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- Medical sources tell Al Jazeera that at least 80 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip since dawn today.
- International condemnation is mounting after Israeli forces fired “warning” shots towards foreign diplomats visiting the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
- The United Nations’s chief spokesperson said the limited humanitarian aid “finally” entering Gaza is “nowhere near enough to meet the needs” of the war-torn enclave’s famished population.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 53,655 Palestinians and wounded 121,950, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The Government Media Office updated the 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 on October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive.
UN says aid shipments to Gaza ‘nowhere near sufficient’
The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) says 90 trucks carrying nutritional supplies, food and medicine reached distribution centres in Gaza yesterday.
“OCHA stresses that this shipment is limited in quantity and nowhere near sufficient to meet the scale and scope of the needs of Gaza’s 2.1 million people,” the agency said in a statement. “Other supplies as basic as fresh food, hygiene items, water purification agents, and fuel to power hospitals have not been let in for over 80 days.”
Settler attacks force Palestinians to abandon occupied West Bank village
Palestinian residents of Maghayer al-Deir in the occupied West Bank have told the AFP news agency that they had begun packing their belongings and preparing to leave the village following repeated attacks by Israeli settlers.
“No one provides us with protection at all,” Yusef Malihat, a resident of the tiny village east of Ramallah, told AFP, a keffiyeh scarf protecting his head from the sun as he loaded a pickup truck with chain-link fencing previously used to pen up sheep and goats.
“They demolished the houses and threatened us with expulsion and killing,” he said, as a group of settlers looked on from a new illegal outpost a few hundred metres away.
“It’s very sad, what’s happening now … even for an outpost,” said Itamar Greenberg, an Israeli peace activist present at Maghayer al-Deir on Thursday.
“It’s a new outpost 60 metres [200 feet] from the last house of the community, and on Sunday, one settler told me that in one month, the Bedouins will not be here, but it [happened much] more quickly,” he told AFP.
The Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission denounced Maghayer al-Deir’s displacement, describing it as being the result of the “terrorism of the settler militias”.
Words won’t save Gaza – The West must stop enabling Israel’s war
The recent statements from the UK government regarding Israel’s horrific crimes in Gaza are a welcome realisation that Israel, their trusted ally, is engaged in heinous brutality against the people of Gaza.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy stood in the House of Commons yesterday (May 20) and denounced Israel’s blockade of Gaza as “morally wrong” and “an affront to the values of the British people”, and in doing so, also paused the free-trade agreement negotiations with Israel and imposed a handful of select, and relatively minor sanctions in protest. A day earlier, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, President Emmanuel Macron, and Prime Minister Mark Carney jointly warned of “concrete actions” if Israel did not halt its renewed military offensive and allow aid to flow into Gaza.
These statements mark the most explicit criticism of Israel by Western allies in recent memory, yet they came only after more than a year and a half of relentless civilian casualties – more than 50,000 Gazans killed since 2023, including tens of thousands of women and children. How many innocent lives, including those of children, could have been spared if such criticism of atrocities committed by Israel had been made more than a year ago by Western allies?
The question now is whether this belated moral clarity will be backed by the meaningful measures required to effect change, with meaningful being the operative word.
Read more here.
Gaza authorities say six officers guarding aid killed by Israel
The Gaza Government Media Office says an Israeli attack, consisting of eight strikes, has killed at least six security officers guarding humanitarian aid from looting.
Throughout the war, Israel has been targeting security officers around assistance convoy in what critics say is a deliberate policy to spread chaos and deepen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“It has become clear that the occupation army is operating in a systematic way to enable looting the aid and medicine trucks to ensure that they do not reach those who need them,” the office said in a statement.
Mahmoud Khalil permitted to hold newborn son for the first time
Detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time on Thursday after a federal judge blocked efforts by the administration of US President Donald Trump to keep the father and infant separated by a Plexiglass barrier.
The visit came ahead of a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been detained in a Louisiana jail since March 8.
Khalil was the first person arrested under Trump’s promised crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters and is one of the few who has remained in custody as his case winds its way through both immigration and federal court.
Federal authorities have not accused Khalil of a crime, but have sought to deport him on the basis that his prominent role in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza may have undermined US foreign policy interests.
His request to attend his son’s birth on April 21 was denied last month by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“This is not just heartless,” Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, said of the government’s position.
