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Here’s where things stand on Saturday 5 July 2025:
- Hamas says it has issued a “positive” response to mediators on latest ceasefire proposal, and is ready to “immediately” begin negotiations to implement its framework.
- Israel issues new forced displacement threats for parts of parts of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, as attacks across the besieged territory kill dozens of Palestinians.
- The number of Palestinian aid seekers killed by Israeli forces since May 27 in the besieged Gaza Strip has reached 613, according to the UN, as a report says US contractors ostensibly guarding controversial aid distribution sites have been using live ammunition and stun grenades.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 57,268 people and wounded 135,625, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
No response yet from Israeli leaders
There hasn’t been a lot from Israeli officials tonight and that’s because it is Shabbat; Israeli politicians typically do not work.
But this is something that has been a long-time coming, especially within the last couple of weeks, after US President Trump was really putting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try and come up with a deal.
What we’re hearing now is that Hamas has responded positively. According to some anonymous sources speaking to Israeli media just in the last couple of minutes, Hamas is only proposing what they’re calling “minor changes” to the current framework.
The major sticking point that Hamas and the Israelis had was whether or not the war could continue. Israel had previously wanted guarantees that they could return to the fighting, whereas Hamas wanted guarantees that the war would actually end.
This is why the last ceasefire deal completely fell apart because the Israelis did not want to negotiate for phase two of that deal, because it would mean negotiations for an end of the war.
So ultimately what Hamas is looking for is an end of the aggression on the Palestinian territory. But it’s unclear what the Israelis are going to get in return.
Questions abound but Hamas’s response ‘much-awaited’ in Gaza
It’s a much-awaited, much-anticipated [response from Hamas]. Throughout the day, people were asking us questions about the response and when it was going to happen.
Everybody was anxious.
We don’t know whether this response by Hamas… to enter into a serious round of negotiations is going to bring an end to the ongoing killings, for example, or the presence of the [Israeli] drones that are hovering everywhere, or the reports of ongoing heavy artillery and shooting at people waiting for food at distribution points.
None of this is clear right now, but at least it’s a first step.
Palestinian community in West Bank ‘entirely depopulated’ by Israeli settlers
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released the footage below to show how an attack earlier today by Israeli settlers forced an entire community in the occupied West Bank to relocate to other areas.
Israeli settlers have increasingly ramped up their violent attacks, many of which are carried out with support from Israeli troops, amid the war on Gaza.
Hamas says submitted ‘positive response’ to mediators on ceasefire proposal
Hamas says it submitted its response after completing consultations with Palestinian forces and factions.
“The movement has submitted a positive response to the mediators, and the movement is fully prepared to immediately enter into a round of negotiations regarding the mechanism for implementing this framework,” it said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Israeli military says Lebanon strike killed ‘terrorist’ linked with Iran
The Israeli army and security agency Shin Bet say they were behind a targeted assassination near Beirut yesterday that killed one person and injured three others.
The military in a statement described the man who was killed as a “Lebanese terrorist” who operated on behalf of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
It said he was a key figure in the smuggling of weapons from Iran through Syria to various points in the occupied West Bank, and his killing deals a blow to the weapons manufacturing capability of “various terror organisations”.
Israel kills more aid seekers
Sources at al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat tell Al Jazeera that four aid seekers have been killed by Israeli fire near an aid distribution point in central Gaza, on Salah al-Din Street, the main north-south thoroughfare in the Strip.
Israel has killed more than 600 starving people seeking aid near distribution points since late May, when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations.
Palestine Action appeals High Court decision
A bid by lawyers representing Palestine Action to appeal against a High Court judge’s refusal to temporarily block an imminent ban on the group has begun at the Court of Appeal.
The Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Lord Justice Lewis and Lord Justice Edis are hearing the challenge against the decision of Justice Chamberlain, who earlier on Friday ruled against granting “interim relief” to block the ban becoming law over the weekend.
Barristers for the UK’s Home Office are opposing the appeal bid, having also defended the bid for the temporary block.
The hearing is being held at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
Mapping Israeli strikes on Iran’s air defences
Al Jazeera’s digital investigation team Sanad has mapped out Israeli strikes on Iran’s air defences to reveal how they paved the way for US bombers in their own operation.
Israeli army claims ‘operational control’ over 65 percent of Gaza
The Israeli military reports that its invading ground forces now have direct military control over 65 percent of the Gaza Strip.
It said in a short statement that its soldiers killed more than 100 “terrorists” over the past week, and that the military campaign in the besieged enclave will continue.
As we reported earlier, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said about 85 percent of Gaza’s total area is now part of Israel’s militarised zones or under forced evacuation orders.
