Israels

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reveals details of phone conversation with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is “in denial” about the suffering inflicted on Gaza, and the international community is now saying, “Enough is enough”.

A day after announcing that Australia will recognise Palestinian statehood at the United Nations next month, Albanese said that frustration with the Israeli government amid the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza had contributed to Australia’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

“[Netanyahu] again reiterated to me what he has said publicly as well, which is to be in denial about the consequences that are occurring for innocent people,” Albanese said in an interview with state broadcaster ABC on Tuesday.

Albanese said he spoke with Netanyahu last week to inform him of Australia’s decision to join France, Canada and the United Kingdom in recognising a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting in September.

Netanyahu, he said, continued to make the same arguments he made last year regarding the conduct of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has now killed more than 61,500 Palestinians since October 2023.

“That if we just have more military action in Gaza, somehow that will produce a different outcome,” Albanese said, recounting his call with the Israeli leader, according to ABC News.

Announcing Australia’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood on Monday, Albanese said that “the risk of trying is nothing compared to the danger of letting this moment pass us by”.

“The toll of the status quo is growing by the day, and it could be measured in innocent lives,” Albanese said, adding the decision was made as part of a “coordinated global effort” on the two-state solution, which he had discussed with the leaders of the UK, France, New Zealand and Japan.

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— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) August 11, 2025

“A two-state solution is humanity’s best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and to bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza,” he said.

“It seems to me very clearly… we need a political solution, not a military one,” he said.

Albanese had said just last month that he would not be drawn on a timeline for recognition of a Palestinian state, and has previously been wary of a public opinion backlash in Australia, which has significant Jewish and Muslim minorities.

But the public mood has shifted sharply in Australia against Israel’s war on Gaza.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge this month, calling for aid deliveries to be allowed to enter Gaza as the humanitarian crisis worsens and Israel’s military continues to block relief efforts.

Israel also plans to take military control of Gaza City, risking the lives of more than a million Palestinians and instigating what a senior UN official said would be “another calamity”, as deaths from starvation and malnutrition continue to grow across the enclave.

“This decision is driven by popular sentiment in Australia, which has shifted in recent months, with a majority of Australians wanting to see an imminent end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Jessica Genauer, a senior lecturer in international relations at Flinders University, told the Reuters news agency.

Aug. 10 (UPI) — Israel’s goal in Gaza is not to occupy the devastated Palestinian enclave but to “free it from Hamas terrorists,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Sunday as he defended the plan to escalate its offensive, which has come under staunch international opposition, including from allies.

“Our goal is not to occupy Gaza, our goal is to free Gaza, free it from Hamas terrorists,” Netanyahu said, speaking in English during a press conference. “The war can end tomorrow if Hamas lays down its arms and releases all the remaining hostages.”

Israel’s security cabinet overnight Thursday approved the plan to take control of Gaza. The Israeli military controls about 75% of the enclave, with Gaza City and the Central Camps and Moasi being the two remaining areas that Netanyahu described as Hamas “strongholds.”

Under the plan, the Israeli military is instructed to “dismantle” them, he said.

“Contrary to false claims, this is the best way to end the war, and the best way to end it speedily,” he said.

Since it was announced, Netanyahu’s plan has been widely condemned for risking not only the roughly 2 million Palestinians who live there but also the Israeli hostages.

Allies Britain, Denmark, France, Greece and Slovenia have called for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the situation in Gaza, saying Israel’s decision to expand military operations risks violating international humanitarian law.

“Expanding military operations will only endanger the lives of all civilians in Gaza, including the remaining hostages, and result in further unnecessary suffering,” they said in a joint statement.

Gaza is experiencing a worsening humanitarian situation. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, five people have died from starvation in the last 24 hours, including two children, bringing the total to 217 starvation deaths, 100 of them children.

Netanyahu — who is wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges of using starvation as a method of warfare — used the press conference Sunday to blame Hamas and the United Nations for the food shortage, saying the militia loots aid trucks and the intergovernmental organization refused to distribute aid brought in on trucks.

“We’ve had tons of uncollected food rotting on the Gazan side of the border because the U.N. was, and still is, unwilling to deliver all of it,” he said.

The United Nations has previously refuted these accusations, stating there are security concerns and bureaucratic roadblocks. Late last month, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, blamed Israel for showing “a lack of willingness to allow us to do our work.”

Netanyahu said there has been a “humanitarian surge” in recent days that is “preventing hunger” while stating that Israel has been the victim of a “global campaign of lies.”

“The only ones that are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” he said.

According to U.N. statistics, more than one in three Gazans go days without eating, and nearly a quarter of the Enclave is enduring famine-like conditions.

In the nearly two-year-old war, more than 61,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed, according to the health ministry.

By offering nothing except continual massacre for the Palestinians, and attempting to subjugate the surrounding areas to its will, Israel finds itself “in a predicament of its own making”, argues former Israeli adviser Daniel Levy.

Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, tells host Steve Clemons that Israel has put Arab leaders in a bind, as regional disgust grows towards Israel for its war crimes in Gaza.

And while Western governments and cultural institutions have been carrying water for Israel for decades, argues Levy, some have begun “acknowledging things they worked hard not to acknowledge for an awfully long time.”

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have held rallies and marches in cities around the world in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, demanding an end to Israeli attacks on the besieged and bombarded enclave as Israel-imposed starvation engulfs the entire population.

In London, the Metropolitan Police said it arrested more than 466 people at a protest on Saturday against the British government’s decision to ban the group Palestine Action.

