The leader of Israel’s opposition party says the government’s approach to the war against Hamas risks the country becoming an “outcast among nations”.
The comments from Yair Golan, a retired general and the leader of the Democrats, are rare criticism from within Israel of its conduct in Gaza.
“A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set for itself the goals of expelling a population,” Mr Golan told Reshet Bet radio.
…
Mr Netanyahu swiftly hit back against Mr Golan’s remarks, calling them “wild incitement” against Israeli soldiers.
The prime minister accused Mr Golan of echoing “disgraceful antisemitic blood libels” against the country.
I avoid quoting articles from the Independent. Small sections only have been quoted with full attribution according to fair use provisions of copyright laws.
Victims of the Israeli attack are taken from the morgue of al-Nasser Hospital to be buried after funeral procedures, on May 19, 2025 in Khan Younis. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The United Nations human rights chief called Israel’s intensifying assault on Gaza “tantamount to ethnic cleansing.”
The Israeli military on Monday designated Gaza’s second-largest city a combat zone and ordered all residents to evacuate ahead of an “unprecedented attack,” the latest escalation of Israel’s U.S.-backed genocidal assault on the enclave’s besieged and starving population.
The forced displacement order came as Israeli tanks and troops pushed further into the Gaza Strip as part of a renewed ground assault on the territory, which has been decimated by relentless bombings that began in the aftermath of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said Monday that the rate of Israeli killings in Gaza has intensified significantly in recent days, crushing any lingering hope of an imminent cease-fire and heightening alarm over the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian emergency on the ground.
The group estimated that more than 300,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced between May 12 and 18, with that number set to grow with the evacuation of Khan Younis.
“This surge in lethal attacks is part of a broader escalation by the Israeli military, marked by a scorched-earth policy and the systematic destruction of Gaza’s remaining residential areas and infrastructure,” said Euro-Med. “The ongoing campaign—now in its 19th month—has been characterised by mass killings, enforced starvation, and the deliberate dismantling of life-sustaining systems, with the explicit aim of eradicating the Palestinian population in Gaza and eliminating any possibility of return or reconstruction.”
Avichay Adraee, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), wrote in a social media post early Monday that “from this moment, Khan Younis governorate will be considered a dangerous combat zone.”
“The IDF will launch an unprecedented attack to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations in this area,” Adraee continued. “For your safety, evacuate immediately.”
Video footage posted to social media showed Israeli airstrikes pounding the area and residents scrambling to evacuate their families, many of whom have already been displaced multiple times since late 2023.
“They are literally forcing all of Gazans into a concentration camp in what used to be Rafah in southern Gaza, after destroying it. They are now planning on annihilating Khan Younis,” Elia Ayoub, a researcher based in the United Kingdom, wrote Monday. “There’s never been a genocide so thoroughly documented as it was live-streamed straight to our phones.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes in Gaza, said Monday that the IDF is moving to seize “full control” of the “entire strip” while allowing in “minimal” humanitarian aid—remarks that deepened concerns about Israeli plans to starve out Gaza’s population and annex the territory.
“If this means annexation, it violates international law,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in response to Netanyahu’s comments. “Sweden maintains that the territory of Gaza must not be changed or reduced.”
“There needs to be a cease-fire and end to the fighting, and the hostages must be released,” she added. “No more statements or plans from the Israeli government that exacerbate the situation for civilians in Gaza.”
Over the past 24 hours, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 130 people, bringing the official death toll since October 2023 to 53,486, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
In a statement late last week, United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk warned that Israel’s “latest barrage of bombs” and “methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods”—as well as the cut-off of humanitarian assistance—signals “a push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.”
“We must stop the clock on this madness,” said Türk.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
Palestinian rescuers remove the body of a victim from the site of an Israeli strike in al-Saftawi area west of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 18, 2025. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
On Sunday, Israel’s prime minister said that Israel will permit a “basic” amount of food aid to enter the Gaza Strip. Israel has imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid since early March.
Over 140 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli strikes since early Sunday as part of a new ground operation launched by Israel, according to Al Jazeera, which cited medical sources.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday it had begun “extensive ground operations throughout northern and southern Gaza as part of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots.'”
According to The Associated Press, the offensive is the largest since Israel shattered an eight-week cease-fire in mid-March.
Local health officials report that over 3,000 Palestinians have been killed since that cease-fire ended, and 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, prompting Israel to launch a fierce military campaign on the enclave.
Amid reported Israeli attacks on the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, the Gaza Health Ministry on Sunday said that all public hospitals in northern Gaza are “out of service.”
Israel has also imposed a complete blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza in early March, but according to the AP Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday his cabinet approved a move to permit a “basic” amount of food into the enclave.
The International Committee of the Red Cross calls for immediate protection of civilians and healthcare facilities amid devastating hostilities. pic.twitter.com/eoBOpFxlnl
On Sunday morning, the journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote on Bluesky: “135 Palestinians killed in Gaza so far today. Massacre after massacre, day after day. The world does nothing.”
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
A boy sits with an empty pot at a charity distribution in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 19, 2025. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
“The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid,” said the head of the World Health Organization.
As Israeli leaders were split over a plan to allow a “minimal” amount of aid into Gaza on Monday, Palestinian and global civil society groups issued a call for an international humanitarian mission that would go much further in fighting the looming famine across the enclave.
With the World Food Program and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East having “exhausted their reserves,” more than 750 international groups joined “Unified Call to Confront Famine” and ensure the blockade stopping more than 3,000 food aid trucks and 116,000 metric tons of food are allowed into the enclave.
