Palestine

Israel has destroyed another high-rise in Gaza City, bringing the number of buildings razed during its campaign to seize the largest urban centre in the Gaza Strip to at least 50, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence.

The attack on Al-Ruya Tower on Sunday came as Israeli forces killed at least 65 people across the Gaza Strip, including 49 in the northern part of the besieged enclave.

The Israeli military said it struck Al-Ruya Tower on Sunday after issuing an evacuation threat, forcing residents and displaced families sheltering in makeshift tents in the neighbourhood to flee.

The head of the Palestinian NGOs Network, Amjad Shawa, who was near the site of the attack, told Al Jazeera that the situation “is scary”, with panic spreading among the people.

“Today, hundreds of families lost their shelters. Israel [is] aiming to force Palestinians to the southern areas using these explosions, but everyone knows that there is no safe place in the south or any humanitarian zone,” Shawa said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the military was “eliminating terrorist infrastructure and nefarious terrorist high-rises”, a talking point that Israel often repeats as it obliterates civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

The attack on Al-Ruya – a five-storey building with 24 apartments, as well as department stores, a clinic and a gym – follows an earlier one on the Al Jazeera Club in central Gaza City, where tents housing displaced families were also hit.

It comes after Israel targeted the 15-storey Soussi Tower on Saturday and the 12-storey Mushtaha Tower on Friday. Several Palestinians sheltering in tent encampments around those towers were wounded.

One family that had their shelter destroyed when the Soussi Tower was reduced to rubble said, “We have nothing left for us.”

“We quickly left the building without bringing anything with us. The Israelis attacked the building half an hour later,” the Palestinian man said. “Now, we are trying to stay away from the eyes of the other people by trying to sew some fabrics and sheets,” he said, referring to his family’s attempt to put up a new shelter.

Israeli escalation in Gaza City

Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan for the military occupation of Gaza City in August, a move Netanyahu suggested had already led to the displacement of 100,000 Palestinians.

As Israel pushes to displace residents of Gaza City to the south of the enclave, Palestinians have been saying that nowhere is safe in the territory.

Gaza’s Ministry of Interior issued a statement on Sunday warning Palestinians in Gaza City not to trust Israel’s claim that it had set up a humanitarian zone in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis.

“We call on citizens in Gaza City to beware of the occupation’s deceitful claims about the existence of a humanitarian safe zone in the south of the Strip,” it said in a statement.

The Israeli military had designated al-Mawasi a “humanitarian zone” early on in its campaign against Gaza. Since then, it has been bombed repeatedly.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported that “every five to 10 minutes, you can hear the sounds of explosions from all directions in Gaza City”, including heavy bombing in the Sabra and Zeitoun neighbourhoods.

“Israeli forces are using remotely controlled explosive robots, and detonating them in residential streets, destroying neighbourhoods,” he said. In Sheikh Radwan, Mahmoud added, homes, public facilities, schools and a mosque had been hit.

Rescuers reported that at least eight Palestinians, including children, were killed when Israeli forces bombed the al-Farabi school-turned-shelter, west of Gaza City.

Sohaib Foda, who was sleeping on a mattress in Gaza City’s al-Farabi School when the attack took place, said the attack left her and a young relative wounded.

“I heard a thud, and a block fell on my face. My cousin’s daughter, who was sleeping here, got injured and fell beside me. Another block then fell on her head,” Foda said.

“Everyone was screaming. I was scared. When I touched my face, it was covered in blood, and I realised I had been injured.”

Mohammed Ayed, who witnessed the attack, said the school was hit by two rockets. He said teams were still working in the rubble to rescue missing people or recover their remains.

“We have recovered two hands so far,” he said. “As you can see, these are children’s hands.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 64,368 Palestinians and wounded 162,776 since October 2023, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Thousands more remain buried under the rubble as famine continues to spread across the enclave.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, meanwhile, said at least five people, including three children, have starved to death in Gaza over the past day.

These figures bring the total number of malnutrition deaths in Gaza to 387, including 138 children, since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. Since the global hunger monitor, IPC, confirmed the famine in northern Gaza on August 22, at least 109 hunger-related deaths have been recorded, 23 of them children, the ministry added.

