Tents for displaced Palestinians stand amid the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, October 22, 2025
THE humanitarian crisis experienced by Palestinians in Gaza continues to worsen despite the ceasefire, according to aid workers today.
The World Health Organisation says more than 15,000 patients are waiting to be evacuated from Gaza — including 3,800 children. But the evacuation appears to have been blocked by Israel.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on social media that the United Nations body has so far managed to evacuate 41 critical patients out of Gaza. But Israel has continued to keep the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt closed.
The continued close comes even though the ceasefire deal says the crossing would open for the movement of people.
This comes a day after the International Court of Justice said Israel must allow the UN aid agency in Gaza (UNRWA) to provide humanitarian assistance to the territory that has been largely destroyed by the Israelis.
The UN general assembly asked the court last year to give an advisory opinion on Israel’s legal obligations after the country effectively banned UNRWA, the main provider of aid to Gaza, from operating in the territory.
Israel “is under the obligation to agree to and facilitate relief schemes provided by the United Nations and its entities, including UNRWA,” the court’s president, Yuji Iwasawa, said.
Israel has denied it has violated international law, saying the court’s proceedings are biased, and did not attend hearings in April.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.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/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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Palestinians, including children, wait with pots to receive hot meals distributed by charity organizations, as people struggle with hunger due to the Israeli food blockade at Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza City, Gaza on October 21, 2025. [Moiz Salhi – Anadolu Agency]
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Thursday that hunger and suffering in Gaza remain severe despite a fragile ceasefire, saying that aid levels have barely improved and medical evacuations are far too limited to meet needs, Anadolu reports.
“The ceasefire announced two weeks ago is fragile and has been violated, but continues to hold, which is great news for everyone,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press briefing in Geneva. “However, the crisis is far from over, and the needs are immense.”
Stressing that “there is no shift in amount of aid since ceasefire,” Tedros said the aid has increased since the ceasefire but is still “only a fraction” of the actual needs.
“There is no dent in hunger because there is not enough food,” he said, noting hunger takes longer to reverse. He added that many of the trucks entering Gaza now are commercial, which does not help the case, as people cannot afford to buy.
Regarding the medical evacuations, the WHO chief warned that “once-a-week medical evacuations are not enough,” as well as the one or two routes made available for such operations. He urged Israel to allow patients to travel to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to receive treatment immediately. “For some, delays mean death,” he said, as 700 have died while waiting.
Still, he stressed that 15,000 patients, including 4,000 children, require treatment outside Gaza, urging countries to accept more patients.
He urged the opening of all crossings, including Rafah, which was supposed to be opened last week, and added that “a significant amount of aid has built up at Al-Arish in Egypt that is ready to enter Gaza as soon as the crossing is opened.”
According to Tedros, WHO’s 60-day cease-fire plan requires $45 million to maintain life-saving services, strengthen disease surveillance, and coordinate partners. But he warned that rebuilding Gaza’s health system “will cost at least $7 billion.”
More than 170,000 people are injured, including 5,000 amputees and 3,600 with severe burns, while about one million need mental health care, he said.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.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/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) speak to the media before the interdelegational meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in West Jerusalem, on October 22, 2025. [POOL / Marc Israel Sellem – Anadolu Agency]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his ruling coalition not to advance bills for annexation of the occupied West Bank in the Knesset following US criticism, a lawmaker said Thursday, Anadolu reports.
Coalition Chairman Ofir Katz said Netanyahu instructed him “not to advance proposals regarding applying sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) until further notice,” the daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
On Wednesday, the Knesset approved in a preliminary reading two bills to annex the West Bank and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement bloc. Both drafts still must pass three additional readings to become law.
The move drew US fire with US President Donald Trump saying that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. His Vice President JD Vance, who concluded a 3-day visit to Israel on Thursday, also called the Knesset vote “a stupid political stunt.”
Netanyahu, for his part, called the vote on the West Bank annexation bills “a deliberate political provocation by the opposition to sow discord during Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Israel.”
In a statement by his office, Netanyahu said that the two bills were sponsored by opposition members of the Knesset.
“The Likud party and the religious parties (the principal coalition members) did not vote for these bills, except for one disgruntled Likud member who was recently fired from the chairmanship of a Knesset committee,” Netanyahu said. “Without Likud support, these bills are unlikely to go anywhere.”
Annexing the West Bank would effectively end the possibility of implementing a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as outlined in UN resolutions.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.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/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance gives a speech in West Jerusalem, on October 22, 2025. [POOL / Marc Israel Sellem – Anadolu Agency]
US Vice President JD Vance on Thursday ruled out Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, calling a Knesset vote for annexing the occupied territory “a stupid political stunt,” Anadolu reports.
“If it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it. The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel,” Vance told reporters in Tel Aviv.
“The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy,” he added.
Vance said that he was told that the Knesset voting was “a symbolic vote.”
“If people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that. But we certainly weren’t happy about it,” he added.
On Wednesday, the Knesset approved in a preliminary reading two bills to annex the West Bank and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement bloc. Both drafts still must pass three additional readings to become law.
Annexing the West Bank would effectively end the possibility of implementing a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as outlined in UN resolutions.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Regarding the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan, Vance said some parts of the enclave with no Hamas presence can be rebuilt “quickly.”
“We can actually have tens of thousands of Gazans moving into southern Gaza, where you have the Hamas free zone, in the next couple of months,” he said.
“I think the hope is to rebuild Rafah over the next two to three years. And theoretically, you can have half a million people live in a rebuilt Rafah,” the vice president added.
Vance said “a lot of progress” was made regarding the understandings of the composition of an international task force in Gaza.
“No American troops on the ground,” he said, but rather they will be “supervising and mediating the peace.”
The vice president arrived in Israel on Tuesday for a three-day visit to oversee the implementation of the truce that came into force on Oct. 10 in Gaza and discuss the second phase of Trump’s plan with senior Israeli officials.
Phase one included the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The plan also envisages the rebuilding of Gaza and the establishment of a new governing mechanism without Hamas.
Since October 2023, the Israeli genocidal war has killed over 68,200 people and injured more than 170,300, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.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/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
US President Donald Trump during a meeting with Mark Rutte, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025.[Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
US President Donald Trump said he would decide whether to push for the release of imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, a figure many see as capable of uniting Palestinians behind a two-state solution, Anadolu reports.
“I am literally being confronted with that question about 15 minutes before you called … That was my question of the day,” Trump told Time magazine in an interview published Thursday. “So, I’ll be making a decision.”
The comments came as Trump discussed Palestinian leadership, saying Palestinians “don’t have a leader right now, at least a visible leader.”
When asked about Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s potential role in post-war Gaza governance, Trump said, “I’ve always gotten along with him. I’ve always found him reasonable, but he’s probably not.”
Barghouti is a prominent Fatah leader often called the “Palestinian Mandela” for his influence and leadership qualities.
He was arrested by Israel in 2002 and sentenced to five life terms plus 40 years for allegedly directing deadly attacks against Israelis.
Barghouti tops most polls among Palestinians for whom they would vote for in a presidential election, making him a potentially unifying figure for a two-state solution.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.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/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Tents for displaced Palestinians stand amid the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, October 22, 2025
