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Here’s where things stand on Friday 1 August 2025:
- Olga Cherevko, a staff member at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, says that while Israel is now letting slightly more aid into the enclave, it is “not nearly enough to even scratch the surface to meet the people’s needs here on the ground”.
- At least seven people were killed and dozens injured while waiting for food supplies near the Morag Corridor south of Khan Younis on Friday morning, our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic report.
- US envoy Steve Witkoff and US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, have visited aid distribution sites in Gaza as deaths from starvation continue to mount in the Palestinian territory.
- Medics in Gaza report that two more babies and a young man have died of hunger under Israeli-imposed restrictions on humanitarian aid. Hunger-related deaths in Gaza now stand at 154, including 89 children.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 60,332 people and wounded 147,643 others. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Israeli authorities force Palestinian man to demolish his own Jerusalem home
Footage verified by Al Jazeera shows a Palestinian family demolishing their home in the al-Mukaber town in occupied East Jerusalem, after being forced by Israeli authorities.
The Governorate of Jerusalem said in a Facebook that “the occupation displaced four people” including owner Adham Aweisat after the demolition, which took place under the pretext of building without a permit.
Ben-Gvir reiterates his call for re-establishing illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza
Israel’s far-right national security minister has repeated his call for Israel to push Palestinians out of Gaza and build new settlements there.
In a post on X, Itamar Ben-Gvir lamented that Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza in 2005 – a move he protested at the time – and said Israel should re-establish them.
“The lesson remains clear and simple today: We must go home. To Gush Katif,” Ben-Gvir said, using a term referring to a group of 17 old Israeli settlements in the enclave.
“To all of Gaza,” he continued. “The ones who need to leave are the enemies – not the lovers of the land.”
Amnesty requests info on ship in line with Spain’s arms embargo on Israel
The head of Amnesty International has welcomed what she called the Spanish government’s “response to the ongoing genocide” in Gaza and requested information in line with implementing the government’s commitment.
Agnes Callamard wrote in a post on X that the global rights organisation welcomes the decisions to ban new arms export licences and to reject requests for ships carrying arms for Israel to stop in Spanish ports.
“We therefore call on them to ensure these measures are implemented without exception,” she said.
Spain’s El Pais daily newspaper reported that Amnesty International has called on the Spanish government to verify the cargo of a Maersk ship suspected of transporting weapons to Israel that arrived at the port of Barcelona on Friday and will stop in Algeciras on August 6.
Photos: Palestinians line up for food at distribution point
Today’s death toll in Gaza rises
At least 42 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on the enclave since the early hours of this morning.
This toll comes to us from sources at local hospitals, who added that at least 15 of those killed were aid seekers.
Israeli soldiers use silencers while shooting Gaza aid seekers
For the first time, Israeli soldiers today used silenced weapons to shoot at starving Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza.
Anas al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in northern Gaza, reported that he spoke to multiple witnesses who confirmed the use of silencers in the Sudanese area near Beit Lahiya, deployed by the Israeli army when targeting people around an aid site.
He said this means the Israeli soldiers were trying to inflict casualties without drawing too much attention to themselves.
The development comes as US envoy Steve Witkoff and ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited Gaza for several hours today to see how food distribution works at a site run by the internationally criticised GHF.
‘I feel I’m slowly losing my daughter’
Palestinian mother Nasma Ayad fears her eight-year-old daughter Jana will soon suffer the same fate as dozens of children who have died of malnutrition in the Strip.
“I feel I’m slowly losing my daughter, day after day – everything she’s suffering from is multiplying,” Ayad said of Jana, who, weighing just 11kg (24lb), now has trouble seeing, speaking or standing up.
Suzan Marouf, a therapeutic nutritionist at Patient Friend’s Benevolent Society Hospital in Gaza City, where Jana is being treated, said the girl has “started having an edema, which is fluid retention that makes the limbs and the body swell and store water because of the lack of protein and food”.
