Palestinians seeking aid continue to be killed near distribution sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

At least 34 Palestinians have been killed and several others wounded by Israeli fire while waiting for humanitarian aid in central and southern Gaza Strip, hospital sources told Al Jazeera.

At least 82 Palestinians were killed across Gaza by the Israeli army on Friday, sources said, including several in an attack where jets bombed a house west of Deir el-Balah.

At least 37 people were killed in central Gaza, including 23 who were seeking aid, according to hospital sources. In Gaza City, another 23 people lost their lives, while 22 were killed in southern Gaza – 11 of whom were also aid seekers.

Israeli attacks on hungry Palestinians near aid centres have killed hundreds of people since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) started distributions on May 27.

The shadowy Israeli- and United States-backed group tasked with distributing aid supplies has been criticised by the United Nations for its “failure” to ensure the safe delivery of supplies in Gaza, where aid agencies have warned that the entire population is facing the threat of famine after Israel imposed a total blockade from early March to late May.

Ismail al-Thawabta, the director-general of Gaza’s Government Media Office, said on Thursday that the total number of aid seekers killed stood at 409, and 3,203 more had been injured.

UNICEF warned the Gaza Strip was also facing a man-made drought as its water systems collapsed.

“Children will begin to die of thirst,” spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva on Friday. “Just 40 percent of drinking water production facilities remain functional.”

Advertisement

The UN agency warned that the GHF distribution system was “making a desperate situation worse”.

Elder, who was recently in Gaza, said he had many testimonials of women and children injured while trying to receive food aid, including a young boy who was wounded by a tank shell and later died of his injuries.

He said a lack of public clarity on when the sites, some of which are in combat zones, were open was causing mass casualty events.

“There have been instances where information [was] shared that a site is open, but then it’s communicated on social media that they’re closed, but that information was shared when Gaza’s internet was down and people had no access to it,” he said.

On Wednesday, the GHF said in a statement it had distributed three million meals across three of its aid sites without an incident.

As Israel’s war on Gaza continues, it has also traded air attacks with Iran for a week.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Friday that Israel’s conflict with Iran and its genocide in Gaza are “quickly reaching the point of no return”.

“This madness must end as soon as possible,” Erdogan said during a speech to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s youth forum in Istanbul. “Israel complained about damage to its hospitals today, yet it has so far carried out over 700 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza alone,” he added, reiterating calls for a ceasefire.

At least 16 Palestinian aid seekers were among the 29 killed by the latest Israeli army fire in Gaza Thursday, local health officials said.

The 16 people were killed and dozens more were injured in Israeli gunfire while waiting for food near an aid distribution point in the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza.

Seven more people lost their lives and several others were injured when an Israeli drone hit near a tent for displaced people in the Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City, the source added.

Six civilians were also killed in separate attacks in Gaza City, medics said.

According to the Gaza Government Media Office, 300 aid seekers have been killed and 2,649 injured by Israeli army fire near distribution points since Israel launched a new aid collection system in the Palestinian territory on May 27.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed concern over the deteriorating situation of health care facilities in the Gaza Strip, calling for unimpeded entry of aid and fuel into the besieged enclave.

“Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, #Gaza, is struggling to stay operational amid relentless strain and lack of supplies,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X late Wednesday.

He said that the hospital received over 300 injured people Tuesday alone, reportedly linked to two incidents near non-U.N. militarized food distribution sites where 75 people died, including 11 children.

‘Time is ticking’

About 590 patients are currently hospitalized, Tedros noted and said that it is almost double Nasser’s capacity.

“The hospital is unable to increase its capacity due to lack of ventilators, monitors, beds and staff.”

The WHO chief underlined that Nasser is located within the evacuation zone, but he added many health workers cannot reach the hospital due to fear for safety or lack of fuel for transportation.

Tedros said WHO delivered a minimum amount of fuel on Wednesday which is enough to sustain just five more days of operation but warned that without additional fuel, services will begin shutting down.

“WHO once again calls for the protection of the hospital; for unimpeded entry of health aid and fuel into and across Gaza via all possible routes,” he said.

“Time is ticking to save lives. Ceasefire!” the WHO director-general added.

The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a cease-fire, has pursued a genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023, killing more than 55,600 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

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.

CNN (citing Israeli officials):

According to Israeli officials cited by CNN, Israel launched its operation against Iran without a firm US commitment to join.

They believed that early military successes might entice Trump into military involvement.

However, the pace of Israeli success is slowing, and officials warn that this increases the risk of a miscalculation.

They acknowledged that Israel cannot eliminate all of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Supreme Court has revived long-running lawsuits against Palestinian authorities from Americans killed or wounded in attacks in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

The United States Supreme Court has upheld a statute passed by Congress to facilitate lawsuits against Palestinian authorities by Americans killed or injured in attacks abroad as plaintiffs pursue monetary damages for violence years ago in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

The 9-0 ruling overturned a lower court’s decision that the 2019 law, the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, violated the rights of the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization to due process under the US Constitution.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the ruling, said the 2019 jurisdictional law comported with due process rights enshrined in the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

“It is permissible for the federal government to craft a narrow jurisdictional provision that ensures, as part of a broader foreign policy agenda, that Americans injured or killed by acts of terror have an adequate forum in which to vindicate their right” to compensation under a federal law known as the Anti-terrorism Act of 1990, Roberts wrote.

The US government and a group of American victims and their families had appealed the lower court’s decision that struck down a provision of the law.

Among the plaintiffs are families who in 2015 won a $655m judgement in a civil case alleging that the Palestinian organisations were responsible for a series of shootings and bombings around Jerusalem from 2002 to 2004. They also include relatives of Ari Fuld, a Jewish settler in the Israel-occupied West Bank who was fatally stabbed by a Palestinian in 2018.

