Closing summary
It has just gone 6pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. This blog will be closing shortly but you can find all the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Here is a summary of the developments on today’s blog:
The UN’s humanitarian chief said on Wednesday that recent “horrifying scenes” of Palestinians being killed while trying to access food aid were the result of “deliberate choices” to deprive them of essentials. “The world is watching, day after day, horrifying scenes of Palestinians being shot, wounded or killed in Gaza while simply trying to eat,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement, adding: “This is the outcome of a series of deliberate choices that have systematically deprived two million people of the essentials they need to survive.”
Gaza is facing “dark days”, the UK prime minister has said, as he vowed to consider “further action” against Israel. On Wednesday, Keir Starmer described the Israeli government’s conduct in the 25 mile-long strip as “counterproductive and intolerable”. He added: “We will keep looking at further action along with our allies, including sanctions, but let me be absolutely clear: we need to get back to a ceasefire.”
Starmer was also asked in the House of Commons whether he would repeat the position put forward by government lawyers that there is not a genocide taking place in Gaza, to which he replied: “I’ve said that we are strongly opposed and appalled by Israel’s recent actions, and have been absolutely clear in condemning them and calling them out, whether that’s the expansion of military operations, settler violence, or the dreadful blocking of aid, is completely unacceptable.”
The UN security council will vote later today on a resolution calling for a ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access in Gaza. It will be the first vote on the issue held by the council since November. The US is expected to exercise its veto to prevent the 15 nation body passing the resolution, as it did the last time the council voted on the subject of Israel and Gaza.
Spain, which has strongly criticised Israel’s offensive in Gaza, has cancelled a contract to buy 168 firing posts and 1,680 anti-tank missiles from Israeli defence company Rafael, reported Spanish media. The deal was worth €287.5m ($327m), according to top-selling daily Spanish newspaper El País, which cited unnamed government sources. The equipment was to be manufactured in Spain under licence from Rafael.
The UK has said Israel’s newly introduced measures for aid delivery in Gaza are “inhumane, foster desperation and endanger civilians”. Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer described the killings of Palestinians while trying to access aid sites as “deeply disturbing” and called for and independent investigation into the incidents.
The Gaza health ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 95 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, including women and children at a school housing displaced families that was hit near the southern city of Khan Younis. “At least 12 people were killed, including several children and women, in a strike by an Israeli drone this morning on a tent for displaced persons” near Khan Younis, the agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Wednesday that a soldier had been killed in combat in the northern Gaza Strip. Israel’s military said that 420 service personnel had been killed inside Gaza since its ground operation started on 27 October 2023.
On Tuesday Israel’s military warned residents of Gaza against travel in areas leading to the distribution centres, after at least 27 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire as they waited for food at the points set up by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said it had begun distributing drinking water with the support of the German Red Cross to displaced Palestinians in Gaza. In an update on Wednesday morning on X, PRCS said it had “launched an emergency campaign to provide desalinated water to the most vulnerable amid worsening shortages and an escalating humanitarian crisis”.
Norway’s parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposal to have the country’s $1.9tn sovereign wealth fund divest from all companies with activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. “We have an established ethical regime for the fund,” finance minister Jens Stoltenberg told the chamber in a debate on several aspects of the way the fund is run before the vote.
Israel’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that its arms exports hit an all-time high of more than $14.7bn in 2024, with a sharp rise in deals with Arab Gulf states, despite international criticism of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.
The BBC has defended its reporting on the war in Gaza and accused the White House of misrepresenting its journalism after Donald Trump’s administration criticised its coverage of a fatal attack near a US-backed aid distribution site. Senior BBC journalists said the White House was political point-scoring after Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of taking “the word of Hamas with total truth”. She also falsely claimed that the BBC had removed a story about the incident.
