It is reported today that the Israeli military killed at least 32 Palestinians trying to access food today at distribution points set up in northwestern Rafah and Middle Gaza by the so-called ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (GHF) and Safe Research Solutions (SRS), an American security company tasked by Israel with distributing food.

In the early morning of 1 June, the Israeli military reportedly shot at Palestinians trying to reach the aid distribution points in northwestern Rafah. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, there were over 200 Palestinian casualties, including 31 killed and dozens seriously injured. Around the same time, in a similar incident close to another distribution point south of the Netzarim corridor in Middle Gaza, at least 1 person was shot and killed, and 42 were injured. While more information is being gathered, in both locations, the casualties reportedly include children and women.

The killings today follow numerous reports of the lethal use of firearms against Palestinians approaching GHF distribution points in Rafah and Middle Gaza since this new mechanism was established late last month. Between 27 and 31 May, the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) had already recorded daily violence connected with the mechanism, including reports of at least 19 Palestinians killed and 80 injured in total. At least 2 Palestinians were reportedly missing.

The UN Human Rights Office OPT stresses once more that Israel’s militarised humanitarian assistance mechanism violates international standards on aid distribution, endangers civilians, and is contributing to the catastrophic situation in Gaza. The 20 months of hostilities, Israel’s destruction of civilian infrastructure across Gaza, the almost 3 months of complete siege and blockade of Gaza, attacks on community kitchens, as well as the unlawful targeting of civilians including the police force, have led to a break down in civil order and is forcing on Palestinians the stark choice of dying from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available through the GHF.

The weaponisation of food for civilians and restricting or preventing their access to other life sustaining services constitute a war crime and may constitute elements of other international crimes, including genocide.

Israel, as the occupying power, has the duty, to the fullest extent of the means available to it, to ensure the provision of food and medical care for the population commensurate with their needs. They have further obligations to facilitate access by international humanitarian service providers and to facilitate the access of the civilian population to that assistance. The Office recalls that in 2024 the International Court of Justice, having found that there was a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to the plausible rights of Palestinians in Gaza under the Genocide Convention, issued binding orders on Israel to take all measures to ensure, without delay, and in cooperation with the UN, the unhindered provision at scale of aid and assistance to Gaza.

As a matter of urgency, Israel must immediately comply if further unnecessary deaths of Palestinian civilians are to be prevented. 

The apparent summary execution of an UNRWA staff member in Rafah on 23 March this year is truly shocking and must be promptly investigated, and those responsible brought to justice. It reflects a chilling pattern of violations of the basic principles of International Humanitarian Law. Related to the same incident, the Israeli military appears to have shot at clearly marked ambulances and rescue vehicles, killing eight Palestinian Red Crescent Society and seven Gaza Civil Defense staff. This appears to be an incident of deliberate targeting and killing of medical and humanitarian personnel in violation of international law. These killings reflect the Israeli military’s pattern of unlawful killings since the escalation of hostilities in Gaza began in October 2023.

UN Human Rights Office has documented numerous reports of possible extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, including the reported summary execution of members of the Anan family on 19 December 2023, the deliberate and systematic lethal targeting of members of the civilian police and the civil defence, the killing of journalists, and a pattern of attacks on fishers clearly neither participating in hostilities nor posing any threat to life or limb.

Palestinians have died in Israeli custody in situations that raise grave concerns that they were tortured and/or otherwise killed. In one example, the Israeli military arrested Dr. Adnan Ahmad Ateya Al Bursh, a senior orthopedic doctor on 17 December 2023 at Al Awda Hospital, North Gaza. He reportedly died on 19 April 2024 in Ofer Prison, an Israeli detention facility. According to witnesses he showed signs of torture and other ill-treatment, and his body is still being withheld by the Israeli authorities.

All of those reportedly killed are presumed to have been civilians and if they were targeted as such this would constitute a serious violation of IHL, as would the deliberate killing of any person within the power of a party. Under IHL, the parties to a conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants, and attacks may only be directed against combatants and other military objectives and never against civilians. Deliberately targeting or killing a civilian is a war crime.

