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Here’s where things stand on Friday 1 August 2025:
- Israel’s aid distribution scheme in Gaza is “engineering chaos and massacres”, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), as Israel kills at least 38 aid seekers today.
- The Gaza Health Ministry says that three more people, including two children, have starved to death in the last 24 hours. Hunger-related deaths in Gaza now stand at 162, including 92 children.
- 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.
- 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.
Unconditional US support for Israel opening rifts among Trump’s MAGA base, analyst says
As images of starving and increasingly desperate Palestinians keep coming out of Gaza, the United States’ staunch support for Israel is even beginning to draw criticism from some of President Trump’s most “ardent” supporters, political analyst Eric Ham has told Al Jazeera.
“Clearly, the troubling sights that we’re seeing coming out of Gaza are so dire, so bad that now you have … some of the most ardent and supportive and far-right conservatives that are now beginning to push back [against unconditional US support for Israel],” he said, speaking from Washington, DC.
“And what’s it’s leading to, of course, is another source of tension between [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump.”
Ham said that while some Trump supporters see the vast US financial support of Israel as being against the “America First” principles, the massive bipartisan support for Israel going back decades is also starting to weaken.
“I think what we’re beginning to see is not only a break within the MAGA base, but also more and more Democrats are beginning to push back – particularly on the influential AIPAC Jewish lobby that has continued to finance so many lawmakers both on the right and left,” he said.
“What we’re beginning to see is that there’s no longer just a blank cheque to provide arms and weapons and of course, aid to Israel – particularly when you’re seeing so many of the United States foreign allies and partners beginning to also push back.”
Palestinian mother survives Israeli shooting to secure a bag of lentils
Israel is severely limiting the number of aid trucks into Gaza, which means many return home to their families from aid distribution points and warehouses with nothing to eat.
But some do not make it back alive – more than 1,300 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces while seeking aid across Gaza.
One woman in Gaza, who says she braved an Israeli attack to get a bag of lentils at a GHF site, recounted her experiences to Al Jazeera.
“I stood behind a rock, and they started shooting. I kept crawling until I reached the trailer, and then I got down,” she said. “I managed to secure a bag of lentils. That was after several attempts.”
She said she went to the site by herself as her husband is sick and disabled, and she has six daughters.
“That’s why I’m the one who goes to get the aid. I don’t have sons or boys who can bring the aid for me,” she said.
Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza since dawn reaches 71
Sources in Gaza hospitals have told Al Jazeera that at least 71 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks across the Strip since dawn on Friday, including 38 people seeking aid.
Witkoff did not meet any United Nations staff during trip to Gaza, UN spokesperson says
The deputy spokesperson for the United Nations secretary-general has said that, “as far as he was aware”, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Wikoff did not meet anyone from the United Nations during his visit to Gaza on Friday.
“I checked with all the various offices and agencies, and none of them have replied about any meeting,” Farhan Haq told Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo during a news conference in New York.
Haq said that Witkoff, who visited an aid site run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed GHF in southern Gaza, could certainly also have visited UN workers and facilities if he had requested a meeting.
“We trust and expect that the US officials will continue to be in touch with us. We certainly have made clear what our operations on the ground are, and we’ve been in touch with them, as with other [UN] member states,” Haq said.
The UN has repeatedly criticised the GHF for being unable to provide aid on the scale required to hunger-ravaged Gaza, for violating basic humanitarian principles, and for the dire security at and around its aid sites, where more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
US trying to ‘whitewash’ and ‘accelerate’ Israel’s starvation of Gaza
Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, has told Al Jazeera that the visit by US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff visit to an aid site in Gaza run by the controversial GHF organisation on Friday was “perhaps a new low” as it tried to “whitewash” Israel’s deliberate starvation of the Strip.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who travelled with Witkoff to Gaza, posted on X a picture showing hungry people behind razor wire with a GHF poster displaying a big US flag and the words “100,000,000 meals delivered”.
More than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in and around GHF sites in recent weeks amid repeated Israeli attacks, and aid organisations have said that the amount of food provided at these sites is well below what Gaza’s starving population requires.
“Dozens of governments and aid organisations over the past several weeks have criticised this aid scheme that Israel and the United States have set up, and importantly, there have been a couple of American whistleblowers who have come forth recently,” Elmasry said.
“In that context, the United States had a choice – they could have come clean. They didn’t necessarily have to condemn Israel, no one is expecting that, but they could have said things aren’t going well and we need to address that,” he added.
“Instead of doing that, which would have been the bare minimum, they’re trying to whitewash the deliberate starvation programme and accelerate it so that Israel can complete the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas official accuses Trump of ‘repeating Israeli lies’ on Gaza aid
Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq says Trump “does not tire of repeating Israeli accusations and lies, and we will not tire of rejecting and refuting them”.
“We strongly condemn the repeated claims and lies by US President Trump accusing Hamas of stealing and selling humanitarian aid in Gaza,” he wrote in a statement released online.
He said the accusations are false and unsupported by evidence, adding that they “exonerate the criminal and blame the victim”.
The official reminded that an investigation by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) found no evidence of massive Hamas theft of aid last week. He called what is happening in Gaza a “systematic starvation and extermination” that is directly backed by Washington.
