Israeli settlers attacked an aid convoy for the second time in days, delaying 30 trucks from Jordan on their way to Gaza. Video shows settlers chanting “May Palestine’s name be wiped out”. Jordan condemned the assault, accusing Israel of failing to stop repeated settler attacks.
Published On 6 Aug 20256 Aug 2025
Gaza’s health system is in a state of collapse as Israel continues its attacks on medical facilities. A strike on Tuesday hit a UN clinic in Gaza City. The nearby Al Shifa Hospital reported a severe shortage of blood as many people in Gaza are too malnourished to make donations.
Published On 6 Aug 20256 Aug 2025
Vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down an ‘unsafe road’, local officials tell WAFA news agency.
At least 20 Palestinians have been killed and many injured after a truck carrying humanitarian aid overturned onto a crowd of people in central Gaza, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave.
The incident occurred on Wednesday as large numbers of Palestinians gathered in central Gaza in search of food and basic supplies, amid an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.
Local officials quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the vehicle overturned after Israeli forces directed it down what they described as an “unsafe road”.
Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded in the incident while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid, the AFP news agency reported.
“Despite the recent limited allowance of a few aid trucks, the occupation deliberately obstructs the safe passage and distribution of this aid,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement.
“It forces drivers to navigate routes overcrowded with starving civilians who have been waiting for weeks for the most basic necessities. This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks and forcibly seizing their contents.”
The incident comes as humanitarian organisations warn of famine and disease spreading across the enclave, while deaths from starvation and malnutrition continue to rise.
At least three people died from malnutrition on Wednesday, medical sources told Al Jazeera. A source at al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza confirmed that Hiba Yasser Abu Naji, a child, died from malnutrition. An infant also died from malnutrition, according to the source. An adult from Jabalia was also reported to have died as a result of malnutrition.
On Monday, the Israeli military permitted 95 aid trucks to enter Gaza – a figure far below the 600 trucks a day needed to meet basic requirements, according to UNRWA. The current daily average is 85 trucks.
Meanwhile, Palestinians approaching aid distribution sites run by the notorious GHF have frequently come under Israeli fire since the organisation launched operations in late May. Such shootings have become near-daily occurrences near its sites in central and southern Gaza.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for OCHA, said that while some aid was entering the enclave, “there should be hundreds and hundreds of trucks entering Gaza every day for months or years to come.
“People are dying every day. This is a crisis on the brink of famine,” he said, adding that tonnes of life-saving aid remain stuck at border crossings due to bureaucratic delays and a lack of safe access.
Elsewhere in Gaza, several Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across the enclave.
Al-Awda Hospital reported that five people – including a woman and two children – were killed, and others wounded, in an Israeli raid on a house north of the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Four more people were killed in an Israeli raid on two homes in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Moscow says Israeli troops did not intervene as settlers attacked a Russian diplomatic vehicle and verbally threatened diplomats.
Moscow has lodged a formal complaint with Israel over an attack by Israeli settlers on a Russian diplomatic vehicle near an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Tuesday that Moscow considered the attack a “gross violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961”, and expressed “bewilderment and disapproval” that the attack “occurred with the connivance of Israeli military personnel”.
According to Zakharova, the vehicle belonging to Russia’s representation to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and bearing diplomatic registration plates was attacked on July 30 near the “illegal Israeli settlement of Giv’at Asaf”, located east of Ramallah and some 20km (12 miles) north of Jerusalem, by a group of settlers.
“The vehicle sustained mechanical damage. The attack was accompanied by verbal threats directed at the Russian diplomats,” the spokeswoman said, adding that Israeli soldiers present “did not even bother to stop the aggressive actions of the attackers”.
According to reports in Russian media, the vehicle came under attack while carrying members of Russia’s diplomatic mission to the PA, who are also accredited with Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
The Russian Embassy in Tel Aviv has sent a demarche letter to Israeli authorities, Zakharova added.
Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyansky, raised the attack on the diplomatic vehicle at a UN Security Council session on Tuesday focused on Israeli captives in Gaza.
Polyansky said the attack on Russia’s vehicle in the occupied West Bank comes at a time when “Israeli authorities have embraced the policy of cleansing and colonising” the Palestinian territory.
“It is ordinary Palestinians and even foreigners who every day become victims of relentless raids by security forces and settler violence,” Russia’s UN representative said.
The “attack on an official vehicle of the Russian Mission to the Palestinian Authority” was carried out “under the lenient eye of the Israeli military”, he said.
“It is clear that a systematic policy of exiling Palestinians – whether from the Gaza Strip or the West Bank – is fraught with new risks and dangers for stability and security in the Middle East and could once again bring the region to the brink of a major war,” he added.
Violent attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied West Bank have surged since October 2023, with the UN reporting that almost 650 Palestinians – including 121 children – have been killed in the territory by Israeli forces and settlers between January 1, 2024 and the start of July 2025.
