Category: 2. World

At least 87 Palestinians have been killed since dawn in Israeli attacks across Gaza, with dozens of children dying from malnutrition during Israel’s punishing months-long blockade, as ceasefire talks reportedly stall.

Among the victims on Saturday, 14 were killed in Gaza City, four of them in an Israeli strike on a residence on Jaffa Street in the Tuffah area, which injured 10 others.

At least 30 aid seekers were killed by Israeli army fire north of Rafah, southern Gaza, near the one operating GHF site, which rights groups and the United Nations have slammed as “human slaughterhouses” and “death traps”.

According to Al Jazeera Mubasher, Israeli forces fired directly at Palestinians in front of the aid distribution centre in the al-Shakoush area of Rafah.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the Israeli army opened fire indiscriminately on a large crowd during one of the attacks.

“Many desperate families in the north have been making dangerous journeys all the way to the south to reach the only operating distribution centre in Rafah,” he said.

“Many of the bodies are still on the ground,” Mahmoud said, adding that those who were wounded in the attack have been transferred to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Amid relentless daily carnage rained upon starving aid seekers and the ongoing Israeli blockade, Gaza’s Government Media Office said 67 children have now died due to malnutrition, and 650,000 children under the age of five are at “real and immediate risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks”.

“Over the past three days, we have recorded dozens of deaths due to shortages of food and essential medical supplies, in an extremely cruel humanitarian situation,” the statement read.

“This shocking reality reflects the scale of the unprecedented humanitarian tragedy in Gaza,” the statement added.

Israel is engineering a “cruel and Machiavellian scheme to kill” in Gaza, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Friday, as the world body reported that since May, when GHF began its operations, some 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.

“Under our watch, Gaza has become the graveyard of children [and] starving people,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.

Mass displacement, expulsion ‘illegal and immoral’

As the Israeli military announced on Saturday that its forces attacked Gaza 250 times in the last 48 hours, Israeli officials have continued to push a plan to forcibly displace and eventually expel Palestinians.

Earlier this week, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” which will house 2.1 million Palestinians on the rubble of parts of the city of Rafah, which has been razed to the ground.

But Palestinians in Gaza have rejected the plan and reiterated that they would not leave the enclave. Rights groups, international organisations and several nations have slammed it as laying the ground for “ethnic cleansing”, the forcible removal of a population from its homeland.

Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera on Saturday that the majority of Israelis are “really appalled” by Katz’s plan, which would be “illegal and immoral”.

“Anybody who will participate in this disgusting project will be involved in war crimes,” Elder said.

The message underlying the plan, he said, is that “there can’t be two people between the river and the sea, and those who deserve to have a state are only the Jewish people.”

As Israel announces its intention to force the population of Gaza into Rafah, Middle East professor at the University of Turin, Lorenzo Kamel, told Al Jazeera that the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and their concentration in restricted areas is nothing new.

In 1948, 77 years ago to this day, 70,000 Palestinians were expelled from the village of Lydda during what became known as the “march of death”.

“Many of them ended up in the Gaza Strip,” Kamel said, adding that the Israeli authorities have been forcing Palestinians into spaces similar to concentration camps for decades.

“This is not something new, but it has accelerated in the past months,” he said. The plan to gather the Gaza population on the ruins of Rafah is therefore “nothing but another camp in preparation for the deportation from the Gaza Strip”.

Ceasefire talks hang in the balance

Negotiations taking place in Qatar to cement a truce are stalling over the extent of Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the Strip, according to Palestinian and Israeli sources familiar with the matter, the Reuters news agency reported on Saturday.

The indirect talks are expected to continue, despite the latest obstacles in clinching a deal based on a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire.

A Palestinian source said Hamas has not accepted the withdrawal maps which Israel has proposed, as they would leave about 40 percent of the territory under Israeli occupation, including all of Rafah and further territories in northern and eastern Gaza.

Matters regarding the full and free flow of aid to a starving population, and guarantees, were also presenting a challenge.

Two Israeli sources said Hamas wants Israel to retreat to lines it held in a previous ceasefire, before it renewed its offensive in March.

Delegations from Israel and Hamas have been in Qatar since Sunday in a renewed push for an agreement.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted to his social media platform, Truth Social.

The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.

The agreement in principle put on Trump’s table last Wednesday involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.

EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) retaliatory measures which they had paused until midnight the same day.

In his letter to Mexico’s leader, Trump acknowledged that the country has been helpful in stemming the flow of undocumented migrants and fentanyl into the United States.

But he said the country has not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.

“We have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with The European Union, and we have concluded we must move away from these long-term, large, and persistent, Trade Deficits, engendered by your Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies, and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter to the EU. “Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.”

The higher-than-expected rate has dealt a blow to the EU’s hopes of deescalation and a trade deal and could risk a trade war with goods of low margins including Belgian chocolate, Irish butter and Italian olive oil.

The EU was informed of the tariff hike ahead of Trump’s declaration on social media.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the 30% rate would “disrupt transatlantic supply chains, to the detriment of businesses, consumers and patients on both sides of the Atlantic”.

She said the bloc was one of the more open trading places in the world, and still hoped to persuade Trump to climb down.

“We remain ready to continue working towards an agreement by August 1. At the same time, we will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” she said.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called for “goodwill  … to reach a fair agreement that can strengthen the west as a whole. It would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic.” She added that both sides should avoid “polarisation”.

The decision to hike the tariffs will also be another test of Trump’s ability to act in good faith in negotiations.

Brussels will view the latest threat as a maneuver by Trump to extract more concessions from the EU, which he once described as “nastier” than China when it came to trade.

While Trump indicated earlier this week that his new rates, also levelled against big economies including Japan, South Korea and Brazil, will not apply until 1 August, his latest tactic will create much distrust.

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, downplayed the impact of the threatened 50% tariff. Trump and Lula have indicated a willingness to negotiate, though Lula also said: “Trump could’ve called, but instead posted the tariff news on his website – a complete lack of respect which is typical of his behavior towards everyone.”

Even if Trump had agreed to the proposal put on his table on Wednesday, further negotiations would have been needed in any case to create a legal text that can be formally registered by the US government, a process that is itself laden with risk.

The UK took seven weeks to get its agreement registered with a promise included to reduce tariffs on car exports from 27.5% to 10%, but the agreed zero tariff for the British steel industry was omitted.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director and president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the letters were evidence that serious trade talks were not taking place over the past three months. He stressed that nations were instead talking among themselves about how to minimize their own exposure to the US economy and Trump.

“They’re spending time talking to each other about what the future is going to look like, and we’re left out,” Holtz-Eakin said.

He added that Trump was using the letters to demand attention, but, “in the end, these are letters to other countries about taxes he’s going to levy on his citizens”.

The new tariff ends a turbulent week for the EU with Trump announcing an extension for talks until 1 August on Monday, then on Tuesday announcing the EU would “probably” receive a letter setting its new US tariff rate within 48 hours, claiming the bloc had shifted from being “very tough” to “very nice”.

But diplomats viewed it as a mixed message as Trump stressed that he was still talking to negotiators from the bloc, but that he was displeased with European policies toward US tech firms.