Palestine

The highest number of attacks on aid workers was in Palestinian territory, followed by Sudan, the UN says.

United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher has issued a “shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy” as he has shared statistics on the killing of 383 aid workers last year worldwide, nearly half in Gaza.

Marking World Humanitarian Day on Tuesday, Fletcher said the killings rose by 31 percent from the year before, “driven by the relentless conflicts in Gaza, where 181 humanitarian workers were killed, and in Sudan, where 60 lost their lives”.

“Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve,” Fletcher said. “Attacks on this scale with zero accountability are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy.”

The UN said most of those killed were local staff and were either attacked in the line of duty or in their homes.

“As the humanitarian community, we demand – again – that those with power and influence act for humanity, protect civilians and aid workers and hold perpetrators to account,” said Fletcher, who is the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

This year’s toll

The Aid Worker Security Database, which has compiled UN reports since 1997, said the number of killings rose from 293 in 2023.

Provisional figures from the database for this year show 265 aid workers have been killed as of August 14.

One of the deadliest attacks this year took place in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when Israeli troops opened fire before dawn on March 23, killing 15 medics and emergency responders travelling in clearly marked vehicles.

The Israeli army drove bulldozers over the bodies and the emergency vehicles and buried them in a mass grave. UN and rescue workers were able to reach the site only a week later.

The UN reiterated that attacks on aid workers and their operations violate international humanitarian law and damage the lifelines sustaining millions of people trapped in war and disaster zones.

“Violence against aid workers is not inevitable. It must end,” Fletcher said.

Elsewhere

Lebanon, which Israel battered in a war with Hezbollah last year, saw 20 aid workers killed, compared with none in 2023.

Ethiopia and Syria each had 14 killings, about double their numbers in 2023, and Ukraine had 13 aid workers killed in 2024, up from six in 2023, according to the database.

Meanwhile, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) said it verified more than 800 attacks on healthcare in 16 territories so far this year with more than 1,110 health workers and patients killed and hundreds injured.

“Each attack inflicts lasting harm, deprives entire communities of lifesaving care when they need it the most, endangers healthcare providers and weakens already strained health systems,” the WHO said.

World Humanitarian Day marks the day in 2003 when UN rights chief Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other humanitarians were killed in a bombing of UN headquarters in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.

When I heard about the killing of Mohammed Noufal and his colleagues from Al Jazeera, my first thoughts were with his sister, Janat. I knew her vaguely in university; she is a polite girl with a beautiful smile, who was studying digital media at the Islamic University of Gaza and ran an online shop where she sold girls’ accessories.

She had already lost several members of her family when she received the news of her brother’s martyrdom. I thought of her and the devastating pain she must be in. I thought of how her story reflects the fate of so many Palestinian families who, over the past almost two years, have faced slow death, member by member.

On October 30, 2023, just three weeks after the start of the war, a missile struck Janat’s family house in Jabalia. She and her sisters and brothers survived, although Mohammed had serious injuries. Their aunt and uncle were killed.

A year later, on October 7, 2024, Omar, Janat’s eldest brother, was martyred while he was trying to rescue the injured from a bombed house; the Israeli army hit the same spot again, killing him.

Then, on June 22 of this year, her mother, Muneera, passed away. She was visiting relatives when the Israeli army bombarded the area. Muneera was hit by shrapnel; she arrived at the hospital still alive but passed away 39 hours later.

On August 10, Israel bombed a media tent near al-Shifa Hospital, killing Janat’s brother Mohammed and six other journalists.

Now, Janat has only her father Riyad, her brother Ibrahim and her sisters Ola, Hadeel, Hanan left.

“[When] my older brother Omar passed away, we heard our father groan and say, “You’ve broken my back, oh God,” Janat told me when I reached out to her.

“When we lost my mother Muneera, my father said in a hoarse voice, ‘We have been struck down’,” she continued.

“When my brother Mohammed, the journalist, was martyred, he said nothing. He didn’t scream, he didn’t cry, he didn’t utter a word. And that’s when fear began to creep into my heart … I feared that his silence might break him forever. I feared his stillness more than I feared his grief.”

After Mohammed was martyred, Janat tried to convince her brother Ibrahim to leave his work as a journalist, because she was afraid for him. He was the last one left to support her, their father, and her sisters. But he refused, saying that nothing would befall them except what God had written for them. He told her that he wanted to follow the legacy of their martyred brother and his colleagues.

For Janat, the pain of losing her loved ones has become unbearable. “Whenever we thought we could breathe a little, the next loss would bring us back to the same darkness. Fear is no longer a passing feeling, but a constant companion, watching us from every corner of our lives. Loss has become part of our existence, and grief has settled into the details of daily life, in every paused smile and every prolonged silence,” she told me.

Her words echo the suffering of so many families here in Gaza.

According to the Government Media Office, as of March this year, 2,200 Palestinian families were completely wiped out from the civil registry, all of their members killed. More than 5,120 families had only one member left.

Palestinian families are constantly under the threat of extinction with each wave of bombing.

My own relatives have also been erased from the civil registry. My father, Ghassan, had eight cousins – Mohammed, Omar, Ismail, Firas, Khaled, Abdullah, Ali, and Marah – who formed a large branch of our extended family. After the outbreak of war, we began losing them one after another. Each loss left a new void, as if we were being pulled into a spiral of recurring grief.

Only the wives of Omar and Ismail and their two children remain now. My father carries this immense pain quietly, holding his sorrow deep inside.

Today, we face another Israeli offensive on northern Gaza. Last year, the Israeli onslaught killed tens of thousands. Those who defied forced displacement to the south paid a heavy price.

Many of us who have lost loved ones do not want to live through the horror again. Last year, my family stayed in the north, but we are now exhausted. We are worn out from the bombing, death, and terror we experienced. We will leave this time. Janat’s family, who proudly held on to their half-destroyed home in Jabalia, will also leave.