Academics, United Nations experts and leading rights groups have described the horrific Israeli atrocities in Gaza as a genocide.

Later on Sunday, United States President Donald Trump suggested that he put forward a new proposal to end the war in Gaza, calling it a “final warning” for Hamas.

The Palestinian group acknowledged receiving “ideas” from the US, saying that it welcomes any efforts to reach a lasting ceasefire.

US president claims Israel accepted his terms to end the war in Gaza and issues ‘last warning’ for Hamas.

Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has suggested that he put forward a new proposal to end the war in Gaza, saying that Israel has accepted his terms as it pushes on with its brutal assault on the Palestinian territory.

In a social media post on Sunday, Trump warned Hamas to accept his conditions, saying that he informed the group about the “consequences” of turning down the offer.

Throughout the 23-month war, US officials have repeatedly claimed that Israel has accepted ceasefire efforts – all while Israeli leaders vow publicly to intensify their offensive, which leading rights groups and scholars have described as a genocide.

“Everyone wants the Hostages HOME. Everyone wants this War to end!” Trump wrote in a social media post.

“The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well. I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

It remains unclear what Trump’s terms entail.

But Trump has previously issued similar verbal warnings to Hamas and predicted that the war would end soon. On August 25, the US president said he thinks the war would come to a “conclusive ending” within three weeks.

Later on Sunday, Hamas confirmed receiving “ideas” from the US for ending the war.

“Hamas welcomes any initiative that helps in the efforts to stop the aggression against our people,” the group said.

“We affirm our immediate readiness to sit at the negotiation table to discuss the release of all prisoners in exchange for a clear declaration to end the war, the full withdrawal from Gaza, and the formation of a committee to manage Gaza from Palestinian independents, who will immediately begin their work.”

Hamas has been calling for a ceasefire deal that would see a prisoner exchange to release Israeli captives in Gaza and a lasting end to the Israeli offensive.

The Palestinian group also said last month that it accepted a proposal presented by the mediators for a 60-day truce.

Trump’s statement comes as Israel steps up its campaign to capture Gaza City against the pleas of rights groups and Western officials.

The US president has been a staunch supporter of Israel. Last week, his administration imposed sanctions on Palestinian rights groups for cooperating with the International Criminal Court’s investigation into Israeli abuses.

Trump also previously called for removing all Palestinians from Gaza and turning the enclave into a US-owned “Riviera of the Middle East” – a plan that rights advocates decried as an ethnic cleansing push.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embraced Trump’s mass displacement proposal, presenting the push to ethnically cleanse Gaza as an effort to allow Palestinians to voluntarily leave the territory.

But legal scholars say that people have no real choice when they are under the threat of constant Israeli bombardment.

The Israeli campaign has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians and levelled most of the territory to the ground.

Holocaust Museum LA says the post was misinterpreted as a ‘political statement’ and promises to ‘do better’.

A Holocaust museum in Los Angeles is facing backlash after deleting an Instagram post that suggested the phrase “never again” should apply to all people – not just Jews.

The post, shared with Holocaust Museum LA’s 24,200 Instagram followers, read: “Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews.” The slogan “never again”, long associated with Holocaust remembrance, is also invoked more broadly as a pledge to prevent future genocides.

The Instagram message was initially praised online and interpreted by some as an acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering amid Israel’s war on Gaza, which numerous United Nations experts, scholars and rights groups have described as a genocide.

It was later deleted and replaced with a statement on Saturday saying the post had been misinterpreted.

“We recently posted an item on social media that was part of a pre-planned campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community that was easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East. That was not our intent,” it said.

Holocaust Museum LA also promised to “do better” and to “ensure that posts in the future are more thoughtfully designed and thoroughly vetted”.

The museum, which is currently closed for construction until June 2026, quickly faced criticism online after journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News reposted a screenshot of the deleted message, writing: “Speechless. No words for this.”

Yasmine Taeb, a human rights lawyer and progressive strategist, called the museum’s move “absolutely disgusting”, saying that the museum is “cowering under pressure” from pro-Israel voices.

“Countless genocide scholars and human rights organisations have confirmed what Israel is doing in Gaza is textbook definition of genocide,” Taeb told Al Jazeera.

