What kind of future awaits Hamas after the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran?

Mourners gather during a funeral procession for Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas, who was killed during a visit to Tehran, on July 31. (AFP/Getty Image)
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Updated 07 August 2024
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What kind of future awaits Hamas after the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran?

  • Experts discuss whether the Palestinian group can retain its influence and rebuild after the killing of its political bureau chief
  • The killing of Hamas leaders may represent a tactical victory for Israel, but seems to have limited strategic value, says analyst

LONDON: It has been 14 years since Israeli agents carried out one of Mossad’s most audacious, controversial and, perhaps, pointless assassinations.

On Jan. 19, 2010, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, the man responsible for procuring weapons for Hamas, was murdered in a hotel bedroom in Dubai.

It was a big operation, with many moving parts, involving almost 30 Mossad operatives who entered Dubai on false passports.

It ended with Al-Mabhouh being overpowered in his room at the Al-Bustan Rotana and given a fatal dose of suxamethonium chloride, a drug used in anesthetic cocktails.




People take part in a march called by Palestinian and Lebanese youth organizations in the southern Lebanese city of Saida, on August 5, 2024, to protest against the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh. (AFP)

To avoid leaving a tell-tale needle mark, the drug was administered with a device that used ultrasound to deliver it through the skin. The drug causes paralysis and, still conscious but with his lungs unable to function, Al-Mabhouh asphyxiated to death.

The assassins put him to bed and left, using a Mossad-developed device for putting hotel-door security chains in place from the outside of the room, hoping that Al-Mabhouh’s death would be attributed to natural causes.

It might have been, but for the vigilance of Dubai’s police chief. He suspected foul play and, by having the comings and goings through Dubai airport before and after the hit analyzed, and days of hotel security-camera footage examined in detail, put together a damning portfolio of evidence.

At the time, the killing was big news. Images of two Mossad agents posing as tennis players, emerging from an elevator behind Al-Mabhouh, appeared on televisions and newspapers around the world.

Today, however, for few outside Hamas or Mossad will the name Al-Mabhouh have any resonance. Certainly, his killing failed to have any appreciable impact on the flow of arms to the group.




Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) meeting with Palestinian Hamas movement leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 30, 2024. (AFP)

This week, the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of the Hamas political bureau, is also big news — as was the killing on July 13 of Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif.

But soon, says Ahron Bregman, a former officer in the Israeli army and a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, the disruption caused by their deaths to the activities and ambitions of Hamas will disappear, as the ripples caused by a small pebble thrown into a large lake quickly vanish.

“The killing of Ismail Haniyeh will not change much as far as Hamas is concerned,” said Bregman, author of “The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs” and the memoir “The Spy Who Fell to Earth,” an account of his part in the exposure of an Egyptian alleged double agent.

“Hamas is more than rifles, rockets and even leaders. Hamas is an idea.

“If Israel wants to defeat it, it must offer the Palestinians a better idea — say, a Palestinian state.

“If such an idea is not put forward, then Hamas will remain in place and rebuild itself for future battles with Israel.”

KEY HAMAS FIGURES

  • Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ Gaza leader, has just been named Ismail Haniyeh’s successor.
  • Khaled Meshaal, a founding member, has mostly operated from the relative safety of exile.
  • Khalil Al-Hayya, Doha-based deputy leader of Hamas, is said to have the backing of Iran.
  • Musa Abu Marzouk lived for 14 years in the US before becoming deputy chairman of Hamas’ political bureau.

Hamas is an Islamist militant group that spun off from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the late 1980s. It took over the Gaza Strip after defeating its rival political party, Fatah, in elections in 2006.

The sheer number of killings of key Hamas figures carried out by Israel over the past quarter-century, and the negligible impact of these killings on the organization’s capabilities or objectives, speaks of a policy being carried out despite a lack of success — or, perhaps, in accordance with a less obvious, and probably domestically focused agenda.

Killing high-profile Hamas targets, and perpetuating the war in the process, makes it harder for Israelis inclined toward peace to criticize or plot to remove their wartime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Certainly, it is not difficult for Netanyahu’s critics to see the killing of Haniyeh as a deliberate tactic to derail peace talks.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani put it succinctly on X, writing: “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?”