An evangelical leader and adviser to Donald Trump on interfaith issues has been appointed the new head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Johnnie Moore, a member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and founder of the boutique advisory firm Kairos Company, was appointed the new head of the GHF after Jake Wood, a former marine, resigned, saying that he could not guarantee the GHF’s independence from Israeli interests.
Syrian authorities insisted on Wednesday they would “never be a threat” to anyone in the region, after Israel bombed the country’s south in retaliation for overnight rocket fire on the Golan Heights. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz held Syria’s leader “directly responsible”, while Syria condemned the Israeli shelling as a “blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty” that “aggravates tensions in the region”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has detailed the harrowing account of one of its paramedics, who told the organisation he heard Israeli troops shoot first responders while they were still clinging to life. Asaad al-Nasasra, 47, was one of two first responders to survive the 15 March attack on a convoy of emergency vehicles in which 15 other medics and rescue workers were killed.
Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday criticised an initial proposal from the US in negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme, though he stopped short of entirely rejecting the idea of agreement with Washington. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the US proposal as “100% against the idea of ‘we can’”, borrowing from an Iranian government slogan. He also said that Tehran needed to keep its ability to enrich uranium.
BBC staff in London say their families are being “targeted and punished” by the Iranian regime as it intensifies a campaign of intimidation against journalists and media outlets. There have been more than 20 “threat-to-life” incidents against people in the UK by Iran in recent years, according to the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism commander.
Turkey is training and advising Syria’s armed forces and helping improve its defences, and has no immediate plans for the withdrawal or relocation of its troops stationed there, defence minister Yasar Guler told Reuters. In written answers to questions from the news agency, Guler said Turkey and Israel – which carried out its latest airstrikes on southern Syria late on Tuesday – are continuing de-confliction talks to avoid military accidents in the country.
About 20 far-right protesters arrived at the Kerem Shalom crossing to block aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning, Haaretz reported. The GHF announced on Tuesday that it would halt the limited food distribution operations permitted by Israeli authorities at centres in the Gaza Strip for one day.
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Why is it so difficult to report on Gaza?
Coverage of the war in Gaza is constrained by Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists and a bar on international reporters entering the Gaza Strip to report independently on the war.
Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza since 7 October 2023, unless they are under Israeli military escort. Reporters who join these trips have no control over where they go, and other restrictions include a bar on speaking to Palestinians in Gaza.
Palestinian journalists and media workers inside Gaza have paid a heavy price for their work reporting on the war, with over 160 killed since the conflict began. The committee to protect journalists has determined that at least 19 of them “were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders”.
Foreign reporters based in Israel filed a legal petition seeking access to Gaza, but it was rejected by the supreme court on security grounds. Private lobbying by diplomats and public appeals by prominent journalists and media outlets have been ignored by the Israeli government.
To ensure accurate reporting from Gaza given these restrictions, the Guardian works with trusted journalists on the ground; our visual teams verify photo and videos from third parties; and we use clearly sourced data from organisations that have a track record of providing accurate information in Gaza during past conflicts, or during other conflicts or humanitarian crises.
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UN denounces Israel’s 'deliberate choices' depriving Palestinians of essentials
The UN’s humanitarian chief said on Wednesday that recent “horrifying scenes” of Palestinians being killed while trying to access food aid were the result of “deliberate choices” to deprive them of essentials.
“The world is watching, day after day, horrifying scenes of Palestinians being shot, wounded or killed in Gaza while simply trying to eat,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement, adding:
This is the outcome of a series of deliberate choices that have systematically deprived two million people of the essentials they need to survive.
“No one should have to risk their life to feed their children,” said Fletcher.
The UN has described the amount of aid allowed into Gaza, after Israel partially lifted a more than two-month total blockade, as a trickle.
“We must be allowed to do our jobs: we have the teams, the plan, the supplies and the experience,” said Fletcher, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
He added:
Open the crossings – all of them. Let in life-saving 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.
