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As Israel gears up to hold elections in October, a dramatic surge in settlement activity has heightened concerns that the settler movement is stepping up efforts to cement its grip on the occupied West Bank, in stark defiance of international law.

Last week, the United Nations warned that attacks by Israeli settlers – often carried out alongside Israeli forces – and the creation of illegal settlements and outposts had hit “an all-time high”.

The uptick comes as members of Israel’s hard right seek to ratchet up the political temperature ahead of the crucial polls. It also follows a parliamentary term during which Israel moved to entrench control over the West Bank deeper within the machinery of the state, shifting authority from military administration to civilian institutions, accelerating settlement planning and expanding infrastructure.

However, the Religious Zionist Party of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – the man widely credited as pushing the settler project to the forefront of Israeli political debate – is suggested by numerous opinion polls to be far from certain to even meet the electoral threshold for the post-election Knesset.

This has prompted what analysts describe as a desperate scramble to promote the settlement mission while consolidating the support of the settler minority that Smotrich grew up within.

Speaking at a meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party in late July, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz boasted that, under the governing coalition and Smotrich’s supervision, Israel had approved the establishment of 104 illegal settlements and some 160 settlement farms in the West Bank since coming to power in 2022, according to Israeli media.

In August of last year, Smotrich announced the creation of the E1 settlement project, linking occupied East Jerusalem with the existing settlement of Maale Adumim, located several kilometres to the east – a proposal which, Smotrich bragged, “buries the idea of a Palestinian state”.

The race to settle

Smotrich, who made increased administrative control over the West Bank a condition for supporting Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition in 2022, has undertaken a series of measures to expand the influence of settlers within policymaking.

In 2023, he established his influential Settlements Administration agency within the Ministry of Defence – which oversees the West Bank’s occupation. And last month, he legally embedded the agency within the ministry, making it harder to reverse any of the decisions taken under its watch.

Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said it is “hard to imagine” that Netanyahu “won’t come up with some kind of imaginative ploy to keep him and the far right on the ticket”, referring to Smotrich.

“He has very strong support within the settlements and the ideological far-right,” Flaschenberg added, “but that might not be enough in and of itself to get him securely past the threshold. He’s being squeezed between the populism of [far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir and what many people in the lower middle class see as the security of Netanyahu.”

Keeping the hard right

Allied to Smotrich is a prime minister who observers describe as facing not simply an electoral battle, but an existential battle for both his freedom – as a consequence of his long-running corruption trial – and legacy, should the independent inquiry into his failings ahead of the Hamas-led attack of 2023 go ahead.

Given the stakes, some analysts have suggested the incumbent was far from ready to gamble on losing the support of Israel’s hard right and settler movement by condemning the increasing levels of violence in the West Bank.

“We saw him come out on US TV and concede that there may have been a few incidents in the West Bank, but nothing serious,” Chatham House’s Yossi Mekelberg said of Netanyahu’s response to the widespread violence that has swept the West Bank in recent weeks.

“He needs the hard right and settlers’ support, if not for him individually, then at least for his bloc.”

While Netanyahu may feel he has room to manoeuvre over the hugely controversial issue of ultra-Orthodox conscription, no such margin existed within the hard right and settlers. Ultra-Orthodox parties, a key component in the 2022 coalition government, have made the exemption of their constituents from the draft – which almost all Israeli adults are eligible for – a pillar of their political campaigning in recent years.

“Netanyahu knows that the ultra-Orthodox will likely stay with him,” added Mekelberg. “The settlers are more binary. You’re either for them or against,” he said.

Cresting the wave

Irrespective of electoral tactics, the consequences for people living in the occupied West Bank have been catastrophic. In July alone, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, there were 2,256 attacks against Palestinians and their property: 1,458 by the Israeli army and 798 by settlers.

After Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, offered a rare criticism of the settler “extremism” which triggered the latest round of violence, Katz accused him of spreading a “blood libel”.

According to leaks of the same meeting in Hebrew-language media, other ministers present called for a harsher response to any resistance from Palestinians, and for the military to be given even greater freedom to shoot at them.

“As the election gets closer, we’re seeing an even greater increase in the violence that’s been escalating ever since October 2023,” said Yair Dvir, of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

“It’s important to add this isn’t just the scale of the violence, but also its brutality and the participation of the Israeli state – both the soldiers and the political support they’re receiving.”

