Updates: Conditions in Gaza City under Israeli attack ‘unthinkable’ says UN

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For more on the Trump administration’s crackdown against Palestinian NGOs and its move to sanction prominent organisations, read this.

Washington shields Israel as it commits the darkest of crimes, but the family of nations still has the means and duty to act, writes Jeffery Sachs and Sybil Fares. For more, read their thoughts in this opinion piece.

Northwestern University President Michael Schill has said he will leave his post as the school faces funding cuts from the Trump administration and mounting pressure to quash pro-Palestine activism. For more, read this.

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

This live page will be closing soon. Here’s a recap of the day’s major developments:

• Israeli forces have carried out intensified attacks across Gaza, killing at least 75 Palestinians, including 44 people in Gaza City, and 14 aid seekers in central and southern Gaza.
• The attacks included strikes on Gaza City as the army expands its assault on residential homes and displacement camps, claiming it now controls 40 percent of the city.
• The director-general of Gaza’s Health Ministry has said at least 30 percent of Palestinians killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza have been children, amounting to 28 children killed each day since October 2023.
• The Palestinian rights group Al-Haq has decried sanctions imposed by the US against it, as well as other Palestinian NGOs, for their involvement in the ICC’s attempts to investigate and arrest Israeli officials for war crimes.
• Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has warned that Palestinians face a “risk of ethnic cleansing” in the occupied West Bank as Israeli army and settler attacks continue to forcibly displace residents.
• The first day of a two-day “Gaza tribunal” event in London examining the United Kingdom’s role in Israel’s war on Gaza, hosted by former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, has wrapped up.
• The event concluded with Labour MP Richard Burgon saying he plans to introduce a “sanctions on Israel” bill in Parliament next week.

UN experts have called on countries around the world to take action to protect Palestinian journalists in Gaza as Israeli attacks have killed at least 248 media workers in the enclave since October 2023.

“On the one hand, Israel continues to deny access to any international media, and on the other, it kills with impunity local journalists who are the world’s only professional lens into the agony of genocide and famine unfolding in Gaza,” the experts said in a statement.

“Even as the journalists starve, lose family members, sleep in tents and get targeted by the Israeli military like the rest of Gaza’s population, they have continued to courageously bear witness to atrocities committed by the Israeli military.”

They called for independent criminal investigations into Israel’s killings of journalists, as well as “full reparations and justice for their families”.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a US-based legal advocacy group, has condemned the Trump administration’s decision to sanction three prominent Palestinian rights groups.

CCR noted that today’s sanctions come months after the US designated Palestinian prisoner advocacy group Addameer, as well as the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese.

“By targeting civil society, human rights organizations, and international mechanisms, the administration is attempting to undermine the infrastructure of support for the most vulnerable communities,” CCR said in a statement.

“This dangerous, authoritarian sequence should alarm us all.”

Climate advocate Greta Thunberg has said Israel’s attempts to discredit international activists taking part in the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla are part of a wider effort to crack down on solidarity with Palestinians.

“I do want to make some things very clear, that we will not be stopped by the baseless threats of Israeli officials who use genocidal, political propaganda in desperate attempts to try to silence and scare us,” Thunberg said in a video posted on X.

“Our mission is peaceful, completely lawful and grounded in the urgent need to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza while also doing everything possible to ensure global attention is on Palestine.”

For more on the flotilla, check out our live page here.

Greta Thunberg vows Global Sumud Flotilla will not be silenced by Israeli threats, calling them “genocidal propaganda.” She says the mission remains clear: a peaceful, lawful act of solidarity to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/E7D5qMiLnZ

— Global Sumud Flotilla (@GlobalSumudF) September 4, 2025

The Palestinian embassy in Moscow has held a day of remembrance for the more than 60,000 people killed in Israel’s war on Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari was at the event, where people from all walks of life came together in a show of solidarity.

See her report below:

The Palestinian rights group has denounced the Trump administration’s sanctions as “a coward, immoral, illegal & undemocratic act” at a time when genocide is being carried out in Gaza.

The US announced sanctions against Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights for their involvement in the ICC’s attempts to investigate and arrest Israeli government officials for war crimes.

“Only states with complete disregard to international law & our shared humanity can take such heinous measures against human rights orgs working to end a genocide,” Al-Haq wrote on X about the US move.

“As the world moves to impose sanctions and arms embargoes on Israel; its ally, the U.S. is working to destroy Palestinian institutions working tirelessly for accountability for the victims of Israel’s mass atrocity crimes.”

Last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of committing war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

We condemn in the strongest terms the draconian sanctions imposed by The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on our organisations: @alhaq_org , @AlMezanCenter & @pchrgaza/1

— Al-Haq الحق (@alhaq_org) September 4, 2025

Israeli police detained eight people in Haifa after they joined a demonstration condemning Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The arrests took place on Ben Gurion Street, where protesters held signs and chanted slogans, according to local media reports.

Police said the group had ignored repeated orders to disperse.

The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) for cooperating with the International Criminal Court, which has also been a target of US sanctions under the second Trump administration.