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Norway lawmakers oppose blanket ban by wealth fund on companies in Israeli-occupied areas
Norway’s parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposal to have the country’s $1.9tn sovereign wealth fund divest from all companies with activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
We reported on the story before the vote took place at 3pm local time (1pm GMT/2pm BST). You can read it here.
UK minister says Israel's aid delivery in Gaza 'inhumane' and calls for investigation into killings of Palestinians at food point
The UK has said Israel’s newly introduced measures for aid delivery in Gaza are “inhumane, foster desperation and endanger civilians”.
Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer told the House of Commons:
We are appalled by repeated reports of mass casualty incidents in which Palestinians have been killed when trying to access aid sites in Gaza.
Desperate civilians who have endured 20 months of war should never face the risk of death or injury to simply feed themselves and their families. We call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events for the perpetrators to be held to account.
It is deeply disturbing that these incidents happened near the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution sites, they highlight the utterly desperate need to get aid in. The Israeli government says it has opened up aid access with its new system, but the warnings raised by the United Kingdom, United Nations, aid partners and the international community about these operations have materialised and the results are out.
Israel’s newly introduced measures for aid delivery are inhumane, foster desperation and endanger civilians. Israel’s unjustified block on aid into Gaza needs to end – it is inhumane. Israel must immediately allow the United Nations and aid partners to safely deliver all types of aid at scale to save lives, reduce suffering and maintain dignity.
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Gaza facing 'dark days', UK prime minister says, vowing to consider 'further action' against Israel
Gaza is facing “dark days”, the UK prime minister has said, as he vowed to consider “further action” against Israel.
At the dispatch box, Keir Starmer described the Israeli government’s conduct in the 25 mile-long strip as “counterproductive and intolerable”, reports the PA news agency.
Leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party in Northern Ireland Claire Hanna claimed there was “more moral clarity coming from Ms Rachel on YouTube than there is from many world leaders who are complicit in silence”, referring to the children’s entertainer who has called on leaders to “be so ashamed” of what she described as their “anti-Palestinian racism”.
Hanna asked the House of Commons:
The prime minister said this week that Britain must be ready for war and, I ask, after tens of thousands of deaths, after a generation of Gazans stunted by hunger and trauma, when will it be ready for peace?
When will it help to stop this genocide? When will it hold the Israeli government to account, and when will it recognise the state of Palestine?
Starmer replied:
She’s absolutely right to describe this as dark days.
Israel’s recent action is appalling and in my view counterproductive and intolerable, and we have strongly opposed the expansion of military operations and settler violence, and the blocking of humanitarian aid.
The prime minister added:
You will have seen we’ve suspended the FTA [free trade agreement] talks and sanctioned extremists supporting violence in the West Bank.
We will keep looking at further action along with our allies, including sanctions, but let me be absolutely clear: we need to get back to a ceasefire.
We need the hostages who’ve been held for a very long time to be released, and we desperately need more aid at speed and at volume into Gaza, because it’s an appalling and intolerable situation.
Several MPs wearing red badges, including John McDonnell, the independent MP for Hayes and Harlington, and Labour’s MPs for Alloa and Grangemouth and Nottingham East Brian Leishman and Nadia Whittome silently left the chamber after the exchange, reports the PA news agency.
Liberal democrat leader Ed Davey asked Starmer whether he would “push at the UN security council for humanitarian corridors to get the desperately needed aid urgently into Gaza”.
He told the Commons:
The US-Israeli programme is clearly failing and nothing short of lifting the full blockade on aid will do, but given the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government refuses to do that, will the prime minister take more decisive action today?
Starmer replied that the government is “working at pace with our allies on that very issue, to take whatever measures we can to get that humanitarian aid in”. He gave Davet his “assurance we’ll continue to do that because that aid needs to get in at speed and at volume”.
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Israel defence ministry says arms exports hit all-time high in 2024
Israel’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that its arms exports hit an all-time high of more than $14.7bn in 2024, with a sharp rise in deals with Arab Gulf states, despite international criticism of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.
