Hostages’ Families Protest Against Gaza Plan – As It Happened

A summary of today’s developments

Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza, despite intensifying criticism at home and abroad. “We intend to,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News Channel when asked if Israel would take over the entire coastal territory. “We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.”
Netanyahu made the comments shortly before a meeting he was due to have on Thursday with a small group of senior ministers to discuss plans for the military to take control of more territory in Gaza. Two government sources told Reuters any resolution by the security cabinet would need to be approved by the full cabinet, which may not meet until Sunday.
Israeli media has reported part of the security cabinet meeting. The IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, has warned Benjamin Netanyahu about the hostages still in Gaza, according to broadcaster Channel 12. “The lives of the hostages will be in danger if we embark on a plan to occupy Gaza,” the broadcaster reports him as saying. “There is no way to guarantee that we will not be harmed by them. Our forces are worn out, the military equipment needs maintenance, and there are humanitarian and sanitary problems.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has responded to accusations earlier from the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who called for the closure of GHF and described its food distribution sites in Gaza as having become sites of “orchestrated killing and dehumanisation”. GHF, a US- and Israeli-backed aid organisation operating in Gaza, said in a statement: “MSF’s accusations are both false and disgraceful – amplifying a disinformation campaign orchestrated by the Hamas-linked Gaza health ministry.”
Of the 42 people killed on Thursday, at least 13 were seeking aid in an Israeli military zone in southern Gaza where UN aid convoys are regularly overwhelmed by looters and desperate crowds. Another two were killed on roads leading to nearby sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American contractor, according to Nasser hospital, which received the bodies, AP reported.

Palestinians struggle to collect humanitarian aid airdropped by parachutes into Gaza City, northern Gaza. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP

A footballer known as the “Palestinian Pelé” has been killed in an Israeli attack in southern Gaza, according to the Palestine Football Association (PFA). Suleiman al-Obeid was killed on Wednesday when Israeli forces attacked civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, the PFA said.
There is an upward trend in the number of trucks entering Gaza but it is still below what was agreed between the EU and Israel under a deal last month on improving humanitarian access, the bloc’s foreign policy and humanitarian arms said in a document seen by Reuters on Thursday. The UN and other partners report that 463 trucks were off-loaded at crossing points to Gaza between 29 July and 4 August, the document said.
Israeli authorities returned the body of a Palestinian activist killed by an Israeli settler last week, after female Bedouin relatives launched a hunger strike to protest against the authority’s decision to hold his body in custody, reports the Associated Press. The hunger strike was a rare public call from Bedouin women who traditionally mourn in private. Witnesses said Awdah al-Hathaleen was shot and killed by a radical Israeli settler during a confrontation caught on video last month.
Zadie Smith, Michael Rosen, Irvine Welsh and Jeanette Winterson are among more than 200 writers who have signed a letter calling for an “immediate and complete” boycott of Israel until the people of Gaza are given adequate food, water and aid. Hanif Kureishi, Brian Eno, Elif Shafak, George Monbiot, Benjamin Myers, Geoff Dyer and Sarah Hall also signed the letter, which advocates the cessation of all “trade, exchange and business” with Israel.
Human Rights Watch have called on governments worldwide to suspend their arms transfers to Israel after deadly airstrikes on two Palestinian schools last year, reports the Associated Press. Human Rights Watch said an investigation did not find any evidence of a military target at either school.
Gaza has seen its highest monthly figure of acute malnutrition in children, with hunger-related deaths rising in the territory, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. He added that malnutrition is widespread in the territory, reports Reuters.
Demonstrations have been planned across Israel on Thursday evening to protest against the expected security cabinet decision, reports the Associated Press. On Thursday morning, almost two dozen relatives of hostages being held in Gaza set sail from southern Israel towards the maritime border with Gaza, where they broadcast messages from loudspeakers on boats to their relatives in Gaza.
Police on Thursday said they had charged the first three people in England and Wales with supporting activist group Palestine Action since it was banned under anti-terrorism laws. Two women and a man were charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act of 2000 after their arrest at a protest in central London on 5 July, the capital’s Metropolitan police force said.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Eyal Zamir vowed on Thursday to continue expressing the military’s position “without fear” ahead of the expected security cabinet meeting. “We will continue to express our position without fear, in a pragmatic, independent, and professional manner,” Zamir said according to a military statement reported by Agence France-Presse.
Indonesia will convert a medical facility on its currently uninhabited island of Galang to treat about 2,000 injured residents of Gaza, who will return home after recovery, a presidential spokesperson said on Thursday, according to Reuters. Muslim-majority Indonesia has sent humanitarian aid to Gaza after Israel started an offensive in October 2023 that Gaza health officials say has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians (the Gaza health ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants).
US president Donald Trump said it was important that Middle Eastern countries join the Abraham Accords, saying it will ensure peace in the region. “Now that the nuclear arsenal being ‘created’ by Iran has been totally OBLITERATED, it is very important to me that all Middle Eastern Countries join the Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
The US has presented Lebanon with a proposal for disarming Hezbollah by the end of the year, along with ending Israel’s military operations in the country and the withdrawal of its troops from five positions in south Lebanon, according to copy of a Lebanese cabinet agenda reviewed by Reuters.