British lawmakers proscribed Palestine Action under anti-terrorism legislation in July after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged planes as part of a series of protests. The group accuses the UK government of complicity in what it calls Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Protesters, some wearing black-and-white Palestinian scarves and waving Palestinian flags, chanted, “Hands off Gaza” and held placards with the message “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

In Turkiye’s Istanbul, thousands of protesters demanded more aid be allowed into the Strip, with organisers calling on the international community to take urgent action to end the humanitarian crisis.

Many also took to the streets in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to protest against the blockade and Western support for Israel, demanding the immediate and unrestricted delivery of aid into Gaza.

Several pro-Palestine rallies were also held across Spain, including in the capital, Madrid, to protest Israeli attacks and the starvation in the enclave. Carrying Palestinian flags, protesters shouted, “End to genocide”.

In Switzerland’s Geneva, thousands gathered at the Jardin Anglais to protest against famine and malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza resulting from the Israeli blockade. The crowd staged a sit-in, shouting in English, French and Arabic to demand an end to international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

Large rallies showing support for those suffering in Gaza have also been held in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Protesters in major cities around the world have marched to oppose Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City, its campaign of starvation, and its genocide of Palestinians. Demonstrators say the 22-month war of extermination must end.

Once again, as the presidential campaign season gets underway, the leading candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its “special relationship” with the United States.

Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary material and diplomatic support — continuing the more than $3 billion in foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in the world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally. None of them criticizes Israel’s conduct, even when its actions threaten U.S. interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are harmful to Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the U.S. should support Israel no matter what it does.

Such pandering is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office routinely court special interest groups, and Israel’s staunchest supporters — the Israel lobby, as we have termed it — expect it. Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or “Christian Zionists,” two groups that are deeply engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some justification, that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel’s policies may lead these groups to turn against them and back their opponents instead.

If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel’s friends in the media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere. Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes, which increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in 2000?), and a candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would lose some of their support. And no Republican would want to alienate the pro-Israel subset of the Christian evangelical movement, which is a significant part of the GOP base.

Indeed, even suggesting that the U.S. adopt a more impartial stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can get a candidate into serious trouble. When Howard Dean proposed during the 2004 campaign that the United States take a more “evenhanded” role in the peace process, he was severely criticized by prominent Democrats, and a rival for the nomination, Sen. Joe Lieberman, accused him of “selling Israel down the river” and said Dean’s comments were “irresponsible.”

Word quickly spread in the American Jewish community that Dean was hostile to Israel, even though his campaign co-chair was a former president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Dean had been strongly pro-Israel throughout his career. The candidates in the 2008 election surely want to avoid Dean’s fate, so they are all trying to prove that they are Israel’s best friend.

These candidates, however, are no friends of Israel. They are facilitating its pursuit of self-destructive policies that no true friend would favor.

The key issue here is the future of Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel conquered in 1967 and still controls. Israel faces a stark choice regarding these territories, which are home to roughly 3.8 million Palestinians. It can opt for a two-state solution, turning over almost all of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians and allowing them to create a viable state on those lands in return for a comprehensive peace agreement designed to allow Israel to live securely within its pre-1967 borders (with some minor modifications). Or it can retain control of the territories it occupies or surrounds, building more settlements and bypass roads and confining the Palestinians to a handful of impoverished enclaves in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel would control the borders around those enclaves and the air above them, thus severely restricting the Palestinians’ freedom of movement.

But if Israel chooses this second option, it will lead to an apartheid state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said as much when he recently proclaimed that if “the two-state solution collapses,” Israel will “face a South African-style struggle.” He went so far as to argue that “as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” Similarly, Israel’s deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, said earlier this month that “the occupation is a threat to the existence of the state of Israel.” Other Israelis, as well as Jimmy Carter and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have warned that continuing the occupation will turn Israel into an apartheid state. Nevertheless, Israel continues to expand its settlements on the West Bank while the plight of the Palestinians worsens.

Given this grim situation, one would expect the presidential candidates, who claim to care deeply about Israel, to be sounding the alarm and energetically championing a two-state solution. One would expect them to have encouraged President Bush to put significant pressure on both the Israelis and the Palestinians at the recent Annapolis conference and to keep the pressure on when he visits the region this week. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently observed, settling this conflict is also in America’s interest, not to mention the Palestinians’.

One would certainly expect Hillary Clinton to be leading the charge here. After all, she wisely and bravely called for establishing a Palestinian state “that is on the same footing as other states” in 1998, when it was still politically incorrect to use the words “Palestinian state” openly. Moreover, her husband not only championed a two-state solution as president but he laid out the famous “Clinton parameters” in December 2000, which outline the only realistic deal for ending the conflict.

But what is Clinton saying now that she is a candidate? She said hardly anything about pushing the peace process forward at Annapolis, and remained silent when Rice criticized Israel’s subsequent announcement that it planned to build more than 300 new housing units in East Jerusalem. More important, both she and GOP aspirant Rudy Giuliani recently proclaimed that Jerusalem must remain undivided, a position that is at odds with the Clinton parameters and virtually guarantees that there will be no Palestinian state.

Sen. Clinton’s behavior is hardly unusual among the candidates for president. Barack Obama, who expressed some sympathy for the Palestinians before he set his sights on the White House, now has little to say about their plight, and he too said little about what should have been done at Annapolis to facilitate peace. The other major contenders are ardent in their declarations of support for Israel, and none of them apparently sees a two-state solution as so urgent that they should press both sides to reach an agreement. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security advisor and now a senior advisor to Obama, noted, “The presidential candidates don’t see any payoff in addressing the Israel-Palestinian issue.” But they do see a significant political payoff in backing Israel to the hilt, even when it is pursuing a policy — colonizing the West Bank — that is morally and strategically bankrupt.

