Updates: Gaza ceasefire? Questions swirl as Israel, US deny any deal made

Gaza’s youngest influencer is among the many children killed by Israel in the last two days. Read more here.

Watch Al Jazeera’s Inside Story discussing toughening Western rhetoric towards Israel, here.

For an explainer on the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, read this.

And for all of our coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, go here.

We’ll soon be closing this live page. Here are the day’s main developments:

• A source says Hamas has agreed to a 60-day Gaza truce proposal by United States special envoy Steve Witkoff, which includes the exchange of 10 living Israeli captives for Palestinian prisoners.
• A US official denied the claim, saying what Witkoff saw from the Palestinian group is “disappointing and completely unacceptable”.
• Medical sources tell Al Jazeera that at least 81 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on various parts of Gaza since dawn.
• A widely condemned new aid system network in Gaza – backed by Israel and the US – involves military contractors and is starting operations.
• A WHO spokeswoman says medicines are essentially gone from Gaza’s hospitals as the badly wounded from Israeli attacks continue to pour in.

A World Health Organization (WHO) representative has described how Gaza’s healthcare workers are dealing with wounded children who are also starving because of Israel’s 12-week blockade.

“The little ones are so emaciated, so malnourished. When you put a skin graft on their burns, it doesn’t take. It doesn’t heal because their immune systems are failing. So you have horror on horror, and the only answer is a ceasefire,” WHO spokeswoman Dr Margaret Harris said.

Infections are a serious problem with no antiseptics in supply, she added. “They basically don’t have things to clean the floor. No antibiotics. People don’t even have an immune system to fight the infection.”

Medical workers themselves are enduring exhaustion, lack of food, and mental health issues, said Harris.

“They’re suffering enormous mental trauma as they don’t know if the next person they see is one of their children, their brother, sister, neighbour. And they don’t know if the next moment is their last.”

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam says Lebanon will consider bilateral ties with Israel if an agreement leads to “real peace”.

“We are a peace-seeking nation, but we want a real peace. Israel is occupying territories that belong to our country,” he was quoted as telling Sky News Arabia by Lebanese and Israeli media.

Of weapons in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Salam said: “What’s dangerous about the camps’ arms is that they may lead to an inter-Palestinian strife.”

A British surgeon who operated on the only child to survive an Israeli strike on the home of Dr Alaa al-Najjar says that the boy, Adam, could have long-term challenges, even if he is able to overcome his physical injuries.

Nine out of al-Najjar’s 10 children were killed in the Israeli strike, and the family has been prevented from recovering the bodies of two from the rubble for burial.

“Poor little Adam and his mother, and his father, if he survives, had an unimaginable tragedy. And even if his physical injuries recover, we don’t know the extent of his traumatic brain injury, and we certainly don’t know the lasting mental health effects,” Dr Graeme Groom, who is working at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, told Al Jazeera.

“I think the population here in Palestine is extraordinarily resilient. But they don’t want to be known as resilient. They want the bombs to stop.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu convened a meeting of his cabinet in a predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood, as Israel celebrated Jerusalem Day, promising that the ancient city would remain under Israel’s control.

“We will keep Jerusalem united, whole, and under Israeli sovereignty,” Netanyahu said on the Israeli holiday, which celebrates Israel’s taking of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, speaking from East Jerusalem’s Silwan.

At the meeting, the government approved a resolution to encourage and financially support countries in establishing or relocating their embassies to Jerusalem, according to a joint statement by Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and the minister for Jerusalem affairs and Jewish heritage, Meir Porush.

In 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, home to the city’s most sensitive holy sites, in a move that is not internationally recognized. The Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.

“Jerusalem, our eternal capital, was reunited 58 years ago in the Six-Day War. It will never be divided again,” Netanyahu said.

Pressure on Israel has ramped up with Spain calling for an arms embargo and sanctions on individuals who obstruct a two-state solution to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The United States paused trade talks and sanctioned a number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Canada and France have also threatened punitive measures.

And the European Union – Israel’s biggest trade partner – is reviewing its landmark agreement covering trade and political dialogue.

Antiwar activists who Al Jazeera has spoken to talked of an uptick in interest in their movement after the Israeli government’s unilateral decision in mid-March to end the ceasefire it had agreed to after months of negotiations.

Others spoke of a dramatic increase in support when – after 11 weeks of an unremitting siege of Gaza – Israel announced its latest mass ground invasion of the devastated Palestinian territory on May 17.

