UN committee warns of 'another Nakba' in Palestinian territories

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Two companies have been identified as potential partners in a controversial US plan to distribute food supplies in the Gaza Strip, bypassing UNRWA and other UN agencies, The New Arab's sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has reported.

They were identified as Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions.

Read more here.

Tunisian tennis star Ons Jabeur said she has faced abuse and bullying as a result of speaking out about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, adding that she had been called a "terrorist".

Jabeur, who has been a UN World Food Programme ambassador since last year, has been using her social media platforms to speak about Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and the impact the war is having on civilians.

The three-time Grand Slam finalist told the Hologic WTA Tennis website that she thinks about Palestine "24/7", and that she is often reduced to tears during her meetings with the WFP, when learning about the challenges civilians face in Gaza.

She added that the destruction, killings and starvation in the enclave have "really affected me emotionally".

Read about about it here.

As Pope Leo XIV begins his papacy, the global Catholic community - and many in the Middle East and North Africa - are watching closely for signs of how the first American pope will approach the ongoing war on Gaza, the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and regional tensions.

While Leo XIV has not yet made specific statements on Palestine or the Middle East, his background, close relationship with Pope Francis, and early signals of continuity all suggest a papacy committed to peace and interfaith dialogue, and social justice.

The New Arab takes a look at how Leo's Papacy might relate to Palestine and MENA. 

Read more here.

Israeli settlers attacked the Arab al-Mlaihat community, northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Jericho -Wafa reports.

Hasan Mlaihat, an activist and supervisor of the al-Baidar Organisation in Defence of Bedouin Rights, said the settlers attacked Palestinians, spraying pepper spray in their faces.

The activist said the settlers injured him, sprayed pepper spray and intimidated his family members.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has issued an "urgent call" for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and immediate humanitarian access, warning of "catastrophic consequences for the civilian population".

CERD condemned Israel's intensified war on Gaza, which it says places civilians, especially vulnerable groups, at grave risk of famine, disease, and death.

The committee also urged Israel to allow aid entry and called on all states to help end violations and prevent war crimes and genocide.

A Palestinian activist was injured after Israeli forces raided the town of Tuqu, southeast of the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem - Wafa reports.

The agency says 19-year-old Mustafa al-Badan was injured on the foot as they fired tear gas.

Lebanon and Syria are cracking down on Palestinian factions that for decades have had an armed presence in both countries, and which, on some occasions, were used to plan and launch attacks against Israel.

On Wednesday, Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa said his government is holding indirect talks with Israel through mediators, whom he did not name.

He said the indirect negotiations aim to ease tensions after intense Israeli airstrikes on Syria.

Several Palestinians suffered from smoke inhalation after the Israeli army raided the al-Khader town, south of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus. 

Local sources told Wafa the army released tear gas bombs and opened fire on several civilians.

An Israeli strike targeting a facility for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, killed at least four Palestinians -Wafa reports.

The agency reported that Israeli jets targeted an UNRWA facility in the Jabalia refugee camp, also injuring dozens.

Ron Dermer, a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was at the White House on Thursday for talks on Gaza and other issues, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Friday.

"We are in constant communication and dialogue with our counterparts and our allies and friends in Israel. Ron Dermer was here at the White House yesterday meeting with members of President Trump's team," Leavitt said. 

(Reuters)

Yemen's Houthi rebels said they attacked Israel's main airport on Friday, after the Israeli military said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.

Huthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said that the Iran-backed group targeted the Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv "using a hypersonic ballistic missile", while also claiming a drone attack "targeting a vital Israeli enemy target" in the same area.

Israel would not be involved in food distribution under a US-led plan for the Gaza Strip but would provide "necessary military security", Washington's ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said on Friday.

Huckabee spoke to reporters in Jerusalem a day after the US State Department said a new foundation would lead the distribution of humanitarian aid in war-battered Gaza, where an over two-month-long Israeli blockade has caused severe shortages of everything from food and clean water to fuel and medicine.

"The Israelis are going to be involved in providing necessary military security, because it is a war zone, but they will not be involved in the distribution of the food, or even in the bringing of the food into Gaza," the US ambassador said.

The US-led initiative has been met with international criticism as it appears to sideline the United Nations and existing aid organisations, and would overhaul current humanitarian structures in Gaza.

The world could very well be witnessing "another Nakba", a United Nations committee warned Friday, referring to the mass displacement of Palestinians in the war that accompanied Israel's creation in 1948.

"Israel continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on the people living under its occupation, whilst rapidly expanding confiscation of land as part of its wider colonial aspirations," warned a UN Special Committee tasked with investigating Israeli practices affecting Palestinian human rights. "What we are witnessing could very well be another Nakba."

