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

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Tuesday that France backs a review of the EU's association agreement as part of "further action" being considered by the UK, France and Canada over Israel's war on Gaza.

The 1995 association agreement is the legal basis for Israel's relations with the EU, including diplomacy and trade.

Israel's easing of humanitarian aid access to Gaza is "totally insufficient ... Immediate and massive aid is needed," Barrot told France Inter radio.

He said Israel needed to ensure massive, immediate aid without any hindrance.

The leaders of Britain, Canada and France on Monday threatened sanctions against Israel if it does not stop a renewed military offensive in Gaza and lift aid restrictions, piling further pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Reporting by Reuters

Israel's far-right minister Bezlal Smotrich said the UK, Canada and France have “morally aligned themselves with a terrorist organisation that raped, slaughtered, murdered and burned women, babies, and children," and that "they have gone so far as to seek to reward terrorism by granting it a state."

His comments come after the leaders of the three countries issued a joined statement on Monday calling on Israel to bring the war in Gaza to a halt, warning that its “disproportionate” military operations in Gaza may be violating international law.

"Israel will not bow its head before this moral hypocrisy, antisemitism, and one-sidedness. It will continue its just and moral war until Hamas is destroyed, the hostages are returned, and the threat from the Gaza Strip to Israeli citizens is eliminated,” Smotrich said.

He added: "Israel will never agree to the establishment of a terrorist state in its midst that would endanger its existence and threaten the future of the Jewish people."

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says that it was terminating $60m in federal grants to Harvard University, saying the Ivy League institution failed to address antisemitic harassment and ethnic discrimination on campus.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen or ended federal grants and contracts for the university worth nearly $3bn in recent weeks.

Since taking office in January, the Republican president has sought to use federal research funding to overhaul US academia, which he says has been gripped by anti-American, Marxist and “radical left” ideologies.

The administration has accused Harvard of continuing to consider ethnicity when reviewing student applications and of allowing discrimination against Jews as a result of the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian student protest movement that hit US campuses last year.

New York’s Columbia University has also been targeted over alleged antisemitism.

“Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address antisemitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards … over their full duration,” the health department said in a post on X.

Harvard University did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based institution has previously said it “cannot absorb the entire cost” of the frozen grants, and that it was working with researchers to help them find alternative funding. It is also suing the Trump administration over its decision to cut grants.

Reporting by Reuters

A petition signed by 761 aid groups and non-governmental organisations has urged countries around the world to break the Israeli siege on Gaza and send diplomatic humanitarian convoys through the Rafah crossing.

The move, which was initiated by Palestinian civil society groups on 12 May, received more than 300 signatures in one day, with the participation of prominent human rights groups including Human Rights Watch.

“We urge states to join the humanitarian convoy by dispatching official diplomatic missions - at the highest possible level - to accompany the aid trucks already waiting at the Rafah crossing, and to enter Gaza alongside them,” the petition states.

“This act is grounded in states’ legal obligations, moral courage, and human solidarity,” it adds.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

Here are some of the latest updates from Israel's war on Gaza:

 - At least 50 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since the early hours of Tuesday, with the death toll from the shelling of a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza rising to nine people.

- The Israeli army said on X it has shot done a drone that was crossing the border from Egypt to Israel attempting to "smuggle weapons" on Monday night.

- At least 10 have been killed in a bombing that targeted Musa Bin Nusair School, sheltering displaced Palestinians, in Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.

- Another Israeli strike on a petrol station in the Nuseirat refugee camp has killed at least 15 people.

- Canada, France and the United Kingdom have threatened sanctions against Israel if it does not end its renewed military offensive in Gaza and lift restrictions on aid.

- UN Women says an average of one girl and one woman are killed by Israeli attacks every hour, with more than 28,000 females now killed in the Strip since the war broke out in October 2023.

Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza has been left without its key power sources after Israeli forces targeted all three power generators, Al Jazeera reported on Momday.

“The hospital is now operating on backup energy from solar panel batteries, which are expected to last only a few more hours,” Hind Khoudary wrote in an update on X.

“Medical staff warn that patients in the intensive care unit are at imminent risk as power supplies dwindle.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was allowing limited food and water into Gaza for the first time in 11 weeks due to pressure from the US, reported Reuters on Monday.

Netanyahu said he would allow nine trucks into the besieged strip for a population of more than two million people, in a move that US civil rights and advocacy organisation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called a “completely insufficient, psychotic PR stunt”.

“The Israeli government’s decision to let a trickle of aid into Gaza - reportedly only nine aid trucks in a day - will do nothing to relieve the threat of famine facing two million Palestinian men, women and children besieged in Gaza. This is a completely insufficient, psychotic PR stunt by Netanyahu’s genocidal government, which is determined to occupy and flatten Gaza, and then expel any Palestinians who survive. The genocide - and our nation’s support for that genocide - must end,” Cair said in a statement.

Netanyahu said that US senators who have been supporters of Israel for years have told him the terrible images of people being starved by Israel in Gaza have caused a loss of support and have brought Israel close “to a point where we might lose control”.