“It’s appalling that a museum established for the purpose of educating the public about genocide and the Holocaust not only refuses to acknowledge the reality of Israel’s actions in Gaza, but [is] removing a social media post that merely stated that ‘never again’ is not intended for just Jews, in order for it to not be interpreted as a response to the genocide in Gaza.”

The original now-deleted post did not mention Gaza, but it faced a barrage of pro-Israel comments expressing disapproval, including some that called on donors to stop funding the institution.

By deleting the post and issuing the subsequent statement, the museum sparked accusations of backtracking on a universal anti-genocide principle.

“We live in a world where the Holocaust Museum has to aploogise and retract for simply appearing to sympathise with Palestinians,” Palestinian American activist and comedian Amer Zahr told Al Jazeera.

“If that does not illustrate the historic dehumanisation that Arab Americans have had to live with, I don’t know what does.”

Assal Rad, a researcher with the Arab Center Washington DC, called the controversy “unbelievable”.

“Palestinians are so dehumanized that they’re excluded from ‘never again,’ apparently their genocide is the exception,” Rad wrote on X.

Political commentator Hasan Piker also slammed the museum’s decision. “A real shame that even a tepid general anti-genocide statement was met with unimaginable resistance from Israel supporters,” he wrote in a social media post.

The Holocaust Museum LA did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The Israeli army has bombed another high-rise in Gaza City after telling Palestinian residents to evacuate or face being killed amid its ongoing siege and imposed mass starvation in the enclave.

The Israeli military designated more high-rise towers as targets in a map released on Saturday. Shortly after releasing the map, it bombed the 15-storey Soussi Tower, which is located opposite a building belonging to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood.

“These attacks are causing panic amongst the people, especially considering the time they are given to evacuate. Half an hour or an hour is not enough time for people to escape from these buildings,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said, reporting from Gaza City.

The Israeli military said in a statement, without offering evidence, that the buildings struck were used by Hamas to gather intelligence to monitor the locations of the Israeli army. It also said armed Palestinian groups planted “numerous explosive devices” and dug a tunnel in the area.

Gaza’s Government Media Office rejected the claims and called them “part of a systematic policy of deception used by the occupation to justify the targeting of civilians and infrastructure” and forcibly displace Palestinians from their homes. It said 90 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed by Israel.

The targeted buildings were near the 12-storey Mushtaha Tower, which on Friday was similarly bombed and razed to the ground, as Israel moves to seize Gaza City despite international criticism.

At least 68 Palestinians were killed and 362 wounded across the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military over the past day, the enclave’s Ministry of Health said on Saturday afternoon.

The toll includes 23 aid seekers killed and 143 wounded by Israeli forces. At least six more Palestinians also died of Israeli-induced starvation, bringing the total number of starvation deaths during nearly two years of war to 382, including 135 children.

At least 64,368 Palestinians have been killed and 162,367 wounded by Israel since the start of the war in the aftermath of the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Israel declares new ‘humanitarian zone’, bombs the area

Sources at Nasser Hospital, located in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, told Al Jazeera that at least two Palestinians were killed and many wounded in an Israeli air strike on a tent housing displaced people in the al-Mawasi area.

While this area was designated as a “humanitarian” or “safe” zone by the Israeli army early in the war, it has been repeatedly bombed, leading to the deaths of hundreds of displaced civilians.

Hours before the latest bombings, the Israeli army had announced the establishment of another similar zone in al-Mawasi, which runs along Gaza’s Mediterranean coast. It claimed the area will have infrastructure such as field hospitals, water lines, desalination facilities and food supplies.

Reporting from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said Palestinians do not trust the so-called humanitarian area as tents in similar zones have been attacked by Israel many times before and nowhere is safe.

But people in Gaza City have few options: If they stay, they risk being killed, and if they leave, they face dangers on the road and may have to spend considerable money to move their belongings south.

Those who have returned to their homes in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, where Israeli forces withdrew recently after weeks of ground assaults, have found everything they owned destroyed.