A further 5,269 Palestinians were injured during that period, including 1,029 children. Settler attacks alone accounted for more than 2,200 casualties and cases of damage to property, the UN said.
US president’s comments come amid warnings that expanding Israeli operations would be ‘catastrophic’ for Palestinians.
Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has suggested that he will not block possible Israeli plans to take over Gaza.
When asked on Tuesday about reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to occupy the entire Palestinian territory, Trump said he is focused on getting “people fed” in Gaza.
“As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” the US president told reporters.
Washington provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually, assistance that significantly increased following the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.
Israel has used forced displacement orders to squeeze Palestinians into ever-shrinking pockets in Gaza, turning 86 percent of the territory into militarised zones.
But increased military operations in the remaining part of the territory would further endanger the lives of Palestinians, who already endure daily bombardment and Israeli-imposed starvation.
Netanyahu’s purported plans to conquer Gaza have also raises concerns about the safety of the remaining Israeli captives held in the enclave by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.
Top United Nations official Miroslav Jenca said on Tuesday that a complete occupation of Gaza would “risk catastrophic consequences”.
“International law is clear in the regard. Gaza is and must remain an integral part of the future Palestinian state,” Jenca told the UN Security Council.
Israel withdrew its forces and settlements from the Palestinian territory in 2005, but legal experts have said that the enclave remained technically under occupation, since the Israeli military continued to control Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters and ports of entry.
Since the start of the war in 2023, right-wing Israeli officials have called for the re-establishment of Israel’s military presence and settlements inside Gaza.
Netanyahu has also suggested that Israel aims to remove all Palestinians from the enclave, in what would amount to ethnic cleansing, a plan that Trump himself echoed in February.
Trump, at the time, proposed clearing Gaza of its people to construct a “riviera of the Middle East” in its stead.
The recent reports about Israel’s intention to expand its ground operations in Gaza come amid growing international outcry over the deadly hunger spreading across the territory.
Israel has blocked nearly all aid from entering Gaza since March, making US-backed GHF sites almost the only places for Palestinians to get food.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been shot by the Israeli military while trying to reach GHF facilities deep inside Israel’s lines of control. Nevertheless, the US has continued to support the organisation, despite international pleas to allow the UN to distribute the aid.
In recent days, Israel has allowed some food trucks and air drops to distribute aid to Gaza, but the assistance is still far from meeting the needs of the population.
The Israeli military has also been accused of targeting aid seekers trying to reach assistance trucks away from GHF sites in northern Gaza.
On Tuesday, Trump reiterated his often-repeated claim that the US has provided $60m in aid to Gaza. His administration had provided $30m to GHF.
“As you know, $60m was given by the United States fairly recently to supply food – a lot of food, frankly – for the people of Gaza that are obviously not doing too well with the food,” he told reporters.
“And I know Israel is going to help us with that, in terms of distribution and also money. We also have the Arab states [which] are going to help us with that in terms of the money and possibly distribution.”
Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 61,000 people and flattened most of the territory in what rights groups and UN experts have called a genocide.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has accused Israel of carrying out a “systematic genocide” in Gaza.
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Israeli attacks have killed at least 83 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip amid a deepening Israel-induced hunger crisis, medical sources have told Al Jazeera, as hospitals in the besieged territory have recorded eight more deaths from starvation and malnutrition.
Among those killed on Tuesday were 58 aid seekers who were shot by Israeli forces as they approached aid distribution sites operated by the US- and Israeli-backed GHF.
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said the “same exact scenario plays out in Gaza every single day” since GHF distribution sites began operating in May.
“Palestinians are approaching these distribution sites, waiting for food, but the Israeli forces are opening fire,” Khoudary said.
She quoted sources at al-Shifa Hospital as saying the number of injured people who have been transferred from the distribution point near northern Gaza’s Zikim crossing “is very large”.
“Injuries are coming with bullets in parts of their bodies that are very hard to treat, including their heads, necks and also their chests,” Khoudary said. “The cycle of violence is the same in all three distribution locations.”
The GHF has been heavily criticised by the United Nations and other humanitarian organisations for failing to provide enough aid and for the dire security situation at and around its aid distribution sites.
So far, more than 1,560 Palestinians seeking aid have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to receive food amid the Israeli-induced starvation crisis.
The attacks come as aid agencies and health officials warn of a sharp rise in starvation, particularly among children and the elderly.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, eight more people have died of starvation or malnutrition in the latest 24-hour reporting period, including a child. This brings the total number of Palestinians who have died from hunger or malnutrition since Israel’s war began to 188, including 94 children.
On Monday, Israel allowed 95 aid trucks into the Strip, far below the 600 trucks per day needed to meet minimum survival needs, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). The daily average now stands at 85 trucks.
Gaza’s Government Media Office has once again warned of an intensifying humanitarian catastrophe and in a statement said most of the limited aid has been looted due to “security chaos being sowed by the Israeli occupation as part of a systematic policy of engineering chaos and starvation”.
