Closing summary
Here is a recap of today’s events
Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Gaza and was shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. Witkoff visited the site in Rafah and was accompanied by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee praised the GHF as he visited the site in Rafah – one of four GHF sites where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. In a social media post, he wrote: “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!”
Witkoff later said on Friday that his visit to US-backed aid stations in Gaza would help Washington draw up a plan to deliver more aid to the Palestinian territory. “Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza,” Witkoff said in a post on X. He added that the purpose of the visit was to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
The UN human rights office said on Friday that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military, AFP reports. “In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement. “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.
Iran on Friday rejected accusations by the US and more than a dozen of its allies that Tehran had attempted to kill or kidnap dissidents, journalists and officials in Western countries. In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei described the claims as “baseless”, calling them “an attempt to divert public attention from the most pressing issue of the day, the genocide in occupied Palestine”.
France has started to airdrop 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and is urging Israel to allow full access to the area which it said was slipping into famine. President Emmanuel Macron said:“Airdrops are not enough. Israel must open full humanitarian access to address the risk of famine.”
Finland’s president Alexander Stubb has said he is ready to approve a recognition of a Palestinian state if the government moves forward with such a proposal.
Award-winning Israeli author David Grossman called his country’s campaign in Gaza “genocide” and said he was using the term with a “broken heart”, AFP reports. This came days after a major Israeli rights group also used the same term, amid growing global alarm over starvation in the besieged territory.
Donald Trump said he wants Palestinians in Gaza “fed”, saying that this is something which should have happened a long time ago.
Speaking to Axios’s journalist Barak David, Trump said: “We want to help people. We want to help them live. We want to get people fed. It is something that should have happened a long time ago.”
This comes after the US president said yesterday “the fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis” was for Hamas to surrender and release all captives.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli gunfire and airstrikes killed at least 22 people in Palestinian territory on Friday, including eight who were waiting to collect food aid.
Spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed in a strike in the southern Gaza Strip, and four more when a vehicle was hit in the central area of Deir el-Balah.
The civil defence agency reported deadly fire at Palestinians who were seeking humanitarian aid, in a territory where UN-backed experts have reported that “famine is now unfolding”.
The Israeli military did not comment, and told AFP it could not confirm any of the incidents without specific coordinates for each of them.
Here are some images that are coming to us over the wires
From silence to statehood: how Trump’s indifference moved the UK on Palestine
It was, in the end, an off-the-cuff remark from Donald Trump that moved the dial.
“I’m not going to take a position,” the US president said when asked in Scotland about pressure on Keir Starmer to recognise a Palestinian state. “I don’t mind him taking a position. I’m looking for getting people [in Gaza] fed right now.”
Within 36 hours, after an emergency meeting of his cabinet, the prime minister had set out a plan to revive fading hopes of a two-state solution – and recognise Palestine by the end of September.
It is a historic shift in the position of the UK government and its efforts to bring peace to a region it ruled through an international mandate from 1922 to 1948. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, told a UN conference on Monday that “Britain bears a special burden of responsibility”.
Under the new policy – which the Guardian understands was largely drafted by Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser – the UK will recognise Palestine unless Israel meets certain conditions including agreeing a ceasefire in Gaza and reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.
You can read the full report here:
US envoy Witkoff says purpose of Gaza visit was to 'help craft' aid plan
US special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Friday that his visit to US-backed aid stations in Gaza would help Washington draw up a plan to deliver more aid to the Palestinian territory, AFP reports.
“Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza,” Witkoff said in a post on X, accompanied by a photo of himself wearing a protective vest and meeting staff at a distribution centre.
He added that the purpose of the visit was to “help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
Award-winning Israeli author David Grossman called his country’s campaign in Gaza “genocide” and said he was using the term with a “broken heart”, AFP reports.
This came days after a major Israeli rights group also used the same term, amid growing global alarm over starvation in the besieged territory.
“For many years, I refused to use that term: ’genocide’,” the prominent writer and peace activist told Italian daily La Repubblica in an interview published on Friday.
“But now, after the images I have seen and after talking to people who were there, I can’t help using it.”
Grossman told the paper he was using the word “with immense pain and with a broken heart.”
“This word is an avalanche: once you say it, it just gets bigger, like an avalanche. And it adds even more destruction and suffering,” he said.
He said it was “devastating” to “put the words ‘Israel’ and ‘famine’ together” because of the Holocaust and our “supposed sensitivity to the suffering of humanity.”
Grossman’s works, which have been translated into dozens of languages, have won many international prizes.
