Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that his country would not give in to the “winds of defeatism” as he reaffirmed his offensive aim of defeating Hamas, AFP reports.
Netanyahu made his new vow of victory after the New York Times quoted sources as saying Israel was ready to make a deal without reaching all its goals.
“I am here to make it unequivocally clear: This will not happen,” he said.
“The war will end once Israel achieves all of its objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all of our hostages.”
The prime minister said the Israeli army had “all the means to achieve” the targets in Gaza.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza has said that 1.9 million people are now displaced in the territory, adding she was “deeply concerned” by reports of new evacuation orders for Khan Younis, AFP reports.
“Over 1m people have been displaced once again, desperately seeking shelter and safety [and] 1.9m people are now displaced across Gaza … I’m deeply concerned about reports of new evacuation orders issued in the area of Khan Younis,” Sigrid Kaag told the UN Security Council.
“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering. Their homes life shattered, their lives upended. The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery,” Kaag added.
She said that not enough aid was reaching the battered strip and that the opening of new crossings, particularly to southern Gaza, was necessary to avert a humanitarian disaster.
Kaag said the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt should be re-opened and also pleaded with the international community to do more to fund relief efforts.
Shanaz Saddique is one of a surge of pro-Palestinian candidates hoping to mobilise Muslim votes at Britain’s July 4 election by tapping into discontent over the two main political parties’ positions on the conflict in Gaza, Reuters reports.
Both the ruling Conservatives and the resurgent Labour party have said they want the fighting to stop, but have also backed Israel’s right to defend itself — angering some among the 3.9 million Muslims who make up 6.5 per cent of Britain’s population.
Few, if any, of the pro-Palestinian candidates running as independents or for non-mainstream parties will get elected to parliament, but “The Muslim Vote” campaign is looking to win enough votes to send a strong message to those who do.
Workers Party candidate for Oldham East and Saddleworth, Shanaz Saddique, poses for a photograph in Oldham, Britain on June 27, 2024. — Reuters
“Gaza is … not about a political argument. It’s a human rights argument,” Saddique, who is running to be elected as a Member of Parliament for Oldham East and Saddleworth north of Manchester told Reuters. “We do not apologise for being the Gaza party.”
The Muslim Vote campaign is advising voters to pick pro-Palestine candidates running as independents or from smaller parties like the left-wing Workers Party, which has put up 152 candidates including Saddique.
The party’s outspoken leader George Galloway won a special election in March for a vacant parliamentary seat in Rochdale, a neighbouring town to Oldham, which also has a big Muslim population, after Labour withdrew support from its candidate over a recording espousing conspiracy theories about Israel.
Israel has connected a power line to a main desalination plant in the Gaza Strip to provide additional drinking water to Palestinian residents in the enclave, Reuters quotes Israel’s military as saying.
The power line goes directly from Israel to a UN-managed desalination plant in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis so that Hamas cannot exploit the new energy supply, according to a statement by the Israeli military and COGAT, the agency for civilian coordination with the Palestinians.
Production will jump fourfold to 20,000 cubic metres of drinking water per day, the statement said.
However, that is far from enough to supply the population of Gaza, which has been devastated by nine months of Israeli military campaign.
“The increase in supply of water is a further step taken to support humanitarian efforts for Gazan residents, and to prevent contamination and outbreaks of disease during the summer months,” the statement said.
Gaza’s European Hospital in Khan Younis is virtually empty with staff and patients fleeing the facility after the Israeli army ordered residents in the surrounding areas to evacuate, Reuters quoted a World Health Official spokesperson as saying.
“The hospital staff and the patients decided to already evacuate themselves,” said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO Representative for the occupied Palestinian territories, adding that just three patients remained.
“We plea the European Gaza hospital will be spared, will be non-damaged,” he told the UN press briefing, speaking by video link from Jerusalem.
