Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 584

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said the humanitarian situation in Gaza is “ever more dramatic and unjustifiable”, stressing she had repeatedly urged Israel to find a way to end the conflict, AFP reports.

“It is a request that I renew today in the face of a humanitarian situation in Gaza that I have no difficulty in defining as increasingly dramatic and unjustifiable,” Meloni told parliament.

In questions from parliament, she was pressed by an MP to condemn Netanyahu’s actions, and asked whether she would introduce sanctions against Israel or recall its ambassador.

Meloni said her conversations in recent months with Netanyahu were “often difficult conversations in which I always referred to the urgency of finding a way to end the hostilities, the need to respect international law, international humanitarian law”.

She added: “We did not agree with several choices, we do not agree with the recent proposals of the Israeli government and we have not failed to say so to our interlocutors.”

Gaza’s civil defence agency has said the number of people killed in Israeli bombardment across the Palestinian territory since dawn has risen to 80, including 59 in the north.

“The number of martyrs killed in the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip since dawn today has risen to 80, including 59 in the northern Gaza Strip,” civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told AFP.

Doctors Without Borders has slammed Israel for creating a “deliberate humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and accused it of trying to make aid conditional on the forced displacement of Palestinians, AFP reports.

“We are witnessing, in real time, the creation of conditions for the eradication of Palestinian lives in Gaza,” the medical charity, known by its French acronym MSF, said in a statement.

“Gaza has become a hell on earth for Palestinians.”

MSF warned that its medical teams on the ground had “seen a 32-per cent increase in the number of patients presenting with malnutrition over the past two weeks”.

“Dwindling fuel stocks are limiting the ability to desalinate and distribute water,” it said in its statement.

“Those health facilities that still function — already critically inadequate in number and capacity for the population — are still being attacked and are suffering from rapidly diminishing stocks of medications and other essential supplies.”

MSF highlighted that its “teams in Gaza have received no supplies for 11 weeks and face critical shortages of essential medical items such as sterile compresses and sterile gloves”.

New Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand has accused Israel of using a lack of food as a political tool in its Gaza operation and urged further work on a ceasefire with Hamas, Reuters reports.

“We cannot allow the continued use of food as a political tool … Over 50,000 people have died as a result of the aggression caused against the Palestinians and the Gazan people in Palestine. Using food as a political tool is simply unacceptable,” Anand told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting.

“We need to continue to work towards a ceasefire. We need to ensure that we have a two-state solution and Canada will continue to maintain that position.”

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.”

United States and Saudi Arabia agree to end Israel’s war on Gaza and release all hostages, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud has said, Reuters and Al Arabiya English report.

Al Saud added, “We need to reach a ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible”.

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.