Live: UK halts trade deal talks with Israel, summons ambassador over Gaza

The Israeli government’s plan to demolish what remains of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and concentrate the Palestinian population into a tiny area would amount to an abhorrent escalation of its ongoing crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and acts of genocide, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday in a report.

“Hearing Israeli officials flaunt plans to squeeze Gaza’s two million people into an even tinier area while making the rest of the land uninhabitable should be treated like a five-alarm fire in London, Brussels, Paris, and Washington,” said Federico Borello, interim executive director of HRW.

“Israel’s blockade has transcended military tactics to become a tool of extermination, Borello said as the organisation called on all parties to the Genocide Convention to do more to prevent further atrocities in Gaza.

States that signed the #Genocide Convention are obligated to prevent genocide - not enable it.

By arming and backing #Israel as it starves and displaces 2 million people in #Gaza, 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 & other 🇪🇺 states risk legal liability for complicity. @hrw: https://t.co/ZsYuihBCLH pic.twitter.com/3MLWNXpU3Z

— Claudio Francavilla (@ClaFrancavilla) May 15, 2025

Beside a makeshift firewood stove, in a classroom that has served as their home for the past year, Um Kamal Ubeid gently feeds her one-year-old grandson, Kareem.

The dish is simple: bread soaked in tea, but for Palestinians in Gaza, it has become a lifeline amid extreme scarcity.

Known locally as tea fattah, the modest meal is long associated with Gaza’s darkest times, like Israeli offensives and prolonged blockades.

Now, with rice, grains and tinned food all exhausted under an ongoing total Israeli siege, it is all the Ubeid family have left to survive on.

“I don’t exactly remember the first time I had tea fattah, but I was around 14 during the early years of the blockade and the 2008–2009 war,” said Kareem’s father, Kamal Ubeid, 32, speaking to Middle East Eye.

Read more: From feast to survival: The ‘fake’ makloubeh and fattah of a starving Gaza

More than 74 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in a wave of Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, according to Al Jazeera.

At least 57 people were killed in overnight attacks and the death toll increased on Thursday morning as a barrage of strikes hit residential areas in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, according to local health officials, the report said.

Medical staff at Nasser Medical Complex reported an influx of casualties, many of them children.

The US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he wanted the United States to "take" Gaza and turn it into a "freedom zone", as Israel's war on the Palestinian territory rages on.

"I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good - make it a freedom zone, let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone," the US leader said in Qatar, adding: "I'd be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone."

Israeli attacks on Thursday killed at least 50 people in the war-battered Palestinian territory, AFP reported, citing Gaza's civil defence agency.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were "recovered from rubble" after a dawn strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, while another 35 were killed in 12 separate strikes across the Gaza Strip.

Bassal added that in southern Gaza, one woman was killed in artillery shelling, and one man by gunfire.

Good morning, Middle East Eye readers,

Here are some of the latest updates on Gaza and across the region:

• Gaza rescuers said at least 34 people were killed in Israeli strikes and artillery shelling in the war-battered Palestinian territory since dawn on Thursday.

• Ben Cohen, co‑founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and a longtime progressive activist, told AFP he was speaking for millions of Americans outraged by the "slaughter" in Gaza after his removal from a US  Senate hearing on Wednesday.

• A US-backed humanitarian organisation will start work in Gaza by the end of May under a heavily criticised aid distribution plan, but has asked Israel to let the United Nations and others resume deliveries to Palestinians now until it is set up.

• The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has warned that life-saving humanitarian aid stuck in warehouses outside the Gaza Strip is "at risk of spoilage" due to Israel's closure of the crossings.

• A Palestinian young man was shot and wounded by Israeli occupation forces tonight during a raid on the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilya, according to Wafa news agency.

Our live blog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

- Wednesday marked one of the bloodiest days in Gaza since Israel resumed its bombardment of the Strip on 18 March. Nearly 100 have been killed since dawn, local reports said. 

- Israel's attacks in Gaza this week send the signal they are not interested in negotiating a ceasefire, Qatar's prime minister told CNN.

- Israel has agreed to resume aid to Gaza, but only through the US-formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a statement from the organisation said. The first supplies would be distributed before the end of the month.

- China's UN envoy has weighed in on the US-Israeli plan for Gaza's aid distribution, and demanded that Israel "fulfil its obligations as the occupying power under international humanitarian law by immediately lifting the blockade and restoring full access to supplies".

