The images that have emerged over the past few weeks of Palestinians being starved by Israel’s blockade of Gaza have been “impossible for any politician anywhere in the world to defend”, Lynn Boylan, an Irish member of the European Parliament representing Sinn Fein, tells Al Jazeera.
Even in countries such as Germany, which has been a staunch ally of Israel, citizens have been contacting their politicians and saying, “this must stop”, she noted, adding “unfortunately, then we’ve seen the distraction of [Israel’s conflict with] Iran, and the focus moved away from Gaza.”
Boylan said the daily footage of Palestinians being targeted at the aid distribution sites as they “desperately try to get food and water for their children and themselves” has now become normalised.
“The commentary that we heard was as a direct result of both the imagery and the people power and putting pressure on the German government … hasn’t manifested”, she said.
The Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Brigadier General Yehuda Vahn, Al Jazeera reports.
HRF says Vach was in command of the “establishment and enforcement of an unlawful ‘kill zone’ in the Netzarim Corridor, a zone it said is characterised by ‘the deliberate targeting of civilians — particularly children — by sniper teams and mobile armoured patrols operating with impunity under Vach’s orders”.
“The complaint was based on powers of attorney obtained from the families of two Palestinian children who were summarily executed by Vach’s troops”, HRF said in a statement.
The lack of action and double standards demonstrated by the European Union when it comes to Israel’s aggression have damaged its credibility, Lynn Boylan, an Irish member of the European Parliament representing Sinn Fein, tells Al Jazeera.
She said the failure to hold Israel accountable, after nearly two years of its campaign in Gaza, stands in stark contrast to the “swift action taken” by the EU when it came to Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“The double standards are so blatant … and citizens are telling me that every single day that they are ashamed of the EU … that why should any country respect trade agreements or any other form of agreement or negotiation or cooperation with the EU, when Israel is able just to tear up international law with no consequences,” she said.
Gaza’s civil defence agency has said Israeli forces killed at least 23 people in the war-stricken territory, including at least three children who died when a house was struck.
“At least 23 dead and dozens of wounded were taken (to hospitals) after Israeli firing and raids” across Gaza, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Among the casualties were three children who were killed in an air strike on a home in Jabalia, northern Gaza. AFP video footage from Gaza City showed relatives weeping over the bodies of children killed in nearby Jabalia.
Bassal said the children were among 21 people killed in six air strikes by drones and planes across the territory. He said two other people were killed by Israeli fire while waiting for food aid in the Netzarim zone in central Gaza.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Six Israelis were detained for assaulting soldiers near a village in the occupied West Bank where deadly clashes with Palestinians erupted this week, the military said, AFP reports.
Soldiers went to disperse a gathering of Israelis near the village overnight, the military said in a statement.
“Dozens of Israeli civilians hurled stones toward them and physically and verbally assaulted the soldiers, including the Battalion Commander,” it said.
“In addition, the civilians vandalised and damaged security forces’ vehicles, and attempted to ram the security forces,” it added.
At least 81 Palestinians have been killed and 422 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s health ministry, Al Jazeera reports.
The total toll in Israel’s offensive on Gaza has risen to 56,412 killings and 133,054 injuries since October 7, 2023. At least 6,089 killings and 21,013 injuries came after Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18.
Gaza mediators are engaging with Israel and Hamas to build on momentum from this week’s ceasefire with Iran and work towards a truce in the Palestinian territory, Qatar foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari tells AFP.
Ansari said Doha — with fellow Gaza mediators in Washington and Cairo — was now “trying to use the momentum that was created by the ceasefire between Iran and Israel to restart the talks over Gaza”.
“If we don’t utilise this window of opportunity and this momentum, it’s an opportunity lost amongst many in the near past. We don’t want to see that again,” the spokesman, who is also an adviser to Qatar’s prime minister, said.
“We have seen US pressure and what it can accomplish,” Ansari said, referring to the January truce.
The Qatari official said, particularly in the context of US enforcement of the Israel-Iran truce, it was “not a far-fetched idea” that pressure from Washington would achieve a fresh truce in Gaza.
“We are working with them very, very closely to make sure that the right pressure is applied from the international community as a whole, especially from the US, to see both parties at the negotiating table,” Ansari said.
A Palestinian child walks by a damaged vehicle, as people inspect the site of an Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City on June 27, 2025. — Reuters/Mahmoud Issa
At least 14 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn, reports Al Jazeera Arabic, citing hospital sources.
At least eight people were killed in Saftawi, north of Gaza City, in an Israeli airstrike on the Osama Bin Zaid School — where many displaced people had sought shelter.
Among those killed were two children and a woman.
Palestinians look at the rubble and destroyed vehicles in the Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip after a house was targeted by an Israeli strike, on June 27, 2025. — AFP
Israel’s Military Advocate General has ordered an investigation into possible war crimes over allegations that Israeli forces deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians near Gaza aid distribution sites, Haaretz reports, according to Reuters.
Haaretz, a left-leaning Israeli newspaper, quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they were told to fire at the crowds to keep them back, using unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.
The military told Reuters that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had not instructed soldiers to deliberately shoot at civilians.
Haaretz quoted unnamed sources as saying that the army unit established to review incidents that may involve breaches of international law had been tasked with examining soldiers’ actions near aid locations over the past month.
The military told Reuters that some incidents were being reviewed by relevant authorities.
The Israeli army has said that a missile launched from Yemen toward Israeli territory had been “most likely successfully intercepted”, Reuters reports.
Israel has threatened Yemen’s Houthi movement, which has been attacking Israel in what it says is solidarity with Gaza, with a naval and air blockade if its attacks on Israel persist.
Israel accused the United Nations of aligning itself with Hamas after Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced an Israeli-backed aid distribution system in Gaza, AFP reports.
