Rights and Accountability 25 July 2025
A starving toddler in Gaza City, 24 July.
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 24 July livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
Israel has bombarded areas across Gaza this week, killing 646 Palestinians and injuring more than 3,400 between 16 and 23 July, according to records from the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
On 22 July, 15 Palestinians were killed and 50 were wounded when Israel targeted tents of displaced families in Beach refugee camp west of Gaza City.
The same day, another 15 Palestinians were killed, including six children, in an airstrike on a residential building in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza. The United Nations says that paramedics were also injured in that attack, and at least one ambulance was damaged, as the residential building is located near an ambulance station.
On 21 July, Israel bombed a kindergarten in al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, in two successive strikes. Images and video show small children, streaming out of the classrooms with their backpacks on, their faces bloodied and terrified, being comforted by parents, teachers and caregivers.
Just a few days before, Israel bombed the Abu Helou school shelter in al-Bureij refugee camp. These attacks happened during a ground invasion of central Gaza this past week. On 20 July, according to a statement by the World Food Program (WFP), its 25-truck convoy carrying vital food assistance crossed Zikim crossing, in northern Gaza, and subsequently encountered large crowds of civilians anxiously waiting to access desperately needed food supplies.“As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire,” resulting in mass casualties, the WFP stated.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reported that 73 people had been killed and more than 150 were injured in the attack, some in critical condition. Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, stated that most of the injuries were in the head or chest and that the hospital was overwhelmed with the influx of casualties.
Based on available reports, this appears to be the highest number of fatalities among Palestinians seeking food in a single location and on a single day since 27 May.
Forced displacement continues across Gaza, with the Israeli army squeezing Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas.
A displacement order on Sunday, 20 July, covered four neighborhoods and nearly 6 square kilometers of Deir al-Balah. The UN said that its initial estimates indicate that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were in the area at the time the order was issued, including some 30,000 people sheltering in 57 displacement sites.
At least 1,000 families had fled the area.
The newly-designated displacement area “includes several humanitarian warehouses, four primary health clinics, four medical points, and critical water infrastructure: the Southern Gaza Desalination Plant, three water wells, one water reservoir, one solid waste dumping site and one wastewater pumping station. Any damage to this infrastructure will have life-threatening consequences,” the UN added.
With this latest order, the area of Gaza under displacement orders or within Israeli-militarized zones has risen to 88 per cent, “leaving 2.1 million civilians squeezed into a fragmented 12 percent of the Strip, where essential services have collapsed.”
The new displacement order “cuts through Deir al-Balah all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, further splintering the Strip. It will limit the ability of the UN and our partners to move safely and effectively within Gaza, choking humanitarian access when it is needed most,” the UN stated.
In addition to relentless attacks on school shelters, homes and buildings, services have stopped at six health facilities in the Gaza Strip due to a fuel shortage because of Israel’s continued closure of the crossings since March.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza described the ongoing obstruction of fuel and medical supplies as “a deliberate attempt to destroy what remains of the health system.”
The United Nations says that hospitals in Gaza are “overwhelmed and cannot cope with the influx of patients due to lack of supplies and fuel. Local health authorities said that in the past few days, several of their health facilities have shut down due to the lack of fuel. More hospitals, including Al-Shifa, are at imminent risk of shutting down within the next few days.”
Israel’s ongoing ban on fuel into Gaza has forced the main desalination plant in Gaza City to shut down. The Gaza Municipality warned that the city has entered a phase of “extreme thirst” due to the lack of fuel to run the plant.
In a statement, the municipality said the worsening fuel crisis has further deepened the water shortage.
Large areas are no longer receiving water, and most wells are out of service. Some 1.2 million displaced people and residents now face the threat of severe thirst as water sources collapse and urgent humanitarian intervention remains absent, the municipality stated.
The Sameer Project, a mutual aid organization in Gaza, warned that the drivers of the water distribution trucks they work with said that they are running out of gas, and that “in a week or two, mutual aid groups won’t be able to deliver water trucks to people anymore.”Catastrophic starvation
Israel’s starvation of Gaza has hit catastrophic levels.
Palestinians are reporting that there simply is no more food left, with markets empty and stockpiles depleted.