Displaced Palestinians from areas in east Khan Younis arrive in the city as they flee after the Israeli army issued a new evacuation order for parts of the city and Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on July 2, 2024. — AFP
The health ministry in Gaza has said at least 25 people were killed in 24 hours, taking to 37,925 the death toll in nearly nine months of Israel’s offensive on Gaza, AFP reports.
A ministry statement added that 87,141 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began on October 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel.
Israel’s evacuation order from the east of Khan Younis shows its inability to achieve its goal of eliminating Hamas and its intent to exhaust the population, says Luciano Zaccara, a professor of Gulf politics at Qatar University’s Gulf Studies Center, told Al Jazeera.
“This demonstrates that they cannot win the war because they wanted to eliminate Hamas physically and politically but so far the group is still there, this is why they need to move people, in order to chase them,” Zaccara told Al Jazeera.
“It also proves that Israel wants to win this war by exhausting the people,” he said, referring to several previous evacuation orders from different locations in the past nine months of conflict.
“In this way, it creates much more trouble and harm for Palestinians who cannot stay for more than one month or 15 days in one place,” he added.
The idea that there are safe places to move people to, Zaccara said, “is not true because every time there has been a displacement there were also attacks”.
The UN said Israeli authorities blocked more than half of the 115 planned humanitarian aid deliveries to northern Gaza in June, Anadolu Agency reports.
Speaking at a news conference, spokesman to the secretary general, Stephane Dujarric, said there are “little or no” available shelters or critical supplies in the areas where people have been forcibly displaced.
Aid distribution through the Kerem Shalom crossing was “nearly impossible” due to security and fuel shortages, he added.
The director of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City has said several Palestinians in Israeli jails died during interrogation, torture, medical negligence, and deprivation of medicine, Anadolu Agency reports.
Speaking at a press conference following his release, Mohammad Abu Salmiya said he and the other released Palestinians left behind Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails “who experience difficult conditions.”
He added that the Palestinian detainees are subjected to physical and psychological torture, and are offered few quantities of food.
“Gaza prisoners lost (on average) 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of their weights because of lack of food,” Dr. Abu Salmiya said.
He also noted that the Israeli doctors and nurses were also part of the assault and punishment of the Palestinian prisoners by not providing them with the required medical treatment.
Israeli health authorities are moving patients from areas of northern Israel to hospitals in central parts of the country in what appears to be preparations for a war with Lebanon, local media reports according to Anadolu Agency.
Israeli private Channel 12 said it was the first time such a move has occurred since the start of the Israeli onslaught against Gaza on Oct 7 last year.
It added that the patients who were transferred from the north are complex medical cases, and many of them are placed on ventilators.
The channel noted that bed occupancy in intensive care units at hospitals in northern Israel is “relatively small,” including the Ziv Medical Center, the Poria Hospital, and the Galilee Medical Center.
The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees estimated that a quarter of a million people had been impacted since Israel’s army issued a new evacuation order for parts of southern Gaza a day earlier, AFP reports.
“We’ve seen people moving, families moving, people starting to pack up their belongings and try to leave this area,” UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told reporters in Geneva via video-link from Gaza.
The agency “estimates that around 250,000 people have been impacted by these orders”, she said, adding: “We expect these numbers to grow”.
The 250,000 number was UNRWA’s estimate for the people in the area of new evacuation orders in eastern Khan Yunis, Wateridge told AFP.
“We expect that almost all of these people will move from this area,” she said, adding that the agency hoped to get a better idea later of the numbers who have physically left.
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati expressed optimism about reaching a diplomatic solution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Anadolu Agency reports.
“I am sure with the help of Allah that we will reach a solution regarding the situation (in southern Lebanon) in the coming days,” Mikati said at an event in Beirut.
Commenting on recent statements by some countries asking their nationals to leave Lebanon amid tensions with Israel, he said some of those countries that took such a decision still want to come to Lebanon.
Medical and technical teams began evacuating patients from Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis city, Anadolu Agency reports.
