Category World News

The United Nations humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, has urged Israel to immediately open more crossings into the famine-stricken Gaza Strip to allow for a surge in aid deliveries.

In remarks to reporters on Wednesday, Fletcher said that the UN is seeking a dramatic boost in humanitarian aid for Gaza, saying the hundreds of relief trucks cleared to enter the devastated enclave were nowhere near the thousands needed to ease a humanitarian disaster.

Thousands of humanitarian vehicles must enter weekly to avert further catastrophe, he told the Reuters news agency.

“We have 190,000 metric tonnes of provisions on the borders waiting to go in and we’re determined to deliver. That’s essential life-saving food and nutrition,” Fletcher said.

Israel’s two-year war on Gaza has displaced almost all of the Strip’s 2.2 million residents from their homes, and famine is present in the north, global monitors say.

Vast swaths of the coastal territory have been reduced to a wasteland by Israeli bombardments and air strikes that have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Rights groups and a UN commission of inquiry have accused Israel of committing genocide in the war. Israel has denied the allegations.

US President Donald Trump and regional leaders on Monday signed a declaration in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to cement a ceasefire deal. The resumption of aid deliveries is listed as a provision in Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the war on Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the Israeli army retained control of parts of the city.

“Large areas of Gaza City and the north remain under firm control of the Israeli military,” Mahmoud said. “Armoured vehicles and tanks are still stationed in the eastern parts of the city, preventing many residents from going back to their homes.”

“No aid is reaching Gaza City, not even from the 300 trucks that were promised entry. Major roads have been destroyed or blocked by rubble from collapsed buildings, especially high-rises, cutting off key access routes in and out of the city,” Mahmoud added.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces have continued to sporadically attack various parts of Gaza despite the ceasefire, killing at least three people since dawn on Wednesday, according to medical sources. Gaza’s Health Ministry said hospitals in Gaza received at least 11 other bodies, including eight recovered from rubble and three who succumbed to injuries from earlier attacks.

‘Unhindered access’

Israeli officials said 600 trucks have been approved to enter the blockaded territory under the current US-brokered truce deal.

Fletcher called the announcement of 600 trucks a “good base” but said it was not enough to meet the scale of need.

He called for more than 50 international NGOs, including Oxfam and the Norwegian Refugee Council, to be allowed to bring in aid, saying the issue has been raised with Israel, the United States and other regional partners.

“We cannot deliver the scale necessary without their presence and their engagement. So we want to see them back in. We are advocating on their behalf,” he said.

“We’ve been calling for unhindered access,” Fletcher told the AFP news agency, adding: “It should happen now. We want it to happen immediately as part of this [ceasefire] agreement.”

Fletcher said the looting of aid trucks had dropped sharply in recent days as deliveries increased.

“If you’re only getting in 60 trucks a day, desperate, hungry people will attack those trucks. The way to stop the looting is to deliver aid at massive scale and get the private sector and commercial markets operating again.”

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has meanwhile said it is prepared to operate the Rafah crossing, which it previously did with EU assistance.

Fletcher welcomed the PA’s offer to play a role in reopening the crossing. He said medical evacuations through the crossing would be a priority, citing recent talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Rafah crossing remained shut on Wednesday, despite reports that it could reopen to aid convoys, as Israel insisted Hamas hand over the remains of the last deceased Israeli captives that were held by Palestinian groups in Gaza, as agreed in the truce deal.

In a statement on Wednesday night, the Palestinian group’s armed wing said it has abided by the terms of the agreement, handing over all living captives in their custody, as well as the bodies they were able to retrieve.

The group added that locating and recovering the remaining bodies would require extensive effort and specialised equipment, and that it is continuing to make efforts towards that end.

During his first state visit to Moscow, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that he vowed to ‘redefine’ ties with Russia, which has been hosting ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for the last 10 months.

Police clashed with pro-Palestine demonstrators in Barcelona on Wednesday, detaining several people who targeted companies they accused of backing Israel’s war on Gaza. Protesters set garbage containers on fire, smashed the windows of a Burger King restaurant and threw objects at police.

