6 h. ago ‘I had a home, apartment, career’ the Guardian’s Gaza diarist on the life he lost – and his journey into exile

The anonymous writer has seen horror after horror in the 21 months since he was driven from his home in Gaza City. How has he kept going? And does he have any hope left?On the morning of 7 October 2023, the author of the Guardian’s Gaza diary woke up planning to play tennis. “This year I decided to take care of my mental and physical health,” he wrote in his first entry, published six days later. “This means no stress, no negative energy and definitely more tennis.”Instead, with the news full of how Hamas had broken out of the territory, killing 1,200 people, he found himself scrambling desperately for the documents showing he owned his apartment in Gaza City, in the north of the strip. “If our building gets bombed, I need evidence that this apartment belongs to me,” he wrote. Continue reading...

Society

16 h. ago ‘Humanitarian city’ would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM

Ehud Olmert says forcing people into camp would be ethnic cleansing, and anger at Israel over Gaza war is not all down to antisemitismThe “humanitarian city” Israel’s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian.Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation. Continue reading...

Politics

45 h. ago Artist or activist? For Juliet Stevenson and her husband, Gaza leaves them with no choice

Film-maker Hugh Brody hopes to honour his mother, a Holocaust survivor, with a show of solidarity for PalestineRead any celebrity-signed open letter advocating for social justice over the past few years and you’ll probably spot Juliet Stevenson’s name. When the veteran actor is not gracing screens or on a stage somewhere, she’s out on the streets brandishing a placard or giving speeches about human rights, gender equality and the Palestinian right to self-determination.Just last month, she wrote in the Guardian about the British government’s “complicity” in the Gaza atrocities and what she called an attempt to repress civil liberties by proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Continue reading...

Culture

48 h. ago Inside Home and Away star's harrowing death at 45 after tragic final job

Dieter Brummer was a heartthjsonrob in Australia and the UK after he played Shane in Home and Away - but he had a tragic ending in 2021 after his career fell apart

Events

1 week ago Israeli military used 500lb bomb in strike on Gaza cafe, fragments reveal

Exclusive: Experts say use of heavy munition in Monday’s strike that killed dozens may constitute a war crimeThe Israeli military used a 500lb (230kg) bomb – a powerful and indiscriminate weapon that generates a massive blast wave and scatters shrapnel over a wide area – when it attacked a target in a crowded beachfront cafe in Gaza on Monday, evidence seen by the Guardian has revealed.Experts in international law said the use of such a munition despite the known presence of many unprotected civilians, including children, women and elderly people, was almost certainly unlawful and may constitute a war crime. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago The Guardian view on annihilation in Gaza: the deaths mount, but the pressure has ebbed | Editorial

Israel’s attack on Iran overshadowed the ongoing carnage. Its allies are complicit in the horror; they must instead help to build a future for Palestinians“We cannot be asking civilians to go into a combat zone so that then they can be killed with the justification that they are in a combat zone.” It defies belief that the Unicef spokesperson, James Elder, should have needed to spell that out this week. And yet each day Palestinians continue to be killed while attempting to collect aid for their families from food hubs in Gaza, forced to make a lethal choice between risking being shot and letting their families slowly starve. More than 500 have died around the centres since the system was introduced – yet, with attention fixed on Israel’s attacks on Iran, there has been little to spare for recent deaths.The Israeli military has given shifting accounts of events. But soldiers told the newspaper Haaretz that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds that posed no threat. The Israel...

Events

2 w. ago US to give $30m to Gaza Humanitarian Foundation despite violent and chaotic rollout of food distribution

Grant makes US a direct backer of aid organization that reportedly has collaboration with Israeli governmentThe Trump administration has authorised a $30m grant to the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, making the US a direct backer of an aid organisation that is closely linked to private security contractors and has been accused by critics of “politicising” the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza.According to a document seen by the Guardian, the state department has already disbursed $7m to GHF, a US- and Israeli-backed aid organisation that has been given preferential access to operate in Gaza because it says that it can deliver millions of meals to starving people without that food falling into the hands of Hamas. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago The Guardian view on Gaza’s engineered famine: stop arming the slaughter – or lose the rule of law | Editorial

As Palestinians starve amid the rubble, western governments defend Israel, fund armed aid and dismantle the very rules they claim to upholdGaza’s cries have been drowned out by Israel’s strikes on Iran, and the diplomatic pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu over the suffering has ebbed. Yet as the industrialised world urges de-escalation in the Middle East, the devastation continues. On Tuesday morning, witnesses described Israeli forces firing towards a crowd waiting for trucks loaded with flour, leaving more than 50 dead. These are not stray bullets in wartime chaos, they are the outcome of a system that makes relief deadly.As Médecins Sans Frontières declared this week, what is unfolding in Gaza is “the calculated evisceration of the very systems that sustain life”. That includes homes, markets, water networks and hospitals – with healthcare continually under attack. Last week, a UN commission found that more than 90% of the Gaza Strip’s schools and universities have be...

Politics

last month Helen Flanagan shares boob job inspiration after shrinking down to A cup

EXCLUSIVE: Coronation Street beauty Helen Flanagan has recently opened up about her boob journey after she lost her famous assets after breastfeeding her three children

Politics