In a statement on Sunday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the recognition of a Palestinian state and offered “our partnership in building the promise of a peaceful future for both the State of Palestine and the State of Israel”.lia comes in coordination with UK, ahead of UN General Assembly meeting.

"We, especially in an individualistic society, measure everything from our own position," he later told Middle East Eye. "It's me, me, me. Christ is for me [and] if I was the only one in the world, Christ would have come for me… but the exclusive Christ is inclusive for all who come to him".

Like most of Gaza's Muslims, its small Christian community is also religiously devoted and has clung to their faith to get them through two years of what is, by legal definition, a genocide carried out by Israel.

"Right now it's revolutionary to be pro-Palestinian, but I think what is consistently that revolutionary is to be ever loving in Christ," Hatem's daughter Lydia, who works with the Quaker-inspired Friends Committee on National Legislation, told MEE.

Quakers are historically Protestant Christians with a deep commitment to peace advocacy and social justice. MEE asked Hatem and Lydia about their religious denomination.

"The same one that Christ comes from?" Hatem responded with laughter.

"I don't know. Was he Baptist? Was he Orthodox? We've attended churches from an Evangelical persuasion, if you will," he said. For the last two decades, he's been going to a Baptist church in the Atlanta, Georgia area, where he is based, and where he works as an engineering consultant.

Baptists are, on the whole, an older tradition of Evangelical Christianity, but the "born again" style of the US evangelical church has set itself apart for its more literal reading of scripture, and its outsized influence on conservative US politics – particularly in advancing Israeli interests.

NPR's reporting last year showed many white Evangelicals – who make up the vast majority of the church – consider voting for the Republican Party to be their religious duty.

The Pew Research Center has found that about a quarter of all Americans identify as Evangelical. That figure dwarfs Jewish-Americans, who make up just under six percent of the population.

One of the most prominent names wielding critical influence on Israel-Palestine US policy is Evangelical Christian and US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who has insisted that Palestinians don't actually exist.

"Did all those Christians who are descendants of Abraham, or who are Jewish, or are in Israel, did they move to southern Alabama or to Arkansas?" Hatem said.

He spoke with a passion in his voice that he appeared to strictly reserve for these matters of faith and indigeneity.

"No, their descendants are there [in Palestine]," he continued. "The fact that somebody prominent is saying it, like Huckabee, doesn't make it right… Huckabee is misinterpreting the Bible".

The misinterpretation, Hatem explained, comes from dispensationalism – a concept largely popularized at the start of the 20th century, denoting that God had different dealings with humanity in different eras or "dispensations".

Dispensationalists believe that the church and Israel are two distinct entities. In that vein, they believe that God has not yet fulfilled his plan for Israel, which will materialize in the end times upon the second coming of Jesus Christ, who is expected to rule the world from the Temple Mount – also known as the al-Aqsa compound – in Jerusalem.

Israel, as a country, therefore, has prophetic significance to Evangelicals.

But many like Hatem do not see biblical Israel as the nation-state, given the church itself didn't either – at least for the first 1,800 years.

"I mean, is it everybody who became Jewish? Is it everybody who's by blood related to Abraham? What about Jews who accepted Christ in the first century? Where did they go?" he said.

"What is the sin of [the people of] Israel, who perceived themselves as God's people at the time? It was the rejection of Christ, the ultimate fulfilment of prophecy. That is what it's about. It's not about a modern-day state of Israel".

'They want to wipe their memories'
Israel has now killed at least 40 relatives and friends of the Sayeghs since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023. That's four percent of the 1,000 Christians left in Gaza.

Some of his Muslim friends, he told MEE, are unreachable. He has no idea if they're dead or alive.

Hatem's aunt, who is older than modern-day Israel at 91 years old, is in the care of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City.

"Israel killed her father, who was a railroad worker when they bombed Gaza back in 1948," Hatem told MEE. "She had to work as a school teacher at the age of about 14."

Like most others sheltering in the church, she isn't going anywhere, despite recent evacuation orders by the Israelis.

Israel now occupies more than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip, but areas it has designated as "safe zones" like al-Mawasi in the south have been regularly bombed.

