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Here’s where things stand on Sunday 27 July 2025:
- Israeli forces continue bombing Gaza, a day after killing at least 71 people, including 42 aid seekers, as five more Palestinians starved to death.
- Israel’s military has seized the Freedom Flotilla’s Handala ship, detaining its 21 crew members, as they attempted to break the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip.
- Israeli forces have dropped a small amount of aid into northern Gaza, wounding 11 people, in a scheme the UN says is “expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians”.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 59,733 people and wounded 144,477. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Hunger spreads across Gaza amid Israeli siege
For weeks, the UN, dozens of agencies and governments around the world have been sounding the alarm about Israel’s man-made famine in Gaza, where aid sites have turned into death traps.
On Saturday alone, 42 hungry Palestinians were killed trying to get their hands on food.
More than 1,000 people have now died while waiting for food by Israeli forces and US mercenaries.
US senator criticises GHF operations in Gaza
Democratic Senator Cory Booker says it’s been “heartbreaking” to witness the “catastrophic hunger and suffering of civilians” in Gaza, and called for an immediate and drastic surge in aid to the besieged enclave.
“It is our collective moral duty to ensure that humanitarian relief reaches those who need it most urgently. The strategy of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has not worked,” he wrote.
As we’ve been reporting, Israeli forces and US mercenaries have killed more than 1,000 Palestinian aid seekers since the GHF began its operations in late May.
Booker also said aid must not be diverted by Hamas, despite the New York Times reporting a day earlier that the Israeli military has never found proof that aid is being diverted by the Palestinian group.
“Every moment of delay will cost lives and cause irreparable harm to the health of children, pregnant women, and other civilians,” the senator added.
UK’s SNP threatens to force vote on Palestinian statehood
A minor opposition party in the United Kingdom’s parliament has threatened to bring forward legislation on recognising Palestinian statehood, and “force a vote” if Prime Minister Keir Starmer continues to oppose the move.
The Scottish National Party (SNP), which pushes for the independence of Scotland, said it would table a “Palestine Recognition Bill” when parliament returns after its summer recess if Starmer does not change his position.
The SNP threat comes after more than 220 British MPs, including dozens from Starmer’s Labour Party, demanded that the UK follow France and recognise a Palestinian state.
“Unless Keir Starmer stops blocking UK recognition of Palestine, the SNP will introduce a Palestine Recognition Bill when Parliament returns in September and force a vote if necessary,” said Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader in the UK parliament.
“Keir Starmer must stop defending the indefensible, finally find a backbone and demand that Israel ends its war now,” he added.
The SNP holds nine seats in the 650-seat parliament.
Who is on board the Handala?
The ship was carrying 19 activists from 10 countries, as well as two journalists from Al Jazeera.
The crew members are:
- Emma Fourreau, French-Swedish member of the European Parliament
- Gabrielle Cathala, French National Assembly member
- Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian-American human rights lawyer
- Jacob Berge, Jewish-American activist
- Hatem Aouini, Tunisian trade unionist
- Vigdis Bjorvand, 70-year-old Norwegian activist
- Frank Romano, French-American lawyer and actor
- Robert Martin, Australian rights activist
- Tania “Tan” Safi, Australian journalist and organiser, born to Lebanese refugees
- Christian Smalls, US labour activist
- Bob Suberi, American veteran
- Antonio Mazzeo, Italian researcher and journalist
- Santiago Gonzalez Vallejo, Spanish rights activist
- Sergio Toribio, Spanish environmental activist
- Justine Kempf, French nurse with NGO Medecins du Monde
- Ange Sahuquet, French rights activist
- Antonio La Picirella, Italian climate activist
- Braedon Peluso, US sailor and activist
- Chloe Fiona Ludden, former UN staff member
The journalists on board are Mohamed El Bakkali from Morocco and Waad Al Musa, who is Iraqi-American.
Photos: Israelis protest for deal to free captives held in Gaza
Macron speaks with Erdogan, el-Sisi
The French leader says he has discussed the situation in Gaza with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Macron said he also spoke about the conference France is co-hosting next week in New York on a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“Everything must be done to ensure peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians,” the French president wrote of his call with Erdogan.
“We cannot accept that people, including large numbers of children, die of hunger,” he said after his call with el-Sisi.
Macron has previously announced that France would be recognising Palestinian statehood, joining 142 of the UN’s 193 members that currently recognise or plan to recognise a Palestinian state.
Every single person in Gaza is starving’
The Israeli blockade of aid has caused a hunger crisis in Gaza and is condemning a growing number of its people to death by starvation.
Nonetheless, Palestinian journalists are risking their lives to expose what Western media often softens or obscures: the use of starvation as a tool of genocide.
Four Palestinians killed in Israeli attack on central Gaza
An Israeli drone attack has killed four Palestinians sheltering in a tent in Deir el-Balah, according to a source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
We’ll bring you more when we have it.
‘My children haven’t eaten for a week’
The search for food is getting increasingly desperate in Gaza.
A bag of flour could cost Palestinian aid seekers their life, but they say there is no other option.
