Updates: Gaza humanitarian crisis ‘unchanged’, Israel keeps restricting aid

As Washington tries to iron out the details of phase two of Trump’s Gaza plan, including a demand for Hamas to disarm, analyst Rob Geist Pinfold says “all sorts of compromises” are possible on disarmament.

“Hamas could, for example, agree to give up its heavy weapons – things like its long-range rockets and mortars – whilst keeping its small arms,” said Pinfold, a lecturer in international security at King’s College London.

“The issue here will be Israel. Netanyahu has campaigned on total victory, the total destruction, the disarmament, of Hamas, which will mean that Israel will drag its feet all the way.”

Watch our video below for the full interview:

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Keep up to date with our latest coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here.

Read our explainer on Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank after the US has said no here.

You can also read our story on a family returning to Gaza City amid the rubble here.

We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a look at the day’s top developments:

• At least two Palestinians have been killed in Israeli army shelling east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, a source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital tells Al Jazeera.
• After a meeting in Egypt, Palestinian political factions, including Hamas, have agreed to hand the administration of Gaza over to a transitional committee of technocrats, according to a statement published by Hamas.
• UN agencies and humanitarian groups have called on Israel to immediately reopen all the crossings into Gaza as Palestinians face dire conditions amid continued Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Hamas and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) can have no role in Gaza, as he tells reporters during a visit to Israel that Trump’s 20-point plan is progressing well.
• Israeli military and settler violence has continued across the occupied West Bank, with an 18-year-old Palestinian teenager dying of wounds sustained during an army raid in Nablus.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, marked United Nations Day today by stressing the need to recommit to strengthening the “rule-based” order.

In a post on X, Lazzarini said the UN has for 80 years “spared no efforts to forge peace, tackle poverty & hunger, advance human rights & strengthen a rule-based world”.

“Recommitting to these principles matters more than ever amid the catastrophe in Gaza, where we have seen an utter disregard for international humanitarian law, including the weaponisation of aid,” he said.

Walid Habbas, a researcher at the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies, breaks down the Israeli Parliament’s effort to annex the occupied West Bank, as Israel’s hold on the territory increasingly resembles full control:

Edouard Beigbeder, the Middle East and North Africa director at UNICEF, has run through a long list of healthcare and other services needed by Palestinian children in Gaza after two years of deadly Israeli bombardment.

“We need to double the numbers of incubators running in Gaza,” he said in a video shared on X. “We need water and sanitation systems running, providing safe water for children. We need to reopen the schools and we need to have places where children can have psychosocial support.”

In Gaza, UNICEF has been bringing in essential nutrition and medical supplies, hygiene kits, tents and winter clothing.@UNICEFmena's Edouard Beigbeder calls for the ceasefire to be sustained and respected and outlines the critical needs for children and families. pic.twitter.com/rt8XQOZ2jR

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) October 24, 2025

Clashes have erupted between Palestinians and Israeli forces after they stormed the town of Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem.

A local source told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic that soldiers were stationed in several neighbourhoods of the town, which led to clashes where live ammunition and tear gas were fired.

The source added that a number of children and young men were detained during the raid.

Issa Amro says Israeli soldiers raided his home in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron, in the south of the occupied West Bank.

“They showed me a false military zone order claiming that my house is a ‘closed military zone.’ They forced all my friends and neighbors to leave … my house,” Amro wrote in a social media post.

The post included what appears to be surveillance footage from the courtyard of the home. One of the videos, which don’t include any audio, show at least four Israeli soldiers in the courtyard.

Amro, a prominent Palestinian human rights activist and founder of the group Youth Against Settlements, has been a frequent target of Israeli military and settler attacks in the West Bank.

Happening now: Israeli soldiers raided my house in Tal Rumieda in Hebron .
They showed me a false military zone order claiming that my house is a “closed military zone.” They forced all my friends and neighbors to leave the my house. pic.twitter.com/DtBJ1ISlox

— Issa Amro عيسى عمرو 🇵🇸 (@Issaamro) October 24, 2025

Israeli from illegal settlements have vandalised the inside of a mosque in Khirbet Tana, near the town of Beit Furik, east of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

Thaer Hanani, an official of the Committee for the Defence of Tana Lands, told the Wafa news agency that the settlers stormed the Bayt al-Sheikh Mosque, damaging the carpets inside and the remaining solar power units.

Hanani warned that the repeated raids by Israeli forces and the protections given to settlers were evidence of a growing effort to forcibly push Palestinians out in preparation to take full control of the land.

Israel says it struck the area of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah in southern Lebanon earlier today to target an alleged Hezbollah member whom it claimed was trying to re-establish the group’s military capabilities.

“The terrorist’s activities constituted a violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon. The [Israeli military] will continue to operate in order to remove any threat posed to the State of Israel,” the army said in a statement.

