Crimes Against Humanity

‘All the kids are hungry. We are hungry.’

This is a day in the life of a Palestinian family in Gaza, living through Israel’s policy of starvation. Video shows the challenges they face as they try to find a meal from a charity kitchen during a widespread famine.

Odeh Hadalin, an activist, football player and participant in the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, has been shot in the chest and killed by an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank. The suspect, Yinon Levi, has been under sanctions by the EU and the US.

Israeli forces have killed at least 63 people across Gaza, hours after the military announced it would begin “pausing” attacks for 10 hours daily in some areas to allow humanitarian aid to pass through.

On Sunday, the Israeli army said it would temporarily halt military activity each day from 10am to 8pm (07:00-17:00 GMT) in parts of central and northern Gaza, including al-Mawasi, Deir el-Balah and Gaza City. It also pledged to open designated aid corridors for food and medical convoys between 6am and 11pm.

But hours into the first day of the “humanitarian pauses”, Israeli air raids resumed.

“There was an air strike on Gaza City, and this is one of the areas that was designated as a safe area, and where the Israeli forces are going to halt their military operations,” Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reported from Deir el-Balah.

“According to Palestinians in that area, a bakery was targeted.”

The bombardment comes as global outcry grows over the worsening humanitarian disaster in Gaza inflicted by Israel.

Famine deaths rise

Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported that six more Palestinians, including two children, died from hunger-related causes in the past 24 hours, pushing the number of starvation deaths to 133 since October 2023.

Among the dead was five-month-old Zainab Abu Haleeb, who succumbed to malnutrition at Nasser Hospital.

“Three months inside the hospital, and this is what I get in return, that she is dead,” said her mother, Israa Abu Haleeb, as the child’s father cradled her small body wrapped in a white shroud.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Sunday that one in three Gaza residents has gone days without eating, and nearly 500,000 people are suffering from “famine-like conditions”. The World Health Organization also warned last week that more than 20 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are malnourished.

Falestine Ahmed, a mother in Gaza, told Al Jazeera she lost one-third of her body weight.

“I used to weigh 57kg [126 pounds], now I weigh 42kg [93 pounds], and both my son and I have been diagnosed with severe malnutrition,” she said. “We barely have any food at home, and even when it’s available, it’s far too expensive for us to afford.”

Israel has authorised new corridors for aid, while the United Arab Emirates and Jordan have airdropped supplies into the territory. However, deliveries have been fraught with danger and are far too few.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported that one aid drop injured nearly a dozen people. “Eleven people were reported with injuries as one of these pallets fell directly on tents in that displacement site near al-Rasheed Road.”

Despite the mounting evidence of extreme hunger, Israel continues to deny that famine exists in Gaza. The Israeli military insists it is working to improve humanitarian access.

But scenes of desperation contradict official claims. “I’ve come all this way, risking my life for my children. They haven’t eaten for a week,” said Smoud Wahdan, a mother searching for flour, speaking to Al Jazeera. “At the very least, I’ve been looking for a piece of bread for my children.”

Another displaced mother, Tahani, said that her cancer-stricken child was among those suffering. “I came to get flour, to look for food to feed my children. I wish God’s followers would wake up and see all these people. They are dying.”

Aid groups overwhelmed

Liz Allcock, the head of protection for Medical Aid for Palestinians, told Al Jazeera that she has never seen Gaza in such a state. “The scale of starvation and the number of people you see walking around who are literally skin and bones [is shocking]… Money really has no value here when there is nothing to buy,” she said.

“All of Gazan society – no matter who they are – is suffering from critical food shortages,” she added, warning that one-quarter of the population is at risk of acute malnutrition.

The United Nations says aid deliveries can only succeed if Israel approves the rapid movement of convoys through its checkpoints.

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher noted that while some restrictions appeared to have eased, the scale of the crisis required far more action.

“This is progress, but vast amounts of aid are needed to stave off famine and a catastrophic health crisis,” he said.

Diplomatic pressure builds

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he discussed the Gaza situation with his Turkish and Egyptian counterparts and plans to co-host a conference in New York City next week focused on securing a two-state solution.

“We cannot accept that people, including large numbers of children, die of hunger,” he said.

Macron confirmed that France would soon recognise Palestinian statehood, joining more than 140 UN member states.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in an interview that Israel’s blockade of aid amounts to a violation of “humanity and morality”.

“Quite clearly, it is a breach of international law to stop food being delivered, which was a decision that Israel made in March,” he told ABC News. However, he added that Australia was not ready to recognise Palestinian statehood “imminently”.

In the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that ceasefire talks led by President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, are making “a lot of progress”.

“We’re optimistic and hopeful that any day now, we will have a ceasefire agreement,” Rubio told Fox News, suggesting that half of the remaining Israeli captives may be released soon.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 88 Palestinians were killed and 374 wounded in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours alone.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, at least 59,821 Palestinians have been killed and more than 144,000 injured.

Despite talk of pauses and diplomacy, the violence continues to escalate.

Months after stopping all supplies from entering Gaza, Israel has airdropped a few aid cartons and allowed some trucks to enter the Strip, following immense international pressure. Israel says it’s also begun 10-hour pauses in fighting in three locations ‘for humanitarian purposes’, but continuing attacks killed more than 50 Palestinians on Sunday.

In Shambat al-Aradi, a tight-knit neighbourhood in Khartoum North once known for its vibrant community gatherings and spirited music festivals, two childhood friends have suffered through confinement and injustice at the hands of one of Sudan’s warring sides.

Khalid al-Sadiq, a 43-year-old family doctor, and one of his best friends, a 40-year-old musician who once lit up the stage of the nearby Khedr Bashir Theatre, were inseparable before the war.

But when the civil war broke out in April 2023 and fighting tore through their city, both men, born and raised near that beloved theatre, were swept into a campaign of arbitrary arrests conducted by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The friends were detained separately and tortured in different ways, but their experiences nonetheless mirrored one another – until they emerged, physically altered, emotionally broken and forever bound by survival.

Imprisonment and ransom

Al-Sadiq’s ordeal began in August 2023 when RSF forces raided Shambat and arbitrarily arrested him and countless other men.

He was crowded into a bathroom in a house that the RSF had looted along with seven other people and was kept there for days.

“We were only let out to eat, then forced back in,” he explained.

During his first days of interrogation, al-Sadiq was tortured repeatedly by the RSF to pressure him for a ransom.