Iran’s Pezeshkian calls for Muslim unity against Israeli ‘crimes’
In Azerbaijan for the latest meeting of the heads of the 10-member Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO), Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian called for unity among Muslim countries against Israel in meetings with Turkish and Pakistani counterparts.
Pezeshkian told Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that considering the vast resources in Muslim-majority countries, “It is a pity that the Zionist regime brazenly commits crimes in Gaza and massacres tens of thousands of children and women.”
He also pointed to Israel’s attacks on Iran during the 12-day war, according to a short readout from his website, and said, “This aggression was committed with overt support from the US and Europe, and in complete violation of international norms and rules.”
Pezeshkian told Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that Iran has always emphasised it is ready to negotiate over differences.
‘I used to walk, go to school, play’
Defense for Children International-Palestine has shared the story of an eight-year-old Palestinian girl named Rehab, who was paralysed in over half of her body after being wounded in an Israeli missile strike.
“I used to walk, go to school, play with my siblings. Now I’m injured and sitting, I can’t walk,” the girl said in a video shared by the rights group on social media.
Dalia, Rehab’s mother, also described the pain of seeing her daughter suffer with no way to help.
“We used to teach them, ‘I have the right to play, to learn, and to live in peace.’ But now I can’t tell her that any more because we can’t provide it,” Dalia said in the video.
“She always sees her siblings playing, running, and chasing each other but she can’t join. That is the hardest thing for a person, especially for a mother, to feel that her child is scared or that they need her but she can’t help them.
“This is very, very painful.”
Red Cross field hospital staff member injured in Gaza’s Rafah
The staff member was injured by a stray bullet but is in stable condition, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says.
“This incident is unacceptable, and a reminder of the dangers civilians, medical staff, and patients experience every day in Gaza,” the agency said in a post on X.
The ICRC said stray bullets have prevented the field hospital in Rafah from operating normally for weeks. Health workers and patients are regularly forced to “rush to designated safe areas at the sound of an alarm to avoid getting shot”, it said.
“Women in the maternity ward are forced to move to the floor because they cannot be moved while giving birth. Surgeons and other operating staff continue working with the sound of bullets around them, knowing one could pierce the canvas of the operating theatre at any moment.”
The ICRC added that two Palestine Red Crescent Society staff members were also injured today while on duty, “underscoring the perilous security environment in Gaza and the intolerable risks first responders face while trying to reach those who depend on their support”.
Uncertainty around future civil disobedience after Palestine Action decision
In the end, the bid for judicial review by Palestine Action was lost. They will not be able to have that government ban postponed, as they had intended.
They argued in court that to make them a proscribed group … would be disproportionate as the group itself does not advocate violence.
[The High Court decision] does raise quite a few issues in terms of what exactly civil disobedience means now, what strategies of civil disobedience now are proscribed or are allowed, and fit within the remit of the law.
But what’s certain as of now is that, as of midnight, Palestine Action will be designated a proscribed group and therefore, any overt support of it, being a member of it, [will] possibly carry a jail sentence of up to 14 years.
Police swarm protesters outside UK’s Royal Court of Justice
Palestine Action, the activist movement that the British government wants to label a “terrorist group”, says its protests will not stop after police swarmed those gathered outside the top court in central London.
The group is set to be banned after a High Court judge refused to temporarily block it being designated as a terror group. This would make supporting Palestine Action punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the government’s plan.
‘Whomever got a bag of flour, got shot in the head’: More from MSF
A staff member of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, who survived the mass killing in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis by Israeli soldiers that we reported on earlier, has recounted the horrific incident.
“Five trucks were parked to let people come in and take what they could. Then the [Israeli] tanks started advancing and we could see a lot of snipers in the area too. Suddenly, shots started coming from every direction. Whomever got a bag of flour, got shot in the head. The bags of flour were all over the ground. Covered in blood,” said the MSF worker, whose name was changed to protect his identity.
“There were so many bodies on the ground. After that, a quadcopter came to where we were hiding under the rubble of one of the houses. [The quadcopter] told us to put our hands up and come out. It said ‘you are not allowed to take flour. Keep walking and don’t pick up any of the dead or wounded from the ground.’ Some people stayed, we could still hear the tanks firing. Young men, dying for a bag of flour.”
MSF Emergency Coordinator in Gaza Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa said the level of desperation for food in Gaza is “beyond comprehension”, and humanitarian agencies are restricted by Israel.
“Israeli authorities are limiting movements and supplies and have devised a new militarised way to distribute food that is degrading and deadly. The systemic and deliberate starvation of Palestinians for over 100 days is pushing people in Gaza to breaking point. This carnage must stop now.”