Despite intense international pressure for a ceasefire to ease hunger and the appalling conditions in the besieged Palestinian enclave, efforts to mediate a truce between Israel and Hamas have collapsed.
Instead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks poised to announce plans to fully occupy the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli media reports.
Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Tuesday that he had held a “limited security discussion” lasting about three hours, during which military Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir “presented the options for continuing the campaign in Gaza”.
An Israeli official told the Reuters news agency that Defence Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, an aide of Netanyahu, would attend a meeting later this week to decide on a strategy to take to the cabinet. Israeli media reported that the cabinet is to convene on Thursday.
Israel’s Channel 12, quoting an official from Netanyahu’s office, said the prime minister was leaning towards taking control of the entire territory, which the Israeli army has mostly reduced to rubble.
The United Nations on Tuesday called reports about a possible decision to expand Israel’s military operations throughout the Gaza Strip “deeply alarming” if true.
“International law is clear in the regard, Gaza is and must remain an integral part of the future Palestinian state”, UN Assistant Secretary-General Miroslav Jenca told a UN Security Council meeting.
On Tuesday, Israeli tanks pushed into central Gaza, but it was not clear if the move was part of a larger ground offensive.
Palestinians living in the last quarter of territory where Israel has not yet taken military control via ground incursions or forced evacuations said any new push would be catastrophic.
“If the tanks pushed through, where would we go? Into the sea? This will be like a death sentence to the entire population,” said Abu Jehad, a Gaza wood merchant.
More than 61,020 Palestinians, including at least 18,430 children, have been killed in Gaza since the war began in 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.
Israel’s deadly assault has also forced nearly all of Gaza’s more than 2 million people from their homes and caused what a global hunger monitor last week called an unfolding famine.
Impact of war’s consequences to be felt beyond this generation.
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
Israel international Shon Weissman was expected to complete move from Spain’s Granada to Germany’s Fortuna Dusseldorf.
Bundesliga 2 side Fortuna Dusseldorf has pulled out of signing Israel striker Shon Weissman in response to fan anger about his social media posts on the Gaza war, German tabloid Bild has reported.
Fan furore erupted online on Monday when news emerged that Weissman was on the cusp of joining Dusseldorf from Spanish side Granada FC.
On Tuesday, the club tweeted: “We looked into Shon Weissman intensively, but ultimately decided not to sign him”.
The club did not reveal the reasons for the decision, but Bild reported the club reacted to fan anger about social media statements from Weissman, who was already in Dusseldorf and had completed a medical exam.
The centre forward, who has 33 Israel caps, made several social media posts after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that set off the Gaza war.
Bild reported that Weissman called for Israel to “wipe Gaza off the map” and to “drop 200 tons of bombs on it”.
The 29-year-old had also liked posts saying “there are no innocents [in Gaza], they don’t need to be warned”.
Weissman, who deleted the posts soon after making them, has since said he made a mistake and was acting in the heat of the moment.
Dusseldorf fans launched an online petition on Monday saying Weissman’s “disrespectful and discriminatory” comments are in stark contrast to the principles Fortuna “stand for and try to promote”.
Weissman has already been the subject of fan protests in Granada, a side he joined in January 2023.
Bild reported that Dusseldorf and Weissman had planned to issue an apology statement for the posts, which was to be made public after the signing was made official.
After 22 months of combat in Gaza sparked by the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas that killed 1,219 people and saw hundreds kidnapped, the Israeli army has devastated large parts of the Palestinian territory.
More than 60,933 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, and humanitarian agencies have warned that the territory’s 2.4 million people are slipping into a catastrophic famine.
Germany, as it has sought to atone for the Holocaust, has long been a steadfast supporter of Israel, but concern has risen sharply over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The war has previously made an impact in professional football in Germany.
In 2023, Bundesliga side Mainz decided to sack player Anwar El Ghazi for statements made on social media about the conflict.
El Ghazi, a Dutch international with Moroccan roots, won a wrongful dismissal case in a German court against the club, who have since appealed.
Former Bayern Munich defender Noussair Mazraoui, now with Manchester United, apologised publicly after making several social media posts on the conflict, including one which called for “victory” for “our oppressed brothers in Palestine”.
German football fans are heavily involved in major decisions, from signing players to setting fixtures, due to the so-called 50+1 regulation, which requires club members to retain overall control of professional football sides.
Urgency surrounds the future of the two-state solution as Israel ramps up its control of historic Palestinian territory. And even though several countries have moved to recognise a Palestinian state, many observers say it’s too late. Soraya Lennie breaks it down.
Published On 5 Aug 20255 Aug 2025
Hezbollah has called for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory before any discussion on disarmament.
Hezbollah supporters have gathered in the Lebanese capital to protest against the group’s disarmament ahead of a government cabinet meeting on the issue.
The demonstrations occurred in Beirut on Monday night amid pressure by the United States on Lebanon to get Hezbollah to lay down its arms.