Reporter Nahed Hajjaj posted on Friday, 18 July: “Do not be surprised when we journalists stop covering news here. I swear by God that today I could not get up from the hunger. There is no food. Even if someone has money, there is nothing in the market to even purchase. We are all starving. We are all dying.” On Sunday, 20 July, the Palestinian health ministry held a protest of sirens, in what it says was an urgent warning and an alarm toward the deteriorating starvation and health situation in the besieged Gaza Strip.“Our sirens today are the voice of the hungry and the bereaved who are left to die without the minimum means of survival,” the ministry said.
That day, the health ministry said that it had recorded 86 deaths from starvation, 76 children and 10 adults – what it called a “silent massacre.”The number has since risen.
Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif broke down in tears describing the scene outside of a hospital on Sunday, where people were collapsing in hunger and others were being brought to the hospital with injuries from Israeli attacks.
He appealed to all international press freedom and human rights organizations on Wednesday over renewed threats against him by the Israeli military.A group of journalists announced that it was going on a hunger strike and would just be consuming saltwater, in protest of Israel’s mass starvation policy and the deteriorating situation across Gaza.
The group of journalists declared, “We are on an open hunger strike until the smallest child in Gaza can eat.”The reporters called on “the free people of the world to stand up and participate in the Empty Stomach movement, for the oppressed, the hungry and the thirsty in the Gaza Strip.”
Members of Gaza’s civil defense joined the hunger strike as well.
Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis stated that 15 more Palestinians died from starvation on 22 July, bringing the total number to 101, including 80 children.“The toll of martyrs due to hunger and malnutrition is increasing rapidly,” the hospital said.
Dr. Ambereen Salimi, an American doctor working inside the hospital, described the conditions in Gaza as “catastrophic.”
“Everything here is extremely cruel,” she said. “No food, no medicine, no shelter, no safety. Everything is lost under siege and a genocide war.”
Three-month-old Yahya al-Najjar died due to starvation this week, the third infant to be killed by Israel’s starvation in 24 hours, according to journalist Ahmed al-Najjar.
Israel continues to deliberately and systematically prevent the entry of baby formula and specialized nutritional supplements for infants.Dr. Fidaa al-Nadi at Nasser Medical Complex spoke to reporters about the deaths of babies from starvation.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention stated on Monday that it was calling on every leader in the world “to step in immediately with measures that ensure food and water gets into Gaza right now. No more discussions, meetings, reports, sessions, summits,” the institute said. “Get food and water into Gaza now.” Reporter Wadea Abu el-Saud covered a protest of children in the streets on 19 July. The children were marching with empty stomachs and chanting “No to hunger, no to death.”“They came out to the streets not to play…. Rather, to scream out of hunger,” Abu el-Saud says.
“Their bellies are empty and their eyes are looking for a bite, for mercy, for a homeland whose children are not starving.”
Slaughter at “aid sites” continues
Meanwhile, Israeli and American forces stationed at the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites continue to trap, injure and kill starving Palestinians every day, while preventing the United Nations and its partner organizations from distributing lifesaving food aid with dignity and safety – as thousands of tons of food remain blocked on the other side of the Israeli crossings.
On Sunday, 20 July, Israeli forces killed at least 92 Palestinians who tried to obtain meager parcels of flour and food aid, in what Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor described as one of the “most heinous massacres against starving civilians.”
“The occupation army ordered the civilians to approach aid trucks with their hands raised – a clear sign of surrender – and then opened fire on them without provocation,” the rights group said.
“When the first groups arrived, Israeli tanks were already stationed in the area. Soldiers then used loudspeakers to command: ‘Raise your hands and walk in front of the tanks – those who want flour, come forward.’ Around 200 civilians complied. As they neared the aid trucks, Israeli forces suddenly opened heavy fire directly at their heads, instantly killing dozens. Others were left crawling, wounded, and bleeding.”
In a separate incident also on 20 July, Euro-Med said, “Israeli forces shot and killed six more starving civilians near a food distribution point run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Rafah as people attempted to access aid.”