Advertisement

The ruling comes even as Jewish settlements on Palestinian-owned land are considered illegal under international law.

“The plaintiffs, US families who had loved ones maimed or murdered in PLO-sponsored terror attacks, have been waiting for justice for many years,” said Kent Yalowitz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

“I am very hopeful that the case will soon be resolved without subjecting these families to further protracted and unnecessary litigation,” Yalowitz added.

Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, and now Iran, served as a backdrop to the case. Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, more than 55,000 people have been killed and 130,000 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

US courts for years have grappled over whether they have jurisdiction in cases involving the Palestinian Authority and PLO for actions taken abroad.

Under the language at issue in the 2019 law, the PLO and Palestinian Authority automatically “consent” to jurisdiction if they conduct certain activities in the United States or make payments to people who attack Americans.

Roberts in Friday’s ruling wrote that Congress and the president enacted the jurisdictional law based on their “considered judgment to subject the PLO and PA (Palestinian Authority) to liability in US courts as part of a comprehensive legal response to ‘halt, deter and disrupt’ acts of international terrorism that threaten the life and limb of American citizens”.

New York-based US District Judge Jesse Furman ruled in 2022 that the law violated the due process rights of the PLO and Palestinian Authority. The New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.

President Joe Biden’s administration initiated the government’s appeal, which subsequently was taken up by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on April 1.

Over 40 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire while queueing for food at Gaza aid site

Israeli forces have killed more than 120 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours, medical sources have told Al Jazeera, including dozens of hungry aid seekers, as Israel continues to relentlessly bombard the besieged territory, with the overall war death toll now surpassing a staggering 55,000 people.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 57 people trying to access aid were killed and more than 363 injured by Israel since Wednesday morning. The distribution points are operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed drive in tightly Israeli-controlled zones.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has described the GHF aid system as a “dramatic success” despite mass killings and scenes of utter human desperation, triggering widespread international opprobrium.

The isolated aid sites – set up in Rafah and in the Netzarim Corridor – have been branded “human slaughterhouses” as more than 220 people have been killed while desperately trying to secure meagre food parcels for their families since GHF started operating on May 27.

The Israeli army has admitted its troops fired “warning shots” in the area of the Netzarim Corridor, where the majority of aid seekers were reported killed overnight.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said the Israeli military “is deliberately creating chaos in the Gaza Strip by perpetuating a policy of starvation and deliberately targeting and killing starving people seeking food”.

The United Nations also condemned the killings and has refused to supply aid via the foundation, which uses private contractors with Israeli military backup in what the UN says is a breach of humanitarian standards.

Advertisement

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) called the aid distribution model “a distraction from the ongoing atrocities and a waste of resources”.

It reiterated that the humanitarian community in Gaza, including UNRWA, is “ready and has the experience and expertise to reach people in need”.

Israel has banned UNRWA and other legacy aid agencies with decades of experience from operating in Gaza, where a famine looms, while it maintains a punishing aid blockade.

Chris Newton, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Israel’s chaotic and violence-plagued aid system is deliberately structured to keep Palestinians desperate and hungry while pushing them southward.

Newton told Al Jazeera that GHF’s stated aim of providing 1,750 calories worth of food per person per day is well short of the minimum standard for crisis situations.

That amount of food is “closer to the ration given in a starvation experiment run in the 1940s in the US than it is to Israel’s own previous 2008 red line for the minimum calories needed to avoid malnutrition in Gaza,” said Newton.

‘A war on children’

Elsewhere in Gaza on Wednesday, dozens of other people were killed by Israeli gunfire and strikes across the coastal territory.

An Israeli attack in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighbourhood killed at least seven people, according to local medical sources.

Three Palestinians, including two children, were killed when an Israeli strike hit a home in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, while in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, three more Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone strike, which wounded several others, according to the news agency Wafa.

In southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, Israeli air strikes on displacement tents in the Tiberias camp killed four Palestinians, including a child, and wounded others, Wafa said.

Children have borne much of the brunt of Israel’s ongoing assault. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the total death toll from Israel’s war has risen to 55,104 since October 7, 2023 – most of them women and children.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said al-Shifa Hospital, like many other health facilities, has been reduced in terms of its capacity to provide proper healthcare to people, let alone children.

UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who was at al-Shifa, said, “Everywhere we go, this is the same scenario.

“Despite doctors’ most incredible efforts, we see children being brutalised, burned … because it’s a war on children.”

Arrest of Madleen crew ‘arbitrary, unlawful’

In the meantime, Israel continues to hold some of the crew members and activists who were on board the Madleen aid vessel trying to break the Israeli siege. Israeli forces intercepted the vessel and its 12 crew members in international waters off Gaza earlier this week.

Advertisement

While it deported four of the members, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, eight others remain in detention.

The group Adalah–The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel called on Israel to immediately release the remaining detained volunteers and return them either “to the Madleen to resume their humanitarian mission to Gaza or to their countries of origin”.

At least two of the detainees were placed in solitary confinement, according to their lawyers, though one – Rima Hassan – has since been returned to the main prison wing.

Brazilian national Thiago Avila was placed in solitary at Ayalon Prison due to an “ongoing hunger and thirst strike” that began this week. “He has also been treated aggressively by prison authorities, although this has not escalated to physical assault,” Adalah said.

Hassan, a French citizen and member of the European Parliament, was also temporarily placed in isolation in Neve Tirza Prison after writing “Free Palestine” on a wall in another prison called Givon.

The UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, has decried the arrests as “arbitrary” and “unlawful” and also called for the detainees’ immediate release.

The Israeli military says it recovered the bodies of Yair Yaakov and a second captive, whose name has not yet been released, in a joint operation in Khan Younis with the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet.