Middle East
My nephew asks if he will eat meat only in heaven. I struggle to answer | Israel-Palestine conflict
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When on March 2, we heard all crossings into Gaza were closed, we thought it would not last more than two weeks. We really wanted a normal Ramadan where we could invite our surviving relatives for iftar and not worry about what food we could find to break our fast.
But it did not turn out this way. We spent the holy month breaking our fast with canned food.
My family, like most families in Gaza, had not stocked up on food or essentials, as no one expected the crossings to close again, or the famine – or even the war – to return.
In the days after the closure, food and other basic goods disappeared from the markets, and prices skyrocketed. A kilogramme of any vegetable jumped to $8 or more, sugar $22 and baby formula $11. A sack of flour previously costing $8, went up to $50; within two months, it reached $300.
Most people in Gaza could not afford these prices. As a result, families, including my own, began reducing the number of meals they eat, limiting themselves to just breakfast and dinner, and shrinking each person’s portion – half a loaf of bread for breakfast a whole one for dinner. Men, women, elderly people and children would stand in front of bakeries and charity kitchens for hours, in shame and sorrow, just to get a few loaves of bread or a small plate of food. For some families, this would be their only food for the day.
All the residents of central Gaza, where I live, relied on only three bakeries: two in Nuseirat and one in Deir el-Balah.
The crowds at these bakeries were overwhelming, blocking roads and halting movement in the area. Every day, there were cases of fainting and suffocation due to the pushing and shoving. In the end, only a small number of those who waited since morning would get bread.
My father would go to the bakery before sunrise to line up, instead of using what’s left of our flour, because we did not know how long this situation would last. But he would find the line already long, dozens having slept outside the bakery. He would stay until noon, then send my brother to take his place in the line. In the end, they would return with nothing.
On March 31, the World Food Programme announced the closure of all of its bakeries, including the three we could access, due to the depletion of flour and the lack of gas needed to run the ovens. This marked the start of true famine.
Soon, charity kitchens started closing as well because they ran out of food stock. Dozens of them shuttered in the past week alone. People grew even more desperate, many taking to local groups on Facebook or Telegram to beg for anyone to sell them a bag of flour at a reasonable price.
We live in a “lucky” neighbourhood where the kitchen still functions.
My niece Dana, who is eight years old, lines up in front of it every day with her friends, waiting for her turn as if it were a game. If she receives a single scoop of food, she comes back running, feeling very proud of herself. And if her turn doesn’t come before the food runs out, she returns in tears, complaining about how unfair this world is.
One day during Ramadan, a boy, displaced with his family to the al-Mufti School near our home, was so desperately trying to get food that he fell into the pot of hot food the charity kitchen was cooking. He suffered severe burns and later died from them.
The signs of famine began becoming apparent everywhere about a month and a half after the closure of the crossings. We see them in every aspect of our lives – sleeping on an empty stomach, rapid weight loss within, pale faces, weak bodies. Climbing stairs now takes us twice the effort.
It has become easier to get sick and more difficult to recover. My nephews, 18-month-old Musab and two-year-old Mohammed, developed high fever and flu-like symptoms during Ramadan. It took them a whole month to get better because of the lack of food and medicine.
My mother has been suffering from severe vision loss due to complications after eye surgery she had in late February. The malnutrition and the lack of eye drops she needed to recover have made her condition much worse.
I myself have been unwell. I donated blood to al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat just days before the border was closed and this seriously affected my physical health. Now, I suffer from extreme weakness in my body, weight loss and difficulty focusing. When I went to the doctor, he told me to stop eating canned food and to eat more fruit and meat. He knew that what he was saying was impossible to do, but what else could he say?
Perhaps the most difficult part about this situation is having to explain famine to little children. My nieces and nephews cannot stop asking for things to eat that we simply cannot provide. We struggle to convince them that we are not punishing them by hiding food, but that we simply do not have it.
Five-year-old Khaled keeps asking for meat every day while looking at food pictures on his mother’s phone. He stares at the images and asks whether his martyred father gets to eat all this in heaven. Then he asks when his own turn will come, to join his father and eat with him.
We struggle to answer. We tell him to be patient and that his patience will be rewarded.
I feel helpless seeing daily scenes of famine and desperation. I ask myself, how can the world stay silent while seeing children’s bodies go thin and fragile and the sick and injured die slowly?
The occupation uses every method to kill us – by bombing, starvation, or disease. We have been reduced to begging for a piece of bread. The entire world watches and pretends that it cannot even give us that.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Middle East
Palestinian journalist among two killed in Israeli attack on Gaza hospital | Israel-Palestine conflict News
Hassan Eslaih has been killed in Nasser Hospital during treatment for injuries sustained in the previous Israeli attack.
Israel’s army has admitted to carrying out “a targeted attack” on the Nasser Medical Complex in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing two people, including Palestinian journalist Hassan Eslaih.
Gaza’s Government Media Office on Tuesday confirmed the killing of Eslaih, who was receiving treatment at the hospital’s burn unit for severe injuries sustained during an April 7 Israeli strike on a media tent located next to the hospital.
The AFP news agency footage from Nasser Hospital after Tuesday’s strike showed smoke rising from the facility as rescuers searched through the rubble by the light of torches.
A hospital worker who gave his name as Abu Ghali said the Israeli bombardment “does not differentiate between civilians and military targets”.
“This is a civilian hospital that receives injured people around the clock,” he told AFP.
Eslaih was the director of the Alam24 News Agency and a freelancer who contributed to international news organisations, including photos of the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
Israel has claimed Eslaih was a Hamas fighter who participated in the October 7 attack, an allegation he vehemently denied.
Dozens of journalists killed
At least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon since the war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Gaza’s Government Media Office put the death toll at 215.
Israel’s military said in a post on Telegram that the strike targeted a Hamas “command and control complex” at the hospital – the largest in southern Gaza – without providing further evidence.
“The compound was used by the terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and [military] troops,” the post said, in what appeared to be a reference to Eslaih and Hamas.
Gaza’s Health Ministry on Tuesday condemned “the repeated targeting of hospitals and the pursuit and killing of wounded patients inside treatment rooms”, saying it “confirms Israel’s deliberate intent to inflict greater damage to the healthcare system”.
Hospitals in Gaza have been a frequent target of Israeli attacks since the war began in October 2023, although attacking health facilities, medical personnel and patients is illegal under the 1949 Geneva Convention.
According to officials in Gaza, Israel has bombed and burned at least 36 hospitals across the enclave since the war erupted.
Middle East
Campaigners take UK to court over export of F-35 components to Israel | Israel-Palestine conflict News
The United Kingdom’s government faces a High Court challenge over the export of F-35 jet components used by Israel.
Co-claimants Al-Haq, a Palestinian rights organisation, and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) are behind the case.
“We’re going to court to try to force the government to stop supplying F-35 components to Israel,” Jennine Walker, a lawyer with GLAN and the legal firm Bindmans, representing Al-Haq, told Al Jazeera.
The four-day case is set to begin on Tuesday, as Israel’s onslaught in Gaza continues with the aid of F-35 jets, having already killed more than 61,700 people.
Here’s what you need to know:
What’s happening?
In September 2024, the UK suspended about 30 out of 350 arms export licences to Israel following a review that found there was “a clear risk certain military exports to Israel might be used in violations of international humanitarian law”, according to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
But it carved out an exception for F-35 jet components, citing the F-35 global programme’s importance to international security. The parts, however, would not be sent directly to Israel, the government said.
Al-Haq and GLAN argue that the government is breaking domestic and international law through a loophole by allowing the parts to be supplied to Israel via the global spares pool and F-35 partner countries, “despite the [International Court of Justice] finding that there is plausible risk of genocide being committed against Palestinians in Gaza”.
The UK reportedly provides about 15 percent of the components in the F-35 fighter jets used by Israel.
The case has taken on new significance after a report last week by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Progressives International and Workers for a Free Palestine suggested F-35 parts are still being sent directly to Israel as of March 2025.