“These entities have directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

The three groups have been added to the Treasury’s Special Designated Nationals list, “a list of individuals and companies owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of, targeted countries”, according to its website.

The US is currently pursuing a pressure campaign against the court over its issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Video posted on social media, and verified by Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency, shows the moment an Israeli shelling targeted several homes in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City.

As we reported earlier, the Israeli army claimed today that it controls 40 percent of the city, including the neighbourhoods of Zeitoun and Sheikh Radwan, as it pushes to seize the entire thing, regardless of the dire humanitarian consequences of its military operation.

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Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), an armed conflict monitoring group, says more than 300 protests were recorded across Israel last month as the Israeli government escalated its war on Gaza – more than double the number of protests held in July.

“Nearly two years into the war, this is the largest number of Israeli protests we have seen,” Ameneh Mehvar, a Middle East senior analyst at ACLED, said in a statement.

“Throughout the month, public dissent has mounted from diverse groups in Israel. The largest share has been organized by families of hostages and their supporters, demanding a ceasefire deal to secure the hostages’ release.”

Palestinian citizens of Israel also took to the streets to condemn Israel’s Gaza bombardment and starvation policy. Meanwhile, Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups also demonstrated against a push to recruit yeshiva students into the Israeli military.

“Nearly 70 demonstrations last month specifically called for Netanyahu’s resignation, accusing him of prioritizing political survival over the hostages’ return,” Mehvar added.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has written a letter to executives at major US media outlets ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Fox, urging them to consistently broadcast footage of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, including the killing of children.

“While images of the destruction and its aftermath circulate widely on international and independent media outlets, such footage does not appear with the same frequency in mainstream American media,” CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said.

“What’s happening in Gaza is the global story of our time. The American public deserves the opportunity to witness the full human impact of the Trump administration’s support for the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza City.”

The US has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid since the Gaza war began – assistance that experts say has been instrumental in the Israeli government’s nearly two-year assault on the territory.

“We urge you to show, with the consistency and urgency this moment requires, videos of the children and families suffering and dying under Israeli bombardment with American weapons, just as many independent and foreign media outlets do,” Hooper wrote in the letter.

Hezbollah is under pressure to lay down its arms as part of a US-backed plan, and Lebanon’s government has asked the army to draft a proposal by the end of the year.

But facing continued Israeli strikes and the aftermath of the assassination of much of its leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah refuses to disarm, calling the effort a trap.

With no trust and no guarantees, where will Lebanon go from here? Al Jazeera senior producer Ali Harb breaks it all down in the latest episode of The Take, below:

Six activists have been released on bail after denying “terror” charges in the United Kingdom for their alleged support for the group Palestine Action. The activists, aged between 26 and 62, risk up to 14 years in prison.

The British government proscribed Palestine Action in July under the country’s Terrorism Act 2000, drawing widespread criticism that the move infringes on freedom of speech and the right to protest.

Hundreds of people have been arrested across the UK since then for expressing support for the group at rallies in several cities.

Representatives of the group Defend Our Juries, to which the arrested individuals belonged, confirmed yesterday that more demonstrations would go ahead on Saturday in London in England, Derry in Northern Ireland, and Edinburgh in Scotland.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military says Israel now controls 40 percent of the city in northern Gaza, including the neighbourhoods of Zeitoun and Sheikh Radwan.

“The operation will continue to expand and intensify in the coming days,” Brigadier General Effie Defrin said during a news conference.

Defring added that the army will only end its operations when Israeli captives are released and Hamas’s rule ends.

Israeli forces carried out raids in several towns across the Nablus area in the occupied West Bank, including Sebastia to the northwest and Duma and Aqraba to the south, Wafa news agency reported, citing local officials.

The mayor of Sebastia said troops storm the town almost daily, raiding homes, smashing property and forcing shops to close. He described the latest raid as accompanied by provocations and heavy reinforcements.

In Duma, Israeli forces entered the al-Samara neighbourhood and surrounding Bedouin communities, while in Aqraba troops spread out across several areas of the town, the local village council said.

Tess Ingram, UNICEF’s communication manager for the Middle East and North Africa, told a UN briefing from Gaza that famine and bombardment are pushing children to the brink.

“Gaza City, the last refuge for families in the north, is fast becoming a place where childhood cannot survive”, she said, warning that almost 1 million people remain trapped in a “city of fear, flight and funerals”.

Ingram described hospitals on the verge of collapse, with only five neonatal intensive care units left and incubators running at double capacity. Malnutrition clinics are overwhelmed, she said, with children relapsing just weeks after treatment as food and aid remain blocked.

She highlighted the story of Nesma, a mother whose two-year-old daughter Jouri died of Israeli-induced starvation last month, while her nine-year-old, Jana, now clings to life.

“This unthinkable is not looming – it is already here. The escalation is under way,” she said of the Israeli army’s Gaza City incursion.

“The cost of inaction will be measured in the lives of children buried in rubble, wasted by hunger, and silenced before they ever had a chance to speak,” Ingram said.