We have experienced atrocities that no human being can endure. We cannot take any more death.

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

A Hamas source told Al Jazeera the group has agreed terms for a ceasefire in Gaza, as a step towards ending the war. The plan calls for a 60-day pause in fighting and the release of half of Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Al Jazeera’s Hamda Salhut reports.

More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in its nearly two-year genocidal war on Gaza, with the population suffering relentless bombardment with nowhere safe in the besieged enclave, Israeli-induced starvation and the daily killing of people desperately seeking food for their families.

Israel is intensifying strikes on Gaza City, the territory’s largest – and now destroyed – urban centre, as it plans to seize it and forcibly displace tens of thousands of people to concentration zones in the south. At least 26 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday, including 14 seeking aid.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, says, “Israeli attacks are still ongoing, unabated, in the eastern part of Gaza City. The scale of attacks illustrates how Israel’s current strategy is shaping the geography and demography of Gaza.”

“We can see how Israel is using heavy artillery, fighter jets and drones, in order to destroy what’s left of residential homes there. The scale of destruction is extremely overwhelming,” he said.

“This current military tactic ensures that Israel will enable its forces to operate on the ground and will also ensure residential areas turn into zones of rubble. People there say Israeli attacks are happening day and night.”

Many who have already been displaced multiple times during the war by Israeli bombardment are on the move again from Gaza City. Others are staying put.

The city was the main target of air attacks on Sunday that killed nearly 60 people, and Israel is also targeting the few remaining healthcare centres there.

But while many Palestinians who remain in the devastated city are forced to survive in the ruins of buildings, makeshift shelters, or tents, some people have told Al Jazeera that it would be impossible for them to leave.

“How am I supposed to even get there? How can I go? I need nearly $900 to move – I don’t even have a dollar. How am I supposed to reach the south?” asked displaced Palestinian man Bilal Abu Sitta.

Others do not trust Israeli promises of aid and shelter. “We don’t want Israel to give us anything,” Noaman Hamad said. “We want them to [allow] us back to the homes we fled – we don’t need more than that.”

Slight hope emerged as Hamas said it approved a Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward yesterday by mediators Qatar and Egypt. An informed source told Al Jazeera that the draft deal would ensure a 60-day truce that would see the release of half of the Israeli captives held in Gaza as well as an unspecified number of Palestinian captives imprisoned by Israel.

But Palestinians in Gaza have seen countless false dawns before, and after a brief ceasefire in January was shattered by Israel in March, the war then entered its most grim phase of human misery.

‘Israel carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation’

Gaza’s Health Ministry says five more Palestinians have died from malnutrition as a result of Israel’s punishing monthslong blockade in the past 24 hours, including two children.

As of August 18, the known number of people who have starved to death in Gaza, according to the ministry, reached at least 263 people, including 112 children.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) warned that as of July 2025, more than 320,000 children – the entire population under the age of five in Gaza – are at risk of acute malnutrition.

Families are surviving on the bare minimum of basic foods, with almost no dietary diversity, WFP said. The agency called for an immediate ceasefire to allow large-scale delivery of humanitarian aid.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says children in Gaza should be preparing for the new school year, but instead are searching for water, queuing for food, and living in classrooms turned into overcrowded shelters.

UNRWA warned that children in the enclave have already lost three years of schooling, risking becoming a “lost generation”, and renewed its call for an immediate ceasefire.

Amnesty International has condemned Israel “systematically destroying the health, wellbeing and social fabric of Palestinian life”. In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

In the meantime, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says its staff in Gaza are witnessing a surge in mass casualties linked to Israel’s ongoing siege and its oversight of limited distribution of aid by the controversial, US- and Israel-backed aid organisation GHF.

“The indiscriminate killings, and the counts of mass casualties we still [see] on a daily basis right now, hasn’t stopped, but only increased in its scale,” said Nour Alsaqqa of MSF.

She said one MSF facility in Rafah, located near an aid distribution centre, has been overwhelmed with wounded Palestinians, including children.

“We are receiving baby injuries and killings from the distribution sites. People who are coming with gunshots, with different injuries, related to the distribution sites and they go only seeking food,” she said.

“They go out of desperation and they risk their lives to access aid, which is still inaccessible due to Israel’s siege.”

Since the establishment of the GHF aid sites at the end of May, nearly 2,000 people have been killed while trying to access aid, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The government of the United Kingdom has warned Irish novelist Sally Rooney against funding Palestine Action after she pledged support to the campaign group banned by the Labour-led government as a “terrorist” group last month.

The prime minister’s office said on Monday that “support for a proscribed organisation is an offence under the Terrorism Act” and warned against backing such organisations.

“There is a difference between showing support for a proscribed organisation, which is an offence under the Terrorism Act, and legitimate protest in support of a cause,” a spokesperson was quoted by PA Media.

In an opinion piece in the Irish Times on Saturday, Rooney, the author of best-selling novels such as Normal People and Conversations with Friends, criticised the government’s move to ban the pro-Palestinian group.

“Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation,” she wrote in the article.

Palestine Action was banned after its activists broke into a military base in central England in June and sprayed red paint on two planes in protest against the UK’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children.

What’s Palestine Action?

Since its founding in 2020, Palestine Action has disrupted the arms industry in the UK with “direct action”. It says it is “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.

Israel has been accused of widespread abuses in its 22 months of war on Gaza. The International Court of Justice in January 2024 said Israeli actions in Gaza were plausibly genocide. Since then, multiple rights organisations have called Israel’s war a genocide. In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.

Rooney said she chose the Dublin-based newspaper to publicise her intention rather than a UK one as doing so “would now be illegal” in Britain after the government banned Palestine Action.

“The UK’s state broadcaster … regularly pays me residual fees. I want to be clear that I intend to use these proceeds of my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can,” she wrote.

Hundreds arrested

More than 700 supporters of Palestine Action have been arrested in the UK, mostly at demonstrations, since the group was outlawed under the Terrorism Act 2000.

