Closing summary
Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir published a video on Friday showing him confronting the most high-profile Palestinian detainee in Israeli custody in his prison cell. Marwan Barghouti, a leading member of the Palestinian Fatah party, has spent more than 20 years behind bars after being sentenced for his role in anti-Israeli attacks in the early 2000s.
The Palestinian health ministry is reporting that at least one child has died of starvation in Gaza in the past 24 hours. It adds that the number of people recorded to have died of starvation in Gaza has reached at least 240, of whom 107 are children. Israel has been blockading the Gaza strip, preventing the entry of the necessary volume of supplies and food into the territory, which prompted humanitarian organisations to raise alarm and accuse it of “weaponising aid”.
At least 1,760 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid in Gaza since late May, including 12 so far today, according to the he UN human rights office. The figure represents a jump of several hundred since its last published figure at the beginning of August.
Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, said that statements by the Hezbollah leader, Naim Qassem, carried an implicit threat of civil war, calling them “unacceptable”. “No party in Lebanon is authorised to bear arms outside the framework of the Lebanese state,” Salam said in a post on X carrying his statements from an interview with the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
Some 127 pallets of humanitarian aid have been airdropped into the Gaza Strip today, including for the first time from Singapore, according to the IDF. Aircraft from United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy and Singapore delivered the pallets, each containing around one tonne of food.
Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said that its health centres see an average of 10,300 patients a week with infectious diseases, mostly diarrhoea from contaminated water, as a heatwave affects Gaza and water supplies become strained.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) has reiterated its calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, warning of the “immense challenges” disabled people face in accessing essential services across the Strip, including food and healthcare, amid the ongoing Israeli assault.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem has accused Lebanon’s government of “handing” the country to Israel by pushing for the group’s disarmament, warning it would fight to keep its weapons. The US has been pushing for the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia militant and political movement. This is something the government had already been doing, but not at the pace the Trump administration wanted.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it launched an attack in the area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and killed Nasser Musa, who it said was the head of Hamas’ military control department in the Rafah Brigade.
The Palestinian health ministry is reporting that at least one child has died of starvation in Gaza in the past 24 hours. It adds that the number of people recorded to have died of starvation in Gaza has reached at least 240, of whom 107 are children.
Israel has been blockading the Gaza strip, preventing the entry of the necessary volume of supplies and food into the territory, which prompted humanitarian organisations to raise alarm and accuse it of “weaponising aid”.
At least 1,760 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid in Gaza since late May, including 12 so far today, according to the he UN human rights office.
The figure represents a jump of several hundred since its last published figure at the beginning of August.
“Since 27 May, and as of 13 August, we have recorded that at least 1,760 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid; 994 in the vicinity of GHF (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 766 along the routes of supply convoys. Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” the agency’s office for the Palestinian territories says in a statement.
That compares with a figure of 1,373 killed, the office reported on 1 August.
Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, said that statements by the Hezbollah leader, Naim Qassem, carried an implicit threat of civil war, calling them “unacceptable”.
“No party in Lebanon is authorised to bear arms outside the framework of the Lebanese state,” Salam said in a post on X carrying his statements from an interview with the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
Last week, the Lebanese cabinet tasked the army with confining weapons only to state security forces, a move that has outraged Hezbollah.
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Some 127 pallets of humanitarian aid have been airdropped into the Gaza Strip today, including for the first time from Singapore, according to the IDF.
Aircraft from United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy and Singapore delivered the pallets, each containing around one tonne of food.
The Times of Israel reported:
Israel re-adopted a policy of allowing aid airdrops on July 26, amid mounting international criticism over the hunger crisis in Gaza.
But airdrops are only able to deliver a small fraction of what can come into Gaza by land.
They also pose safety risks for the civilians who can be hit by the packages from above.
Protesters, predominantly Houthi supporters, in Sana’a, Yemen, demonstrate in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza
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Unrwa warns of spread of infectious diseases as Gaza struggles with heatwave and reduced water supplies
Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said that its health centres see an average of 10,300 patients a week with infectious diseases, mostly diarrhoea from contaminated water, as a heatwave affects Gaza and water supplies become strained.
