Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 584

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that he trusts the support of his US counterpart, Donald Trum,p in their efforts to put an end to the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.

“God willing, we hope to soon receive heartening good news regarding Gaza as well,” he said in a post on X.

Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz has urged all sides to avert a “famine” in Gaza, which has been under an aid blockade by Israel since early March, AFP reports.

“It is a humanitarian obligation on all parties … and I stress, on all parties — that famine in the region be averted as soon as possible,” Merz has told parliament.

US President Donald Trump has said that Israel was not sidelined by his trip to the Gulf and that good US relations with those countries are good for Israel, Reuters reports.

“This is good for Israel,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“Having a relationship like I have with these countries …. I think it’s very good for Israel.”

Israeli military strikes have killed at least 50 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, local health authorities say, as US President Donald Trump continues his visit to the Middle East, Reuters reports.

Medics said most of the dead, including women and children, resulted from a barrage of Israeli airstrikes that targeted several houses in the Jabalia area in northern Gaza.

The Israeli escalation came against Palestinian hopes that the Trump visit might provide pressure for a de-escalation of violence. Hamas on Monday released Edan Alexander, the last known living American hostage, ahead of Trump’s trip.

Speaking in Riyadh on Tuesday, Trump said more hostages would follow Alexander and added that the people of Gaza deserved a better future.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has said that nearly a quarter of people in Gaza could be pushed into famine without immediate action.

“Everyone in Gaza is hungry,” the WFP wrote on X.

“As supplies dwindled over the past two months, access to food is becoming increasingly difficult.”

US President Donald Trump has said that he would “continue to add more countries” to the Abraham Accords, a series of normalisation agreements between Israel and Arab states.

He was addressing a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh.

The statement comes a day after Trump said it was his “fervent hope” that Saudi Arabia would soon sign its own normalisation agreement with Israel, adding: “But you’ll do it in your own time.”

US President Donald Trump has said there is a “chance of a future free of Hezbollah’s grip” in Lebanon.

He made the remarks as he addressed a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council during his visit to Riyadh.

Israel’s army says it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels have kept up attacks on Israel since soon after the Gaza offensive began in 2023, AFP reports.

“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted,” the Israeli army says in a statement.

AFP correspondents in Jerusalem heard explosions, probably from the interception of the missile.

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Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour has also spoken at the UN Security Council meeting on Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

He told the council that “time is our enemy” as “hunger eats away at our children”.

Mansour appealed to the council to reject Israel’s plan for “the so-called distribution of humanitarian aid”, saying it continues to pursue “illegal objectives by other means”.

“That plan has been rejected by all UN agencies and all humanitarian organisations as it is just a continuation of the weaponisation of aid,” he said.

It drives “desperate civilians and humanitarians into militarised zones to receive or distribute aid at the peril of their lives, by counting calories”, and “denying aid to many”.

Israel’s military has urged Palestinians residing in multiple areas of northern Gaza to evacuate “immediately” ahead of a planned attack after alleging rocket fire from the Palestinian territory, AFP reports.

“This is a final advance warning before the attack,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X. “The IDF (military) will attack with great force every area from which rockets are launched… For your safety, you must move immediately to the known shelters in Gaza City,” he added.

At least 56 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the early hours of this morning, Al Jazeera reports, citing medical sources

At least 50 of the victims were in northern Gaza.

The rising toll comes as Israeli forces also continued attacks on the southern city of Khan Younis.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says there’s “no way” Israel will halt its bombardment on Gaza even if a deal is reached to release more captives, Al Jazeera reports.

In comments released by his office from a visit to wounded soldiers the previous day, Netanyahu said Israeli forces are just days away from a promised escalation of force and would enter Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission … It means destroying Hamas”.

Any ceasefire reached would be temporary, the prime minister added. If Hamas were to say it will release more captives, “we’ll take them and then we’ll go in. But there will be no way we will stop the war. We can make a ceasefire for a certain period of time, but we’re going to the end”.

An Israeli military court has extended the detention of journalist Haneen Qawareeq, 24, on suspicion of “incitement” on social media until Thursday, Al Jazeera reports.

Qawareeq, who is from Nablus in the occupied West Bank, was detained on May 7, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said.

She was sent to Hasharon Prison before being transferred to Damon Prison, where she is currently being held without any formal charges against her.

Qawareeq is among more than 180 Palestinian journalists detained by the Israeli military since the start of the bombardment on Gaza, with some 50 still imprisoned, according to the monitors.

