WHO says aid situation in Gaza ‘remains catastrophic’ despite ceasefire – Middle East live

West Bank residents fear they may be Israel’s next target after Gaza

William Christou

To the residents of the West Bank, the war in Gaza came as a warning. As they watched Israeli bombs destroy as much as 88% of the Gaza Strip over the last two years, they realised that there was no limit to what Israel would do to crush Palestinian militants.

Now that the war in Gaza is drawing down, Palestinians fear that Israel will turn its focus on the West Bank.

Eager to avoid incurring the same wrath that Gaza suffered, voices of resistance have kept silent, even as the number of daily settler attacks and restrictions in the West Bank rises sharply. Wednesday’s preliminary approval in the Knesset of bills applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank – a process halted on Thursday after Trump administration figures voiced strong disapproval – barely registered among Palestinians. Only two years ago it would have provoked mass protests.

In Jenin, the boundaries of the military occupation are slowly expanding; soldiers pay daily visits to residents who live near the camp and bulldozers tear up their roads.

“When we used to hear shooting, we used to think there was a fight in the camp. Now we know it was the Israelis – not one bullet comes from the Palestinians. There’s no one left,” said Hiba Jarar as she cleaned her house after it was searched by an Israeli soldier a few days earlier.

Jarar lives in Jabria, a wealthy neighbourhood that sits on a hill overlooking the Jenin camp. From her living room window she can see Israeli troops moving to and from their makeshift barracks, a repurposed apartment building.

She is one of the last remaining people in the neighbourhood. One by one, residents have been raided by the Israeli military and told to vacate. The row of luxury villas lies deserted, the torn-up road stopping at a mound of dirt heaped high by Israeli bulldozers.

Jarar said:

The Israelis know they have nothing to fear any more. They raid houses with just a single soldier now. The soldier that searched my house was respectful, I was lucky. But who knows what will happen next time?

Vance says Knesset votes on annexing West Bank are an ‘insult’ as Netanyahu halts progress

Lorenzo Tondo

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ordered a halt to the advancement of parliamentary bills linked to the annexation of the West Bank after the US vice-president, JD Vance, described a vote on two bills in the Knesset as an “insult”.

The bills applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, which would be tantamount to the annexation of land Palestinians want for a state, won preliminary approval from Israel’s parliament on Wednesday, barely a week after Donald Trump pushed through a deal aimed at ending a two-year Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Asked by reporters about the vote at the end of a two-day visit to Israel, Vance said:

If it was a political stunt, it is a very stupid one, and I personally take some insult to it.

The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of President Trump is that the West Bank will not be annexed. This will always be our policy.

On Thursday afternoon, Ofir Katz, the chair of Israel’s coalition government, said Netanyahu had instructed him not to advance bills pertaining to annexation, and Netanyahu’s office said Wednesday’s vote had been a “deliberate political provocation” that aimed to sow division during Vance’s visit.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, landed in Israel on Thursday, becoming the latest in a string of US officials to visit the country to shore up the Gaza ceasefire. He described any plan to extend Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory as “potentially threatening for the peace deal”.

“They’re a democracy, they’re going to have their votes, and people are going to take these positions,” Rubio said. “But at this time, it’s something that we … think might be counterproductive.”

While mediators try to bolster a fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, intensified Israeli settler violence targeting the Palestinian olive harvest in the occupied West Bank has continued unabated, according to Palestinian and UN officials.

Since the harvest began in the first week of October, there have been at least 158 attacks across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to figures made public by the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC).

There was a 13% rise in settler attacks in the first two weeks of the 2025 harvest compared with the same period in 2024, said Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN’s human rights office in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Activists and farmers say the violence has intensified since the Hamas-led attacks that triggered the war in Gaza two years ago, reports Reuters. They say settlers target olive trees because Palestinians see them as a symbol of their connection to the land. Adham al-Rabia, a Palestinian activist, said:

The olive tree is a symbol of Palestinian steadfastness.

The UN’s Sunghay said that this season settlers had burned groves, chain-sawed olive trees, and destroyed homes and agricultural infrastructure. According to Reuters, in a regular update on the olive harvest season on Tuesday, Sunghay said:

Settler violence has skyrocketed in scale and frequency, with the acquiescence, support, and in many cases participation, of Israeli security forces – and always with impunity.

The Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, which governs Israeli West Bank settlements in the region of Turmus Ayya, said it condemned “every instance of violence that occurs” in the area. It said that settlers carried weapons “intended solely for self-defence”.

