Israel / Palestine

Saudi crown prince condemns ‘massacre’ committed against Palestinian and Lebanese people at the Arab-Islamic summit.

Qatar has told Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel it will stall its efforts to mediate a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal until they show "willingness and seriousness" to resume talks, its foreign ministry said on Saturday.

Top UN officials continued to line up on Tuesday to defend the irreplaceable role of the global body’s agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, insisting that if implemented, the Israeli parliament’s decision to ban it would only deepen suffering in Gaza.

United Nations Security Council members urged Israel and Iran on Monday to end their spiraling cycle of tit-for-tat attacks on one another, following Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Iran.

The UN’s top humanitarian official warned on Saturday that the entire population of northern Gaza is at risk of dying, calling for an immediate stop to “blatant disregard for basic humanity” by Israeli forces.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Israel and the Iran-backed groups it is fighting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon to call a truce after the Israeli military said it had killed a top official for Hezbollah, a militant group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon, who had been widely expected to be the group’s next leader.

UNDP assessment says poverty will cross 74 percent in 2024, affecting 4.1 million people, in the Palestinian territory.

Qatar’s emir has called for ceasefires in Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon and stressed the importance of establishing a Palestinian state at a meeting with European Union leaders in Brussels, Belgium. The 27-nation EU is seeking to work more closely with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – which brings together Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – in addressing conflicts in both the Middle East and Ukraine.

The United States threatened on Tuesday to curb its military assistance to Israel if it doesn't produce a "dramatic increase" in humanitarian aid coming into the Gaza Strip. The warning comes after the UN assessed over the weekend that no new aid had entered northern Gaza in two weeks. 

Yemen is at risk of being dragged further into the rising conflict in the Middle East, UN Special Envoy for the country Hans Grundberg warned the Security Council on Tuesday. … He said the safety of UN personnel has also been increasingly at risk amid the growing regional escalation, which began last year following the start of the war in Gaza.