Updates: Israel’s Netanyahu says will take over Gaza; more starve to death

The live page is now closed.

To read more about the role that weapons provided by the United States have played in enabling Israeli abuses in Gaza, you can read our story on a newly released Human Rights Watch report here.

You can also find our most recent reporting on the famine ravaging Gaza as a result of Israeli restrictions on assistance here.

And, you can always find all of our coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.

We will be closing the live page soon. Here’s a brief review of the day’s main events:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would ‘take control of all Gaza,’ in a television interview, adding that Israel did not want to oversee governing responsibilities and would hand them over to an unspecified third party.
• The number of Palestinians who have starved to death due to Israel’s brutal siege on Gaza rose to 197 people, including 96 children. The WHO says that about 12,000 children in Gaza under the age of five were acutely malnourished at the end of July, the highest number on record.
• The Lebanese government approved a US-backed proposal to disarm the paramilitary group Hezbollah by the end of the year. Hezbollah officials said it would not disarm before Israeli forces, still occupying Lebanese territory in defiance of a truce agreement, left the country.
• The rights watchdog Human Rights Watch released a report stating that Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza since the beginning of the war, including “unlawfully indiscriminate” strikes with US-provided munitions.

The United Nations has confirmed that the US brokered a meeting between the UN and the discredited GHF, which the US and Israel have pushed the UN to collaborate with despite continuous massacres of Palestinians at the organisation’s aid distribution sites in Gaza.

“[The] UN now confirms this meeting took place,” Al Jazeera correspondent Gabriel Elizondo said in a social media post.

“A UN official saying: At the invitation of the US Mission, UN entities and partners attended a dialogue on the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. The chairman of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was in attendance.”

The GHF has repeatedly deflected criticism of the way it operates by slamming the UN for refusing to participate in its aid distribution scheme, but the UN, along with other major humanitarian NGOs, said from the creation of the organisation that it would force further displacement, expose people to harm and restrict aid to one part of Gaza.

The Palestinian news service Wafa has reported that Israeli forces have raided the town of Ramin, east of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank.

The report says that Israeli forces entered the town and raided a store, checking the IDs of residents and stopping vehicles.

Israeli forces have carried out constant raids in the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers have also surged.

The far-right US Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene has said she will not back down after the pro-Israel lobbying organisation AIPAC attacked her for calling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, a view held by a growing number of US voters, along with scholars and rights groups.

While the Republican Party remains a bastion of support for Israel, a small section of the US right has stepped up criticism in recent months.

“I’m one of the only members of Congress that doesn’t take money from AIPAC, who donates way more money to Republicans than Democrats,” she said.

“The truth is AIPAC needs to register as a foreign lobbyist by U.S. law because they are representing the secular government of nuclear armed Israel 100 percent!!!”

Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative at the UN, says Moscow views Israel’s plans to expand its control of Gaza as “a very bad step, in an absolutely wrong direction”.

“We condemn this kind of action,” Polyanskiy told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.

“We did it from the outset, from the moment when these plans were announced and contemplated. They run counter to all the UN decisions on [the] Palestine-Israeli conflict.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said that outside journalists must be granted access to the Gaza Strip and that action is needed to end starvation caused by Israel’s blockade, which has largely continued despite a handful of mostly symbolic changes.

“The world must act now,” CPJ’s regional director, Sara Qudah, said.

Israel has not allowed foreign journalists into Gaza, and has killed dozens of Palestinian reporters working to document conditions there, including members of Al Jazeera’s team.

The deputy chief of Hezbollah’s political council, Mahmoud Komati, has called the Lebanese government’s decision to disarm Hezbollah a “march in humiliation” and surrender to Israel and the US.

“There is no state or government in the world that would confront the resistance in its own territory while the enemy is still there occupying the land and carrying out aggressions against Lebanon daily,” Komati told Al Jazeera Mubasher.

He said Hezbollah will hold on to its right to resist Israel under the UN Charter, which asserts an “inherent right of individual or collective self-defence”.

“Our presence is legal and legitimate and ethical and humane, and so are our weapons as a resistance [movement],” Komati said.

A new poll from the Angus Reid Institute shows 52 percent of Canadians believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Fifty-four percent of respondents also said they want the Canadian government to do more to ensure that it’s not sending lethal military equipment to Israel.

Canadian rights groups have accused the government of deceiving the public by continuing to allow weapons to be sent to Israel, despite a pledge to curtail such transfers amid the country’s war on Gaza.