“Israel again reached an all-time peak in defence exports in 2024, marking the fourth consecutive record-breaking year in the scope of defence agreements,” the ministry, which oversees and approves the exports of Israel’s defence industries, said in a statement, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
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On Sunday, at least 31 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces opened fire at a food distribution centre in Rafah, Gaza, according to witnesses.
On Monday, another three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at the same site, according to health officials and a witness. And on Tuesday, 27 people were killed after Israeli forces opened fire again, say Gaza officials.
The incidents have intensified criticism of the new system for distributing supplies in Gaza, run by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) rather than by the UN or well-established aid organisations.
The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, said on Tuesday that Palestinians in Gaza now faced an impossible choice: “Die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available.” The attacks on civilians, he added, constituted a war crime.
The Gaza health ministry said Israeli strikes had killed at least 95 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, including women and children at a school housing displaced families that was hit near the southern city of Khan Younis.
It comes as Israel announced that one of its soldiers had died in the fighting after three deaths reported a day earlier, as its forces continued their months-long battle to eliminate Hamas militants and free the remaining hostages still held in Gaza.
The UK prime minister has been asked whether he would repeat the position put forward by government lawyers that there is not a genocide taking place in Gaza, reports the PA news agency.
In a recent high court case challenging arms sales to Israel, lawyers representing the government claimed there was no evidence of a genocide.
Scottish National party (SNP) MP Brendan O’Hara (Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber) asked Keir Starmer whether he would say that from the despatch box, asking during prime minister’s questions:
The prime minister has repeatedly told this House that it is not for him or his government to determine what is and what is not a genocide. But that position is no longer tenable, because at the high court recently the prime minister instructed his lawyers to argue that in Gaza, and I quote ‘no genocide has occurred, or is occurring’. So the truth is, his government has made a determination.
The question is, does he have the courage of his convictions and will he repeat from that despatch box what he told his lawyers to argue in the high court?
Starmer replied:
I’ve said that we are strongly opposed and appalled by Israel’s recent actions, and have been absolutely clear in condemning them and calling them out, whether that’s the expansion of military operations, settler violence, or the dreadful blocking of aid, is completely unacceptable.
We must see a ceasefire, hostages must be released, and there must be aid into Gaza.
BBC staff in London say their families are being “targeted and punished” by the Iranian regime as it intensifies a campaign of intimidation against journalists and media outlets.
There have been more than 20 “threat-to-life” incidents against people in the UK by Iran in recent years, according to the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism commander.
The officer, speaking to the parliamentary committee on transnational repression last month, said three men had been charged under the National Security Act over Tehran’s threats towards Iran International, a UK-based television station.
In March last year, an Iranian journalist was stabbed outside his London home and forced to move abroad, saying he no longer felt safe in the UK.
The BBC says there has been a “sharp and deeply troubling escalation” this year in the targeting of its journalists’ families in Iran, orchestrated by Tehran.
Staff with BBC Persian, the Farsi-language broadcasting subsidiary of the World Service, say they have been left paranoid and in tears about the fate of their parents and other family members in Iran, who have been dragged into long interrogations by Iranian officials and threatened with losing their jobs, being sent to prison and having family assets seized.
Behrang Tajdin, a BBC Persian journalist, said:
They are trying to make our families’ lives miserable. It’s not just harassment any more, it is punishment – and only for being related to someone.
Syrian authorities insisted on Wednesday they would “never be a threat” to anyone in the region, after Israel bombed the country’s south in retaliation for overnight rocket fire on the Golan Heights.
Israeli media said the projectiles were the first launched from Syria into Israeli territory since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, with two unknown groups claiming responsibility, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Israeli military said “two projectiles were identified crossing from Syria into Israeli territory, and fell in open areas”. It later said it struck “weapons” belonging to the Syrian government in retaliation.
