Gaza live: Concerns about all-out regional war rise following Golan Heights deadly attack
Live Updates
Israeli attacks have killed at least 21 people across Gaza since this morning, according to Al Jazeera.
The victims include 18 Palestinians who were killed in Khan Younis, one person who was killed in an attack on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, and two people who were killed in a strike on a residential building in Gaza City.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples, its chief said.
"While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.
He added that children under five were most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by more than nine months of conflict.
Israel's military said on Sunday it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the virus were found in test samples in the enclave.
The World Food Programme (WFP) has been forced to reduce rations for families in Gaza to ensure broader coverage for newly displaced people.
"Food stocks and humanitarian supplies in central and southern Gaza are very limited and barely any commercial supplies are going in," WFP said in a post on social media platform X.
Israeli forces attacked worshippers attending Friday prayers in East Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, injuring one man, the Wafa news agency reported.
Israeli forces reportedly used batons to attack worshippers near the Bab al-Asbat area as they tried to reach the mosque.
There was also tightened security around the area, with Israeli forces erecting barricades, checking the identities of citizens going to pray and preventing a number of them from entering.
There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected representatives.
That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way - hailed at every step as a conquering hero - to the podium of the US Congress.
This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter - so far - of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble.
READ MORE: Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide, opinion by Jonathan Cook
Peace Now, an Israeli group advocating for a two-state solution and the end of Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands, reported that Israel has set up at least 25 outposts, "most of them agricultural outposts", in the occupied West Bank since the war in Gaza began.
"The cabinet approved the establishment of five new settlements: Evyatar, Givat Assaf, Sde Ephraim, Adorayim and Nachal Haletz, all illegal outposts intended to become official settlements," the report read.
The report added that far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich "instructed government ministries and other authorities to begin funding 70 illegal outposts, establish public buildings, and connect them to water, electricity, and other infrastructure".
"1,205 Palestinian structures were demolished by Israel, resulting in over 2,500 Palestinians losing their homes," it continued.
Of these, 1,027 structures were demolished in the occupied West Bank and 178 buildings were destroyed in occupied East Jerusalem.
The United Nations world heritage organisation, Unesco, has added Saint Hilarion monastery, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, located at the site of Tell Umm Amer in Gaza, to its List of World Heritage in Danger amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Unesco said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, was added to the list at the request of Palestinian authorities, citing "imminent threats" it faced.
"It's the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context," Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the Unesco World Heritage Centre, told AFP.
In December, Unesco's Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict granted the site "provisional enhanced protection", the highest level of immunity established by the 1954 Hague Convention.
🔴 BREAKING!
— UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳 (@UNESCO) July 26, 2024
Just inscribed on the @UNESCO #WorldHeritage List & World Heritage in Danger List: Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer, #Palestine 🇵🇸.
➡️https://t.co/FfOspAHOlX #46WHC pic.twitter.com/22HXI6Jiic
Al-Salah Club in Deir al-Balah is one of very few sporting facilities in Gaza still standing.
“The club is now a sanctuary… displaced people come to take shelter inside it,” Sobhi Mabrook, the second tier football club’s coach, tells Middle East Eye.
“We thought of resuming sports activities, but we couldn’t. It’s unfeasible. This is a symptom of Israel’s war on Gaza, particularly on sports.”
Al-Salah, once a training facility for hundreds of athletes, was an incubator of different sports, including judo, karate, handball and wrestling. But all that changed when Israel’s onslaught on Gaza began on 7 October.
Israeli bombs have killed many of the club’s talented stars.
READ MORE: Olympics begins under shadow of Israeli obliteration of Palestinian sport
The governments of Australia, Canada and New Zealand released a joint statement in which they reiterated their call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
"The situation in Gaza is catastrophic," the statement read. "The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue."
"We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of Hamas for the atrocities of October 7 and ongoing acts of terror. Hamas must lay down its arms and release all hostages. We see no role for Hamas in the future governance of Gaza."
The statement also urged Israel to "listen to the concerns of the international community".