They crushed his fingers, one at a time, using pliers. At one point, to scare him, they fired at the ground near him, sending shrapnel flying into his abdomen and causing heavy bleeding.

After three days, the men were lined up by their captors.

“They tried to negotiate with us, demanding 3 million Sudanese pounds [about $1,000] per person,” al-Sadiq recalled.

Three men were released after handing over everything they had, including a rickshaw and all their cash. Al-Sadiq and the other remaining prisoners were moved to a smaller cell – an even more cramped toilet tucked beneath a staircase.

“There was no ventilation. There were insects everywhere,” he said. They had to alternate sleeping – two could just about lie down while two stood.

A few kilometres away, al-Sadiq’s friend, the musician, who asked to remain anonymous, had also been arrested and held at the Paratrooper Military Camp in Khartoum North, which the RSF captured in the first months of the war with Sudan’s military.

That would not be the only time the musician was taken because the RSF had been told that his family were distantly related to former President Omar al-Bashir.

“They said I’m a ‘remnant of the regime’ because of that relation to him even though I was never part of the regime. I was against it,” he said, adding that he had protested against al-Bashir.

Months into the war, his family’s Shambat home was raided by the RSF and his younger brother was shot in the leg. To keep everybody safe, the musician quickly evacuated his family to Umm al-Qura in Gezira state, then went home to collect their belongings. That was when he was arrested.

During his time at the military camp, he told Al Jazeera, the RSF fighters would tie him and other prisoners up and lay them facedown on the ground in the yard. Then they would beat them with a “sout al-anag” whip, a Sudanese leather whip traditionally made of hippo skin.

The flogging lasted a long time, he added, and it was not an isolated incident. It happened to him several times.

In interrogations, RSF personnel fixated on his alleged affiliation with al-Bashir, branding him with slurs like “Koz”, meaning a political Islamist remnant of al-Bashir’s regime, and subjecting him to verbal and physical abuse.

He was held for about a month, then released to return to a home that had been looted.

He would be detained at least five more times.

“Most of the detentions were based on people informing on each other, sometimes for personal benefit, sometimes under torture,” al-Sadiq said.

“RSF commanders even brag about having a list of Bashir regime or SAF [Sudan armed forces] supporters for every area.”

Forced labour

While he was held by the RSF, the musician told Al Jazeera, he and others were forced to perform manual labour that the fighters did not want to do.

“They used to take us out in the morning to dig graves,” he said. “I dug over 30 graves myself.”

The graves were around the detention camp and seemed to be for the prisoners who died from torture, illness or starvation.

While he could not estimate how many people were buried in those pits, he described the site where he was forced to dig, saying it already had many pits that had been used before.

Meanwhile, al-Sadiq was blindfolded, bound and bundled into a van and taken to an RSF detention facility in the al-Riyadh neighbourhood.

The compound had five zones: a mosque repurposed into a prison, a section for women, an area holding army soldiers captured in battle, another for those who surrendered and an underground chamber called “Guantanamo” – the site of systematic torture.

Al-Sadiq tried to help the people he was imprisoned with, treating them with whatever they could scavenge and appealing to the RSF to take the dangerously sick prisoners to a hospital.

But the RSF usually ignored the pleas, and al-Sadiq still remembers one patient, Saber, whom the fighters kept shackled even as his health faded fast.

“I kept asking that he be transferred to a hospital,” al-Sadiq said. “He died.”

Some prisoners did receive treatment, though, and the RSF kept a group of imprisoned doctors in a separate room furnished with beds and medical equipment.

There, they were told to treat injured RSF fighters or prisoners the RSF wanted to keep alive, either to keep torturing them for information or because they thought they could get big ransoms for them.

Al-Sadiq chose not to go with the other doctors and decided to cooperate less with the RSF, keeping to himself and staying with the other prisoners.

Conditions were inhumane in the cell he chose to remain in.

“The total water we received daily – for drinking, ablution, everything – was six small cups,” al-Sadiq said, adding that food was scarce and “insects, rats and lice lived with us. I lost 35kg [77lb].”

Their captors did give him some medical supplies, however, when they needed him to treat someone, and they were a lifeline for everyone around him.

The prisoners were so desperate that he sometimes shared IV glucose drips he got from the RSF so detainees could drink them for some hydration.

The only other sources of food were the small “payments” of sugar, milk or dates that the RSF would give to prisoners who they forced to do manual labour like loading or unloading trucks.

Al-Sadiq did not speak of having been forced to dig graves for fellow prisoners or of having heard of other prisoners doing that.

For the musician, however, graves became a constant reality, even during the periods when he was able to go back home to Shambat.

He helped bury about 20 neighbours who died either from crossfire or starvation and had to be buried anywhere but in the cemeteries.

The RSF blocked access to the cemeteries without explaining why to the people who wanted to lay their loved ones to rest.

In fact at first, the RSF prohibited all burials, then relented and allowed some burials as long as they were not in the cemeteries.

So the musician and others would dig graves for people in Shambat Stadium’s Rabta Field and near the Khedr Bashir Theatre.

He said many people who were afraid to leave their homes at all ended up burying their loved ones in their yards or in any nearby plots they could furtively access.

The friends’ ordeals lasted into the winter when al-Sadiq found himself released and the RSF stopped coming around to arrest the musician.

Neither man knows why.

Both al-Sadiq and the musician told Al Jazeera they remain haunted by what they endured.

The torment, they said, didn’t end with their release; it followed them, embedding itself in their thoughts, a shadow they fear will darken the rest of their lives.

On March 26, the SAF announced it had recaptured Khartoum. Now, the two men have returned to their neighbourhood, where they feel a greater sense of safety.

Having been detained and tortured by the RSF, they believe they’re unlikely to be viewed by the SAF as collaborators – offering them, at least, a fragile sense of safety.

The hunger that has been building among Gaza’s more than two million Palestinians has passed a tipping point and is accelerating deaths, aid workers and health staff say.

Not only Palestinian children – usually the most vulnerable – are falling victim to Israel’s blockade since March, but also adults.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme says nearly 100,000 women and children urgently need treatment for malnutrition, and almost a third of people in Gaza are “not eating for days”. Medical workers say they have run out of many key treatments and medicines.

The World Health Organization reports a sharp rise in malnutrition and disease, with a large proportion of Gaza’s residents now starving.

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says a quarter of all young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women screened at its clinics in Gaza last week were malnourished, blaming Israel’s “deliberate use of starvation as a weapon”.

Washington, DC – Josephine Guilbeau’s voice remained steady as it rose with anger and frustration outside the United States Capitol while she described the Israeli-imposed hunger crisis in Gaza.

“The level of evil that it takes to make a decision to starve a baby as a means of war, as a weapon of war – what have we come to as a humanity? What have we come to as a country?” the 17-year US Army veteran said on Thursday.

Guilbeau had joined several fellow veterans, doctors, former officials and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in calling on the lawmakers and President Donald Trump to listen to the US public and end unconditional support for Israel.

The advocates banged on empty pots outside the Capitol to draw attention to the starvation in Gaza, where many have not eaten in days and more than 100 have died of hunger due to the Israeli blockade, according to United Nations agencies and local health officials.

Holding photos of famished Palestinian children, doctors and veterans stressed the US role in enabling Israel’s conduct through military aid, weapons provision and diplomatic support.

Tlaib called on her colleagues in Congress to join their constituents in opposing Israeli atrocities.

Recent public opinion polls have shown growing US public discontent with Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, but Congress remains staunchly supportive of Israel on a bipartisan basis.

“Americans serving in Congress, wake up because the American people are telling you over and over again: We’re not in support of this,” Tlaib told reporters outside the US Capitol.

“So maybe for once, would you listen to your constituency? Poll them like you like you poll everything else. They will tell you they do not want one goddamn freaking dime going to starve a whole people.”

‘Stop enabling the genocide’

Tlaib appeared to criticise a vote by her progressive ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez against a measure to stop $500m in missile defence aid to Israel.

Only six lawmakers voted in favour of the amendment, introduced by Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, last week.

Ocasio-Cortez, who was one of 422 legislators to vote against the proposal, argued that cutting off “defensive” aid to Israel does not help end the bombardment of Palestinians.

Tlaib, however, suggested on Thursday that she is not convinced by that justification.

“No matter what weapons – I don’t care if it’s offensive or defensive, whatever you call it – let’s stop enabling the genocide,” the Palestinian American congresswoman said.

Although Ocasio-Cortez has described Israel’s war on Gaza as genocide and supported measures to restrict arms to Israel, her vote last week stirred a backlash from left-wing activists who said any weapons to Israel would enable its bombardment campaign against Palestinians.

Washington provides Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance annually despite allegations of rights violations that would make the country ineligible for security aid under US law.

UN experts and leading rights groups have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

Stacy Gilbert, who resigned from the US Department of State last year after a 20-year career in protest to a government report denying that Israel is blocking aid to Palestinians, said on Thursday that the starvation in Gaza is the result of a “deliberate” decision by Israel.

“I am calling on Trump to make a break with this policy that started under Joe Biden, this disastrous policy of unconditional military support for Israel,” Gilbert told reporters.

Doctor says Trump ‘failed’ supporters

Nidal Jboor, a Michigan-based physician with the advocacy group Doctors Against Genocide, also warned Trump against following the same policies as his predecessor, stressing that the US president has the power and leverage to end the war.

“If you don’t stop it today, then you are as sleepy as Joe was. It’s your call,” Jboor said, invoking Trump’s moniker for Biden, “Sleepy Joe”.

“This is not who we are. Americans are better than this. What we are supporting in Gaza does not make America great again. Shut down the killing zone. Flood Gaza with aid. End the genocide. History will remember at this point and this moment what we did and what we failed to do.”

During the election race last year, Trump courted the sizable Arab and Muslim communities in Michigan with promises of bringing peace to the region.

The US president initially took credit for a truce that came into effect in January. But shortly after taking office earlier this year, he proposed removing all Palestinians from Gaza – a plan that rights advocates say would amount to ethnic cleansing, a crime against humanity.

Moreover, he has continued to arm Israel, and his administration has backed Israel’s resumption of the war in March, the siege on Gaza and the upending of the aid system in the territory.

Jboor said Trump “failed” his Arab and Muslim supporters.

“People were voting for him because he promised peace, and now he’s breaking his promises,” the doctor told Al Jazeera.

US touts GHF

In May, the US and Israel launched an initiative to monopolise aid distribution through a private entity, dubbed GHF.

But Palestinians and rights groups have described GHF aid distribution sites, concentrated in the south of Gaza, deep inside areas under Israeli army control, as death traps.

Israeli troops have been opening fire daily at aid seekers, killing hundreds of people.

While the US proudly proclaims that GHF has distributed 90 million meals since May, the tally amounts to a fraction of the food needed to feed the territory’s two million people.

In recent weeks, Israel has allowed some aid convoys to enter the north of Gaza, but the assistance trucks have also come under Israeli firing and shelling there, as well.

Despite the bloodshed, the US has been touting the GHF operation as a success, reiterating false claims that Hamas steals aid distributed through the UN and its partner organisations.

Asked about the hunger spreading in Gaza, State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters on Thursday that the US is “aware” of the humanitarian situation in the territory and wants to see an end to the devastation.

“That’s why we have seen this commitment to get aid to the people who need it, in a way where it is not weaponised by Hamas,” Pigott added, referring to GHF.

Shortly before Pigott expressed continuing support for GHF, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu appeared to confirm that his country is purposely starving Gaza, saying that “there is no nation that feeds its enemies.”

“The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu said in a radio interview, according to The Times of Israel.

Back on Capitol Hill, the advocates appeared confident that their voices could make a difference, even after 22 months of war that have seen the crisis deepen and the death toll mount daily.

“Every single voice is so powerful to move the needle; we have to change the minds of our leaders and make them understand that if they do not stop funding Israel, we will vote them out,” Guilbeau, the US Army veteran, told Al Jazeera.

Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona and Alfred Yekatom have been sentenced for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The International Criminal Court has convicted two leaders of a predominantly Christian rebel group in the Central African Republic for multiple war crimes committed against Muslim civilians during the country’s civil war in 2013 and 2014, sentencing each to more than a decade in prison.

The former president of the CAR Football Federation, Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, along with Alfred Yekatom, a rebel leader known as “Rambo,” were found guilty on Thursday of their involvement in atrocities including murder, torture and attacking civilians.