“Despite the September 2024 suspension of direct shipments of F-35 components from the UK to Israel, the data suggest such shipments are ongoing as of March 2025”, the report said, citing Israeli tax authority data.
From Tuesday until Friday, High Court judges will examine whether the government’s decision to suspend some but not all arms licences for export to Israel was legally correct.
Al Jazeera understands the judicial review will focus on the carve-out for F-35 jet parts. The campaigners have said they aim to ensure the UK government “urgently suspends all arms exports to Israel”, while accusing the UK of “complicity” in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
What will the campaigners argue?
Co-claimants Al-Haq and GLAN applied for a judicial review into arms export licences to Israel in December 2023, citing violations carried out by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
They say F-35 jets have plausibly been involved in war crimes.
“We know Israel is using the F-35 jets to bomb civilians. For example [in] the attack on March 18 which broke the ceasefire, and this wouldn’t be possible without the UK’s help,” Walker said.
“Hundreds of civilians died,” Walker said, referring to one of the deadliest days across Gaza when Israeli assaults killed more than 400 people. “We know every F-35 jet has some British parts.”
What’s the UK’s position?
In a statement sent to Al Jazeera, a spokesperson with the UK’s Foreign Office said, “This government has suspended relevant licences for the [Israeli army] that might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.”
The spokesperson added that of the remaining licences for Israel, the “vast majority” are not for the Israeli army but for “civilian purposes or re-export, and therefore are not used in the war in Gaza”.
The spokesperson reiterated the government’s position that the F-35 programme exemption was “due to its strategic role in NATO and wider implications for international peace and security”, adding that “any suggestion that the UK is licensing other weapons for use by Israel in the war in Gaza is misleading”.
Which other groups are involved in the case?
Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are assisting the court by submitting written evidence.
Oxfam’s intervention is based on its documentation of the destruction caused by Israeli fire on water sanitation and health facilities.
Akshaya Kumar, the director of crisis advocacy at Human Rights Watch, raised the idea of criminal responsibility, referencing the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal.
“If you are a supplier, you are aiding and abetting the continued assault, the continued air strikes. You are part of that criminal responsibility,” she said.
Elizabeth Rghebi, the MENA advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, argued that several states have either been unwilling to observe international legal obligations or have claimed that the structure of the F-35 programme makes it impossible to apply arms controls to the end-user, “which would make the entire programme incompatible with international law”.
What is the scale of damage from Israeli air strikes in Gaza?
Israel’s latest military assault on Gaza began shortly after October 7, 2023, when Hamas, the group that governs the Strip, led an incursion into southern Israel, during which 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 were taken captive.
Israel has failed to achieve its stated aim of crushing Hamas, while its aerial bombardment from jets, including the F-35, has decimated civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, universities, libraries, mosques and churches.
Emeritus professor Paul Rogers from the University of Bradford said, “In terms of tonnage dropped, most modern wars have had very high levels of tonnage used. Gaza is probably one of the worst. If you go back to the Second World War – [there was] the carpet bombing of German cities, the firebombing of Japanese cities, for that matter, and, on a smaller scale, the bombing Britain experienced during the second and third years of the war.”
He added: “So, it’s not exceptional in that sense, but the concentration of so much firepower in a very small area is very unusual. It bears comparison with some of the worst examples of modern warfare and their impact on civilians.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has documented the woes inflicted on Gaza’s healthcare sector, including the systematic destruction of hospitals, withholding of medical supplies and the detention of doctors.
“Airstrikes and a lack of medical supplies, food, water and fuel have virtually depleted an already under-resourced health system,” the WHO said.
It added that 90 percent of housing units in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged. A similar percentage of school buildings require complete reconstruction or major rehabilitation.
On May 4, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a barrage of suicide drones at Port Sudan, the army’s de facto wartime capital on the Red Sea.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) accused foreign actors of supporting the RSF’s attacks and even threatened to sever ties with one of its biggest trading partners.