The escalation is intended, according to one Israeli official, to lead to “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories”.

Read the full story here.

Ambassador Jorge Ivan Ospina, Colombia’s newly appointed ambassador to the occupied Palestinian territories, says his country is willing to provide medical treatment for thousands of Palestinians wounded during Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza.

“The world cannot turn a blind eye,” to the Palestinian civilians suffering in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Ospina said.

“People cannot die of hunger. They must receive immediate medical attention and must be rehabilitated,” he added.

Colombia broke diplomatic ties with Israel last year over its war on Gaza.

A new aid distribution network involving private military contractors in Gaza says it has opened its first distribution hubs.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is taking over the handling of humanitarian relief despite objections from United Nations. The desperately needed supplies started flowing on a day that saw Israeli strikes kill at least 80 people in Gaza.

The group said truckloads of food – it did not say how many – had been delivered to its hubs, and distribution to Palestinians has begun.

“More trucks with aid will be delivered tomorrow with the flow of aid increasing each day,” it said in a statement.

The UN and aid groups that have long supplied aid to Gaza have pushed back against the new system, which is backed by Israel and the United States. They assert that Israel is trying to use food as a weapon and say a new system won’t be effective.

Dr Margaret Harris, spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, says medicines are essentially gone from Gaza’s hospitals as the badly wounded from Israeli attacks continue to pour in.

“They are facing people coming in with the most horrific and complex injuries. They don’t have the cleaning fluid to do it and they don’t have the painkillers. Just even changing a bandage on a child with a burn is excruciating,” she told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, essential medicines for people with cancer, heart disease and maladies are not coming in either because of Israel’s total blockade, said Harris.

“So whether you’ve been bombed or whether you need medicine to keep you healthy, everyone is suffering from the lack of supplies.”

Israeli ground forces have entered an area near Meiss el-Jabal in the Marjayoun district, according to a news report.

The Israeli Army Radio’s report added that the soldiers advanced a few hundred metres into the territory, without giving further details.

The United Nations says more than 70 civilians have been killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon since a ceasefire was struck at the end of last year.

Israel has continued to strike Lebanon, including attacks on the capital, Beirut, since a November 27 ceasefire, which largely halted more than a year of hostilities between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah, including two months of all-out war.

I’m keen to think there’s a game being played, but you also get the sense that everyone is lost.

The Americans are trying to reach a deal. The deal might be somewhat acceptable to the Palestinians, to Hamas, but not to Israel, because Israel is trying to continue the war.

And I think most of these deals have failed on one important point: Israel does not want to stop the war and Hamas demands that any deal should have a clause that speaks of ending the war.

And this is all, if you’ll remember, a violation of a deal that was already signed. It was an accord that was agreed to under the administration of former US President Joe Biden. There was a UN Security Council resolution that actually talked about three phases. We finished with the first phase, then were supposed to enter the second phase and continue talking in the second phase without resuming the war.

So we are now living in the realm of Israeli violations of an already-existing accord, and they are trying to work out something whereby they force Hamas’s hand into accepting something that does not end the war.

And how do they force Hamas’s hand? By burning Palestinian families. So the point of pressure on Hamas is they continue to bomb every day, kill 100 people or so every day, and now incinerate Palestinian families in order for Hamas to accept a deal.

The Israeli prime minister has promised to bring home all abductees held in Gaza, those alive and those deceased.

“If we don’t achieve it today, we will achieve it tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. We are not giving up,” Netanyahu said of the duty to free the captives in a speech to close out “Jerusalem Day”.

“We intend to bring them all back, the living and the dead.”

Netanyahu has consistently rejected calls for a truce that would end the war in Gaza in exchange for the release of all captives by Hamas.

In a social media post earlier, the group Bring Them Home Now, which represents families and friends of the captives, said the United States must pressure Netanyahu to end Israel’s escalation of the military assault on Gaza to ensure their release.

“They were kidnapped alive, waiting to return home safely. Some returned in coffins; others remain abandoned in Gaza. Our families are living proof that military pressure kills hostages. Every escalation risks more lives.”

"They were kidnapped alive, waiting to return home safely. Some returned in coffins; others remain abandoned in Gaza. Our families are living proof that military pressure kills hostages. Every escalation risks more lives."

Representatives of the families of 41 hostages who were… pic.twitter.com/gHnJUeU2e9

— Bring Them Home Now (@bringhomenow) May 26, 2025