“It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse. And I cannot ignore the echoes of this pain in the stories of Palestinian families, torn apart by Israeli military prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.”
Israeli strike kills four in Deir el-Balah
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza continues to mount amid relentless Israeli attacks.
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that an Israeli strike in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza has killed four Palestinians and injured several others.
WHO decries dire condition of healthcare system in Gaza
The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that Gaza’s healthcare system is on the verge of collapse.
“Israel’s intensified military operations continue to threaten an already weakened health system, amidst worsening mass population displacement and acute shortages of food, water, medical supplies, fuel and shelter,” the UN agency said in a statement.
According to WHO, only 19 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational, with some only providing limited services.
Thursday’s death toll in Gaza rises to 80
Medical sources tell Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 80 Palestinians since dawn.
US Muslim group condemns killing of Israel embassy workers
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers does not represent the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States.
“We condemn last night’s deadly attack on Israeli embassy employees in Washington, DC,” CAIR said in a statement.
“While millions of Americans feel extreme frustration at the sight of the Israeli government slaughtering Palestinian men, women and children on a daily basis with weapons paid for with our taxpayer dollars, political violence is an unacceptable crime and is not the answer.”
One killed and dozens injured in Israeli attack in Khan Younis
Israel has bombed a tent for displaced people in southern Gaza, killing at least one person and wounding 30 others, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
Hamas says aid entering Gaza is a ‘drop in the ocean’ of needs
The Palestinian group says the policy of “engineered starvation” is continuing in Gaza, stressing that the limited aid that has entered the territory is a “drop in the ocean” of Palestinians’ humanitarian needs.
Hamas also warned against establishing what it called “concentration camps” to allow people to get access to food, calling on the international community to pressure Israel to end its blockade on Gaza.
‘Massacre’ reported in northern Gaza
The Palestinian Civil Defence says Israel has bombed a four-storey home, committing a “massacre” in Jabalia.
The agency’s spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said at least four people were killed and around 50 others remain missing under the rubble. He added rescue efforts are unable to proceed without heavy equipments.
Photos: Israel bombs south Lebanon
Israel has renewed its bombardment of Lebanon, striking a building in the southern town of Toul after issuing an evacuation warning for the area.
Below are photos from the attack and its aftermath.
Israeli forces kill at least 72 people in Gaza since dawn
At least 72 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air attacks across the Gaza Strip since dawn today, medical sources have told Al Jazeera.
“It’s high time we recognise Palestine,’ Labour MP Thornberry says
Labour MP and chair of the United Kingdom’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee Emily Thornberry has welcomed what she described as a change in the British government’s position on Israel.
In an interview with Channel 4 News, Thornberry argued that the possibility of sanctioning far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and a hiatus in trade negotiations with Tel Aviv represented a significant shift,
She also lambasted Netanyahu for prolonging the war for political gain.
“There was a peace agreement. Both sides had agreed to it. And then Netanyahu was the one who said, ‘No, we’re not going to sign it and wanted to continue with the war’,” she said.
“And the trouble is that we have a leader in Israel who just wants a perpetual war, as far as we can see.”
Thornberry also called on the UK to recognise Palestinian statehood.
“It really is high time that we recognise the State of Palestine,” she said, adding that a planned conference in New York this June, hosted by Saudi Arabia and France, would provide an opportunity for the UK and France to lead a renewed diplomatic push.
Israeli attack kills five in central Gaza
The Israeli military has struck a home in the Maghazi refugee camp killing five people and injuring several others, Al Jazeera Arabic reports.
Hezbollah calls for ‘resounding’ win in local vote amid Israeli attacks
The group’s chief Naim Qassem has released a message to supporters urging them to participate in the upcoming municipal elections in south Lebanon on Saturday to ensure a “resounding” victory and assert defiance against Israel.
“We will not give up a grain of soil in our generous South, and we will not accept Israeli occupation in any inch of our homeland,” Qassem said. “Your participation in the local elections is part of the reconstruction that we will oversee through the elected local governments, and the Lebanese state must live up to its responsibility.”
Yesterday, Netanyahu boasted about the destruction of what he called “terrorist villages” in south Lebanon, suggesting that the widespread bombing and demolition of homes in the Lebanese border towns was a deliberate tactic.
