Gaza latest: Trump pressed to recognise Palestinian state - as starvation intensifies in 'hellish' Gaza amid Israeli blockade
People in central Gaza have been rushing to collect aid after it was air dropped by parachutes today.
A number of countries have been dropping aid into Gaza but humanitarian organisations say it is not enough to significantly improve the dire situation.
Earlier, the communications officer at Oxfam, Ghada Haddad, said a "comprehensive humanitarian response" was needed and this would not be possible without a permanent ceasefire and opening the borders.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
As I sit here in Australia watching Israel starve Palestinians to death, I can't help but think it could have been me
'Why can't I have a pomegranate?' The little girl's question sank his heart. How would my colleague, Hatem, explain to his daughter that there are no pomegranates, and barely any flour? How will he explain that real people are doing this to her on purpose? Starving her little stomach as a weapon? As I sit here in Australia, watching 'our ally in the Middle East' deprive my family and friends of food, I can't help but think: it could have been me. The only difference between me and Hatem's daughter is a few thousand kilometres. Geographic luck is why I am safe, why I have clean water, a fridge full of food, a home without drones buzzing overhead. But it doesn't save me from the guilt. I sit glued to the screen as my colleagues, with sunken cheeks and frail bodies – barely able to stand – try to document their own starvation for Americans, Australians, anyone, to take action. It doesn't stop me from wondering why – as the UN secretary general calls this the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger recorded by its system 'anywhere, anytime' – my colleagues still need to 'prove' their own starvation. It doesn't stop me from feeling that perhaps, as humans, we are all unlucky. Because we are living in hell. We live in a global system that lets you bomb hospitals and starve children. We live in a world that allows this to happen. I stare at the empty Word document. I have tried to write this article for a week now but can't seem to find the right words. What words could ever be enough? What sentence could capture the feeling of watching an entire people slowly vanish? What words can I offer if footage of a child with a distended stomach isn't enough? If a mother crying over rice grain isn't enough? If people fighting for food scraps dropped from the sky, hospital wards filled with toddlers but empty of medicine, and lines for nonexistent water, are not enough? What I feel is something more than heartbreak. It's rage. No child should go to bed hungry, let alone die from it. No mother should have to choose which child gets to eat. No people should be punished simply for existing. No one should know what it's like not to eat for days. Yet, here we are. Israel is deliberately starving Gaza to death. The starvation is not a byproduct of genocide – it is the genocide; deliberate, calculated and human-made. It is starving more than 2 million people slowly, painfully and publicly. Before that, it flattened our homes, burned people alive in their tents, displaced millions, and targeted schools and universities. It turned Gaza, a place once filled with life and joy, into rubble. It turned schools into a place children would sleep, learning only how to survive – or how to die. And now, finally, it is openly starving us to death. Parents watch their children go hungry, feeling helpless. Infants are born without the chance to grow. Supermarket shelves are empty. Aid trucks are blocked. People are dying, not only from bullets but from hunger. These are not statistics. These are my cousins, my neighbours, my friends. People I grew up with. People I used to share a sandwich with at school recess. It is hard for me to believe they are now skin and bone, counting their days without food. Some tell me they have stopped counting. You and I are watching a human-made starvation, with full internet access, with journalists risking their lives to show us. There is nothing hidden. Nothing secret. We know. And knowing comes with responsibility. To speak up. To protest. To donate. To demand our governments take real action. To refuse to be complicit. These acts may feel little, compared with this scale of human cruelty. But if I were watching my hungry daughter ask about pomegranates, I would want every human on this planet to try doing something. Anything. Because anything is infinitely more than nothing. Plestia Alaqad is an award-winning journalist and author
The Independent
9 hours ago
- The Independent
Inside the aid drops onto Gaza's torched ruins - with the starving too weak to fight for food
From the sky, the torched ruins of once-bustling cities simmer into view as the back of a Jordanian military plane yawns open. The ground beneath – Gaza – is ash and ruin: the bottom of a firepit stretching out to the horizon. It is as if giants have torn through anything that once lived here: monstrous teeth have ripped chunks out of the few buildings that still teeter above ground. Everything else appears stamped underfoot. In some corners, Israeli tank tracks have clawed up what is left of the soil in sickening scrawls. The only flicker of life is the families corralled into tents on scraps of beach in the punishing sunlight. From the ground looking up, these impossibly huge planes roar into view. It is absurd. Gaza is just 25 miles long and a few miles wide, and entirely accessible by land and sea. But because of Israel 's ongoing bombardment of the Strip and war with militant group Hamas, coupled with its crippling blockade, countries across the world are now dropping aid at enormous expense from the sky. Airdrops are always a last resort, a desperate measure. That is because it rarely gets to those who are most in need, UN officials have told The Independent – those dying of starvation are too weak to endure the hunger games to grab it. Sometimes it also lands in the sea. Sometimes it lands on the very people it is supposed to save. 