Israel/Palästina

The EU and Israel have reached an agreement to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, with deliveries to take place in the "coming days", the bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas announced on Thursday. The breakthrough comes after months of back and forth between the EU and Israel over the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, as Israel escalates its offensive against Hamas. 

Mohammed Baraka, who served at the EU border assistance mission at Rafah in southern Gaza and was evacuated to Egypt when the war broke out, has accused Brussels officials of “coldly” dismissing him from his job by email and “abandoning” a loyal employee. He now has no way of returning to Gaza but also no right to remain in Egypt and no possibility of going anywhere else because, he says, he has no papers due to the hasty evacuation in 2023.

UN humanitarians have warned that the catastrophic conditions in Gaza are worsening, as tents, schools, homes and medical facilities come under attack, and fuel supplies run out. What little fuel remains is powering essential operations, but it is running out fast, and there are virtually no additional accessible stocks left, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, has called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel, including a full arms embargo, and withdraw international support for what she termed an “economy of genocide”. Albanese made the comments in a speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday as she presented her latest report, which named dozens of companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli repression and violence towards Palestinians.

Israel has escalated its offensive in Gaza before imminent talks about a ceasefire, with warships and artillery launching one of the deadliest and most intense bombardments in the devastated Palestinian territory for many months. … Despite the new wave of violence in Gaza, hopes of a ceasefire have risen after Donald Trump’s announcement on Tuesday that Israel had accepted the terms of a potential deal with Hamas.

Briefing ambassadors in the Security Council, Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East Khaled Khiari said more than 1,000 Palestinians had been killed since mid-June alone, many of them while seeking aid. Citing figures from the Gazan health authorities, he reported that the total number of Palestinian fatalities since 7 October 2023 had surpassed 56,500.

At least 410 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while trying to fetch from controversial new aid hubs in Gaza – a likely war crime – the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday.

As the pall of starvation hangs over Gaza, UN agencies have sounded the alarm over deadly violence at food distribution points, where over 400 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in recent weeks while trying to access desperately needed humanitarian aid. 

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, most of them as they were seeking food from a US-Israeli distribution scheme, according to local health authorities.

Amid reports of yet another deadly attack on a school in Gaza on Wednesday, the UN’s top aid official Tom Fletcher welcomed growing international calls for lifesaving aid work by established agencies to resume in the war-torn enclave. “We value the support of more and more Member States who are joining our call: Let us work,” Mr. Fletcher said, his comments coinciding with the announcement that the US and Israeli-backed aid hub in southern Gaza operating independently of the UN had been suspended on Wednesday.