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A general of heavily damaged buildings and a large number of makeshift tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, Gaza, on July 9, 2025. [Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini – Anadolu Agency]
Gaza’s population has dropped by 10% as Israel continued its destructive war on the Palestinian enclave, official figures showed on Thursday, Anadolu reports.
“Palestine, specifically the Gaza Strip, is suffering an unprecedented humanitarian and demographic catastrophe due to the ongoing Israeli aggression since October 2023,” the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.
The bureau said that more than 57,000 Palestinians, including 18,000 children and 12,000 women, were killed in Israeli attacks, which constitutes 2.4% of Gaza’s total population.
Figures released by the bureau also showed that nearly 100,000 Palestinians have left the enclave since the start of the Israeli war.
Before the outbreak of the Israeli war, Gaza’s population stood at 2,226,544 in 2023, as official figures showed.
“Population estimates indicate that the population has declined to approximately 2,129,724, representing a 6% decrease compared to the projection of mid-2024 estimates,” it said.
“Furthermore, the population dropped to 2,114,301, a decrease of 10% from what was estimated for mid-2025.”
The bureau warned of “a fundamental shift” and distortion in the age and population pyramid “due to the deliberate targeting of younger age groups by the Israeli army, particularly children and youth.”
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.
Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
This week, MPs shamefully approved the proscription of Palestine Action. Several challenged the move in the Commons. Zarah Sultana, Independent MP for Coventry South, gave an outstanding speech in condemnation. Because of the exceptional gravity of the issue, we reproduce her speech, lightly edited, here.
TWENTY-ONE years ago, a human rights barrister … defended an activist who broke into RAF Fairford trying to disable a bomber to prevent war crimes in Iraq. That became a landmark case in lawful, non-violent direct action against an illegal war. That barrister is now our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer KC. He argued that it was not terrorism, but conscience.
Fast-forward to June 20 2025: two Palestine Action activists entered RAF Brize Norton and sprayed red paint — red paint, not fire — on aircraft linked to surveillance flights over Gaza. Instead of prosecuting them for criminal damage, the Home Secretary is using the Terrorism Act 2000 to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
This is an unprecedented and dangerous overreach of the state. Never before in Britain has it been a crime to simply support a group.
Palestine Action’s real crime is shutting down Elbit Systems sites that arm the Israeli military; its true offence is being audacious enough to expose the blood-soaked ties between this government and the genocidal Israeli apartheid state and its war machine.
Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb is not just absurd; it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth.
Amnesty International, Liberty, over 266 senior lawyers and UN special rapporteurs have all opposed these draconian measures. Under this order, anyone expressing moral support for a proscribed group could face 14 years in prison. That includes wearing a badge, wearing a T-shirt, sharing a post or calling for de-proscription.
And journalists have no exemption either: there is no legal protection for reporting favourably, even factually, about Palestine Action.
Let us not forget what is happening in Gaza, where the real crimes are being ignored: hospitals bombed, children starved, and tens of thousands of people killed. Palestinian children now suffer more amputations per capita than children anywhere else on Earth.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, and the Israeli Prime Minister faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, yet the government’s response is to criminalise solidarity and to continue exporting lethal F-35 jets that are decimating Gaza.
We also have to understand the history of this country and what built our democracy: the tradition of civil disobedience that includes the suffragettes, without whom I would not have the vote, let alone the privilege of being here as an MP.
Even those who oppose Palestine Action’s tactics must recognise the vast gulf between criminal damage and terrorism. If this order passes, what and who is next — climate protesters, striking workers, feminists in the street?
Already we have seen a wider crackdown on our civil liberties — musicians censored, journalists arrested, and demonstrators, including MPs sitting here, harassed — and now this government want to use anti-terror laws to make peaceful protest itself a crime. If our democratic institutions functioned as they should, none of this would be necessary.
If this proscription passes, we have to understand that no campaign will be safe tomorrow. We have to recognise that this will go down as a dark day in our country’s history … People will ask, “Which side were you on?” and I stand with the millions of people who oppose genocide, because I am one of them. I oppose the blood-soaked hands of this government trying to silence us. So I say this loudly and proudly: we are all Palestine…
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.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect 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.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.
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An exterior view of the District Court in east Jerusalem, on November 22, 2021. [Mostafa Alkharouf – Anadolu Agency]
Israel’s attorney general on Friday rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to postpone his corruption trial for two weeks, local media said, Anadolu reports.