The RSF surprised many with the strikes. It had used drones before, but never hit targets as far away as Port Sudan, which used to be a haven, until last week.
“The strikes … led to a huge displacement from the city. Many people left Port Sudan,” Aza Aera, a local relief worker, told Al Jazeera. “If the aggression continues … I think I’ll leave like everyone else.”
A drone war
When a civil war erupted between the SAF and RSF in April 2023, the army had aerial supremacy due to its fleet of warplanes and drones.
Yet the RSF is closing the gap with an arsenal of suicide drones, which it used on Port Sudan for six consecutive days, hitting an army base, a civilian airport, several hotels, and a fuel depot, which caused a massive blast.
“Sudan had already entered the phase of drone warfare over the last … few months at least,” said Suliman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker think tank.
The army largely relies on the relatively affordable Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, reportedly receiving $120m worth of them since late 2023.
Bayraktars can travel long distances with a large payload, and the army says they helped it regain swaths of territory from the RSF in eastern and central Sudan between September 2024 and March 2025, including the capital Khartoum.
Despite losing significant ground, the RSF then stepped up its aggression against the SAF with Chinese-made drones, according to a recent report by Amnesty International.
The human rights group, Sudan’s de facto military government and other monitors all accuse the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of purchasing these drones – and other weapons – and supplying them to the RSF.
The UAE has denied the accusations as “baseless”.
“The UAE strongly rejects the suggestion that it is supplying weapons to any party involved in the ongoing conflict in Sudan,” said Salem Aljaberi, a spokesperson for the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement on X.
Regardless, the increasing use of drones by both sides marks an escalation and risks exacerbating an already catastrophic situation for civilians, according to experts and human rights monitors.
Bold announcement
On May 6, the army-backed authorities in Port Sudan announced the severing of all ties with the UAE after accusing it of being behind the attacks.
That announcement was not well thought-out, according to Baldo.
Sudan’s army could lose tens of millions of dollars in gold revenue, as well as access to vital banking operations, he told Al Jazeera.
A UAE-backed company, Emiral Resources, owns a majority of shares in Sudan’s largest gold mine, the Kush mine.
Kush is administered by Sudan’s army, which likely sells tens of millions of dollars worth of gold to the UAE.
According to the Central Bank of Sudan, about 97 percent of gold exports from army-controlled areas went to the UAE in 2023.
Kush exported at least one tonne of gold in 2024, although it is unclear how much higher the number is for production.
Furthermore, UAE banks own a majority share in the Bank of Khartoum, whose digital platform, Bankak, facilitates money transfers for millions of displaced Sudanese and public institutions.
The UAE state also owns El Nilein Bank, which manages and approves international transactions on behalf of Port Sudan, according to a report that Baldo co-authored in March for the Chatham House think tank.
“This was a rushed decision [to cut ties with the UAE] that will have serious consequences … due to the UAE’s control over [Sudan’s] national economy,” Baldo told Al Jazeera.
Major escalation?
Sudan’s army has not clarified how and when it will sever ties with the UAE.
On May 6, SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan vowed in a video to “defeat the militia (RSF) and those who help them”.
Al Jazeera sent written questions to army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah, asking if Port Sudan will implement the announced suspension.
No reply was received by time of publication.
For its part, the UAE’s Foreign Ministry told Al Jazeera in an email that it will not retaliate against Port Sudan.
“The statement issued by the so-called ‘Security and Defence Council’ will not affect the deep-rooted and enduring ties between the UAE and the Republic of the Sudan, and their peoples,” the emailed statement said.
Meanwhile, experts and observers believe the war in Sudan is trending towards a major escalation.
The army’s regional backers could respond to the RSF’s increased use of drones by doubling down on their support for the army, warned Alan Boswell, a Sudan expert for the International Crisis Group.
“The obvious risk [from the attacks on Port Sudan] is that it brings other [regional powers] into deeper involvement on the army’s side,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We could see an escalating war with greater and greater firepower, and nothing would be left of Sudan’s infrastructure by the end of it.”