Key events

It’s 3am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and we’re shutting this live blog now. You can read our latest full report with the key developments here: Fears for Palestinians and hostages as Netanyahu plans full Gaza occupation. Thanks for reading.

In Australia, a prominent Jewish community leader has said Israel has no choice but to take control of Gaza if it wants to achieve its goal of defeating Hamas and freeing the militant group’s hostages.

Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, also said it appeared inevitable Australia’s government would recognise a Palestinian state in the near future, Australian Associated Press is reporting.

Ryvchin said Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments that Israel intends to take over the entire Gaza Strip were welcome because it would mean the defeat of Hamas.

“I think that the worst thing that could happen is any form of civilian return to Gaza,” Ryvchin told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

When you have a situation where Hamas refuses to lay down its arms, refuses to release the hostages, refuses the ceasefire that’s been on the table since the end of May, it leaves no choice but to complete the job militarily.

And that’s clearly what the prime minister is planning to do.

Alex Ryvchin, co-chair of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

An Israeli kibbutz that was ravaged during Hamas’s October 2023 attacks has suspended a cornerstone-laying event in protest against the Israeli security cabinet meeting over Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to take full control of Gaza.

The chairman of Kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Gazan border, urged the government to return the hostages as part of an agreement “even if the price is high”, and said the kibbutz understood the dangers of Hamas better than cabinet members, the Times of Israel is reporting.

Kibbutz Nir Oz was largely destroyed when Hamas militants entered all but six of more than 200 homes in the small community and murdered or kidnapped one of every four residents – 117 out of about 400 people, the report says.

Of those abducted, nine are still being held in Gaza, with only five of them believed to still be alive.

A torched home in Kibbutz Nir Oz after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

The ceremony on Thursday for a new neighbourhood in the kibbutz was planned in the presence of released hostages and the families of those still held in captivity. The Times report continues:

But in the middle of the proceedings, kibbutz chairman Tzviki Tessler announced that “the cabinet is gathering now to discuss the occupation of Gaza. We can’t continue as normal at this time, so we will stop the ceremony as we must. I speak on behalf of Nir Oz and of the hostages and call on the leadership and the cabinet … don’t approve any action that can endanger the lives of the hostages.”

He said that without the return of the hostages “there will be neither victory nor rehabilitation”.

People at the Nir Oz cornerstone ceremony that was halted on Thursday. Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters

Irit Pauker – whose father Gideon Pauker was shot and wounded in his Nir Oz home on 7 October and bled to death there next to his wife, Orna, who was not hurt – said the hostage families had been fighting for a year and 10 months and no longer knew against whom: Hamas or the state of Israel.

The Times quoted her as saying:

Now is maybe the last opportunity to save them … stand by us.

A Hamas official has said the militant group will treat any force formed to govern Gaza per Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion as an “occupying” force linked the Israel, Reuters has quoted the official as telling the Al Jazeera Mubasher television network.

A Jordanian official, meanwhile, has said Arabs “will only support what Palestinians agree and decide on” after the Israeli prime minister said he wanted to hand over Gaza to Arab forces that would govern the territory.

In the first reaction by a main Arab neighbour to Netanyahu’s comments, the Jordanian official told Reuters:

Security in Gaza must be done through legitimate Palestinian institutions.

Netanyahu did not elaborate on the governance arrangements or which Arab countries could be involved.

The Israeli leader made the comments to Fox News shortly before a meeting he was due to have on Thursday with a small group of senior ministers to discuss plans for the military to take control of more territory in Gaza

The Jordanian official said:

Arabs will not be agreeing to Netanyahu’s policies nor clean his mess.

More now on almost two dozen relatives of hostages who set sail from southern Israel towards the maritime border with Gaza, where they broadcast messages from loudspeakers calling for the hostages’ release.

Yehuda Cohen, the father of Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli soldier held in Gaza, said from a boat on Thursday that Benjamin Netanyahu was prolonging the war to satisfy extremists in his governing coalition, the Associated Press reports.

The Israeli prime minister’s far-right allies want to escalate the war, relocate most of Gaza’s population to other countries and reestablish Jewish settlements that were dismantled in 2005.

Cohen said:

Netanyahu is working only for himself.