Seven Palestinians, including two children, have been detained by Israeli forces in overnight and predawn raids across the West Bank, according to Palestinian local sources.

Israeli settlers separately assaulted a Palestinian man and his wife on their own farmland on Saturday.

The couple was attacked in the al-Zarqa area of Beitillu, northwest of Ramallah, when a group of settlers stormed the farm where they were working, leaving both with injuries and bruising that required hospital treatment.

The latest settler attacks and raids by Israeli forces are a single day’s snapshot of activity now unfolding “in every direction” across the occupied West Bank, said Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah.

Odeh said Israeli military jeeps were roaming constantly through Ramallah on Saturday, as soldiers used tear gas inside a supermarket in the city. This level of everyday disruption, she said, has become difficult to separate from the settlement expansion driving it.

Settlers have erected another illegal outpost this week, Odeh added, the 12th such construction in the past seven days alone.

The military raids that produced Saturday’s detentions spanned three governorates at once. In Tubas, forces searched a family home in the town of Tammun and detained a 16-year-old; in Nablus, four Palestinians were picked up in predawn raids on the villages of Urif, Einabus and Burqa; and in Bethlehem, a second 16-year-old was detained in Wadi Fukin, with another man held at the Container Checkpoint.

In the nearby town of Asira ash Shamaliya, troops went further still, storming dozens of homes overnight and converting one house into a makeshift field interrogation centre, security sources told Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Further south, in Khashem al-Daraj near Hebron, Israeli forces chased down and detained 11 workers, beating them in the process, according to local activist Osama Makhamreh.

Israeli settlers, meanwhile, were active on parallel fronts.

In Surif, near Hebron, residents from the Bat Ayin outpost set fire to one car, damaged another, and sprayed racist graffiti on a house, the town’s mayor, Hazem Ghneimat, said.

Later on Saturday, three young Palestinian men were assaulted with pepper spray on the road between al-Mughayyir and Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, after settlers rammed their vehicle with an all-terrain vehicle – an attack that village council head Amin Abu Aliya said has become almost a daily occurrence along that stretch of road.

In Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, Israeli authorities forced three residents to demolish their own homes rather than face the fines and costs of a state-led demolition, which, Palestinians say, is a practice used routinely to sidestep Israel’s near-total refusal to grant them building permits.

Saturday’s events fit a pattern that rights monitors have been documenting for months. Palestinian sources recorded more than 11,000 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers across the West Bank in the first half of this year alone, with Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus the worst affected.

The figures echo recent United Nations warnings – including from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has said settler violence and forced displacement are accelerating alongside plans to expand and legalise outposts, all of which the UN maintains have no legal validity under international law.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham added his own criticism on Saturday, calling the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Palestine “unacceptable” and saying his government was weighing further measures on Israeli settlements, including possible restrictions on arms exports.

Israeli settlers vandalised a Palestinian cemetery, smashing stonework marking the graves of deceased Palestinians during a march near the village of Tal in the occupied West Bank.

Residents said Israeli forces accompanied the march and fired tear gas at Palestinians.

Why is Israel arming illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank? As settler attacks reach record levels, the government has distributed more than 100,000 assault rifles to Israelis. Al Jazeera’s Leila Warah reports on what that means for Palestinians on the ground.

Al Jazeera visited the occupied West Bank village of Sinjil, where Israeli earth mounds, metal barriers and road closures have blocked all main entrances. Residents say the restrictions have left the village effectively cut off, making even routine journeys difficult and potentially deadly.

SEOUL, July 27 (UPI) — South Korea’s Hana Financial Group said Friday it posted record earnings for the first half of this year, driven by its banking and brokerage businesses.

The Seoul-based financial conglomerate noted its net profit amounted to $1.6 billion during the first six months of 2026, up 4.4% from a year earlier. Its flagship subsidiary, Hana Bank, made the largest contribution, with a bottom line of $1.45 billion.

Non-banking affiliates also delivered robust results. Hana Securities, one of the country’s major brokerages, more than doubled its net income to $186 million year-on-year during the January-June period.

