Red Cross urges states to ‘urgently improve dire’ humanitarian conditions in Gaza

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Widespread destruction is seen at the Jabalia refugee camp, where entire residential areas have been reduced to rubble amid ongoing conflict in Gaza City, Gaza, on January 20, 2026. [Anas Zeyad Fteha – Anadolu Agency]

The International Committee of the Red Cross on Friday called on states to urgently act on the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, warning that civilians continue to face severe hardship despite recent progress under the ceasefire, Anadolu reports.

“States must harness the momentum generated by the first phase of the agreement between Israel and Hamas to urgently improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza,” ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric said in a statement.

Over the past 15 weeks, the ICRC helped implement the first phase of the agreement by facilitating the return of hostages, detainees, and remains.

“The international community must now seize every opportunity to scale up efforts that alleviate suffering in Gaza,” Spoljaric urged. “This includes easing restrictions on so-called dual-use material and equipment such as water pipes and generators, which are essential for restoring the essential infrastructure people rely on.”

According to the ICRC, many residents remain displaced and without basic services, living among rubble during winter conditions. Hospitals, schools, homes, and water systems require urgent repair, while thousands of families are still awaiting information about missing relatives.

“All states and parties to conflict have a responsibility to ensure the boundaries and protections enshrined in international humanitarian law are upheld,” Spoljaric said, calling it essential for saving lives, restoring human dignity and lasting peace.

READ: Israel to reopen Gaza’s Rafah crossing after 2 years of closure

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Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
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
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.
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.
Orcas 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.
Orcas 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.

Continue ReadingRed Cross urges states to ‘urgently improve dire’ humanitarian conditions in Gaza

Israel to reopen Gaza’s Rafah crossing after 2 years of closure

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Trucks carrying humanitarian aid sent to Gaza arrive at the Rafah Border Crossing after departing from Egypt’s Port of Arish aboard the 20th Humanitarian Aid Ship prepared by the Turkish Red Crescent, delivering approximately 1,400 tons of supplies on January 27, 2026. [Stringer – Anadolu Agency]

Israel announced Friday it will reopen Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt in both directions starting Sunday, allowing limited movement of people, after two years of closure, Anadolu reports.

The Israeli army said the move comes as part of the ceasefire agreement in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“In accordance with the ceasefire agreement and the directive of the political echelon, the Rafah Crossing will open this coming Sunday (Feb. 1) in both directions for limited movement of people only,” the army said in a statement.

It added that exit from and entry into Gaza through the crossing will be coordinated with Egypt and subject to prior security clearance by Israel, under the supervision of a European Union mission.

The army said the reopening will also allow the return of residents who left Gaza during the war, following coordination with Egypt and after obtaining Israeli security approval.

There was no immediate comment from Palestinian or Egyptian authorities.

READ: Israel says opening Rafah crossing does not mean journalists can enter Gaza

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
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
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.
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.
Orcas 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.
Orcas 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.

Continue ReadingIsrael to reopen Gaza’s Rafah crossing after 2 years of closure

YouTube’s compliance with Israel ban violates press freedoms, Al Jazeera says

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In this photo illustration an Aljazeera logo seen displayed on a smartphone on 23 Mar, 2023 [Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]

Al Jazeera Media Network denounced YouTube’s compliance with an Israeli decision to ban its channels, calling the move a “violation of media freedoms and international standards,” Anadolu reports.

In a statement late Thursday on the US social media company X, Al Jazeera stated: “We strongly denounce YouTube’s submission to the Israeli authorities’ decision to ban the broadcast of our channels on the platform and the blocking of our websites in Israel.

“This response violates the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which require global technology companies to protect freedom of expression and resist government pressure that silences independent journalism.”

Israeli authorities earlier this week decided to block broadcasts of Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen for 90 days, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi announced Sunday on X that Al Jazeera and Al-Mayadeen would be blocked in Israel on their websites, television broadcasts, and YouTube beginning that day.

READ: Despite claiming to be a democracy, Israel among world’s worst jailers of journalists

Al Jazeera said: “The banning of our digital platforms and websites on weak security grounds sends a dangerous signal that major technology companies can be co-opted as instruments of regimes hostile to freedom.

“This escalation is part of a broader and systematic pattern of Israeli violations, including the killing and detention of our journalists and the closure of our offices in the occupied territories, aimed at suppressing the truth.

“We call for an international investigation into how technology platforms submit to censorship and for safeguards against political pressure.”

As of 1100GMT, there had been no reaction from YouTube management.

Israel began barring Al Jazeera from operating in May 2024, and the decision has since been extended, citing the network’s coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.

During the war, Israel killed more than 71,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 171,000 others, most of them women and children, and destroyed about 90% of the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has occupied Palestinian territories, as well as land in Syria and Lebanon, for decades and has rejected withdrawal and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital along pre-1967 borders.

