Israeli military used 500lb bomb in strike on Gaza cafe, fragments reveal
Exclusive: Experts say use of heavy munition in Monday’s strike that killed dozens may constitute a war crime
The Israeli military used a 500lb (230kg) bomb – a powerful and indiscriminate weapon that generates a massive blast wave and scatters shrapnel over a wide area – when it attacked a target in a crowded beachfront cafe in Gaza on Monday, evidence seen by the Guardian has revealed.
Experts in international law said the use of such a munition despite the known presence of many unprotected civilians, including children, women and elderly people, was almost certainly unlawful and may constitute a war crime.
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Read More at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/02/israeli-military-bomb-fragments-gaza-al-baqa-cafe
The planned expulsion of Gaza’s population is already underway
Israel is conditioning aid delivery to force Gazans south into 'concentration zones.' This plan has begun to stall, but that only portends greater brutality.
Maybe you were waiting for the alarm bells to ring, or for the Israeli army spokesperson to issue an official announcement. But the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, long referred to in Israeli parlance as “transfer,” is already underway. Not in some distant future. Right now.
It’s not exactly happening before Israeli eyes — it’s always possible to look away — but the echoes are reaching Israeli homes. The thundering blasts from Gaza heard across the country are personal messages, like those the army used to send Gazans in a previous era of cruelty: “Your home is about to be bombed. Leave immediately.” This is the updated version of the message, addressed not to the people of Gaza, but to Israeli citizens: “The transfer is underway. It is progressing. And it cannot be undone.”
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Read more at https://www.972mag.com/gaza-expulsion-aid-delivery/
Compare the courage of Greta Thunberg’s Gaza aid mission with the inaction and complicity of western governments
One of the definitions of genocide, according to the 1948 UN convention, is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. This is an accurate description of what Israel has been doing in Gaza. It has killed 452 aid workers, systematically killed police officers charged with protecting aid, destroyed infrastructure needed to carry humanitarian aid, blocked fuel and water needed to cook food. More than 95% of agricultural land has been rendered unusable by Israeli attacks, 81% of cropland has been damaged and 83% of plant life has been destroyed. Almost all of its cattle and poultry are dead; milk production is nearly halted.
Israel has criminalised Unrwa, Gaza’s main humanitarian agency, and three months ago imposed a total blockade. It then replaced the existing humanitarian structures with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Its purpose, as Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich declared, was to allow the entry of the “minimum necessary” so that “the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes”. Stop what? Well, Smotrich openly declares that Israel will expel all surviving Palestinians from Gaza. Not only does the GHF provide far too little and often unusable aid, but it also set up aid points in the south to deliberately empty Gaza’s north. Israeli troops then repeatedly massacred starving Palestinians, replacing the existing humanitarian structures with what Tory MP Kit Malthouse called “a shooting gallery, an abattoir”.
The Madleen did not make it to Gaza’s shores. Yet its crew exposed an obscenity that has repulsed western citizens, who will one day force their governments to cease their complicity – which is why, in the end, Israel will lose.
Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/10/greta-thunberg-gaza-aid-mission-madleen
Israeli forces kill at least 60 Palestinians seeking food in Gaza, health officials say
Dozens more wounded as crowds approached food distribution centres run by Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
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.
Medical officials said at least 25 people were killed and dozens wounded as they approached a food distribution centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near Netzarim in central Gaza.
Later in the day, at least 14 people were killed by Israeli gunfire as they were moving towards another GHF distribution site, in Rafah, at Gaza’s southern border. On Tuesday Israeli troops killed 17 Palestinians around GHF sites.
Read more on The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/11/israeli-forces-kill-at-least-60-palestinians-seeking-food-aid-in-gaza-health-officials-say
Statement on aid distribution in Gaza by Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
(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.