“What we have built in 50 years was flattened in five days,” resident Aqeel Kishko told Al Jazeera. “Nothing remains standing – buildings, roads and infrastructure. We are walking not only on ruins but also on dead bodies of our loved ones.”

Nohaa Tafish said it would be impossible for Gaza’s largest urban centre to be revived.

“What would people return to? There is nothing to return to,” she said.

Ahmed Rihem also had his home in Gaza City reduced to rubble. “It is as if the entire Zeitoun neighbourhood was hit with a nuclear bomb,” he said.

It was my childhood dream to study medicine. I wanted to be a doctor to help people. I never imagined that I would study medicine not in a university, but in a hospital; not from textbooks, but from raw experience.

After I finished my BA in English last year, I decided to enrol in the medical faculty of al-Azhar University. I started my studies at the end of June. With all universities in Gaza destroyed, we, medical students, are forced to watch lectures on our mobile phones and read medical books under the light of our mobile phones’ flashlights.

Part of our training is to receive lectures from older medical students, who the genocidal war has forced into practice prematurely.

My first such lecture was by a fifth-year medical student called Dr Khaled at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.

Al-Aqsa looks nothing like a normal hospital. There are no spacious white rooms or privacy for the patients. The corridor is the room, patients lie on beds or the floor, and their groans echo throughout the building.

Due to the overcrowding, we have to take our lectures in a caravan in the hospital yard.

“I’ll teach you what I learned not from lectures,” Dr Khaled began, “but from days when medicine was [something] you had to invent.”

He started with basics: check breathing, open the airway, and perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). But soon, the lesson shifted into something no normal syllabus would have: how to save a life with nothing.

Dr Khaled told us about a recent case: a young man pulled from beneath the rubble – legs shattered, head bleeding. The standard protocol is to immobilise the neck with a stabiliser before moving the patient.

But there was no stabiliser. No splint. No nothing.

So Dr Khaled did what no medical textbook would teach: he sat on the ground, cradled the man’s head between his knees, and held it perfectly still for 20 minutes until equipment arrived.

“That day,” he said, “I wasn’t a student. I was the brace. I was the tool.”

While the supervising doctor was preparing the operating room, Dr Khaled did not move, even when his muscles began aching, because that was all he could do to prevent further injury.

This story was not the only one we heard from Dr Khaled about improvised medical solutions.

There was one which was particularly painful to hear.

A woman in her early thirties was brought into the hospital with a deep pelvic injury. Her flesh was torn. She needed urgent surgery. But first, the wound had to be sterilised.

There was no Betadine. No alcohol. No clean tools. Only chlorine.

Yes, chlorine. The same chemical that burns the skin and stings the eyes.

She was unconscious. There was no alternative. They poured the chlorine in.

Dr Khaled told us this story with a voice that trembled with guilt.

“We used chlorine,” he said, not looking at us. “Not because we didn’t know better. But because there was nothing else.”

We were shocked by what we heard, but perhaps not surprised. Many of us had heard stories of desperate measures doctors in Gaza had had to take. Many of us had seen the gut-wrenching video of Dr Hani Bseiso operating on his niece on a dining table.

Last year, Dr Hani, an orthopaedic surgeon from al-Shifa Medical Complex, found himself in an impossible situation when his 17-year-old niece, Ahed, was injured in an Israeli air strike. They were trapped in their apartment building in Gaza City, unable to move, as the Israeli army had besieged the area.

Ahed’s leg was mangled beyond repair and she was bleeding. Dr Hani did not have much choice.

There was no anaesthesia. No surgical instruments. Only a kitchen knife, a pot with a little water, and a plastic bag.

Ahed lay on the dining table, her face pale and eyes half-closed, while her uncle – his own eyes brimming with tears – prepared to amputate her leg. The moment was captured on video.

“Look,” he cried, voice breaking, “I am amputating her leg without anaesthesia! Where is the mercy? Where is humanity?”

He worked quickly, hands trembling but precise, his surgical training colliding with the raw horror of the moment.

This scene has been repeated countless times across Gaza, as even young children have had to go through amputations without anaesthesia. And we, as medical students, are learning that this could be our reality; that we, too, may have to operate on a relative or a child while watching and hearing their unbearable pain.