Hezbollah emerged weakened from a war with Israel last year that eliminated most of the group’s leadership, killed thousands of its fighters, and left tens of thousands of its supporters displaced from their destroyed homes.
In recent months, the US and Lebanon have been holding talks on a roadmap for disarmament. Lebanon’s new leadership has pledged to extend its authority across all its territory, but has so far avoided acting against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah supporters protested because they believe disarmament will have implications for their political standing and security, said Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr.
“Hezbollah has made its position clear: it will not disarm because to do so would serve Israel’s interests, not Lebanon’s sovereignty,” said Khodr, reporting from Beirut.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has told the country’s leadership that the group feels blackmailed – that if they don’t disarm, they will not be given funds for reconstruction, she reported.
Ahead of Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Hezbollah, through Lebanese MP Ali Fayyad, reiterated its demand that the issues of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory, the release of Lebanese prisoners, and the cessation of hostilities take place before any discussion on disarmament, Lebanon’s National News (NNA) agency reported.
Lebanon’s political leadership, however, is pushing for the move – even if it may come by force.
“If there is a cost to be able to centralise the weapons with the … Lebanese armed forces, [it may be] better like that,” Elias Hankash, another member of the Lebanese parliament, told Al Jazeera.
“But everything has been done so far … to avoid any clash with Hezbollah.”
The Lebanese army will take on Hezbollah if and when there’s a political decision to disarm the group by force, Khodr said.
“I call on all political parties to approach the issue of arms control with full responsibility,” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said on Friday, also stating that the issue of disarmament is sensitive due to sectarian divisions, with consequences for national peace.
In 2008, a government decision to dismantle the group’s telecommunication network led to street violence.
Lebanon’s Agriculture Minister Nizar Hani told NNA that the president has set a clear timetable for the disarmament process. He added that the Lebanese army has already taken over hundreds of Hezbollah sites and weapons depots.
Hani stressed that the group is a part of the “Lebanese fabric” and has played a major role in “liberating the land,” but “the next phase requires that the state alone be the decision maker of war and peace”.
Hezbollah was the most powerful military and political actor in Lebanon for years, and while it lost some military capabilities in its conflict last year with Israel, it has not been defeated entirely, Khodr said.
“Hezbollah is still strong in the state because of the monopoly [it has] over Shia representation as well as the appointment of key figures in all of the states,” Mark Daou, another MP, told Al Jazeera.
Lebanon’s political landscape and society have long been divided with differing views on Hezbollah’s role and the need for disarmament.
The issue has dominated Lebanese politics for decades, but there is now a sense of urgency with increasing international pressure – as well as increasing military pressure from Israel, which regularly targets Hezbollah despite the ceasefire between the two since November 2024.
“The government is now expected to formally commit to disarming Hezbollah, a decision that could at the least ignite a political crisis,” said Khodr.
When I was a freshman at Columbia University in 1999, the professor of my Literature Humanities course shared some personal information with my class, which was that she slept exactly three hours per night. I forget what prompted the disclosure, though I do recall it was made not to elicit pity but rather as a matter-of-fact explanation of the way things were: sleeping more than three hours a night simply did not allow her sufficient time to simultaneously maintain her professorship and tend to her baby.
This, of course, was before the era of smartphones took the phenomenon of rampant sleep deprivation to another level. But modern life has long been characterised by a lack of proper sleep – an activity that happens to be fundamental to life itself.
I personally cannot count the times I have awakened at one or two o’clock in the morning to work, unable to banish from my brain the capitalist guilt at engaging in necessary restorative rest rather than being, you know, “productive” 24 hours a day.
And yet mine is a privileged variety of semi-self-imposed sleep deprivation; I am not, for example, being denied adequate rest because I have to work three jobs to put food on the table for my family.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national public health agency of the United States, approximately one-third of US adults and children under the age of 14 get insufficient sleep, putting them at increased risk for anxiety, depression, heart disease, and a host of other potentially life-threatening maladies. As per CDC calculations, a full 75 percent of US high schoolers do not sleep enough.
While the recommended amount of sleep for adults is at least seven hours per day, a 2024 Gallup poll reported that 20 percent of US adults were getting five hours or less – a trend attributable in part to rising stress levels among the population.
To be sure, it’s easy to feel stressed out when your government appears more interested in sending billions upon billions of dollars to Israel to assist in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip than in, say, facilitating existence for Americans by offering healthcare, education, and housing options that don’t require folks to work themselves to death to afford.
Then again, pervasive stress and anxiety work just fine for those sectors of the for-profit medical establishment that make bank off of treating such afflictions.
Meanwhile, speaking of the Gaza Strip, residents of the occupied territory are well acquainted with acute sleep deprivation, which is currently a component of the Israeli military’s genocidal arsenal for wearing Palestinians down both physically and psychologically. Not that a good night’s sleep in Gaza was ever really within the realm of possibility – even prior to the launch of the all-out genocide in 2023 – given Israel’s decades-long terrorisation of the Strip via periodic bombardments, massacres, sonic booms, the ubiquitous deployment of buzzing drones, and other manoeuvres designed to inflict individual and collective trauma.