- Around 90 percent of families in Gaza are facing severe water shortages amid widespread destruction of infrastructure, Wafa news agency is reporting citing medical sources.

- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday of standing with Hamas after Macron said Israel's policy in Gaza was "shameful".

- Right-wing European leaders Friedrich Merz and Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday said Netanyahu ought to show restraint in Gaza, but they did not indicate that they would take any measures to hold him accountable.

- A federal judge in Virginia ordered the release of Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri on bail. Suri was taken away by masked men outside his home on 17 March in a suburb of Washington, DC, for his pro-Palestine views. 

Israel has agreed to resume aid to Gaza, but only through the US-formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a statement from the organisation said on Wednesday.

The effort would bypass the decades-old infrastructure put in place by the United Nations and its agencies, despite protests by the international body and several world leaders. 

"The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) today announced that it will launch operations in the Gaza Strip before the end of the month. This follows discussions with Israeli officials to allow the flow of transitional aid into Gaza under existing mechanisms while construction of GHF's Secure Distribution Sites (SDS) is completed," the statement read.

The first 90 days of GHF's services is expected to provide 300 million meals, the organisation said. 

It added that it will ensure its "own security" in the Strip, and alleged that Hamas had previously been stealing aid. 

Israel has yet to confirm it has indeed agreed to the initiative. 

Israel's attacks in Gaza this week send the signal they are not interested in negotiating a ceasefire, Qatar's prime minister told CNN in an interview on Wednesday.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said a US-backed Israeli plan for humanitarian aid distribution was unnecessary, stressing the United Nations should be allowed to deliver aid to the war-torn enclave.

- Reporting by Reuters

A shooting in Salfit, close to Nablus in the occupied West Bank, has killed one Israeli settler and injured two others, one of them critically, Israeli media reported late on Wednesday.

In a statement, Hamas said the attack "represents the true pulse of the West Bank and reflects the spirit of resistance inherent in our people, who refuse to accept injustice and aggression and continue to respond to the crimes, aggression, and malicious plans of the occupation aimed at controlling our land and displacing our people for the sake of further occupation expansion."

The group did not claim responsibility for the shooting, but urged more such actions.

"We call on the people of our proud West Bank to carry out further painful operations against the occupation and its settler gangs, and to unite behind the option of resistance and steadfastness in the face of the occupation and its arrogance," the statement said. 

The Quds News Network is reporting Israeli bombardment in both northern and southern Gaza on Wednesday evening local time, specifically targeting residential buildings belonging to families.

Wednesday has already been one of the deadliest days for Palestinians since Israel resumed its full-scale war on Gaza on 18 March.

Right-wing European leaders on Wednesday said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ought to show restraint in Gaza, but they did not indicate that they would take any measures to hold him accountable.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Israel should more carefully consider how it carries out its air strikes in Gaza, given the lives of the Israeli captives are at stake there, but also said Netanyahu should still be able to visit Germany despite an outstanding International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday said that Israel must respect international law, and she called the humanitarian situation in Gaza "dramatic and unjustifiable".

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called out Netanyahu's policy in Gaza as "shameful" and "unacceptable".

Netanyahu later said Macron was siding with Hamas. 

A federal judge in Virginia on Wednesday ordered the release of Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri on bail. Suri was taken away by masked men outside his home on 17 March in a suburb of Washington, DC.

The men, who turned out to be federal agents, said his visa was revoked on the orders of the Secretary of State Marco Rubio for “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media".

Suri is married to a Palestinian American whose father once advised the Hamas political bureau. 

He has been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention since, having been transferred to a facility in Texas that he has described as overcrowded and unsanitary. 

The government's case - an attempt to deport him for his political views - will continue while Suri is reunited with his family. 

The move follows the release of two other students who were detained for their pro-Palestinian views in different parts of the country. 

Canada's new foreign minister, Anita Anand, accused Israel on Wednesday of using a lack of food as a political tool in its war on Gaza, and urged further work on a ceasefire with Hamas.

Israel has completely sealed off the Gaza Strip since early March.

"We cannot allow the continued use of food as a political tool ... Over 50,000 people have died as a result of the aggression caused against the Palestinians and the Gazan people in Palestine. Using food as a political tool is simply unacceptable," Anand told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting.

"We need to continue to work towards a ceasefire. We need to ensure that we have a two-state solution, and Canada will continue to maintain that position."