147,643 since October 7, 2023, the ministry added.

The total number of aid seekers killed since May 27, when Israel introduced a new aid distribution mechanism, has reached 1,383, with more than 9,218 injured, the statement said.



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SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

Aid uptick ‘not enough to even scratch the surface’: OCHA

Olga Cherevko, a staff member at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, says that while Israel is now letting slightly more aid into the enclave, its vast bureaucratic restrictions on aid flow have continued to make it impossible to reverse widespread malnutrition.

“The slight increase in what is coming in is not nearly enough to even scratch the surface to meet the people’s needs here on the ground,” Cherevko told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza.

She described Palestinians as continuing to suffer “depths of despair, depths of malnutrition and starvation”.

A major reason more aid trucks aren’t entering Gaza, she said, is that the UN must coordinate every step of the delivery process with Israel, which often extensively delays approvals and clearances.

“There are so many factors on the ground that point to the fact that, despite the slight relaxation of [Israel’s] various constraints [on aid entry], we’re still in the same situation,” Cherevko said.

“People are continuing to starve, malnutrition rates continue to go up, people are risking their lives to get food, and there’s no change substantially and operationally, really.”


UNRWA says aid trucks far more efficient than airdrops

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has criticised the shift to humanitarian airdrops, which he says are 100 times more costly than trucks while carrying just half the assistance.

“If there is political will to allow airdrops – which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings,” he said, adding that the UN has 6,000 trucks filled with aid waiting at Gaza’s border.

“As the people of Gaza are starving to death, the only way to respond to the famine is to flood Gaza with assistance,” Lazzarini wrote in a post on X. “No alternative to the UN coordinated response with UNRWA as the backbone had provided similar results.”

“Let’s go back to what works & let us do our job,” he said.


Witkoff says he spent over five hours in Gaza today

The US special envoy said he and ambassador Mike Huckabee spent their time “level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions” and meeting with the GHF and other agencies.

Witkoff said they aim to relay “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation” in Gaza to US President Trump and to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.



SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

Palestinians view GHF as ‘symbol of control and manipulation’

People are expecting little from Witkoff’s visit to the GHF site.

Since the GHF took over [aid distribution] operations, getting food has become very dangerous and humiliating. Many Palestinians have begun to view the GHF not as a humanitarian actor, but as a symbol of control and manipulation.

Twenty-two months into this war, Gaza is still witnessing military escalation and a deepening humanitarian crisis that has been politicised and militarised.

Reports from Gaza’s Health Ministry indicate that the situation is worsening and the number of malnutrition cases is on the rise.

US working on a plan ‘to get people fed’: Trump

US President Donald Trump has told Axios’s journalist Barak David that he is working on a plan “to get people fed” in Gaza.

“We want to help people. We want to help them live. We want to get people fed. It is something that should have happened a long time ago,” Trump said.

This is not the first time the US president has said he is concerned about reports of starvation in Gaza, placing the onus on Israel to improve the humanitarian crisis in the enclave. Yesterday, Trump said “the fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis” was for Hamas to surrender and release all captives.

In the past, he has floated a US takeover of the enclave, expelling Palestinians and turning the land of the Gaza Strip into a “resort”, in what the UN said would amount to ethnic cleansing.


EU staff urge leaders to pressure Israel for Gaza aid access in open letter

Hundreds of staff members working for EU institutions wrote a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas, urging the two to press Israel to let humanitarian aid into Gaza.

According to the letter seen by Al Jazeera, more than 700 signatories ask for the opening of all land crossings for the delivery of essential goods and permitting humanitarian ships to dock.

“Israel cannot be allowed to show disdain for yet another agreement and further disrespect to the European Union,” read the statement, referring to an understanding that the EU had reached with Israel in mid-July to improve the situation on the ground.

The European Union is Israel’s largest trading partner and, as such, it has considerable leverage to insist on compliance with international humanitarian law, read the document.

The signatories proposed specific measures that could be taken against Israel. Here are some of those listed:

  • Targeted sanctions against entities responsible for obstructing humanitarian access, including Israeli leaders.
  • Leading a coordinated international effort with the UN to ensure safe humanitarian corridors into Gaza.
  • Suspending diplomatic relations with Israel.

“Our credibility and moral leadership depend on taking bold and principled action now.”



SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

Israeli settlers torch vehicle, attack homes in West Bank attack

Israeli settlers have torched a vehicle belonging to foreign activists in the occupied West Bank village of Susiya, south of Hebron, the Wafa news agency reports.

