By Elham Asaad Buaras
London (The Muslim News): Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, is set to visit Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, leading a delegation from the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee amid intensifying international efforts to secure Palestinian statehood.
The Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television reported that Prince Faisal will head the delegation tasked with mobilising international support to end the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and to create a political pathway for ending the Israeli occupation. The delegation is expected to meet senior Palestinian officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas.
The visit comes as preparations continue for a UN conference in New York next month, which France and Saudi Arabia will co-chair. The conference will focus on the prospects of a two-state solution.
Meanwhile, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry on Friday, at least 54,321 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its offensive in October 2023. The ministry said 72 bodies were brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours, while a further 278 people were injured, bringing the total number of wounded to 123,770. Many more are believed to remain trapped under rubble or lie on roads, unreachable by rescuers due to ongoing hostilities.
In Khan Younis, a strike on a tent sheltering displaced people killed 13 individuals, a medical source confirmed. Three others were killed in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza following a drone attack on civilians, according to local sources. Medical staff reported seven deaths in Jabalia al-Nazla in the north after Israeli forces bombed a family home, reported Anadolu Agency.
Elsewhere in Jabalia, five Palestinians were killed in separate attacks on gatherings of civilians. Israeli shelling of tents in Khan Younis killed three more people, while an airstrike on a civilian vehicle in Abasan al-Kabira, east of the city, killed two and injured several others. One person was reportedly shot dead in the al-Shakoush area, northwest of Rafah.
Israeli forces also demolished homes in the al-Tuffah district of eastern Gaza City and the town of al-Qarara. Airstrikes in central Gaza on Friday claimed the lives of three more civilians, including a pregnant woman. A man and his wife were killed in Deir al-Balah when their residential area was targeted. In a separate attack on the Al-Bureij refugee camp, at least one person was killed and several others wounded—most of them critically—when a barbershop was hit.
On Friday night, WAFA reported that five civilians were killed, and dozens injured in Gaza City and Khan Younis. Four people died when a house near Az-Zahraa School in the Daraj neighbourhood was bombed. A separate strike on the Kullab family home in the al-Amal area of Khan Younis claimed one life and left many wounded.
The Israeli army has expanded its ground operations, ordering residents in parts of northern Gaza to evacuate westward. The move is viewed by many as part of a wider strategy to impose a permanent occupation of the enclave.
The Bureau of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People stated on Friday calling for “immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza” as the conflict passed the 600-day mark. The committee cited “widespread and engineered deprivation and mass displacement” and expressed “grave concern over the escalating casualties, worsening humanitarian emergency, catastrophic devastation and destruction and continued obstruction of life-saving assistance to the Palestinian people.”
The committee described the current phase of the conflict as “the cruellest” and echoed remarks made by UN relief chief Tom Fletcher: “When you face starvation, you don’t need air drops and floating piers; you need roads open, convoys moving, and a ceasefire that lasts.”
It also rejected the recently launched Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by Israel and the United States, branding it “an attempt to circumvent the UN and its agencies on the ground, foremost UNRWA (UN agency for Palestinian refugees),” and arguing that it “fails the test of the humanitarian principles.”
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office, affiliated with Hamas, said on Friday that Israeli forces have detained more than 12,000 Palestinians from Gaza since the beginning of the war, with 3,500 still in custody. The group said these include dozens of medical workers, civil defence personnel, and journalists. The report indicated that 700 Palestinians were detained in May alone, with new detention facilities set up where soldiers have reportedly engaged in “all forms of torture and abuses that are internationally prohibited.”
Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, stated that it was “safe to say there is famine” in Gaza. He told Al Jazeera that the absence of formal recognition was due to the lack of access for independent experts, a situation for which he held Israel responsible.
Fakhri described the food distribution initiative launched this week, supported by Israel and the US, as a form of coercion. “It’s about humiliating people, and it’s about controlling the population. The initiative has nothing to do with stopping starvation,” he said. He warned that the marginalisation of established international agencies like the UN could “set a dangerous precedent for the future in which aid will be militarised in other contexts”.
[Photo: A view of the destruction after Israeli warplanes hit a building in the al-Shanti area of the northern Gaza Strip on May 31, 2025.
Photojournalist: Karam Hassan/AA]