A French pro-Palestinian protest group is contesting a government decision to shut it down, saying the move was politically motivated and based on "false" arguments as part of a wider crackdown on the movement for Palestinian rights.

Urgence Palestine (Emergency Palestine), created in 2023 to protest against Israel's military offensive in Gaza, filed its counterarguments to the shutdown procedure on Thursday, their lawyer Elsa Marcel said.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, explaining the decision, said in a letter dated April 28 to one of the group's founders, Omar Alsoumi, that Urgence Palestine had provoked violent acts, including towards Jewish people, and had called for armed struggle.

Asked about the decision, Alsoumi told Reuters on Friday:

"This shows the partiality of the French government on the genocidal war that the Palestinian people is experiencing."

He said the group, which has been organising protests across France over the past 19 months, rejects any conflation of Jews and the Israeli government and that Palestinians have the right to resist occupation under international law.

The United States and Iran will hold a new round of nuclear talks Sunday in Oman, officials said, just ahead of a visit to the region by President Donald Trump.

Trump, who will visit three other Gulf Arab monarchies, has voiced hope for reaching a deal with Tehran to avert an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear program that could ignite a wider war.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Oman, which has been mediating, had proposed Sunday as the date and both sides had accepted.

"Negotiations are moving ahead and naturally, the more we advance, the more consultations we have, and the more time the delegations need to examine the issues," he said in a video carried by Iranian media.

"But what's important is that we are moving forward so that we gradually get into the details," Araghchi said.

Steve Witkoff, Trump's friend who has served as his globe-trotting negotiator, will take part in the talks, the fourth since Trump returned to the White House, according to a source familiar with arrangements.

"As in the past, we expect both direct and indirect discussions," the person said on condition of anonymity.

Israel's defence minister vowed a forceful response after a missile fired from Yemen was intercepted on Friday, in an attack claimed by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

"The Houthis continue to launch Iranian missiles at Israel. As we promised, we will respond forcefully in Yemen and wherever necessary," Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a post on X.

Iran has agreed to hold a fourth round of indirect nuclear talks with the United States on Sunday in Oman, Tasnim news reported on Friday, citing a member of the Iranian team.

The fourth round of negotiations, initially scheduled for May 3 in Rome, was postponed, with mediator Oman citing "logistical reasons".

Germany's Lufthansa airline group said on Friday it would extend its suspension of flights to and from Tel Aviv installed after a rocket attack struck the area of Israel's main airport.

As a result of "the current situation" flights now will not resume until 18 May, Lufthansa said, prolonging a suspension that was originally scheduled to last until 6 May and then 11 May.

The group - whose carriers include Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines - suspended its Tel Aviv flights following a May 4 rocket attack launched by Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The attack was the first time a missile breached the perimeter of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport.

The missile landed near an airport car park and injured six people.

Israel's military said on Friday it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen towards Israeli territory, with sirens activated in several areas following the projectile.

A ceasefire deal between Yemen's Houthis and the US does not include sparing Israel, the Iran-aligned group had said on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the US would stop bombing the Houthis in Yemen, saying that the group had agreed to stop attacking US ships.

It is "very difficult" to imagine any operation to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip without the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, a UNRWA spokeswoman said on Friday.

The United States on Thursday announced a new foundation to provide aid to Gaza, sidelining the United Nations as Israel's two-month blockade brings severe shortages to the war-battered Palestinian territory.

"It is impossible to replace UNRWA in a place like Gaza. We are the largest humanitarian organisation," the agency's spokeswoman Juliette Touma told a press conference in Geneva, when asked about that proposal.

Little is known for sure about the body proposed by the United States, but a listing in Switzerland showed the establishment in February of the "Gaza Humanitarian Foundation".

"We have the largest reach, whether it is through our teams that work across the Gaza Strip, where we have more than 10,000 people who work to deliver whatever is left of the supplies," said Touma, speaking from Amman, Jordan.

"We also manage shelters for the displaced families."

The death toll in Gaza has risen to 52,787, medical sources confirmed on Friday.

In the last 24 hours, the bodies of 27 Palestinians, including a body that was retrieved from the rubble, and 85 casualties were admitted to hospitals in the Strip.

Thousands more remain unaccounted for.

Three Palestinians were killed on Friday by Israeli strikes at the Murtaja junction in eastern Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Among those killed were a 60-year-old man and his 19-year-old son, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has canceled his scheduled visit to Israel next week, prior to President Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East, The Jerusalem Post reported on Friday.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert  said that "Gaza belongs to the Palestinians and must be part of a future Palestinian state", as he addressed the left-wing People’s Peace Summit at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem on Friday, with former Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nasser Al-Kidwa.

