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Here’s where things stand on Saturday, May 31 2025:
- The United Nations says Gaza is the “hungriest place on Earth” and the territory’s entire 2.3 million people face “catastrophic hunger”.
- The Israeli army has killed two more people seeking aid at a distribution point in the west of Rafah, southern Gaza.
- Israel confirmed that it has blocked a delegation of ministers from five Arab nations from completing a planned visit to Ramallah, occupied West Bank, speaking condemnation.
- US President Donald Trump said a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is “very close”, and could be announced as early as today.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 54,381 Palestinians and wounded 124,054, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
- The Government Media Office updated its death toll to more than 61,700, saying thousands of people missing under the rubble are presumed dead.An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive.
‘Blatant violation’: Arab ministers forced to cancel Ramallah visit over Israeli curbs
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry says a planned visit to Ramallah by an Arab ministerial delegation has been called off today due to Israeli obstruction.
In a statement, the ministry said the delegation – including ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – was forced to cancel after Israel denied access through the airspace over the occupied West Bank, which it controls.
The delegation condemned the move as a “blatant violation” that “reflects the arrogance of the Israeli government” and its “disregard for international law”, according to the statement.
Earlier, as we reported, an Israeli official told Reuters that Israel would “not cooperate” with the planned visit, fearing it would promote the establishment of a Palestinian state.
People ‘desperate for one bag of flour’
Not much food is coming into the Gaza Strip. The number of trucks entering is very limited and what they are carrying is also limited.
Most Palestinians say they have not received any food because there have not been any normal distribution points.
People say they are willing to do anything for one bag of flour or one food parcel.
Hospitals facing generator crisis: Gaza Health Ministry
Israel’s destruction of generators is threatening critical care services including operating units, intensive care units, emergency units and nurseries, Gaza’s Health Ministry has said in a statement.
Three high-capacity generators were bombed recently and the remaining generators risk going out of service, the ministry added.
️”Technical teams in hospitals are working with limited and exhausted options to bolster electricity supplies to vital departments,” it said.
The remaining generators have been in operation for more than a year and are difficult to maintain due to a lack of parts, it explained.
“We call on all relevant institutions and agencies to urgently provide generators with the required capacity, as well as the necessary spare parts for maintenance.”
Civil Defence conducting nonstop missions amid Israeli attacks on Gaza
The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza reports that its emergency responders carried out 22 missions across the enclave between Friday and Saturday mornings.
In the besieged northern governorate that Israel is trying to evacuate of citizens, first responders extinguished a fire in a home and a vehicle, as well as recovered bodies from another bombed house and rescued injured people.
In the central areas, they responded to several fires in residential buildings and transported two people to the hospital who were wounded in separate attacks.
In Khan Younis in the south, the organisation said it dispatched aid workers to transport multiple casualties after separate attacks on homes in al-Amal.
Al-Quds Brigades releases footage of ambush on Israeli soldiers in north Gaza
The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has released a video which it says shows an ambush against invading Israeli soldiers in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City in the northern part of the enclave.
The al-Quds Brigades showed fighters planting explosives inside a house badly damaged by previous Israeli attacks, prior to the arrival of a large Israeli ground force involving troops and tanks.
Palestinian fighters detonate the explosives after Israeli soldiers enter the building, and sounds of gunfire can be heard as Israeli drones buzz overhead.
Separately, the al-Quds Brigades said it targeted a gathering of Israeli soldiers and vehicles advancing southeast of Khan Yunis with a barrage of mortar shells.
Israeli plan to establish 22 new settlements shows contempt for two-state solution
As we reported yesterday, the Israeli government has approved the establishment of 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, drawing widespread international condemnation.
Political analyst Xavier Abu Eid says the decision underscores Israel’s intent to block any future two-state solution and to take as much land as possible.
“The message is very clear: the Israeli government is telling everyone they are not interested in following the international position or having a two-state solution or the prospects of an agreement,” Abu Eid, a former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Al Jazeera.
He noted that placing new settlements in areas near the Jordan Valley and deep inside the Ramallah governorate – centres of Palestinian governance and economic activity – would make any future land-swap arrangement under a two-state framework even more difficult.