A woman walks near a billboard displaying portraits of Hamas leader Mohammed Deif (R) and Ismail Haniyeh with the slogan “assassinated” reading in Hebrew, in Tel Aviv, on August 2, 2024. (AFP)

Israel’s list of assassinations and attempted assassinations of Hamas leaders is a long one, and the killings have not always been as subtly carried out as the necessarily low-key Mossad hit on Al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

One of the first high-profile targets to be killed was Salah Shehadeh, the leader of Hamas’ military wing, who was targeted in Gaza on July 23, 2002, by an Israeli F-16 that dropped a massive bomb on his home.

Such was the cost in collateral damage — 14 others died, including Shehadeh’s wife and nine children — that 27 Israeli Air Force pilots had a fit of conscience, denouncing such attacks as “illegal and immoral” and “a direct result of the ongoing occupation which is corrupting all of Israeli society.”

The soul-searching did not last long, however. The toll of senior Hamas leaders has continued more or less unabated ever since.

Those who have been killed include Ahmed Yassin, who founded Hamas in 1987. He died 20 years ago, on March 22, 2004, in a hail of missiles fired from Israeli helicopters as he returned home from morning prayers in Gaza.

He was succeeded by Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi, who died in similar fashion just 26 days later.




Iranians take part in a funeral procession for late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, on August 1, 2024. (AFP)

Ahmed Al-Jabari, second-in-command of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, was targeted unsuccessfully five times before succumbing in Gaza City in November 2012 to a missile fired from a drone.

This year, unsurprisingly, has been a particularly busy one in terms of Hamas assassinations carried out by Israel. Hamas deputy and Haniyeh’s right-hand man Salah Al-Arouri was killed on Jan. 7 in an airstrike in Lebanon that also claimed the lives of several other senior Hamas commanders.

On March 11, Marwan Issa, deputy commander of Al-Qassam Brigades and Hamas No. 3, died in an airstrike in Gaza.

But none of these deaths — individually or taken together — has managed to turn Hamas from its path or hamper its ability to continue doggedly pursuing its aims militarily.

Haniyeh’s death is likely to have no greater immediate impact on Hamas’ capabilities than the assassinations that have gone before, said John Jenkins, former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Iraq and a Middle East expert with the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University.

But it might signal a change of strategy that bodes ill for any hopes of an immediate end to conflict.




Smoke billows from burning tires behind an Israeli army vehicle in Hebron on July 31, 2024, following a demonstration by Palestinians denouncing the killing of Haniyeh. (AFP)

“In the past, decapitation hasn’t worked — not with Hamas, nor with Hezbollah, nor Iran,” he said. “Or, at least, it has disrupted rather than interrupted.”

Israel, he added, “undoubtedly knows that. But it’s also thought for two decades that ‘mowing the grass’ is the best way to manage the conflict.”

That policy of simply keeping a lid on the problem “is now over — it collapsed on Oct. 7, 2023.

“So, the game now is destruction — of Hamas’ offensive capabilities and its ability to function as a significant political actor within the occupied Palestinian territories.

“That doesn’t mean killing the idea; that’s not possible. It means killing the capability. That’s why a ceasefire is a long way off.

“Spectacular assassinations are now part of a wider strategy of dismantling tunnels, command and control functions, logistics, and so on. That’s the only context in which they make sense.”

It is, however, a very dangerous game, with the killings of Haniyeh and Deif in Tehran and Beirut condemned by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week as “a dangerous escalation.”




Yemenis wave flags and lift placards of Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh during a rally in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa on August 2, 2024. (AFP)

Instead of Israel rampaging around the region on a killing spree — let alone assassinating Hamas’ Qatar-based negotiators, such as Haniyeh — “all efforts should instead be leading to a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all Israeli hostages, a massive increase of humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and a return to calm in Lebanon and across the Blue Line,” said Guterres.

“This endless cycle,” he added, “needs to stop.”

In an interview with a British newspaper over the weekend, Amjad Iraqi, an associate fellow with Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program, warned that Israel’s increasingly audacious killings were indeed edging the region dangerously close to a regional war.

“People are not understanding the gravity of what this is,” he told the Independent.

“There is a kind of egotistical, unstable dance that all these actors are making with missiles and with people’s lives, while trying to explain it as calibrated responses.”

Only a ceasefire could cool things down, but as things stand, “we are at a very, very dangerous point.”




Muslims pray during the final prayers for Ismail Haniyeh at his funeral in the Qatari capital Doha on August 2, 2024. (AFP)

The reality of imminent escalation, said Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute, “means that the ‘day after’ and the path to statehood seems even farther away now, with all sides focusing on the military outcome of the here and now, at the expense of immense civilian suffering and a viable political solution.”