The settlers also attacked Palestinian homes in the village – located in the Masafer Yatta area – including one that housed a group of foreign activists, Wafa said.



Translation: Settlers burn a vehicle belonging to foreign activists in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.


Six Palestinians arrested by Israeli forces near West Bank’s Hebron, Nablus: Report

Israeli forces have carried out numerous arrests during raids around Hebron and Nablus in the occupied West Bank, reports the Wafa news agency.

They apprehended two people in the city of Hebron after searching their homes and damaging property, as well as two people in the nearby town of Yatta, according to Wafa.

Israeli forces also arrested one man from Balata refugee camp in Nablus, and another man in the nearby town of Huwara – both of whose homes they raided and searched, said Wafa.

Israeli settlers attack Ramallah, Nablus in occupied West Bank

Israeli settlers, some of them on motorcycles, stormed the village of Burqa located east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in an effort to intimidate Palestinians.

Another settler attack occurred in Jalud village, southeast of Nablus, where security sources told Wafa news agency that settlers attacked the home of a Palestinian man and threw Molotov cocktails at it, causing damage.

Settlers also stormed the Aqqaba area south of Nablus and attempted to steal from Palestinian property.

The footage below, which has been verified by Al Jazeera, shows Israeli soldiers firing at residents during a raid in Hebron.

Translation: Scenes from the clashes in Fawwar camp south of Hebron, with Israeli forces firing live ammunition and tear gas canisters.



SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

Israel kills four people in Lebanon: Ministry

A series of Israeli air strikes killed four people in south and east Lebanon, the Lebanese Health Ministry says, referring to strikes that occurred the previous evening.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had targeted Hezbollah “infrastructure that was used for producing and storing strategic weapons” in south Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

More than a year of hostilities – including two months of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, which largely ended with a November ceasefire – left the group badly weakened.

Israel has nonetheless kept up near-daily air strikes in Lebanon despite the ceasefire, and has threatened to continue them until the group has been disarmed. Under the terms of the truce, Hezbollah was to withdraw its fighters north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli border.

Israel was meant to withdraw all its troops from Lebanon, but has kept them in five areas it deems strategic.

Celebrated Israeli writer David Grossman says Israel committing ‘genocide’

David Grossman, an award-winning Israeli novelist, has said Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to a “genocide”, a term he said he is using with “immense pain and a broken heart”.

“For many years, I refused to use that term: ‘genocide’,” Grossman, a longtime peace activist and government critic, told the Italian daily La Repubblica newspaper.

“But now, after the images I have seen and after talking to people who were there, I can’t help using it,” he said.

“This word is an avalanche: once you say it, it just gets bigger, like an avalanche. And it adds even more destruction and suffering,” he said.

Gaza Is The Worst CRIME Of The CENTURY - w./ UN Official Martin Griffiths




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SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

Israeli soldiers use silencers while shooting Gaza aid seekers

For the first time, Israeli soldiers today used silenced weapons to shoot at starving Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza.

Anas al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in northern Gaza, reported that he spoke to multiple witnesses who confirmed the use of silencers in the Sudanese area near Beit Lahiya, deployed by the Israeli army when targeting people around an aid site.

He said this means the Israeli soldiers were trying to inflict casualties without drawing too much attention to themselves.

The development comes as US envoy Steve Witkoff and ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited Gaza for several hours today to see how food distribution works at a site run by the internationally criticised GHF.

Israeli forces kill 65 Palestinians across Gaza since dawn

At least 65 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since Friday morning, medical sources have told Al Jazeera. The sources said 36 people were killed and more than 270 were injured on Friday while seeking food aid.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that two people in the Strip have died from starvation in the last 24 hours. The ministry said the latest deaths bring the total death toll from hunger during Israel’s war on Gaza to 162, including 92 children.


Israel’s army allows six countries to airdrop minuscule aid over Gaza

The Israeli military has confirmed that six countries were allowed to drop 126 humanitarian aid packages over the Gaza Strip in the past few hours.

It said in a statement that a directive from the political leadership allowed France, Germany, Spain, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to airdrop the very limited amount of aid over the famine-stricken enclave.

The Israeli army again rejected the charge by much of the international community that a policy of “deliberate starvation” is currently taking place in Gaza.

The UN and international aid organisations have emphasised that the airdrops remain woefully insufficient and potentially dangerous while Israel continues to block aid waiting at Gaza’s borders and creates an unsafe environment for aid delivery.

126 aid packages, 16 per plane, 8 planes, each plane can drop up to 14 tons of aid, up to 112 tons total or 5.6 trucks of the 600 needed daily.