Some of Hatem's fondest memories are in Gaza, including his wedding to his wife Marlyn at the Church of Saint Porphyrius in 1999 – a church built in the 12th century, now under imminent threat of destruction.

Today, the places he used to frequent like the barbershop, the dentist's office, and the bakery, are rubble and ash.

"They don't just want to kill people or drive them out. They want to wipe their memories," he said.

"You try to say over and over and over: 'There are no Palestinian people,' but they still came. They still existed. So what do you do? You just erase everything. You erase what connects them together. You erase where they met, where they communed, where they prayed together," Hatem says.

So what is the way forward? How does this war end?

"I don't know what will happen," Hatem said, exasperated, and leaning back in his chair for the first time in an hour-long discussion. "I don't know".

But he was sure of one thing – that his faith demands a non-violent response.

"We as Christians don't see war as an option to meet some objectives," he told MEE. "We're against weapons. We're against arms," he said.

"But this is not going to solve the problem, because once the resistance drops their arms, they are going to be crushed and kicked out, and that's what happened before. We've seen it".

Fighting back
When Hatem says "resistance," he is referring to the armed Palestinian factions fighting against the Israelis in Gaza, largely led by the Qassam Brigades, which is the armed wing of Hamas, and Saraya al-Quds, which is the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Both are considered terrorist organizations in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Smaller, lesser-known factions are also operating alongside them.

As enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, armed resistance is a right of an occupied people. From an Islamic point of view, it can be a duty, depending on the circumstances.

The issue has, at times, caused a political rift between Muslim and Christian Palestinians in how to respond to 77 years of Israeli dispossession and aggression, but most especially when it came to the 7 October Hamas-led attack, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 people inside Israel.

"If anyone has the right to armed resistance, it's me," Bethlehem-born Christian theologist Fares Abraham told MEE.

His family in the occupied West Bank, he said, has suffered greatly at the hands of the Israeli military.

"As a Palestinian, as a Christian, as a citizen of Palestine, I do not choose to participate in armed resisting," he said.

"When Jesus was arrested – wrongly arrested and unjustly – Peter wanted to resist violently, and he withdrew his sword and he cut off Malchus' ear. But Jesus told him, put your weapon down," Abraham said.

Palestinians have historically employed a number of non-violent tactics to draw attention to their plight, with the most recent and well-known being the 2018 Great March of Return, when tens of thousands of demonstrators in Gaza made their way, on foot, to the Gaza-Israel fence to protest Israel's sea, land, and air siege of the enclave.

Israeli soldiers immediately opened fire, ultimately killing 190 Palestinians.

"God gives so many different examples of who our neighbor is, and [how] our neighbor can be our enemy," Abraham told MEE.

"If Jesus was alive in the Holy Land today, he would go and grieve with the mother of an Israeli soldier who was killed in Gaza, and he would also go to Gaza and grieve with the mother who lost her child in an indiscriminate bombing".

Whether any part of that is surprising or controversial is precisely the point of the Church at the Crossroads conference, Daniel Bannoura, the man who conceptualised the event, earlier told the audience as he kicked off the programme.

"Some of the things that are going to be said here might be a bit uncomfortable. Some of the people are going to say stuff that you're not used to," he said on stage, largely referring to some of the fiery criticism of Israel that was to come.

"This is a time for us to listen, to learn, to engage and to think seriously what needs to be done next," and talk to Palestinians rather than talk about them, he said.

Abraham, who spends his time between the US and the occupied West Bank, has three children with his wife Soha, who is from Gaza. He now runs Levant Ministries, which is one of the conference's conveners.

The church, he said, must maintain the kind of empathy that rises far above the politics and instinctual urges of humanity.

"For the church… the way of peace is bringing people together, is peacemaking, bridge building," he told MEE.

"[Christ] chose to show us a better way. But that way was so costly that he paid [with] his own life for it. That's the Christian message. And if Christians are not willing to present this message, we will never have peace".

