Daily Times

At least 18 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes on Khan Younis in Gaza’s south, with two more deaths reported in Gaza City in the north and one in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the enclave, according to media reports.

Clashes take place in Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank between the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian fighters during an attempt to arrest Mohammed Jaber, a commander of an armed group who is wanted by the Israeli military.

In its latest update on the situation in Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees says that as of Wednesday, 199 UNRWA staff members have been killed since the war began.

Meanwhile, Hamas has refuted Israeli PM Netanyahu’s claim that Israel is not denying aid to Gaza

The group says human rights organisations confirmed that the Israeli military has “used starvation methods, blocked aid, burned and destroyed the Rafah border crossing and killed many humanitarian workers”.

The Rafah border crossing to Egypt has been closed since Israel captured it in early May, blocking what was the only route out of the besieged coastal enclave after Israel’s war on Gaza began.

In a statement on its official Telegram channel, Hamas said that “this clearly disproves Netanyahu’s claims about allowing aid to reach the residents of the Gaza Strip” – a claim he made in a speech before US Congress on Thursday.

The group also called Netanyahu’s “visions” about the future of Gaza “illusions and fantasies”.

In his speech yesterday, Netanyahu gave an outline of a plan for a “de-radicalised” post-war Gaza and touted a potential future alliance between Israel and the US’s Arab allies. “The Palestinian people alone have the right to determine their fate and decide who governs them,” Hamas said. “They have chosen to rally around the resistance and confront the occupation until it is defeated”.

Moreover, Palestine’s UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour has slammed the UN Security Council for failing to secure a ceasefire and bring an end to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. “We have collectively failed. This council has failed,” the Palestinian envoy said during a special council session on the humanitarian response in Gaza.

“We can continue counting aid trucks and speaking of routes and imagining alternatives, but the only true measure of our success is our ability to alleviate human suffering – and the suffering of Palestinians is Israel’s goal and desire,” Mansour said.

“Whatever solutions you come up with, [Israel] will continue ensuring they fail until it is forced to change course. And the first, indispensable step is an immediate ceasefire.”

Separately, Georgios Petropoulos, the head of the Gaza operation for the UN humanitarian affairs office, has said the delivery of humanitarian aid in the Palestinian enclave has steadily deteriorated as the war drags on.

He told Al Jazeera that many roads have been destroyed, making it difficult for people to walk and for trucks or even donkey carts to transport supplies.

“We’re at the point where logistics specialists have gone from talking about fuel and trucks to talking about fodder and donkeys. We’re regressing decades back [in terms of] the systems that we have to use to support the people in Gaza,” he said. Petropoulos added that the UN knows “how to aid people who are in a tragic war. We must be allowed to do so.”

“We have to have an effective supply of aid, effective supply of aid workers. We have to have a health system that works. We have to have communications, and we have to have absolute protection of civilians on all sides of this conflict.”