
US envoy Witkoff visits Gaza to 'help craft aid plan'
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said Friday that his visit to U.S.-backed aid stations in Gaza would help Washington draw up a plan to deliver more aid to the Palestinian territory.
"Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza," Witkoff said in a post on X, accompanied by a photo of himself wearing a protective vest and meeting staff at a distribution center.
He added that the purpose of the visit was to "help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza".

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L'Orient-Le Jour
3 hours ago
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Israel's Ben-Gvir says he prayed at Al-Aqsa mosque compound
Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem on Sunday and said he prayed there, challenging rules covering one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East. Under a delicate decades-old "status quo" arrangement with Muslim authorities, the Al-Aqsa compound is administered by a Jordanian religious foundation and Jews can visit but may not pray there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement after Ben-Gvir's visit that Israel's policy of maintaining the status quo at the compound "has not changed and will not change." Videos released by a small Jewish organisation called the Temple Mount Administration showed Ben-Gvir leading a group walking in the compound. Other videos circulating online appeared to show him praying. Reuters could not immediately verify the content of the other videos. The visit to the compound known to Jews as Temple Mount took place on Tisha B'av, the fast day mourning the destruction of two ancient Jewish temples, which stood at the site centuries ago. The Waqf, the foundation that administers the complex on a hillside in Jerusalem's walled Old City, said Ben-Gvir was among another 1,250 who ascended the site and who it said prayed, shouted and danced. Israel's official position accepts the rules restricting non-Muslim prayer at the compound, which is Islam's third-holiest site and the most sacred site in Judaism. Ben-Gvir has visited the site in the past, calling for Jewish prayer to be allowed there. Ben-Gvir said in a statement he prayed for Israel's victory over the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the war in Gaza and for the return of Israeli hostages being held by militants there. He repeated his call for Israel to conquer the entire enclave. Suggestions that Israel would alter rules at the Al-Aqsa compound have sparked outrage in the Muslim world and ignited violence in the past. There were no immediate reports of violence on Sunday. A spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Ben-Gvir's visit, which he said "crossed all red lines." "The international community, specifically the U.S. administration, is required to intervene immediately to put an end to the crimes of the settlers and the provocations of the extreme right-wing government in Al-Aqsa mosque, stop the war on the Gaza Strip and bring in humanitarian aid," Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.


Nahar Net
8 hours ago
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US envoy meets Israeli hostage families in Tel Aviv
by Naharnet Newsdesk 03 August 2025, 13:00 U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met anguished relatives of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza on Saturday, as fears for the captives' survival mounted almost 22 months into the war sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack. Witkoff was greeted with some applause and pleas for assistance from hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, before going into a closed meeting with the families. Videos shared online showed him arriving to meet the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, as families chanted "Bring them home!" and "We need your help." The meeting came one day after Witkoff visited a U.S.-backed aid station in Gaza to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory. "The war needs to end," Yotam Cohen, brother of 21-year-old hostage Nimrod Cohen, told AFP. "The Israeli government will not end it willingly. It has refused to do so," he added. "The Israeli government must be stopped. For our sakes, for our soldiers' sakes, for our hostages' sakes, for our sons and for the future generations of everybody in the Middle East." Of the 251 hostages taken during the Hamas attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead. After the meeting, the Forum released a statement saying Witkoff had given them a personal commitment that he and US President Donald Trump would work to return the remaining hostages. - 'Horrifying acts' - Hamas attempted to maintain pressure on the families, on Friday releasing a video of one of the hostages -- 24-year-old Evyatar David -- for the second time in two days, showing him looking emaciated in a tunnel. The video called for a ceasefire and warned that time was running out for the hostages. David's family said their son was the victim of a "vile" propaganda campaign and accused Hamas of deliberately starving their son. "The deliberate starvation of our son as part of a propaganda campaign is one of the most horrifying acts the world has seen. He is being starved purely to serve Hamas's propaganda," the family said. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Saturday also denounced the video, and one released a day earlier by another Palestinian Islamist group, as "despicable". "They must be freed, without conditions," he posted on X. "Hamas must be disarmed and excluded from ruling Gaza." The United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, had been mediating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel that would allow the hostages to be released and humanitarian aid to flow more freely. But talks broke down last month and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is under domestic pressure to come up with another way to secure the missing hostages, alive and dead. He is also facing international calls to open Gaza's borders to more food aid, after UN and humanitarian agencies warned that more than two million Palestinian civilians are facing starvation. - 'Without rest' - Israel's top general warned that there would be no respite in fighting if the hostages were not released. "I estimate that in the coming days we will know whether we can reach an agreement for the release of our hostages," armed forces chief of staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said in a statement. "If not, the combat will continue without rest." Zamir denied that there was widespread starvation in Gaza. "The current campaign of false accusations of intentional starvation is a deliberate, timed, and deceitful attempt to accuse the IDF (Israeli military), a moral army, of war crimes," he said. Alongside reports from UN-mandated experts warning a "famine is unfolding" in Gaza, more and more evidence is emerging of serious malnutrition and deaths among the most vulnerable Palestinian civilians. Modallala Dawwas, 33, living in a displacement camp in Gaza City told AFP her daughter Mariam had no known illnesses before the war but had now dropped from 25 kilograms (four stone) to 10 (around one and half stone) and was seriously malnourished. Hamas's 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures. Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,332 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a post on X early Sunday that one of its staff members was killed and three others wounded in an Israeli attack on its Khan Yunis headquarters in Gaza. Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli fire killed 34 people in the territory on Saturday. Five people were killed in an Israeli strike on an area of central Gaza where Palestinians were awaiting food distribution by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said. The GHF has largely sidelined the longstanding U.N.-led aid distribution system in Gaza, just as Israel in late May began easing a more than two-month aid blockade that exacerbated existing shortages. The U.N. human rights office in the Palestinian territories said at least 1,373 Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza were killed since May 27, adding that most of them were killed near GHF sites, and by the Israeli military.


Nahar Net
8 hours ago
- Nahar Net
Palestinian Red Crescent says one staff killed in Israeli attack on Gaza HQ
by Naharnet Newsdesk 03 August 2025, 13:03 The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Sunday that one of its staff members was killed and three others wounded in an Israeli attack on its Khan Yunis headquarters in Gaza. "One Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) staff member was killed and three others injured after Israeli forces targeted the Society's headquarters in Khan Younis, igniting a fire on the building's first floor," the aid organization said in a post on X. A video, which the PRCS said "captures the initial moments" of the attack, shows fires burning in a building, with the floors covered in rubble. It comes two days after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff visited a U.S.-backed aid station in Gaza to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory. Nearly two years after the war began, U.N. agencies have warned that time was running out and that Gaza was "on the brink of a full-scale famine". Eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Gaza civil defense agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were killed in an attack by Israeli forces in southern Gaza in March, according to the U.N. humanitarian office OCHA. Hamas' October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official Israeli figures. Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,332 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, deemed reliable by the U.N.