Defence minister Israel Katz held Syria’s leader “directly responsible”. Syria condemned the Israeli shelling as a “blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty” that “aggravates tensions in the region”.
“Syria has never been and will never be a threat to anyone in the region,” the foreign ministry said, in a statement carried by the official Sana news agency.
The ministry denied responsibility and said it could not confirm whether rockets were launched towards Israel, blaming “numerous parties … trying to destabilise the region”.
Turkey is training and advising Syria’s armed forces and helping improve its defences, and has no immediate plans for the withdrawal or relocation of its troops stationed there, defence minister Yasar Guler told Reuters.
Turkey has emerged as a key foreign ally of Syria’s new government since rebels – some of them backed for years by Ankara – ousted former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December to end his family’s five-decade rule. It has promised to help rebuild neighbouring Syria and facilitate the return of millions of Syrian civil war refugees, and played an important role last month in getting US and European sanctions on Syria lifted.
The newfound Turkish influence in Damascus has raised Israeli concerns and risked a standoff or worse in Syria between the regional powers, reports Reuters.
In written answers to questions from Reuters, Guler said Turkey and Israel – which carried out its latest airstrikes on southern Syria late on Tuesday – are continuing de-confliction talks to avoid military accidents in the country.
Turkey’s overall priority in Syria is preserving its territorial integrity and unity, and ridding it of terrorism, he said, adding Ankara was supporting Damascus in these efforts. “We have started providing military training and consultancy services, while taking steps to increase Syria’s defence capacity,” Guler said, without elaborating on those steps.
Named to the post by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan two years ago, Guler said it was too early to discuss possible withdrawal or relocation of the more than 20,000 Turkish troops in Syria.
This can “only be re-evaluated when Syria achieves peace and stability, when the threat of terrorism in the region is fully removed, when our border security is fully ensured, and when the honourable return of people who had to flee is done,” he said.
Nato member Turkey has accused Israel of undermining Syrian peace and rebuilding with its military operations there in recent months and, since late 2023, has also fiercely criticised Israel’s assault on Gaza. But the two regional powers have been quietly working to establish a de-confliction mechanism in Syria.
Guler described the talks as “technical level meetings to establish a de-confliction mechanism to prevent unwanted events” or direct conflict, as well as “a communication and coordination structure”.
“Our efforts to form this line and make it fully operational continue. Yet it should not be forgotten that the de-confliction mechanism is not a normalisation,” he told Reuters.
Spain cancels purchase of Israeli anti-tank missiles: reports
Spain, which has strongly criticised Israel’s offensive in Gaza, has cancelled a contract to buy 168 firing posts and 1,680 anti-tank missiles from Israeli defence company Rafael, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Wednesday, citing Spanish media.
The deal was worth €287.5m ($327m), according to top-selling daily Spanish newspaper El País, which cited unnamed government sources. The equipment was to be manufactured in Spain under licence from Rafael.
Spanish defence ministry sources told AFP that the government “has begun a process to revoke licences of Israeli origin” and was working to redirect its procurement programmes “with the goal of achieving greater technological independence and autonomy”.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s criticisms of the offensive in Gaza infuriated Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last year by recognising a Palestinian state.
In late April, Spain cancelled a contract to buy bullets from another Israeli company, IMI Systems, after pressure from the Socialist-led government’s far-left coalition partner Sumar – a move swiftly condemned by Israel.
Labour minister Yolanda Díaz, the founder of Sumar, said at the time that Spain could not engage in “business with a genocidal government … that is massacring the Palestinian people”.
Sánchez’s government said it halted weapons transactions with Israel after the start of the war after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
But according to Centre Delàs, a Barcelona-based thinktank specialising in security and defence, the government has granted 46 contracts worth more than €1bn to Israeli companies based on data published on a public tenders platform, reports AFP.
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The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has detailed the harrowing account of one of its paramedics, who told the organisation he heard Israeli troops shoot first responders while they were still clinging to life.
