Israel condemned by 25 nations over "inhumane killing" of Gaza civilians and "drip feeding of aid" as war expands

CBS News

4 days ago

Twenty-five nations, including Britain, Canada and Japan, issued a joint statement on Monday with "a simple, urgent message: the war in Gaza must end now."
The statement by the U.S. allies and partners across the globe and published online by the U.K. government condemns Israel's tightly-controlled aid distribution method, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's U.S.-backed government of the "drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children."
"It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid," said the statement, which was published after one of the deadliest days for aid seekers during the 21-month war in Gaza. Health officials in the Hamas-run enclave said more than 80 people were killed trying to access emergency food supplies on Sunday alone.
In addition to the U.K., the nations that signed the joint statement were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
"The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity," the statement says. "The Israeli Government's denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable. Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law."
The war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas-orchestrated terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken as hostages. Most of those captives have since been released, but Netanyahu said earlier this month that 50 remain in Gaza, including 20 he said were still alive.
"The hostages cruelly held captive by Hamas since 7 October 2023 continue to suffer terribly," the 25 nations said in the statement. "We condemn their continued detention and call for their immediate and unconditional release. A negotiated ceasefire offers the best hope of bringing them home and ending the agony of their families."
Israel does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza to report on the war, making it impossible to independently verify figures provided by the Palestinian enclave's Hamas-run health ministry and other agencies. The Israeli government rejects these numbers as falsely inflated, but the United Nations says the ministry's figure of more than 59,000 people being killed in total since the war started is the most credible information available.
CBS News' own team inside Gaza has spoken with medical workers and family members of aid seekers who say Israeli forces have routinely opened fire on people near food distribution sites since at least the end of May, when a new, controversial, U.S.- and Israeli-backed organization started operating a handful of "humanitarian hubs" in the enclave.
The deaths reported on Sunday, near a convoy of aid trucks operated by the U.N.'s World Food Program, were not linked to the U.S.-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is run by an evangelical preacher who worked previously as an adviser to President Trump. But Palestinian authorities say most of the aid seekers killed by Israeli forces over the last month and a half were trying to access GHF hubs.
GHF director Rev. Johnnie Moore told CBS News earlier this month that while he didn't "want to diminish these reports" about killings near GHF hubs, "we can't control what happens outside our distribution sites."
He repeated his previous calls — which have been echoed by the White House — for the United Nations and its humanitarian agencies to join the GHF's efforts to feed people in Gaza.
None of the established humanitarian agencies that have worked for decades in Gaza have agreed to work with the GHF, saying it forces already-displaced Palestinians to trek for miles to reach its hubs and that it violates basic humanitarian principles.
The Trump administration announced its first public support for the GHF in early July: $30 million in funding.
In a statement on Monday, COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of affairs in the Palestinian territories, said: "Israel acts in accordance with international law and is leading efforts to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza in coordination with the international organizations."
Israel has blamed Hamas for all deaths in Gaza since the war began, accusing it of using civilians as human shields and of seizing aid materials for its own use, both of which the group — long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and the European Union — denies doing.
Pope Leo XIV also renewed his call over the weekend for "an immediate end to the barbarity of this war and for a peaceful resolution to the conflict" in Gaza.
Netanyahu has said repeatedly that the war will continue until Hamas is rendered impotent militarily and politically, and all the hostages are returned.
The international outcry and mounting demands for an immediate ceasefire come at a time when there's little to suggest any imminent breakthrough in ongoing negotiations for a truce. They come instead as Israel says it is again expanding its ground war in Gaza, forcing thousands of Palestinians to once again flee for safety.
On Sunday, Israel widened its evacuation orders for Gaza to include an area that has been somewhat less hard-hit than others, indicating a new battleground may be opening up and squeezing Palestinians into ever tinier areas.
In an Arabic language social media post published Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces warned that it was operating "with great force to destroy the enemy's capabilities and terrorist infrastructure" in the central city of Deir al-Balah, "as it expands its activities in this region to operate in an area it has not operated in before."
"For your safety, evacuate the area immediately and move south," the IDF said.
The U.N.'s humanitarian agency OCHA estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were in the area under the new evacuation order, and families were seen carrying what few items they could on donkey carts, bicycles and even dragging sleds behind them as they headed south.
Deir el-Balah resident Abdullah Abu Saleem, 48, told the French news agency AFP that "during the night, we heard huge and powerful explosions shaking the area as if it were an earthquake," which he attributed to "artillery shelling in the south-central part of Deir el-Balah and the southeastern area."
"We are extremely worried and fearful that the army is planning a ground operation in Deir el-Balah, and the central camps where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are sheltering," he told AFP.
The Israeli military did not provide immediate comment on the operations, but the GLZ Radio network, which is funded by the Israeli government and affiliated directly with the IDF, reported Monday that soldiers had, "for the first time since the start of the war," entered Deir al-Balah on the ground.
GLZ said a single combat brigade, "including engineering and armor forces, have recently entered a maneuver in the southern Deir al-Balah area in the central camps in the Gaza Strip. The attacks were preceded by air and artillery strikes during the night and morning, and in the afternoon the forces went into action."
The announced expansion of ground operations drew a quick statement of concern from the group that represents the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza – the precise whereabouts of whom remain unknown.
"The families demand that the Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Chief of Staff, and IDF Spokesperson appear before them and the Israeli public this evening to clearly explain why the offensive in the Deir al-Balah area does not put the hostages at serious risk," the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters said in a statement. "As of this moment, we have received no official, organized updates or satisfactory answers on this matter. The people of Israel will not forgive anyone who knowingly endangered the hostages — both the living and the deceased. No one will be able to claim they didn't know what was at stake."