“We are witnessing, in real time, the deliberate starvation of a civilian population as a method of warfare,” said Human Rights Watch (HRW), which also joined the call, in a statement. “Over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are living in famine.”
The group echoed an address by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), at the World Health Assembly on Monday in Geneva.
“The risk of famine in Gaza is increasing with the deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid,” said Tedros. “The WHO has said around a quarter of the 2.1 million population in Gaza are facing ‘a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness, and death’ due to the Israeli blockade.”
With aid that is “ready and waiting to enter Gaza” entirely blockaded by Israel since March 2, just before the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) broke a temporary cease-fire, civil society groups said states should join a “Diplomatic Humanitarian Convoy to Gaza through the Rafah Crossing.”
In the convoy, official diplomatic missions would accompany thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, coordinating with the United Nations and the government of Egypt.
“Inaction will lead to mass death by starvation, enable further grave illegalities, and undermine the international legal system.”
Supporting groups noted that governments that are “complicit in the ongoing atrocities,” such as the U.S., the top international IDF funder, and called on “individual diplomats, parliamentarians, and ministers from those countries to join the convoy in their personal capacities.” They also called on international media outlets to join—”to bear witness, to document the famine, and to expose the blockade starving Gaza.”
“This is a human imperative,” said HRW. “A Diplomatic Humanitarian Convoy would mark a historic step to break the siege, end the starvation, and affirm the world’s rejection of hunger as a weapon of war.”
The call came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the government’s “greatest friends in the world” had made clear that they “cannot accept images of hunger, mass hunger.”
Images of Palestinians in Gaza suffering from a lack of food, medicine, water, and other aid have been widely available since long before the current blockade, but Netanyahu’s comments suggested that allies like the U.S. government have applied pressure to allow aid into the enclave.
On his trip to the Middle East last week, U.S. President Donald Trumpsaid the U.S. would have the looming famine in Gaza “taken care of.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a United Nations-backed food insecurity initiative, said last week that at least 244,000 people in Gaza are facing Phase 5-level hunger, defined as “extreme deprivation of food.”
“Starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident,” said the IPC.
The entire enclave is in Phase 4, which is characterized by “large food consumption gaps… very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality.”
Aid and medical workers are struggling to treat thousands of children who have been diagnosed with acute malnutrition.
“We currently are lacking nutrition rehabilitation supplies and equipment, including pharmaceuticals,” said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories. “Because of the blockades, supplies are dwindling rapidly.”
Nutritionist Rana Soboh told The Associated Press Monday that she treated a mother who had fainted while breastfeeding her newborn after having gone days without eating.
The next day Soboh met a mother of a malnourished 1-year-old boy who weighed just 11 pounds, having lived his entire life during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the near-total blockade that began in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
“He hadn’t grown any teeth,” the AP reported. “He was too weak to cry. The mother was also malnourished, ‘a skeleton, covered in skin.’ When the mother asked for food, Soboh started crying uncontrollably.”
A U.N. official said Monday that under Netanyahu’s plan to provide “minimal” aid, 20 aid trucks carrying food was expected to enter Gaza; before Israel began its assault on Gaza, about 500 trucks entered the enclave per day.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has objected to the tiny amount of food that may soon enter Gaza, saying it will “fuel Hamas and give it oxygen.”
Netanyahu said the plan would be a “bridge” to a new aid system in which a private foundation and U.S. security contractors would distribute humanitarian assistance. The U.N. has rejected the proposal, saying it is “at odds with the DNA of any principled humanitarian organization.”
HRW said the call for all humanitarian aid to enter Gaza in diplomatic convoy was grounded in “international law, shared morality, the Genocide Convention, the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures, [and] the U.N. Charter.”
“Inaction,” said the group, “will lead to mass death by starvation, enable further grave illegalities, and undermine the international legal system.”
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAVote For Genocide Vote Labour.
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A Palestinian toddler hugs a woman as relatives of the deceased mourn as the bodies of Palestinians killed in the Israeli attack on Al-Saftawi region are taken out of Al-Shifa Hospital for burial in Gaza City, Gaza on May 18, 2025. [Khames Alrefi – Anadolu Agency]
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said Sunday that the situation in the Gaza Strip has drastically worsened due to Israel’s crippling siege on the Palestinian enclave, Anadolu reports.
“The situation in Gaza has drastically deteriorated over the last two months due to the imposed siege and the prevention of humanitarian aid,” UNICEF said in a statement on X.
It said Gaza’s children continue to endure relentless Israeli airstrikes and are being deprived of essential goods, services, and life-saving care.
The organization called for the immediate resumption of a ceasefire and the urgent entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.
Since March 2, Israel has kept Gaza crossings closed to food, medical, and humanitarian aid, deepening an already severe humanitarian crisis in the enclave, according to government, human rights, and international reports.
Earlier this month, Israel’s Security Cabinet approved an aid delivery plan for the Palestinians in war-torn Gaza through private US security contractors based on handing over aid boxes to individuals.
The Israeli plan, however, has been rejected by the UN and dozens of international aid groups, saying it runs against humanitarian principles, is logistically unworkable, and could put Palestinian civilians and staffers in harm’s way.
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas also decried the Israeli plan as “political blackmail” and “a violation of international law.”
Nearly 2.4 million people in Gaza live completely dependent on humanitarian aid, according to World Bank data.
The Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that Tel Aviv is coordinating with a US firm to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza, suggesting that the aid distribution may start on May 24.
The Israeli army has continued its brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 53,300 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
