- At least 70 people, including dozens in northern Gaza, have been killed since dawn in heavy Israeli bombardment with four children’s bodies recovered from the debris in an attack in Jabalia.
- The war on Gaza dominates an Arab League summit in Baghdad, Iraq.
- The Red Crescent renews call for Israel to reopen crossings with Gaza for the entry of humanitarian aid, warning it has been “left to starve and ache”.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 53,272 Palestinians and wounded 120,673, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. 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 taken captive.
UNRWA’s Lazzarini asks: ‘How many more Palestinian lives’ will be lost?
Lazzarini stresses that Palestinians “cannot just be reduced to numbers”.
“Atrocities are becoming a new norm, under our watch, making the unbearable bearable with indifference,” he wrote on X.
Without real action, Western warnings to Israel ‘can be safely ignored’
Mouin Rabbani, a political analyst, says Western governments and officials “have issued increasingly stern warnings to Israel” about its Gaza policies over the past days.
Despite that, Rabbani said it is understood “as long as Western responses are limited to statements, those making them can be safely ignored and Israel can continue to do as it pleases”.
That is “particularly so when such statements are accompanied by continued weapons deliveries, preferential trade agreements, political support, and other forms of cooperation”, Rabbani wrote on X.
Arab leaders urge more pressure to ‘stop the bloodshed’ in Gaza
Arab leaders have urged the international community to apply pressure for a Gaza ceasefire and humanitarian aid access to the besieged Palestinian territory.
“We call on the international community … to exert pressure to end the bloodshed and ensure that urgent humanitarian aid can enter without obstacles all areas in need in Gaza,” the leaders said in a joint final statement at a summit in Baghdad.
Addressing an Arab League summit in Baghdad, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said he’s “alarmed” at the expansion, adding, “We need a permanent ceasefire, now.”
The German government said it’s “deeply concerned” about the Israeli assault.
5 takeaways from President Trump’s Middle East trip
Washington, DC – Three days, three countries, hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and a geopolitical shift in the United States’s approach to the region: Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East has been eventful.
This week, the United States president visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the first planned trip of his second presidency, after attending Pope Francis’s funeral last month.
Trump was visibly gleeful throughout the trip as he secured investments, criticised domestic political rivals and heaped praise on Gulf leaders. The word “historic” was used more than a few times by US officials to describe the visits.
Read the full story here.
Rubio says without a deal, Israel will move ahead with Gaza attack
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says “some impediments remain” in negotiations towards ending Israel’s war on Gaza and securing the release of Israeli captives.
In an interview with CBS News programme Face the Nation, Rubio said without an agreement, “we anticipate that Israel will continue forward with their operations” in the Gaza Strip.
“But that doesn’t mean we stopped working on trying to achieve a peaceful outcome that also protects Israel’s security and ends Hamas’s governance of Gaza, so that Gaza can have a free and prosperous future moving forward,” the top US diplomat said, according to a transcript of the interview, which will air on Sunday.
“That’s what the president [Trump] wants to see as the end goal here. That is the end goal, and that’s what we’re working on through every means at our disposal.”
Rubio also said Washington believes some progress has been made in negotiations, “but there’s more work to be done.”
Rights group denounces reported Gaza ethnic cleansing plan
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called on President Trump to renounce an “insane” plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and reportedly force its population into Libya.
If the news reporting about the plan is true, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza would be a “moral stain on our nation’s history that brings shame for generations to come”, CAIR said in a statement.
“The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, five people with knowledge of the effort told NBC News,” it said.
The plan is under serious enough consideration that the Trump administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former US official said.
In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the US froze more than a decade ago, the three people said.
In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said: “If this news report that the Trump administration truly is plotting the forced transfer of one million Palestinians from their homeland in Gaza to Libya is true, this plan would represent an unprecedented act of ethnic cleansing unseen in modern history.
“This is morally reprehensible and a historic crime against humanity. It is a slap in the face to all the Arab leaders President Trump just met. Any country or entity that takes part in this war crime would rightly face universal condemnation.”
New Gaza truce talks under way as Israel expands ground assault
Israel and Hamas have confirmed a new round of Gaza truce talks is under way in Qatar as the Israeli military expanded its ground offensive on the besieged Palestinian territory, despite growing international calls for a ceasefire.
The new offensive comes after Israel escalated its air attacks on Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians in the past three days. Many of the victims were killed in northern Gaza, including in Beit Lahiya and Jabalia, which have received forced displacement orders by the Israeli army in recent days.
Read the full story here.
At least 24 killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza’s al-Mawasi
Many others have been injured in the Israeli attack on homes and tents sheltering displaced people in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
The dead and injured were taken to the Kuwaiti field hospital and to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
We’ll bring you more on this when we can.
Spain’s RTVE runs Gaza message despite threat of fines
Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE has run a video message about Israel’s war on Gaza in advance of the Eurovision final.
Earlier, we reported the European Broadcasting Union threatened RTVE with punitive fines if its commentators mentioned Gaza during the broadcast of the singing competition.
RTVE ran a short text onscreen without any sound that read, “When human rights are at stake, silence is not an option. Peace and Justice for Palestine.”
The move was welcomed by Oscar Puente, Spain’s transportation minister. “Amen,” he wrote on X alongside the clip.
I was screaming, looking for my children’
Um Firas al-Mansi, a displaced Palestinian woman and mother, thought she would be safe in a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.
But al-Mansi says Israel targeted the camp more than 10 times. “I was screaming, looking for my children,” she said after the latest strike.