The US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had provided “46 million meals” in the territory, the foreign ministry said in a post on X, but “the UN is doing everything it can to oppose this effort. In doing so, the UN is aligning itself with Hamas, which is also trying to sabotage the GHF’s humanitarian operations”.
US President Donald Trump has voiced optimism about a new ceasefire in Gaza, as criticism grew over mounting civilian deaths at Israeli-backed food distribution centres in the territory, AFP reports.
Asked by reporters how close a ceasefire was between Israel and Hamas, Trump said: “We think within the next week, we’re going to get a ceasefire.”
Gaza’s civil defence agency has said that Israeli forces killed at least 62 people, including 10 who were waiting for aid in the territory.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal has told AFP that 62 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli strikes or gunfire in the Gaza Strip.
When asked by AFP for comment, the Israeli military said it was looking into the incidents, and denied that its troops fired in one of the locations in central Gaza where rescuers said one person was killed.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that hungry people in Gaza seeking food must not face a “death sentence” as controversy swirls around a new US and Israeli-backed distribution system, AFP reports.
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters, without explicitly naming the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose operations have led to near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people desperate to get food.
British counter-terrorism police have arrested four people in connection with a pro-Palestinian protest last week in which military planes were sprayed with paint at an air base in England, Reuters reports.
A woman, 29, and two men aged 36 and 24, were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, while another woman, 41, was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender, a police statement said.
Two activists from the Palestine Action group broke into the air base in Oxfordshire in central England on June 20, spraying red paint over two planes used for refuelling and transport, and further damaging them with crowbars, an act that was condemned by Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “disgraceful”.
Within days of the incident, interior minister Yvette Cooper set out plans to use anti-terrorism laws to ban Palestine Action, saying its actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
In response to Friday’s arrests, the campaign group accused authorities of “cracking down on non-violent protests which disrupt the flow of arms to Israel during its genocide in Palestine”.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems and other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza.
Gaza’s government media office has slammed the Israeli government for “promoting lies” about the control of aid in northern Gaza, amid Israeli claims Hamas was stealing aid from civilians in the territory, Al Jazeera reports.
“We categorically deny the false claims,” the office said, referring to a joint statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday, which claimed that Hamas was taking control of humanitarian aid entering northern Gaza and stealing it from civilians.
Gaza’s government media office said that the claims of Hamas stealing the aid were false, and that the aid convoys had in fact been “secured” by Palestinian families and clans, “without any interference from the Palestinian government or factions”.
“This was a popular stance on their part, aimed at providing crumbs of food to hundreds of thousands of starving civilians,” the statement said.
It slammed the Israeli government for pushing “cheap lies” that it said were intended to “legitimise the continued blockade”.
Trucks loaded with aid drive on the Israel-Gaza border as they make their way into Gaza, as seen from Israel on June 7, 2025. —Reuters
The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity has called for a controversial Israel and US-backed relief effort in Gaza to be halted, saying it is “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”, AFP reports.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, launched last month, “is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies”, MSF says in a statement, demanding that the scheme be “immediately dismantled”.
The director of medical relief in Gaza told Al Jazeera Arabic that the situation in the Strip is getting worse for children.
“We expect a large number of children to die from malnutrition unless a serious intervention occurs,” he said.
“Pressure must be put on the occupation to allow the entry of baby milk and medicine,” the official said, adding that “many surgeries have been postponed due to a shortage of staff, medical supplies, and medicine.”
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire across Gaza today has risen to 36, sources in hospitals in the territory have confirmed to Al Jazeera Arabic.
In what has become a routine occurrence, a number of those killed were seeking at one of the distribution centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Six people were killed by Israeli fire near a GHF aid point north of Rafah, sources at the Kuwait Field Hospital said.
In a separate attack, 10 people were killed, including a journalist, in an Israeli drone strike on a group of people in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City.
An Israeli court has rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to postpone his testimony in his corruption trial, after US President Donald Trump said the case should be cancelled, AFP reports.
The Jerusalem district court said in a judgement published online that “in its current form, [his request] does not provide a basis or detailed justification for the cancellation of the hearings”.
The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group says it bombarded a group of Israeli soldiers and vehicles that infiltrated the vicinity of the entrance of Hamad City in the north of Khan Younis, Al Jazeera reports.
The attack was carried out in conjunction with the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, using mortar shells, according to an al-Quds Brigades statement on Telegram.
Sources in Gaza hospitals have confirmed to Al Jazeera Arabic that 26 Palestinians have been killed in strikes across Gaza since dawn.
The victims include six people killed by Israeli fire near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid point north of Rafah, and eight killed in the Tuffah neighbourhood in north Gaza.
Two people were also killed in a strike on a tent housing displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi in the south.
Seven people have been killed while at least 10 others have been wounded in an Israeli attack, which hit the Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City in the north of the Strip, Al Jazeera reports, citing sources at the Baptist Hospital.
A human rights lawyer says staff working for the controversial group behind the violence-plagued aid distribution programme in Gaza could be held criminally liable for complicity in war crimes.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from London, Kate Mackintosh, executive director of the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe, said that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) could bear criminal liability for the killings of hundreds of aid seekers near its distribution points.
“It’s very unclear why these people are being targeted and killed, but I think it’s pretty clear that these are unarmed civilians who are desperately trying to get food for their families,” she said.
“Firing upon people in that situation prima facie is a war crime.”
She said that people working for the GHD would “have to think about the extent to which they could be complicit in those crimes”.
“If they’re aware that this is going to happen — or even in some jurisdictions, they’re aware of the substantial risk of this happening, which it seems they must be, given what we’ve seen since these operations began — then they could be held criminally liable for participating in those crimes.”