'Like all the young men, Oday waited in the scorching sun for four hours. But when the planes arrived, he couldn't get out of the way in time,' said Moatasem Al-Quraan, 31, from central Gaza, about his cousin, nurse Oday Al-Quraan, who was crushed to death earlier on Monday. A pallet of aid being airdropped into central Gaza landed on him as he waited for food, his family and eyewitnesses told The Independent. 'He is married and has two children,' said Moatasem. 'He was like every citizen in Gaza. He has been hungry for four months. 'The plane which dropped the aid which killed Oday was carrying 12 boxes, inside each were 36 cartons of food. Where will we distribute them? The aid on the plane isn't enough for the 20,000 people who were waiting there.' Further north in Gaza, Muhammad Mansour, a 39-year-old father of six, said that when the aid drops, it is usually taken by armed gangs, as crippling hunger has exploded into lawlessness. A few times it falls in the sea. 'I don't know how to swim,' Muhammad said in desperation. 'Some went out in small fishing boats, but when they got it, the flour, sugar and rice were useless due to the seawater.' On Monday, the Jordan Armed Forces–Arab Army (JAF) conducted seven airdrop operations together with the UAE, Germany, France, Belgium and Canada - delivering 45 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza as part of the Kingdom's ongoing efforts to support Palestinians in the enclave. In total, 289 airdrops have been conducted since Israel permitted them to restart two weeks ago, delivering 305 tonnes of aid. Meanwhile, officials in Jordan warned that they have had warehouses of aid for Gaza gathering dust since Israel reimposed a devastating blockade in March. Hussein Shebli, the head of the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO) that coordinates a lot of Jordan's aid response for Gaza, painted a damning picture of the nightmare of getting those supplies in by land. He said they face long distances, multiple checkpoints making transportation difficult, as well as frequent closures of the crossings into Gaza, and 'active prevention of aid entry by the occupying entity'. 'Deliberate inspection delays at checkpoints and crossings often hold shipments for extended periods, leading to spoilage and further disruption,' he said. Repeated attacks by Israeli settlers on aid convoys have caused serious delays and damage to shipments. The aid that does get to the crossing points can then be rejected on 'questionable grounds,' he added, referencing one load of dates which was turned back 'over the alleged presence of pits'. Israel continues to deny there are restrictions on aid or that there is even a hunger crisis in Gaza, despite the UN-backed global hunger monitor recently concluding that 'the worst-case scenario of famine' is playing out. Instead, the Israeli government blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it is taking steps for more aid to reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, airdrops, and announcing protected routes for aid convoys. The main military unit coordinating aid – COGAT – has even blamed the UN for not picking up aid it has allowed in, although UN officials said they are faced with a slew of obstacles, including struggling to get permits to reach these pick up points. The Israeli military said on Monday that it will continue to work 'to improve the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip… while refuting the false claims of deliberate starvation in Gaza'. But the reality is people are still dying of hunger: Gaza's health ministry said on Monday that five more people died of starvation or malnutrition over the past 24 hours. The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from hunger to 180, including 93 children, since the war began. Images are still pouring out of hospitals showing emaciated children, their bones pressing through paper-thin flesh. There are also deep concerns for the 20 remaining living Israeli hostages and captives still being held by Hamas, who during the 7 October bloody attacks on southern Israel seized over 250 hostages and killed over a 1000 more according to Israeli estimates. Late last week, the militant group released new galling videos of two emaciated Israeli hostages held in Gaza, which has horrified Israelis and added even more pressure on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire with Hamas, even as his government considers another expansion of the nearly 22-month war. In one, a skeletal Evyatar David, who was taken from the Nova Music Festival, says he is digging his own grave and speaks of days without food. As global outrage over the rising famine in and bombardment of Gaza surges, UN agencies warn that the airdrops are insufficient and Israel must let in far more aid by land. Tamara al-Rifai, a spokesperson UN's Palestinian refugee agency, said airdrops are 100 times more expensive than their equivalent by land. Last year, the DC-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimated that one four-hour round trip by a C-130 military plane costs around $32,000 – while a trip by truck is estimated at around $970 from Cairo to Rafah in southern Gaza (when that route was still possible). Back in Gaza, local medics reported that at least 40 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes on Gaza on Monday, including 10 seeking aid at aid distribution sites run by the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The UN says more than 1,000 people have been killed trying to receive aid in the enclave in just a few months, most of them shot by Israeli forces operating nearby. The Israeli military has repeatedly denied targeting aid seekers and has said it has previously only fired in the vicinities of aid distribution centres. As the war rages on, the families in ravaged Gaza are dying to trying to find food. 'We thank all the countries that have helped and are trying to help, but the only solution is to open the crossing and distribute supplies,' said Moatasem as he attended the funeral of his cousin Oday. 'My cousin went to bring a meal to feed his family and children but returned to them dead.'