For its part, Hamas, “to project resilience and the resolve of its leadership despite the assassination of Haniyeh, is trying to pivot quickly to appoint a new political bureau chief.”

A consultative process is under way “and, until a decision is made, such as the appointment of Khaled Mashal, for example, ceasefire negotiations cannot realistically recommence.”

As it has done many times before, in other words, Hamas will quickly grow a new limb to replace one that has been amputated.

But “a more urgent obstacle to restarting talks is that Hamas cannot be authorized to re-enter a diplomatic phase until Iran declares that the regime and its proxies have sufficiently retaliated against Israel for the series of high-profile assassinations, with much speculation around when that might happen.”




Mourners offer their condolences to senior Hamas official Khaled Mashaal (L) during the funeral of Ismail Haniyeh, in the Qatari capital Doha on August 2, 2024. (AFP)

The killing of Haniyeh has, she believes, “cornered Hamas into a dilemma that will determine how the organization evolves over time.

“On the one hand, the loss of a recognizable political leader will trigger radicalization among some Hamas supporters and embolden hardliners among the military faction such as Yahya Sinwar, his brother and their inner circle.

“On the other, with Hamas fighters suffering losses inside Gaza and its military infrastructure downgraded, Hamas will be looking for a lull in the fighting to recoup and plan ahead.

“But for Hamas, this is a long game, and it is far from over — key figures inside and outside Gaza will continue to struggle to consolidate Hamas and its victory narrative and position it for a role in post-war Gaza.”




An Indonesian protester holds up a placard with the image of Ismail Haniyeh during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Surabaya on August 6, 2024. (AFP)

Ahron Bregman agrees that the killing of Haniyeh “might lead to a regional war in which Iran and Hezbollah could become involved. If the latter happens, it will play straight into the hands of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, whose dream has always been that his Oct. 7 attack on Israel triggers a regional war.”

The assassination will also “put on ice any hostage deal, as both leaders, Netanyahu and Sinwar, are not interested in such a deal at the moment.

“For Netanyahu, a deal could spell the end of his coalition government. As for Sinwar, he will wait to see if the assassination at the heart of Tehran, which humiliated Iran, could lead to a regional war.”




Yahia Sinwar addresses supporters during a rally in Gaza City, on April 14, 2023. (AFP)

It is true, Bregman added, that “in recent months, Israel has managed to assassinate many of the Hamas leaders. Sinwar is quite on his own now, and I’m sure he’s got very few of the old guard to consult with.

“But Hamas is bigger and larger than any leader or leaders. When this war is over, there will still be Hamas — battered, leaner, but still standing and able to send rockets into Israel.

“The assassinations are tactical victories for Israel, but there is nothing strategic in it, not even in the possible killing of Sinwar himself.”




Members of the Palestinian Joint Action Committee sit during a symbolic funeral for Ismail Haniyeh, in Beirut, on August 2, 2024. (AFP)

Ultimately, the cost of Israel’s campaign of assassinations could be borne by Israelis and Palestinians alike.

The details of the operation to kill Al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010 emerged in the book “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” published by Israeli historian and investigative journalist Ronen Bergman in 2018.

Bergman concluded that, because Israel’s intelligence community had always “provided Israel’s leaders sooner or later with operational responses to every focused problem they were asked to solve,” that very success had “fostered the illusion among most of the nation’s leaders that covert operations could be a strategic and not just a tactical tool — that they could be used in place of real diplomacy to end the geographic, ethnic, religious, and national disputes in which Israel is mired.”

As a result, Israel’s leaders “have elevated and sanctified the tactical method of combating terror and existential threats at the expense of the true vision, statesmanship, and genuine desire to reach a political solution that is necessary for peace to be attained.”