The court sentenced Yekatom to 15 years for 20 war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ngaissona received 12 years for 28 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The charges stem from their roles as senior leaders in a militia known as the anti-Balaka, which was formed in 2013 after mainly Muslim Seleka rebels stormed the capital Bangui in March of that year and toppled then-President Francois Bozize, a Christian.

The violence that ensued left thousands of civilians dead and displaced hundreds of thousands of others. Mosques, shops and homes were looted and destroyed.

The ICC’s presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt read harrowing details in The Hague of the violence committed by the militia against suspected Seleka Muslims.

Yekatom’s men tortured one suspect by cutting off his fingers, toes, and one ear. This man’s body was never found. Others were killed and then mutilated.

Appearing in court dressed in a light brown suit and waistcoat, white shirt, and dark tie, Yekatom listened impassively as the judge read out the verdict.

Dressed in a bright blue jacket, Ngaissona nodded to the judge as his sentence was delivered.

The court found Yekatom not guilty of conscripting child soldiers and acquitted Ngaissona of the charge of rape.

Both men had pleaded not guilty to all charges laid out in the trial, which opened in 2021. It is the first case at the ICC, which began in May 2014, to focus on the violence that erupted after the Seleka seized power in the CAR in 2013.

Yekatom was extradited to The Hague in late 2018, after being arrested in the CAR for firing his gun in parliament. Ngaissona was arrested in France in December 2018 and extradited to The Hague.

The trial of an alleged Seleka commander, Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, is ongoing.

Last year, judges at the ICC unsealed another arrest warrant in the investigation. According to prosecutors, Edmond Beina commanded a group of about 100-400 anti-balaka fighters responsible for murdering Muslims in early 2014.

Separate proceedings against Beina and five others at a specially-created court are slated to begin in the CAR on Friday.

The CAR is among the poorest nations in the world and has endured a succession of civil wars and authoritarian governments since gaining independence from France in 1960.

Violence has subsided in recent years, but fighting occasionally erupts in remote regions between rebels and the national army, which is backed by Russian mercenaries and Rwandan troops.

The Director-General of the World Health Organisation has warned more than two million people in Gaza are facing starvation, as deaths from malnutrition surge. His comments come as Israel continues to prevent aid supplies, including baby formula, from reaching the enclave.

Deir el-Balah, Gaza – “There is no voice louder than hunger,” the Arabic proverb goes.

Now it has become a painful truth surrounding us, drawing closer with each passing day.

I never imagined that hunger could be more terrifying than the bombs and killing. This weapon caught us off-guard, something we never thought would be more brutal than anything else we’ve faced in this endless war.

It’s been four months without a single full meal for my family, nothing that meets even the basic needs on Maslow’s hierarchy.

My days revolve around hunger. One sister calls to ask about flour, and the other sends a message saying all they have is lentils.

My brother returns empty-handed from his long search for food for his two kids.

We woke up one day to the sound of our neighbour screaming in frustration.

“I’m going mad. What’s happening? I have money, but there’s nothing to buy,” she said when I came out to calm her down.

My phone doesn’t stop ringing. The calls are from crying women I met during fieldwork in displacement camps: “Ms Maram? Can you help with anything? A kilo of flour or something? … We haven’t eaten in days.”

This sentence echoes in my ears: “We haven’t eaten in days.” It is no longer shocking.

Famine is marching forwards in broad daylight, shamelessly in a world so proud of its “humanity”.

A second birthday amid scarcity

Iyas has woken up asking for a cup of milk today, his birthday.

He has turned two in the middle of a war. I wrote him a piece on his birthday last year, but now I look back and think: “At least there was food!”

A simple request from a child for some milk spins me into a whirlwind.

I’d already held a quiet funeral inside me weeks ago for the last of the milk, then rice, sugar, bulgur, beans – the list goes on.

Only four bags of pasta, five of lentils and 10 precious kilos (22lb) of flour remain – enough for two weeks if I ration tightly, and even that makes me luckier than most in Gaza.

Flour means bread – white gold people are dying for every single day.

Every cup I add to the dough feels heavy. I whisper to myself: “Just two cups”. Then I add a little more, then a bit more, hoping to somehow stretch these little bits into enough bread to last the day.

But I know I’m fooling myself. My mind knows this won’t be enough to quell hunger; it keeps warning me how little flour we have left.

I don’t know what I’m writing any more. But this is just what I’m living, what I wake up and fall asleep to.

What horrors remain?

I now think back on the morning bread-making routine I used to resent.

As a working mother, I once hated that long process imposed by war, which made me miss being able to buy bread from the bakery.

But now, that routine is sacred. Thousands of people across Gaza wish they could knead bread without end. I am one of them.

Now I handle flour with reverence, knead gently, cut the loaves carefully, roll them out and send them off to bake in the public clay oven with my husband, who lovingly balances the tray on his head.

A full hour under the sun at the oven just to get a warm loaf of bread, and we’re among the “lucky” ones. We are kings, the wealthy.

These “miserable” daily routines have become unattainable dreams for hundreds of thousands in Gaza.

Everyone is starving. Is it possible that this war still has more horrors in store?

We complained about displacement. Then our homes were bombed. We never returned.

We complained about the burdens of cooking over a fire, making bread, handwashing clothes and hauling water.

Now those “burdens” feel like luxuries. There’s no water. No soap. No supplies.

Iyas’s latest challenge

Two weeks ago, while being consumed by thoughts of how to stretch out the last handfuls of flour, another challenge appeared: potty training Iyas.

We ran out of diapers. My husband searched everywhere, returning empty-handed.

“No diapers, no baby formula, nothing at all.”

Just like that.

My God, how strange and harsh this child’s early years have been. War has imposed so many changes that we could not protect him from.

His first year was an endless hunt for baby formula, clean water and diapers.

Then came famine, and he grew up without eggs, fresh milk, vegetables, fruit or any of the basic nutrients a toddler needs.

I fought on, sacrificing what little health I had to continue breastfeeding until now.

It was difficult, especially while undernourished myself and trying to keep working, but what else could I do? The thought of raising a child with no nutrients at this critical stage is unbearable.

And so my little hero woke up one morning to the challenge of ditching diapers. I pitied him, staring in fear at the toilet seat, which looked to him like a deep tunnel or cave he might fall into. It took us two whole days to find a child’s seat for the toilet.

Every day was filled with training accidents, signs he wasn’t ready.

The hours I spent sitting by the toilet, encouraging him, were exhausting and frustrating. Potty training is a natural phase that should come when the child is ready.