A study on trauma and sleep disruption in Gaza – conducted in November 2024 and published this year in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Psychology – notes that, in the present context of Israel’s round-the-clock assault, “the act of falling asleep is imbued with existential dread”. The study quotes one Gaza mother who had already lost three of her seven children to Israeli bombings: “Every time I close my eyes, I see my children in front of me, so I’m afraid to sleep.”
Of course, Israel’s penchant for killing entire families in their sleep no doubt exacerbates the fear associated with it. The study observes that children in Gaza have been “stripped of the simple peace that sleep should offer, forced to endure nightmares born from real-life horrors”, while overcrowded shelters have rendered the pursuit of shut-eye ever more elusive.
Furthermore, mass forced displacement in the Gaza Strip “has deprived families of their homes, severing the link between sleep and security”.
A recent article in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics argues that sleep is a human right that is integral to human health – and that its deprivation is torture. It seems we can thus go ahead and add mass torture to the list of US-backed Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
Naturally, the US has engaged in plenty of do-it-yourself torture over the years, as well, including against detainees in Guantanamo Bay – where sleep deprivation was standard practice along with waterboarding, “rectal rehydration”, and other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
In her 2022 study of sleep deprivation as a form of torture, published by the Maryland Law Review, Deena N Sharuk cites the case of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan teenager imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay in 2003 and subjected to what was “referred to as the Frequent Flyer Program”, whereby detainees were repeatedly moved between cells in order to disrupt their sleep.
According to Sharuk, Jawad was moved “every three hours for fourteen consecutive days, totaling 112 moves”. The young man subsequently attempted suicide.
Now, the ever-expanding array of immigration detention facilities in the US offers new opportunities to withhold sleep, as victims of the country’s war on refuge seekers are crammed into cages illuminated at all hours by fluorescent lights.
And while a well-rested world would surely be a more serene one, such a prospect remains the stuff of dreams.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong has told the country’s media that “there is a risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise”, amid Israel’s devastating war on Gaza and increasing violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Wong, who did not indicate that Australia plans to change its stance and recognise Palestinian statehood, made her comments in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ( ABC) on Tuesday morning, where she responded to questions about a mass protest in Sydney attended by hundreds of thousands of people rallying against Israel’s war on Gaza.
Organisers said that between 200,000 and 300,000 people joined the protest across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday. Police had initially estimated that about 90,000 people took part.
Wong said the Australian government shared the protesters “desire for peace and a ceasefire”, and that the huge turnout reflected “the broad Australian community’s horror” and the “distress of Australians, on what we are seeing unfolding in Gaza, the catastrophic humanitarian situation, the deaths of women and children, the withholding of aid”.
However, asked if Australia was considering taking any more concrete actions, such as imposing sanctions on Israel, Wong said: “We don’t speculate on sanctions for the obvious reason that they have more effect if they are not flagged.”
She noted that Australia had already imposed sanctions on two far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, in June this year, as well as “extremist” Israeli settlers.
On Australia’s position regarding Palestinian statehood, Wong said: “In relation to recognition, I’ve said for over a year now, it’s a matter of when, not if.”
Wong’s interview came as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is reportedly seeking to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of Sunday’s protest.
Responding to questions about what he plans to discuss with Netanyahu, Albanese said he would again express his support for a two-state solution.
Rawan Arraf, the executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, said that the “only business” that Albanese should be discussing with Netanyahu is cancelling the “two-way arms trade between Australia and and Israel, new sanctions measures, and Netanyahu’s one-way trip to the [International Criminal Court] to face war crimes and crimes against humanity charges“.
Albanese “must not give legitimacy to an accused war criminal”, Arraf wrote in a post on X.
While both Albanese and Wong have continued to emphasise the importance of a two-state solution, Australia has yet to follow other countries, including France and Canada, that have recently announced their plans to recognise Palestinian statehood, and join the vast majority of countries which already do so.
Albanese also had a phone call with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, the first publicly recorded call between the pair since November 2023, according to the ABC.
Responding to questions about the Sydney protest rally, Albanese said: “It’s not surprising that so many Australians have been affected in order to want to show their concern at people being deprived of food and water and essential services.”
But the state government in New South Wales, which is led by Albanese’s Labor Party, had sought to prevent the march from crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the week leading up to the protest.
The protest only went ahead after State Supreme Court Justice Belinda Rigg ruled that “the march at this location is motivated by the belief that the horror and urgency of the situation in Gaza demands an urgent and extraordinary response from the people of the world”.
“The evidence indicates there is significant support for the march,” Rigg added.
A number of state and federal Labor ministers also took part in the march, in an indication of a growing divide within Albanese’s party.