Qassam Brigades releases footage of explosive ambush in Gaza
The armed wing of Hamas has released a video of multiple attacks on invading Israeli forces in southern Gaza, including the detonation of three roadside bombs and mortar strikes.
The footage claims to show the targeting of Israeli vehicles in the al-Batin al-Samin area, southwest of Khan Younis, and of shelling Israeli positions and gatherings at the incursion axes in Khan Younis with rockets and mortars.
Houthis say they targeted Ben Gurion airport with hypersonic missile
Yemen’s Houthis say they targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion airport “using a ‘Palestine 2’ hypersonic ballistic missile” on Friday evening, the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a video statement.
The Israeli military earlier said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.
The Iran-backed Houthis have launched repeated missile and drone attacks against Israel since their Palestinian ally Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war.
The Houthis, who say they are acting in support of the Palestinians, paused their attacks during a two-month ceasefire in Gaza that ended in March, but renewed them after Israel resumed major operations.
Israel has carried out several strikes that have killed dozens of people in Yemen, targeting Houthi-held ports and the airport in the rebel-held capital Sanaa.
Palestinian injured in aid chaos: ‘None of us will go back to Zikim’
A Palestinian whose leg was run over by an aid truck during a chaotic attempt to distribute aid has given testimony to MSF, which treated them in Gaza City.
The person said when they tried to go to Zikim in northern Gaza to get flour, they “saw many people dead from the shelling and shooting from tanks”.
“As the trucks entered, at first they drove very fast but then they slowed down for the big crowd. When the trucks turned, some of the 50kg [110-pound] bags of flour fell off, injuring people. The Israeli forces forced the driver to keep going, despite there being people all around him. The driver tried to reverse the truck to leave the area, but it was so crowded that people were hit”, they continued.
Seven young men behind the truck were instantly killed. Amid the chaos, the patient did not realise that their own leg had been run over by the truck.
Now, they said that their family has one less person who can help try to find the food and supplies they need to survive Israel’s enforced deprivation policy.
“What I dream about is for all this to be over and to rebuild the house and the business of my father that has been destroyed,” they said.
Israel’s army chief ‘will know in coming days’ whether there will be ceasefire
Israel’s army chief Eyal Zamir has visited invading troops in the Gaza Strip, saying he estimates that “in the coming days we will know whether we will succeed in reaching” an agreement with Hamas.
“If not, the fighting will continue without cease,” he said, according to the military, adding that the soldiers will have to “adapt to the changing reality” based on Israeli interests.
Zamir claimed that the “false starvation campaign” in Gaza is an attempt to accuse the Israeli military of war crimes. He again blamed Hamas for the suffering in the besieged enclave.
Israeli-imposed starvation claims more victims in Gaza
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip recorded three more deaths due to famine and malnutrition over the past day, including two children, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
This brings the total number of starvation victims to 162 Palestinians, including 92 children.
The ministry said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to worsen, and renewed its call on the international community to intervene.
MSF: Israeli aid distribution ‘engineering chaos and massacres’
Caroline Willemen, the Gaza project coordinator for MSF, says “Food remains critically scarce, and there is little indication that sufficient aid will arrive consistently.”
“As a result, every day, people risk their lives in a desperate search for food.”
Using an example from July 30, just days ago, she detailed what the experience of attempting to receive food from aid trucks guarded by Israeli soldiers in Gaza is like for starving Palestinians.
“As people approached trucks distributing aid near Zikim, in north Gaza, Israeli forces opened fire on them. People were wounded in the gunfire and in the crush as crowds panicked and ran”, she said.
“Medical staff at the MSF-supported Sheikh Radwan clinic in north Gaza treated 77 injured patients and received eight people dead on arrival. Across north Gaza, nearly 600 people were treated for similar injuries following violence and chaos near Zikim that night, according to the Ministry of Health, as food trucks were passing.”
Per our reporting, dozens of people trying to pick up life-saving aid in Gaza are killed every day, as Israel continues to deny that starvation in the Strip is at crisis levels.
As Witkoff visited Gaza, a 12-year-old boy was killed seeking aid
US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff visited one of the food distribution sites run by the controversial Israeli and US-backed GHF near Rafah in southern Gaza on Friday.
But on the day his carefully curated visit took place, medical sources say that elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli forces killed at least 36 Palestinians seeking aid – including a 12-year-old boy, who was reportedly shot dead while he tried to find food for his family.
“We were hopeful about Witkoff’s visit. We were saying, ‘Thank God, maybe he’ll help, maybe he’ll push for a ceasefire,’” Gaza resident Mahmoud Awad told Al Jazeera.
“But instead, the gunfire increased, and there was even more insistence on killing as many young men and children as possible.
“We were hoping for a ceasefire, but instead a child died. Why did the child die?”
Protesters denounce Gaza starvation in Morocco cities
Protesters gathered in several Moroccan cities to demonstrate against the starvation policy imposed on Palestinians in Gaza.
Footage verified by Al Jazeera showed gatherings organised by the Moroccan Commission for Supporting Nation’s Causes in cities like Berkane, Tetouan, Agadir, Aklim, Oujda, and others, with the participation of hundreds of demonstrators.
Photos: Palestinians wounded as they rush to few aid trucks in Beit Lahiya