Following the killings on 23 March, the Israeli Defense Forces dismissed the Deputy Commander of the Golani Battalion and issued a reprimand to the Commander of the 14th Brigade. Although the case was reportedly submitted to the Military Advocate General, no further accountability measures have been reported as of now. In addition, monitoring by the UN Human Rights Office confirms that such investigations in this context do not lead to effective accountability. UN Human Rights Office is gravely concerned that the prevalence of unlawful killings, including extrajudicial executions, and the repeated nature of these violations, as well as the apparent absence of effective steps from the Israeli military to repress and punish most of these cases, imply that these killings are not isolated events and indicate that they are condoned by the military and civilian hierarchy. In the absence of effective accountability within the Israeli military and judicial system, the international community must take steps to ensure effective investigations into all allegations of unlawful killings in the context of the escalation of hostilities in Gaza. 

The UN Human Rights Office in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) condemns the Israeli military’s continuing strikes on shelters for Palestinians in Gaza over the last week – including a fourfold increase in strikes on residential buildings. These attacks have killed hundreds of civilians, injured scores of others, displaced thousands and indicate a disregard for the principles of distinction and proportionality required by international humanitarian law.

Of 629 Palestinians reportedly killed in the last week, at least 358 of them, including at least 148 children and women, were reportedly killed as a result of attacks targeting houses and IDP tents. Many more were injured or trapped under the rubble. The high number of strikes on shelters, in the context of the existing destruction of infrastructure in Gaza, raises grave concerns that not all strikes were targeting military objectives.

In addition, 9 Palestinian journalists were killed – making this past week one of the deadliest for journalists since 7 October 2023. They have a deep sense of duty to their work, but they, too, are displaced, tired and hungry like the rest of the population of Gaza. However, it appears that in many instances, these journalists may have been deliberately targeted with the intention of limiting the flow of information on what is happening in Gaza and the scale of the impact that this war is having on civilians.

It is imperative that international journalists be allowed to enter Gaza and their safety ensured, in order to report freely on what is happening on the ground and to promote accountability. 

The UN Human Rights Office is deeply concerned by recent claims by a group affiliated with Hamas that they executed Palestinians accused of theft. Such summary executions would constitute serious violations of IHL. Hamas must ensure that any such practice ends immediately. All those responsible must be held to account.

The Israeli military’s escalation of attacks in Gaza over the weekend raises further concerns that Israel is inflicting conditions of life on Palestinians increasingly incompatible with their continued existence in Gaza as a group. These latest attacks, which are forcing people to move while they are being bombed, the methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods, and the denial of humanitarian assistance underline an apparent push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and tantamount to ethnic cleansing. Palestinian civilians are dying under the bombs or from hunger. This is intolerable, and a ceasefire must be immediately agreed and implemented.

On 19 May the Israeli Defense Forces announced that they had struck '160 terror targets" across Gaza over the period of one day, which in the context of the existing destruction of infrastructure in Gaza, raises grave concerns that not all strikes were targeted at military objectives. Furthermore, the pattern of strikes on Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) tents and residential buildings, as well as on crowded hospitals, indicates that little, if any, care is being taken to protect the lives of civilians in Gaza, while reports of the use of weapons with wide area effects suggest deliberate, indiscriminate attacks.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation is beyond description. For the third consecutive month, Israel continues to prevent the entry and distribution of any items essential for life. Mass displacement continues as a result of bombings and strikes, the humanitarian catastrophe, and displacement orders, some of which no longer even identify areas where civilians should move. Around 150,000 people reportedly have been displaced in the last 24 hours alone. Displaced Palestinians are being forced onto the streets, with no shelter, and in most cases with no food, water or medical care. On 19 May, Israel issued more displacement orders impacting large areas of Khan Younis and Deir El Balah, which will result in further massive displacement, death, destruction, and push people into smaller areas.

Those who have been forced from their homes or other shelters remain under attack. In the last 48 hours, the Israeli military has intensified strikes, especially in North Gaza and Khan Younis and adjacent Deir al Balah in Middle Gaza, killing at least 96 Palestinians during the night and early morning of 17-18 May alone. In the last few days, the majority of Palestinians killed were in IDP tents, especially in the overcrowded Al Mawasi area in western Khan Yunis, where the Israeli military had previously unilaterally designated a “humanitarian zone.” During the late

night of 17 May, Israeli military strikes on IDP tents in Al Mawasi killed at least 36 Palestinians, including 4 cases in which parents and their children were killed together. In the morning of 18 May, an attack on another IDP tent near Alkhear Hospital in Al Mawasi, killed 4 Palestinians, a man and his 3 boys.

