(August 1, 2025)
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S. and Israeli-backed humanitarian aid initiative, has been delivering aid into Gaza since May. But since then, the U.N. says hundreds of Palestinians have been killed outside of GHF aid sites. Nick Schifrin spoke with former security contractor Anthony Aguilar about what he saw there and why he believes the execution of the GHF mission has failed.
A fired U.S. contractor likened Gaza aid efforts to “The Hunger Games.” His former employer and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation refuted his claims.
Driving the news: Witkoff flew in from Miami to meet Trump for dinner on Monday, the sources say, fresh off a visit last week to Israel and Gaza.
A U.S. official said it was decided that the Trump administration will „take over“ management of the humanitarian effort in Gaza because Israel isn‘t handling it adequately.
The official didn‘t say what the U.S. role would actually entail, but said Gulf countries like Qatar will contribute funds, while Jordan and Egypt will also likely be involved.
At least 83 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza today, according to hospital sources cited by our colleagues on the ground. Among them are 58 aid seekers.
Negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, which began in Doha following the confrontation with Iran, have been stalled for some time, and Ynet has learned Monday evening that U.S. President Donald Trump has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a green light to launch a more aggressive military operation against Hamas in Gaza.
Seit Kurzem demonstriert die Bundesregierung eine veränderte Haltung in der Nahostpolitik. Der deutsche Außenminister Wadephul soll die israelische Regierung bei einem Besuch in Tel Aviv „ernsthaft ermahnt“ haben, sie müsse in ihrem eigenen Interesse angesichts weltweiter Isolation ihre Politik „fundamental“ ändern, und verurteilt „Pläne von Annexionen“. Die Bundeswehr hat parallel dazu eine „Luftbrücke“ aufgemacht und wirft symbolträchtig Lebensmittel über Gaza ab. Kanzler Merz „ringe“ derweil noch um seine Aussage zu Israel. So die Nachrichtenlage der letzten Tage in Kurzform.
According to Channel 12, the plan will be submitted to the full security cabinet for approval on Thursday.
GAZA, June 26, 2025 (WAFA) – The death toll in the Gaza Strip has reached 61,020, the majority of whom were women and children, since the beginning of the Israeli aggression in October 2023. At least 150,671 others have also been injured.
This toll remains incomplete, as many victims remain trapped under rubble, inaccessible to ambulance and rescue crews.
Medical sources confirmed that of the total casualties, 9,519 civilians have been killed and 38,630 have been injured since March 18, 2025, when the Israeli occupation resumed its aggression on the Gaza Strip after breaking the ceasefire agreement.
The Gaza Health Ministry reported that at least 21 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes since early Monday. Combined with 92 deaths recorded the previous day, the two-day toll stands at 111.
Since the launch of Israel’s military operation in October 2023, the overall death toll in Gaza has climbed to 60,839, with more than 149,000 others injured. The escalating civilian casualties have intensified international pressure for a ceasefire and renewed efforts to reach a hostage-release and aid agreement.
In the southern part of the Strip, we can see that the Israeli ground operations are concentrated around the eastern and central parts of the city of Khan Younis. Palestinian armed factions and Israeli ground forces are trading fire there.
Israel’s ground campaign is accompanied by very heavy fire from its air force and also from Israeli artillery units that continue to pound the al-Mawasi area, where families were told to go to in order to get away from Israel’s bombardment.
“The decision has been made,” Amit Sega, chief political analyst with Channel 12, quoted an unnamed senior official in Netanyahu’s office as saying.
“Hamas won’t release more hostages without total surrender, and we won’t surrender. If we don’t act now, the hostages will starve to death and Gaza will remain under Hamas’s control.”
(August 4, 2025)
“The horror videos by Hamas stem from one goal – their attempt to pressure the State of Israel,” said Itmar Ben Gvir, the right-wing firebrand, in remarks made during a controversial visit to the Temple Mount, sacred for both Jews and Muslims, at the weekend.
“It is from here that a message must be sent: to conquer the entire Gaza Strip, declare sovereignty over all of Gaza, eliminate every Hamas member, and encourage voluntary emigration. Only in this way will we bring back the hostages and win the war,” Ben Gvir added.
(November 30, 2023)
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
(…)
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
(October 25, 2015)
A political consultant once related how he lunched with Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered a hamburger with fries. He was not supposed to be eating such foods – doctor’s orders. As they were finishing up, Bibi’s wife, Sarah, came in, saw the evidence and began to see red. Netanyahu, all righteous indignation, looked her straight in the eye and said he had eaten no such hamburger. The storyteller said he was convinced at that moment that Netanyahu himself believed it.