But perhaps the hardest lesson we are learning is when not to treat – when the wounds are beyond saving and resources must be spent on those who still have a chance of survival. In other countries, this is a theoretical ethical discussion. Here, it is a decision we need to learn how to make because we may soon have to make it ourselves.

Dr Khaled told us: “In medical school, they teach you to save everyone. In Gaza, you learn you can’t – and you have to live with that.”

This is what it means to be a doctor in Gaza today: to carry the inhuman weight of knowing you cannot save everyone and to keep going; to develop a superhuman level of emotional endurance to absorb loss after loss without breaking and without losing one’s own humanity.

These people continue to treat and teach, even when they are exhausted, even when they are starving.

One day, midway through a trauma lecture, our instructor, Dr Ahmad, stopped mid-sentence, leaned on the table, and sat down. He whispered, “I just need a minute. My sugar’s low.”

We all knew he hadn’t eaten since the previous day. The war is not only depleting medicine – it is consuming the very bodies and minds of those who try to heal others. And we, the students, are learning in real time that medicine here is not just about knowledge and skills. It is about surviving long enough to use them.

Being a doctor in Gaza means reinventing medicine every day with what is available to you, treating without tools, resuscitating without equipment, and bandaging with your own body.

It is not just a crisis of resources. It is a moral test.

And in that test, the wounds run deep – through flesh, through dignity, through hope itself.

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

Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank amid a sharp escalation of violence, following the country’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call this week to take over most of the territory.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the dead man as Ahmed Shehadeh, 57, saying he was killed on Friday by “occupation bullets” near the al-Murabba’a checkpoint south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian news agency Wafa cited Amid Ahmed, director of the Red Crescent’s Emergency and Ambulance Centre in Nablus, as saying Israeli soldiers prevented his crew from reaching the site of the shooting.

The Israeli military claimed in a statement that a man had “hurled a suspicious object” at soldiers operating near the checkpoint, after which they “eliminated” him.

Further south, troops carried out multiple raids in Bethlehem, with soldiers entering the Khalayel al-Louz area southeast of the city and setting up a military checkpoint, according to Wafa.

The news agency also reported raids on the villages of Artas and al-Ubayyat, where soldiers tore down posters of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.

In parallel, Israeli settlers wielding knives and sticks stormed the village of Khallet al-Dabaa in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron, injuring 20 people, including a three-month-old infant.

Palestinian activist Osama al-Makhmara told the Anadolu news agency that the injuries ranged from bruises and fractures to stab wounds, claiming that nine people were taken to hospital for treatment.

Four months ago, Israeli authorities demolished 25 homes, agricultural structures and water wells in the village, citing “unlicensed construction”.

Israel’s drive to expand illegal settlements in the West Bank was given renewed impetus by far-right finance minister and settler leader Smotrich, who said on Wednesday that Israel should annex roughly 82 percent of the West Bank.

Smotrich said he wanted “maximum territory and minimum [Palestinian] population” to be brought under Israeli sovereignty, “to remove, once and for all, a Palestinian state from the agenda”.

More than 700,000 settlers, or 10 percent of Israel’s population, live in 150 illegal settlements and 128 outposts spread across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Xavier Abu Eid, former communications director for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told Al Jazeera that Israeli flags and settlements were now visible across the 30-40km (18-25 miles) between Ramallah and Nablus.

“Clearly, the maps that were presented by Smotrich are being designed on the ground by settlers and the Israeli army,” he said.

‘Too little, too late’

Smotrich launched his maximalist campaign as France, Britain, Belgium, Australia and Canada pledged to formally recognise a Palestinian state during the United Nations General Assembly in New York later this month.

The diplomatic push comes as Israel mounts its full-scale offensive on Gaza City as part of takeover plans for the entire enclave, while accelerating its West Bank annexation plans in the background.

On Friday, Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen announced on X that her country would join the growing international drive for a two-state solution, which is being spearheaded by France and Saudi Arabia. She called it “the most significant international effort in years to create the conditions for a two-state solution”.

The previous day, Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo adopted a resolution saying that peaceful coexistence in the Middle East cannot be achieved while Israel “issues implicit threats to occupy or annex further Arab lands”.