As our latest full report from Lorenzo Tondo details, the hostages’ family members boarded boats that departed from the coastal city of Ashkelon, near the border with Gaza, carrying yellow flags and posters bearing images of the hostages as they shouted their names.

“This is the moment for courageous leadership,” the families said, appealing directly to Netanyahu as well as the lead hostage negotiator, Ron Dermer, and the chief of the Israel Defense Forces.

Continued obstruction, delay and failure to bring our loved ones home will be a tragedy for generations. The responsibility is yours. Do not sacrifice our loved ones on the altar of an endless war.

Families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza during the flotilla calling for their immediate release in front of Ashkelon, near Gaza’s maritime border. Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA

A summary of today’s developments

Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza, despite intensifying criticism at home and abroad. “We intend to,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News Channel when asked if Israel would take over the entire coastal territory. “We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.”
Netanyahu made the comments shortly before a meeting he was due to have on Thursday with a small group of senior ministers to discuss plans for the military to take control of more territory in Gaza. Two government sources told Reuters any resolution by the security cabinet would need to be approved by the full cabinet, which may not meet until Sunday.
Israeli media has reported part of the security cabinet meeting. The IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, has warned Benjamin Netanyahu about the hostages still in Gaza, according to broadcaster Channel 12. “The lives of the hostages will be in danger if we embark on a plan to occupy Gaza,” the broadcaster reports him as saying. “There is no way to guarantee that we will not be harmed by them. Our forces are worn out, the military equipment needs maintenance, and there are humanitarian and sanitary problems.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has responded to accusations earlier from the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who called for the closure of GHF and described its food distribution sites in Gaza as having become sites of “orchestrated killing and dehumanisation”. GHF, a US- and Israeli-backed aid organisation operating in Gaza, said in a statement: “MSF’s accusations are both false and disgraceful – amplifying a disinformation campaign orchestrated by the Hamas-linked Gaza health ministry.”
Of the 42 people killed on Thursday, at least 13 were seeking aid in an Israeli military zone in southern Gaza where UN aid convoys are regularly overwhelmed by looters and desperate crowds. Another two were killed on roads leading to nearby sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American contractor, according to Nasser hospital, which received the bodies, AP reported.

Palestinians struggle to collect humanitarian aid airdropped by parachutes into Gaza City, northern Gaza. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP

A footballer known as the “Palestinian Pelé” has been killed in an Israeli attack in southern Gaza, according to the Palestine Football Association (PFA). Suleiman al-Obeid was killed on Wednesday when Israeli forces attacked civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, the PFA said.
There is an upward trend in the number of trucks entering Gaza but it is still below what was agreed between the EU and Israel under a deal last month on improving humanitarian access, the bloc’s foreign policy and humanitarian arms said in a document seen by Reuters on Thursday. The UN and other partners report that 463 trucks were off-loaded at crossing points to Gaza between 29 July and 4 August, the document said.
Israeli authorities returned the body of a Palestinian activist killed by an Israeli settler last week, after female Bedouin relatives launched a hunger strike to protest against the authority’s decision to hold his body in custody, reports the Associated Press. The hunger strike was a rare public call from Bedouin women who traditionally mourn in private. Witnesses said Awdah al-Hathaleen was shot and killed by a radical Israeli settler during a confrontation caught on video last month.
Zadie Smith, Michael Rosen, Irvine Welsh and Jeanette Winterson are among more than 200 writers who have signed a letter calling for an “immediate and complete” boycott of Israel until the people of Gaza are given adequate food, water and aid. Hanif Kureishi, Brian Eno, Elif Shafak, George Monbiot, Benjamin Myers, Geoff Dyer and Sarah Hall also signed the letter, which advocates the cessation of all “trade, exchange and business” with Israel.
Human Rights Watch have called on governments worldwide to suspend their arms transfers to Israel after deadly airstrikes on two Palestinian schools last year, reports the Associated Press. Human Rights Watch said an investigation did not find any evidence of a military target at either school.
Gaza has seen its highest monthly figure of acute malnutrition in children, with hunger-related deaths rising in the territory, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. He added that malnutrition is widespread in the territory, reports Reuters.
Demonstrations have been planned across Israel on Thursday evening to protest against the expected security cabinet decision, reports the Associated Press. On Thursday morning, almost two dozen relatives of hostages being held in Gaza set sail from southern Israel towards the maritime border with Gaza, where they broadcast messages from loudspeakers on boats to their relatives in Gaza.
Police on Thursday said they had charged the first three people in England and Wales with supporting activist group Palestine Action since it was banned under anti-terrorism laws. Two women and a man were charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act of 2000 after their arrest at a protest in central London on 5 July, the capital’s Metropolitan police force said.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Eyal Zamir vowed on Thursday to continue expressing the military’s position “without fear” ahead of the expected security cabinet meeting. “We will continue to express our position without fear, in a pragmatic, independent, and professional manner,” Zamir said according to a military statement reported by Agence France-Presse.
Indonesia will convert a medical facility on its currently uninhabited island of Galang to treat about 2,000 injured residents of Gaza, who will return home after recovery, a presidential spokesperson said on Thursday, according to Reuters. Muslim-majority Indonesia has sent humanitarian aid to Gaza after Israel started an offensive in October 2023 that Gaza health officials say has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians (the Gaza health ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants).
US president Donald Trump said it was important that Middle Eastern countries join the Abraham Accords, saying it will ensure peace in the region. “Now that the nuclear arsenal being ‘created’ by Iran has been totally OBLITERATED, it is very important to me that all Middle Eastern Countries join the Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday.
The US has presented Lebanon with a proposal for disarming Hezbollah by the end of the year, along with ending Israel’s military operations in the country and the withdrawal of its troops from five positions in south Lebanon, according to copy of a Lebanese cabinet agenda reviewed by Reuters.