Independent journalist Antony Loewenstein told Al Jazeera that Sunday’s march showed that Australians are “frustrated that our government is doing little more than talk at this point”.
“People are so outraged, not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also the Australian government’s complicity,” said Loewenstein, who spoke at the march on Sunday.
Australia “is part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, which Israel is using over Gaza every day, and the parts that are amongst those parts in the plane are probably coming from Australia”, he said.
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.
Sudanese women who fled the city of el-Fasher say paramilitary Rapid Support Forces fighters killed, looted, and raped people during their escape. Now in Tawila, about 60km to the west, they face rain, hunger, and a growing cholera outbreak.
Published On 4 Aug 20254 Aug 2025
People in Sudan’s North Darfur region are forced to eat animal fodder to survive as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to lay siege to el-Fasher – the last urban centre in the region under army control.
“We are suffering, world. We need humanitarian aid – food and medicine – whether by airdrop or by opening ground routes. We cannot survive in this condition,” Othman Angaro, from a displacement camp in el-Fasher, told Al Jazeera.
Angaro described how he and his family rely on livestock fodder known as ambaz, a type of animal feed made out of peanut shells.
Another woman, veterinarian Zulfa Al-Nour, told Al Jazeera that her family relies daily on a charity kitchen called “Matbakh Al-Khair” for a single meal, amid a total lack of external aid.
She called for urgent international intervention, including airdrops of humanitarian supplies, warning that even the ambaz fodder is nearly depleted.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) last week warned about starvation in the el-Fasher region. Starvation has reached the most severe level on the United Nations-backed food security scale – ‘IPC Phase 5’, indicating full-blown famine – it said on Friday.
The two-month siege of el-Fasher has complicated aid efforts.
The RSF has blocked food supplies, and aid convoys trying to reach the city have been attacked, locals said. Prices for the goods smuggled into the region cost more than five times the national average.
An outbreak of cholera in the North Darfur state, of which el-Fasher is the capital, has further added to the misery.
Deaths due to the water-borne disease have risen to 191 in the region, which has witnessed months of fighting between Sudan’s army and the RSF, according to a government official.
At least 62 people have died from the disease in Tawila in the North Darfur state, the spokesman for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, Adam Rijal, said in a statement on Monday.
Nearly 100 people have also died in the Kalma and the Otash camps, Rijal added, both displacement camps located in the city of Nyala in South Darfur state.
Some 4,000 cases of cholera have been reported in the region, according to the statement.
In recent months, more than half a million people have taken shelter in Tawila, some 60km (37 miles) west of el-Fasher, the state capital, which has been under two months of siege by the RSF rebels. Most of the Darfur region is under the rebel control except for el-Fasher.
Meanwhile, with Sudan in the throes of the rainy season, along with poor living conditions and inadequate sanitation, the outbreak of cholera is only worsening, warn aid groups.
Cholera was first identified in early June in Tawila and has since spread to numerous refugee camps, according to NGO Avaaz.
Nearly 40 people have died due to cholera in the Jebel Marra area, a district of West Darfur state.
Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, is operating two cholera treatment facilities in Tawila housing 146 beds – coordinating nearly the entire medical response to the outbreak.
Last month, it warned that “much more” needs to be done to improve “access to water, hygiene, and medical care to curb the spread of the outbreak in the midst of the rainy season”.
Samir, a former teacher displaced to el-Fasher with his family, told Avaaz last week that the situation was “catastrophic” and that the cholera outbreak was being exacerbated by widespread hunger.
“People are dying because they are too weak to survive,” he told the NGO.
“Their immune systems are compromised from severe malnutrition. People are starving in the displacement camps.”
مدينة الفاشر في ولاية شمال دارفور غرب السودان بتعيش مجاعة قاتلة بسبب فرض الحصار عليها من قبل قوات الدعم السريع المدعومة من الامارات
المجاعة دخلت المرحلة الخامسة يعني مجاعة كاملة ووضع كارثي
اتكلموا عنهم#الفاشر_تموت_جوعاََ pic.twitter.com/1aNfuGY9nH— Ahmed Elhadary (@Ahmed_hadary77) August 2, 2025
Translation: “The city of el-Fasher in North Darfur state, western Sudan, is experiencing a deadly famine due to the siege imposed on it by the Rapid Support Forces backed by the Emirates. The famine has reached the fifth stage, meaning a full-scale famine and a catastrophic situation. Speak about them.”
Meanwhile, fighting continues.
“The RSF’s artillery and drones are shelling el-Fasher morning and night,” one resident told the Reuters news agency.
“The number of people dying has increased every day, and the cemeteries are expanding,” he said.
On Monday, Emergency Lawyers, a human rights group, said at least 14 people fleeing el-Fasher were killed and dozens were injured when they were attacked in a village along the route.
The UN called for a humanitarian pause to fighting in el-Fasher last month as the rainy season began, but the RSF rejected the call.