The Israeli army did not specifically order those in the hospital to leave, but medical teams started evacuating patients, injured people and some of the hospital’s medical equipment as the hospital is located in one of the areas where residents received text warnings from Israeli authorities to move to another location.
Medical sources told Anadolu that the medical teams moved several patients and injured people to Nasser Hospital in central Khan Younis.
They added that the hospital’s technical teams also moved some medical devices and equipment out of fear that it would be damaged if the Israeli army raids the hospital.
An Anadolu correspondent also reported that displaced people also dismantled their tents around the hospital and moved to other places upon receiving the Israeli army’s evacuation orders earlier in the day.
The pier built by the US military to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza has not been re-anchored yet, the Pentagon said, Anadolu Agency reports.
“It was disconnected late last week. It was moved to (Israel’s Port of) Ashdod for the high sea states. The pier remains in Ashdod right now,” spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters.
“We’re still assessing when it can be re-anchored when sea states calm a bit,” Singh added.
“In terms of the distribution, you did see that some distribution did start back up over the weekend. It is going to take a few days to move some of that aid out of the marshaling area that had built up over time,” Singh said, adding the aid is slowly moving out of that marshaling area.
Russia’s permanent representative to UN criticized a US-backed three-phase ceasefire plan for Gaza, saying it lacks details for its implementation, Anadolu Agency reports.
Vassily Nebenzia held a news conference after Russia took over the presidency of the Security Council in July, and responded to Anadolu’s question on the implementation of the resolution that supports the truce proposal announced by US President Joe Biden, with 14 votes in favor and Russia abstaining on June 10.
Emphasising that an “unequivocal, immediate and verifiable ceasefire” must be demanded by the Security Council first, Nebenzia said the US proposal did not clearly address the issue of the truce.
He said the proposal in the resolution was “vague” and lacked necessary details.
Nebenzia said Russia abstained as it did not want to sign a resolution whose implementation, objectives, and timeframe were unclear.
“We did not want to give a blank document to our colleagues to pretend the implementation in fact, sabotage the [ceasefire] process, which we see happening,” he said.
Israel carried out fresh strikes in southern Gaza, forcing hundreds of Palestinians to flee after the army once again ordered the evacuation of certain densely populated areas, AFP reports.
Witnesses reported multiple strikes in and around the city of Khan Younis, where eight people were killed and more than 30 were wounded, according to a medical source and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The bombardment came after a rare rocket barrage claimed by the group Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas.
The rockets were aimed at Israeli communities near the Gaza border and were fired in retaliation for Israeli “crimes… against our Palestinian people”, said the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad.
The Israeli army estimates that an additional four weeks are needed to complete its military operation in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, Al Jazeera reports citing Israel’s Channel 12 broadcaster.
The report claims the military needs several more weeks in order to eliminate the remaining tunnels in the city.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for the Sde Teiman prison to keep its doors open to Palestinian detainees, despite overcrowding, Al Jazeera reports.
“We are overcrowded in prisons, and it is a good thing,” Ben-Gvir was quoted as saying by Israeli media outlets.
“This is not a reason to release [Palestinian detainees], that is how they are supposed to be. These are terrorists, I give them what is required by law – the minimum,” he said.
Ben-Gvir said on X that the problem was not overcrowding in the prison but the fact that the Shin Bet — Israel’s internal security service — wants “to improve the conditions of the terrorists we reduced, and if not — to release them”.
“And I say: It will not arise and will not be,” he said.
The dispute comes after reports that more than 50 Palestinian detainees, including the director of Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital Muhammad Abu Salmiya, were released by Israel yesterday due to overcrowding in the country’s prisons.
Israel’s Prison Service said that the Sde Teiman prison took in 500 Palestinian detainees last month at the request of the army.
The past 24 hours have been quite difficult for residents of the eastern parts of Khan Younis, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reports from Deir el-Balah, Gaza.