Why am I and so many other mothers here forced to go through it like this, under mental strain, with a child who I haven’t had a chance to prepare?

So I fall asleep thinking about how much food we have left and wake up to rush my child to the toilet.

Rage and anxiety build up as I try to manage our precious water supply as soiled clothes pile up from the daily accidents.

Then came the expulsion orders in Deir el-Balah.

A fresh slap. The danger is growing as Israeli tanks creep closer.

And here I am: hungry, out of diapers, raising my voice at a child who can’t understand while the shelling booms around us.

Why must we live like this, spirits disintegrating every day as we wait for the next disaster?

Many have resorted to begging. Some have chosen death for a piece of bread or a handful of flour.

Others stay home, waiting for the tanks to arrive.

Many, like me, are simply waiting their turn to join the ranks of the starving without knowing what the end will look like.

They used to say time in Gaza is made of blood. But now, it’s blood, tears and hunger.

Belgian authorities have interrogated two members of the Israeli military following allegations of serious breaches of international humanitarian law committed in Gaza, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Brussels said.

The two people were questioned after legal complaints were filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation and the Global Legal Action Network. The complaints were submitted on Friday and Saturday as the soldiers attended the Tomorrowland music festival in Belgium.

“In light of this potential jurisdiction, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office requested the police to locate and interrogate the two individuals named in the complaint,” said the prosecutor’s office in a written statement on Monday. “Following these interrogations, they were released.”

The questioning was carried out under a new provision in Belgium’s Code of Criminal Procedure, which came into effect last year. It allows Belgian courts to investigate alleged violations abroad if the acts fall under international treaties ratified by Belgium – including the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture.

The prosecutor’s office said it would not release further information at this stage of the investigation.

The Hind Rajab Foundation, based in Belgium, has been campaigning for legal action against Israeli soldiers over alleged war crimes in Gaza. It is named after a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli fire while fleeing Gaza City with her family early in Israel’s war on Gaza.

Since its formation last year, the foundation has filed dozens of complaints in more than 10 countries, targeting both low- and high-ranking Israeli military personnel.

The group hailed Monday’s developments as “a turning point in the global pursuit of accountability”.

“We will continue to support the ongoing proceedings and call on Belgian authorities to pursue the investigation fully and independently,” the foundation said in a statement. “Justice must not stop here – and we are committed to seeing it through.”

“At a time when far too many governments remain silent, this action sends a clear message: credible evidence of international crimes must be met with legal response – not political indifference,” the statement added.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the incident, saying that one Israeli citizen and one soldier were interrogated and later released. “Israeli authorities dealt with this issue and are in touch with the two,” the ministry said in a statement cited by The Associated Press news agency.

The incident comes amid growing international outrage over Israel’s conduct in its war on Gaza. More than two dozen Western countries called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza on Monday, saying that suffering there had “reached new depths”.

After more than 21 months of fighting that have triggered catastrophic humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s more than two million people, Israeli allies Britain, France, Australia, Canada and 21 other countries, plus the European Union, said in a joint statement that the war “must end now”.

“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” the signatories added, urging a negotiated ceasefire, the release of captives held by Palestinian armed groups and the free flow of much-needed aid.

On Sunday, the World Food Programme accused Israel of using tanks, snipers and other weapons to fire on a crowd of Palestinians seeking food aid.

It said that shortly after crossing through the northern Zikim crossing into Gaza, its 25-truck convoy encountered large crowds of civilians waiting for food supplies, who were attacked.

“As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire,” it said on X, adding that the incident resulted in the loss of “countless lives” with many more suffering critical injuries.

“These people were simply trying to access food to feed themselves and their families on the brink of starvation. This terrible incident underscores the increasingly dangerous conditions under which humanitarian operations are forced to be conducted in Gaza.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry described the Israeli attack, which killed at least 92 people, as one of the war’s deadliest days for civilians seeking humanitarian assistance.

More than 59,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, according to local health officials. Much of the territory lies in ruins, with severe shortages of food, medicine and other essentials due to Israel’s ongoing blockade.

Israeli forces killed at least 115 Palestinians across Gaza on Sunday, most as they waited for desperately needed food aid in one of the deadliest single incidents involving aid seekers since May.

Dozens more Palestinians have been wounded, according to health officials.

In northern Gaza, at least 67 people were killed near the Zikim crossing when an Israeli strike hit crowds gathering for aid. Another six people were killed near a separate distribution site in the south. The day before, 36 Palestinians were killed in similar circumstances.

The death toll brings the total number of people killed while trying to access food relief to more than 900 since May.

Ahmed Hassouna, who attempted to collect food from an aid site of the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), described the moment Israeli forces opened fire.

“There was a young man with me, and they started firing gas at us. They killed us with the gas. We barely made it out to catch a breath,” he told Al Jazeera.

Another man, Rizeq Betaar, carried a wounded elderly man away from the gunfire.

“We were the ones who carried him on the bicycle… There are no ambulances, no food, no life, no way to live any more. We’re barely hanging on. May God relieve us,” he said.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said a convoy of 25 trucks carrying aid came under gunfire shortly after entering Gaza.

“WFP reiterates that any violence involving civilians seeking humanitarian aid is completely unacceptable,” the agency said in a statement.

Israel’s military said its forces fired “warning shots” at what it called “an immediate threat”, but denied deliberately targeting aid convoys.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned on Sunday the situation in Gaza has reached “catastrophic” levels, with children “wasting away” and some dying before aid reaches them.

“People are risking their lives just to find food,” OCHA said, calling the conditions “unconscionable”.

The US-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also denounced Israel’s continuous attacks on aid seekers.

“The escalating massacres of starving Palestinian women, children and men murdered with US-supplied weapons and with the complicity of our government as they desperately search for food to feed their families is not only a human tragedy, it is also an indictment of a Western political order that has enabled this genocide through inaction and indifference,” said Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, in a statement.

“Western governments cannot claim ignorance. They are watching in real time as innocent civilians are intentionally starved, forcibly displaced, and slaughtered – and are choosing to do nothing. History will long remember the Western world’s indifference to the forced starvation, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.”

Man-made starvation

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said staff in Gaza are sending desperate messages about the lack of food.

“All man-made, in total impunity. Food is available only a few kilometres away,” he wrote on X, adding that UNRWA has enough supplies at the border to feed Gaza for three months. But Israel has been blocking aid since March 2.