During the third quarter, Hana Financial said it would spend $171 million on share buybacks and cancellations, bringing the annual total to $478 million. It also plans to increase 2026 dividends payments by 26.5% from a year ago.

The company expects overall cash dividends for this year to reach $820 million, up more than 10% from 2025.

Hana Financial CFO Park Jong-moo said that the group would raise its target for return on equity, or ROE, to 12% from the previous goal of 10%. The group’s ROE stood at 10.62% in the first half.

ROE measures how efficiently a company generates profit from the shareholders’ equity. In other words, Hana Financial aims to earn 12 cents of yearly net profit for every dollar of shareholders’ equity.

“We will create a virtuous cycle in which higher ROE leads to greater shareholder returns and enhanced corporate value,” Park told an earnings call. “We have raised our ROE target to 12% and set our shareholder payout ratio at 50% or higher.”

Hana Financial shares rose 1.46% on the Seoul bourse Friday before falling 1.36% Monday.

Israeli soldiers have intensified their offensive in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, raiding at least 20 towns and villages, demolishing homes and arresting dozens of Palestinians, as Arab states and the Arab League condemn escalating settler attacks against Palestinians and their property.

Al Jazeera reporters in the occupied West Bank reported on Monday that Israeli forces had stormed the Jabal Salman area in the town of Beita, south of Nablus, and carried out demolition operations in the town of Nilin, west of Ramallah.

In a separate incursion, forces stormed the town of Arrabeh in Jenin, accompanied by military bulldozers.

Raids and arrests were also reported in Deir al-Ghusun, north of Tulkarem, where five Palestinians were detained.

Four young men were arrested during raids on the Balata camp and Asira al-Shamaliya in Nablus, Quds News reported.

Soldiers raided homes and made arrests in several other villages and towns, including Deir Jarir, Jalbon, Kafr Qaddum, Tal, Burqa, Beit Furik, Anabta, the Aktaba suburb, Qalqilya, Arroub camp and Beit Ummar.

Quds News reported that Israeli soldiers halted an ambulance trying to transport a pregnant woman from the town of Qaryut to a Nablus hospital for treatment for a medical emergency. Her condition deteriorated, leading to a miscarriage.

As the Israeli military continues its crackdown, emboldened settlers have intensified their harassment and violent attacks. Palestinians in the Abu Fuzaa encampment near Taybeh village east of Ramallah were attacked on Monday, and in Al-Burj village, south of Hebron, settlers released cattle among olive trees, damaging agricultural land.

“Israeli settlers continue their attacks against Palestinians, mostly in their homes, at night, intimidating them,” Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim reported. “And what happens is that usually Israeli forces would come in and instead of curbing these settlers, they would conduct arrests in the occupied West Bank among Palestinians.”

Palestinians felt trapped and defenceless, with “no one to protect them”, she said, “while the Israeli settlers have the support of the Israeli army and have the impunity to continue attacking Palestinians without any accountability”.

International condemnation

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sent letters to several world leaders, the European Union, the Arab League and the president of the United Nations Security Council, calling for urgent action to stop Israeli aggression and settler violence against Palestinians.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, wrote in a post on X on Saturday that settler attacks were “pogroms against defenceless civilians”.

The UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain issued statements condemning the attacks, including a mosque in Tulkarem being set ablaze.

The Arab League issued a collective condemnation, warning that the situation was approaching a “moment of explosion” and calling on the international community to intervene.

The Spanish government said in a statement on Saturday that Israel “must reverse its policies of settlement expansion and of shielding settler violence against the Palestinian civilian population”.

Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi described settler attacks on mosques as “systematic fascist crimes”.

Haaretz quoted Israeli military officials describing the situation in the West Bank as “extremely dangerous and volatile”. An editorial in the Israeli newspaper said senior army officers had warned that the government was giving “tailwind” to settler violence, with one reservist officer saying his unit lacked sufficient troops and could only “stand by and watch”.

“We have to remember that this time is very sensitive, because we’re getting closer to Israeli elections, and Netanyahu wants to stay in power. He wants to appease his far-right members and coalition by showing the voters that he will be cracking down more and more on Palestinians,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim said.

“He’s trying to get some sort of credit for the attacks against Palestinians and the raids in general.”