"The protection of civilians is paramount and a requirement under international humanitarian law. Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas. It must end."
Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has accused US Vice President Kamala Harris of favouring a Gaza ceasefire deal that would see Israel "surrendering" to Hamas.
His comments come after Harris made a televised statement following her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Harris said it was "time for this war to end" and spoke of the suffering of people in Gaza, as well as the need for a ceasefire and the release of hostages.
"Kamala Harris revealed to the whole world what I have been saying for weeks, what is really behind the deal," he said on X.
"Surrendering to [Hamas military leader] Sinwar, ending the war in a way that would allow Hamas to rehabilitate and release most of the abductees in Hamas captivity. Do not fall into this trap!"
קמלה האריס חשפה בפני העולם כולו את מה שאני אומר כבר שבועות, מה באמת עומד מאחורי העסקה.
— בצלאל סמוטריץ' (@bezalelsm) July 26, 2024
כניעה לסינוואר, הפסקת המלחמה באופן שיאפשר לחמאס להשתקם והפקרת רוב החטופים בשבי החמאס.
אסור ליפול למלכודת הזו!
Quoting an Israeli official, the Times of Israel reports that the US is no longer considering sanctioning Israel's far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.
The Biden administration was reportedly weighing the option over the past few days.
However, the Israeli official said that the US will continue sanctioning Israeli extremists in the occupied West Bank, despite heavy pushback from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his meeting with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Good morning Middle East Eye readers,
Here are the latest updates:
- An Israeli strike on the al-Bina family home in eastern Gaza City killed five people, according to the Wafa news agency
- Mustafa Muhammad Abu Ara, a Hamas leader in the occupied West Bank, has died in Israeli detention, according to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs
- The Israeli army announced the death of another soldier during combat in southern Gaza
- US Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech in which she called for hostages to be released and the Gaza war to end, saying she will "not be silent" on the suffering of people in Gaza
- An Israeli official claimed Harris's speech would complicate negotiations, and questioned whether the suffering of Palestinians was "really the problem right now". A Harris aide denied the official's claims
- Another Israeli official said his country was "deeply disappointed" by the UK's decision to withdraw its objection to the ICC's request for an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant
Israel says that displaced Palestinians should be screened as they return to the north of Gaza when the ceasefire begins, complicating a final ceasefire deal, according to a western official, a Palestinian and two Egyptian sources, Reuters has reported.
This reportedly breaches an agreement to allow civilians who fled south to freely return home, the four sources told Reuters.
Hamas rejected the new Israeli demand, according to the Palestinian and Egyptian sources.
Israeli negotiators "want a vetting mechanism for civilian populations returning to the north of Gaza, where they fear these populations could support" Hamas fighters who remain entrenched there, said the western official.
Israel furthermore demands to retain control of Gaza's border with Egypt, which Cairo dismissed as outside a framework for a final deal accepted by Hamas.
The US said on Thursday that talks to reach a ceasefire in Gaza are in the “closing stages”, as President Joe Biden hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, DC.
Biden will press Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire deal during the two leaders’ discussions, US officials said.
"I think the message from the American side in that meeting will be that we need to get this deal over the line,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday.
Biden and Netanyahu, who have a decades-long relationship going back to when Biden was a US senator in the 1970s, were photographed in the Oval Office, with Biden's historic decision not to seek re-election palpable in the room.
READ MORE: US says closer than ever to ceasefire as Netanyahu and Biden meet
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell harshly criticised Israel’s move to label Unrwa as a "terrorist" organisation in a post on X on Thursday, calling it "nonsense".
“Outlawing Unrwa – and labelling it as terrorist, which it is not – amounts to targeting regional stability and human dignity of all those benefiting from the UN agency work. We join many partners in urging the Israeli government to halt this nonsense.”
Outlawing @UNRWA – and labelling it as terrorist, which it is not – amounts to targeting regional stability and human dignity of all those benefiting from the UN agency work.
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) July 25, 2024
We join many partners in urging the Israeli Governement to halt this nonsense.
