Closing summary
Here is a recap of today’s events
Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Gaza and was shown one of the controversial aid sites around which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. Witkoff visited the site in Rafah and was accompanied by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
Huckabee praised the GHF as he visited the site in Rafah – one of four GHF sites where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. In a social media post, he wrote: “GHF delivers more than one million meals a day, an incredible feat!”
Witkoff later said on Friday that his visit to US-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. 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”.
The UN human rights office said on Friday that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military, AFP reports. “In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys,” the UN agency’s office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement. “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.
Iran on Friday rejected accusations by the US and more than a dozen of its allies that Tehran had attempted to kill or kidnap dissidents, journalists and officials in Western countries. In a statement, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei described the claims as “baseless”, calling them “an attempt to divert public attention from the most pressing issue of the day, the genocide in occupied Palestine”.
France has started to airdrop 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and is urging Israel to allow full access to the area which it said was slipping into famine. President Emmanuel Macron said:“Airdrops are not enough. Israel must open full humanitarian access to address the risk of famine.”
Finland’s president Alexander Stubb has said he is ready to approve a recognition of a Palestinian state if the government moves forward with such a proposal.
Award-winning Israeli author David Grossman called his country’s campaign in Gaza “genocide” and said he was using the term with a “broken heart”, AFP reports. This came days after a major Israeli rights group also used the same term, amid growing global alarm over starvation in the besieged territory.
Donald Trump said he wants Palestinians in Gaza “fed”, saying that this is something which should have happened a long time ago.
Speaking to Axios’s journalist Barak David, Trump said: “We want to help people. We want to help them live. We want to get people fed. It is something that should have happened a long time ago.”
This comes after the US president said yesterday “the fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis” was for Hamas to surrender and release all captives.