In short, the presidential candidates are no friends of Israel. They are like most U.S. politicians, who reflexively mouth pro-Israel platitudes while continuing to endorse and subsidize policies that are in fact harmful to the Jewish state. A genuine friend would tell Israel that it was acting foolishly, and would do whatever he or she could to get Israel to change its misguided behavior. And that will require challenging the special interest groups whose hard-line views have been obstacles to peace for many years.

As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued in 2006, the American presidents who have made the greatest contribution to peace — Carter and George H.W. Bush — succeeded because they were “ready to confront Israel head-on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in America.” If the Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends of Israel, they would be warning it about the danger of becoming an apartheid state, just as Carter did.

Moreover, they would be calling for an end to the occupation and the creation of a viable Palestinian state. And they would be calling for the United States to act as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians so that Washington could pressure both sides to accept a solution based on the Clinton parameters. Implementing a final-status agreement will be difficult and take a number of years, but it is imperative that the two sides formally agree on the solution and then implement it in ways that protect each side.

But Israel’s false friends cannot say any of these things, or even discuss the issue honestly. Why? Because they fear that speaking the truth would incur the wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main organizations in the Israel lobby. So Israel will end up controlling Gaza and the West Bank for the foreseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid state in the process. And all of this will be done with the backing of its so-called friends, including the current presidential candidates. With friends like them, who needs enemies?

Varsen Aghabekian Shahin says international community must take concrete steps to end Israeli impunity for abuses.

The international community must “shoulder its responsibility” and take action against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Palestinian foreign affairs minister has told Al Jazeera before an emergency United Nations Security Council session.

In an interview on Saturday, Varsen Aghabekian Shahin said the 15-member council must uphold international law when it convenes at UN headquarters in New York on Sunday to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip.

The meeting was organised in response to Israel’s newly announced plan to seize Gaza City, which has drawn widespread condemnation from world leaders.

“I expect that the international community stands for international law and international humanitarian law,” Aghabekian Shahin told Al Jazeera.

“What has been going in Palestine for the last 22 months is nothing but a genocide, and it’s part and parcel of Israel’s expansionist ideology that wants to take over the entirety of the occupied State of Palestine.”

The Israeli security cabinet approved plans this week to seize Gaza City, forcibly displacing nearly one million Palestinians to concentration zones in the south of the bombarded coastal enclave.

Palestinians have rejected the Israeli push to force them out of the city while human rights groups and the UN have warned that the plan will worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and lead to further mass casualties.

Israel has pledged to push ahead with its plans despite the growing criticism, saying that it wants to “free Gaza from Hamas”.

The country’s top global ally, the United States, has not commented directly on the plan to seize Gaza City. But US President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that he would not block an Israeli push to take over all of Gaza.

Aghabekian Shahin told Al Jazeera that if Trump – whose administration continues to provide unwavering diplomatic and military support to Israel – wants to reach a solution, Palestinian rights must be taken into account.

“There will be no peace in Israel-Palestine, or the region for that matter, or even the world at large, if the rights of the Palestinians are not respected,” she said, noting that this means a Palestinian state must be established.

The minister also slammed recent remarks from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the future governance of Gaza.

In a social media post on Friday, Netanyahu said he wants “a peaceful civilian administration” to be established in the enclave, “one that is not the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, and not any other terrorist organization”.

But Aghabekian Shahin said it’s up to Palestinians to decide who should govern them.

“The one that has the legal and the political authority on Gaza today is the PLO,” she said, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“If Gaza wants to come back to the core, which is the entirety of the Palestinian land, then it has to become under the control and governance of the Palestinian Authority, the PLO.”

Aghabekian Shahin also condemned the international community for failing to act as Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have faced a surge in Israeli military and settler attacks in the shadow of the country’s war on Gaza.

“It is the inaction that has emboldened the Israelis, including the settlers, to do whatever they are doing for the last six decades, since day one of the 1967 occupation,” she said.

“The times are very dangerous now, and it’s important that the international community shoulders its responsibility. The impunity with which Israel was happily moving should stop.”

For more than 21 months, much of the international media danced around the truth about Israel’s war on Gaza. The old newsroom cliche – “if it bleeds, it leads” – seemed to apply, for Western media newsrooms, more to Ukraine than Gaza. When Palestinian civilians were bombed in their homes, when entire families were buried under rubble, coverage came slowly, cautiously and often buried in “both sides” framing.

But when the images of starving Palestinian children began to emerge – haunting faces, skeletal limbs, vacant stares – something shifted. The photographs were too visceral, too undeniable. Western audiences were confronted with what the siege of Gaza truly means. And for once, the media’s gatekeepers could not entirely look away.

The world’s attention, however, alerted Israel, and a new “hasbara” operation was deployed. Hasbara means “explaining”, but in practice, it’s about erasing. With Tel Aviv’s guidance, pro-Israel media operatives set out to “debunk” the evidence of famine. The method was fully Orwellian: Don’t just contest the facts. Contest the eyes that see them.

We were told there is no starvation in Gaza. Never mind that Israeli ministers had publicly vowed to block food, fuel and medicine. Never mind that trucks were stopped for months, sometimes vandalised by Israeli settlers in broad daylight.