860 aid flights a day are needed to meet the needs, that is over 100,000 aid packages daily.


SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

Two indicators that Gaza is now in famine, UNICEF official says

UNICEF’s deputy executive director says the situation in Gaza has crossed the threshold of famine, after he returned from a trip to the Strip earlier this week.

“We now have two indicators that have exceeded the famine threshold,” Ted Chaiban told a media conference on Friday.

“One in three people in Gaza are going days without food. And the malnutrition indicator has exceeded the famine threshold, with acute malnutrition now at over 16.5 percent.”

He said that than 320,000 young children are currently at risk of acute malnutrition in Gaza, and that Israel is still not allowing aid in quickly enough or in sufficient quantities to alleviate the crisis.

He said that UNICEF has 1,500 trucks of aid standing by in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Turkiye, and that while 33 UNICEF trucks have entered Gaza in the last couple of days, “this is still a fraction” of what is needed.

“We need to flood the Strip [with aid] from all channels, all gates,” he said.

Hamas releases video of Israeli captive held in Gaza

The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, has released a short video showing Israeli captive Evyatar David, who was taken from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.

The footage shows a gaunt David in a small tunnel, mixed with images of starving Palestinian children in Gaza.

“They eat what we eat, they drink what we drink,” Hamas says, adding that “the occupation government has decided to starve them” after rejecting a ceasefire agreement.

This comes a day after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad released a video of Israeli soldier Rom Braslavski, saying the armed group has lost contact with the team holding him in the aftermath of Israel’s ground invasion of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.


Palestinians wounded as they rush to few aid trucks in Beit Lahiya


Palestinians rushed toward a limited number of aid trucks that Israel allowed into Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, August 1


As Witkoff visited Gaza, a 12-year-old boy was killed seeking aid

US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff visited one of the food distribution sites run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed GHF near Rafah in southern Gaza on Friday.

But on the day his carefully curated visit took place, medical sources say that elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli forces killed at least 36 Palestinians seeking aid – including a 12-year-old boy, who was reportedly shot dead while he tried to find food for his family.

“We were hopeful about Witkoff’s visit. We were saying, ‘Thank God, maybe he’ll help, maybe he’ll push for a ceasefire,’” Gaza resident Mahmoud Awad told Al Jazeera.

“But instead, the gunfire increased, and there was even more insistence on killing as many young men and children as possible. “We were hoping for a ceasefire, but instead a child died. Why did the child die?”



SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

MSF: Israeli aid distribution ‘engineering chaos and massacres’

Caroline Willemen, the Gaza project coordinator for MSF, says “Food remains critically scarce, and there is little indication that sufficient aid will arrive consistently.”

“As a result, every day, people risk their lives in a desperate search for food.”

Using an example from July 30, just days ago, she detailed what the experience of attempting to receive food from aid trucks guarded by Israeli soldiers in Gaza is like for starving Palestinians.

“As people approached trucks distributing aid near Zikim, in north Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire on them. People were wounded in the gunfire and in the crush as crowds panicked and ran”, she said.

“Medical staff at the MSF-supported Sheikh Radwan clinic in north Gaza treated 77 injured patients and received eight people dead on arrival. Across north Gaza, nearly 600 people were treated for similar injuries following violence and chaos near Zikim that night, according to the Ministry of Health, as food trucks were passing.”

Per our reporting, dozens of people trying to pick up life-saving aid in Gaza are killed every day, as Israel continues to deny that starvation in the Strip is at crisis levels.


Palestinian injured in aid chaos: ‘None of us will go back to Zikim’

A Palestinian whose leg was run over by an aid truck during a chaotic attempt to distribute aid has given testimony to MSF, which treated them in Gaza City.

The person said when they tried to go to Zikim in northern Gaza to get flour, they “saw many people dead from the shelling and shooting from tanks”.

“As the trucks entered, at first they drove very fast but then they slowed down for the big crowd. When the trucks turned, some of the 50kg [110-pound] bags of flour fell off, injuring people. The Israeli forces forced the driver to keep going, despite there being people all around him. The driver tried to reverse the truck to leave the area, but it was so crowded that people were hit”, they continued.

Seven young men behind the truck were instantly killed. Amid the chaos, the patient did not realise that their own leg had been run over by the truck.  Now, they said that their family has one less person who can help try to find the food and supplies they need to survive Israel’s enforced deprivation policy.

“What I dream about is for all this to be over and to rebuild the house and the business of my father that has been destroyed,” they said.


