Live: 54 Palestinians killed, 831 wounded in 24 hours

Our live blog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.

Here are the day's key developments:

- More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to access food in Gaza since the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operations, the United Nations said on Tuesday. 

- The number of people who have died from famine and malnutrition in Gaza has climbed to 101, the territory’s Ministry of Health said. 

- The World Food Programme (WFP) says hunger in Gaza has reached alarming levels, with a third of the population going days without food due to Israel’s ongoing blockade.

- The highest-ranking Catholic official in the Holy Land, Pierbatista Pizzaballa, has condemned Gaza’s humanitarian crisis as “morally unacceptable” following a visit to the besieged enclave.

- Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) on Tuesday announced that it has lost contact with its own guards that are holding an Israeli soldier, Rom Braslavski, captive in Gaza. 

- The Trump administration announced it will be withdrawing from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) because the agency admitted Palestine as a member.

Extremist Israeli politicians and right-wing settlers held a conference in Israel's parliament on Tuesday where they said the US had given them the "green light" to transform the besieged Gaza Strip into a "resort town" once they had completed the ethnic cleansing of more than two million Palestinians.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel had received a "green light from the president of the United States to turn Gaza into a prosperous strip, a resort town with employment".

"We will occupy Gaza and make it an inseparable part of Israel," Smotrich told a few dozen attendees at the event titled "The Gaza Riviera - From Vision to Reality".

Read more: The idea of turning Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East" was first floated by US President Donald Trump

The ministry of health in Gaza said on Tuesday that since the beginning of June, it has registered 45 cases of what it described as "acute flaccid paralysis," marking an "unprecedented increase in such cases".

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website describes the condition as "an uncommon but serious neurologic condition" which "causes the muscles and reflexes in the body to become weak," mostly in children. There is no known targeted cure. 

"With the inability to diagnose, these cases could be polio or Guillain-Barré syndrome," the statement from the Gaza health ministry said.

"This increase [in cases] is due to the catastrophic environmental and health conditions facing the residents of the Gaza Strip, including water pollution, the collapse of sanitation services, the accumulation of waste, and the spread of infectious diseases, along with malnutrition and weakened immunity". 

A US official told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday that President Donald Trump's Special Envoy for Peace Missions, Steve Witkoff, will travel to Europe this week for discussions involving Israel's war on Gaza. 

The official did not specify exactly who Witkoff will meet on his trip. 

Malnourishment is soaring and starvation is knocking on every door in Gaza, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday, describing the situation in the Palestinian enclave as a "horror show".

"And now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles," Guterres told the UN Security Council.

"That system is being denied the conditions to function. Denied the space to deliver. Denied the safety to save lives".

- Reporting by Reuters

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has been warned he could "end up in The Hague" due to his "inaction" and "cowardice" over Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

Conservative MP Kit Malthouse addressed Lammy in the House of Commons on Monday after the foreign secretary announced that the UK and 24 other countries were once again urging Israel to commit to a ceasefire.

Lammy said that the UK was setting aside £60m ($84m) in humanitarian assistance to Gaza. But the Labour MP for Tottenham stopped short of suggesting his government would be recognising a Palestinian state - which he is under pressure from MPs to do so ahead of a UN conference at the end of this month.

Read more: Malthouse, a vocal critic of Israel's war on Gaza, lashed out at Lammy

The Palestinian Authority, as the representative for the State of Palestine, responded on Tuesday to the Trump administration's withdrawal from the United Nations cultural agency Unesco, calling it an "unacceptable politicisation". 

"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicisation of Unesco’s work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel, the illegal occupying Power, against heritage, culture, and archaeological sites in Palestine, as well as in other areas such as education, science, media, and the environment," the statement said.

"The State of Palestine calls on the United States to cease granting Israel impunity in international forums [and] the United States should not bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel," it added. 

Otherwise, the statement continued, the Trump administration "would find itself compelled to withdraw from the entire multilateral international system, in order to shield Israel from accountability, thus encouraging it to continue perpetrating its crimes as a rogue state operating outside the framework of international legality".

Palestine's membership in Unesco is "to safeguard Palestinian tangible and intangible heritage from violations and from the systematic destruction carried out by Israel, particularly in Jerusalem and throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory," the statement said. 

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) on Tuesday announced that it has lost contact with its own guards that are holding an Israeli soldier captive in Gaza. 

PIJ said it does not know the fate of Rom Braslavski or those who were assigned to keep him alive. 

Fighting factions in Gaza, including Hamas, have often lost contact with one another and their own teams as they turn to more primitive communication methods to avoid detection and surveillance. 

The Trump administration on Tuesday announced it will be withdrawing from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) because the agency admitted Palestine as a member.

"Unesco’s decision to admit the 'State of Palestine' as a Member State is highly problematic, contrary to US policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization," the State Department said. 

"Continued involvement in Unesco is not in the national interest of the United States". 

The withdrawal, per the rules, will not take effect until 31 December, 2026.

US President Donald Trump withdrew from Unesco during his first term for the very same reason, before his successor Joe Biden rejoined the agency.

And under former president Barack Obama, US funding to Unesco was suspended when it first recognised Palestine as a member in 2011. 