Israeli officials, speaking in polished English to Western media, assured the public this was all a Hamas fabrication, as though Hamas had somehow managed to trick aid agencies, foreign doctors and every journalist in Gaza into staging hunger.

The propaganda machine thought it had struck gold with one photograph. A New York Times image showed a skeletal boy, Mohammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq. Israeli intelligence sources whispered to friendly outlets: He’s not starving. He has a medical condition. As if that somehow makes his horrific condition acceptable.

The Times went ahead and added an editor’s note to “correct” the record.

That’s how hasbara works – not by persuading people but by exhausting them. By turning every fact into a dispute, every image into a row. By pushing editors to “balance” a photograph of an emaciated child with a government news release denying he is hungry.

Imagine a weather report where one source says, “It’s raining,” and another insists, “No, it’s sunny,” while everyone stands outside, soaked from the downpour. Gaza is that drenched truth, and yet much of the Western news media still feels obliged to quote the weatherman in Tel Aviv.

Every honest report is met with a barrage of emails, phone calls and social media smears, all designed to create just enough doubt to make editors pull back.

But the claim “He’s not starving. He’s just sick” is not an exoneration. It’s an admission.

A child with a pre-existing medical condition who is brought to the point of looking like a skeleton means he has been deprived not only of the nutrition he needs, but of the medical care. This is forced starvation and medicide side by side.

Palestinian journalists inside Gaza, the only ones reporting since Israel banned all foreign media and killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists, are starving alongside the people they report on. In a rare joint statement, the BBC, AFP and Associated Press warned that their own staff members face “the same dire circumstances as those they are covering”.

At the height of the outrage over these photos last week, Israel allowed in a trickle of aid – some airdrops and 30 to 50 trucks a day when the United Nations says 500 to 600 are needed. Some trucks never arrived, blocked by Jewish extremists.

Meanwhile, a parallel mechanism for aid distribution has been funnelled through Israeli-approved American contractors, which purposefully create dangerous and chaotic conditions that lead to daily killings of aid seekers. Crowds of starving Palestinians gather, only to be shot at by Israeli soldiers.

And still, the denials persist. The official line is that this is not starvation. It’s something else – undefined but definitely not a war crime.

The world has seen famine before – in Ethiopia, in Somalia, in Yemen, in South Sudan. The photographs from Gaza belong in the same category. The difference is that here, a powerful state causing the starvation is actively trying to convince us that our own eyes are lying to us.

The goal is not to convince the public that there is no hunger but to plant enough doubt to paralyse outrage. If the facts can be made murky, the pressure on Israel diminishes. This is why every newsroom that avoids the word “starvation” becomes an unwitting accomplice.

Starvation in Gaza is not collateral damage. It is an instrument of war, measurable in calories denied, trucks blocked and fields destroyed.

Israel’s strategy depends on controlling the lens as well as the border. It goes as far as prohibiting journalists allowed on airplanes airdropping food from filming the devastation below.

For a brief moment, the publication of those photos of starving Palestinians broke through the wall of propaganda, prompting minimal concessions. But the siege continues, the hunger deepens and the mass killing expands. Now the Israeli government has decided to launch another ground offensive to occupy Gaza City, and with it, the genocide will only get worse.

History will record the famine in Gaza. It will remember the prices of flour and sugar, the names of children and the aid trucks turned back. And it will remember how the world allowed itself to be told, in the middle of a downpour, that the sky was clear.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ office said Israel’s decision to take control of Gaza City is a dangerous escalation that will lead to more “forced displacement, killings, and massive destruction.”

Palestinians in Gaza City are facing the prospect of further displacement with a mixture of fear and defiance after Israel announced plans for a military takeover of the largest city in the enclave, where nearly a million people are currently sheltering.

The city was thrown into chaos on Friday after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans for the takeover, which would involve the forcible removal of Palestinians already displaced multiple times into concentration zones in the south.

“I swear to God that I have faced death like 100 times, so for me, it’s better to die here,” said Ahmed Hirz, who has been displaced along with his family at least eight times since Israel’s war began.

“I will never leave here,” he told Al Jazeera. “We have gone through suffering and starvation and torture and miserable conditions, and our final decision is to die here.”

That sentiment was shared by others who spoke to Al Jazeera. Rajab Khader said he would refuse to move to southern Gaza, to “stay in the streets with dogs and other animals”.

“We must stay in Gaza [City] with our families and loved ones. The Israelis will find nothing except our bodies and our souls,” he said.

Maghzouza Saada, who was previously displaced from northeastern Beit Hanoon, expressed her outrage over being forced to move again, when nowhere in the Strip could be considered safe.

“The south is not safe. Gaza City is not safe, the north is not safe. Where should we go?” she asked. “Do we throw ourselves in the sea?”

‘State of panic’

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said residents had been in a “state of panic” since the early hours of Friday over Israel’s plans to ethnically cleanse the area.

He said that some had started to pack up whatever is left of their belongings. “Not because they know where they are going, but because they don’t want to be caught at the [last] moment. They want to be ready for the time the Israeli military is forcing them out,” said Mahmoud.

“The fear, the concern, the desperation are all on the rise. The Israeli military promises an evacuation zone where people, in fact, end up being killed in these areas,” he added.

Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network, said residents were tired of being forcibly and repeatedly displaced. This time, he said, the prospect of evacuation posed even greater dangers, with hospitals, water facilities and other infrastructure destroyed.

“Now, there is nothing to give to the people, and it’s risky,” he said.