Ten of those who were killed since dawn on Thursday were in Gaza City, where Israeli forces are currently conducting a siege and launching daily strikes on residential buildings as they prepare a major offensive against the Palestinian group Hamas.
The Times of Israel, citing Israeli military figures, reported that a total of 200,000 Palestinians have already been forced out of Gaza City in recent weeks, in an operation described by rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday as “unlawful and inhumane”.

In an Israeli attack early on Thursday, two Palestinians were killed, including an infant, and several others injured after tents sheltering displaced people were hit near Yarmouk Street in Gaza City.

Another Palestinian child was killed after Israeli forces opened fire in the Bureij camp in central Gaza, a source from al-Awda Hospital told Al Jazeera.

Sources from al-Awda and al-Mahmoudiyah hospitals also reported early on Thursday several deaths and injuries following Israeli shelling of Shujayea district east of Gaza City.

Further south, at least four Palestinians waiting for aid were killed in two separate incidents in Rafah, while one person was killed in Israeli shelling northwest of Khan Younis.

Earlier, Palestinian authorities and medical sources reported at least 72 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza within a 24-hour period on Wednesday.
These figures bring the number of people killed in Israeli attacks since the start of the war to at least 64,718, with 163,859 wounded, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
‘Further compounding genocidal conditions’
Israel accelerated its military campaign on Wednesday, with the army attacking dozens of homes in areas of Gaza City in an attempt to push Palestinians out of the area.
The escalation is accompanied by direct and repeated Israeli warnings to leave Gaza City.

In a statement on Wednesday, Amnesty International urged Israel to “immediately rescind” the mass displacement order, calling it “cruel” and “unlawful”, while warning it it “further compounds the genocidal conditions of life” that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians.

“Amnesty International has repeatedly and unequivocally stated that forcibly displacing Palestinians within the Gaza Strip or deporting them violates international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the statement said.

Heba Morayef, a senior Amnesty official for the Middle East, said the Israeli order “is a devastating and inhuman repeat” of the mass displacement order issued for all of North Gaza in October 2023.

Amnesty said some of those who are trying to flee since the order was issued were unable to do so because they cannot afford transport costs, or fit into the small area designated by Israel for evacuation.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said people are making their way from the area to the southern and central areas of the Strip, “but some people are coming back because they are unable to find a place to stay”.

“So as of this moment, there is no safe place in Gaza, including the ‘humanitarian zone’ designated by Israel. The journey itself, from north to south Gaza, has become a matter of life or death.”

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said it will remain in Gaza City, despite the Israeli order.

In a statement published on X by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the UN organisation said it is “appalled” by Israel’s order, saying the evacuation zone “has neither the size nor scale of services” required to support the displaced people.

“This catastrophe is human-made, and the responsibility rests with us all,” the statement said, while calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and for upholding international humanitarian law.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Earlier, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Palestinian and Qatari delegations are in Cairo working on a ceasefire proposal. He added that Egypt is engaged in intensive contacts with partners to advance de-escalation efforts in Gaza. Abdelatty rejected displacement from the territory, settlement expansion, and what he called the “illusions of Greater Israel,” stressing that Cairo “cannot be part of any injustice against the Palestinian people.”

He accused Israel of systematically targeting civilians waiting for aid and described the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza as “a blatant violation of all international norms.”

by al jazeera , Caolán Magee

On Sunday, the Arabic version of the hashtag had appeared in more than 227,000 posts on X, where it recently topped the platform’s trending list. On Instagram, the hashtag has been used in more than 5,000 posts.

Most posts are attributing to a post from October 31, 2023, quoting Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah’s warning: “People have started going hungry.”

The social media trend also came amid warnings from the United Nations and other aid agencies that Israel is starving Palestinian civilians, including more than a million children, by blocking food and medicines from entering the enclave.

Under the hashtag #GazaIsStarving, social media platforms have been flooded with images and videos showing the extent of the humanitarian crisis, which many countries and rights groups have called a genocide.

ANTARA contributor in Kuala Lumpur reported on Monday, the discussion on the nuclear-free zone will begin today and continue through Tuesday at the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (SEANWFZ) Executive Committee meeting at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center (KLCC).