“The design of the settlement enterprise is not something new and goes against the Palestinian right to self-determination,” he said.
US children’s YouTube star Ms Rachel says world leaders must be ‘ashamed’
YouTube star Ms Rachel, who is massively popular in the US for her children’s content, has released a video directed at leaders who see Israel’s mass killing in Gaza and ignore it.
“You saw the doctor who had her nine children come to her who had been killed. You saw the little girl walking through the fire,” she said in a video post on Instagram.
“It’s never been wrong to say not to starve children, not bomb children, and not to kill 15,000 children. What’s wrong is to be silent.”
Ms Rachel has been using her platform to raise awareness about the horrors unfolding in Gaza, and last week met with a three-year-old from the enclave who lost her legs in an Israeli air strike.
Political will can stop Gaza’s famine: UNRWA chief
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said mass starvation in Gaza is preventable if there is the political will to allow humanitarian organisations to do their work.
“We are back to the blaming game while the people of Gaza are starving and trying to survive heavy bombardments,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X.
Palestinians in Gaza are facing starvation and risk famine as Israel continues to block aid from being delivered.
Lazzarini said that the trucks sent in the last two weeks make up just 10 percent of people’s daily needs, describing this as a “mockery to the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch”.
He added that reports indicate that just 900 trucks have been sent in the last two weeks, compared with the 600–800 sent daily by the UN during the ceasefire earlier this year.
“We are not asking for the impossible. Allow the UN including UNRWA & humanitarian partners to do our work: assist people in need and preserving their dignity,” he urged.
54,381 killed in Gaza during war
The bodies of 60 people and another 284 wounded have been brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
The figures do not include hospitals in the north, where access is strained. The ministry added that more victims are believed to be in areas rescuers cannot reach yet.
The latest casualties bring Gaza’s total death toll during the war to 54,381, it said, with 124,054 others wounded, it added.
Three children among 5 killed in Israeli attack on Gaza City tent
We can now bring you more information on the Israeli attack that hit a tent sheltering displaced people near Gaza City this morning.
The attack, on the Shati area, killed a family of five: a man, his wife and their three children, according to Wafa.
‘Quiet part being said out loud’ about Israel’s settlement enterprise
Political analyst Ori Goldberg says the Israeli government’s new settlement announcement is a “big deal” that shows how brazen it has become in annexing land. Yet paradoxically, he calls it a “desperate move” driven by settlers who sense their political influence is fragile.
“Settlers are quite aware of the fact that come the next election cycle … their position inside and outside of Israel will not allow them to do this as easily,” Goldberg told Al Jazeera.
Establishing more settlements is “the only way for the settlers who are holding on to significant political power to make a statement”.
One of the leading figures in the pro-settler movement, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, understands this dynamic well and is intent on aggressively promoting settlement expansion, says Goldberg.
“Smotrich has absolutely no political livelihood if he is not able to say this as loudly and as clearly as he can,” he said. “He knows this is the only moment he can push this initiative forward and get some kind of national support.”
“The main difference following the almost two-year war in Gaza, is that all the quiet parts are spoken out loud,” he added.
Death toll in Gaza rises
Medical sources have told our team on the ground that at least 14 people have been killed today in the Gaza Strip.
Israel using cruel methods to torture Gaza prisoners: Monitor
Israel is using a variety of cruel methods to torture Palestinians taken prisoner from the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office. They include:
- Beatings and electric shock in sensitive areas.
- Hanging from the hands for long hours.
- Deprivation of food, showers and worship.
- Sexual assaults and threats, including rape.
- Getting threatened or mauled by police dogs.
- Being transported naked and bound in degrading conditions.
According to the monitor, 700 Palestinians in Gaza were detained by Israeli forces in May alone, pushing the total number of those taken from the territory since the start of the war to at least 12,000.
More than 3,500 Palestinians from Gaza remain imprisoned, at least 44 people from Gaza have died in prison, and 1,846 are held as so-called “unlawful combatants”, which strips them of any legal rights, it also said.
