Israel’s war on Gaza live: 300,000 Palestinians flee Gaza City invasion
‘Suspicious’ aerial targets from Lebanon intercepted: Israeli army
The Israeli military says projectiles fired from Lebanon approached Israel and were “successfully intercepted” by air defences.
“The suspicious aerial targets did not cross into Israeli territory, and no sirens were sounded in accordance with protocol,” an army statement said.
Earlier, a local official told Israel’s Channel 12 that one person was critically wounded after several drones from Lebanon crashed in the north.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israel have traded fire for nine months in hostilities that have played out in parallel to the Gaza conflict, raising fears of an all-out war between the heavily armed adversaries.
Israeli forces arrest Palestinian, demolish a home in West Bank
Israeli military raids are continuing in the occupied West Bank. The footage below shows a Palestinian being arrested by Israeli forces in Birzeit, north of Ramallah.
Israeli bulldozers reportedly began demolishing a three-storey home in the Khirbet Qalqas area, south of Hebron in the occupied territory.
The Wafa news agency cites the brother of the building’s owner as saying 30 people will now be displaced after the destruction of the house under the pretext of not having a building permit.
Gallant meets with US envoy amid reported row with Netanyahu
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has met with White House Middle East envoy Brett McGurk in Israel to discuss the war on Gaza.
His office said in a statement that the two discussed progress on the ceasefire agreement, “with an emphasis on the security measures required to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza”.
It said the two discussed delivery of “critical munition, some of which will be sent to Israel in the coming days”. Gallant’s office characterised the meeting as a follow-up to the one in Washington, DC, in late June.
This comes as Israeli media are reporting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberating removing Gallant from his government amid disagreements on issues including enlisting ultra-Orthodox Jews for military service.
Visualising how Israel keeps stealing Palestinian land
In 2024, Israel illegally seized 23.7sq km (9.15sq miles) of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, amid its ongoing war on Gaza.
That’s more than the land it took over the past 20 years combined.
On July 2, Israeli authorities announced the largest single seizure in more than 30 years – 12.7sq km (4.9sq miles) in the Jordan Valley.
It was the latest in a series of land grabs announced this year by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oversees settlement planning.
Israel has seized more than 50sq km (19.3sq miles) of Palestinian land since 1998, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog.
In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera unpacks the land Israel has stolen from Palestinians.
Anti-Semitisim rising across Europe because of Gaza war
An EU rights watchdog says Europe’s Jewish community faces a “rising tide of anti-Semitism” because of the war on Gaza, “eroding” progress made in the fight against it.
“The spillover effect of the conflict in the Middle East is eroding hard fought-for progress” in tackling anti-Jewish hate, Fundamental Rights Agency Director Sirpa Rautio said.
“Jews are more frightened than ever before.”
Even before Israel’s war on Gaza, the agency found 96 percent of European Jews said they encountered anti-Semitism during the previous year.
Using information collected from 12 Jewish organisations in 2024, the report found that across Europe, 76 percent reported hiding their Jewish identity “at least occasionally” and 34 percent avoid Jewish events or sites “because they do not feel safe”.
In France, 74 percent of Jews said they felt the war affected their sense of security – the highest rate among the countries surveyed.
UN reports ‘utterly appalling’ conditions at school sheltering 14,000
The facility run by the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is housing 14,000 displaced civilians in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
According to Louise Wateridge, a UNRWA spokesperson, the shelter has not had any food to distribute since March 11, and once-healthy children are now “unrecognisable” because of severe malnutrition and disease.
“Our colleagues shared that two people had already died in this facility because of the lack of sanitation and there is a spread of hepatitis A and skin diseases,” she said.
“The facility only has 25 toilets, meaning 560 people are sharing one single toilet with no hygiene products and a shortage of water due to lack of fuel, to pump the water from the well.”
‘Destruction of agricultural land for possible establishment of a buffer zone’
Israeli military manoeuvres across the Gaza Strip continue to create much more difficult situations on the ground while there is a partial withdrawal in the Shujayea neighbourhood.
The military pulled out of the area, where it had been operating for the past month, destroying the vast majority of its residential buildings and bulldozing large areas of its agricultural land in what looks like the establishment of a buffer zone, leaving the rest of the Shujayea neighbourhood in complete ruins.
Social services have been eliminated. All remaining residential buildings and public facilities, including schools as well as privately owned facilities like UNRWA facilities in the Shujayea neighbourhood, were completely destroyed.
As people made their way back to check on their homes and residential blocks, they were shocked by the level of devastation.
‘Nothing can prepare you to witness what Palestinians have endured’
Hams Smith, an emergency physician who recently returned from Gaza, says he has never witnessed anything as dramatic as what he saw in the Palestinian enclave in all his career in conflict zones.
“Nobody can adequately prepare for what Palestinian healthcare workers and Palestinians in Gaza have endured in the last nine months,” Smith told Al Jazeera.
“I have worked in several humanitarian and conflict-affected contexts in my career so far and nothing comes even close to the sheer scale and barbarity and violence that is being meted out against the Palestinian people,” he said.
“These are desperate times and anyone who is able to render useful support at this time – be they clinician, nurses or nutrition specialists – and have the privilege to enter Gaza, should do so,” he added, explaining why he returned to the Strip in May following a previous trip in December.