“I am calling for the urgent referral of Jana as soon as possible to be treated outside the country,” said Ayad.
Israeli settlers attack Ramallah, Nablus in occupied West Bank
Israeli settlers, some of them on motorcycles, stormed the village of Burqa located east of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in an effort to intimidate Palestinians.
Another settler attack occurred in Jalud village, southeast of Nablus, where security sources told Wafa news agency that settlers attacked the home of a Palestinian man and threw Molotov cocktails at it, causing damage.
Settlers also stormed the Aqqaba area south of Nablus and attempted to steal from Palestinian property.
The footage below, which has been verified by Al Jazeera, shows Israeli soldiers firing at residents during a raid in Hebron.
Celebrated Israeli writer David Grossman says Israel committing ‘genocide’
David Grossman, an award-winning Israeli novelist, has said Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to a “genocide”, a term he said he is using with “immense pain and a broken heart”.
“For many years, I refused to use that term: ‘genocide’,” Grossman, a longtime peace activist and government critic, told the Italian daily La Repubblica newspaper.
“But now, after the images I have seen and after talking to people who were there, I can’t help using it,” he said.
“This word is an avalanche: once you say it, it just gets bigger, like an avalanche. And it adds even more destruction and suffering,” he said.
Hamas calls for weekend protests at US, Israeli embassies
Hamas has called on people around the world to hold demonstrations outside US, Israeli and allied embassies every Friday, Saturday and Sunday until Israel’s “aggression ends”.
In a statement, the Palestinian group said Israel’s “continued blockade, the denial of food and medicine, the closure of crossings, and the starvation of children and the sick” are “crimes against humanity that will not be forgotten”.
“We call for continued action until the war of extermination and starvation against our people in the Gaza Strip stops and until the occupation is expelled from all of our land,” said Hamas.
EU staff urge leaders to pressure Israel for Gaza aid access in open letter
Hundreds of staff members working for EU institutions wrote a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas, urging the two to press Israel to let humanitarian aid into Gaza.
According to the letter seen by Al Jazeera, more than 700 signatories ask for the opening of all land crossings for the delivery of essential goods and permitting humanitarian ships to dock.
“Israel cannot be allowed to show disdain for yet another agreement and further disrespect to the European Union,” read the statement, referring to an understanding that the EU had reached with Israel in mid-July to improve the situation on the ground.
The European Union is Israel’s largest trading partner and, as such, it has considerable leverage to insist on compliance with international humanitarian law, read the document.
The signatories proposed specific measures that could be taken against Israel. Here are some of those listed:
- Targeted sanctions against entities responsible for obstructing humanitarian access, including Israeli leaders.
- Leading a coordinated international effort with the UN to ensure safe humanitarian corridors into Gaza.
- Suspending diplomatic relations with Israel.
“Our credibility and moral leadership depend on taking bold and principled action now.”
US working on a plan ‘to get people fed’: Trump
US President Donald Trump has told Axios’s journalist Barak David that he is working on a plan “to get people fed” in Gaza.
“We want to help people. We want to help them live. We want to get people fed. It is something that should have happened a long time ago,” Trump said.
This is not the first time the US president has said he is concerned about reports of starvation in Gaza, placing the onus on Israel to improve the humanitarian crisis in the enclave. Yesterday, Trump said “the fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis” was for Hamas to surrender and release all captives.
In the past, he has floated a US takeover of the enclave, expelling Palestinians and turning the land of the Gaza Strip into a “resort”, in what the UN said would amount to ethnic cleansing.
Palestinians view GHF as ‘symbol of control and manipulation’
People are expecting little from Witkoff’s visit to the GHF site.
Since the GHF took over [aid distribution] operations, getting food has become very dangerous and humiliating. Many Palestinians have begun to view the GHF not as a humanitarian actor, but as a symbol of control and manipulation.
Twenty-two months into this war, Gaza is still witnessing military escalation and a deepening humanitarian crisis that has been politicised and militarised.