“I feel obliged to state once more that like the hundreds of protesters arrested last weekend, I too support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it,” Rooney said.

The spokesperson from the prime minister’s office said Palestine Action was proscribed “based on security advice following serious attacks the group has committed, following an assessment made by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre”.

The government ban on Palestine Action came into force on July 5, days after it took responsibility for a break-in at an air force base in southern England that caused an estimated 7 million pounds ($9.3m) of damage to two aircraft.

The group said its activists were responding to Britain’s indirect military support for Israel during the war in Gaza.

Being a member of Palestine Action or supporting the group is now a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. It places the campaign group on the same legal footing as ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda.

More than 500 people were arrested at a protest in London’s Parliament Square on August 9 for displaying placards backing the group. The number is thought to be the highest ever recorded number of detentions at a single protest in the capital.

At least 60 of them are due to face prosecution, police said.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has defended the proscription of the group, stating: “UK national security and public safety must always be our top priority.”

“The assessments are very clear – this is not a nonviolent organisation,” she said.

In her article, Rooney accused the UK government of “willingly stripping its own citizens of basic rights and freedoms, including the right to express and read dissenting opinions, in order to protect its relationship with Israel”.

Previous indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, facilitated by mediators, ended without any results to end the Israel-Palestine war.

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani has held talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to discuss a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, as Israel intensifies its offensive to seize Gaza City.

“El-Sisi and the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Qatar stressed the importance of efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement in Gaza,” according to a statement by the Egyptian presidency on Monday.

The two leaders “affirmed their rejection of the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and the displacement of Palestinians”, as Israel plans to seize Gaza City and force Palestinians from the enclave’s main urban centre. They also insisted that establishing a Palestinian state is “the path to peace”.

A source told Al Jazeera that “intensive discussions” are currently taking place in Egypt between a Hamas delegation and mediators. Hamas, which governs Gaza, has been calling for a ceasefire, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rebuffed the offer.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been mediating between Israel and Hamas since the beginning of the war in Gaza that has killed 62,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children.

Efforts by mediators have so far failed to secure a lasting ceasefire in the ongoing war, which over more than 22 months has created a dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

A truce brokered by Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators that came into force in January was broken by Israel in March. Since then, it has imposed a total blockade, causing famine and starvation. More than 260 Palestinians have died due to the Israeli-induced starvation crisis.

The latest round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas, facilitated in Doha by mediators, lasted for several weeks before ending on July 25 without any results.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, visiting the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Monday, said that Qatar’s prime minister was visiting “to consolidate our existing common efforts in order to apply maximum pressure on the two sides to reach a deal as soon as possible”.

Alluding to the dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip, where United Nations agencies and aid groups have warned of a humanitarian crisis, Abdelatty stressed the urgency of reaching an agreement.

“The current situation on the ground is beyond imagination,” he said.

Thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee again from Gaza City ahead of an impending Israeli offensive.

‘Genocides don’t end through negotiated solutions’

Commenting on the Qatari prime minister’s trip to Egypt, Abdullah Al-Arian, an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, said it was important to remember that similar negotiations have occurred before, but it is “a lack of Israeli political will” that has ultimately stalled them.

Israel “has continued to pursue this genocide and taking it to new, horrific, unprecedented levels”, he told Al Jazeera, adding that there has been a lack of international pressure to secure a ceasefire agreement.

“Historically, genocides don’t end through negotiated solutions … They end usually because the party that committed the genocide is forced to end it, usually through external pressure, external intervention of some kind, and that has not happened yet,” the academic stressed.

On Monday, human rights group Amnesty International accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza as the UN and aid groups continued to warn of famine in the Palestinian enclave.

In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

The UN and the international community have been slamming Israel for blocking necessary aid from entering the war-torn enclave.

The human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza as the United Nations and aid groups warn of famine in the Palestinian enclave.

In a report quoting displaced Palestinians and medical staff who have treated malnourished children, Amnesty said: “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

The group accused Israel of “systematically destroying the health, wellbeing and social fabric of Palestinian life”.

“It is the intended outcome of plans and policies that Israel has designed and implemented, over the past 22 months, to deliberately inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction – which is part and parcel of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” Amnesty said.

Israel has killed nearly 62,000 Palestinians and turned Gaza into rubble since it launched its military offensive on October 7, 2023. Campaigners and rights organisations have called it a war of vengeance and identified Israeli actions as a genocide.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes .

The report is based on interviews conducted in recent weeks with 19 displaced Palestinians in Gaza sheltering in three makeshift camps as well as two medical staff members in two hospitals in Gaza City.

“I fear miscarriage, but I also think about my baby. I panic just thinking about the potential impact of my own hunger on the baby’s health, its weight, whether it will have [birth defects] and, even if the baby is born healthy, what life awaits it, amid displacement, bombs, tents,” Hadeel, 28, a mother of two who is four months pregnant, was quoted as saying in the report.

A 75-year-old woman told Amnesty International that she wishes to die. “I feel like I have become a burden on my family. … I always feel like these young children, they are the ones who deserve to live, my grandchildren. I feel like I’m a burden on them, on my son,” Aziza said.

Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty International, said in a statement: “As Israeli authorities threaten to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza City, the testimonies we have collected are far more than accounts of suffering, they are a searing indictment of an international system that has granted Israel a license to torment Palestinians with near-total impunity for decades.”

Nearly one million Palestinians in Gaza City, many of whom have been displaced multiple times in the past two years, face forced displacement as Israel has intensified its attacks on the enclave’s main urban centre.

Call for truce

Rosas called for “an immediate, unconditional lifting of the blockade and a sustained ceasefire” for reversing “the devastating consequences of Israel’s inhumane policies and actions” in Gaza.