He won Israel’s top literary prize in 2018, the Israel Prize for Literature.
The celebrated author has long been a critic of the Israeli government.
Here is a graphic showing the number of people killed and injured while seeking aid in Gaza, based on figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health.
At least 83 Palestinians, including 53 people seeking aid, kiled in past 24 hours - Gaza health ministry
At least 83 Palestinians, including 53 people seeking aid, have been killed and 554 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Telegram.
One body was also recovered from the rubble of previous Israeli attacks.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed a total of 60,332 Palestinians and injured 147,643 since 7 October 2023, the ministry added.
The total number of aid seekers killed since 27 May, when Israel introduced a new aid distribution mechanism, has reached 1,383, with more than 9,218 injured, the statement said.
A staff member at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza said that the slight increase in aid is “not nearly enough to even scratch the surface”.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Olga Cherevko from the OCHA said that despite Israel allowing more aid into the area, the impacts of malnutrition are almost irreversible due to previous restrictions.
“The slight increase in what is coming in is not nearly enough to even scratch the surface to meet the people’s needs here on the ground,” Cherevko said.
She said that a major reason aid isn’t entering Gaza is because the UN has to coordinate the deliveries with Israel, who are delaying approvals.
“There are so many factors on the ground that point to the fact that, despite the slight relaxation of [Israel’s] various constraints [on aid entry], we’re still in the same situation,” Cherevko said.
“People are continuing to starve, malnutrition rates continue to go up, people are risking their lives to get food, and there’s no change substantially and operationally, really.”
Finland’s president Alexander Stubb has said he is ready to approve a recognition of a Palestinian state if the government moves forward with such a proposal.
This comes after some countries, with France and Canada amongst them, have pledged to recognise a Palestinian state alongside the 80th UN general assembly in September.
Now, Stubb has said he is prepared to approve a proposal to recognise a Palestinian state. Writing on X, he said: “The decisions by France, the United Kingdom and Canada reinforce the trend towards recognising Palestine as part of efforts to breathe new life into the peace process.
“If I receive a proposal to recognise the Palestinian state, I am prepared to approve it.”
He said he understood that Finns had “different opinions on the recognition of Palestine, and that there is also concern,” calling for an “open” and “honest” debate.
However, Petteri Orpo, Finland’s prime minister, reiterated Helsinki’s support for a two-state solution, although didn’t specify whether the government was ready to recognise a Palestinian state.
France has started to airdrop 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and is urging Israel to allow full access to the area which it said was slipping into famine.
Earlier today French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot announced that the European nation would be sending four flights carrying 10 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza from Jordan.
Now, president Emmanuel Macron wrote on social media platform X: “Faced with the absolute urgency, we have just conducted a food airdrop operation in Gaza. Thank you to our Jordanian, Emirati, and German partners for their support, and to our military personnel for their commitment.
“Airdrops are not enough. Israel must open full humanitarian access to address the risk of famine.”
Face à l'urgence absolue, nous venons de conduire une opération de largage de vivres à Gaza.
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 1, 2025
Merci à nos partenaires jordaniens, émiriens et allemands pour leur appui, ainsi qu’à nos militaires pour leur engagement.
Les largages ne suffisent pas.… pic.twitter.com/dEzo3GXmi8
Summary
Here is a recap of events so far today.
Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has visited Gaza and was shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. Witkoff visited the site in Rafah and was accompanied by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee praised the GHF as he visited the site in Rafah – one of four GHF sites where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. In a social media post, he wrote: “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!”
The UN human rights office said on Friday that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military, AFP reports. “In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement. “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.
Human Rights Watch on Friday accused Israeli forces operating outside US-backed aid centres in war-torn Gaza of “routinely opening fire” on Palestinian civilians seeking food, as well as using starvation as “a weapon of war”. “US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarised aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 11 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and air strikes on Friday, including two who were waiting near an aid distribution site inside the Palestinian territory. Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed in a strike near the southern city of Khan Younis, and four more in a separate strike on a vehicle in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
A series of Israeli airstrikes killed four people in southern Lebanon, Beirut’s Ministry of Health said on Friday, offering a toll for attacks that took place the day before.
Syria has pledged to investigate clashes in the southern province of Sweida, which killed hundreds of people last month, Reuters reports. French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Friday that France is sending four flights carrying 10 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza from Jordan, Reuters reports. “This is emergency aid but still not sufficient” in the face of this “revolting” situation, Barrot told broadcaster franceinfo.