Since October 2023, the Israeli military has killed nearly 1,200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to Arab League figures, in addition to more than 73,000 killed in Gaza during Israel’s genocidal war there.

Israel is intensifying its crackdown on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank after an attack by Israeli settlers resulted in the deaths of six people. Author and activist Phyllis Bennis says we’re seeing an ‘increase in direct war crimes’ with no accountability.

Israeli settlers set fire to Al-Rahma Mosque in Qusra, near Nablus, as Israeli forces arrested dozens of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a military crackdown following a shooting in Tal that killed four Palestinians and two Israelis on Friday.

At one point in the documentary, House of Hope, the protagonist, Manar Wahhab, breaks down in a classroom corner in the school she founded with her husband in the occupied West Bank. The cameras keep rolling.

“To step into someone’s life with a camera at the moment when they’re really down, it feels a little bit uncomfortable, but we made the choice together to keep filming during these moments. I wanted the audience to be there with them,” director Marjolein Busstra told Al Jazeera.

The film follows Wahhab, a Palestinian woman who established a Waldorf school with her husband, Milad Vosgueritchian, in al-Eizariya in the occupied West Bank.

House of Hope Vision Kindergarten & School teaches the Waldorf philosophy of non-violent resistance and offers children a space to express their emotions and cope with the trauma and difficulty of living under occupation.

“The school protects the children’s dignity in the present moment. It’s more about refusing to let occupation shape their inner world, so that they can actually be children and have agency,” Busstra said. “It’s in Waldorf philosophy that they make space to express the feelings.”

Working with a Palestinian crew, Busstra spent three years with Wahhab, travelling to the occupied West Bank nine times throughout the course of the documentary. She first met Wahhab 18 years ago during a film workshop in the West Bank.

Although the documentary centres around the elementary school, Wahhab is the story’s driving force. The story follows Wahhab and Vosgueritchian, both at the school and at home with their children.

“I started filming the school, but right away, I knew I wanted to do it about Manar’s inner life,” Busstra said. “I think hope is a difficult word at the moment, but I have a deep awe for Manar, who keeps creating and teaching even while carrying so much herself.”

For Wahhab, her respect for Busstra and their existing friendship helped her trust the film crew during vulnerable moments.

“We both believe deeply in education, in children’s creativity and freedom and in seeing the human being as something whole and beautiful in mind, soul and spirit. Those shared values created openness and trust between us and helped shape a film that is not only about events but also about humanity,” Wahhab told Al Jazeera.

The film was produced by Think-Film, the company behind The Voice of Hind Rajab, which tells the story of the five-year-old Hind killed by Israeli forces in 2024. Soldiers fired 335 bullets into the car carrying the girl and six of her family members – a story that became a symbol for the system failure to protect children in Gaza.

Although sometimes difficult, Wahhab said she made an effort to let the crew document multiple facets of her life.

“Over those three years, the crew met many versions of Manar. Sometimes they arrived, and I was fresh, energetic and cooperative. Other times, they found me exhausted, angry, overwhelmed, or ill,” she said. “I understood that I had to be as authentic as possible, because I was representing not only myself, but also my community, hope, peace and the voice of Palestinians.”

Wahhab and Vosgueritchian founded the school out of a desire to offer a different kind of education to Palestinian children and to provide a place where they felt safe and could share their emotions.

“The school was born many years ago when we saw the hardships surrounding our community and wanted to create something different, a space of love, safety, creativity and healing,” Wahhab said. “House of Hope is an idea, a mission and an energy that we carry wherever we go.”

In an increasingly violent Israeli occupation, Wahhab considers the Waldorf philosophy essential.

“I do not see nonviolence as weakness. Actually, I believe the opposite. Violence is easy. Nonviolence requires courage, awareness, patience and inner work. It asks us to see beyond our own pain and ego and to hold on to our humility even when circumstances are trying to pull us away from it,” she said.

“The world absorbs the energy that we create, and right now, there is so much fear, anger and violence in our world. I think we need more peace within ourselves, peace with one another and peace with nature,” Wahhab added.

After Hamas’s incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, came Israel’s brutal military response. Life became increasingly difficult for Wahhab, Vosgueritchian and the children at House of Hope, but the crew continued to document their realities.