Over the 22 months since Israel launched its offensive, Gaza’s water access has been progressively strained, reports the Associated Press. Limits on fuel imports and electricity have hampered the operation of desalination plants while infrastructure bottlenecks and pipeline damage affect the flow of water.
Aquifers have become polluted by sewage and the wreckage of bombed buildings, while aid groups and the local utility say wells are mostly inaccessible or destroyed.
In recent weeks, Israel has taken some steps to reverse the damage. It delivers water via two of Israeli national water utility Mekorot’s three pipelines into Gaza and reconnected one of the desalination plants to Israel’s electricity grid, deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel said.
Still, the plants put out far less than before the war, Monther Shoblaq, head of Gaza’s coastal municipalities water utility, said. The utility priorities getting water to hospitals and to people. But that means sometimes withholding water needed for sewage treatment, which can trigger neighbourhood backups and heighten health risks.
Deliveries average less than three litres per person per day – a fraction of the 15-litre minimum humanitarian groups say is needed for drinking, cooking and basic hygiene. In February, acute watery diarrhoea accounted for less than 20% of reported illnesses in Gaza. By July, it had surged to 44%, raising the risk of severe dehydration, according to Unicef, the UN children’s agency.
Southern Gaza could get more relief from a the United Arab Emirates-funded desalination plant just across the border in Egypt. Cogat, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, claims it has allowed equipment into the territory to build a pipeline from the plant and deliveries could start in a few weeks.
The plant wouldn’t depend on Israel for power, but since Israel holds the crossings, it will control the entry of water into Gaza for the foreseeable future.
But aid groups warn that access to water and other aid could be disrupted again by Israel’s plans to launch a new assault on some of the last areas outside its military control. Those areas include Gaza City and Muwasi, where much of Gaza’s population is now located.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) has reiterated its calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, warning of the “immense challenges” disabled people face in accessing essential services across the Strip, including food and healthcare, amid the ongoing Israeli assault.
In a post on X, Unrwa cited data from the Global Protection Cluster that found more than 83% of people with disabilities in Gaza have lost their assistive devices.
Unrwa has been the major distributor of aid in Gaza and has provided education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region.
But an Israeli ban on the agency in Gaza and the occupied West Bank took effect earlier this year after Israel accused it of being infiltrated by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group. Unrwa denies this claim.
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Here is the full statement from the Palestinian foreign ministry about Marwan Barghouti and the treatment of other Palestinian prisoners:
The foreign ministry holds the Israeli government responsible for the lives of Marwan Barghouti and all prisoners.
It demands urgent international intervention to protect the prisoners the ministry of foreign affairs and expatriates condemns in the strongest terms the raid by the extremist minister Ben Gvir on the isolation sections of “Rimon” prison and his direct threat to the brother and leader Marwan Barghouti, considering it an unprecedented provocation and organized state terrorism, falling within the framework of the crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation faced by the prisoners and our people.
The ministry, while holding the Israeli government fully and directly responsible for the life of the prisoner Marwan Barghouti and all prisoners, will follow up on this threat with utmost seriousness with the International Red Cross, states, the international community, and its specialized organizations and councils, and demands urgent and genuine international intervention to protect them from the brutality of the occupation and to secure the immediate release of all of them.
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Israeli far-right national security minister posts video online showing him confronting high-profile Palestinian detainee in his prison cell
Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir published a video on Friday showing him confronting the most high-profile Palestinian detainee in Israeli custody in his prison cell.
Marwan Barghouti, a leading member of the Palestinian Fatah party, has spent more than 20 years behind bars after being sentenced for his role in anti-Israeli attacks in the early 2000s.
In the clip published by Ben Gvir on X, the minister and two other individuals, including a prison guard, surround Barghouti in a corner of his cell.
“You will not defeat us. Whoever harms the people of Israel, whoever kills children, whoever kills women … we will erase them,” Ben Gvir says in Hebrew.
Barghouti tries to respond but is interrupted by Ben Gvir, who says: “No, you know this. And it’s been the case throughout history.”
The video does not specify where Barghouti is being held.