The League said any lasting settlement must be based on a two-state solution and the 2022 Arab Peace Initiative, which offers a full normalisation of relations in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in 1967.

But the PLO’s Abu Eid told Al Jazeera that time was running out. “Many people feel that there is no longer a two-state solution to speak about, and perhaps this late international response recognising the state of Palestine is once again seen as too little, too late,” he said.

Mass arrests

As Israel grabs more Palestinian territory in the West Bank, its forces have ramped up their campaign of mass arrests, detaining at least 70 people across dozens of villages over the past week.

Wafa reported arrests in the town of Haris, near Salfit, where village council head Omar Samara, deputy head of the village council Tayseer Kulaib, and a “large number of villagers” were detained.

Troops also arrested a man in Qalqilya city as they raided family homes.

Israeli prison conditions for Palestinians have long been described by rights groups as harsh and degrading, with reports of medical neglect and abuse.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office issued a statement on Bilal Barghouti, a 39-year-old from Beit Rima serving a life sentence in Israel’s Gilboa prison, describing the conditions in which he was being kept as “slow murder and systematic torture”.

Former detainees have said Barghouti, who suffers from a range of chronic illnesses, has lost a lot of weight, has been barred from visits, and subjected to beatings, insults and scalding with hot water.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said on Friday that Israeli forces had made more than 19,000 arrests – including at least 585 women and 1,550 children – across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since the war on Gaza started.

It said the figure does not include arrests in Gaza itself, where the number is believed to be in the thousands, according to its statement carried by news agency Wafa.

The society also reported 77 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody, including 46 from Gaza. The bodies of 74 of those who died remain withheld by Israel, alongside at least 85 other prisoners whose remains are being kept from their families.

Egypt says forced Palestinian displacement a ‘red line’ as Qatar calls it a ‘extension’ of Israel’s policy of violating Palestinian rights.

Egypt and Qatar have expressed strong condemnation over remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the displacement of Palestinians, including through the Rafah crossing.

In a statement on Friday, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the comments as part of “ongoing attempts to prolong escalation in the region and perpetuate instability while avoiding accountability for Israeli violations in Gaza”.

In an interview with the Israeli Telegram channel Abu Ali Express, Netanyahu claimed there were “different plans for how to rebuild Gaza” and alleged that “half of the population wants to leave Gaza”, claiming it was “not a mass expulsion”.

“I can open Rafah for them, but it will be closed immediately by Egypt,” he said.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry reiterated its “categorical rejection of forcibly or coercively displacing Palestinians from their land”.

“[Egypt] stresses that these practices represent a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and amount to war crimes that cannot be tolerated,” the ministry added.

The statement affirmed that Egypt will never be complicit in such practices nor act as a conduit for Palestinian displacement, describing this as a “red line” that cannot be crossed.

‘Collective punishment will not succeed’

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry also fiercely criticised Netanyahu’s remarks, calling them an “extension of the occupation’s approach to violating the rights of the brotherly Palestinian people”.

“The policy of collective punishment practised by the occupation against the Palestinians … will not succeed in forcing the Palestinian people to leave their land or in confiscating their legitimate rights,” it said in a statement.

It stressed the need for the international community to “unite with determination to confront the extremist and provocative policies of the Israeli occupation, in order to prevent the continuation of the cycle of violence in the region and its spread to the world”.

The war of words comes as Egypt and Qatar continue to lead mediation efforts between Hamas and Israel, seeking to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the coastal enclave.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, said Netanyahu’s comments were “incredibly controversial” since it’s the Israeli government which has outlined that “it wants the Palestinians out of Gaza”.

“The condemnation from both Qatar and Egypt is essentially telling Israel this is all a part of its larger plan, that Israel is the one that waged war on the Gaza Strip, that the continuation of crimes against the Palestinian people and the total closure of the Rafah border crossing is the reason why they’re imprisoned in Gaza, not because of anything else,” she said.

“It is Israel that single-handedly created this policy.”

An unofficial tribunal led by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the UK of aiding Israel’s war crimes and being complicit in genocide. Its findings carry no legal weight, but the testimonies of those who witnessed the suffering in Gaza have been stark.