Rosas concluded: “The impact of Israel’s blockade and its ongoing genocide on civilians, particularly on children, people with disabilities, those with chronic illnesses, older people and pregnant and breastfeeding women is catastrophic and cannot be undone by simply increasing the number of aid trucks or restoring performative, ineffective and dangerous airdrops of aid.”

The Israeli military and Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not make statements about Amnesty’s findings at the time of publication.

Israel, while heavily restricting aid allowed into the Gaza Strip, has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation.

More than 250 Palestinians, including 110 children, have died of malnutrition during the war due to the Israeli blockade. The enclave – home to 2.1 million people – had already been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007, but since the war began, Israel has tightened it, at times stopping all aid from entering and now allows only a trickle of supplies into the Strip.

In a report issued last week, the Israeli military body overseeing civil affairs in Palestinian territory rejected claims of widespread malnutrition in Gaza despite widespread condemnation from the UN and the international community in general.

‘Famine unfolding before our eyes’

Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan and several of their European allies have called on Israel to allow unrestricted aid into Gaza, stressing that the humanitarian crisis has reached “unimaginable levels”.

“Famine is unfolding before our eyes. Urgent action is needed now to halt and reverse starvation,” the foreign ministers of about two dozen countries and the European Union’s top diplomat said in a joint statement last week.

In April, Amnesty accused Israel of committing a “livestreamed genocide” against Palestinians by forcibly displacing Palestinians in Gaza and creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged territory, claims that Israel dismissed at the time as “blatant lies”.

The US State Department has stopped all visitor visas for Palestinians arriving for urgent medical treatment from Gaza while it ‘reviews’ how approvals are handled. Aid groups have slammed the decision saying it blocks critically ill children from receiving life-saving treatment in the US.

Israel’s military has stepped up attacks on Gaza City as part of its expanded operations aimed at seizing the last major population centre in the enclave, forcing tens of thousands of starving Palestinians to flee again.

The Gaza City neighbourhoods of Zeitoun, Sabra, Remal and Tuffah have particularly borne the brunt of the Israeli bombardments in recent days as a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israel’s plans to forcibly displace Palestinians to southern Gaza would increase their suffering.

Thousands of families have fled Zeitoun, where days of continuous strikes have left the neighbourhood devastated. At least seven people were killed on Sunday when an Israeli air strike hit al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.

Also on Sunday, the Israeli military said tents and equipment to erect shelters will be provided to the Palestinians who have been displaced multiple times in 22 months of war, which has been called an act of genocide by multiple rights organisations.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said artillery fire and air raids have forced many from their homes.

“The Zeitoun neighbourhood is a very densely populated area, home to many families, including those who have been sheltering there. Residents were surprised when the artillery shelling and the intensive air raids started. Some people stayed. Others started moving. As the violence escalated, many were forced to evacuate – hungry, devastated and displaced yet again, leaving behind everything they had,” Khoudary said.

‘New wave of genocide’

Israel last week announced plans to push deeper into Gaza City and remove its residents to the south, a move that has drawn international condemnation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, said civilians would be moved to “safe zones” even though these areas have also been repeatedly bombed.

Nearly 90 percent of the 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza remain displaced, and an overwhelming number of them are now facing starvation. At least seven more Palestinians died of starvation in Gaza in 24 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday, raising the war’s hunger-related death toll to 258, including 110 children, as a result of Israel’s ongoing siege of the enclave.

On Sunday, Israel killed nearly at least 57 Palestinians, 38 of them aid seekers, taking the total number of Palestinians killed since the war began in October 2023 to nearly 62,000.

Hamas denounced Israel’s plan to set up tents in the south as a cover for mass displacement.

The group said in a statement that the measure amounted to a “new wave of genocide and displacement” and described it as a “blatant deception intended to cover up a brutal crime that the occupation forces prepare to execute”.

There was an atmosphere of despair in Gaza after Israel’s latest forced displacement order, Maram Humaid, Al Jazeera’s online correspondent from Gaza, posted on X.

“There are no words to describe how people in Gaza feel right now. Fear, helplessness, and pain fill everyone as they face a new wave of displacement and an Israeli ground operation,” she posted.

“Family and friends’ WhatsApp groups are full of silent screams and sorrow. God knows people have suffered enough. Our minds are almost paralysed from thinking.”

Displaced and desperate Palestinians are scrambling for scraps of food as they face more bombardment from Israeli forces.

The UN says one in five children in Gaza is malnourished as tens of thousands rely on charity kitchens, whose small portions of food can be their only meal of the day.

“I came at 6am to the charity kitchen to get food for my children, and if I don’t get any now, I have to come back in the evening for another chance,” said Zeinab Nabahan, displaced from the Jabalia refugee camp, told Al Jazeera.

“My children are starving on small amounts of lentils or rice. My children haven’t had bread or any breakfast. They’ve been waiting for me to leave with whatever I can get from the charity kitchen.”

Another resident, Tayseer Naim, told Al Jazeera that “had it not been for God and charity kitchens”, he would not have survived. “We come here at 8am and suffer to get lentils or rice. We suffer a lot, and we leave at midday and walk for about a kilometre.”

‘Man-made famine’

On Sunday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned that Gaza is facing a “man-made famine” and urged a return to a UN-led distribution system.

“We are very, very close to losing our collective humanity,” Juliette Touma, the agency’s communications director, said in a post on X.

She said the crisis had been fuelled by “deliberate attempts to replace the UN-coordinated humanitarian system through the politically motivated ‘GHF’.”

She warned the alternative system promoted by Israel and the United States “brings dehumanisation, chaos, and death” and stressed: “We must return to a unified, UN-led coordination and distribution system based on international humanitarian law. The abomination must end.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) says despite its teams “doing everything” to deliver food assistance in Gaza, current supplies only meet 47 percent of the intended target.

According to the UN agency, around 500,000 people are now on the “brink of famine”, and that only a ceasefire would allow food assistance to be scaled up to the required levels.