Dr Mohammed Abu Afash, the director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Gaza, told Al Jazeera women and children are collapsing from hunger.

“We are heading into the unknown. Malnutrition among children has reached its highest levels,” he said, warning of a looming disaster if aid is not allowed in immediately.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health echoed that warning, saying hundreds of Palestinians suffering from malnutrition and dehydration could soon die.

“We warn that hundreds of people whose bodies have wasted away are at risk of imminent death due to hunger,” a spokesperson said.

Palestinian families say basic staples such as flour are impossible to find. The ministry said at least 71 children have died of malnutrition since the war began in 2023, while 60,000 others show signs of severe undernourishment.

On Sunday alone, it reported 18 deaths linked to hunger.

Food prices have soared beyond the reach of most people in Gaza, where 2.3 million are struggling to survive under siege conditions implemented by Israel.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from central Gaza, said a 35-day-old baby in Gaza City and a four-month-old child in Deir el-Balah had died of malnutrition at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

“The mother was touching her body, saying, ‘I am sorry I could not feed you,’” Khoudary said.

“Parents go to the GHF distribution sites to risk getting killed or leave their children starving. We met a mother who is giving her children water just to fill their stomachs. She can’t afford flour – and when she could, she couldn’t find it.”

More forced evacuations

Meanwhile, more Palestinians are being forced to flee. After Israel dropped leaflets containing evacuation threats over neighbourhoods in Deir el-Balah, residents reported air attacks on three homes in the area, prompting families to leave with what little they could carry.

Israel’s military said it had not yet entered those districts but promised to continue targeting what it called “terrorist infrastructure”.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said: “We are face to face with another misleading evacuation order. People are told to move to al-Mawasi, a so-called safe zone, but since day one, Palestinians have been killed there.

“This is not a safe zone. There is no safe zone in a war zone. Palestinians know that walking into al-Mawasi is like walking into a death trap – they’ll be killed in days, hours, or even minutes.”

The hashtag gains global popularity as Israel continues to kill Palestinians seeking food and children die of malnutrition.

Hashtag #GazaIsStarving is trending across social media as Palestinians face a worsening hunger crisis caused by Israel’s relentless bombardment of the enclave and allowing limited aid.

On Sunday, the Arabic version of the hashtag had appeared in more than 227,000 posts on X, where it recently topped the platform’s trending list. On Instagram, the hashtag has been used in more than 5,000 posts.

Most posts are attributing to a post from October 31, 2023, quoting Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah’s warning: “People have started going hungry.”

Nearly two years later, the phrase has become a global rallying cry as Israeli forces kill dozens of starving Palestinians every day.

The social media trend also came amid warnings from the United Nations and other aid agencies that Israel is starving Palestinian civilians, including more than a million children, by blocking food and medicines from entering the enclave.

Since May, nearly 900 Palestinians have been killed near aid sites run by GHF, a notorious aid agency backed by Israel and the United States.

Under the hashtag #GazaIsStarving, social media platforms have been flooded with images and videos showing the extent of the humanitarian crisis, which many countries and rights groups have called a genocide.

The following X post shows Palestinian children visibly suffering from malnutrition during medical examinations at a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) clinic in Gaza City. Israel has banned UNRWA from distributing aid in Gaza.

#صور | أطفال يعانون من سوء التغذية خلال فحصهم في أحد النقاط الطبية التابعة للأونروا بمدينة غزة#غزه_تموت_جوعاً#GazaIsStarving#FamineInGaza#غزة_تقتل_جوعاً#StarvingGaza#FreePalestine#OpenRafahNow#GazaStarvingToDeath pic.twitter.com/VN4GitxrH2

— حسين الفضلي (@Huseinalfdl) July 19, 2025

The following July 10, 2025 video, released on Saturday and verified by Al Jazeera, shows Israeli security forces using pepper spray on Palestinians seeking food at a GHF aid distribution hub in Shakoush area of southern Rafah.

The scene below illustrates the severity of Gaza’s food crisis and the level of desperation for aid, with children clashing over rations and scraping the bottoms of pots for food in the north of Gaza.

The following video, filmed on July 19 near a GHF distribution site in Rafah, captures civilians fleeing the scene as Israeli tanks and bulldozers are seen moving through the area.

The following verified photos taken on July 19 show Yazan Abu Foul, a two-year-old child suffering from severe malnutrition, amid restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid and essential supplies in Shati refugee camp to the west of Gaza City.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Nadiya escaped the rapists and killers only because her father hid her in a haystack amidst the shooting, shouting and bloodshed that took place 82 years ago.

“He covered me with hay and told me not to get out no matter what,” the 94-year-old woman told Al Jazeera – and asked to withhold her last name and personal details.

On July 11, 1943, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), a nationalist paramilitary group armed with axes, knives and guns, stormed Nadiya’s village on the Polish-Ukrainian border, killing ethnic Polish men and raping women.

“They also killed anyone who tried to protect the Poles,” Nadiya said.

The nonagenarian is frail and doesn’t go out much, but her face, framed by milky white hair, lights up when she recalls the names and birthdays of her grand- and great-grandchildren.

She also remembers the names of her neighbours who were killed or forced to flee to Poland, even though her parents never spoke about the attack, now known as the Volyn massacre.

“The Soviets forbade it,” Nadiya said, noting how Moscow demonised the UIA, which kept fighting the Soviets until the early 1950s.

Nadiya said her account may enrage today’s Ukrainian nationalists who lionise fighters of the UIA for having championed freedom from Moscow during World War II.

After Communist purges, violent atheism, forced collectivisation and a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, the UIA leaders chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils. They sided with Nazi Germany, which invaded the USSR in 1941.

In the end, though, the Nazis refused to carve out an independent Ukraine and threw one of the UIA’s leaders, Stepan Bandera, into a concentration camp.

But another UIA leader, Roman Shukhevych, was accused of playing a role in the Holocaust – and in the mass killings of ethnic Poles in what is now the western Ukrainian region of Volyn and adjacent areas in 1943.

Genocide?

Up to 100,000 civilian Poles, including women and children, were stabbed, axed, beaten or burned to death during the Volyn massacre, according to survivors, Polish historians and officials who consider it a “genocide”.