“The story I wanted to create with Manar stayed the same, but after October 7, everything became heavier. They were so down for a while. They were like different people, like they lost all hope,” Busstra said. “The school built this safe haven, but the occupation is always rattling at the door.”

Israel’s intensified military actions in the West Bank, including the shooting and killing of children, are a constant spectre. In another scene, Wahhab watches her son leave for school and checks to see if he has a phone charger and spare clothes in case he is held at a checkpoint for hours.

“The energy is so heavy now. I hope people understand that we are not asking for something extraordinary. We are asking for basic human rights, the right to live with dignity and freedom, the right to safety and the right to be fully human beings,” Manar said.

Busstra, who closely followed Wahhab for three years, said she wants audiences to go “beyond the framing of us vs them”.

“I hope that this stays with people, not as something distant that happens to others, but something they can locate within their own understanding of what it means to love someone in an unsafe world.”

Wahhab believes the film offers a more nuanced perspective of Palestinians.

“I think that in the West, many people see a very limited picture of Palestine and the Middle East. Sometimes they see us through stereotypes as terrorists, as people who are undeveloped or somehow less than themselves,” she said. “I hope this film helps people look beyond those images. The news does not tell the full reality. It often shows only violence and people killing one another. It doesn’t show the essence of people’s lives. It shows negativity,” she said.

Wahhab encouraged people to consider the documentary through a lens of shared humanity.

House of Hope won the best international feature documentary prize at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May 2026 and was recently screened at UNESCO in Paris. It will soon be screened at the Jerusalem Arab Film Festival.

“Even though our story is deeply rooted in the West Bank, its message is universal. Our hope is that people everywhere can see our story and take something meaningful from it.”

Protest group says at least 200 demonstrated in Israeli capital a day after major escalation of West Bank violence.

Israeli police have arrested nine people at a Tel Aviv demonstration decrying settler violence in the occupied West Bank, according to media reports and protest organisers.

Hundreds of people gathered on Kaplan Street on Saturday to demonstrate against the settler violence and Israeli military rule in the occupied Palestinian territory, according to Israeli media. The protest was organised by the left-wing Hadash party and its allies.

The Mothers Against Violence protest group said more than 200 people took part in the demonstration, and accused police of using force against demonstrators, including the nine they confirmed were arrested.

Israeli police said demonstrations had gone ahead without authorisation and had begun to “disrupt public order and block the roadway”, according to local media.

The protest came a day after Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinians in the town of Tal, near Nablus, during a settler incursion on their land. Two Israelis were also killed in the confrontation.

On Friday, about 30 settlers entered Tal, next to the illegal Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad, and tried to break into two houses on Friday, said Essam Saifi, a local Fatah official. Residents confronted them, and the settlers opened fire.

A video shows a Palestinian man seizing a rifle from a settler and shooting him before soldiers shot him dead. Three others were killed and four wounded.

Ubai al-Aboudi, a rights activist in Ramallah, told Al Jazeera that one week prior, settlers set fire to a home in Tal with the family still inside. “It was a miracle that the residents of Tal were able to get that family out of the house before they were burned alive,” he said.

In retaliation for Friday’s shooting incident, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a wide-scale military operation across the West Bank, and Israeli forces arrested nearly 50 Palestinians in Tal while raiding about 70 homes.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said at least 80 Palestinians were held across the West Bank the day after the incident, calling it “collective punishment”.

Funerals for the four killed were held before dawn under restrictions on attendance.

Political analyst Ori Goldberg said video of the attack on Tal had made denial impossible for the Israeli public.

“They saw the Jewish terrorist come into the villages and they saw the response … I’m not expecting the public to rise in protest in response, but I do expect this might revivify the last dregs of liberal Zionism in protest,” he told Al Jazeera.

“This may be a threshold moment in what Israelis have previously termed as ‘settler violence’ in an attempt to distance it from themselves,” Goldberg added.

At least 1,182 Palestinians have been killed, 13,000 wounded and nearly 24,000 arrested in the occupied West Bank since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, according to official Palestinian figures.

President Trump’s $1.4-billion crypto windfall has become the biggest obstacle to passing his sweeping digital-asset legislation as Democrats demand tougher language to prevent the president from profiting off an industry his administration regulates.