If apocryphal, it is definitely in character. Netanyahu regularly embraces bad ideas or even lies so totally that he convinces himself of their rightness. Others start to believe them too. His outlandish idea, uttered in a speech, was that Hitler would have been happy with just expelling Jews if a Palestinian, the then grand mufti of Jerusalem, had not suggested annihilation instead.
Oct 22, 2015
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Adolf Hitler didn‘t want to kill the Jews, but a Muslim convinced him to do it.
Holocaust historians disagree.
(October 22, 2023)
With Hamas in power in Gaza, coupled with a deliberately emaciated PA in the West Bank, Netanyahu could claim there was no Palestinian partner for negotiation, and he could continue to crisscross the West Bank with settlements.
In the aftermath of the bloody Black Shabbat, as it is now called in Israel, and an extensive aerial bombing campaign, Israel is poised “go after Hamas leadership” — whatever that means — in a costly ground offensive.
The key question is what happens the “day after” — something Netanyahu has never been adept at answering. His concept appears to be apres moi, le deluge — after me, chaos.
(November 22, 2024)
Hamas political bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk knows a thing or two about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s decades-long support for the group.
In fact, Mr. Abu Marzouk is Exhibit A.
Thanks to Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Abu Marzouk operates from the luxury of Doha instead of rotting in an Israeli jail since 1996 when Mr. Netanyahu first became prime minister.
In a move never adequately justified, Mr. Netanyahu, in his first year in office, dropped a request by his predecessor, Shimon Peres, for Mr. Abu Marzouk’s extradition from the United States, where he was a resident.
(September 28, 2016)
After Rabin‘s assassination by a Jewish ultranationalist opposed to Israel‘s peace moves in 1995, Peres became acting prime minister. But he failed to capitalize on the widespread sympathy for the fallen leader and lost a razor-thin election the following year to Netanyahu.
In one famous incident, an angry Peres rhetorically asked a gathering of his Labor Party whether he was a „loser.“ Resounding calls of „yes“ rained down on him.
Peres would later blame a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings for his defeat. He described his visit to the scene of a deadly bus explosion in Jerusalem, where people started screaming „killer“ and „murderer“ at him. „I knew that I lost the election,“ he said.
(June 19, 1996)
Arafat, speaking in China, said the peace accords were an international agreement rather than a bilateral one between the Palestinians and Israel.
„Now it is the turn of the international community. I am not alone now,“ Arafat said. „We hope everyone will be committed to what has been agreed upon.“
Khalil Shakaki, head of a West Bank think tank, predicted Netanyahu will eventually support a Palestinian state confined only to the Gaza Strip – where almost half the Palestinians now under autonomy live. He predicted a complex „arrangement“ in the larger West Bank, possibly including a role for neighboring Jordan.
Netanyahu‘s first test of intentions will come soon: He must decide whether to honor the outgoing government‘s commitment to withdraw troops from Hebron, the last West Bank city under Israeli occupation.
(March 4, 1996(
In a leaflet distributed in Jerusalem today, „The Cells of the Martyr the Engineer Yahya Ayyash — the New Pupils“ said the bombing was „the end of our violent revenge“ for the death of Mr. Ayyash, a Hamas bomb maker killed on Jan. 5 in the Gaza Strip by an exploding cellular phone widely believed to have been planted by Israeli agents.
The Cells of the Martyr group had taken responsibility for the suicide bombings last Sunday in Jerusalem and in the coastal Israeli town of Ashkelon, and appears to be a renegade offshoot of the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades.
A leaflet issued last Thursday by the Qassam Brigades offered an eight-day respite from attacks while Israel considered the Brigades‘ conditions for a cease-fire: an end to Israeli violence against Hamas members and other Palestinians and the release of all Hamas prisoners in Israel jails.
Ignoring that offer, The Cells of the Martyr blew up a bus today and set its own terms for a cease-fire, declaring that it would halt attacks for three months to enable Hamas and Israel to reach a truce mediated by the Palestinian Authority, the governing body led by Yasir Arafat.
The Cells criticized the Qassam Brigades for its truce offer, and warned that attacks would resume if Israel pursued Hamas militants. Addressing Israelis ahead of the May 29 national election, the group said, „Neither the Labor party nor the Likud party will give you security as long as your Government practices terrorism against us and continues to arrest members of our people.“
(February 26, 1996)
Although Government and opposition leaders joined in condemning the attacks and both sides refrained from recriminations, there was no question that the revival of terror attacks, with the worst carnage to date in suicide bombings, would have a profound impact on the campaign for national elections on May 29.
While Prime Minister Shimon Peres and his Labor Party have held a sizable lead in public-opinion polls over the conservative Likud opposition since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November, all political pundits have said that could change sharply and rapidly if Palestinian terrorists struck again.