"Only a two-state solution is a prescription for a dramatic change in the direction of our country and the whole region," he said, before adding that Israel should've ended its military campaign in Gaza "a long time ago".

The United Nations Children's Fund on Friday criticized emerging plans to take over distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza on Thursday floated by both Israel and the United States, saying that they would increase suffering for children and families.

The U.S. State Department earlier floated a solution that would allow delivery of food aid to Gaza was "steps away" and an announcement was coming shortly.

A proposal is circulating among the aid community for a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that would distribute food from four "Secure Distribution Sites", resembling plans announced by Israel earlier this week, which drew criticism that it would effectively worsen displacement among the Gaza population.

"It appears the design of a plan presented by Israel to the humanitarian community will increase ongoing suffering of children and families in the Gaza Strip," said UNICEF spokesperson James Elder.

Elder said his remarks also applied to the new foundation which he understood to be part of the same broad plan.

The aid community has already rejected any plans that would give occupying power Israel a role in distributing aid in Gaza.

However, the Foundation document said the sites would be "neutral" and U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Friday that Israel would not be involved in handing out aid.

Still, Elder said that the use of such hubs, which the foundation says will initially serve 300,000 people each, would create risks for children and families as they go to retrieve aid and would drive further displacement.

"The use of humanitarian aid as a bait to force displacement, especially from the north to the south will create this impossible choice: a choice between displacement and death," said Elder, who has been on several missions to Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began 19 months ago.

"It appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic."

Israel will not be involved in Gaza aid distribution but will take part in providing security, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in a press conference on Friday.

Israel has been imposing an aid blockade on the enclave since March. Huckabee said the supply of aid was not dependent on reaching a ceasefire.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed his concern about the fate of the hostages and the humanitarian plight in Gaza in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a German government spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.

Merz "expressed his hope that negotiations on a ceasefire would soon get underway," said the spokesperson, who added that the situation in Syria was also discussed in the Thursday call.

A Hamas delegation held two meetings with Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Doha this week but they produced no breakthrough in the search for a Gaza truce, sources close to the group said Friday.

"Egyptian officials met twice with a high-level Hamas delegation led by (chief negotiator) Khalil al-Hayya (and) Qatari officials on Wednesday and Thursday in Doha," one source told AFP. A second source said the talks were "serious" but made "no concrete progress".

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will visit Saudi Arabia and Qatar on Saturday, his ministry said, days before US President Donald Trump begins a regional tour.

Araghchi is due to hold talks with senior Saudi officials in Riyadh before heading to Doha for a conference on Arab-Iranian dialogue, ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear what the talks in Riyadh would cover.

Trump is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates from May 13 to 16 on his first major Middle East trip of his second term.

In Riyadh, he is expected to meet leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a source close to the Saudi government told AFP earlier this month.

The visit follows three rounds of US-Iran negotiations over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

A date for a fourth round has yet to be announced.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met on Thursday with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the 80^th anniversary of the Nazis' surrender in WW, held in Moscow, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said.

During the meeting, Abbas expressed his appreciation for China's continued support for the Palestinian cause on the international stage. He also thanked President Xi for the humanitarian and development assistance that China provides to Palestinian territories.

The PA leader also stressed on the importance of the strategic partnership between the State of Palestine and the People's Republic of China.

US President Donald Trump met Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Thursday and discussed nuclear talks with Iran and Israel's war in Gaza, Axios reported, citing two sources briefed on the meeting.

The meeting was held at the White House and was not made public by the U.S. or Israel, according to Axios.

Dermer met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday and had several meetings in the White House including one with Trump on Thursday, Axios said.

The White House had no immediate comment.

Trump is preparing for his first major diplomatic trip next week that includes a three-country Middle East tour starting in Saudi Arabia.

A fourth round of US nuclear talks with Iran is likely to take place over the weekend in Oman, with Iranian state media pointing to 11 May as a probable date.

Israeli airstrikes targeting central Gaza on Friday have killed at least three members of the same family, including an infant.

Israel bombed the Hamdan family home near the Martyrs' Mosque east of the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to medical sources, cited by the Turkish Anadolu agency.

Six others were injured in the incident.

Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat in southern Gaza Strip, the army said in a statement on Friday.

Earlier on Thursday, Hamas said its militants were engaged in "fierce fighting" with Israeli soldiers in the south of the Gaza Strip near Rafah.