Senate Republicans released a proposal this week intended to break a months-long impasse over the bill, known as the Clarity Act. But Democrats and consumer watchdog groups dismissed the terms almost immediately, complaining the bill would not stop Trump or his family from continuing to profit from his meme coin and other crypto ventures.

Trump needs the support of at least seven Senate Democrats to pass the legislation, which would set rules for digital assets. Ethics has emerged as the biggest, though not the only, sticking point.

“It’s the linchpin,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat and key negotiator who has been supportive of the crypto industry.

A spokesperson for the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House has consistently asserted Trump is not involved in managing the family’s crypto ventures and has denied conflicts of interest.

Democrats have specifically taken issue with a provision that would leave Trump’s Justice Department as the primary enforcer of the new ethics regulations, preventing state attorneys general from acting as an independent check.

Another Democratic negotiator, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said they’re working on a compromise ethics proposal to send to the White House but didn’t provide details.

Senators in both parties said they see the negotiations in the coming week as key to whether a bill reaches Trump’s desk this year. But after the chilly initial reception to the latest White House offer, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.C.) said he didn’t think the Clarity Act would pass the chamber before the month-long August recess.

“We’ll see where the votes are,” Thune said.

Alsobrooks, Gallego and other crypto-friendly Democrats are demanding changes to other pieces of the massive bill, including consumer protection and illicit finance measures.

The bill has other issues, including opposition from banks intent on tightening restrictions on stablecoin rewards. Tillis and several other Republicans said they are considering backing changes to reflect banks’ concerns that their deposits could shift to stablecoin accounts, crimping their profits and customers’ access to credit.

Tillis has floated adding “circuit-breaker” language empowering the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or other regulators to step in if bank deposits drop — an idea opposed by GOP Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, the crypto industry’s biggest backer in the chamber.

Porous provisions

Critics said the draft’s ethics protections are porous. It would let Trump divest a large stake in his crypto venture or move it into a blind trust for the rest of his term, but stops short of requiring him to sell.

“It’s going to allow him to keep making money the way he has in the past,” said Scott Greytak, deputy executive director of Transparency International US, an anti-corruption advocacy group.

The restrictions also hinge on whether an official has a “direct interest” in a crypto asset — a threshold that may not apply to Trump.

The president is a significant owner of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, which holds about a 38% stake. Whether that counts as a direct interest “isn’t clear,” said Zach Everson, research director for Public Citizen’s Trump Accountability Project. “Does direct interest describe how he holds the crypto?”

Because the bill wouldn’t apply to the children of government officials, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump could continue their own crypto business interests. And much of the family’s fortune has already been made: Trump and his affiliates have earned a huge windfall from meme coin and token ventures, income the legislation would not claw back.

Critics also decried a provision that would sunset the ethics requirements on Jan. 20, 2029, the day Trump’s successor would be inaugurated. That could prevent the next administration from holding Trump accountable.

The White House and Republicans argued that Trump had gone further in backing ethics restrictions in law than any previous president.

“History will remember this as the moment a president chose a higher standard of ethics than the law required of him,” Lummis, a key architect of the bill, said on X.

Democrats were skeptical even before the language was released. “Any meaningful ethics provision would be shot down by the White House,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said.

The politics of crypto have long divided Democrats, and a bipartisan deal on the legislation risks provoking a backlash from progressives. Failure to reach a deal, however, could make the party the target of a torrent of crypto campaign cash.

Crypto group Fairshake and its two affiliated super PACs have raised $164 million for the midterm elections, Federal Election Commission filings show, and have spent $66.6 million so far.

It’s the kind of political arsenal that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York can ill afford to have aimed at his candidates as the party seeks to regain Senate control.

But others, like Murphy, have warned that blessing Trump’s big crypto bill would undermine Democrats’ midterm message.

A potential presidential candidate, Murphy said Wednesday while addressing the left-leaning Center for American Progress that the bill is before the Senate “because the industry paid for it” and urged Democrats to instead turn fighting crypto corruption into a potent campaign issue this fall.

Markets have grown less convinced a deal gets done. On Polymarket, the odds of the Clarity Act passing this year fell to about 1 chance in 3 earlier this week after Republicans released the new draft.