“What’s horrifying isn’t the numbers but the way the murders were carried out,” Robert Derevenda of the Polish Institute of National Memory told Polskie Radio on July 11.

This year, the Polish parliament decreed July 11 as “The Volyn Massacre Day” in remembrance of the 1943 killings.

“A martyr’s death for just being Polish deserves to be commemorated,” the bill said.

“From Poland’s viewpoint, yes, this is a tragedy of the Polish people, and Poland is fully entitled to commemorate it,” Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych told Al Jazeera.

However, rightist Polish politicians may use the day to promote anti-Ukrainian narratives, and a harsh response from Kyiv may further trigger tensions, he said.

“All of these processes ideally should be a matter of discussion among historians, not politicians,” he added.

Ukrainian politicians and historians, meanwhile, call the Volyn massacre a “tragedy”. They cite a lower death toll and accuse the Polish army of the reciprocal killing of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

In post-Soviet Ukraine, UIA leaders Bandera and Shukhevych have often been hailed as national heroes, and hundreds of streets, city squares and other landmarks are named after them.

Evolving views and politics

“[The USSR] branded ‘Banderite’ any proponent of Ukraine’s independence or even any average person who stood for the legitimacy of public representation of Ukrainian culture,” Kyiv-based human rights advocate Vyacheslav Likhachyov told Al Jazeera.

The demonisation backfired when many advocates of Ukraine’s independence began to sympathise with Bandera and the UIA, “turning a blind eye to their radicalism, xenophobia and political violence”, he said.

In the 2000s, anti-Russian Ukrainian leaders began to celebrate the UIA, despite objections from many Ukrainians, especially in the eastern and southern regions.

These days, the UIA is seen through a somewhat myopic prism of Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia, according to Likhachyov.

Ukraine’s political establishment sees the Volyn massacre and armed skirmishes between Ukrainians and Poles as only “a war related to the Ukrainians’ ‘fight for their land’”, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at Bremen University in Germany.

“And during a war, they say, anything happens, and a village, where the majority is on the enemy’s side, is considered a ‘legitimate target’,” he explained.

Many right-leaning Ukrainian youngsters “fully accepted” Bandera’s radicalism and the cult of militant nationalism, he said.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, thousands of far-right nationalists rallied throughout Ukraine to commemorate Bandera’s January 1 birthday.

“Bandera is our father, Ukraine is our mother,” they chanted.

Within hours, the Polish and Israeli embassies issued declarations in protest, reminding them of the UIA’s role in the Holocaust and the Volyn massacre.

Far-right activists began volunteering to fight Moscow-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine in 2014 and enlisted in droves in 2022.

“In the situational threat to [Ukraine’s] very existence, there’s no room for reflection and self-analysis,” rights advocate Likhachyov said.

Warsaw, meanwhile, will keep using the Volyn massacre to make demands for concessions while threatening to oppose Ukraine’s integration into the European Union, he said.

As for Moscow, it “traditionally plays” the dispute to sow discord between Kyiv and Warsaw, analyst Tyshkevych said, and to accuse Ukrainian leaders of “neo-Nazi” proclivities.

Is reconciliation possible?

Today, memories of the Volyn massacre remain deeply contested. For many Ukrainians, the UIA’s image as freedom fighters has been bolstered by Russia’s 2022 invasion, somewhat pushing aside reflection on the group’s role in the World War II atrocities.

For Poland, commemoration of the massacre has become a marker of national trauma and, at times, a point of leverage in political disputes with Ukraine.

In April, Polish experts began exhuming the remnants of the Volyn massacre victims in the western Ukrainian village of Puzhniky after Kyiv lifted a seven-year moratorium on such exhumations. Some believe this may be a first step in overcoming the tensions over the Volyn massacre.

Reconciliation, historians say, won’t come easily.

“The way to reconciliation is often painful and requires people to accept historical realities they’re uncomfortable with,” Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog, told Al Jazeera.

“Both [Poland and Ukraine] are modern European democracies that  can handle an objective investigation of past atrocities in ways that a country like Russia unfortunately can not,” he said.

US nurse tells of Israeli authorities confiscating supplies of baby formula being brought into Gaza by medical workers.

One in every 10 children screened in clinics in Gaza run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is malnourished, as child hunger surges across the territory amid the continuing Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid.

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”.

Lazzarini said the UN must be allowed to do its work in Gaza, particularly bringing in “humanitarian assistance at scale, including for children”.

“Any additional delay to a ceasefire will cause more deaths,” he said, noting that more than 870 starving Palestinians had been killed so far while trying to access food from the highly criticised distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is backed by Israel and the United States.

UNRWA’s communications director, Juliette Touma, told reporters in Geneva via a videolink from Amman, Jordan, 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.

“As malnutrition among children spreads across the war-torn enclave, UNRWA has over 6,000 trucks of food, hygiene supplies, medicine, medical supplies outside of Gaza. They are all waiting to go in,” Touma added.

“The world cannot continue to look away.”

“1 in 10 children screened by UNRWA in #Gaza is now malnourished,” UNRWA @JulietteTouma briefs the press at @UNGeneva.

Before the war, such cases were almost unheard of.

Now, Gaza’s shattered health system is overwhelmed — and aid is being blocked by the Government of Israel.… pic.twitter.com/3b8S2qONef

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 15, 2025

Since January 2024, UNRWA said it had screened more than 240,000 boys and girls under the age of five in its clinics, adding that before the war, acute malnutrition was rare in Gaza.

Andee Clark Vaughan, an emergency nurse with the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association (PANZMA) based in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday how Israeli authorities had confiscated baby formula from medical workers entering the territory.

“Immune systems are so compromised here because of the malnutrition,” Vaughan said, describing how Palestinian mothers are so malnourished that they are unable to produce breast milk to feed their infants and forced to make difficult decisions to keep their children alive.

“What we’ve been seeing here is moms trying to do their utmost best, mixing water – which is often contaminated – with beans or lentils just to make something of sustenance to get these kids fed and get them nutrients,” Vaughan added.

On Monday, UNICEF said that last month, more than 5,800 children were diagnosed with malnutrition in Gaza, including more than 1,000 children with severe, acute malnutrition.

It said it was an increase for the fourth month in a row.

Demolition operations being conducted by Israel in Gaza’s southern Rafah Governorate have been stepped up sharply, an investigation by Al Jazeera’s Sanad investigations unit has found.