“We have to move elders who cannot walk, and we have patients and injured people who cannot move. We cannot leave them behind, and we cannot give them services.”

Some 900,000 Palestinians at risk

As news of Israel’s controversial escalation sunk in, the military continued its attacks on the vulnerable population, killing at least 36 people since dawn – including at least 21 who were seeking aid – according to medical sources.

Among the day’s attacks, an Israeli drone targeted Gaza’s southern municipality of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis city, killing two Palestinians, according to a source from Nasser Hospital who spoke to Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera Arabic reported that one aid seeker was shot dead by Israeli forces in northern Gaza. And at least two people were killed at an aid distribution site run by the controversial United States and Israel-backed GHF, which is slated for expansion under Israel’s new offensive.

Reporting from Jordan’s capital, Amman, Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid said that the notorious foundation, which currently runs four aid sites where over 1,300 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food, mainly by Israeli forces, would be operating 12 more hubs in the enclave.

Abdel-Hamid said that Israel had not given an “exact timeline” for taking control of Gaza City, but that a ground offensive was in the offing, with “troop movement along Israel’s southern border with Gaza”. Forcibly removing up to 900,000 Palestinians from the city could, she said, take weeks.

In the longer term, military experts have said Israel’s plans – which would see it assume security control over the enclave, establishing an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority – could take years.

‘War crime’

Amid mounting global condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union and a number of countries, it was unclear what Israel’s chief military backer, the US, made of the plans.

US Vice President JD Vance declined to comment on whether his administration had been given prior notification about Israel’s Gaza City plans, but continued to withhold support for a Palestinian state and underlined that “Hamas can’t attack innocent people”.

Experts say Israel would not be able to move forward with its plan to take total military control of Gaza without billions of dollars in backing from Washington. And few have forgotten President Donald Trump’s stated desire to “clean up” Gaza and turn the enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

On Friday, Hamas called Israel’s plans for Gaza City a “war crime”, saying that the decision explained why the country had suddenly withdrawn from the last round of ceasefire negotiations.

In a separate statement on Telegram, it said Palestinians would “resist any occupation or aggressive force”, slamming the US for providing cover for Israel, and accusing the international community of complicity in crimes against the Palestinian people.

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency session on Saturday to discuss Israel’s escalation.

Israel’s war on Gaza has injured more than 150,000 Palestinians.

Many with life-changing injuries need specialist long-term care, but face devastation and blockade by Israel.

What’s the impact of all this on Gaza’s people now – and into the future?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Dr Khamis Elessi – Neurorehabilitation and pain medicine consultant at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza

Dr Samah Jabr – Palestinian psychiatrist and psychotherapist and former head of the Mental Health Unit at the Ministry of Health in Palestine; author of the book Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The global reverberation of Palestinian historical trauma

Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah – Served as a war surgeon in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East; professor of Conflict Medicine at the American University of Beirut

Netanyahu’s war cabinet set to approve military operations across entire enclave, according to Israeli media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to announce plans to fully occupy the Gaza Strip, Israeli media have reported.

Netanyahu’s decision will see the Israeli military expand its operations across the entire enclave, including areas where Hamas’s captives are being held, i24NEWS, The Jerusalem Post, Channel 12 and Ynet reported on Monday.

“The decision has been made,” Amit Sega, chief political analyst with Channel 12, quoted an unnamed senior official in Netanyahu’s office as saying.

“Hamas won’t release more hostages without total surrender, and we won’t surrender. If we don’t act now, the hostages will starve to death and Gaza will remain under Hamas’s control.”

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the reported plans and called on the international community to “intervene urgently to prevent their implementation, whether they are a form of pressure, trial balloons to gauge international reactions, or genuinely serious”.

Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The reports come as Netanyahu is set to convene his war cabinet on Tuesday to discuss the next steps for Israel’s military in Gaza as its war in the besieged enclave nears the two-year mark.

Netanyahu is facing growing international pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza and halt the war amid mounting Palestinian deaths due to malnutrition and Israeli attacks.

At least 74 Palestinians, including 36 aid seekers, were killed in Israeli attacks on Monday, according to medical sources in Gaza.

The Israeli leader is also facing mounting domestic pressure to secure the release of Hamas’s remaining captives in Gaza, following the release of footage of detainees Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appearing emaciated.

Netanyahu on Monday doubled down on his war goals, including eliminating Hamas and securing the release of the remaining captives.

“We must continue to stand together and fight together to achieve all our war objectives: the defeat of the enemy, the release of our hostages, and the assurance that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu said at the start of a regular cabinet meeting on Monday.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan on Monday accused the United States and other Western countries of turning a blind eye to Israeli atrocities, and said that Netanyahu’s government bore “full responsibility” for the lives of the captives “due to its stubbornness, arrogance, and evasion of reaching a ceasefire agreement, and the escalation of the war of extermination and starvation against our people”.

More than 60,930 Palestinians, including at least 18,430 children, have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza health authorities.

Forty-nine captives, including 27 who are believed to be dead, are still being held by Hamas, according to Israeli authorities.

Aug. 3 (UPI) — Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and prayed there over the weekend, breaking a longstanding agreement that allows Jews to visit the site, but not pray.

The site, located in occupied East Jerusalem, is known by Jews as the Temple Mount, and Ben–Gvir’s prayer prompted a statement from the Israeli prime minister’s office affirming that there has been no change in the decades-old agreement.

Jordan, the site’s custodian, called Ben-Gvir’s actions “an unacceptable provocation.” Hamas called it a “deepening of the ongoing aggressions against our Palestinian people.” A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the visit “crossed all red lines.”