That’s about half the odds the prediction market gave passage after the Senate Banking Committee backed an earlier version of the bill on May 14.

Dennis and Patterson write for Bloomberg. Bloomberg writers Yash Roy, Lydia Beyoud, Aidan Williams, Bill Allison and Olga Kharif contributed to this report.

Overnight funerals were held for four Palestinians killed near Nablus. Palestinian officials blame Israeli settlers and soldiers for attacking areas in the occupied West Bank, while Israel said the violence began after an attack on Israeli civilians.

July 24 (UPI) — The Israeli military is launching a major operation in the occupied West Bank after a clash between settlers and Palestinians left six people dead on Friday.

Four Palestinian residents of the village of Tell and two Israeli soldiers were killed in the incident, after a group of settlers entered the village claiming to be on a hike.

Israeli officials said violence broke out when a Palestinian man stole a weapon from local security personnel, firing at the Israelis. Palestinian officials said the men were provoked while defending their village from armed trespassers.

The incident sparked a series of settler rampages in more than a dozen villages on Friday, the Times of Israel reported.

Hundreds of Israelis torched homes and hurled stones at Palestinians, the Times reported.

Following the Friday killings, Israeli officials said they were preparing a major “counterterrorism” operation in the West Bank, Al-Jazeera reported.

Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right Israeli finance minister, called for the demolition of Palestinian villages following the Friday killings.

“The population must be evacuated for its own protection, and these villages must be cleared of terrorist infrastructure and terrorists in order to restore deterrence and security to the area,” he told CNN.

Following the funeral for one of the Israeli soldiers killed, settlers torched buildings, homes and farms belonging to Palestinians, the Times reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he instructed Israel Defense Forces to take a “series of forceful steps against terror.”

In a statement, Netanyahu said his military would “act forcefully in villages that serve as terror hotspots” as well as “accelerate the regularization of farms and the establishment of new ones.”

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

“The Israeli government is pushing the West Bank towards explosion,” said Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, in a statement. “Its blatant violations of the historical and legal status quo at Jerusalem’s Holy Sites are illegal and dangerous provocations. They are pushing the region towards another disastrous conflict that will reverberate beyond the occupied Palestinian territories.”

A large-scale settler attack targeted the Palestinian town of Turmus Ayya and Jalud, with properties set on fire and live ammunition reportedly fired toward homes.

Videos show Israeli settlers attacking the Palestinian village of al Tuwani in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, setting homes, vehicles and a mosque on fire. According to Palestinian media, Israeli forces provided protection for the settlers during the assault.

Ras al-Ahmar, occupied West Bank – The drive to Thaer Bisharat’s home should take less than 10 minutes from the main road. Instead, it took three hours.

Every gate leading into Ras al-Ahmar, in the northern Jordan Valley, is shut these days. Such road closures have become the norm rather than the exception, patrolled in shifts by Israeli soldiers and settlers whose roles on the ground have become increasingly difficult to tell apart. The sole access point that remained was a single, winding dirt road, passable only by four-wheel drive vehicles and requiring drivers to evade the roving Israeli patrols.

During the drive to Thaer’s house, Israeli forces had the area under an even greater lockdown than normal as they were nearby in the al-Buqaia plain, destroying three wells belonging to local Palestinians – including one owned by a relative of Thaer’s.

This is some of the most fertile land in the occupied West Bank, where farmers normally tend rows of banana trees alongside crops such as grapes, olives and potatoes. But along the dirt road leading to Thaer’s isolated home, the farms stand half-abandoned, with plastic greenhouse doors open and flapping in the breeze, as crops go thirsty after water was cut off in the area weeks ago by Israeli authorities.

“I can’t even run an errand,” said Thaer. “From Tamun, the village, it used to take me ten minutes. Now, with the current [dirt] road… it takes an hour, at best.”

He was spending the afternoon alone – his brother and sister-in-law had gone into town that morning for basic necessities. Left by himself, it was easy to feel like a sitting duck.

“Just this morning, there was a car – two people in it, dressed in military gear, army-backed,” he said. “They went to the people living near the banana houses. They took down ID photos, names, phone numbers. And they tell them, ‘You’ve got 24 hours to leave. Otherwise we’re coming to confiscate everything you’ve got’.”

