Christian Zionist ambassador's ceasefire lies: Gaza War Day 683

As Palestinian children wait in line in hopes of receiving a free hot meal, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee describes God's blessings on the "chosen people" of Israel to an audience of fellow Christian Zionists. (Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency)

Compilation of news reports – IAK staff

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday, including at least 31 aid seekers. In total, Israel has killed at least 2,018 aid seekers since May 27, 2025 (learn about aid seekers here).

Among the dead is former Palestinian national basketball player Mohammed Shaalan, shot and killed as he tried to get aid for his family.

The total known number of Palestinians who have died from malnutrition stands at 269, including 112 children.

For detail on Israeli attacks in Gaza on Tuesday, go here.

GAZA NEWS:

(For some basic info on the Palestine-Israel conflict, go here. For a bit more critical context, skim this, this, and this.To read about a remarkable but underreported, 20-month-long peaceful protest in Gaza against Israel, go here.)

Israel Continues Total Destruction of al-Zaytoun Neighborhood

According to Raji Sourani, director of the Palestine Center for Human Rights (PCHR), “Al-Zaytoun is one of the oldest and most densely populated neighborhoods in Gaza City. Since the beginning of the current war, it has been a constant target of Israeli attacks, subjected to relentless bombardment and repeated ground invasions.

Sourani believes what is happening in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood reflects an Israeli policy of “gradual annexation and comprehensive destruction- erasing one neighborhood after another until Gaza City is completely emptied of its residents.”

Residents of al-Zaytoun are fleeing in a panic, fearful that this is the beginning of a larger plan, “to confine the entire population of Gaza to a narrow area in the south, itself under relentless bombardment, as a prelude to their forced displacement outside the Strip. Al-Zaytoun thus stands as a stark example of the next phase in Israel’s ongoing plan to depopulate Gaza.”

Smoke rises and Palestinians flee the site after Israeli army conduct attacks over al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza on August 06, 2025. (Khames Alrefi – Anadolu Agency)

OCCUPIED WEST BANK/EAST JERUSALEM NEWS & HEADLINES:

(For background on the West Bank, read this and this. For information on the significance of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, read this and this.)

Israel’s outrageous demands for ending siege of Jenin

Israeli officials have reportedly laid out a series of conditions to end their months-long military assault on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, including:

closure of the UNRWA office
a Palestinian police station to be opened within the camp, with Palestinian police officers working under the authority of and, on behalf of, Israeli security interests
redesignation of Jenin refugee camp as a “neighborhood” (read about the significance of refugees and refugee camps here and here)
Israel to be able to conduct security checks on refugees returning to the camp after Israeli withdrawal
resettlement of around 50 percent of refugee camp residents in dispersed housing units away from the camp
restrictions on the rebuilding of homes destroyed by Israel

“These conditions are unacceptable to us, and we will not deal with them in any way, shape, or form,” Jenin’s mayor Mohammed Jarrar said, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

Israel launched a large-scale military operation named “Iron Wall” in January 2025, which has left large sections of the camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, and other areas of the occupied West Bank destroyed.

Israeli attacks continue at the Jenin Refugee Camp and in the north of Jenin, West Bank on February 04, 2025. (Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency)

MORE WEST BANK HEADLINES:

Israeli Paramilitary Colonizers Escalate Violations Across Occupied West Bank

Israeli Army Continues Invasions, Violations, In West Bank

Israeli colonists destroy olive trees owned by Palestinians in ‘Atara village near Ramallah

Israeli forces detain at least 21 Palestinians, including minor, in West Bank raids

Israel issues new and renewed administrative detention orders against 55 Palestinians

Israeli forces protect settlers during a provocative tour of Hebron, occupied West Bank (Mamoun Wazwaz/Anadolu)

ISRAEL NEWS:

(Get a glimpse inside Israel and the turmoil within its government. Often, our news items and headlines are taken from Israeli media.)

Israeli far-right demands Netanyahu reject Gaza ceasefire offer approved by Hamas

Far-right Israeli ministers have called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ignore a proposal for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza accepted by Hamas on Monday.

Finance minister and head of the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party Bezalel Smotrich declared that Israel “must not give in”: “Continue to the end, win and bring back all the hostages in one go,” he wrote on social media.

Extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote on his Telegram channel, “I say to the prime minister: you have no mandate to go for a partial deal and not to decisively defeat Hamas” (continue reading here).

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ISRAEL CALLS UP RESERVISTS TO OCCUPY GAZA DESPITE CEASEFIRE TALKS: Israeli reserve soldiers have begun receiving call-up notices for a planned occupation of Gaza City, even as Hamas has accepted a ceasefire proposal, local media reported Tuesday. Channel 12 said tens of thousands of reservists are expected to be summoned in the coming days. Army chief Eyal Zamir also extended the service of reservists currently deployed.