Contacted by AFP, sources close to Ben Gvir said the meeting took place “by chance” in Ganot prison in southern Israel during an inspection visit by the minister, but they would not say when the footage was filmed.
In a statement released by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry denounced the confrontation as “an unprecedented provocation”.
Responding to the video in a post on X, the Palestinian mission to the United Nations said Barghouti was “enduring extremely harsh humanitarian conditions in his solitary confinement cell”.
It added that he had “lost more than half his weight due to deliberate medical neglect and mistreatment”.
“At the same time, extremist Israeli security minister Itamar Ben Gvir continues to directly threaten him in an attempt to break his will and resilience.”
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At least 16 Palestinian people, including five aid seekers, have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since dawn, Al Jazeera is reporting, citing medical sources.
Here are some of the latest images being sent to us over the newswires from Gaza:
Hezbollah says government 'handing' Lebanon to Israel with disarmament attempt
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem has accused Lebanon’s government of “handing” the country to Israel by pushing for the group’s disarmament, warning it would fight to keep its weapons.
The US has been pushing for the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia militant and political movement. This is something the government had already been doing, but not at the pace the Trump administration wanted.
“The government is implementing an American-Israeli order to end the resistance, even if it leads to civil war and internal strife,” Qassem said.
“The resistance will not surrender its weapons while aggression continues, occupation persists, and we will fight it … if necessary to confront this American-Israeli project no matter the cost,” he said.
Qassem urged the government “not to hand over the country to an insatiable Israeli aggressor or an American tyrant with limitless greed”.
Hezbollah, created in the 1980s in reaction to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war, emerged badly weakened from last year’s war with Israel, and under US pressure the Lebanese government has ordered the army to devise a plan to disarm the group by the end of the year.
Since the Israel-Hezbollah war ended last November with a US-brokered ceasefire, Hezbollah officials have said the group will not discuss its disarmament until Israel withdraws from five hills it controls inside Lebanon and stops almost daily airstrikes that have killed or injured hundreds of people.
Israel has accused Hezbollah of trying to rebuild its military capabilities. Israel’s military has said the five locations in Lebanon provide vantage points or are located across from communities in northern Israel, where about 60,000 Israelis were displaced during the war.
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The Gaza health ministry said yesterday that four more people had died from famine and malnutrition over the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 239 since the start of the war, including 106 children.
Israel imposed a total aid blockade for 11 weeks starting in March (ostensibly to put pressure on Hamas to release hostages), and the trickle of food, fuel and medical supplies allowed in since May has not relieved extreme hunger.
Aid groups have said Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip is the principal cause of the famine unfolding across the territory.
When Israel allowed aid back in, it did so mostly under a contentious new aid delivery system – run by the Israeli-backed logistics group the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Israel says the new distribution system stops aid going to Hamas.
Aid trucks have been frequently rushed by desperate civilians, leading to chaotic scenes, but a USAID analysis published last month found no evidence of large-scale diversion of aid by Hamas.
At least 1,400 people have been killed while seeking aid since 27 May 2025, most of whom were killed near GHF sites, while other Palestinian people were killed along the routes of aid convoys, the UN has said.
Responding to a global outcry provoked by images of widespread starvation and malnutrition in Gaza, along with the regular killings of aid seekers by Israeli forces, the Israeli military increased the scale of aid allowed into the Strip at the end of last month.
But the amount of aid Israel allowed in is still totally inadequate for the humanitarian needs of Gaza’s two million population that is now experiencing catastrophic levels of famine, according to aid and human rights organisations, with widespread shortages of food and clean water.
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Aid groups say Israel’s new registration rules are ‘weaponising aid’
Peter Beaumont is a senior international reporter for the Guardian
More than 100 aid organisations working in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have accused Israel of dangerously “weaponising aid” in its application of new rules for registering groups involved in delivering humanitarian assistance …
The letter, signed by organisations including Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières and Care, was written in response to registration rules announced by Israel in March that require organisations to hand over lists of their donors and Palestinian staff for vetting.
The groups contend that doing so could endanger their staff and give Israel broad grounds to block aid if groups are deemed to be “delegitimising” the country or supporting boycotts or divestment.