France will suspend its programme to receive Palestinians from conflict-torn Gaza pending the outcome of an investigation into how a student accused of sharing antisemitic posts was allowed into the country, the French foreign minister said on Friday.
Iran on Friday rejected accusations by the US and more than a dozen of its allies that Tehran had attempted to kill or kidnap dissidents, journalists and officials in Western countries. In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei described the claims as “baseless”, calling them “an attempt to divert public attention from the most pressing issue of the day, the genocide in occupied Palestine”.
Here are some images that are coming to us over the wires
US ambassador to Israel praises GHF as he visits aid site where hundreds killed
US special envoy Steve Witkoff appeared in a number of photos taken in Gaza and shared on social media by the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, as the pair toured a GHF distribution point.
“This morning I joined … Steve Witkoff for a visit to Gaza to learn the truth about (GHF) aid sites,” Huckabee wrote.
Witkoff arrived in Israel on Thursday as part of a renewed US effort to mediate a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas after negotiations broke down last week, and to discuss the situation in Gaza, a US official told AFP.
This morning I joined @SEPeaceMissions Steve Witkoff for a visit to Gaza to learn the truth about @GHFUpdates aid sites. We received briefings from @IDF and spoke to folks on the ground. GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat! pic.twitter.com/GyVK5cwNgZ
— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@USAmbIsrael) August 1, 2025
Updated
US envoy Steve Witkoff visits Gaza aid site
Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has visited Gaza and been shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces.
Witkoff, the US president’s special envoy for the Middle East, had earlier met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid mounting international horror over conditions of starvation in Gaza occurring amid months of Israeli-imposed aid restrictions.
The visit to the site in Rafah by Witkoff – a former real estate lawyer with no foreign policy or humanitarian background, who has also met Vladimir Putin on Trump’s behalf – was reported by a number Israeli media organisations and comes as Human Rights Watch on Friday described the aid sites run by the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – as “death traps” that had become the scene of regular “bloodbaths”. The UN has said almost nine hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces attempting to reach the sites.
Human Rights Watch denounces 'death trap' US-backed aid centres in Gaza
Human Rights Watch on Friday accused Israeli forces operating outside US-backed aid centres in war-torn Gaza of “routinely opening fire” on Palestinian civilians seeking food, as well as using starvation as “a weapon of war”.
“US-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarised aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.
Israel and the United States have backed a private aid operation run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) at four sites inside Gaza, protected by US military contractors and the Israeli army, AFP reports.
GHF launched its operations in late May, sidelining the longstanding UN-led humanitarian system just as Israel was beginning to ease a more than two-month aid blockade that led to dire shortages of food and other essentials.
Since then, witnesses, the civil defence agency and AFP correspondents inside Gaza have reported frequent incidents in which Israeli troops have opened fire on crowds of desperate Palestinian civilians approaching GHF centres seeking food.
At least 859 Palestinians were killed while attempting to obtain aid at GHF sites between 27 May and 31 July – most by the Israeli military – according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
“Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families,” HRW’s Wille said in a statement.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment on the HRW report.
It has previously insisted that its forces do not target unarmed civilians and strive to avoid accidental casualties.
France will suspend its programme to receive Palestinians from Gaza pending the outcome of an investigation into how a student accused of sharing antisemitic posts was allowed into the country, the French foreign minister said on Friday.
The move comes after officials said the female student from Gaza will have to leave France after the Sciences Po university in the northern city of Lille revoked her accreditation over the online posts, AFP reports.
“No evacuation of any kind will take place until we have drawn conclusions from this investigation,” Jean-Noel Barrot told Franceinfo radio.
Palestinians entering France from Gaza will undergo a second screening, he added.
France has helped more than 500 people leave Gaza since the latest war between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel started, including wounded children, journalists, students and artists.
UN says 1,373 killed while waiting for aid in Gaza since late May
The UN human rights office said on Friday that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military, AFP reports.
“In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement.
“Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.
Gaza civil defence says 11 killed by Israeli fire
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 11 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and air strikes on Friday, including two who were waiting near an aid distribution site inside the Palestinian territory.
Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed in a strike near the southern city of Khan Younis, and four more in a separate strike on a vehicle in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.
The Israeli army told AFP it could not confirm the strikes without specific coordinates.
Two other people were killed and more than 70 injured by Israeli fire while waiting for aid near a food distribution centre run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) between Khan Younis and the nearby city of Rafah, the civil defence said.
The army did not immediately respond to the report.