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Iran seizes foreign tanker for smuggling 2 million liters of fuel

Updated 6 sec ago
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Iran seizes foreign tanker for smuggling 2 million liters of fuel

DUBAI: A foreign tanker was seized by Iran in the Gulf of Oman for smuggling 2 million liters of fuel, the chief justice of Hormozgan province said on Wednesday, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency.
“During the continuous process of monitoring and surveilling suspicious fuel smuggling movements in the Gulf of Oman, officers inspected a foreign tanker due to its lack of legal documents regarding its cargo and seized it on charges of carrying 2 million liters of smuggled fuel,” Hormozgan’s Chief Justice Mojtaba Ghahremani said, according to the report.
The judiciary official added that 17 crew members were arrested and that a judicial case was opened at the Jask county prosecutor’s office.
There was no additional information regarding the name of the tanker or the flag to which it is registered.
Iran, which has some of the world’s lowest fuel prices due to heavy subsidies and the plunge in the value of its national currency, has been fighting rampant fuel smuggling by land to neighboring countries and by sea to Gulf Arab states.
“The actions of fuel smugglers, who in coordination with foreigners, attempt to plunder national wealth will not remain hidden from the judiciary and punishment of perpetrators, if their crimes are proven, will be without leniency,” Ghahremani said, according to the report. 


Syria announces ceasefire after sectarian clashes, but more fighting and abuse alleged

Updated 16 July 2025
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Syria announces ceasefire after sectarian clashes, but more fighting and abuse alleged

  • Tuesday’s announcement follows deadly sectarian clashes between Druze factions and Sunni Bedouin tribes that killed over 30 people
  • That’s according to Syria’s Interior Ministry. However, fighting and allegations of civilian abuses by security forces continue

BUSRA AL-HARIR: Syria ‘s defense minister announced a ceasefire shortly after government forces entered a key city in southern Sweida province on Tuesday, a day after sectarian clashes killed dozens there. Neighboring Israel again launched strikes on Syrian military forces, saying it was protecting the Druze minority.
The latest escalation under Syria’s new leaders began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province, a center of the Druze community.
Syrian government forces, sent to restore order on Monday, also clashed with Druze armed groups.
A ceasefire announcement
On Tuesday, Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra said an agreement was struck with the city’s “notables and dignitaries” and that government forces would “respond only to the sources of fire and deal with any targeting by outlaw groups.”
However, scattered clashes continued after his announcement — as did allegations that security forces had committed violations against civilians.
Syria’s Interior Ministry said Monday that more than 30 people had been killed, but has not updated the figures since. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said Tuesday that 166 people had been killed since Sunday, including five women and two children.
Among them were 21 people killed in “field executions” by government forces, including 12 men in a rest house in the city of Sweida, it said. It did not say how many of the dead were civilians and also cited reports of members of the security forces looting and setting homes on fire.
Syrian interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa said in a statement that he had tasked authorities with “taking immediate legal action against anyone proven to have committed a transgression or abuse, regardless of their rank or position.”
Associated Press journalists in Sweida province saw forces at a government checkpoint searching cars and confiscating suspected stolen goods from both civilians and soldiers.
Israel’s involvement draws pushback
Israeli airstrikes targeted government forces’ convoys heading into the provincial capital of Sweida and in other areas of southern Syria.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the strikes sought to “prevent the Syrian regime from harming” the Druze religious minority “and to ensure disarmament in the area adjacent to our borders with Syria.” In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the armed forces.
Meanwhile, Israeli Cabinet member and Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli called on X for Al-Sharaa to be “eliminated without delay.”
A soldier’s story
Manhal Yasser Al-Gor, of the Interior Ministry forces, was being treated for shrapnel wounds at a local hospital after an Israeli strike hit his convoy.
‘We were entering Sweida to secure the civilians and prevent looting. I was on an armored personnel carrier when the Israeli drone hit us,” he said, adding that there were “many casualties.”
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said Israeli strikes had killed “several innocent civilians” as well as soldiers, and called them “a reprehensible example of ongoing aggression and external interference” in Syria’s internal matters.
It said the Syrian state is committed to protecting the Druze, “who form an integral part of the national identity and united Syrian social fabric.”
Suspicion over Syria’s new government
Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria’s new leaders since Al-Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist insurgents ousted former President Bashar Assad in December, saying it doesn’t want militants near its borders. Israeli forces have seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria.
Earlier Tuesday, religious leaders of the Druze community in Syria called for armed factions that have been clashing with government forces to surrender their weapons and cooperate with authorities. One of the main Druze spiritual leaders later released a video statement retracting the call.
Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, who has been opposed to the government in Damascus, said in the video that the initial Druze leaders’ statement had been issued after an agreement with the authorities in Damascus but that “they broke the promise and continued the indiscriminate shelling of unarmed civilians.”
“We are being subjected to a total war of annihilation,” he claimed, without offering evidence.
Some videos on social media showed armed fighters with Druze captives, beating them and, in some cases, forcibly shaving men’s moustaches.
Sectarian and revenge attacks
The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
Since Assad’s fall, clashes have broken out several times between forces loyal to the new Syrian government and Druze fighters.
The latest fighting has raised fears of more sectarian violence. In March, an ambush on government forces by Assad loyalists in another part of Syria triggered days of sectarian and revenge attacks. Hundreds of civilians were killed, most of them members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect. A commission was formed to investigate the attacks but no findings have been made public.
The videos and reports of soldiers’ violations spurred outrage and protests by Druze communities in neighboring Lebanon, northern Israel and in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights, where the Israeli military said dozens of protesters had crossed the border into Syrian territory.
The violence drew international concern. The US envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, called the violence “worrisome on all sides” in a post on.
“We are attempting to come to a peaceful, inclusive outcome for Druze, Bedouin tribes, the Syrian government and Israeli forces,” he said.