Planes drop humanitarian aid by parachute amid ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza. Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/UPI/Shutterstock

Palestinians gather in the area where humanitarian assistance lands on top of destroyed homes in western Gaza City. Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/UPI/Shutterstock

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has responded to accusations earlier from the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who called for the closure of GHF and described its food distribution sites in Gaza as having become sites of “orchestrated killing and dehumanisation”.

GHF, a US- and Israeli-backed aid organisation operating in Gaza, said in a statement: “MSF’s accusations are both false and disgraceful – amplifying a disinformation campaign orchestrated by the Hamas-linked Gaza health ministry.

“They know better. By repeating these lies, they’re not aiding civilians, they’re aiding Hamas. Despite that, we’re proud to continue lending them a hand, just as we’ve done on multiple occasions to help transport and safeguard their medical supplies and medicines from the elements.”

Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Al Jazeera Mubasher that it would treat any force formed to govern Gaza as an “occupying” force linked to Israel.

Lorenzo Tondo

A footballer known as the “Palestinian Pelé” has been killed in an Israeli attack in southern Gaza, according to the Palestine Football Association (PFA).

Suleiman al-Obeid was killed on Wednesday when Israeli forces attacked civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, the PFA said.

‘‘During his long career, al-Obeid, 41, scored more than 100 goals, making him one of the brightest stars of Palestinian football,” it said.

Born in Gaza on 24 March 1984, Obeid began his footballing career with Khadamat al-Shati, later playing for Markaz Shabab al-Am’ari in the occupied West Bank, and Gaza Sport. A fixture in the Palestinian national side after his debut in 2007, Obeid gained 24 caps and scored twice, the PFA said, most memorably with a scissor-kick against Yemen during the 2010 West Asian Football Federation championship.

His talent on the pitch earned him the nickname of “the Palestinian Pelé” – a nod to the legendary Brazilian widely hailed as one of the greatest players of all time.

His death adds to a growing toll of athletes lost in Gaza since the war began, with at least 662 sportspeople and their relatives reported to have been killed.

A Jordanian official told Reuters that Arabs “will only support what Palestinians agree and decide on” after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel wanted to hand over Gaza to Arab forces that would govern it.

“Security in Gaza must be done through legitimate Palestinian institutions,” the source said.

Israeli media has reported part of the security cabinet meeting

The IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, has warned Benjamin Netanyahu about the hostages still in Gaza, according to broadcaster Channel 12.

“The lives of the hostages will be in danger if we embark on a plan to occupy Gaza,” the broadcaster reports him as saying.

“There is no way to guarantee that we will not be harmed by them. Our forces are worn out, the military equipment needs maintenance, and there are humanitarian and sanitary problems.”

Britain continues to run near daily surveillance flights over Gaza with the help of a US contractor at a time of growing questions about how the intelligence obtained is used and shared with the Israeli military, writes Dan Sabbagh and Geneva Abdul.

Specialist flight trackers estimate that RAF Shadow aircraft have run more than 600 flights over the Palestinian territory from the Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus in an attempt to locate the remaining hostages held by Hamas since December 2023.

Spy flights were started under the Conservatives but have continued under Labour with few details shared publicly, at a rate of about two a day at first but dropping to one a day more recently, specialist trackers said.

Surveillance was transferred to a US contractor, Sierra Nevada Corporation, in late July to reduce costs and RAF sources indicated that it continues most days in an equivalent aircraft. But within days there was a mistake when the new spy plane was revealed to be circling over Khan Younis on 28 July.

Until that time the spy planes’ transponders were turned off halfway into their flight from Akrotiri heading towards Gaza over the eastern Mediterranean. But the mistake meant that “the RAF (now contracted) flights could be confirmed over Gaza, not just adjacent to Gaza,” said the flight tracker and analyst Steffan Watkins.

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