During his visit, Ben-Gvir called for Israel to “conquer” Gaza and encouraged Palestinians to leave the embattled region.

Temple Mount is the most holy place for Jews as it is the site of two Biblical temples. It is the third most holy site for Muslims, who claim it is where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The Waqf, the Islamic endowment that runs this site, said Ben-Gvir was one of 1,250 Jews who visited the compound Sunday morning.

Ben-Gvir has been convicted of supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism in Israel in the past.

Australia may join more than a dozen other nations in recognising the state of Palestine.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia, calling for peace and aid deliveries in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, where a humanitarian crisis of man-made starvation has been worsening as a result of Israel’s punishing blockade.

Pro-Palestinian protesters braved heavy winds and rain on Sunday to march across the bridge, chanting “Ceasefire Now” and “Free Palestine”. Some of those attending the march, which the organisers dubbed the “March for Humanity”, carried pots and pans as symbols of the forced starvation wracking Gaza.

The protest came less than a week after a joint statement by Australia and more than a dozen other nations expressed the “willingness or the positive consideration … to recognise the state of Palestine as an essential step towards the two-State solution”.

France, Britain and Canada have in recent weeks voiced, and in some cases qualified, intentions to diplomatically recognise a Palestinian state as international concern and criticism have grown over the hunger crisis in Gaza.

At least 175 people, including 93 children, have died of starvation and malnutrition across the territory since Israel launched its war on Gaza after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023, according to the latest Gaza Health Ministry figures.

Australia has called for an end to the war in Gaza, but has so far stopped short of a decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

Police said that up to 90,000 people had attended the protest while the organiser, Palestine Action Group Sydney, said in a Facebook post that as many as 300,000 people may have marched.

Marchers ranged from the elderly to families with young children. Among them was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who did not address the crowd or speak to the media.

Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, addressed the crowd gathered at central Sydney’s Lang Park, calling for the “harshest sanctions on Israel”, accusing its forces of “massacring” Palestinians.

Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on the Israeli arms and surveillance industry, who spoke at the rally, told Al Jazeera that protesters are “outraged” not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also by the Australian government’s “complicity”.

Loewenstein said that Australia has, for many years, including since the start of the war, been part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jets that Israel has been using in attacking the besieged territory.

“A lot of Australians are aware of this,” he said. “We are deeply complicit, and people are angry that their government is doing little more than talk at this point.”

On June 25, Mutawakil al-Mohamad and his family woke up to the sound of Israeli soldiers pounding on their door with their rifles.

It would be the last time they woke up in their family home in occupied East Jerusalem.

The Israeli forces arrived at 7am in military convoys with two heavy bulldozers, and al-Mohamad was terrified the soldiers would raid his house and arrest him or his loved ones.

Instead, the soldiers told the family their home was in a designated “military zone” and ordered them to vacate immediately so they could bulldoze it to the ground.

“When I opened the door, I told the soldiers: ‘My young children are scared.’ I asked them to give me 10 minutes, then we will all be out of the house,” al-Mohamed said. The soldiers obliged, he recalled from Ramallah, the administrative capital of the occupied West Bank, where he now lives.

Demolitions and displacement

Israel is demolishing more Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, at a higher rate in 2025 than any previous year since the occupation began in 1967.

Israeli authorities have already destroyed 783 structures – a figure that does not include the large-scale destruction in refugee camps – leading to the forced displacement of 1,119 people, according to the United Nations.

In the Palestinian refugee camps, Israel has destroyed about 600 structures in the Jenin camp and a combined 300 structures in the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps as part of military raids it launched at the start of this year, according to figures that Al Jazeera obtained from the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq.

Human rights groups, civilians and analysts said the real aim of Israel’s tactics  – systematic home demolitions and forced displacement – is to make life unbearable for Palestinians so more will consider leaving if they can.

“Israel’s goal in the West Bank is the same as its goal in Gaza. … It wants to target all Palestinians,” said Murad Jadallah, a human rights researcher with Al-Haq.

Jadallah argued that Israel’s war in Gaza, which many experts have called a genocide, has shocked the world and distracted many from its unprecedented destruction in the West Bank.

“Israel is benefiting from the images of destruction it has created in Gaza in order to push its agenda in the West Bank,” he told Al Jazeera.

Little support

Since the start of this year, about 40,000 Palestinians have fled Israeli military operations in West Bank refugee camps.

Many have struggled to find affordable replacement accommodations, renting instead in whatever villages where they find room, staying with relatives in overcrowded homes or languishing in public buildings converted into shelters for displaced people, Jadallah said.

Ahmed Gaeem, 60, recalled Israeli soldiers evicting him, his wife, five children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews from their building in the Tulkarem refugee camp in March.

The family was also told by Israeli soldiers that Tulkarem had been designated a “military zone” and they would not be allowed to return for some time.

“We left with the clothes on our backs and nothing else. We didn’t have time to pack anything,” Gaeem told Al Jazeera.

A few weeks into Israel’s military campaign, one of Gaeem’s sons managed to return briefly to assess the damage to their home from a distance.

Their home – like countless others – was destroyed. Its windows were shattered, the door hinges blown off and walls caved in.

Gaeem’s family is currently renting three homes in Iktaba village, a few kilometres from Tulkarem city, for a combined rent of about $1,300 – a fortune for a family surviving on meagre savings.

