Closing summary
This blog will be closing shortly but you can find all the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Here is a summary of the developments on today’s blog:
The Israeli military has placed parts of Gaza City and Khan Younis under a new enforced displacement orders amid fears that the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is preparing to order the full occupation of the Palestinian territory later this week. The Times of Israel reported that Netanyahu planned to convene his security cabinet at 6pm, local time, on Thursday at his office in Jerusalem. It had been postponed amid mounting tensions over whether the plan was feasible.
The move came as the US president, Donald Trump, said any decision over expanded Israeli control in Gaza was up to Israel. “As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Wednesday that the country’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, had a right to “express his views”, but that the military would ultimately have to “execute” any government decisions on Gaza. Katz’s statement on X came after reports in the Israeli media in recent days suggested that Zamir is opposed to a government plan to occupy the Gaza Strip.
Late on Tuesday, a senior UN official warned that expanding Israeli military operations inside the territory “would risk catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinians and could further endanger the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza”. Addressing the UN security council in New York, Miroslav Jenča, the assistant secretary general for Europe, central Asia and the Americas, said: “There is no military solution to the conflict in Gaza or the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday that 20 people were killed when an aid truck overturned near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. “Twenty people were killed and dozens injured around midnight last night in a truck carrying aid [that] overturned … while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid,” the agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Hamas accused Israel of forcing truck drivers to take unsafe routes to reach aid distribution centres. “This often results in desperate crowds swarming the trucks,” its media office said in a statement.
Gaza’s health ministry reported that five more people had died from starvation in the coastal strip, which has been plunged into a devastating hunger crisis owing to Israel’s complete block on aid entering earlier this year.
Jordan said Israeli settlers attacked a Gaza-bound aid convoy on Wednesday in the second such incident in days, accusing Israel of failing to act firmly to prevent repeated assaults. The convoy, carrying 30 trucks of humanitarian aid, was delayed in its arrival in a violation of signed agreements, the government spokesperson Mohammad al-Momani told Reuters. “This requires a serious Israeli intervention and no leniency in dealing with those who obstruct these convoys,” Momani said.
The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe. Revealed on Wednesday for the first time in an investigation by the Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, the cloud-based system – which first became operational in 2022 – enables Unit 8200 to store a giant trove of calls daily for extended periods of time.
Iran executed two men in separate cases on Wednesday, accusing one of spying for Israel and another of being a member of the Islamic State (IS) group, state media reported. A report by the judiciary news website Mizanonline identified the alleged spy as Rouzbeh Vadi, who was accused of relaying classified information to Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad.
Targeting medics and hospitals in acts of war should be called “healthocide”, academics have urged, amid an increase in such attacks in recent years. Health services are increasingly deliberately under attack and medics are facing violence and abuse in conflict zones around the world – in particular in Gaza, but also in Lebanon, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria and El Salvador.
Even as global attention has turned to starvation in Gaza, the water crisis is just as severe according to aid groups. Most water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed and pumps from the aquifer often rely on electricity from small generators – for which fuel is rarely available.
A member of Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli drone strike in Lebanon’s north-eastern Bekaa valley on Tuesday night, the Times of Israel reports, citing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). “The terrorist’s activity posed a threat to the State of Israel and its citizens,” the IDF said, describing Hassam Qassem Gharab as directing, from Lebanon, “terror cells in Syria to launch rockets at the Golan Heights in northern Israel”.
The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has condemned the cabinet’s decision to move towards a state monopoly on arms, saying it was a “grave sin” that only served Israel. In a written statement on Wednesday, the group said the move was a result of US diktats and that its members would treat it as if it did not exist.
Five more Palestinians died of malnutrition in past 24 hours, says Gaza's health ministry
Gaza’s health ministry reported that five more people had died from starvation in the coastal strip, which has been plunged into a devastating hunger crisis owing to Israel’s complete block on aid entering earlier this year, while Jordan reported an aid convoy of 30 trucks that had left for Gaza had been attacked by militant Jewish settlers upon entering Israel.
The attack, the second such incident in days, saw Jordan accuse Israel of failing to act to prevent repeated assaults. “This requires a serious Israeli intervention and no leniency in dealing with those who obstruct these convoys,” said Jordan’s government spokesperson Mohammad al-Momani.
Amid continuing scenes of desperate suffering in Gaza, where vast areas have been rendered fields of rubble by incessant Israeli strikes, the strip’s civil defence agency reported that 20 people were killed when an aid truck overturned on a crowd of people.
“Twenty people were killed and dozens injured around midnight last night in a truck carrying aid [that] overturned … while hundreds of civilians were waiting for aid,” said the agency’s spokesperson, Mahmoud Bassal.
The incident took place near the Nuseirat refugee camp, as the truck was driving on an unsafe road that Israel had previously bombed, Bassal added.
The acute shortages of aid have seen trucks entering Gaza surrounded and looted by hungry Palestinians on numerous occasions, contributing to a pervasive sense of chaos.
Updated