Israel’s defence ministry has announced a plan to relocate 600,000 people into what observers say would be “concentration camps” in the area in southern Gaza, with plans to expand this to the Strip’s entire population.

Sanad’s analysis of satellite imagery up to July 4, 2025, shows the number of demolished buildings in Rafah rising to about 28,600, up from 15,800 on April 4, 2025, according to data from the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).

This means that approximately 12,800 buildings were destroyed between early April and early July alone – a marked acceleration in demolitions that has coincided with Israel’s new push into Rafah launched in late March 2025.

‘Humanitarian city’

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, told reporters on Monday that an initial 600,000 Palestinians living in the coastal al-Mawasi area would be transferred to Rafah, the location for what he called a new “humanitarian city” for Palestinians, within 60 days of any agreed ceasefire deal.

According to Katz, the entire civilian population of Gaza – more than 2 million people – will eventually be relocated to this southern city.

A proposal seen by Reuters carrying the name of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) detailed plans for a “Humanitarian Transit Area” in which Gaza residents would “temporarily reside, deradicalise, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so”.

The minister said Israel hopes to encourage Palestinians to “voluntarily emigrate” from the Gaza Strip to other countries, adding that this plan “should be fulfilled”.

He also stressed that the plan would not be run by the Israeli army, but by international bodies, without specifying which organisations would be implementing it.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) – which has been banned by Israel – warned against the latest mass forced displacement plan.

“This would de facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt for the Palestinians, displaced over and over across generations,” he said, adding that it would “deprive Palestinians of any prospects of a better future in their homeland”.

Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg told Al Jazeera that the plan was “for all facts and purposes a concentration camp” for Palestinians in southern Gaza, meaning that Israel is committing “what is an overt crime against humanity under international humanitarian law”.

“It should be taken very seriously,” he said, and questioned the feasibility of the task of “concentrating the Palestinian population in a locked city where they would be let in but not let out”.

The sheer scale of the destruction, and some exceptions

For now, Rafah, which was once home to an estimated 275,000 people, lies largely in ruins. The scale of Israeli destruction since April this year is particularly apparent when examining specific neighbourhoods of Rafah.

Al-Zohour neighbourhood

Al-Jnaina neighbourhood

Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood

Since Israel breached the last ceasefire agreement with Hamas on March 19, its forces have directly targeted several institutions.

Sanad has identified six educational facilities that have been destroyed, including some located in the Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood, west of Rafah City.

However, satellite data shows that several key facilities have been spared; 40 educational institutions – 39 schools and one university – are intact. Eight medical centres also remain standing.

Sanad has concluded that this noticeable pattern of selective destruction strongly suggests that the preservation of these facilities in Rafah is unlikely to be a coincidence.

Rather, it indicates that Israel aims to use these sites in the next phase of its proposed plan to displace the entire population of Gaza to Rafah.

The spared educational and medical buildings already serve as critical humanitarian shelters for tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians.

The war’s initial wave of displacement from northern to southern Gaza resulted in an overwhelming influx of people into the 154 UN facilities across all five governorates of the Gaza Strip, including schools, warehouses and health centres.

According to UNRWA’s Situation Report in January 2024, these facilities were by then sheltering approximately 1.4 million displaced people, an average of 9,000 people per facility, while an additional 500,000 people were receiving support from other services.

The report also notes that in some shelters, the number exceeds 12,000, four times their intended capacity.

According to UNRWA’s latest report on July 5 this year, 1.9 million people remain displaced in Gaza.

Satellite imagery analysis of the Rafah area from May 2024 to May 2025 reveals that Israeli forces carried out a two-phase operation in Rafah, including in areas which had been designated for humanitarian aid distribution.

Phase One began with the launch of a military offensive in May 2024, during which most buildings in targeted zones in most of eastern Rafah and parts of western Rafah were demolished.

Phase Two, which began in April this year, involves the continued demolition of remaining residential buildings. This phase also included land levelling and the construction of access roads to facilitate the operation of these aid centres.

British Israeli analyst Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera that Israel intends to use Rafah “as a staging post to ethnically cleanse, physically remove, as many Palestinians as possible from the landscape”.

The distribution of aid, which is now under the monopoly of the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is run by private US contractors guarded by Israeli troops, is also “a premeditated part of a plan of social-demographic engineering to move Palestinians – to relocate, displace and kettle them,” Levy said.

Ceasefire talks

Katz’s announcement came a day after Netanyahu arrived in the US to meet US President Donald Trump, as the latter pushes for a deal to end the war in Gaza and bring back the remaining Hamas-held captives.

Netanyahu stressed his opposition to any deal that would ultimately leave Hamas in power in Gaza. “Twenty living hostages remain and 30 who are fallen. I am determined, we are determined, to bring back all of them,” he told reporters before boarding his plane. He added, however: “We are determined to ensure that Gaza will no longer constitute a threat to Israel.”

“That means one thing: eliminating Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. Hamas will not be there,” he said.

An Israeli negotiating team was in Doha this week for indirect talks with Hamas. Trump said on Tuesday that Israel had accepted the latest ceasefire proposal, which provides for the release, in five separate stages, of 10 living and 18 dead captives, in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire, an influx of humanitarian aid to the Strip and the release of many Palestinian detainees currently held in Israeli prisons.

Hamas gave what it called a “positive” response to the proposal, stressing its reservations about the temporary nature of the proposed truce and making some demands.

Netanyahu’s office called Hamas’s stipulations, concerning aid mechanisms and Israel’s military withdrawal, “unacceptable”.

Ethnic cleansing: the ‘end game’

A sticking point remains Israel’s control of the Morag Corridor, just north of Rafah, which would allow Israel to control and isolate Rafah, facilitating the implementation of the mass expulsion plan.

In his remarks on Monday, Katz said Israel would use a potential 60-day ceasefire to establish the new “humanitarian zone” south of the corridor, and that the army would hold nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s territory.

Gideon Levy, Israeli columnist for Haaretz, told Al Jazeera negotiations were unlikely to result in more than a temporary ceasefire, whith the release of Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners, as “Netanyahu doesn’t want an end to the war.”

While Trump could pressure his ally into a permanent deal, the US president does not seem inclined to pull his weight, observers say.

“The end game is an ethnic cleansing,” Levy said. “Will it be implemented? I have my doubts.

“But they are already preparing the area, and if the world is passive and the US gives its green light, it might work.”