On 23 July, the Palestinian health ministry stated that 34 Palestinians were killed and more than 640 injured in 24 hours at these so-called aid distribution sites, raising the death toll to 1,060 with more than 7,200 injured since the GHF opened eight weeks ago in late May.
Dr. Nick Maynard, a British surgeon working in Gaza, told the BBC that based on the injuries he’s treating, Israeli soldiers in Gaza are reportedly turning the targeting of Palestinian children into a systematic “human-hunting game.”
Meanwhile, an American mercenary who had worked for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation admitted in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 this week that “the aid centers treated the population very badly and put them in danger.”The GHF system “can’t be fixed, it has to be put an end to,” he said, adding that “if the UN had the resources and coordination that this mechanism has, it would work much better.”
The unnamed mercenary, who recently resigned, said that “while the Palestinians finished collecting the aid at the site, the American guards opened fire – shooting at them, at their legs, at the dirt mounds – to make them leave.”
He also described an incident where a GHF member of staff threw a stun grenade directly at a Palestinian woman, who collapsed and fell to the floor. “That was the moment I realized I couldn’t go on,” he said.
In response to the confession, the Gaza government media office said on 23 July that those statements “represent damning testimony to the criminal and inhumane nature of this organization, which hides behind the guise of relief work while actually playing a security and military role in areas of forced displacement, subject to clear intelligence and security agendas.”
And if people manage to survive the GHF killing fields, the food parcels from the private US-Israeli mercenary corporation continue to be wholly insufficient for people’s critical needs.
Dr. Ahmad Alfarra, the director of pediatrics at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, said that Palestinian families have come to the hospital suffering from serious health problems linked to consuming spoiled food.
Alfarra said that he wouldn’t send his son to the GHF sites. He told Al Jazeera that “I am afraid that he will go there and he will come back as a [dead] body. The GHF is a [trap] for killing, not for distributing food,” he said.
Israel kills three children in West Bank
Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian children over the past week.
On 18 July, 13-year-old Amr Ali Ahmad Qabha was shot in the back at least seven times by Israeli soldiers in Yabad, near Jenin, in the north.
Defense for Children International-Palestine reports that two Israeli military vehicles “came from the Mevo Dotan settlement and military base, entered the village and took up positions in its northern area, where several soldiers exited their vehicles.”Amr was walking “around a road nearby, and he unknowingly approached the group of Israeli soldiers stationed at the site. Due to the circular bend in the road, the soldiers did not initially see him, nor was he aware of their presence. As Amr turned back and attempted to take cover, the soldiers opened fire on him with live ammunition from a distance of 10 meters [about 33 feet away], and he was struck with around seven bullets: three bullets in the back, one in the neck, one in the abdomen, one in the upper right thigh, and one in the groin.”
Amr fell, and Israeli soldiers prevented anyone from reaching him, including medical staff and ambulance teams, DCIP reported.
“As news of Amr’s injury quickly spread in the village, his father rushed directly to the scene. Despite the soldiers’ shouting and warning shots, he managed to reach and embrace Amr.”
DCIP said that according to the father, “Amr was still alive at that time, using hand gestures to plead for medical help, as he was unable to speak. Israeli soldiers handcuffed the father behind his back, severely [beat him], and was forced to sit beside his bleeding child.”
The soldiers continued to detain both of them, “blocking ambulance access for approximately 40 minutes. Only after the soldiers were certain Amr had died, they allowed the ambulance to approach and transport him” to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Defense for Children International-Palestine reported on Tuesday, 22 July, that another boy, 15-year-old Ibrahim Majed Ali Nasr, was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the Palestinian town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin.
The child was allegedly throwing stones at Israeli soldiers during an Israeli military incursion into Qabatiya when he was shot from a distance of about 10 to 15 meters (30-50 feet) away, striking him with a bullet in the right side of the chest that exited through his right shoulder.
And on 23 July, Israeli forces shot and killed 14-year-old Ibrahim Imad Ahmed Mahmoud Hamran Arraba, south of Jenin, killing him instantly.
Highlighting resilience
Finally, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Palestine and around the world.
Photographer Haneen Salem captured an image of four young boys in Gaza City, taking a rest after playing. Two of them have their rollerblades on, and they smile for the camera.
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