Asaad al-Nasasra, 47, was one of two first responders to survive the 15 March attack on a convoy of emergency vehicles in which 15 other medics and rescue workers were killed.
He told the PRCS that after the attack in Gaza he was detained and tortured for 37 days by Israeli forces.
The bodies of 15 paramedics and rescue workers were later found buried in a mass grave by Red Crescent and UN officials. Witnesses who uncovered the bodies said the workers were found still in their uniforms and some had their hands tied, although this has been disputed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
In the account he gave to colleagues, Nasasra said that some of the paramedics survived the initial assault and were calling for help when they were shot dead, the PRCS said.
Nasasra was driving one of two PRCS ambulances dispatched from Rafah after a convoy including other ambulances, a fire truck, health ministry vehicles and a UN car had been sent earlier to recover the bodies of two paramedics and other victims of an Israeli airstrike.
“Our colleague Al-Nasasra was in the same ambulance with his colleague Rifat Radwan, who filmed the video that was eventually recovered from his phone showing their vehicle being attacked by the Israeli soldiers,” said Nebal Farsakh, the PRCS spokesperson.
The almost seven-minute video, released in April, shows a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights, which contradicted the initial version of events put forward by the IDF, which denied that the vehicles had their headlights or emergency signals on.
“Al-Nasasra and Radwan were subjected to the heavy gunfire everyone heard in the recording and the very heavy gunfire which continued even after the recording ended as Israeli soldiers continued to shoot at them for a long time,” says Farsakh.
BBC accuses White House of misrepresenting fatal Gaza attack report
The BBC has defended its reporting on the war in Gaza and accused the White House of misrepresenting its journalism after Donald Trump’s administration criticised its coverage of a fatal attack near a US-backed aid distribution site.
Senior BBC journalists said the White House was political point-scoring after Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of taking “the word of Hamas with total truth”. She also falsely claimed that the BBC had removed a story about the incident.
Leavitt launched her attack on the BBC after being asked about reports that Israeli forces opened fire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah. Brandishing a print-out of images taken from the BBC’s website, she accused the corporation of having to “correct and take down” its story about the fatalities and injuries involved in the attack.
The Hamas-run health ministry had said at least 31 people were killed in the gunfire. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) later said at least 21 Palestinians were killed by IDF troops.
Lawmakers were on Wednesday debating whether Norway’s $1.9tn sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, should divest from all companies with activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, reports Reuters.
A formal vote was anticipated at about 3pm local time (1pm GMT/2pm BST) and parliament was expected to reject a wholesale boycott, reports the news agency.
The minority Labour government has for months been resisting pressure from pro-Palestinian campaigners to instruct the fund to divest from all firms with ties to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
“We have an established ethical regime for the fund,” finance minister Jens Stoltenberg told the chamber in a debate on several aspects of the way the fund is run. He added:
We divest from the companies that contribute to Israel’s breach of international law, but we do not divest from all companies that are present on the ground.
According to Reuters, lawmaker Ingrid Fiskaa from the small Socialist Left opposition party told the chamber:
Without Norwegian oil fund money, it would be more difficult for Israeli authorities to demolish the homes of Palestinian families.
The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, wrote to Stoltenberg to alert him to what she called the “structural entanglement of Israeli corporations … in the machinery of the occupation both in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and the violence that sustains it”.
She wrote, in a letter dated 20 May:
International corporations benefiting from [the Norwegian fund’s] investments are critical components of the infrastructure sustaining the economy of the occupation.
Stoltenberg replied that the government was “confident that the investments do not violate Norway’s obligations under international law”. He noted that the fund follows ethical guidelines set by parliament, and that compliance is monitored by a separate body.
That watchdog has over the past year recommended divestments from Israeli petrol station chain Paz and telecoms company Bezeq and is looking at more potential divestments in Israel.
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The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has begun distributing drinking water with the support of the German Red Cross to displaced Palestinians.