In less than 24 hours, 5 Palestinian journalists were reportedly killed, including a female journalist. This wave of killings of journalists came a few days after 3 other journalists were killed on 13 and 14 May.

OHCHR has verified the killing of 214 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including 185 men and 29 women. The apparent targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, combined with the denial by Israel of access of foreign journalist to Gaza for over 18 months, except a few visits controlled by IDF, appear to indicate a deliberate attempt by Israel to limit the flow of information to and from Gaza and prevent reporting on the impact of its attacks and denial of humanitarian assistance. 

The UN Human Rights office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) somberly marks World Press Freedom Day as Palestinian journalists continue to be killed or injured at an alarming rate with impunity, along with widespread attacks on their work and freedom.

“Press vests have transformed from a means of protection to a target for attacks,” one journalist told the UN Human Rights office in the OPT. The Office has independently verified the killing of 211 journalists in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including 28 woman journalists. According to UNESCO, at least 47 journalists were killed while on duty. And as of 29 April 2025, 49 Palestinian journalists are held in Israeli detention based on the information from Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military have refused to allow foreign journalists entry to Gaza since 7 October 2023, except for limited army-controlled visits – Palestinian journalists endure the trauma of both living under and reporting on the devastation and death inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza by Israel’s military campaign. They are forced to balance the fear for their lives with their professional commitment to go out and report on daily horrors.

Journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict must be respected and protected from attack unless directly participating in hostilities. There are strong indications of incidents in which many Palestinian journalists may have been directly targeted by the Israeli military during their work, which would be a war crime.

Meanwhile in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the resilience of Palestinian journalists also persists despite significant, dangerous and targeted backlash against their work. The UN Human Rights Office has monitored multiple cases of journalists detained, a significant number of whom appear to have been detained arbitrarily. Many are held under administrative detention, while others have been detained under broad allegations of “incitement” for social media posts, in many cases for apparently protected speech, as part of wider ongoing efforts to silence civil society and annihilate any form of opposition to the military occupation. Both men and women journalists detained by Israeli security forces have reported to the UN Human Rights Office that they have been subjected to beatings, humiliation and sexual and gender-based violence during interrogations about their journalistic work.

Detention, threats, ill-treatment and sexual violence against journalists falls into a larger pattern of intimidation and smears against Palestinian press across the OPT, where their legitimate work is often claimed by Israeli security forces to be associated with “terrorism” including as a justification to shut down media offices.

Palestinian authorities have further contributed to the oppressive environment for journalists, including by banning certain media entities from broadcasting in the West Bank since January 2025, reportedly for publishing “inciting content, misinformation, sedition and interference in Palestinian internal affairs”. They have also threatened Palestinian journalists not to feed information to their media outlets. The shutdown came in the context of often critical coverage of a 6-week operation by Palestinian security forces in Jenin refugee camp, which started in December 2024.

Both Palestinian and Israeli security forces have banned or limited journalists’ entry to the Jenin and other refugee camps in northern West Bank. They injured, detained, threatened and in some cases subjected journalists to ill-treatment.

There have also been reports of journalists harassed by Hamas authorities in Gaza, where they were reportedly pressured to refrain from covering sensitive incidents or information critical of the de facto authorities.

The targeting of journalists is a violation of both international humanitarian law and international human rights law and must cease immediately. Perpetrators of attacks on journalists must be held accountable, including by third party States. The killing of journalists in Gaza and the suppression of media coverage across the OPT has likely contributed to the creation of an enabling environment for ongoing violations of international law that the UN Human Rights Office and other entities have repeatedly raised concerns about. The press is a vital part of ensuring accountability for international law violations, and attempts to suppress media work, including through the killing, detention, ill-treatment, threatening of journalists, or shutting down their offices, are disturbing and entirely unacceptable.