The registration measures were “designed to control independent organisations, silence advocacy and censor humanitarian reporting”, they said.
The letter added: “This obstruction has left millions of dollars’ worth of food, medicine, water and shelter items stranded in warehouses across Jordan and Egypt.”
You can read the full story here:
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it launched an attack in the area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and killed Nasser Musa, who it said was the head of Hamas’ military control department in the Rafah Brigade.
“Musa was responsible for the Rafah Brigade’s operational readiness & attacks during the war, and was a close associate of the brigade’s commander, Mohammad Sabaneh who was eliminated in May 2025,” the IDF wrote in an update on X.
The international court of justice last year issued a damning advisory opinion that said Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories was unlawful and called on it to end.
The judges pointed to a wide list of policies, including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinian people, all of which it said violated international law.
The court said Israel had no right to sovereignty in the territories, was violating international laws against acquiring territory by force and was impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination. It said Israel must end settlement construction immediately and that existing settlements must be removed.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who heads a coalition that includes far-right pro-settler parties and ministers, unsurprisingly denounced the nonbinding opinion, claiming the territories are part of the Jewish people’s historic homeland.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 six-day war. It has annexed East Jerusalem in a move that is not recognised internationally and considers the West Bank to be disputed territory.
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Here is some more detail on the controversial plan to significantly expand a settlement near occupied East Jerusalem:
The decision from the Supreme Planning Council, which meets next week, is expected to support the plan after rejecting objections by Israeli NGOs.
The expected decision in favour will come after Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich – who backs both the plan and the imposition of Israeli sovereignty through the occupied West Bank – gloated that he believed construction on E1 would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.
Smotrich is a junior minister who also holds a position at Israel’s defence ministry with oversight of planning issues in the occupied Palestinian territories. He was placed under sanctions along with fellow far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir by the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in June for “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities”.
Standing at the site of the planned settlement in Ma’ale Adumim on Thursday, Smotrich, a settler himself, said the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and US president, Donald Trump, had agreed to the revival of the E1 development, though there was no immediate confirmation from either.
While approval for the plan would be a significant step, it remained unclear on Thursday how much buy-in Smotrich has from Netanyahu and the Trump administration.
Netanyahu has not commented on Smotrich’s remarks, while the US state department appeared to dodge the issue of E1 when questioned.
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Settlers reportedly attack Palestinian villages as major West Bank settlement expansion set to be approved
Welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. Several Palestinian people are reported to have been injured in an overnight attack by Israeli settlers in the southern West Bank village of Susya, south of Hebron, according to the Times of Israel. A man and his wife were reportedly injured in the attack and were taken to hospital to be treated.
Separately, Israeli settlers were reported to have attacked the village of Atara, also in the occupied West Bank, and set fire to several Palestinian-owned vehicles. There were no immediate reports of any casualties or arrests.
The attacks come amid a wave of violence in the West Bank, where more than 1,000 Palestinians are reported to have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers since 7 October 2023.
Accountability for settlers who commit acts of violence against Palestinians is extremely rare, particularly under Israel’s current rightwing government.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Thursday that about 3,400 new housing units would be built in key Israeli-occupied territory, effectively burying “the idea of a Palestinian state”.
As my colleague Peter Beaumont notes in this story, the so-called E1 plan would extend the existing Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim towards Jerusalem, further cutting occupied East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and further separating the north and south of the territory. The plan still requires formal approval but it is expected to pass a final procedural hurdle, despite huge international opposition.
The announcement comes after some of Israel’s key western allies, such as Australia, Britain, Canada and France, pledged to soon recognise Palestinian statehood, under certain conditions, because of the humanitarian crisis Israel has caused in Gaza.
“This plan buries the idea of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich told journalists on Thursday.
Anyone in the world today who tries to recognise a Palestinian state will receive an answer from us on the ground. Not in documents, not in decisions or declarations – but in facts.
The plan was immediately condemned by the EU, among others. “The EU rejects any territorial change that is not part of a political agreement between involved parties. So annexation of territory is illegal under international law,” the European Commission spokesperson Anitta Hipper said.
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