Fighting between the two groups first erupted in the capital Khartoum in April 2023. It has since spread to several regions of the country as the army chief and de facto head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, jostles for power with RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.
The war has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 13 million people, according to UN estimates, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
As Israel’s forced starvation tightens its grip on Gaza’s entire population, an increasing number of Palestinian families are frantically searching for news of relatives who undertook perilous journeys to get food from aid distribution points, never to return.
Khaled Obaid has been searching for his beloved son, Ahmed, for two months, scanning every passing vehicle on the coastal road in Deir-el-Balah, hoping against all odds that one of them might bring him home.
The boy had left the displaced family’s tent in the central town to find food for his parents and sister, who had lost her husband during the war, and headed to the Zikim crossing point, where aid trucks enter northern Gaza.
“He hasn’t returned until now. He went because he was hungry. We have nothing to eat,” the distraught father told Al Jazeera, breaking down in tears with his wife under the blue tarpaulin where they are sheltering.
Khaled reported his son’s disappearance to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and every official body he could reach, to radio silence. To this day, he has received no answers on Ahmed’s whereabouts.
Khaled’s story is all too common under Israel’s ongoing punishing blockade of Gaza, where the largely displaced population faces a stark choice between starvation and braving the bullets fired by Israeli soldiers and United States security contractors in a bid to get food from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites. These distribution points have been dubbed “death traps” and “human slaughterhouses” by the United Nations and rights groups.
It is a life-or-death gamble that has taken the lives of nearly 1,400 people, shot dead mainly by the Israeli army, at the aid sites since they started operations in late May and along food convoy routes, according to figures released by the UN last week. That is, without counting the untold numbers of missing aid seekers, like Ahmed.
Human rights monitors have been collecting harrowing firsthand accounts of people who have gone missing in Gaza, only to be found later, killed by Israeli forces.
“In many cases, those who went missing are apparently killed near the aid distribution points, but due to the Israeli targeting, their bodies remained unreachable,” Maha Hussaini, the head of media at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera.
“Many Palestinians left home with empty hands, hoping to return with a bag of flour. But many never came back,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir-el-Balah. “In Gaza, the line between survival and disappearance is now heartbreakingly thin.”
As the number of missing aid seekers mounts, famine stalks the enclave, with more than 80 adults reportedly dying of starvation over the past five weeks alone, and 93 children succumbing to man-made malnutrition since the war began.
Authorities in Gaza say an average of 84 trucks have entered the besieged enclave each day since Israel eased restrictions on July 27. But aid organisations say at least 600 aid trucks are needed per day to meet the territory’s basic needs.
On Monday, amid growing international condemnation over the mass starvation, seen by many as being deliberately engineered by Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to double down on his war goals.
Netanyahu announced that he would convene a meeting of his cabinet on Tuesday to ensure that “Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel”. Israel’s Channel 12 cited an official as saying that Netanyahu was tending towards expanding the offensive.
The announcement came on another bloody day in the Strip, with at least 74 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since dawn on Monday, including 36 aid seekers, according to medical sources.
Among the attacks, at least three people were killed by an Israeli strike on a house in Deir el-Balah, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
A source at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City reported that seven people were killed in Israeli shelling on multiple areas in the Shujayea neighbourhood, east of Gaza City.
Emergency services said that two were killed in an Israeli bombing of Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.
It also emerged on Monday that a nurse at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah was killed when he was hit by an airdropped box of aid.
This week, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the dangerous airdrops as a “distraction” and smokescreen.
On Monday, UNICEF warned that 28 children – essentially an entire “classroom” – are dying each day from Israeli bombardment and lack of aid.
“Gaza’s children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a ceasefire, NOW,” said the UN agency on X.
Death by bombardments.
Death by malnutrition and starvation.
Death by lack of aid and vital services.
In Gaza, an average of 28 children a day – the size of a classroom – have been killed.Gaza’s children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a… pic.twitter.com/7QIQQ6IAoG
— UNICEF (@UNICEF) August 4, 2025
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to “assume its responsibilities” by enforcing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, conducting an official visit to the territory and implementing calls at a recent UN conference in New York for a two-state solution.
In a statement posted on social media on Monday, the ministry warned that more than two million Palestinians in Gaza are “living in a tight death circle of killing, starvation, thirst, and deprivation of medicine, treatment, and all basic human rights”.
Mike Johnson, the top legislator in the United States Congress, has visited an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, drawing condemnation from Palestinians.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called the trip by the speaker of the US House of Representatives on Monday a “blatant violation of international law”.
Johnson, who is next in line for the US presidency after the president and vice president, is the highest-ranking US official to visit a West Bank Israeli settlement.
His trip comes amid escalating settler violence against Palestinian communities that killed two US citizens in July.
The Israeli military has also been intensifying its deadly raids, home demolitions and displacement campaigns in the West Bank as it carries out its brutal assault and blockade on Gaza.