“It is for that reason, in order to achieve victory, we have to somehow solve the problem,” Netanyahu said in a message that appeared to be addressed to hardliners in his government.

A resolution was introduced by 29 US Senate Democrats last week urging the Trump administration to use “all diplomatic tools” to stop Israel’s blockade of Gaza and allow aid in.

“Children are starving to death. They’re starving to death as we are here comfortably debating what we think are important issues,” said Senator Peter Welch.

“And it must be the effort of all of us to do all we can to bring this siege and this war to an immediate end.”

At least 84 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since dawn, Al Jazeera reported .

Three staff members of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) were killed in Gaza, the UN announced during a press briefing on Monday.

The total number of staff killed is now over 300, the global organisation said.

“The vast majority of staff were killed by the Israeli Army with their children and loved ones: whole families wiped out,” Unrwa commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.

“Several were killed in the line of duty while serving their communities,” he added.

“Nothing justifies these killings,” Lazzarini said. “Impunity will lead to more killing. Those responsible must be held accountable.”

Unrwa has served Palestinian refugees since 1949, supporting nearly 5.9 million people across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Civil rights and advocacy organisation the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) called Israel’s plan to allow only nine aid trucks into Gaza a “completely insufficient, psychotic PR stunt” on Monday.

Israel said it would end its almost three-month blockade to allow aid into Gaza by allowing nine aid trucks into the strip on Monday. But Cair said the move was not enough.

“The Israeli government’s decision to let a trickle of aid into Gaza - reportedly only nine aid trucks in a day - will do nothing to relieve the threat of famine facing two million Palestinian men, women and children besieged in Gaza. This is a completely insufficient, psychotic PR stunt by Netanyahu’s genocidal government, which is determined to occupy and flatten Gaza, and then expel any Palestinians who survive. The genocide - and our nation’s support for that genocide - must end,” Cair said in a statement.

More than 53,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, have been killed in the Gaza strip since Israel started its war.

Israeli forces will flatten Gaza the same way they flatten the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed, according to reports in Al Jazeera on Monday.

“Just as we levelled Rafah, we will level all of Gaza,” Smotrich said in comments reported by the Israeli Army Radio.

 “The army’s operation aims to occupy and cleanse areas in Gaza, and every house we destroy is considered a tunnel in our view.”

On Monday, the first aid trucks entered Gaza after nearly three months of Israel’s complete blockade, according to the UN.

According to Tom Fletcher, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, nine trucks of aid, including baby food, have been cleared to enter the Gaza Strip via the Karem Abu Salem crossing.

“Today, nine of our trucks were cleared to enter,” Fletcher said in a statement on Monday.

“But it is a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed, and significantly more aid must be allowed into Gaza, starting tomorrow morning.

“The limited quantities of aid now being allowed into Gaza are, of course, no substitute for unimpeded access to civilians in such dire need. The UN has a clear, principled and practical plan to save lives at scale, as I set out last week.

Fletcher added, "We are ready to do so much more."

Fletcher said to do more, they need the Israeli authorities to open at least two crossings, facilitate procedures and remove quotas, lift access impediments, not conduct attacks when deliveries are being made, and allow the full range of needs to be met - such as water, food, hygiene, shelter, fuel, gas and other needs.

“To reduce looting, there must be a regular flow of aid, and humanitarians must be permitted to use multiple routes. Commercial goods should complement the humanitarian response.”

Amnesty International (AI) on Monday urged a probe into a US air strike on a migrant detention centre in Saada, north-western Yemen, on 28 April that killed and injured dozens of migrants.

The air strike was one of many undertaken by the US since March that led to hundreds of people being killed and injured in what human rights groups are calling a violation of international humanitarian law.

“The US attacked a well-known detention facility where the Houthis have been detaining migrants who had no means to take shelter. The major loss of civilian life in this attack raises serious concerns about whether the US complied with its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the rules on distinction and precautions,” said Agnès Callamard, AI’s secretary general.

AI spoke with two individuals who work with African migrant and refugee communities in Yemen, and who had visited two nearby hospitals and their morgues in the aftermath of the air strike, confirmed witnessing evidence of a high number of casualties.  

The organisation also analysed satellite imagery and video footage of horrific scenes showing migrants’ bodies strewn across rubble and rescuers trying to pull badly wounded survivors from the debris.  

At least 71 Palestinians have been killed since dawn on Monday, according to Al Jazeera.

A specialist Israeli military unit entered the city of Khan Younis, disguised as women, and attempted to "kidnap" Ahmed Kamel Sarhan, the commander of the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, according to a press release by Hamas on Monday.

Hamas went on to say that Sarhan was able to thwart the operation but was killed in the process, and the operation was a failure for the Israeli military.

They also said the Israeli army detained Sarhan’s wife and child and used them as "human shields" to withdraw from Khan Younis.

Hamas condemned the move as a violation of humanitarian laws. It said they held the Israeli government responsible for the lives of Sarhan’s wife and child, as well as all the prisoners held by Israel. They called on the international community to intervene immediately to protect and release them.

Hamas also said that Israel’s escalating threats of forced eviction and displacement would not weaken the resolve of the Palestinians and their inalienable rights to freedom and self-determination.