Israeli forces attacked and destroyed the 12-storey Mushtaha tower in Gaza City on Friday after giving just 15 minutes’ warning for people to evacuate the area. The building is located near to a displacement camp where Palestinians are sheltering in tents.

Al-Haq, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al-Mezan targeted for engaging with ICC, state department says.

The United States has added three prominent Palestinian rights groups, Al-Haq, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights to its sanctions list.

The groups were added to the Department of the Treasury’s “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List” on Thursday.

In a subsequent statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the rights groups were targeted for having “directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent”.

The Trump administration had previously sanctioned the ICC in response to its investigation and subsequent arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.

All three groups had provided evidence on Israeli abuses in the case.

“The United States will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to protect our troops, our sovereignty, and our allies from the ICC’s disregard for sovereignty, and to punish entities that are complicit in its overreach,” Rubio said.

We condemn in the strongest terms the draconian sanctions imposed by The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on our organisations: @alhaq_org , @AlMezanCenter & @pchrgaza/1

— Al-Haq الحق (@alhaq_org) September 4, 2025

The Ramallah-based Al-Haq has been a leading organisation both in the occupied Palestinian territory and internationally seeking accountability for Israeli abuses, while leading litigation in several countries.

The Gaza City-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights have been leading independent organisation that have documented Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

In a statement shared by all three organisations, they condemned “in the strongest terms the draconian sanctions” imposed by the Trump administration.

“These measures in times of live genocide against our People, is a coward[ly], immoral, illegal and undemocratic act,” the statement said.

“Only states with complete disregard to international law and our shared humanity can take such heinous measures against human rights orgs working to end a genocide,” the statement said.

The U.S. just sanctioned three of the most prominent Palestinian human rights groups: @alhaq_org, @pchrgaza, and @AlMezanCenter.

Shameful but not surprising.

This administration bends over backwards to put Israel First every time. pic.twitter.com/ocXBYJllki

— Mohsen Farshneshani (@mFarshneshani) September 4, 2025

In a post on the social media platform X, Mohsen Farshneshani, a sanctions lawyer and advisor at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), described the organisations as “three of the most prominent Palestinian human rights groups”.

“Shameful but not surprising,” Farshneshani wrote. “This administration bends over backwards to put Israel First every time.”

The US previously sanctioned the Ramallah-based Addameer, a human rights organisation focused on Palestinian prisoners and detainees, in June.

At the time, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which both work closely with the group, said the sanctions “would make day-to-day operations harder and harder, including for their employees, assisted communities and service suppliers. This will also negatively affect their engagement with their partner organizations, locally and internationally, including US-based groups”.

“The US is using its sanctions regime to do the bidding of the Israeli government, which has long systematically sought to muzzle human rights reporting and advocacy,” it added.

In July, the Trump administration also sanctioned the Palestinian Authority (PA), which administers the occupied West Bank, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which represents Palestinians internationally.

At the same time, the Trump administration has revoked sanctions imposed under former US President Joe Biden on Israelis from illegal settlements and organisations accused of violence.

A film about Hind Rajab, the five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, received a record-breaking 23-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ recounts her final plea to rescuers before she was killed.

Dr Mimi Syed, a US emergency physician, joins Centre Stage to talk about the horrific reality she witnessed during her two trips to Gaza in 2024. She shares evidence she says indicates the Israeli military is deliberately targeting children, the stories she carries from the patients and families she met and explains why she believes the US is no longer merely an accessory to Israel’s war on Gaza— but fully complicit.

There was a 23-minute standing ovation along with chants of ‘Free Palestine’ at the Venice Film Festival premiere of The Voice of Hind Rajab, a film recounting the harrowing final moments of a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

The Israeli military has continued its intense assault on northern Gaza City with a series of deadly overnight attacks.

UK police were recorded arresting a Palestine Action supporter for allegedly taking part in a Zoom meeting to plan a protest against the government’s designation of the group as a “terrorist” organisation.

If being forcibly displaced from their destroyed homes and neighbourhoods wasn’t bad enough, Palestinians in Gaza are facing crippling financial costs of complying with Israel’s displacement orders. Al Jazeera’s Moath Al-Kahlout breaks it down.