European Council president ‘shocked’ at Israel’s Gaza attack
European Council President Antonio Costa said on Saturday that he was “shocked” at the situation in Gaza, which is the target of an expanded Israeli military assault.
“Shocked by the news from Gaza: starving civilians, hospitals hit again by strikes. The violence must stop,” Costa said.
“What’s happening in Gaza is a humanitarian tragedy. A whole people is being subjected to crushing, disproportionate military force. International law is systematically violated.”
Israel’s Gaza ‘disengagement’ that paved the way for conquest
In August 2005, the Israeli government officially withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian coastal enclave it had occupied continuously since 1967. Apart from pulling back its armed forces, it had to undertake the dismantlement of 21 illegal settlements housing 8,000 Jewish settlers.
There is nothing quite so tragic as illegal colonisers being uprooted from one section of land that does not belong to them and transferred to another section of land that does not belong to them.
Ben Gvir calls for full-scale Gaza occupation, dismisses ceasefire talks
Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir says Hamas’s willingness to enter a new round of ceasefire and captives talks is because Israel further increased its military pressure on the Palestinian group.
“Hamas’s sudden ‘flexibility’ in the negotiations is not because it suddenly craved peace, but because the [army] was tightening its grip,” Ben-Gvir said in a statement on X.
“Precisely for this reason this is not the time to retreat and let Hamas breathe and recover again, but to press the gas all the way – until Hamas surrenders. We must now enter Gaza with all our might and finish the job – occupying, seizing the territory, crushing the enemy, and freeing our hostages by force.”
His comments come after a new round of talks is under way in Doha, Qatar
Hamas has repeatedly expressed its willingness to reach a deal, including after Israel shattered a fragile truce in March by resuming its bombing of the enclave. But it has demanded an agreement that includes the permanent end to the war in exchange of the release of all captives.
PM Netanyahu in ‘constant contact’ with truce negotiators in Qatar
President Trump’s Middle East visit raised hope his presence could increase the chances of a ceasefire or the resumption of humanitarian aid to starved Gaza, which Israel has prevented for more than two months.
An unnamed Israeli official told The Associated Press that Prime Minister Netanyahu is in constant contact with the negotiating team in Doha, Qatar, and US envoy Steve Witkoff, and instructed the team to remain there.
Hamas, which released an Israeli-American captive as a goodwill gesture before Trump’s trip, insists on a deal that ends the war and leads to the withdrawal of Israeli forces – something Israel said it won’t agree to.
Israel’s army said on social media it wouldn’t stop its attack on Gaza until the captives are returned and Hamas is dismantled. Israel believes as many as 23 abductees in Gaza are still alive, although Israeli authorities have expressed concern for the status of three of them.
US’s Rubio speaks with PM Netanyahu
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has held a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“They discussed the situation in Gaza and their joint efforts to secure the release of all remaining hostages,” the State Department said in a brief readout of the talks.
The call comes a day after US President Trump wrapped up a trip to the Middle East that did not include a stop in Israel, a decision analysts say highlights deteriorating ties between the two major allies.
Doha’s Gaza ceasefire talks: ‘Unlikely anything will come out of them’
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears unstoppable in his devastating war on Gaza, an analyst says.
“He simply feels he can. He’s got the power, the equipment. There’s no one there to deter or stop him. He’s been at this for almost two years now,” said Sultan Barakat, professor of public policy at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University.
US President Trump’s visit got Israel to send a negotiating team to Qatar for ceasefire talks, but that’s about it, Barakat told Al Jazeera.
“I don’t even understand how these talks can be justified given not just what Netanyahu is doing but the rhetoric that he and his government are spreading about future plans for Gaza. It’s difficult to see how Palestinians will come to these talks under the current circumstances. It’s unlikely anything will come out of them.”
Silent protest in Tel Aviv honours Gaza children killed in Israeli strikes
Hundreds of Israeli protesters hold up candles and pictures of children in Gaza killed by Israeli forces in a silent protest outside the Israeli army’s headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Israeli media report the images are of children killed since March 18 when Israel resumed its bombing of the enclave, shattering a period of relative calm in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan but also the fragile ceasefire deal Israel had with Hamas.
How much space can Palestinians in Gaza access?
On March 18, Israel resumed its bombing of Gaza, shattering a fragile ceasefire it had agreed to with Hamas.
Since then, it has issued at least 23 forced displacement orders, making about 146 square kilometres (56sq miles) of the Gaza Strip inaccessible.
The total area of the Gaza Strip is 365sq km (141sq miles), according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
This, along with declaring large areas branded no-go zones, means Palestinians can’t access more than two-thirds of the enclave. By governorate:
- 100 percent of Rafah is a no-go zone or a displacement area
- 84 percent of northern Gaza
- 51 percent of southern Khan Younis
- 41 percent of central Deir el-Balah
The UN estimates that about 436,000 people have been displaced again since the breakdown of the truce.
US senator says Netanyahu starving 2 million Palestinians
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen has slammed Netanyahu’s government for its two-month blockade on Gaza.
“Let food into Gaza NOW! Netanyahu & his govt are starving 2M civilians,” Van Hollen wrote in a social media post. “The US is complicit in this gross violation of international law.”
The US is Israel’s top ally providing at least $3.8bn in military aid to the country each year. It also has provided billions of dollars in additional assistance to Israel since the war on Gaza began.
How is famine measured?
This week, the world’s top hunger monitor warned because of Israel’s blockade “the risk of famine in the Gaza Strip is not just possible – it is increasingly likely”.
How is famine measured exactly? According to the UN’s criteria, famine is declared when:
- At least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages
- More than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition
- At least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.
Read more in our explainer here.