While Ottawa says it stopped issuing new arms export permits in early January 2024, the government’s own data shows that nearly $14m worth of weapons were sent to Israel last year under existing permits.

Michael Bueckert, acting president of the group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), said the poll’s findings show that “most Canadians support greater action on Palestinian rights”.

But “Canadian foreign policy continues to act as if the reverse were true”, Bueckert said in a statement. “Canadians have spoken: they do not support arming a state that they know is committing genocide.”

A majority of CDNs say that Israel is committing genocide. "What will it take for @MarkJCarney's words and actions to reflect the reality that everyone else can see — that Canada’s ‘friend and ally’ is committing a genocide in Gaza?" https://t.co/qrU6kf4ozf

— Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (@CJPME) August 7, 2025

US Senator Bernie Sanders has once again questioned continued United States military aid to Israel as starvation grips the Gaza Strip.

Sanders wrote on X that “18,500 children have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza”, and noted that “despite these war crimes, the US has provided more than $22 BILLION for the war”.

“Our taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb schools & gun down hungry people as they wait for aid,” he said.

18,500 children have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

Despite these war crimes, the US has provided more than $22 BILLION for the war.

Our taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb schools & gun down hungry people as they wait for aid. pic.twitter.com/bKh9Tvb0LG

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 7, 2025

The progressive pollster Data for Progress has found that US voters are now more likely to say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza than not, a result in line with other recent polls on the subject.

Data for Progress says that 47 percent of likely voters say Israel is committing genocide, up from 39 percent in April 2024. A recent YouGov poll found that 43 percent of people in the US believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, the highest number since the pollster first started asking the question in January 2024, when the figure was 35 percent.

The Data for Progress poll also found that 52 percent of likely voters strongly oppose Israel’s blockage of food and medical supplies to Gaza, while 54 percent believe the US should prioritise humanitarian assistance in Gaza over aid and weapons for Israel.

Crowds of starving Palestinians have struggled to get any of the limited aid being airdropped into Gaza in recent days.

Check out our report from the chaotic scene after an airdrop in Gaza City below:

The international rights watchdog has said that Israel’s campaign to starve Gaza and Hamas sharing videos of emaciated Israeli captives both constitute war crimes.

“Hostage-taking and releasing videos of emaciated Israeli hostages in Gaza are war crimes, as is using starvation as a weapon of war against 2+ million Palestinians there,” Gerry Simpson, associate director of the crisis and conflict division at HRW, said in a social media post.

The UN’s child relief agency (UNICEF) says the number of Palestinian children suffering from acute malnutrition in Gaza has surged from about 2,000 in February to nearly 12,000 now.

“It is clear evidence that malnutrition is accelerating rapidly, putting young lives at grave risk,” the agency wrote on X.

“We know how to prevent and treat malnutrition. The tools exist. The expertise exists. But without safe, sustained access, they mean nothing. Children in Gaza need urgent access to aid at scale and a ceasefire. NOW.”

The surge in the number of children with acute malnutrition in Gaza is staggering.

In February, 2,000 children were affected. By June, that figure tripled. Now it has nearly doubled again.

It is clear evidence that malnutrition is accelerating rapidly, putting young lives at… pic.twitter.com/VHZt2vwW3O

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) August 7, 2025

A group of UN experts is calling on countries around the world to apply pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian groups, including the UN humanitarian office (OCHA) and Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), to have unimpeded access to Gaza.

“All States must act decisively to prevent Israel’s destruction of the conditions of life in Gaza and stop its endless war on humanity,” the experts said in a statement. “States must do everything in their power to restore the UN humanitarian system in Gaza.”

As we’ve been reporting, Israel continues to block unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, instead offering limited aid distribution via airdrops and a widely condemned US and Israeli-backed group known as the GHF.

Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid at GHF-run sites in Gaza, while many others have also been injured by the airdrops.

“Starvation has been used as a savage weapon of war and constitutes crime under international law,” the experts said, calling GHF-linked killings the “predictable result of disrupting effective, impartial humanitarian relief by trusted, experienced international actors”.

A new report from the Center for International Policy, a US-based think tank, has found that the US sent Israel nearly $4.2bn in weapons between October 7, 2023, and May 2025.

The report states that the figure is a “partial snapshot” of US support for Israel that does not include transfers that have been authorised, but have yet to be delivered. It notes that the US has paid for “much of the munitions and small arms used to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip”.

Israel’s complete closure of Gaza to humanitarian assistance and creation of famine have not slowed the flow of US arms, with May 2025 representing the second-largest quantity of arms transfers since the war began.