Gaeem noted that while his salary as a Palestinian Authority (PA) civil servant is $500 a month, he hasn’t been paid in months because of the PA’s ongoing economic crisis.

Over the past several years, the PA has cut salaries and struggled to pay its staff as a result of dwindling donor support and Israel’s refusal to hand over tax revenue it collects on the PA’s behalf, an arrangement laid out in the Oslo Accords.

The PA itself was born out of the Oslo peace agreements of 1993 and 1995, which were signed by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The accords ostensibly aimed to bring about a Palestinian state in the years that followed.

Unprecedented crisis

The Oslo Accords split the West Bank into three zones.

The PA was tasked with overseeing security and executive functions in Area A and executive functions in Area B while Israel remained in total control of Area C.

This control allowed Israel to quietly and gradually expand illegal settlements – after encircling and then demolishing Palestinian homes and communities – in Area C, a largely agricultural region that makes up about 60 percent of the West Bank.

In July, the Israeli army issued two orders that gave it an additional legal pretext to demolish homes in Area B – a power previously held only by the PA under the Oslo Accords. The orders enabled Israel to assume control over building and planning laws and laws pertaining to agricultural sites.

Before these measures, most demolitions in Areas A and B were carried out during military operations or as reprisals against Palestinians who resisted the occupation. Israel now has an additional legal basis to destroy Palestinian homes by claiming the owners do not have building permits.

Israel systematically denies building permits to Palestinians as part of a broader policy of confiscating Palestinian homes and land, according to human rights groups.

Among the record number of demolitions carried out across the West Bank this year, the UN documented the destruction of 49 structures in Areas A and B.

Under international law, Israel is prohibited from destroying private property anywhere in occupied Palestinian territory and from establishing settlements or outposts.

“The extension of demolitions in Area A and B and the way Israel is changing the legal status in Area B are unprecedented,” said Tahani Mustafa, an expert on the West Bank with the International Crisis Group think tank.

She added that Israel appears to be trying to confine Palestinians to ever smaller pockets of land in Area A. Israel’s ultimate plan, she fears, is to make life increasingly unbearable for Palestinians in urban centres, likely by imposing more checkpoints and barriers to restrict movement and carrying out more raids

Israel’s intensifying assault on Palestinians across the West Bank already has people like al-Mohamed fearing that his family could be evicted again.

He said most Palestinians predict that Israel will turn its attention to the West Bank’s cities after it finishes its military raids in the nearby camps.

“It’s hard for us to go anywhere else other than the West Bank,” he told Al Jazeera.

“This is our land. It’s where we want to live and where we want to die.”

Despite some pushback from his party to deal with the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza – especially Israel’s starvation policy – the US governing Republican Party remains unmoved.

Republicans overwhelmingly support Israel’s tactics against the Palestinians, as support for Israel plummets among Independent and Democratic voters.

Trump says he wants more food to reach Gaza via the militarised distribution mechanism, the GHF. But he criticised Western countries that spoke of diplomatic moves, such as recognising Palestinian statehood.

Host Steve Clemons speaks with Republican analyst Mark Pfeifle and Democratic analyst David Bolger on Trump’s political calculations on Middle East policy.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US nonprofit backed by the US and Israel, was set up earlier this year to provide humanitarian aid in Gaza. Its aid distribution got under way in May, following a prolonged halt in supply deliveries to the enclave. But according to the UN, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed trying to access food at the GHF aid hubs.

Starving and beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza have no choice but to walk several miles to collect much-needed food packages from the four heavily militarised hubs. Palestinian medics and civilians told Al Jazeera that GHF and Israeli troops have routinely opened fire on the aid seekers, killing dozens at a time.

Harrowing accounts have been corroborated by video evidence, whistleblowers and Israeli soldiers, and the killings have fuelled international outcry – including condemnations from heads of state, UN agencies and human rights groups.

Who is responsible for the killings?

Mainly Israeli troops, but mercenaries working for the GHF are also implicated, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which documents atrocities against Palestinians.

Euro-Med also alleges that Israeli forces have enabled Palestinian gangs to loot aid convoys and terrorise civilians.

A retired United States special forces officer, Anthony Aguilar, who was formerly employed by the GHF, recently disclosed some of the brutal treatment Palestinians face at aid sites.

“Without question, I witnessed war crimes by the [Israeli military],” Aguilar told the BBC in an exclusive interview.

How are the Palestinians being killed?

Doctors and survivors in Gaza say that Israel often uses snipers to aim directly at Palestinian aid seekers.

Dr Fadel Naeem said he frequently treats survivors in the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City and that most of the gunshot wounds he sees are to the “head, chest and abdomen”.

He noted that Israel also appears to fire indiscriminately at starving Palestinians, sometimes firing tear gas, explosives or artillery shells at large crowds. These attacks often cause serious burns, as well as flesh and shrapnel wounds.

“There is often severe tissue tearing … and many [of the injured] end up with amputated limbs,” said Dr Naeem.

Other Palestinians sustain fractures and broken bones, typically by being trampled in the mad rush to flee Israeli gunfire or obtain a bag of food aid.

Dr Hassan al-Shaer, who works in al-Shifa Hospital, also says many of the injuries are serious.

“Many of the [injured] victims that come to us also have life-threatening wounds, and they are taken to the operating room immediately,” he told Al Jazeera.

What excuse does Israel give for these killings?

Israel officially denies firing at Palestinians and frequently claims that its troops only fire “warning shots” outside GHF distribution hubs to prevent overcrowding.

The Israeli army also says “chaos” at the sites poses an “immediate threat” to army soldiers.

