Hamas / Israel / Middle East…6/5/2025….The Situation in Gaza Remains Critical…Israel Courts Rival Groups to Hamas…..

Israel recoves the bodies of two more hostages….

• The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said it will open two supply distribution centres intended to provide aid on Thursday. The group closed its facilities after the Israeli army warned that roads leading to distribution centres were “considered combat zones” and was due to reopen them this morning, but pushed the time back for what it said were maintenance and repair work. It did not say when distribution of supplies would resume later today.

• Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday the bodies of two Israeli-Americans killed in Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack and held in Gaza had been returned to Israel. Netanyahu said the remains of Judih Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai were recovered and returned to Israel in a special operation by the army and the Shin Bet internal security agency.

• Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the return of the bodies of Judih Weinstein Haggai and Gad Haggai as “a moment of deep pain, but also one of solace and the resolution of uncertainty”. “We will continue to do everything in our power to bring our sisters and brothers back from hell,” he said in a post on X.

• Iran on Thursday “strongly” condemned the United States for vetoing a United Nations security council resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire and full humanitarian access in Gaza. Foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said in a statement that the US move to block the resolution, which was supported by 14 of the 15 members of the council, demonstrated “the country’s complicity in the crimes of the Zionist regime (Israel) and strongly condemned it”.

• German foreign minister Johann Wadephul criticised Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip at a press conference with his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar in Berlin on Thursday, again calling for more humanitarian aid to be allowed into the territory. Wadephul decried the Israeli government’s announcement that it would allow 22 more settlements in the West Bank. Wadephul also said that recognising a Palestinian state now would send “the wrong signal” because “negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be concluded” first.

• Aid needs to reach the people of Gaza “at speed and at volume”, UK prime minister Keir Starmer said as he restated his view the current situation was “utterly intolerable”. He told reporters on Thursday: “Of course, humanitarian aid needs to get in at speed and at volume, but that can only happen if we get back to a ceasefire”.

• More than 2,700 children under the age of five in Gaza were diagnosed with acute malnutrition in the second half of May, “reflecting a sharp deterioration”, reports the Office of the UN high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR). This latest figure is almost triple the proportion of children diagnosed with malnutrition out of those screened in February 2025 during the ceasefire, OHCHR reported.

• Three journalists have been killed and a fourth critically injured a fourth in an Israeli attack on Al-Ahli hospital, also known as the Baptist hospital, in Gaza City, Al Jazeera reported.

• Israel claimed it was targeting an Islamic Jihad militant operating in the courtyard of the Al-Ahli hospital. Gaza’s health ministry has not yet identified the journalists or said which outlets they worked for.

• Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 10 people in Gaza on Thursday as the military keeps up an intensified offensive. “Ten martyrs so far resulting from Israeli strikes since dawn,” agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP), adding that they had targeted an area where displaced civilians were sheltering in the southern city of Khan Younis and houses in Gaza City and the central town of Deir el-Balah. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

• Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday during a trip to Paris accused Israel of carrying out “premeditated genocide” in Gaza. “It’s a premeditated genocide from a far-right government that is waging a war against the interests of its own people,” he said at a joint press conference with France’s president Emmanuel Macron. While Lula has previously used the term “genocide”, Macron has refused to.

• Donald Trump has signed a sweeping order banning travel from 12 countries and restricting travel from seven others, reviving and expanding the travel bans from his first term. Iran, Afghanistan and Yemen are among the 12 countries from which Trump has banned nationals travelling into the US from.

• UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, on Thursday highlighted the lack of hygiene supplies for women and girls menstruating in the Gaza Strip. In a post on X on Thursday, the UN agency wrote: “There are around 700,000 women and girls of menstruating age from the Gaza Strip. Since the State of Israel imposed a siege on Gaza on 2 March, there has been a complete depletion of hygiene supplies, including sanitary pads.”

• The playwright Caryl Churchill has pulled out of a project at London’s Donmar Warehouse, citing the organisation’s sponsorship by Barclays and the bank’s links to Israel. In a statement, Churchill, a longtime supporter of Palestinian rights, said that the London theatre should drop its association with the bank, which has been criticised for providing financial services to defence companies supplying Israel.

• Ms Rachel, the children’s entertainer and educator whose YouTubevideos have been watched by millions of families around the world, said she is willing to risk her career to keep advocating for suffering children in Gaza. In an interview with WBUR, a Boston-based public radio station, Ms Rachel, whose full name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, said she had received pushback for speaking out to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza, where more than 54,000 people have been killed in Israel’s ongoing military assault. But Accurso said she would continue to advocate for children’s safety.

• Russian president Vladimir Putin is ready to “help resolve” the standoff between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme, the Kremlin said on Thursday. “We have a close partnership with Tehran. And President Putin said that he was ready to use this partnership to help resolve the Iranian nuclear issue,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

• Visiting EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Šuica said on Thursday that a €175m package for Syria was a “clear message” of support for its reconstruction. Šuica announced the package in Damascus on Wednesday, saying it would focus on sectors including energy, education, health and agriculture, helping rebuild Syria’s economy, support its institutions and promote human rights…..

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Israel reaches out to set up  riavals to Hamas in Gaza…..

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel has “activated” some clans of Palestinians in Gaza that are opposed to Hamas, though it was not immediately clear what role they would play.

His comments on social media were the first public acknowledgment of Israel’s backing of armed Palestinian groups within Gaza, based around powerful clans or extended families.

Such clans often wield some control in corners of Gaza, and some have had clashes or tensions with Hamas in the past. Palestinians and aid workers have accused clans of carrying out criminal attacks and stealing aid from trucks. Several clans have issued public statements rejecting cooperation with the Israelis or denouncing looting.

An Israeli official said that one group that Netanyahu was referring to was the so-called Popular Forces, led by Yasser Abu Shabab, a local clan leader in Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

In recent weeks, the Abu Shabab group announced online that its fighters were helping protect shipments to the new, Israeli-backed food distribution centers run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the Rafah area. But some Palestinians say the group has also been involved in attacking and looting aid convoys.

Netanyahu did not specify what support Israel was giving to the clans, or what specifically their role would be. His announcement came hours after a political opponent criticized him for arming unofficial groups of Palestinians in Gaza.

In a video posted to his X account, Netanyahu said the government made the move on the advice of “security officials,” in order to save lives of Israeli soldiers….

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