Reports from Gaza’s Health Ministry indicate that the situation is worsening and the number of malnutrition cases is on the rise.
France starts airdropping food into Gaza
France has started to airdrop 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza as it urged Israel to allow full access to the area, which it said was slipping into famine.
“Faced with the absolute urgency, we have just conducted a food airdrop operation in Gaza. Thank you to our Jordanian, Emirati, and German partners for their support, and to our military personnel for their commitment,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X. “Airdrops are not enough. Israel must open full humanitarian access to address the risk of famine,” he added.
The president’s comments come after Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said France was sending four flights carrying 10 tonnes of humanitarian aid each to Gaza from Jordan.
Witkoff says he spent over five hours in Gaza today
The US special envoy said he and ambassador Mike Huckabee spent their time “level setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions” and meeting with the GHF and other agencies.
Witkoff said they aim to relay “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation” in Gaza to US President Trump and to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
UNRWA says aid trucks far more efficient than airdrops
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has criticised the shift to humanitarian airdrops, which he says are 100 times more costly than trucks while carrying just half the assistance.
“If there is political will to allow airdrops – which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings,” he said, adding that the UN has 6,000 trucks filled with aid waiting at Gaza’s border.
“As the people of Gaza are starving to death, the only way to respond to the famine is to flood Gaza with assistance,” Lazzarini wrote in a post on X. “No alternative to the UN coordinated response with UNRWA as the backbone had provided similar results.”
“Let’s go back to what works & let us do our job,” he said.
Hamas condemns latest Israeli settler violence in occupied West Bank
Senior Hamas official Abdel Hakim Henini has condemned Israeli settlers for setting fire to the car of foreign solidarity activists in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.
“This attack not only targets our people and our cause, but also sends an aggressive message to all the free people of the world who support us, in an attempt to intimidate them and prevent them from exposing the crimes of the occupation,” read a Hamas statement quoting Henini.
The repeated attack on civilian property reflects an “organised campaign aimed at forcibly imposing a settlement reality at the expense of the Palestinian presence”, it said, condemning the Israeli army’s protection of these settlers.
On top of burning the vehicle on Thursday night, settlers also threw Molotov cocktails and stones at a residential home, according to the Wafa news agency.
Aid uptick ‘not enough to even scratch the surface’: OCHA
Olga Cherevko, a staff member at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, says that while Israel is now letting slightly more aid into the enclave, its vast bureaucratic restrictions on aid flow have continued to make it impossible to reverse widespread malnutrition.
“The slight increase in what is coming in is not nearly enough to even scratch the surface to meet the people’s needs here on the ground,” Cherevko told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza.
She described Palestinians as continuing to suffer “depths of despair, depths of malnutrition and starvation”.
A major reason more aid trucks aren’t entering Gaza, she said, is that the UN must coordinate every step of the delivery process with Israel, which often extensively delays approvals and clearances.
“There are so many factors on the ground that point to the fact that, despite the slight relaxation of [Israel’s] various constraints [on aid entry], we’re still in the same situation,” Cherevko said.
“People are continuing to starve, malnutrition rates continue to go up, people are risking their lives to get food, and there’s no change substantially and operationally, really.”
Photos: Limited amount of aid dropped into Gaza
Israel kills four people in Lebanon: Ministry
A series of Israeli air strikes killed four people in south and east Lebanon, the Lebanese Health Ministry says, referring to strikes that occurred the previous evening.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had targeted Hezbollah “infrastructure that was used for producing and storing strategic weapons” in south Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
More than a year of hostilities – including two months of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, which largely ended with a November ceasefire – left the group badly weakened.
Israel has nonetheless kept up near-daily air strikes in Lebanon despite the ceasefire, and has threatened to continue them until the group has been disarmed.
Under the terms of the truce, Hezbollah was to withdraw its fighters north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli border.
Israel was meant to withdraw all its troops from Lebanon, but has kept them in five areas it deems strategic.