The Government Media Office in Gaza said Israel was deliberately starving Palestinians by blocking essential goods, including baby formula, nutritional supplements, meat, fish, dairy products, and frozen fruits and vegetables.

In a statement on Telegram, it said Israel was carrying out “a systematic policy of engineered starvation and slow killing against more than 2.4 million people in Gaza, including more than 1.2 million Palestinian children, in a complete crime of genocide”.

It warned that more than 40,000 infants face severe malnutrition while at least 100,000 other children and patients are in a similar condition.

Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera that aid workers were struggling to respond as resources collapse.

“We are trying to do our best. We are … part of this social fabric. We are linked to the people here, and we are staying with them while Israel threatens to apply its plans to forcibly evacuate Gaza City and destroy the rest of Gaza. There are 1.1 million people here, most of them elderly, women, children and people with disabilities,” Shawa said.

He said workers continued to provide limited meals, medical care and education but warned that “the humanitarian system is collapsing” as Israel strikes aid facilities and restricts supplies.

Exclusive footage newly obtained by Al Jazeera captures the harrowing moment an Israeli drone-fired missile killed a Palestinian girl carrying water in Jabalia, northern Gaza, in December 2024. Two men are later seen retrieving her body.

Thousands of protesters in Israel have taken to the streets demanding an end to the war in Gaza and a deal to free captives held there, as the military intensifies attacks on Gaza City to force tens of thousands of starving Palestinians to flee again.

Israeli schools, businesses and public transport have been shut down, with demonstrations planned in major cities as part of a national day of action by two groups representing a number of the families of captives and bereaved families.

Protesters, who fear further fighting could endanger the 50 captives believed to remain in Gaza, only about 20 of whom are thought to be alive, chanted: “We don’t win a war over the bodies of hostages.”

“Military pressure doesn’t bring hostages back – it only kills them,” former captive Arbel Yehoud said at a demonstration in Tel Aviv’s so-called “Hostage Square”. “The only way to bring them back is through a deal, all at once, without games.”

Police said they had arrested 32 as part of the nationwide demonstration – one of the fiercest since the uproar over six captives found dead in Gaza last September.

Sunday’s rallies came just days after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to advance on Gaza City, nearly two years into a genocidal war that has devastated the enclave, left much of its population on the brink of famine, and led to Israel being increasingly internationally isolated.

At Tel Aviv’s so-called “Hostage Square”, activists unfurled a huge Israeli flag covered with the faces of captives still held in Gaza. Protesters also blocked major roads, including the highway linking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where tyres were set alight and traffic came to a standstill, according to local reports.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents relatives of those held, declared a nationwide strike. “We will shut down the country today with one clear call: Bring back the 50 hostages, end the war,” the group said, pledging to escalate their campaign with a protest tent near the Gaza border.

“If we don’t bring them back now – we will lose them forever,” the group warned.

In Jerusalem, businesses closed as demonstrators joined marches. “It’s time to end the war. It’s time to release all of the hostages. And it’s time to help Israel recover and move towards a more stable Middle East,” said Doron Wilfand, a 54-year-old tour guide speaking to the AFP news agency.

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv that while protests were spread across the country, turnout remained relatively small.

“The number of people is pretty small … I do expect it to increase during the day,” he said, noting many shops, restaurants and universities were closed, with public transport running at half capacity. “It’s not a general strike in the sense that people envisage, but it is palpable, it’s tangible, you can feel it in the air.”

On Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the unrest, Pinkas was scathing. “Most prime ministers would have resigned after October 7th … He is not just another prime minister. He cares only about his survival. He is driven by some Messianic delusions of redrawing the Middle East.”

Pinkas added that Netanyahu was deflecting public anger by blaming “the elites” and a “deep-state cabal” rather than taking responsibility.

Israeli government condemns protests

President Isaac Herzog voiced support for the captives’ return, urging international pressure on Hamas rather than heeding calls to halt the war.

But senior government figures lashed out at the protests.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich denounced them as “a perverse and harmful campaign that plays into the hands of Hamas,” while Culture Minister Miki Zohar said blocking roads “is a serious mistake and a reward to the enemy”.

Police reinforced their presence across the country, warning that no “public order disturbances” would be tolerated. Demonstrations were also held near the Gaza border, including in Beeri, a kibbutz badly hit during the Hamas-led attack of October 2023. At least 1,139 people were killed in that attack that triggered what campaigners say is Israel’s war of vengeance. More than 61,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children, in an Israeli offensive that has been dubbed genocide by multiple rights groups.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yaov Gallant have been issued arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

Meanwhile, Egyptian officials said efforts were under way to broker a 60-day truce that would include captive releases. A previous round of talks in Qatar collapsed without progress. The last trace agreed to in January was broken by Israel in March.

Israel’s plan to expand the offensive into Gaza City has been met with international alarm, as United Nations-backed experts warn of famine across the territory.

Say you are the president of the United States and the relationship with a significant chunk of your political base has become less than blissfully harmonious. What do you do?

Well, one option is to stage a summit, accompanied by much fanfare, with the president of Russia, ostensibly in order to end that country’s war in Ukraine.

And this is precisely the manoeuvre that was pulled by US President Donald Trump, who on Friday rolled out the red carpet in Alaska for his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The short-lived encounter was ultimately anticlimactic, with Trump offering the incisive assessment that “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.”

Fox News reported that Trump had rated the much-anticipated meeting with Putin a “10” out of 10 and that he particularly “appreciated the Russian president’s comments when he claimed he would not have invaded Ukraine had Trump won the 2020 presidency”.

Fox went on to add that neither head of state had bothered to specify the “reasoning behind these comments”.

At any rate, the no-deal talks constituted a convenient distraction from current intra-MAGA strife, which owes to a couple of factors. There is, for example, the matter of the files relating to the late Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019.

When US Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed Trump in May on the Justice Department’s review of the content of the so-called “Epstein files”, she reportedly informed the president that his name appeared therein.