UN says 875 Palestinians have been killed near Gaza aid sites

Updated 16 July 2025
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UN says 875 Palestinians have been killed near Gaza aid sites

  • The United Nations has called the GHF aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards

GENEVA: The UN rights office said on Tuesday it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and convoys run by other relief groups, including the United Nations.
The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys.
The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas-led militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.
The GHF, which began distributing food packages in Gaza in late May after Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade, previously told Reuters that such incidents have not occurred on its sites and accused the UN of misinformation, which it denies.
The GHF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest UN figures.
“The data we have is based on our own information gathering through various reliable sources, including medical human rights and humanitarian organizations,” Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva.
The United Nations has called the GHF aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.
The GHF said on Tuesday it had delivered more than 75 million meals to Gaza Palestinians since the end of May, and that other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.
The Israeli army previously told Reuters in a statement that it was reviewing recent mass casualties and that it had sought to minimize friction between Palestinians and the Israel Defense Forces by installing fences and signs and opening additional routes.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has previously cited instances of violent pillaging of aid, and the UN World Food Programme said last week that most trucks carrying food assistance into Gaza had been intercepted by “hungry civilian communities.” 

 


UN finds rising child malnutrition in Gaza, where officials say Israeli strikes kill 93 people

Updated 16 July 2025
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UN finds rising child malnutrition in Gaza, where officials say Israeli strikes kill 93 people

  • Strike in Gaza City’s Tel Al-Hawa district Monday evening kills 19 members of same family
  • Gaza’s Health Ministry says bodies of 93 people killed by Israeli strikes brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Malnutrition rates among children in the Gaza Strip have doubled since Israel sharply restricted the entry of food in March, the UN said Tuesday. New Israeli strikes killed more than 90 Palestinians, including dozens of women and children, according to health officials.
Hunger has been rising among Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians since Israel broke a ceasefire in March to resume the war and banned all food and other supplies from entering Gaza, saying it aimed to pressure Hamas to release hostages. It slightly eased the blockade in late May, allowing in a trickle of aid.

Zainab Abu Haleeb, a five-month-old Palestinian girl diagnosed with malnutrition, according to medics, lies on a bed as she receives treatment at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip July 15, 2025. (REUTERS)