In an update on Wednesday morning on X, PRCS said it had “launched an emergency campaign to provide desalinated water to the most vulnerable amid worsening shortages and an escalating humanitarian crisis”.
The humanitarian organisation wrote:
So far, 100,000 liters have been distributed in Gaza and Middle governorates. The campaign aims to reach one million liters for those most at risk.
PRCS Begins Distributing Drinking Water to Displaced Communities in #Gaza
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) June 4, 2025
With support from the German Red Cross, PRCS has launched an emergency campaign to provide desalinated water to the most vulnerable amid worsening shortages and an escalating humanitarian crisis.
📌 So… pic.twitter.com/2nweXbgpQj
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Here are some more images coming in today via the news wires:
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My colleague in the US, Andrew Roth, has written about the new chair of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF):
Johnnie Moore, a member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and founder of the boutique advisory firm Kairos Company, was appointed the new head of the GHF after Jake Wood, a former marine, resigned, saying that he could not guarantee the GHF’s independence from Israeli interests.
Moore has been a vocal defender of the GHF who has bristled at public criticism of the rollout, telling the UN chief, António Guterres, on X that reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid in Gaza was “a lie … spread by terrorists”.
In a statement, Moore lauded the GHF’s reported delivery of more than 7m meals in the last week, numbers that haven’t been independently verified, and also took aim at media reports about murky finances and chaotic rollouts of the aid distribution centres in Gaza.
A biography on the Kairos website calls Moore a “noted evangelical friend of the State of Israel” and says that he has played an important role in US outreach to Middle Eastern governments, including in the conclusion of the Abraham accords to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states. John Acree, the acting director of the GHF, said that Moore has a “proven record of principled leadership and hands-on humanitarian work”.
But Moore’s paucity of experience working with major charitable organisations will make it difficult for him to refute criticisms about the GHF’s lack of independence and experience dealing with a major humanitarian crisis.
Israel’s leading leftwing newspaper, Haaretz, reports today that about 20 far-right protesters have arrived at the Kerem Shalom crossing to block aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) announced on Tuesday that it would halt the limited food distribution operations permitted by Israeli authorities at centres in the Gaza Strip for one day. It said it planned to resume on Thursday after working on security measures.
The first four Israel-backed humanitarian food distribution centres opened in Gaza in May, three in the south near Rafah and one in central Gaza, near the Netzarim corridor.
A controversial US-based group named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is running the operations. GHF has been criticised for violating the core humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence.
At least 58 Palestinians have reportedly been killed near the centres since the first one opened a week ago.
Rescuers say Israeli strike killed at least 12 people in south Gaza
The civil defence agency in Gaza said an Israeli strike on a tent housing displaced Palestinians near the southern city of Khan Younis on Wednesday killed at least 12 people. Earlier reports had put the death toll at 10 (see 7.47am BST).
“At least 12 people were killed, including several children and women, in a strike by an Israeli drone this morning on a tent for displaced persons” near Khan Younis, the agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP), adding that four more people had been killed in other strikes.
Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday criticised an initial proposal from the United States in negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme, though he stopped short of entirely rejecting the idea of agreement with Washington.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the US proposal as “100% against the idea of ‘we can’”, borrowing from an Iranian government slogan. He also said that Tehran needed to keep its ability to enrich uranium.
“If we had 100 nuclear power plants while not having enrichment, they are not usable for us,” Khamenei said. “If we do not have enrichment, then we should extend our hand (begging) to the US.”
However, some nuclear power nations get uranium from outside suppliers, reports the AP.
Details of the American proposal remain unclear after five rounds of talks between Iran and the US.
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The UN security council will vote later today on a resolution calling for a ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access in Gaza. It will be the first vote on the issue held by the council since November.
The resolution text “demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza respected by all parties” and the “immediate, dignified and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas.”
The US is expected to exercise its veto to prevent the 15 nation body passing the resolution, as it did the last time the council voted on the subject of Israel and Gaza.