The 58th AMM will be officially opened on Wednesday (July 9) by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, followed by an official meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers, including Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono.

The Fourth Conference on Cooperation Among East Asian Countries for Palestinian Development (CEAPAD IV) will also take place during this period.

The meeting will focus on capacity-building programs, reconstruction of critical infrastructure in Palestine, and the provision of comprehensive and effective humanitarian assistance.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud made the remarks during a joint news conference in Jordan’s capital, Amman, on Sunday with his counterparts from Jordan, Egypt, and Bahrain.

“Israel’s refusal of the committee’s visit to the West Bank embodies and confirms its extremism and refusal of any serious attempts for [a] peaceful pathway … It strengthens our will to double our diplomatic efforts within the international community to face this arrogance,” Prince Faisal said.

His comments followed Israel’s decision to block the Arab delegation from reaching Ramallah, where they were set to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had planned the visit as part of efforts to support Palestinian diplomacy amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said blocking the trip was another example of how Israel was “killing any chance of a just and comprehensive” Arab-Israeli settlement.

An international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, is due to be held in New York from June 17 to 20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said the conference would cover security arrangements after a ceasefire in Gaza and reconstruction plans to ensure Palestinians would remain on their land and foil any Israeli plans to evict them.

In Bern, Switzerland, 2000 people rallied in the city center and marched towards the synagogue on Monbijoustrasse, forcing police officers to block access to the building.

The protest, which was orchestrated by Basel4Palestine, was not given prior permission by the police. After multiple demonstrators broke through police cordons, threw stones, and set off fireworks, officers used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds, according to Basel 4 Palestine.

The statement added that the situation was "all the more disturbing" because many Holocaust survivors were present.

Nevertheless, the community said it would not be "bullied" and would continue its mission.

According to the Metropolitan Police, several pro-Palestine protest groups also gathered outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington.

Since dawn on Wednesday, airstrikes have rocked both central and southern Gaza, claiming at least seven lives. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, over 2,300 Palestinians have been killed since March 18, when Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas. The latest assaults have left families mourning loved ones and hospitals overwhelmed with critically injured victims.

In Gaza City, journalist Hani Mahmoud reported from the ground: “Explosions and airstrikes have targeted residential blocks in both the northern and southern parts of the Gaza Strip.” One such attack occurred in the northern city of Beit Hanoun, where three people were killed and several others critically wounded. The injured were rushed to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, already strained by the influx of casualties.

Meanwhile, in the southern city of Khan Younis, a drone strike early in the morning killed three farmers. Eyewitnesses said the victims were en route to their farmland when a missile struck. These farmers were attempting to grow food amid an acute shortage, doing what they could to provide for a population on the brink of starvation. Their deaths not only highlight the human cost of war but also reflect a devastating trend: the systematic targeting of Gaza’s agricultural efforts.

“The attack on farmers is not just an act of violence—it’s a deliberate strategy that undermines food security,” Mahmoud explained. “It exacerbates the already critical shortage of food and water, and pushes Gaza closer to the brink of famine.”

As if the bombings weren’t enough, humanitarian aid remains blocked. Over 3,000 aid trucks, packed with essential supplies—food, medicine, water, and hygiene products—are stalled just miles from Gaza’s border. The trucks are less than an hour away from the Kerem Shalom crossing, yet they remain immobilized due to a lack of safe passage and coordination.

“There are a million children relying on those trucks,” said Mahmoud. “Without them, we are facing an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.”

The situation in Gaza is further worsened by the inability of civilians to access the remaining food supplies. Warehouses located in areas under heavy Israeli military operations are unreachable, and their contents are rapidly spoiling or destroyed.

The United Nations has expressed deep concern about the growing risk of famine and dehydration across the territory, calling for immediate and unhindered humanitarian access. Still, the bombardment continues, and with it, the suffering of Gaza’s civilian population.

This conflict is not just about military action—it is about the survival of a besieged population being systematically deprived of food, water, and safety. The world must not turn away from Gaza. The time to act is now.

News source- Al Jazeera