UNRWA, the main UN agency caring for Palestinians in Gaza, said it had screened nearly 16,000 children under age 5 at its clinics in June and found 10.2 percent of them were acutely malnourished. By comparison, in March, 5.5 percent of the nearly 15,000 children it screened were malnourished.
New airstrikes kill several families
One strike in the northern Shati refugee camp killed a 68-year-old Hamas member of the Palestinian legislature, as well as a man and a woman and their six children who were sheltering in the same building, according to officials from the heavily damaged Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
One of the deadliest strikes hit a house in Gaza City’s Tel Al-Hawa district on Monday evening and killed 19 members of the family living inside, according to Shifa Hospital. The dead included eight women and six children. A strike on a tent housing displaced people in the same district killed a man and a woman and their two children.
The Israeli military did not comment on the strikes.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in a daily report Tuesday afternoon that the bodies of 93 people killed by Israeli strikes had been brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, along with 278 wounded. It did not specify the total number of women and children among the dead.
The Hamas politician killed in a strike early Tuesday, Mohammed Faraj Al-Ghoul, was a member of the bloc of representatives from the group that won seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in the last national elections, held in 2006.
The Israeli military says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in densely populated areas. But daily, it hits homes and shelters where people are living without warning or explanation of the target.
Malnutrition grows
UNICEF, which screens children separately from UNRWA, also reported a marked increase in malnutrition cases. It said this week its clinics had documented 5,870 cases of malnutrition among children in June, the fourth straight month of increases and more than double the around 2,000 cases it documented in February.
Experts have warned of famine since Israel tightened its lengthy blockade in March.
Israel has allowed an average of 69 trucks a day carrying supplies, including food, since it eased the blockade in May, according to the latest figures from COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of coordinating aid. That is far below the hundreds of trucks a day the UN says are needed to sustain Gaza’s population.
On Tuesday, COGAT blamed the UN for failing to distribute aid, saying in a post on X that thousands of pallets of supplies were inside Gaza waiting to be picked up by UN trucks. The UN says it has struggled to pick up and distribute aid because of Israeli military restrictions on its movements and the breakdown in law and order.
Israel has also let in food for distribution by an American contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. GHF says it has distributed food boxes with the equivalent of more than 70 million meals since late May at the four centers it runs in the Rafah area of southern Gaza and in central Gaza.
More than 840 Palestinians have been killed and more than 5,600 others wounded in shootings as they walk for hours trying to reach the GHF centers, according to the Health Ministry. Witnesses say Israeli forces open fire with barrages of live ammunition to control crowds on the roads to the GHF centers, which are located in military-controlled zones.
The military says it has fired warning shots at people it says have approached its forces in a suspicious manner. GHF says no shootings have taken place in or immediately around its distribution sites.
No breakthrough in ceasefire efforts
The latest attacks came after US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held two days of talks last week that ended with no breakthrough in negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release.
Israel has killed more than 58,400 Palestinians and wounded more than 139,000 others in its retaliation campaign since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Just over half the dead are women and children, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its tally.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its attack 21 month ago, in which militants stormed into southern Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. They abducted 251 others, and the militants are still holding 50 hostages, less than half of them believed to be alive.
US calls for probe into killing of Palestinian-American
In a separate development, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee called on Israel to investigate the killing of a 20-year-old Palestinian-American whose family said was beaten to death by Jewish settlers over the weekend in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” Huckabee wrote on X.
Seifeddin Musalat, born in Florida, and a local friend were killed Friday. Musalat was beaten to death by Israeli settlers on his family’s land, his cousin Diana Halum told reporters. The family had called on the US State Department to investigate his death and hold the settlers accountable.
The Israeli military said a confrontation erupted after Palestinians hurled stones at Israelis in the area earlier in the day, lightly wounding two people.
Huckabee, like many in the Trump administration, is a strong supporter of Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal by most of the international community and seen by the Palestinians as a major obstacle to peace.
Israel strikes Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley
Also on Tuesday, Israel launched a series of strikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, targeting what the military said were compounds of the Hezbollah militant group.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said that one of the strikes hit a Syrian refugee camp, killing seven Syrians. Altogether, the strikes killed 12 people and wounded eight, it said. Hezbollah said one of the strikes hit a rig used to drill water wells.
Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes in Lebanon since a US-brokered ceasefire agreement nominally brought an end to the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in November. Some 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon during the war and more than 250 since the ceasefire.

 


UN-backed experts focusing on Palestinian rights quit

Updated 16 July 2025
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UN-backed experts focusing on Palestinian rights quit

  • Council spokesman Pascal Sim said the move marked the first joint resignations of Commission of Inquiry members since the council was founded in 2006

GENEVA: A team of three independent experts working for the UN’s top human rights body with a focus on Israel and Palestinian areas say they are resigning, citing personal reasons and a need for change, in the panel’s first such group resignation.
The resignations, announced Monday by the UN-backed Human Rights Council that set up the team, come as violence continues in Palestinian areas with few signs of letup in the Israeli military campaign against Hamas and other militants behind the Oct. 7 attacks.
The Israeli government has repeatedly criticized the panel of experts, known as the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, and denied their repeated requests to travel to the region or otherwise cooperate with the team.
Council spokesman Pascal Sim said the move marked the first joint resignations of Commission of Inquiry members since the council was founded in 2006. 
The team said in a statement that the resignations had “absolutely nothing to do with any external event or pressure.”
Navi Pillay, 83, a former UN human rights chief who has led the commission for the last four years, said in a letter to the council president that she was resigning effective Nov. 3 because of “age, medical issues and the weight of several other commitments.”