Gila Gamliel, Israel’s science and technology minister, has shared an AI-generated video on X showing post-war Gaza with Palestinians ethnically cleansed from the territory.

The video imagines a Trump Tower and other high rise buildings in the Palestinian enclave.

It also shows Israelis enjoying food and drinks in markets, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks along the beach with his wife.

“This is what Gaza will look like in the future. Voluntary migration of Gazans only with Trump and Netanyahu. It’s us or them,” Gamliel wrote.

חשיפה : כך עזה תראה בעתיד.
הגירת עזתים מרצון רק עם טראמפ ונתניהו.

זה אנחנו או - הם !

לינק לתוכנית ההגירה מרצון מעזה שהגשתי לקבינט בשבוע הראשון למלחמת 'חרבות ברזל' 13.10.23 בתגובה הראשונה. pic.twitter.com/kdPXcONmQl

— גילה גמליאל - Gila Gamliel (@GilaGamliel) July 22, 2025

An upcoming food festival in Jordan has sparked fierce condemnation and calls for a boycott amid rising deaths from starvation and dehydration in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing Israeli blockade. 

A series of posters for the second annual Jordan International Food Festival - due to take place next month - advertise an "unforgettable culinary experience" that highlights local ingredients and chefs. 

But they have sparked anger among many on social media who are questioning the promotion of an "extravagant" food event against the backdrop of a hunger crisis and spreading famine in neighbouring Palestine, where at least 100 people have already died from malnutrition.

"Gaza is literally dying of hunger, and a few kilometres away, the Jordan International Food Festival is taking place?!" one user commented on Facebook.

"A festival of food, extravagance, and photography... over the bodies of children dying of hunger. This is not just a lack of feelings, but a complete moral failure," he continued, adding that people should boycott or cancel the event.

"Cancel the food festival in Jordan. No celebration while Gaza is starving," reads an image shared in Instagram templates, a format which allows for photos to be reshared by different users. 

"A festival just kilometers away from a genocide is not culture - it's complicity."

Read more: Planned Jordan food festival slammed as 'shameful' amid mass starvation in Gaza

Piles of dead bodies and wounded people. That is all 18 year-old Mohammad al-Ewadi could see around him.

He was among thousands of starving Palestinians heading towards the al-Sudaniya area in northwestern Gaza City on Sunday morning. 

There, trucks from the World Food Programme (WFP) were expected to arrive, offering a rare chance to access long-denied essential supplies.

But as people gathered near the truck, Israeli troops surrounded relief-seekers, directly and indiscriminately shooting towards them, according to eyewitnesses, among them Ewadi.

"They [the Israeli army] fired heavily at us from the tanks," he told Middle East Eye, describing how military vehicles moved through the crowd, at times passing within inches of civilians.

"There are now piles of martyrs. It was chaos... the scenes were grotesque, truly grotesque.

"People were being shot from all directions. If someone next to you was hit, you couldn’t help them. You just wanted to hide, in that moment, saving yourself becomes the only thing that matters."

Read more: Palestinians recall Israeli massacre of nearly 100 aid seekers

Fifteen Palestinians died from malnutrition under an Israeli-imposed famine in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday. 

Four of them were children, including three identified as the infant Yousef al-Safadi, Abd al-Jawad al-Ghalban, 16, and Ahmad Hasanat.

One of the adults was identified as 32-year-old woman with special needs, Raheel Rosros. 

Medical officials confirmed the deaths occurred across Gaza's north and south, underscoring widespread starvation amid severe shortages of food and aid.

The latest death bring Gaza's starvation toll to at least 101 Palestinians, including 80 children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. 

Read more: Fifteen more Palestinians die from starvation amid Israeli-imposed famine

Nearly 60 British MPs and peers have called for a full embargo on arms exports to Israel and for the government to be more transparent about the licences it grants for military exports.

Their demands, outlined in a 18 July letter sent to Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, come as Lammy has warned Israel of further sanctions if it does not reach a ceasefire in Gaza.

The UK joined 27 other countries, including Australia, Canada and France, to condemn Israel for depriving Palestinians of "human dignity", and urged the Israeli government to immediately lift restriction on flow of aid.

"We've announced a raft of sanctions over the last few months," Lammy told ITV's Good Morning Britain on Tuesday. 

“There will be more, clearly, and we keep all of those options under consideration if we do not see a change in behaviour and the suffering that we are seeing come to an end.”

Read more: Nearly 60 British MPs and peers call for full arms embargo on Israel

The AFP journalists' union has warned that its colleagues working in Gaza are facing death from starvation, as a result of Israel's blockade on the besieged Palestinian territory.

Famine caused by Israel's war and blockade on Gaza is spreading across the region, with a growing number of deaths due to malnutrition and dehydration reported in recent days.

"We have lost journalists in conflicts, we have had wounded and imprisoned in our ranks, but none of us remembers seeing a colleague die of hunger," the union, SDJ (Society of Journalists), said in a statement on Monday.

Following the union's statement,  AFP management said it "shares the anguish expressed by the SDJ regarding the appalling situation of its staff" and urged Israel to allow their evacuation.

Read more: AFP warns Gaza journalists risk starving to death amid ongoing Israeli siege