Rafah

UN calls for full reopening of Rafah crossing for Gazans

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Palestinians continue their daily lives with limited resources amid the massive destruction in the Tel al Hawa neighborhood in western Gaza, following Israeli army attacks. [Saeed M. M. T. Jaras – Anadolu Agency]

A UN spokesman on Wednesday urged the full reopening of the Rafah crossing for humanitarian aid and civilian movement, as conflicting reports emerged from Israel and Egypt about whether operations at the key entry point would soon resume, Anadolu reports.

Stephane Dujarric told reporters that the UN is aware of contradictory statements—Israel suggesting the crossing would reopen soon and Egypt denying any such coordination.

“Like you, we’ve seen contradicting reports,” Dujarric said.

“What we want to see is Rafah reopened fully for the movement of humanitarian cargo, for the movements of people, and both for humanitarian workers. If residents of Gaza, Palestinians, want to leave, they need to be able to do so voluntarily and freely without any pressure. And for those residents of Gaza who may have left the enclave a while ago, if they wish to return, they should be able to return,” he added.

Dujarric underscored that any reopening hinges on coordination between Israel and Egypt but insisted that humanitarian imperatives must take precedence.

“What we think we need to see is a reopening of Rafah for humanitarian cargo to be able to go in, for humanitarian workers to go in and out, and for Palestinians who wish to leave to be able to do so freely, safely, without any pressure to do so. And for those who have left and wish to come back, and therefore, they want to come back, they should be able to come back,” he added.

Dujarric said the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) continues to receive reports that air strikes, shelling, gunfire, and other Israeli military operations are causing more civilian casualties, displacement, and destruction in the Gaza Strip.

READ: 4 Israeli soldiers injured in clashes in southern Gaza, military says

He said things are “better than” they were before the announcement of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

“But, you know, we’re comparing a horrific situation to an extremely challenging one, to say the least,” he added.

The Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza was scheduled to reopen last October as part of the ceasefire agreement, but it remained closed due to Israel’s non-compliance with the deal.

Since May 2024, the Israeli army has blocked the movement of Palestinians through the crossing, the territory’s only window to the outside world that was not controlled by Tel Aviv before the start of the Israeli onslaught against Gaza in October 2023.

Turning to the Israeli killing of two Palestinian children on Saturday in a drone strike in southern Gaza, Dujarric said it was “horrific to say the least.”

“It’s hard to see how two boys — 8 and 10 — can be considered a threat, and there needs to be an investigation. And accountability for what happened,” he added.

The area targeted by the strike lies within the zones the Israeli army continues to hold under the ceasefire agreement, which took effect in October.

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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.
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.
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.
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.

Continue ReadingUN calls for full reopening of Rafah crossing for Gazans

4 Israeli soldiers injured in clashes in southern Gaza, military says

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Israeli soldiers organize military equipment while standing on armored personnel carriers near the border with the Gaza Strip on August 6, 2025 in Southern Israel, Israel. [Amir Levy/Getty Images]

Four Israeli soldiers were injured in clashes with Hamas fighters in Rafah the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the army said, Anadolu reports.

A military statement said that one of the soldiers was severely wounded, while three others sustained moderate injuries in eastern Rafah.

Channel 14 said that clashes erupted after three Palestinian fighters allegedly emerged from a tunnel in Rafah and fired anti-tank rockets at Israeli forces.

Israeli forces responded with fire from helicopters, with two fighters killed in direct fire, while a third Palestinian allegedly attached an explosive device to an Israeli armored vehicle before fleeing back into the tunnel, the channel said.

The public broadcaster KAN said an Israeli helicopter attacked the area to which the third Palestinian fled.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas on the reports.

According to Israeli media reports, there are around 200 Hamas fighters who are trapped inside underground tunnels in Rafah, and Tel Aviv has not yet responded to demands by Hamas and mediators to allow them safe passage to areas under the group’s control.

Separately, the Israeli army claimed that it had killed more than 40 Palestinian fighters over the past week in operations targeting tunnels in the area under its control in Rafah.

READ: Israel stages drone strike in Damascus countryside, raids in southern Syria

On Monday, US President Donald Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call to clarify the crisis of the fighters trapped inside the Rafah tunnels.

According to Channel 12, Washington has attempted to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas in recent weeks to let the fighters surrender in exchange for amnesty and a “safe corridor” to an area under Hamas control or to a third country.

“The US administration viewed this as a potential model for disarming Hamas, and it did not appreciate Israel’s refusal to cooperate with this approach,” it added.

A fragile ceasefire agreement has been in place in Gaza since Oct. 10, mediated by Türkiye, Egypt, and Qatar, backed by the US.

Phase one of the ceasefire deal includes 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.

Israel has killed more than 70,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured nearly 171,000 others in attacks in Gaza since October 2023.

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

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.
Keir Starmer justifies why he has to travel abroad so much
Keir Starmer justifies why he has to travel abroad so much

Continue Reading4 Israeli soldiers injured in clashes in southern Gaza, military says

‘Humanitarian city’ would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/13/israel-humanitarian-city-rafah-gaza-camp-ehud-olmert

Olmert said Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, and constructing the camp would mark an escalation. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Ehud Olmert says forcing people into camp would be ethnic cleansing, and anger at Israel over Gaza war is not all down to antisemitism

The “humanitarian city” Israel’s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian.

Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.

Palestinians collect the remains of relief supplies in Rafah

“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” he said, when asked about the plans laid out by Israel Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said.

Katz has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the “humanitarian city” on the ruins of southern Gaza, to house initially 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population.

“If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn’t yet happened,” Olmert said. That would be “the inevitable interpretation” of any attempt to create a camp for hundreds of thousands of people, he said.

…

Continue Reading‘Humanitarian city’ would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM

UNRWA warns Israel’s Gaza displacement plan would create ‘massive concentration camps’

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Palestinian families begin fleeing again from shelters near the Al-Mawasi area as the Israeli army expands its ground offensive and tanks reach southwestern Khan Yunis, Gaza, marking their first displacement in nearly a year and a half, on July 10, 2025. [Hani Alshaer - Anadolu Agency]

Palestinian families begin fleeing again from shelters near the Al-Mawasi area as the Israeli army expands its ground offensive and tanks reach southwestern Khan Yunis, Gaza, marking their first displacement in nearly a year and a half, on July 10, 2025. [Hani Alshaer – Anadolu Agency]

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) condemned on Friday Israel’s plan to forcibly displace Palestinians in Gaza towards the southern city of Rafah, warning that the move would create “massive concentration camps” and worsen the humanitarian crisis, Anadolu reports.

Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications, told Al Jazeera English that the agency “categorically refuses any forced displacement of any population.”

“If it happens, it will push further tens of thousands of people who have already been displaced many, many times during this current war but also over the generations, further south and from there into the unknown,” Touma said.

“What needs to happen right now is to focus on reaching a ceasefire and allowing UNRWA to bring in much-needed supplies,” she said.

Touma said UNRWA has “over 6,000 trucks in Egypt and Jordan full of medicines that are soon expiring, food that is also going off, we have hygiene supplies.”

READ: UN says first fuel delivery to Gaza in 130 days ‘isn’t sufficient’ for humanitarian operations

“All we are saying is lift the siege, get a ceasefire, allow UNRWA and other UN organizations to do our work,” she added.

Earlier, the UN raised alarm over continued mass displacement in the Gaza Strip and warned that more than 700,000 people have been uprooted since the end of the ceasefire in March.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he instructed the army to prepare a plan to relocate all Palestinians to what he called a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza.

Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023, killing nearly 57,800 Palestinians, most of them women and children. The relentless bombardment has destroyed the enclave and led to food shortages and a spread of disease.

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.

READ: ‘They think they are untouchable’: Mahmoud Khalil seeks $20 million in damages

Continue ReadingUNRWA warns Israel’s Gaza displacement plan would create ‘massive concentration camps’

Critics Aghast at Israel’s Push for Gaza ‘Concentration Camp’

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Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A Palestinian woman reacts as she checks the damages after an Israeli strike hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in the Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip on July 8, 2025. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

A prominent Israeli human rights lawyer condemned the proposal outlined by Israel’s defense minister as “an operational plan for a crime against humanity.”

The Israeli government’s new plan to push all residents in Gaza to live in a camp built atop the ruins of the city of Rafah is drawing heavy criticism from experts who see it as a precursor for ethnic cleansing.

In an interview with The Guardian, Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard accused Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz of laying out “an operational plan for a crime against humanity” with his announcement this week of an initiative to build a massive refugee camp at Rafah from which Palestinians would not be allowed to leave. Katz characterized the proposed camp as a “humanitarian city.”

Sfard said that the entire camp was being built as a pretext for the mass deportation of Palestinians from Gaza.

“It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip,” he told The Guardian. “While the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary,’ people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual. When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity.”

Dr. Amos Goldberg, a historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, picked apart the Israeli government’s claims that the camp in Rafah would be a “humanitarian city” where Palestinian civilians could live safely away from Israeli military operations being conducted against Hamas fighters.

“It is neither humanitarian nor a city,” Goldberg explained. “A city is a place where you have possibilities of work, of earning money, of making connections and freedom of movement. There are hospitals, schools, universities and offices. This is not what they have in mind. It will not be a livable place, just as the ‘safe areas’ are unlivable now.”

Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian human rights activist and director of the Agora Initiative, expressed a similar sentiment in an interview with The National.

“Israel’s Defense Minister Katz isn’t even hiding it any more—he’s openly calling for a concentration camp for Palestinians in Gaza,” he said.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of the Refugees International advocacy group, told Reuters that he wasn’t at all buying the Israeli government’s stated humanitarian intentions regarding the construction of the camp.

“There is no such thing as voluntary displacement amongst a population that has been under constant bombardment for nearly two years and has been cut off from essential aid,” he said.

Reuters reported Monday that a $2 billion plan for so-called “humanitarian transit areas” inside Gaza was recently discussed in the Trump White House.

President Donald Trump earlier this year called for the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza so that the area could be rebuilt as an international beach resort that he described as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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 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 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.
Continue ReadingCritics Aghast at Israel’s Push for Gaza ‘Concentration Camp’