Lebanon says four killed in Israeli strikes on Thursday
A series of Israeli air strikes killed four people in southern Lebanon, Beirut’s ministry of health said Friday, offering a toll for attacks that took place the day before, AFP reports.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had targeted Hezbollah “infrastructure that was used for producing and storing strategic weapons”, including what the country’s defence minister described as the group’s “biggest precision missile manufacturing site”.
By failing to sanction Israel, EU leaders are complicit in its crimes. They must act now
If they survive Donald Trump’s attacks, the international courts will not deliver their final verdict for several years. But for all those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, there can be little doubt that the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza, slaughtering and starving civilians after systematically destroying all the infrastructure in the territory. In the meantime, settlers and the Israeli army are every day guilty of serious, massive and repeated violations of international law and international humanitarian law in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Those who do not act to stop this genocide and these violations of international law, even though they have the power to do so, are complicit in them. This is unfortunately the case with the leaders of the European Union and those of its member states, who refuse to sanction Israel even though the EU has a legal obligation to do so.
You can read the full opinion piece here:
Updated
Syria has pledged to investigate clashes in the southern province of Sweida which killed hundreds of people last month, Reuters reports.
In a decree dated 31 July, justice minister Mazhar al-Wais said a committee of seven people - including judges, lawyers and a military official - would look into the circumstances that led to the “events in Sweida” and report back within three months.
The committee would investigate reported attacks and abuses against civilians and refer anyone proven to have participated in such attacks to the judiciary.
The violence in Sweida began on 13 July between tribal fighters and Druze factions. Government forces were sent to quell the fighting but the bloodshed worsened, and Israel carried out strikes on Syrian troops in the name of the Druze.
The Druze are a minority offshoot of Islam with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Sweida province is predominantly Druze but is also home to Sunni tribes, and the communities have had longstanding tensions over land and other resources.
A US-brokered truce ended the fighting, which had raged in Sweida city and surrounding towns for nearly a week.
Here are some images coming to us over the wires.
Iran on Friday rejected accusations by the US and more than a dozen of its allies that Tehran had attempted to kill or kidnap dissidents, journalists and officials in Western countries, AFP reports.
In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei described the claims as “baseless”, calling them “an attempt to divert public attention from the most pressing issue of the day, the genocide in occupied Palestine”.
Western governments including the United States, Britain, France and Germany condemned in a joint statement on Thursday “the growing number of state threats from Iranian intelligence services in our respective territories”.
“We are united in our opposition to the attempts of Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty,” they said.
“These services are increasingly collaborating with international criminal organisations to target journalists, dissidents, Jewish citizens, and current and former officials in Europe and North America.”
Baqaei said the accusations were “blatant fabrications... designed as part of a malicious Iranophobia campaign aimed at exerting pressure on the great Iranian nation”.
Sirens sounded in Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip on Friday, prompting the military to launch an interceptor missile towards a suspected threat, the Israeli military said.
The military later confirmed that the launch was triggered by a false alarm, and no threat was detected, Reuters reports.
France sending 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, foreign minister says
French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Friday that France is sending four flights carrying 10 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza from Jordan, Reuters reports.
“This is emergency aid but still not sufficient” in the face of this “revolting” situation, Barrot told broadcaster franceinfo.
A global hunger monitor said on Tuesday that a famine scenario was unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with malnutrition soaring, children under five dying of hunger-related causes and humanitarian access severely restricted.
US envoy to visit Gaza aid sites as number of Palestinians killed while desperate for food grows
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will visit food distribution sites in Gaza run by the controversial US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) where hundreds of Palestinians have died in recent weeks trying to get food.
According to the UN human rights office, at least 859 people have been killed in the vicinity of the GHF sites since the GHF began operating in late May. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said: “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military.”
Witkoff arrived in Israel on Thursday with Netanyahu’s government facing mounting international pressure.
He met with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday to discuss the humanitarian situation and a possible ceasefire, AP reports.
Following the meeting, a senior Israeli official said an understanding between Israel and the US was emerging that there was a need to move from a plan to release some of the hostages to a plan to release all the hostages, disarm Hamas militants, and demilitarise the Gaza Strip, according to Reuters.
“The special envoy and the ambassador will brief the president immediately after their visit to approve a final plan for food and aid distribution into the region,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had told reporters.
Trump on Thursday called the situation in Gaza “a terrible thing,” when asked about comments from his ally and Republican US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who termed Israel’s offensive in Gaza a “genocide”.
Earlier that day and shortly after Witkoff arrived in Israel, Trump had posted on social media: “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!”
Updated