Despite having pledged while on the campaign trail to declassify the Epstein files, Trump changed tack earlier this year and angrily dismissed the investigation as a “hoax”. He went as far as to insult many of his Republican followers as “stupid” and “foolish” for continuing to insist that the Epstein details be released.

On July 12, the president took to social media with his signature preference for manic capitalisation to berate those demanding declassification: “We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.”

And yet this is not the only headache facing the “PERFECT Administration” from within Trump’s own MAGA base, many of whose prominent members have become vocally critical of Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, which Trump persists in aiding and abetting.

The genocide, which will mark its two-year anniversary in October, has officially killed nearly 62,000 Palestinians thus far – although the true death toll is undoubtedly many times higher. Apparently, Israel’s behaviour was entirely palatable to much of the US political establishment when it simply consisted of unending massacres, slaughtered and mutilated babies, bombed hospitals, and razed neighbourhoods.

Now that mass starvation has been visibly added to the genocidal mix, however, Israel seems to have crossed a red line even among formerly staunch devotees. As per Gaza’s Ministry of Health, the death toll from malnutrition has hit 251, including 108 children. Images of skeletal Palestinians have flooded the internet, and the United Nations World Food Programme has categorised food shortage in Gaza as “catastrophic”.

Furthermore, according to the UN, the Israeli military has killed at least 1,760 Palestinians since late May alone, as they sought aid, including at sites run by the nefarious so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Backed by the US and Israel, the GHF has not only served Israel’s plans for mass displacement and forced eviction of Palestinians; the aid distribution hubs have also functioned as a sort of one-stop shop for indiscriminate killing – which, after all, is the whole point of genocide.

And while Trump has intermittently chided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the disagreeable optics of the whole spectacle, it has not been sufficient to appease the scrutiny of the likes of right-wing US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a traditional ally of the president known for such antics as wearing a hat imprinted with the words “Trump Was Right About Everything!”

In a social media post last month, Greene – a leading figure in Trump’s MAGA movement – was unexpectedly explicit in her condemnation of “the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza”. Other MAGA fixtures like far-right influencer Laura Loomer – a self-defined “proud Islamophobe” and general bona fide sociopath – wasted no time in responding to Greene’s post: “There is no genocide in Gaza.”

Anyway, political tensions and infighting were at least temporarily removed from the spotlight by the Trump-Putin extravaganza in Alaska. It’s hardly the first time the old art of distraction has come in handy – Trump’s pal, Netanyahu, is the master of this trade. His commitment to waging genocide in Gaza has more than a little to do with his desire to stave off domestic opposition and avoid dealing with the assorted corruption charges in which he is presently embroiled.

And while the Alaskan red-carpet stunt provided little to write home about, distraction may yet prevail as folks ponder what the hell that was all about.

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

Heavy Israeli air strikes have hit a home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, where shrapnel from another attack wounded a child. Israel’s military is intensifying its bombardment following its plan to take over Gaza City and forcibly displace Palestinians south.

Israel has announced preparations to forcibly evacuate Palestinians from “combat zones” to southern Gaza from Sunday, days after it announced a new offensive to seize control of Gaza City, the enclave’s largest urban centre.

The army’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on Saturday that residents would be provided with tents and other shelter equipment transported through the Karem Abu Salem, or Kerem Shalom, crossing by the United Nations and international relief organisations.

The UN has not commented on the plan or on its alleged role in providing humanitarian assistance.

The statement comes less than a week since Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the military had been given the green light to “dismantle” what he described as two remaining Hamas strongholds: Gaza City in the north and al-Mawasi further to the south.

The army has not specified whether the shelter equipment was intended for Gaza City’s population, estimated at around one million people presently, and whether the site to which they will be relocated in southern Gaza would be the area of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

The UN did not immediately comment on the Israeli announcement, however, it warned on Thursday that thousands of families already enduring appalling humanitarian conditions could be pushed over the edge if the Gaza City plan moves ahead.

The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, described the military’s announcement as “part of its brutal attack to occupy Gaza City” and “a blatant and brazen mockery of international conventions.”

“Forcing people to flee amidst starvation, massacres, and displacement is an ongoing crime against humanity. Criminal behaviour in Gaza is inseparable from the daily crimes committed by the occupation in the occupied West Bank,” the group said in a statement.

Israeli forces have increased operations on the outskirts of Gaza City over the past week. Residents in the neighbourhoods of Zeitoun and Shujayea have reported heavy Israeli aerial and tank fire.

An Israeli drone targeted a group of people in the Asqaula area of the Zeitoun neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, killing two and wounding several others, the Wafa news agency said.

Another person was killed and three were injured when a house near the al-Alami Mosque on az-Zarqa Street, also in eastern Gaza City, was hit.

The tented encampment of al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza, also came under attack on Saturday. An Israeli air raid killed Motasem al-Batta, his wife and their baby daughter in their tent. The area was designated a so-called “humanitarian”, or “safe”, zone early in the war, but it has nonetheless repeatedly come under attack.

A neighbour of the family, Fathi Shubeir, told The Associated Press that displaced civilians were living in the densely populated al-Mawasi area. Speaking of the baby girl, he said, “Two and a half months, what has she done?”

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,827 people since October 2023. Malnutrition has killed 251 people so far, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Eleven people, including a child, have starved to death in the past 24 hours, the ministry said on Saturday.

At Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, the lives of more than 200 patients were hanging by a thread, due to acute shortages of medicine and malnutrition.

Director Mohammed Abu Salmiya said the hospital was overcrowded with wounded patients amid relentless Israeli bombardments and doctors were performing an increasing number of amputations as they were unable to combat the infection of wounds.

According to the World Health Organisation, more than 14,800 patients need lifesaving medical care that is not available in Gaza. Yet, leaving the Strip is not always enough to save a life.