Armored vehicles of Israeli army seen as military mobility and offensive continue near the border line of the Gaza Strip on June 29, 2025 in Israel. (Tsafrir Abayov – Anadolu Agency)

OTHER NEWS:

Mike Huckabee dehumanizes Palestinians in comment on ceasefire negotiations

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Tuesday, “I want to be optimistic about a deal with Hamas but I’m also aware of who we are dealing with, we’re not dealing with a nation state. We’re dealing with savages,”

The former governor of Arkansas’ comments come as Hamas has reportedly agreed to a 60-day ceasefire; Israel had not responded to the proposal as of Tuesday afternoon.

“Whether or not [Hamas is] serious about bringing this to a close, all I can tell you is I hope so. But what’s happened before, even when they say they are thinking seriously about bringing this to a conclusion, making a deal, they always add one or more things that are completely unacceptable, bring those to a table, then it all starts over again,” he said.

NOTE: Amb. Huckabee’s claims are completely false: Netanyahu has repeatedly delayed ceasefire agreements – he has said as much; Israeli media report it as well. Additionally, Israel unilaterally ended the January 2024 ceasefire (after violating it almost a thousand times and killing at least 170 Palestinians in Gaza.

Huckabee’s overtly Christian Zionist rhetoric has been problematic for years. In 2008, Huckabee famously told a rabbi in Massachusetts that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” During a trip to the West Bank in 2017, Huckabee said: “There is no such thing as a West Bank… There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”

Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, speaking to Trinity Broadcasting Network hosts about his Christian Zionist ideology, which invariably dehumanizes Palestinians (screenshot)

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MOST AMERICANS SAY ISRAEL RESPONSE IN GAZA EXCESSIVE: POLL: 59 percent of Americans believe Israel’s military response in Gaza after Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack has been excessive, a poll by Reuters and Ipsos has found. The poll shows that 65 percent of Americans believe the US should help Gazans facing Israel-induced starvation. 58 percent of Americans believe that every country in the United Nations should recognize Palestine as a nation

MORE HEADLINES:

Powerful Libyan official in talks with Israel to resettle Palestinians from Gaza

ADL chief attacks Zohran Mamdani, but gets his facts wrong

Bari Weiss’s Free Press Wants You to Know Some Kids Being Starved by Israel Were Already Sick

There’s a word for the EU’s inaction over Gaza: racism

Microsoft launches formal review into Gaza surveillance claims

How was an alleged Israeli ‘child sex predator’ allowed to leave the US?

ICYMI (IN CASE YOU MISSED IT) – A SELECTION OF YESTERDAY’S HEADLINES:

Amnesty: New testimonies indicate that Israel’s starvation of Gazans is a deliberate policy

Huckabee says Israel’s settlement plan in occupied West Bank ‘not a violation of int’l law’: Report

Christian leaders warn of Israel’s attempt to “eradicate Christian presence” in Palestine

Israel dangles aid for South Sudan, as it withholds relief from Gaza

Palestinian residents set off for safe areas with their belongings they could carry following attacks by the Israeli army on the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, Gaza on August 12, 2025. (Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini – Anadolu Agency)

**STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – AUGUST 19, 2025*:**

At least 63,154 Palestinians killed, 165,988 injured – including:
at least 62,122 killed in Gaza (~18,500 children)
at least 1,032 killed in the West Bank (~210 children)
at least 156,758 injured in Gaza
at least 9,230 injured in the West Bank
at least 269 have died from malnutrition in Gaza, including 112 children

According to Palestinian authorities, during the ceasefire Jan. 19 – March 18 2025, Israeli attacks killed at least 170 Gazans, and Israel committed at least 962 ceasefire violations.

At least 2,018 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access aid parcels from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which started operating on May 26, 2025.

Since the Israeli army resumed its assaults on Gaza on March 18, 2025 it has killed at least 10,576 people. 50 Israeli soldiers (most recent July 26) have been killed during the same time period.

*NOTE: Thousands of those killed in Gaza have yet to be identified, and an estimated 14,000 more are still buried under rubble. Additionally, the numbers of injured and starved are very conservative estimates.

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – August 19, 2025: ~1,629 – including ~1,139 on October 7, 2023 (~36 children), 454 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza, 46 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel. (72 soldiers have reportedly died due to “operational incidents.”)

By one count, Israeli attacks have killed approximately 234 Palestinian journalists and media workers; Palestinians have killed 4 Israeli journalists (other groups have tallied between 192 and 306 Palestinian journalists killed – depending on the criteria used).

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers. Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org