Khan Younis was under heavy military incursions and pretty much full Israeli control for four months.
The entire city was obliterated and all of its social services destroyed.
Now a new wave of enforced displacement is pushing residents from the eastern parts of Khan Younis into the central and western parts of the city, including the al-Mawasi “evacuation zone”, that has been largely unsafe as it was repeatedly bombed.
The lack of fuel means what people are doing right now is either walking for miles or using animals to pull carts to leave.
This constant movement and enforced displacement is taking its toll on a population that has been traumatised and displaced for the past nine months.
The Israeli military has arrested at least 16 Palestinians in raids across the occupied West Bank in the early hours of this morning, the Wafa news agency reports.
The majority of the arrests took place in Bethlehem governorate, where Israeli forces arrested 10 people from different areas, including six people from Aida camp north of the city of Bethlehem.
Two people were also arrested from the village of Artas, one was arrested from town of Nahalin, and another from the village of Husan.
Israeli forces have also arrested two brothers from the city of Nablus, two men from the town of Silat ad-Dhahr and the village of al-Fandaqumiya, south of Jenin, and two men from the town of Silwad, east of Ramallah.
Palestinian children are facing death and serious injuries from unexploded bombs scattered throughout the Gaza Strip, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA has said in its latest update, Al Jazeera reports.
In the most recent incident on June 29, a nine-year-old girl was reportedly killed, and three others injured, by an unexploded bomb south of Khan Younis, OCHA said. Eight other children have been injured in two other recent incidents involving unexploded bombs, OCHA added.
According to the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), at least 10 percent of ammunition potentially fails to function, meaning many of the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of ruin debris in Gaza contain explosives.
Khan Younis resident Ahmed al-Bairam said there was no time to take anything, following the Israeli military’s orders for people to leave the eastern part of the war-torn city in southern Gaza.
“God knows where we will go tomorrow,” he told Reuters, speaking of his latest displacement by the Israeli military.
“We came from the eastern area then we moved to the European hospital, then we went to Rafah, then we came back to Bani Suheila, then we returned to Nasser Hospital and now we just went up the Somood camp,’ Al-Bairam said of his search to find safety for his family from Israeli attacks.
“It is tiring, tiring, tiring. This time we did not take anything with us. There is no time to carry anything,” he said.
“There is no transportation, basically. I have children with me and they all walk.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, has welcomed Spain’s decision to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza.
Albanese said she hoped the move by Spain was the beginning of more Western countries “taking similar actions” to “stand on the right side of history”.
“Words of condemnation are meaningless without action. In fact, decades of mere words have allowed Israel to escalate its lawlessness towards the Palestinians into genocide,” she wrote on social media.
The father of 6-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab — whose killing in an Israeli tank attack in January garnered global attention — has also been reported killed in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.
US journalist Jeremy Scahill said in a post on X that he had learned of the death from Palestinian journalist and documentary maker Ashraf Mashharawi, who recently spoke with Hind’s mother. Hind’s mother found out her husband had been killed by text message, after the family was separated under Israel’s ongoing Gaza siege, Scahill said.
The Israeli tank attack which killed Hind also killed her three cousins, her aunt and uncle. Two Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics sent to rescue Hind were also killed, Scahill said.
The Palestinian Authority has pledged to give greater backing to NGOs in Gaza as it warned that 300,000 families in the beleaguered territory are “marginalised” and need assistance, AFP reports.
The authority held a meeting with about 15 NGOs and aid groups who have complained about increasing problems getting aid into the Gaza Strip and distributing food and other essentials around the territory where Israel has been fighting Hamas for more than eight months.
While the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the occupied West Bank, has virtually no influence in Gaza, the authority’s emergency relief minister Basil al-Kafarna acknowledged the mounting dangers and said: “We are here to support the non-governmental organisations and the agencies for humanitarian relief in the Gaza Strip.”