Johnson’s visit contradicts Arab and US efforts to “end the cycle of violence” as well as Washington’s public stance against settlers’ “aggressions”, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.
“The ministry affirms that all settlement activity is invalid and illegal and undermines the opportunity to implement the two-state solution and achieve peace,” it added.
According to Israeli media reports, Johnson visited the settlement of Ariel, north of Ramallah, on Monday.
“Judea and Samaria are the front lines of the state of Israel and must remain an integral part of it,” Johnson was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post newspaper, using a biblical name for the West Bank.
“Even if the world thinks otherwise, we stand with you.”
The House speaker’s comments appear to be in reference to recent moves by some Western countries – including close allies of the US and Israel – to recognise a Palestinian state.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law. The International Court of Justice, the top United Nations tribunal, reaffirmed that position last year, saying that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible”.
Asked about Johnson’s visit, UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters on Monday: “Our standpoint on the settlements, as you know, is that they are illegal under international law.”
Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, and annexed the entire holy city in 1980.
Successive Israeli governments have been building Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank on land that would be the home of a Palestinian state if a two-state solution were to materialise.
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers now live in the occupied West Bank.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, bans the occupying power from transferring “parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.
While the Oslo Accords granted the Palestinian Authority some municipal powers over parts of the West Bank, the entire area remains under full Israeli security control.
Israel also controls the airspace and ports of entry in the territory.
Israeli settlers in the West Bank have full citizenship rights, while Palestinians live under Israel’s military rule, where they can be detained indefinitely without charges.
Leading rights groups have accused Israel of imposing a system of apartheid on Palestinians.
For decades, the US has publicly rejected West Bank settlements and called for a two-state solution despite providing Israel with billions of dollars in military aid.
However, US President Donald Trump has taken US policy further in favour of Israel, refusing to criticise settlement expansion or commit to backing a Palestinian state.
Many Republicans, meanwhile, have long expressed support for Israel from a theological perspective, arguing that it is a Christian religious duty to back the US ally.
“Our prayer is that America will always stand with Israel. We pray for the preservation and the peace of Jerusalem. That’s what scripture tells us to do. It’s a matter of faith for us,” Johnson said on Sunday during a visit to the Western Wall.
In a social media post, Marc Zell, chair of the US Republicans Overseas Israel, cited Johnson as saying on Monday that the mountains of the West Bank are “the rightful property of the Jewish People”.
Hundreds gathered in Beirut to mark five years since the deadly port explosion that killed over 218 people, renewing calls for justice and accountability. Protesters urged Lebanon’s leaders to act, hoping the stalled judicial investigation will soon be completed.
Published On 4 Aug 20254 Aug 2025
The Syrian Democratic Forces allege that Damascus-linked factions attacked four of its positions early on Monday.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have said that armed factions associated with the country’s security forces have attacked some of its positions in the northern province of Aleppo, as efforts by Syria’s fledgling government to unify the nation have been hit on several fronts.
In a post on X, the group, which controls much of northeastern Syria, claimed the incident took place early on Monday morning in the Deir Hafer area.
The allegation comes just months after the SDF and the Syrian interim government signed a landmark integration agreement in March.
Government-linked factions launched an assault on four of the SDF’s positions in the village of Al-Imam at 3am on Monday morning, the SDF said, noting that the ensuing clashes lasted for 20 minutes.
“We hold the Damascus government fully responsible for this behaviour, and reaffirm that our forces are now more prepared than ever to exercise their legitimate right to respond with full force and determination,” the SDF added.
The latest incident came after the Syrian government accused the SDF of injuring four soldiers and three civilians in the northern city of Manbij on Saturday.
The Defence Ministry called the attack “irresponsible”, saying it had been carried out for “unknown reasons”, according to Syria’s state news agency SANA.
Meanwhile, the SDF, which allied with the United States to help defeat ISIL (ISIS) in the region, blamed the Syrian government, saying it had responded to an unprovoked artillery assault against civilians.
Such skirmishes have cast a shadow over the integration pact the SDF made with Damascus in March, following the fall of longtime President Bashar al-Assad in December.
As part of efforts to reunify the country after almost 14 years of ruinous war, which killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, the agreement seeks to merge Kurdish-led military and civilian institutions with the state.
As well as its clashes with the SDF, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s new government is grappling with the fallout from sectarian violence that broke out on July 13 in the southern province of Suwayda between Bedouin and Druze groups, during which government troops were deployed to quell the fighting. The bloodshed worsened and Israel carried out strikes on Syrian troops, and also bombed the heart of the capital Damascus, under the pretext of protecting the Druze.
Despite the ongoing ceasefire there, four deaths were reported in the province over the weekend, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying that three of the victims were government soldiers and one was a local fighter. Syria’s state media reported on deaths among security forces.
The Syrian government said in a statement that gangs in the area had “resorted to violating the ceasefire agreement by launching treacherous attacks against internal security forces on several fronts”.