An Israeli airstrike on a school housing displaced Palestinian families killed at least 10 people, including children, on Wednesday, local health authorities said.
Reuters reports residents said Israeli military escalated airstrikes and tank shelling on parts of Khan Younis, a day after it dropped leaflets ordering residents to leave their homes and head west. Many Palestinians have been displaced multiple times during the conflict, and have been forced to live in makeshift camps.
Earlier today the IDF announced that a soldier had been killed in combat in the northern Gaza Strip.
Israel’s military says that 420 service personnel have been killed inside Gaza since its ground operation started on 27 October 2023.
These images were taken yesterday, and show Israel’s military operating on the border of the Gaza Strip.
In today’s First Edition newsletter, my colleague Archie Bland with Amjad Al-Shawa looked at the situation with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution process being imposed on Gaza by Israeli authorities:
On Sunday, at least 31 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces opened fire at a food distribution centre in Rafah, Gaza. On Monday, another three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at the same site. And yesterday, 27 people were killed after Israeli forces opened fire again.
If there was any doubt at all about the inadequacy of the new system for distributing supplies in Gaza, run by an Israeli-backed foundation rather than the UN or aid organisations, it has surely been dispelled. Last night, the foundation said that all of its sites would be closed today – and appointed a new executive chair: an evangelical Christian pastor and loyal ally of Donald Trump.
Palestinians – or those who are able to get to the sites – now face an impossible choice, as the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, said on Tuesday: “Die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available.” The attacks on civilians, he added, constitute a war crime.
You can read more of Archie and Amjad’s analysis here: What three deadly days for civilians in Rafah reveal about the food distribution system backed by Israel
Israel carries out strikes against targets inside Syria
Israel has carried out new airstrikes inside Syria, claiming to have targeted Syrian military weapons facilities after rocket fire was being directed towards the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
In a statement the IDF said “The Syrian regime is responsible for what transpires within Syria and will continue to bear the consequences as long as hostile activity continues from its territory.”
The foreign ministry of the recently installed Syrian government said Syria “is not interested in posing a threat to any party in the region,” and claimed there were casualties from the Israeli strikes in Daraa.
Two rockets crossed into Israeli-controlled territory on Tuesday. Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and has occupied it since that time.
Updated
At least 10 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza’s Khan Younis, Reuters reports, citing Hamas-affiliated media.
More details soon …
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation closes the limited food distribution centres permitted by Israel in Gaza
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) announced Tuesday that it would halt the limited food distribution operations permitted by Israeli authorities at centres in the Gaza Strip for one day. It said it planned to resume on Thursday after working on security measures.
On Tuesday Israel’s military had warned residents of Gaza against travel in areas leading to the distribution centres, after at least 27 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire as they waited for food at the points set up by the US-backed GHF.
Israeli authorities have been imposing the use of GHF to distribute food rather than any of the agencies that traditionally operate in Gaza. On Tuesday 21 trucks of food were distributed. During the ceasefire earlier this year 600 trucks a day were required to meet the needs of the Palestinian population. Israel has been blockading aid and food entering the territory for weeks.
Opening summary
Welcome to the Guardian’s rolling coverage of the conflict in Gaza and the wider Middle East. Here are the headlines …
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) announced Tuesday that it would halt the limited food distribution operations permitted by Israeli authorities at centres in the Gaza Strip for one day. It said it planned to resume on Thursday after working on security measures
On Tuesday Israel’s military had warned residents of Gaza against travel in areas leading to the distribution centres, after at least 27 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire as they waited for food at the points set up by the US-backed GHF
Gaza’s health ministry said 27 people were killed early on Tuesday as they gathered to receive food. It was the third such incident in three days, with Israel admitting on Tuesday for the first time that its forces shot at Palestinians who were moving towards them
At least 10 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza’s Khan Younis, Hamas-affiliated media said on Wednesday morning
Updated