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Mysterious fingerprint found on 2,600-year-old seal linked to Biblical doomsday warning
Archaeologists have uncovered a 2,600-year-old clay seal in Jerusalem that may be tied to a biblical warning of impending doom. The artifact, known as a bulla, dates back to the First Temple period and bears an ancient Hebrew inscription that reads: 'Belonging to Yeda'yah (son of) Asayahu.' Even more astonishing, the seal retains a visible fingerprint, believed to have been left by the ancient official who once owned it. Archaeologists believe the name inscribed on the seal may connect directly to a pivotal moment in the biblical account of King Josiah of Judah, who launched sweeping religious reforms after a sacred scroll was discovered in Jerusalem. The scroll, believed to be a version of Deuteronomy, outlined severe curses for disobedience, including famine, war, exile and the devastation of both the land and the Temple. When the contents were read aloud, Josiah was so alarmed by its warnings that he tore his robes and sent a group of trusted officials, including a man named Asayahu, to rid Jerusalem of pagan practices. The newly discovered seal, bearing the name of Asayahu's son, Yeda'yah, offers compelling evidence of a royal official likely active during this critical period. It not only supports the existence of individuals named in the biblical record but also reinforces the historical and spiritual significance of the scroll's rediscovery, an event that marked a turning point in Judah's religious history, researchers said. Archaeologist Zachi Dvira, who co-directs the project, told The Times of Israel: 'Obviously, we are not sure that the Asayahu mentioned on the sealing is the same that appears in the Bible. 'However, several such artifacts found in the area of the Temple Mount carry biblical names, and it does make sense, because these were not objects used by common people.' Marks on the back of the clay seal suggest it was once used to secure a bag or storage container, likely tied with a cord, and the script style places it around the the late First Temple period, roughly between the late 7th and early 6th century BC. That was around the time the Bible says King Josiah of Judah ordered repairs made to the Temple in Jerusalem, which was also known as Solomon's Temple. The order came after the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586BC. During the renovations, workers uncovered an ancient sacred scroll, Sefer haTorah, which scholars believe was likely an early version of the Pentateuch, specifically the Book of Deuteronomy, an event mentioned in 2 Kings 22:12 and 2 Chronicles 34:20. When the sacred scroll was read aloud to King Josiah, its warnings about the people's sins and the threat of divine punishment left the monarch shaken. The scroll was said to have revealed that the people of Judah had seriously violated God's covenant by worshiping other gods and engaging in pagan practices. A prophetess, mentioned in 2 Kings 22:16–17, confirmed the doom to King Josiah, telling him God would bring disaster on Jerusalem. According to 2 Kings 23, Josiah sent officials out to tear down shrines, altars and high places dedicated to Baal, Asherah, Molech, and other foreign gods, even desecrating them to ensure they would never be used again. Among those officials was a senior figure named Asayahu, described in the Bible as 'the king's servant.' Given his status, scholars have suggested that it is entirely plausible that his son, Yeda'yah, followed in his footsteps and held a high-ranking role in the royal court or Temple administration. The discovery of a clay seal inscribed with the name 'Yeda'yah son of Asayahu' has now sparked excitement among researchers, who believe it may be directly linked to the very events described in the Bible. Experts from the Temple Mount Sifting Project said the connection is highly credible, pointing out that seals like this were typically used only by officials of significant authority. Its discovery on the Temple Mount adds further weight to the theory that Yeda'yah served in a prominent role during the First Temple period. The historical backdrop is equally compelling. Just a few decades after the scroll was found, Jerusalem was invaded by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. The city's walls were breached, the Temple was destroyed, and many residents were killed or taken into exile, including key members of the ruling elite. During the siege, much of the city's food came from royal and Temple storehouses, which were stocked with grain, oil, wine, legumes and honey. These supplies were sealed with pieces of clay stamped with the names of the officials responsible for managing them. One such seal previously uncovered by the project bore the name '[He]zelyahu son of Immer,' an official believed to have worked in the Temple treasury. Now, this newly discovered seal, belonging to Yeda'yah son of Asayahu, appeared to tell a similar story, suggesting he too was responsible for overseeing one of these critical storehouses.