Netanyahu had asked the Jerusalem District Court to delay his trial, claiming that he needed to focus on other matters following Israeli attacks on Iran, including the issue of returning Israeli captives from Gaza.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, the court also rejected Netanyahu’s request and decided to keep the scheduled hearing set for next Monday.
The court judges determined that “the schedule presented by Netanyahu to try to delay his trial sessions does not justify canceling the hearings,” it said.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara earlier said that the reasons detailed by Netanyahu in his request “cannot justify canceling two weeks of hearings.”
As a result, Netanyahu is expected to appear before the court on Monday as planned.
Reacting to the decision, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich criticized both the attorney general and the judges.
“The Attorney General’s Office and the judges of Netanyahu’s government insist on being small dwarfs, lacking any strategic vision or understanding of reality,” he wrote on X.
“They seem determined to help us highlight for the public the destructive and dangerous corruption that has taken hold of the judicial system, and the urgent need to reform it,” he added.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also criticized the court’s decision, calling it a “detached and miserable decision.”
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi echoed the criticism, saying: “They live in their own world, isolated… Shame on them!”
Likud lawmaker Avichai Buaron said Netanyahu should simply notify the court and the attorney general that “his duty to the state and the national interest outweigh the need for four more evidentiary hearings, and that he won’t attend in the next two weeks.”
For several months, Netanyahu has appeared before the court to respond to the charges against him but the sessions were halted during the recent Israel-Iran war that began on June 13 and lasted for 12 days.
On Thursday, Netanyahu thanked US President Donald Trump for calling to cancel his corruption trial, a move that sparked wide controversy and division in Israel.
Supporters of Netanyahu welcomed it, while the opposition urged Trump not to interfere in Israel’s judicial process.
Netanyahu faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust that could lead to imprisonment if proven.
In January, Netanyahu began interrogation sessions related to Cases 1000, 2000, and 4000, which he denies. The attorney general filed an indictment related to these cases at the end of November 2019.
Case 1000 involves Netanyahu and his family receiving expensive gifts from wealthy businessmen in exchange for favors.
Case 2000 concerns alleged negotiations with Arnon Mozes, the publisher of the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, to gain positive media coverage.
Case 4000, considered the most serious, involves providing facilitation to Shaul Elovitch, the former owner of the news site Walla and a telecommunications company Bezeq, in return for favorable media coverage.
Netanyahu, whose trial began on May 24, 2020, is the first sitting Israeli leader to take the stand as a criminal defendant in the country’s history.
He also faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, with the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for him and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024 over atrocities in Gaza, where over 56,300 people, mostly women and children, have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023.
UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini speaks during a press conference in Geneva on March 10, 2025. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
Nearly 300 UNRWA workers have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023, and dozens of other agency staffers have alleged torture during Israel Defense Forces detention.
As the International Court of Justice this week weighs an Israeli ban on a United Nations agency that provides lifesaving aid in Gaza, the program’s leader called out attacks on its workers while the United States defended Israel—the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance.
The ICJ is holding a week of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands following the U.N. General Assembly’s December passage of a Norwegian-led resolution asking the tribunal, which is also known as the World Court, for an advisory opinion on Israel’s legal obligation to “ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population.”
Among the 38 nations and three regional blocs scheduled to address the 15 ICJ judges, only the United States and Hungary have so far defended Israel, whose forces have killed nearly 300 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) workers during their nearly 19-month annihilation of Gaza.
“An occupational power retains a margin of appreciation concerning which relief schemes to permit,” U.S. State Department legal adviser Joshua Simmons argued before the court Wednesday, referring to Israel’s 58-year occupation of Palestine, which the ICJ ruled an illegal form of apartheid in a June 2024 advisory opinion.
“Even if an organization offering relief is an impartial humanitarian organization, and even if it is a major actor, occupation law does not compel an occupational power to allow and facilitate that specific actor’s relief operations,” Simmons continued, noting “serious concerns about UNRWA’s impartiality, including information that Hamas has used UNRWA facilities and that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th terrorist attack against Israel” in 2023.
“Given these concerns, it is clear that Israel has no obligation to permit UNRWA specifically to provide humanitarian assistance,” Simmons added. “UNRWA is not the only option for providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza.”