US President Donald Trump has said he hopes that Saudi Arabia will soon join the Abraham Accords, a series of normalisation agreements between Israel and Arab countries, Reuters reports.

“It will be a special day in the Middle East, with the whole world watching, when Saudi Arabia joins us, and you’ll be greatly honouring me and you’ll be greatly honouring all of those people that have fought so hard for the Middle East,” Trump told an investment forum in Riyadh.

Trump said it was his “fervent hope” that Saudi Arabia would soon sign its own normalisation agreement with Israel, adding, “But you’ll do it in your own time.”

Israel’s prime minister has said that “we in the coming days will be entering with all our strength to complete the process […] to subdue Hamas,” Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported according to Al Jazeera.

“It could be that Hamas will say ‘Pause, we want to release another 10 hostages’,” Netanyahu said while meeting Israeli wounded soldiers, adding that in that case they would stop and enter afterwards.

“But there will not be a situation where we stop the war,” he added.

Netanyahu also reiterated previous claims that his government had established an agency to oversee a transfer plan for Gaza’s population.

“But there is one problem, we need countries to receive them. This is what we are working on right now,” he added.

“If you give them an exit, I am telling you that more than 50 per cent will leave, in my opinion, many more.”

The US special envoy to the Middle East has told the families of Israeli captives that he believed there was a real possibility of making progress in Qatar’s capital during indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, Al Jazeera reports.

Speaking alongside US envoy Adam Boehler, he said if they didn’t believe in that possibility, “they wouldn’t be making the trip to Doha,” local media quoted the Hostages and Missing Families Forum as saying.

“Witkoff emphasised that they will accept nothing less than the return of everyone,” the group said.

The Israeli prime minister has briefed his government, saying that while he decided to dispatch a team to the Qatari capital today, the mandate for the negotiating team is quite limited in that they’re not negotiating for an end to the bombardment, but a pause in the fighting upwards of 40 days, Al Jazeera reports.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed facilitating the release of nine detainees from the Kissufim crossing to the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah in coordination with the ministry of health, Al Jazeera reports.

The group also “facilitated their contact with their families to meet and reunite them”, it said in a statement.

“In hospitals, they are also given the opportunity to use telephones to communicate with their families for reunification,” it added.

Hamas has rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that military pressure had helped secure the release of US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander from Gaza a day earlier, AFP reports.

“The return of Edan Alexander is the result of serious communications with the US administration and the efforts of mediators, not a consequence of Israeli aggression or the illusion of military pressure,” the Palestinian group said in a statement.

“Netanyahu is misleading his people and has failed to bring back his prisoners through aggression,” Hamas added.

A months-long Israeli blockade is worsening acute malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, medical charity Medecins du Monde (MDM) warned, accusing Israel of using hunger as “a weapon of war”, AFP reports.

Acute malnutrition in Gaza has “reached levels comparable to those seen in countries facing prolonged humanitarian crises spanning several decades,” said Medecins du Monde.

MDM said data from six health centres it runs in the Palestinian territory highlighted “the human responsibility for hunger in Gaza”.

In the past few hours, Israel has launched fierce attacks on Gaza City, especially the eastern neighbourhoods of Tuffah and Shujayea, Al Jazeera reports.

Three Palestinians were killed in the Israeli bombing of the Shujayea neighbourhood.

More than 380 figures from the cinema world have condemned “genocide” in Gaza in an open letter published ahead of the Cannes Festival opening, Al Jazeera reports.

“We cannot remain silent while genocide is taking place in Gaza,” they wrote in the letter, published in French newspaper Liberation and US magazine Variety.

The signatories include “Schindler’s List” actor Ralph Fiennes, Hollywood stars Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and former Cannes winner Ruben Ostlund.

They condemned the killing of Gaza photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, 25, who is the subject of a documentary by Iranian director Sepideh Farsi that will premiere in Cannes.

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Malnutrition rates are rising in Gaza and hunger could have lasting impacts on “an entire generation”, the World Health Organisation’s representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory has said, Reuters reports.

Rik Peeperkorn said he had seen children in clinics who looked years younger than their age.

“Without enough nutritious food, clean water and access to health care, an entire generation will be permanently affected,” Peeperkorn told a press briefing by video link from Deir al-Balah, warning of poor health, stunting and impaired cognitive development.