READ: Israeli TV says relative of Shin Bet chief suspected of smuggling goods to Gaza for money

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Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
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
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.
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.
Orcas 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.
Orcas 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.

Continue ReadingYouTube’s compliance with Israel ban violates press freedoms, Al Jazeera says

Gaza municipality warns of imminent thirst crisis as water shortage reaches 90%

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Palestinians fill jerrycans with water distributed by tankers and carrying them back to their living areas in the Nuseirat camp, where infrastructure has been severely damaged by Israeli attacks and a water crisis persists, on January 10, 2026. [Adam Bilal – Anadolu Agency]

Gaza Municipality has warned of an escalating water emergency in the city, saying a severe shortage is worsening amid a sharp depletion of supplies after damage to a key pipeline.

In a statement published on its official Facebook page on Wednesday, the municipality said the water pipeline provided by the Israeli water company, Mekorot had been disrupted during bulldozing operations carried out by Israeli occupation forces east of the city and was directly damaged, cutting a supply line that previously covered around 70 per cent of Gaza City’s current water needs.

The municipality said the crisis has been compounded by extensive damage to water infrastructure, including the destruction of nearly 85% of water wells in Gaza City, further restricting available supplies for residents.

It said daily water demand before the war exceeded 100,000 cubic metres, but only a limited proportion of that need is now being met, leaving a deficit of about 90 per cent compared with pre-war levels.

The statement added that the destruction of nearly 150,000 linear metres of water networks, as well as damage to a desalination plant in the Sudaniya area north-west of the city, has reduced alternative sources that had previously eased pressure on the system.

According to the municipality, the latest break in the Mekorot pipeline led to water outages across wide areas of the city, including the Old City, Zeitoun, Sabra and Tel al-Hawa neighbourhoods, as well as parts of western Gaza City.

Gaza Municipality said it is continuing to coordinate with the Palestinian Water Authority to access the site and begin repair work, in an effort to restore part of the lost supply and limit the scale of the outage.

READ: Power cut at UNRWA’s Kalandia Training Centre north of Jerusalem raises fears of seizure

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
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
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.
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.
Orcas 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.
Orcas 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.

Continue ReadingGaza municipality warns of imminent thirst crisis as water shortage reaches 90%

Despite claiming to be a democracy, Israel among world’s worst jailers of journalists

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Israeli forces detain a photojournalist and distrain his equipment as they enclose the area around Jewish Brigade base where they ‘neutralized’ a Palestinian for allegedly carrying a knife according to their announcement in Hebron, West Bank on October 03, 2024. [Wisam Hashlamoun – Anadolu Agency]

A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has ranked Israel as the third worst jailer of journalists in the world, behind only China and Myanmar, in a damning indictment of the state’s escalating war on press freedom.

The CPJ’s annual global census, released this week, recorded 320 journalists imprisoned worldwide as of 1 December 2025, with authoritarian governments using detention, legal harassment and violence to stifle independent reporting and silence dissent. 

While China and Myanmar retained the top two spots, Israel’s position as the third worst jailer of journalists reflects its entrenched and systematic repression of Palestinian media workers, carried out through arbitrary arrests, administrative detention, and sweeping military censorship.

READ: Slaying and censoring the journalists: The murder of Anas al-Sharif

The report highlights the growing use of vague security charges, prolonged pretrial detentions, and denial of access to lawyers—tactics long used by Israel against Palestinian media workers. 

Many of the journalists imprisoned by Israel are held under administrative detention, without formal charges or trial, a practice widely condemned by human rights organisations as a violation of international law.

The CPJ also confirmed that Israel continues to bar international journalists from entering Gaza, denying independent access to a war zone where it is conducting what leading legal scholars, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, have described as a genocide. 

CPJ found that since 7 October 2023, Israel has Israel arrested more than 90 journalists during the course of the genocide and according to Reporters Without Borders killed at least 210.

READ: Record number of journalists killed in 2024, Israel mostly responsible, says CPJ

Despite the mass killing of civilians and destruction of media infrastructure in Gaza, Israel has refused to allow international press into the territory, even as it claims to be a democratic state with “the most moral army in the world”. 

“Israel, the only country on the worst jailers’ list that is traditionally considered a democracy, began imprisoning Palestinian journalists rapidly following the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023,” the report said.

Regarding torture of prisoners CPJ said that the “greatest number of torture and beating claims since 1992 have occurred in Iran, followed by Israel and Egypt”.

READ: Israel says opening Rafah crossing does not mean journalists can enter Gaza

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
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
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.
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.
Orcas 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.
Orcas 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.

Continue ReadingDespite claiming to be a democracy, Israel among world’s worst jailers of journalists