Palestinian mother survives Israeli shooting to secure a bag of lentils

Israel is severely limiting the number of aid trucks into Gaza, which means many return home to their families from aid distribution points and warehouses with nothing to eat.

But some do not make it back alive – more than 1,300 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces while seeking aid across Gaza.

One woman in Gaza, who says she braved an Israeli attack to get a bag of lentils at a GHF site, recounted her experiences to Al Jazeera. “I stood behind a rock, and they started shooting. I kept crawling until I reached the trailer, and then I got down,” she said. “I managed to secure a bag of lentils. That was after several attempts.”

She said she went to the site by herself as her husband is sick and disabled, and she has six daughters. “That’s why I’m the one who goes to get the aid. I don’t have sons or boys who can bring the aid for me,” she said.


Israeli-imposed starvation claims more victims in Gaza

Hospitals in the Gaza Strip recorded three more deaths due to famine and malnutrition over the past day, including two children, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

This brings the total number of starvation victims to 162 Palestinians, including 92 children.

The ministry said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to worsen, and renewed its call on the international community to intervene.


Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza since dawn reaches 71

Sources in Gaza hospitals have told Al Jazeera that at least 71 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks across the Strip since dawn on Friday, including 38 people seeking aid.



SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

US trying to ‘whitewash’ and ‘accelerate’ Israel’s starvation of Gaza

Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, has told Al Jazeera that the visit by US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff visit to an aid site in Gaza run by the controversial GHF organisation on Friday was “perhaps a new low” as it tried to “whitewash” Israel’s deliberate starvation of the Strip.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who travelled with Witkoff to Gaza, posted on X a picture showing hungry people behind razor wire with a GHF poster displaying a big US flag and the words “100,000,000 meals delivered”.

More than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in and around GHF sites in recent weeks amid repeated Israeli attacks, and aid organisations have said that the amount of food provided at these sites is well below what Gaza’s starving population requires.

“Dozens of governments and aid organisations over the past several weeks have criticised this aid scheme that Israel and the United States have set up, and importantly, there have been a couple of American whistleblowers who have come forth recently,” Elmasry said.

“In that context, the United States had a choice – they could have come clean. They didn’t necessarily have to condemn Israel, no one is expecting that, but they could have said things aren’t going well and we need to address that,” he added.

“Instead of doing that, which would have been the bare minimum, they’re trying to whitewash the deliberate starvation programme and accelerate it so that Israel can complete the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.”


Witkoff did not meet any United Nations staff during trip to Gaza, UN spokesperson says

The deputy spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general has said that, “as far as he was aware”, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Wikoff did not meet anyone from the United Nations during his visit to Gaza on Friday.

“I checked with all the various offices and agencies, and none of them have replied about any meeting,” Farhan Haq told Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo during a news conference in New York.

Haq said that Witkoff, who visited an aid site run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed GHF in southern Gaza, could certainly also have visited UN workers and facilities if he had requested a meeting.

“We trust and expect that the US officials will continue to be in touch with us. We certainly have made clear what our operations on the ground are, and we’ve been in touch with them, as with other [UN] member states,” Haq said.

The UN has repeatedly criticised the GHF for being unable to provide aid on the scale required to hunger-ravaged Gaza, for violating basic humanitarian principles, and for the dire security at and around its aid sites, where more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.



SvennoJ on 01 August 2025

Amnesty requests info on ship in line with Spain’s arms embargo on Israel

The head of Amnesty International has welcomed what she called the Spanish government’s “response to the ongoing genocide” in Gaza and requested information in line with implementing the government’s commitment.

Agnes Callamard wrote in a post on X that the global rights organisation welcomes the decisions to ban new arms export licences and to reject requests for ships carrying arms for Israel to stop in Spanish ports.

“We therefore call on them to ensure these measures are implemented without exception,” she said.

Spain’s El Pais daily newspaper reported that Amnesty International has called on the Spanish government to verify the cargo of a Maersk ship suspected of transporting weapons to Israel that arrived at the port of Barcelona on Friday and will stop in Algeciras on August 6.


Ben-Gvir reiterates his call for re-establishing illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza

Israel’s far-right national security minister has repeated his call for Israel to push Palestinians out of Gaza and build new settlements there.

In a post on X, Itamar Ben-Gvir lamented that Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza in 2005 – a move he protested at the time – and said Israel should re-establish them.

“The lesson remains clear and simple today: We must go home. To Gush Katif,” Ben-Gvir said, using a term referring to a group of 17 old Israeli settlements in the enclave.

“To all of Gaza,” he continued. “The ones who need to leave are the enemies – not the lovers of the land.”