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Here’s where things stand on Thursday 3 July 2025:
- At least 33 aid seekers are among 73 Palestinians killed in Gaza since dawn, medical sources have told Al Jazeera, with witnesses describing “horror scenes” after “unprovoked gunfire” at the controversial Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid sites.
- More than 300 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the last 48 hours, according to the Gaza Government Media Office, which says Israel has “committed 26 bloody massacres” in that period.
- Meanwhile, Hamas says it is studying new proposals for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, after US President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed to a proposal for a 60-day truce.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 57,012 people and wounded 134,592, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7 attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
UN expert accuses Israel of weapon-testing in Gaza amid 85,000-tonne explosive devastation
As we just reported, UN expert Francesca Albanese has presented a report to the Human Rights Council. Here are key takeaways from her speech:
- Arms companies have turned near-record profits by equipping Israel with cutting-edge weaponry to unleash 85,000 tonnes of explosives – six times the power of Hiroshima – to destroy Gaza.
- The report also pointed to gains on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange since October 2023, describing a stark contrast: “One people enriched, one people erased.”
- Accusing Israel of using the war to “test new weapons, customized surveillance, lethal drones, [and] radar systems”, Albanese warned that Palestine’s defencelessness had made it “an ideal laboratory for the Israeli military-industrial complex”.
- She named 48 corporate actors, including arms manufacturers, banks, tech companies, energy giants, and academic institutions, alleging that they are directly linked to a broader “economy of occupation, sustaining the Israeli state’s actions”.
- “Weapons and data systems brutalize and surveil Palestinians,” she said. “Colonies spread – financed by banks and insurers, powered by fossil fuels, and normalized by tourism platforms, supermarket chains, and academic institutions.”
- Under international law, she said, even a minimal connection to this system carries clear responsibility. “There is a prima facie responsibility on every state and corporate entity to completely abstain from or end their relationships with this economy of occupation.”
- In a direct appeal to states, Albanese called for bold steps. “Member states must impose a full arms embargo on Israel, suspend all trade agreements and investment relations, and enforce accountability, ensuring that corporate entities face legal consequences for their involvement in serious violations of international law.”
UN expert urges countries to cut trade, financial ties with Israel
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territories, has called on countries to impose a full arms embargo as well as cut off trade and financial ties with Israel, which she alleged is waging a “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.
“Israel is responsible for one of the cruellest genocides in modern history,” Albanese said in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council.
The UN expert was presenting her latest report, which named more than 60 companies she accuses of being involved in supporting Israeli illegal settlements and military actions in Gaza.
“What I expose is not a list, it is a system, and that is to be addressed,” she told the council. “We must reverse the tide,” she added, calling for states to impose a full arms embargo, suspend all trade agreements and ensure companies face legal consequences for their involvement in violations of international law.
Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva earlier this week said Albanese’s latest report was “legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of her office”. Its delegate was not present in the room in line with a new policy to disengage with the council, which Israel says has an anti-Semitic bias.
High school students among 30 arrested by Israeli forces in West Bank: Monitor
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) says that Israeli forces arrested seven high school students in the occupied West Bank at dawn, hours before they were scheduled to take their exams this morning.
It added that about 30 Palestinians were arrested this morning.
The monitor explained that the arrests were concentrated in the village of Deir Istiya in the north of the occupied West Bank.
It added that based on data from the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 67 students have been prevented from taking their exams this year due to their arrest by Israeli authorities.
Hamas mourns 3 fighters killed by Israel
The Palestinian group says Israeli forces killed at least three of its fighters in an attack on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning.
Mourning their loss, Hamas said they had been released as part of a prisoner exchange in 2011.
Earlier today, the Israeli army reported that it had eliminated a “terrorist cell” in the north of the Strip on Wednesday. It is not clear whether the two parties refer to the same incident.
GHF has ‘nothing to do with alleviating starvation in Gaza’
Mads Gilbert, an emergency medicine doctor who has spent extensive time working in Gaza, says the Gaza Health Foundation (GHF) distribution centres are “part of the Israeli occupation forces’ and the Israeli government plan to ethnically cleanse and to fulfil their goal of genocide in Gaza”.
He told Al Jazeera that the food parcels the GHF delivers “are grossly inadequate”.
“There is no dairy or eggs in the parcels – neither in physical form nor powdered form; there is no infant formula, which is desperately needed by the newborn and the children,” he added.
Gilbert also pointed out that the food “needs cooking and there are almost no cooking facilities available in Gaza”.
“The distribution organisation is aimed at using food as bait to attract starving people, to terrorise them and to kill them. The shooting of people in food lines is a war crime,” he concluded.
Palestinian Mujahideen Movement condemns Israeli strike on Gaza City school
The Palestinian group has also strongly condemned “the international complicity and silence” regarding the starvation as well as “genocide and ethnic cleansing against defenceless civilians in shelters and displacement centres”.
It highlighted “the horrific massacre” in the Mustafa Hafez School, which housed displaced Palestinians west of Gaza City.
We have reported earlier that Gaza’s Civil Defence retrieved 10 bodies from the rubble of the school-turned-shelter after an Israeli air attack.
Let UN distribute Gaza aid: UNRWA
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in a post on X has called for investigations into the killing and injury of Palestinians trying to access food through the current US- and Israeli- backed food distribution mechanism in Gaza.
While the previous United Nations-led distribution network operated about 400 sites across the Strip, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, guarded by armed private security contractors working for a US company, has set up only four “mega-sites”, three in the south and one in central Gaza – none in the north, where conditions are most severe.
In its post, UNRWA called for the UN to “do the work” in distributing aid.
Turkiye condemns West Bank annexation calls by Israeli politicians
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has rejected “in the strongest terms” statements by Israeli politicians and ministers calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank.
“These irresponsible calls for annexation, coming notably during a period when ceasefire initiatives are ongoing, disregard the principles for a solution that the international community has taken for many years,” the ministry said.
The statement comes as 14 cabinet ministers from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party urged the premier to immediately annex the occupied West Bank.
In a letter addressed to Netanyahu and shared by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on X, the signatories demanded the government “apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) before the end of the Knesset (parliament) summer session”, which is set to end on July 27.
Israel occupied the Palestinian territory in the 1967 war, but it never formally annexed it – a goal long sought by far-right ministers. Yet, after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and the ensuing war on Gaza, Israeli authorities have been redrawing the map of the Palestinian territory.
Photos: Palestinians mourn loved ones killed in Israeli strike on Khan Younis