Israel crippling Gaza’s health system: Hospital director
The director of Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital says the medical complex is now operating at just 20 percent capacity as Israeli attacks continue destroying Gaza’s health system.
“We are facing a tragic situation, and every day kidney patients die due to the inability to treat them,” Dr Muhammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera.
Israel has been besieging and bombing hospitals across Gaza, killing medical workers, patients and displaced people taking shelter.
“International organisations are trying hard to provide assistance, but the occupation is preventing the entry of aid,” Abu Salmiya said.
Salmiya was released last July, having been detained by Israeli forces while treating patients alongside other medical staff.
His arrest came amid Israeli military claims that Hamas was using the hospital as a base. The medical chief said no charge had ever been brought against him.
Israel arrests woman, former prisoners in West Bank raids
Israeli forces have made several arrests during dawn and morning raids across the occupied West Bank, including a 24-year-old woman taken from her home in Anabta, located east of Tulkarem.
Local sources told Wafa, a young man was arrested during a raid on Silat al-Harithiya village, east of Jenin. Another young man was taken from his home during a raid on Deir Abu Daif, east of Ramallah.
The Prisoners’ Media Office said two former prisoners who were recently released as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal after spending 20 years in Israeli prisons were rearrested in the town of Idhna in Hebron. A teacher was also arrested in the town.
Several Palestinians were arrested during a violent raid on Kafr Qaddum, south of Jenin, and another raid was reported on the Askar al-Jadeed refugee camp in Nablus, but with no arrests.
UN says aid mission most obstructed in recent history
Gaza is now the hungriest place on earth, and the entire population is at risk of famine – that’s the stark warning from the UN.
It says its mission to help starving Palestinians is the most obstructed in recent history. And aid agencies accuse the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – backed by Israel and the US – of helping Israel’s war.
Israel says Lebanon air strike targeted Hezbollah operative
The Israeli military has confirmed that it was behind the drone attack in the southern Lebanese town of Deir ez-Zahrani that we reported on earlier.
It said in a short statement that the attack killed a “terrorist” with Hezbollah who was allegedly a local missile and rocket commander with the armed Lebanese group.
The army claimed that he was behind the launch of “numerous” projectiles against Israel during the war on Gaza, and “recently engaged in attempts to restore Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in the area”.
The Israeli military, which has kept attacking Lebanon despite the ceasefire with Hezbollah, said the attempts by the alleged Hezbollah member were a “blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon”.
Gaza food delivery group ‘not humanitarian aid’: UN
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri says the UN is ready to send its convoys, but that Israel is still denying aid following its 80-day blockade of Gaza.
Fakhri described the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a shadowy organisation which Israel has authorised to distribute food, as “bait to corral people” which “violates every principle of international law”.
“This is aid being used … to push people out from the north into militarised zones … and it’s about humiliating people, and it’s about controlling the population. This has nothing to do with stopping starvation.”
An Israeli ban has prevented the UN’s refugee agency from delivering aid to the displaced and hungry people fleeing relentless strikes.
Fakhri emphasised that Israel’s plan, announced in early April, was criticised by every major humanitarian organisation and the secretary-general of the UN.
Israel blocks Ramallah meeting with Arab ministers
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official says, after media reported that Arab ministers planning to attend had been stopped from coming.
The delegation included ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian Authority officials said. The ministers would require Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.
An Israeli official told Reuters news agency the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”
A Palestinian Authority official said that the issue of whether the meeting in Ramallah would be able to go ahead was under discussion.
People ‘desperate for one bag of flour’
Not much food is coming into the Gaza Strip. The number of trucks entering is very limited and what they are carrying is also limited. And despite the trucks’ entry over the past few days, Palestinians say they have not really received any food because there have not been any normal distribution points.
Meanwhile, we’ve seen people queueing at hot meal kitchens. After waiting long hours, they still sometimes go home with their pots empty.
Without bread or any other type of food, some parents say they are giving their children water just to make them feel full. People say they are willing to do anything for one bag of flour or one food parcel. They are very desperate.