Twenty-year-old Marah Abu Zuhri arrived in Pisa on an Italian government humanitarian flight overnight on Wednesday while severely emaciated. The University Hospital of Pisa said she had a “very complex clinical picture” and serious wasting, before she was reported dead on Friday.

Director-General of Gaza’s Health Ministry Munir al-Bursh told Al Jazeera that 40,000 infants in the territory were suffering from severe malnutrition amid critical food shortages caused by Israel’s restrictions on aid into Gaza.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hind Khoudary said the reality of hunger in Gaza was “devastating.”

“Palestinians have no choice but to see their children die of malnutrition and starvation,” she said. “The latest to have died from hunger were siblings, aged 16 and 25, who died on the same day.”

According to Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, “only 10 percent” of the daily food supplies needed are entering the territory, “while the health system is collapsing day by day and our capacity is very limited”.

He said Israel’s war in Gaza destroyed its socioeconomic structure, leaving Palestinians in the territory “totally dependent on humanitarian aid”.

What is making it into the country is “a very limited amount, which is only to keep the people alive [at a] minimum level,” he added.

The United Nations has warned that levels of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at their highest since the war began.

The families of 50 Israeli captives still held in Gaza were shaken by the recent release of videos showing their emaciated relatives pleading for help and food.

A group representing the families urged Israelis into the streets on Sunday. “Across the country, hundreds of citizen-led initiatives will pause daily life and join the most just and moral struggle: the struggle to bring all 50 hostages home,” it said in a statement.

Netanyahu has rejected criticism that his plan to widen the military offensive would endanger the lives of the remaining captives. The mobilisation of forces is expected to take weeks, and the Israeli prime minister has defended his decision, saying he had “no choice” but to attack Hamas in Gaza.

State Department move comes as Israel’s war and induced-famine in Gaza reach new extremes, with 61,827 killed so far.

The United States has announced that it is halting all visitor visas for people from Gaza pending a “a full and thorough” review, a day after social media posts about Palestinian refugees sparked furious reactions from right-wingers.

The Department of State’s move on Saturday came a day after far-right activist and Trump ally Laura Loomer posted on X that Palestinians “who claim to be refugees from Gaza” entered the US via San Francisco and Houston this month.

“How is allowing for Islamic immigrants to come into the US America First policy?” she said on X in a later post, going on to report further Palestinian arrivals in Missouri and claiming that “several US Senators and members of Congress” had texted her to express their fury.

Republican lawmakers speaking publicly about the matter included Chip Roy of Texas, who said he would inquire about the matter, and Randy Fine of Florida, who described the alleged arrivals as a “national security risk”.

By Saturday, the State Department announced it was stopping visas for “individuals from Gaza” while it conducted “a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days”. It did not provide a figure.

All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days.

— Department of State (@StateDept) August 16, 2025

The US issued 640 visas to holders of the Palestinian Authority travel document in May, according to the Reuters news agency. B1/B2 visitor visas permit Palestinians to seek medical treatment in the US.

Loomer greeted Saturday’s State Department announcement with glee.

“It’s amazing how fast we can get results from the Trump administration,” she said on Saturday, though she later posted that more needed to be done to “highlight the crisis of the invasion happening in our country”.

While I appreciate the State Department and @marcorubio issuing this statement, I want to press even harder to highlight the crisis of the invasion happening in our country.

The visas and arrivals of GAZANS to US airports isn’t new. This has been drastically increasing in speed… https://t.co/mI5APTairz

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 16, 2025

The decision to cut visas comes as Israel intensifies its attacks on Gaza, where at least 61,827 people have been killed in the past 22 months, with the United Nations warning that “widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease” are driving a rise in famine-related deaths.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing to seize Gaza City as part of a takeover of the Strip, forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to concentration zones.

After Israel’s attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City, Palestinians say press vests now feel like a target.

Palestinian journalists have long known Gaza to be the most dangerous place on earth for media workers, but Israel’s latest attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City has left many reeling from shock and fear.

Four Al Jazeera staff were among seven people killed in an Israeli drone strike outside al-Shifa Hospital on August 10. The Israeli military has admitted to deliberately targeting the tent after making unsubstantiated accusations that one of those killed, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, was a member of Hamas.

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed at least 238 media workers since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. This toll is higher than that of World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan and the Yugoslavia wars combined.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud said, “Press vests and helmets, once considered a shield, now feel like a target.”

“The fear is constant — and justified,” Mahmoud said. “Every assignment is accompanied by the same unspoken question: Will [I] make it back alive?”

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists has been among several organisations denouncing Israel’s longstanding pattern of accusing journalists of being “terrorists” without credible proof.

“It is no coincidence that the smears against al-Sharif — who has reported night and day for Al Jazeera since the start of the war — surfaced every time he reported on a major development in the war, most recently the starvation brought about by Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient aid into the territory,” CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah said in the aftermath of Israel’s attack.

In light of Israel’s systematic targeting of journalists, media workers in Gaza are forced to make difficult choices.

“As a mother and a journalist, I go through this mental dissonance almost daily, whether to go to work or stay with my daughters and being afraid of the random shelling of the Israeli occupation army,” Palestinian journalist Sally Thabet told Al Jazeera.

Across the street from the ruins of the School of Media Studies at al-Quds Open University in Gaza City, where he used to teach, Hussein Saad has been recovering from an injury he sustained while running to safety.

“The deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists has a strong effect on the disappearance of the Palestinian story and the disappearance of the media narrative,” he said. Saad argued the Strip was witnessing “the disappearance of the truth”.

While journalists report on mass killings, human suffering and starvation, they also cope with their own losses and deprivation. Photographer and correspondent Amer al-Sultan said hunger was a major challenge.

“I used to go to work, and when I didn’t find anything to eat, I would just drink water,” he said. “I did this for two days. I had to live for two or three days on water. This is one of the most difficult challenges we face amid this war against our people: starvation.”