Elon Musk’s $56bn pay package from Tesla should have been restored by a vote of the company’s shareholders last year, a Tesla attorney has said to the Delaware Supreme Court in the United States.

The Tesla lawyer made his arguments on Wednesday as one of the biggest corporate legal battles entered its final stage after a lower court judge had in January 2024 rescinded the Tesla CEO’s record compensation. The company is also appealing a ruling by the lower court that rejected as legally invalid a vote by shareholders to restore the pay package.

“This was the most informed stockholder vote in Delaware history,” Jeffrey Wall, an attorney for Tesla, told the justices. “Reaffirming that would resolve this case.”

The case’s outcome could have substantial consequences for the state of Delaware, its widely used corporate law, and its Court of Chancery, a once-favoured venue for business disputes that has recently been accused of hostility towards powerful entrepreneurs.

The Court of Chancery ruling striking down Musk’s pay has become a rallying cry for Delaware critics. Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ruled that the Tesla board lacked independence from Musk when it approved the pay package in 2018 and that shareholders lacked key information when they voted overwhelmingly in favour of it. As a result, she applied a demanding legal standard and found the pay unfair to investors.

Musk did not attend the arguments, which were held in a special court to accommodate the 65 people in attendance, mostly lawyers.

The defendants, current and former Tesla directors, denied wrongdoing and said McCormick misinterpreted the facts and the law.

Dexit

Tesla argued in Dover, Delaware that the five justices on Delaware’s high court had three avenues to reverse the lower court ruling.

They could find that Musk, who owned 21.9 percent of Tesla stock in 2018, did not control the board pay negotiations and that shareholders were fully informed when they voted to approve it that year. They could determine that rescinding the pay was an improper remedy because it did not undo the work that Musk had done or the gains that shareholders had received. Or they could determine that last year’s vote demonstrated shareholders wanted to accept the pay deal, despite the legal flaws.

“Shareholders in 2024 knew exactly what they were voting for,” Wall said.

Greg Varallo, an attorney for Richard Tornetta, the small investor who brought the case in 2018, said if the court accepted ratification, it would allow a party to change the outcome after a court case had run its course. “Lawsuits would be interminable”, he told the justices.

Varallo tried to convince the justices the lower court ruling was a result of careful fact-finding and based on settled law. “There is nothing extraordinary about this trial opinion,” he said. “What makes it truly extraordinary is that it addresses the largest pay package in human history, awarded to the richest man on earth, who is also one of the most powerful men on earth.”

After the Musk pay ruling, large companies, including Tesla, Dropbox, and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, switched their legal homes to Texas or Nevada, where courts are friendlier toward directors. Delaware lawmakers responded to the corporate departures, a trend known as “Dexit,” by overhauling its corporate law.

If Musk loses the appeal, he will still reap tens of billions of dollars in stock from the electric vehicle (EV) company, which agreed in August to a replacement deal if his 2018 plan is not restored. Tesla has said the replacement plan will cost $25bn or more in accounting charges.

The company said the replacement award was meant to focus the attention of Musk, who said earlier this year that he was forming a new US political party, on transitioning Tesla to robotics and automated driving. Tesla is now incorporated in Texas, where it is far more difficult for a shareholder to challenge board decisions.

New pay plan

Tesla’s board last month proposed a $1 trillion compensation plan, highlighting confidence in Musk’s ability to steer the company in a new direction, even as Tesla loses ground to Chinese rivals in key markets amid softening EV demand.

The justices are considering the appeal of the pay ruling as well as the $345m legal fee that McCormick ordered Tesla to pay to the attorneys for Tornetta, who held just nine Tesla shares when he sued to block the pay deal. The court typically takes months to rule.

Tesla estimated in 2018 that the stock options plan would be worth $56bn if the company met operational and financial goals, which it did. Because the stock continued to appreciate, the options are currently worth closer to $120bn, by far the largest executive compensation ever. Musk is the world’s richest person with a fortune of around $480bn, according to Forbes.

The defendants have argued that McCormick erred in finding social and business ties to Musk compromised their independence, and said Tesla shareholders were informed of the economic terms of the pay deal before they approved the plan. The directors said she should have reviewed the pay package under the “business judgment” standard, which protects directors from second-guessing by courts.