Yet, according to a news report published by the Israeli daily Haaretz on June 27, Israeli troops pose the real threat.

Many soldiers who served in Gaza admitted that they were “ordered to shoot” directly at Palestinian aid seekers by their superiors.

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars,” one soldier told Haaretz.

“It’s a killing field,” he added.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Katz both deny the allegations and claim that they amount to “blood libel” against Israel, meaning they equate it to a false and anti-Semitic accusation that Jewish people murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals.

Does medical evidence on the ground support Israel’s official narrative?

No, accounts from doctors in Gaza hospitals and clinics do not support Israel’s claim.

Dr Shaer, from al-Shifa, noted that many of the injured people started coming into the hospital when the GHF began aid distribution in late May.

Injuries are often compounded with illnesses and weak immune systems, effects brought on by starvation in Gaza.

Hakeem Yahiya Mansour, a 30-year-old Palestinian emergency medic in Gaza, added “death always happens” at GHF sites.

“Most of the calls we get are from the surroundings [of the distribution zones],” he told Al Jazeera.

What do the GHF sites look like?

Footage of the sites shows thousands of starving Palestinians crowded onto a strip of land roughly the size of a football field, according to Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.

Aid seekers are surrounded by guard towers and are often forced to fight for food parcels that are tossed to hungry crowds at poorly arranged and chaotic distribution points.

Tanks are often stationed nearby, and aid seekers can hear the terrifying buzzing of drones above them.

According to satellite imagery obtained by Al Jazeera’s verification unit, Sanad, Palestinians have little space to manoeuvre or receive aid.

Despite the dangers, Palestinians face an impossible choice: die from gunfire or starvation. Many chose to accept the risk and go for aid in the hope of obtaining food for their families and small children.

Mohanad Shaaban said he did not eat for three days, pushing him to head to the GHF site on July 30. He remembers seeing two tanks at the site – one on the right and a second on the left.

“The [Israelis] then opened fire on us,” he recalled solemnly.

“Please tell the world to end this famine,” Shaaban said.

How is the world responding?

Harrowing scenes and images of Palestinians dying of hunger and being killed at GHF aid sites have compelled some of Israel’s allies to issue stern condemnations and ultimatums.

France, Germany and the United Kingdom recently issued a statement urging Israel to scale up life-saving aid.

What’s more, France has taken the symbolic step of recognising a Palestinian state, which the UK also threatened to do, unless Israel ends the “appalling situation” in Gaza and commits to the “two-state” solution. Canada has also said it will recognise a Palestinian state in September.

Washington, DC – A new poll from the research firm Gallup suggests that only 32 percent of Americans approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza, a 10-point drop from September 2024, as anger over atrocities against Palestinians continues to rise.

The survey, released on Tuesday, also showed an enormous partisan divide over the issue. Seventy-one percent of respondents who identified as members of the Republican Party said they approve of Israel’s conduct, compared with 8 percent of Democrats.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they disapprove of Israel’s military action in Gaza.

Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland and the director of the Critical Issues Poll, said the latest survey shows a trend of growing discontent with Israel that goes beyond the war on Gaza.

“What we’re seeing here is an entrenchment of a generational paradigm among particularly young Americans – mostly Democrats and independents, but even some young Republicans – who now perceive the horror in Gaza in a way of describing the character of Israel itself,” Telhami told Al Jazeera.

In Tuesday’s survey, only 9 percent of respondents under the age of 35 said they approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza, and 6 percent said they have a favourable opinion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The study follows an April poll from the Pew Research Center, which found a majority of respondents – including 50 percent of Republicans under 50 years old – said they had unfavourable views of Israel.

But even as public opinion in the US continues to shift, Washington’s policy of unconditional support for Israel has been unwavering. Since the start of the war on Gaza, the US has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, as well as diplomatic backing at the United Nations.

Both President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, have been uncompromising backers of the Israeli assault on Gaza, which human rights groups have described as a genocide.

Israel has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, imposed a suffocating siege and flattened most of the enclave, reducing its buildings to rubble. The siege is credited with prompting deadly hunger: The UN on Tuesday said there was “mounting evidence of famine and widespread starvation”.

Nevertheless, the US Congress also remains staunchly pro-Israel on a bipartisan basis. Earlier this month, a legislative push to block $500m in missile defence support for Israel failed in a 422-to-six vote in the House of Representatives.

So, what explains the schism between the views of average Americans and the policies of their elected representatives?

Telhami cited voter “priorities”. He explained that foreign policy traditionally has not been a driving factor in elections. For example, domestic issues like abortion, the economy and gun control usually dominate the electoral agenda for Democrats.

He also noted the influence of pro-Israel groups, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which have spent millions of dollars to defeat critics of the Israeli government, particularly progressives in Democratic primaries.

But things are changing, according to the professor.

Palestine is rising in public importance, he said, with US voters looking at the issue through the lens of “soul-searching”, as a way of questioning what they stand for.

“It’s not just Gaza. It’s that we are enabling the horror in Gaza as a country – in terms of our aid or support or, even in some cases, direct collaboration,” Telhami said.

“That it is actually creating a paradigmatic shift about who we are, not just about: ‘Do we support Israel? Do we support the Palestinians?’”

He said the victory of Palestinian rights advocate Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary last month underscores that movement.

“The rise of Zohran Mamdani in New York is giving people pause because he’s been able to generate excitement, not, as some people thought, despite his views on Israel-Palestine, but actually because of his views on Israel-Palestine.”