A deputy spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres has rejected false claims that the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is linked to Hamas, hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington will not allow UNRWA to operate in Gaza.

“UNRWA is not linked to Hamas. UNRWA is the backbone of our humanitarian operations in Gaza,” Farhan Haq told reporters during a briefing in New York City.

“There were a small number of staff members of UNRWA who were credibly linked to Hamas, and we have handled that situation and fired those personnel. Others were not found to have any links, or there was no evidence provided to back up any allegations,” he continued.

“As for the UN’s work on the ground, I would simply point out that UNRWA, as well as the rest of the UN syste,m is working on the ground right now to help the people of Gaza, and we will continue to do that.”

As we’ve been reporting, the International Court of Justice said in a ruling earlier this week that there was no evidence to back up Israel’s claims that UNRWA is linked to Hamas. The ICJ also said Israel must allow UN agencies, including UNRWA, to carry out humanitarian work in Gaza.

The Israeli parliament has voted to annex the occupied West Bank – a move unlikely to become law but described as an “insult” by United States Vice President JD Vance.

President Donald Trump has also insisted that annexation will not happen, but Israeli settler violence is escalating.

Al Jazeera’s Inside Story speaks to experts on whether US-Israeli relations are in upheaval.

Watch the discussion below:

Al Jazeera is reporting from Jordan because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Israel is not willing to deal with anything where Hamas has a seat at the table.

These meetings were the result of concerted efforts by Egypt to bring all the Palestinian factions together to sit in one room and to agree on the way forward. There needs to be a Palestinian committee formed, and without them sitting in the same room, that is not going to be possible.

Now, Israel says that if Hamas has agreed to any of the people Egypt would recommend, then certainly there will be a veto on them. So, this is one complication that is certainly imminent in the discussions between Egypt and the United States and all the other guarantors of the agreement.

Having said that, it is also a meeting that falls short of Palestinian expectations. Nothing really concrete was announced, and even the meetings were not exactly fruitful; they were not multilateral, if you will.

Clashes have broken out between Palestinian youths and Israeli forces after they stormed the city of Tubas and the town of Aqaba, in the occupied West Bank, our colleague from Al Jazeera Arabic reported.

Moreover, the Wafa news agency reported that dozens of Palestinians have been tear gassed after clashes erupted with Israeli forces in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron.

According to the report, citing activist Mohammed Awad, Israeli soldiers fired sound bombs and tear gas at residents and their homes.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), an independent organisation of lawyers, politicians and academics, have applied for a court summons to “privately prosecute” a dual-national British-Israeli citizen who is alleged to have joined the Israeli armed forces.

In a statement from the ICJP, the suspect is alleged to have served in a unit on the Lebanese border and in the occupied West Bank.

The ICJP claimed that Section 4 of the UK’s Foreign Enlistment Act is an offence for a “British subject to accept any engagement in ‘the military or naval service’ of a foreign state which is at war with a friendly state”.

ICJP’s head of legal, Mutahir Ahmed, said that this was a “significant step in holding suspected war criminals accountable within domestic jurisdictions for offences that they have committed outside of their home countries”.

“War criminals must be held accountable for their role in the genocide, from the most senior generals to the most junior foot soldier,” Ahmed added.

With Gaza’s education system shattered by two years of gruelling war, UNICEF’s regional director says he fears for a “lost generation” of children wandering ruined streets with nothing to do.

“This is the third year that there has been no school,” Edouard Beigbeder, the UN agency’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, told the AFP news agency in Jerusalem after returning from the Palestinian territory.

“If we don’t start a real transition for all children in February, we will enter a fourth year. And then we can talk about a lost generation.”

A US-brokered ceasefire, which came into effect earlier in October, has allowed UNICEF and other education partners to get about one-sixth of children who should be in school into temporary “learning centres”, Beigbeder told AFP.

“They have three days of learning in reading, mathematics and writing, but this is far from a formal education as we know it,” he added.

Beigbeder said that such learning centres, often located in schools or near displacement camps, consisted of metal structures covered with plastic sheeting or of tents. He said there were sometimes chairs, cardboard boxes or wooden planks serving as tables, and that children would write on salvaged slates or plastic boards.

Here’s a look at the latest developments:

• Palestinian political factions meeting in Egypt release a statement, saying they have agreed to continue implementing the Gaza ceasefire and will hand the administration of the enclave to a committee to independent “technocrats”.
• The UN and rights groups have ramped up their calls for Israel to allow unimpeded humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza as Palestinians still face starvation and a lack of critical supplies.
• Top US diplomat Marco Rubio says neither Hamas nor the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) can have a role in Gaza, contradicting an International Court of Justice ruling that said Israel must allow all UN agencies, including UNRWA to operate in the Strip.
• Two people have been killed and two others wounded in an Israeli drone attack on a car in southern Lebanon, the country’s Health Ministry says.