Journalist and film director Hassan Abu Dan said reporters “live in conditions that are more difficult than the mind can imagine.”

“You live in a tent. You drink water that is not good for drinking. You eat unhealthy food … We are all, as journalists, confused. There is a part of our lives that has been ruined and gone far away,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud said that despite the psychological trauma and the personal risks, Palestinian journalists continue to do their jobs, “driven by a belief that documenting the truth is not just a profession, but a duty to their people and history”.

A statement issued by the countries says the Israeli prime minister’s comments constitutes a direct threat to Arab national security and peace.

A coalition of Arab and Muslim nations has condemned “in the strongest terms” statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding his vision for a “Greater Israel”.

When interviewer Sharon Gal with the Israeli i24NEWS channel asked Netanyahu if he subscribed to a “vision” for a “Greater Israel”, Netanyahu said “absolutely”. Asked during the interview aired on Tuesday if he felt connected to the “Greater Israel” vision, Netanyahu said: “Very much.”

The “Greater Israel” concept supported by ultranationalist Israelis is understood to refer to an expansionist vision that lays claim to the occupied West Bank, Gaza, parts of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan.

“These statements represent a grave disregard for, and a blatant and dangerous violation of, the rules of international law and the foundations of stable international relations,” said a joint statement by a coalition of 31 Arab and Islamic countries and the Arab League.

“They also constitute a direct threat to Arab national security, to the sovereignty of states, and to regional and international peace and security,” the statement released on Friday said.

The signatories of the statement included the secretaries-general of the League of Arab States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The Arab and Islamic nations also condemned Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s announcement on Thursday to push ahead with settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

The statement said the move is “a blatant violation of international law and a flagrant assault on the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to realise their independent, sovereign state on the lines of June 4, 1967, with Occupied Jerusalem as its capital”.

The statement added that Israel has no sovereignty over occupied Palestinian territory.

Smotrich said he would approve thousands of housing units in a long-delayed illegal settlement project in the West Bank, saying the move “buries the idea of a Palestinian state”.

Last September, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling on Israel to end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories within 12 months.

The resolution backed an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the UN’s top court – which found that Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end. In January 2024, the ICJ said Israel was “plausibly committing genocide”. The top UN court has yet to announce its verdict in the case brought by South Africa.

Netanyahu and Smotrich made the remarks during Israel’s devastating 22-month war on Gaza, which has killed at least 61,827 people and wounded 155,275 people in the enclave.

Last week, Israel’s Security Cabinet approved Netanyahu’s plan to fully occupy Gaza City, and in Tuesday’s interview, Netanyahu also revived calls to “allow” Palestinians to leave Gaza, telling i24NEWS: “We are not pushing them out, but we are allowing them to leave.”

Campaigners said Netanyahu’s use of the word “leave” was a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza – home to 2.1 million people, most of whom are refugees and their descendants from the 1948 Nakba when more than 700,000 Palestinians were forced to flee from what became the state of Israel.

Past calls to resettle people from Gaza outside the war-battered territory, including from United States President Donald Trump, have sparked fears of forced displacement among Palestinians and condemnation from the international community.

In their statement on Saturday, the Islamic countries reiterated their “rejection and condemnation of Israel’s crimes of aggression, genocide, and ethnic cleansing” in Gaza and highlighted the need for a ceasefire in the enclave while “ensuring unconditional access to humanitarian aid to halt the systematic starvation policy used by Israel as a weapon of genocide”.

They also reaffirmed their “complete and absolute rejection of the displacement of the Palestinian people in any form and under any pretext” and called on the international community to pressure Israel to halt its aggression and fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

Since the controversial ban on July 7, more than 700 people have been detained at peaceful protests.

London’s Metropolitan Police say at least 60 people will face prosecution for “showing support” for Palestine Action, the activist group outlawed as a “terrorist organisation” last month for protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Three others have already been charged.

“We have put arrangements in place that will enable us to investigate and prosecute significant numbers each week if necessary,” the force said in a statement on Friday.

Since the controversial ban on July 7, more than 700 people have been detained at peaceful protests, including 522 arrested at a protest last weekend for holding signs backing the group, believed to be the largest number of arrests at a single protest in the capital’s history.

Critics, including the United Nations, Amnesty International and Greenpeace, have called the ban an overreach that risks stifling free speech.

Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said the latest decisions were the “first significant numbers” from recent demonstrations, adding: “Many more can be expected in the next few weeks. People should be clear about the real-life consequences for anyone choosing to support Palestine Action.”

The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission has also warned against a “heavy-handed” approach, urging the government and police to ensure protest policing is proportionate and guided by clear legal tests.

The initial three prosecutions earlier this month stemmed from arrests during a July demonstration, with defendants charged under the Terrorism Act. Police said convictions for such offences could carry sentences of up to six months in prison, along with other penalties.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley praised the rapid coordination between officers and prosecutors, saying he was “proud of how our police and CPS teams have worked so speedily together to overcome misguided attempts to overwhelm the justice system”.

Home Office Minister Yvette Cooper defended the Labour government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action, stating: “UK national security and public safety must always be our top priority. The assessments are very clear, this is not a non-violent organisation.”

The group was banned days after claiming responsibility for a break-in at an air force base in southern England, which the government claims caused an estimated 7 million pounds ($9.3 million) in damage to two aircraft. The home office has accused it of other “serious attacks” involving “violence, significant injuries and extensive criminal damage”.

Palestine Action has said its actions target the United Kingdom’s indirect military support for Israel amid the war in Gaza.

The UK’s Liberal Democrats voiced “deep concern” over using “anti-terrorism powers” against peaceful protesters.

Hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated in several UK cities for nearly two years, calling for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza and for the British government to stop all weapons sales to the country.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last month that the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by September unless Israel takes “substantive steps” to end its war on Gaza and commits to a lasting peace process. Many who have been protesting to end Palestinian suffering have said the move is too little, too late.