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Statement on aid distribution in Gaza by Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

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Written by Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
Published: 04 June 2025 04 June 2025

(4 June 2025) The world is watching, day after day, horrifying scenes of Palestinians being shot, wounded or killed in Gaza while simply trying to eat. 

Emergency medical teams have confirmed treating hundreds of trauma cases. Yesterday alone, dozens were declared dead at hospitals after Israeli forces said they had opened fire.

This is the outcome of a series of deliberate choices that have systematically deprived 2 million people of the essentials they need to survive.  

I echo the Secretary-General’s call for immediate, independent investigations. These are not isolated incidents, and the perpetrators must be held accountable. 

No one should have to risk their life to feed their children. 

As I have repeatedly stressed, we must be allowed to do our jobs: We have the teams, the plan, the supplies and the experience.

Open the crossings – all of them. 

Let in lifesaving aid at scale, from all directions. 

Lift the restrictions on what and how much aid we can bring in. 

Ensure our convoys aren’t held up by delays and denials.

Release the hostages. Implement the ceasefire.

We value the support of more and more Member States who are joining our call: Let us work.

https://www.ochaopt.org/content/statement-aid-distribution-gaza-tom-fletcher-under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief

Palestinians gunned down while trying to reach food aid site in Gaza, hospital says

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Written by Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem and Malak A Tantesh in Gaza | The Guardian Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem and Malak A Tantesh in Gaza | The Guardian
Published: 01 June 2025 01 June 2025

Witnesses say Israeli forces opened fire on people near distribution point run by Israel-backed foundation

More than 30 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday as they went to receive food at an aid distribution point set up by an Israeli-backed foundation in Gaza, according to witnesses, and a hospital run by the Red Cross confirming it was treating many wounded.

Witnesses said Israeli forces had opened fire as Palestinians headed toward the aid distribution site in Rafah run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

 

“My brother went to receive aid from the American distribution points in Rafah when the bullets started raining down on them,” Yarin Abu al-Naja, 44, said. “The Israeli soldiers had started shooting at the people there. My brother went with two of his friends. One of them was critically injured in the head, the other was killed, and my brother was shot in the back.”

“He was transported to the hospital by a donkey cart – no ambulances can reach the area, and there were dozens of injured and dead,” Naja added. “We saw him placed on the ground. There were no available beds due to the large number of casualties and dead arriving from the same location. The scenes were horrific – people missing limbs, hands or legs, others decapitated, or with open abdomens.”

Media reports said dozens of people were being treated at the hospital after the latest incident at the controversial site in Rafah. Officials at the field hospital did not say who opened fire but added that another 175 people were wounded.

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Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/01/palestinians-gunned-down-while-trying-to-reach-food-aid-site-in-gaza-hospital-says

 

‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction

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Written by Meron Rapoport and Oren Ziv | +972 Magazine Meron Rapoport and Oren Ziv | +972 Magazine
Published: 19 May 2025 19 May 2025

While airstrikes account for mass casualties, bulldozers and explosives are flattening Gaza from the ground — what soldiers say is a systematic campaign to make the Strip unlivable, a joint investigation reveals.

This logic of mass destruction has also been applied in the West Bank, albeit on a smaller scale. In fact, a military source told +972 and Local Call that the nature of the destruction in Gaza stems from the tactics the army developed in Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank during the Second Intifada — “exposing the terrain” in military parlance.


Read the full article on +972 Magazine

Witnessing Israel’s ethnic cleansing in the West Bank

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Written by Dave Knieter Dave Knieter
Published: 18 May 2025 18 May 2025

I was one of two volunteers from the human rights organisation International Solidarity Movement arrested in the Palestinian occupied territories in January this year. The charge: Disrupting the Israeli military and police from stealing Palestinian land from the Abu Na’eem family on the rural outskirts of the village al-Mughayyir, about 27 kilometres north-east of Ramallah.

Handcuffed, I was forced to sit in the back of a military truck, surrounded by soldiers pointing rifles at me. Staring out the back window I watched the Israeli flag unfurl against the Bedouin encampment as the village vanished from view.

I was suddenly alone and powerless in an undemocratic, rogue state.

Read the full article with images and videos at greenleft.org.au

For more information about the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) see: https://palsolidarity.org/about/faq/

To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction

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Written by Mahmoud Khalil Mahmoud Khalil
Published: 13 May 2025 13 May 2025

Yaba Deen,* it has been two weeks since you were born, and these are my first words to you.

In the early hours of 21 April, I waited on the other end of a phone as your mother labored to bring you into this world. I listened to her pained breaths and tried to speak comforting words into her ear over the crackling line. During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept my voice low so that the 70 other men sleeping in this concrete room would not see my cloudy eyes or hear my voice catch. I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience. Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?

Since that morning, I have come to recognize the look in the eyes of every father in this detention center. I sit here contemplating the immensity of your birth and wonder how many more firsts will be sacrificed to the whims of the US government, which denied me even the chance of furlough to attend your birth. How is it that the same politicians who preach “family values” are the ones tearing families apart?

Read the full piece on The Guardian

More Articles ...

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  2. Devastation, bombing and starvation: Israel is destroying life in Gaza
  3. Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha wins Pulitzer prize for commentary
  4. The Guardian view on Israel’s aid blockade of Gaza: hunger as a weapon of war
  5. Why I violated the IHRA definition of antisemitism
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