Many Palestinians, as well as Israeli human rights groups, believe the army has abetted settler attacks. The Israeli military did not respond to Reuter’s request for comment on the claim.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the United States and others must do more to push Israel to stop violating the Gaza ceasefire agreement, including the possible use of sanctions or halting arms sales.

According to an official readout of his remarks to reporters on board a return flight from Oman, Erdoğan said the Palestinian militant group Hamas was abiding by the agreement. He added that Turkey remains ready to support the planned Gaza taskforce in any way needed.

Palestine rights group seeks prosecution of UK citizens who fought for Israel

Patrick Wintour

A human rights group has launched an attempt to mount a private prosecution alleging British citizens unlawfully went to fight for Israel.

An application to a magistrates court for a summons against a named individual was lodged on Monday.

The highly unusual prosecution is being brought by the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians (ICJP). The human rights group intends to argue in court that named Britons joined a foreign army at war with a state, Palestine, which the b was not fighting.

It claims that waging war with a foreign force is a breach of section 4 of the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870. The act makes it an offence for any person to accept or agree a commission or engagement in the military service of any foreign state at war with another foreign state that is at peace with the UK government.

The ICJP has named one individual in the attempted prosecution but has gathered evidence against more than 10 British citizens.

To enhance the prospects of a successful prosecution and prevent the case being prejudiced, the ICJP is not naming the individuals they want to be arrested.

The ICJP accuses the Israel Defense Forces of conducting a war that is not confined to Hamas but is against all Palestinians and Palestine itself, a state now recognised by the UK.

The group says it needs to prove the defendant is a British subject, accepted a commission or engagement in the Israeli armed forces, that Israel was at war with Palestine, that Palestine is a foreign state and finally that Palestine was at peace with the UK.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that there has been little improvement in the amount of aid going into Gaza since the ceasefire took hold – and no observable reduction in hunger.

Speaking on Thursday, WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that the aid situation in Gaza “remains catastrophic” and “there is not enough food” for those in the territory. He said:

The situation still remains catastrophic because what’s entering is not enough … there is no dent in hunger because there is not enough food.

On Wednesday, the UN’s top court said that Israel must allow aid into Gaza, and found that its restrictions on doing so over the past two years had put it in breach of its obligations.

In the advisory opinion by the international court of justice in The Hague, aid levels were found to have remained inadequate.

A week ago, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said that it had brought about 560 tonnes of food a day on average into Gaza since the ceasefire began, but it was still below what was needed. Its spokesperson Abeer Etefa said:

We’re still below what we need, but we’re getting there … The ceasefire has opened a narrow window of opportunity, and WFP is moving very quickly and swiftly to scale up food assistance.

During the war, Israel shut down entry and exit routes, largely blocking off food and medicine, which in turn caused a famine in parts of Gaza.

The UN said it would take time to reverse the famine in Gaza and urged the opening of all crossing points.

More on this story in a moment, but first here are some other main developments:

• In a joint statement carried by Saudi state media on Thursday, more than a dozen such states including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey condemned the Israeli parliament’s vote on West Bank annexation. Arab and Muslim countries, which the US has been courting to provide troops and money for a stabilisation force in Gaza – a key element of Trump’s ceasefire plan – have warned that annexation of the West Bank is a red line.

• The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ordered a halt to the advancement of parliamentary bills linked to the annexation of the West Bank after the US vice-president, JD Vance, described a vote on two bills in the Knesset as an “insult”. Seperately, when asked on Thursday if he was concerned by the votes, US president Donald Trump told reporters at the White House: “Don’t worry about the West Bank. Israel’s not going to do anything with the West Bank.”

• US secretary of state Marco Rubio, one of a string of top US officials to visit Israel in recent days, had warned before his arrival that the annexation moves were “threatening” to the fragile ceasefire in Gaza, but he expressed confidence in the truce after meeting with Netanyahu on Thursday. “We feel confident and positive about the progress that’s being made. We’re clear-eyed about the challenges, too,” said Rubio.

• Netanyahu, standing next to Rubio after their meeting on Thursday, was quick to avoid any suggestion of tension with Washington, calling the secretary an “extraordinary friend of Israel” and saying that the back-to-back visits were part of a “circle of trust and partnership”.

• Gaza’s Nasser hospital said that one person was killed in an Israeli drone strike on Thursday in the Khan Younis area. Residents reported almost constant heavy gunfire and tank shelling in eastern areas of Khan Younis and also east of Gaza City in the north of the Palestinian territory overnight into Thursday, reported Reuters.

• A human rights group has launched an attempt to mount a private prosecution alleging British citizens unlawfully went to fight for Israel. An application to a magistrates court for a summons against a named individual was lodged on Monday.