In what UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini described at the time as an act of “reverse due process,” the agency fired nine employees in February 2024 following Israeli allegations that they were involved in the Hamas-led attack on Israel in which more than 1,100 Israelis were killed and 251 Israeli and foreign survivors were kidnapped.
Lazzarini admitted to terminating the staffers without due process or an adequate investigation of Israel’s claims. A subsequent probe by the U.N. Office of Oversight Services “was not able to independently authenticate information used by Israel to support the allegations.”
On Tuesday, Lazzarini reminded the world that “over 50 UNRWA staff—among them teachers, doctors, social workers—have been detained and abused” by Israeli forces since October 2023.
“I wished for death to end the nightmare I was living through”.
Received this awful testimony from a colleague who was rounded up in #Gaza tortured while in Israeli detention and finally released.
For @UNRWA staff humanitarian duty is met with brutality. Since the start of…
“They have been treated in the most shocking and inhumane way,” he continued. “They reported being beaten up and used as human shields. They were subjected to sleep deprivation, humiliation, threats of harm to them and their families, and attacks by dogs. Many were subjected to forced confessions.”
Those forced confessions spurred numerous nations including the United States to cut off funding to UNRWA. Almost all of the countries have since restored funding as Israel’s claims have been debunked or questioned over a lack of evidence.
The U.S.—which has not restored funding for UNRWA—earlier this week abandoned its long-standing position that the body is immune from lawsuits, opening the door for cases by October 7 survivors and victims’ relatives stemming from dubious claims of agency involvement in the attack.
In addition to accusing Israeli troops of torturing its staffers, UNRWA has also documented tortures allegedly suffered by Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including interrupted drowning—also known as waterboarding—being shot in the knees with nail guns, sexual abuse of both men and women, and being sodomized with electric batons. The Israel Defense Forces is investigating dozens of in-custody deaths, many of them at the notorious Sde Teiman base in the Negev Desert.
While Israel’s physical assault on Gaza has killed hundreds of UNRWA workers, its diplomatic war on the U.N. has seen the agency banned from operating in Palestine and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared “persona non grata” in Israel after he included Israel on his 2024 “list of shame” of countries and armed groups that kill and injure children during wartime.
The U.S.-backed 572-day war waged by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court—has left more than 184,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Nearly all of the embattled enclave’s more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced and Israel’s “complete siege” of the coastal strip has fueled widespread starvation and illness.
This week’s ICJ hearing comes amid the tribunal’s ongoing genocide case against Israel, which was brought by South Africa and is backed by dozens of nations either individually or via regional blocs. The court has issued three provisional orders in the case, all of which Israel has been accused of flouting.
Responding to the U.S. intervention in this week’s ICJ hearings, Palestinian Ambassador to the Netherlands Ammar Hijazi told Middle East Eye that “everybody knows that Israel is using humanitarian aid as a weapon of war and is starving the population in Gaza because of that.”
U.N. agencies and international humanitarian groups have warned in recent days of the imminent risk of renewed famine in Gaza as food stocks run out.
“ #Gaza: children are starving.The Government of Israel continues to block the entry of food and other basics.A manmade and politically motivated starvation.Nearly 2 months of siege.Calls to bring in supplies are going unheeded.”— UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini
“The U.S. intervention is very narrow in its scope, when it highlights the rights of an occupying power but ignores the so many layers of duties of that occupying power that Israel is in violation of,” Hijazi added.
Among the countries defending UNRWA during Wednesday’s ICJ session were Indonesia and Russia, which is currently waging a war against Ukraine. Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono affirmed “the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” while Maksim Musikhin, legal director of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, argued that “international law should be respected by Israel” and that UNRWA deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support.UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Original article by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Wounded Palestinian kids receives medical attention at Nasser Medical Complex after an Israeli airstrike struck a residential home in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza on April 19, 2025 [Hani Alshaer/Anadolu Agency]
Nearly 600 children have been killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip since last month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday, Anadolu reported.
Citing figures released by the UN children’s agency (UNICEF), UNRWA said that over 1,600 other children have also been injured since Israel resumed its assaults on 18 March.
“The humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is now likely at its worst point since October 2023,” it added.
The Israeli army resumed its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip on 18 March and has since killed 1,864 people and injured nearly 4,900 others despite a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement that took hold in January.
More than 51,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence 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.
Original article by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