“I’ve come all this way, risking my life for my children. They haven’t eaten for a week,” said Smoud Wahdan, carrying her infant in her arms. “I’ve been suffering from a lack of food, moving from place to place looking for something to eat. At the very least, I’ve been looking for a piece of bread for my children.”
Tahani, another displaced woman in Gaza City, pleaded for help.
“I came to get flour, to look for food to feed my children. I have a child who has cancer,” she said. “I wish God’s followers would wake up and see all these people. They are dying.”
Israeli forces kill 5 Palestinians in southern Gaza
An Israeli drone attack has killed five people sheltering in a tent in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, according to a source at Nasser Hospital.
Israel’s government has designated al-Mawasi a “safe zone” and forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to move there, but the Israeli military regularly launches deadly attacks on displaced people sheltering in flimsy and overcrowded tents.
We’ll bring you more when we have it.
Hamas slams Israel’s seizure of the Handala as an act of piracy
The Palestinian group has denounced Israel for intercepting the Gaza-bound aid ship, and called on the UN “to condemn the crime of piracy”.
“We hold the Netanyahu government responsible for the safety of the activists, and call for the continuation of the flotillas until the blockade is broken,” it said in a statement.
“We appreciate the courage of international solidarity activists, and their message reached our people and the world, despite the Zionist threats,” it added.
Israel continues to deny starvation in Gaza
The Israeli military says they’re going to be carrying out a series of actions aimed at what they say is improving the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip, despite their continuous denial of starvation among the Palestinian people.
Now, among these moves, the army says they’re going to be conducting airdrops in the Palestinian territory.
They’re also going to allow humanitarian pauses; it’s still unclear exactly how it’s going to work.
And the coordinator for government activities in the territory, a sect of the Israeli army, is going to allow the UN to have safe passage of aid trucks going through Gaza.
Now, the Israeli military, in their statement, still says that they emphasise that there is “no starvation in Gaza”, and that they’re trying to refute these claims, even though they are now going to enact a new series of measures aimed at improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
This comes after the Israeli political echelon directed the military to do so after a call within the Israeli prime minister’s security cabinet.
The military says they’re also going to be opening up new humanitarian corridors.
Israel has largely accused the UN of not distributing the aid trucks, while the UN has said that Israel has not allowed them to do so.
But despite all of these efforts that Israel says they are now going to implement, they are still denying starvation in the Gaza Strip.
Handala crew ‘abducted’ from international waters, FFC says
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the organisers of the attempt to deliver aid to Gaza via the Handala, says the vessel was “violently intercepted by the Israeli military in international waters about forty nautical miles [74km] from Gaza”.
In a statement, the group said it had lost all communications with the Handala after Israeli forces cut the cameras on board the ship at 11:43pm local time (20:43 GMT).
“The unarmed boat was carrying life-saving supplies when it was boarded by Israeli forces, its passengers abducted, and its cargo seized. The interception occurred in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law,” it said.
There were 21 activists from 12 countries on board the Handala.
The ship was carrying humanitarian supplies for starving Palestinians in Gaza, including baby formula, diapers, food and medicine.
Israel air drops aid into Gaza, injuring at least 11 people
We were able to look at some of the still photos from the site where the airdrop took place.
It’s near the space inside the northern part of the Gaza Strip, near Beit Lahiya, along the coastal road.
Eleven people were reported with injuries, as one of these pallets fell directly on tents in that displacement site near al-Rasheed road from the northern part of the Strip.
But people were able to get some of the boxes and the food parcels on that pallet.
So it did happen. And the Israeli military said it dropped seven pallets.
But according to what we hear from local sources, about five of the pallets were dropped, and people were able to get to at least three of them.
The other two are in an area that is a bit far from the displacement sites in northern Gaza, and an area that is very close to where the Israeli military is stationed.
It confirms what we’ve reported in the past – that Gaza has turned into a testing lab and the Israeli military is experimenting with every attack, every policy. Similar to the failure of the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, we’ve seen air drops happening in the past.
They were not effective, they did not reach enough people, let alone the chaos and violence they’ve caused.
Infant dies of malnutrition as Gaza famine worsens
A five-month-old girl called Zainab is one of the latest Palestinians to die from malnutrition amid Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip.
Her mother, Israa Abu Haleeb, says her daughter “suffered a lot while sick”.
“Malnutrition, lack of formula milk and the closure of the border crossings, all of it against our people,” she said.
A recap of recent developments
- Israeli forces killed at least 71 Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday, including 42 starving people who were seeking food aid.
- Health authorities in Gaza say five more Palestinians have died of starvation in the past day, bringing the total death toll from hunger since Israel’s war began to 127, including 85 children.
- The Israeli government says it will allow “humanitarian pauses” in parts of Gaza today to facilitate aid deliveries, but experts say the plan will not address the starvation crisis gripping the territory.
- Israel’s military has also air-dropped a small quantity of food aid into northern Gaza, as officials from the UN and humanitarian groups slam the scheme as inefficient, costly and dangerous.
- Israeli forces have stormed the Gaza-bound Handala ship, which was carrying aid to starving Palestinians. The fate of the 19 international activists and two Al Jazeera journalists is not known.
Welcome to our coverage
Hello, and welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Stay with us for the latest news, reactions and analyses.
You can find all our updates from Saturday, July 26, here.