In recent weeks, that pressure has escalated from long-standing “closed military zone” orders issued by the military into outright seizures of private land, alongside the destruction of irrigation pipes, water wells and greenhouses in the barrier’s path – the sharpest expression yet of an advancing takeover in which settler-outpost expansion and land seizure now work in tandem to squeeze out the Palestinians who remain.

“They cage us in and suffocate us,” Thaer said.

A trench, an outpost and a series of seizure orders

That tightening isolation is the result of one of Israel’s newest infrastructure projects in the occupied West Bank: the ‘Crimson Thread’ barrier. Announced in 2025, the first part of the project combines a trench and military road running roughly 22km between the Ein Shibli and Tayasir checkpoints – severing the northern Jordan Valley from Tubas to the north and Nablus to the south. Israel says it is intended to prevent weapons smuggling from Jordan, but the route runs several kilometres inside the occupied West Bank rather than along the already-fenced Jordanian border.

The plan is for the barrier to eventually run for 500km, splitting Palestinians from thousands of hectares of land and creating a barrier that – in its consequences – mirrors the separation wall on the other side of the West Bank.

On March 8, Israeli military commander Gilad Shriki visited several Palestinian communities, and, in their words, warned residents they should leave in preparation for a complete Israeli takeover of the area.

Then, last month, an Israeli Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for construction of the ‘Crimson Thread’ barrier to proceed. Since then, the Israeli Civil Administration has moved aggressively. Roughly three kilometres of trenches have already been dug, destroying Palestinian infrastructure in its path – including irrigation pipes, farmland and greenhouses, all while severing farmers from land on the other side.

The route of the ‘Crimson Thread’ project was stitched together with nine land seizure orders – a “clear escalation” of a decades-long effort by Israeli authorities to remove Palestinians in the area, according to Dror Etkes, who tracks Israeli land policy for Israeli NGO Kerem Navot. What started as checkpoints, settlement building and the designation of Palestinian lands as military firing zones “have in recent years become much more aggressive – through settler attacks, military raids, confiscation of property and denial of access to firing zones”.

Now, such military land seizure orders allow Israeli authorities to “seize whatever land it deems necessary” for security purposes, says Etkes.

According to the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, Israeli authorities issued 49 military land-seizure orders in the first half of this year – already exceeding the 47 issued in all of 2025.

Thaer scoffs at the official rationale. “It’s not a military road,” he said. “You don’t dig a trench two and a half, three metres deep for that.”

‘Effectively in a prison’

Etkes said the barrier accomplishes two things at once: “blocking Palestinians’ ability to enter everything east of the barrier” – where most of their farmland is – while linking existing illegal settlements to a new outpost being built along the route, on Jabal Tamun, that he expects to further impact 8-9,000 dunams (8 to 9sq km) of Palestinian agricultural land, most of it in Area B.

“The majority of communities aren’t there anymore – they’ve been forced to leave, which convinced [Israeli authorities] that the time was right for the next move,” said Etkes, listing emptied communities such as Khirbet Samra and Khirbet Yarza.

A Kerem Navot map shows the ‘Crimson Thread’ barrier route curling around Khirbet Yarza – but by the time construction reached it, Khirbet Yarza was already gone, with its residents displaced by settlers months earlier.

Mahdi Daraghmeh, who heads the al-Maleh village council, has watched the same pattern unfold throughout the hamlets he oversees. “Settler terror and fear have pushed many families to leave,” he said. “In the communities here, 130 families have been displaced – they’ve abandoned their structures, their homes, their land. And now they’ve lost their livelihoods – they have nothing left to live on.”

Since the June Supreme Court ruling, Israeli authorities have carried out near-daily operations in the area, cutting water supplies, destroying tanks and confiscating tractors and other farming equipment.

“They confiscated the tractors and water tanks from us here,” said Thaer. “So they claim these tractors and tanks are a threat to their security. A threat to your security, how?”

At the same time, settlers brought caravans into the area east of Ras al-Ahmar, positioning themselves inside territory expected to be cut off from Palestinian communities.

On June 16, bulldozers demolished livestock infrastructure at the home of Bilal Bani Oudeh, a friend of Thaer’s, and warned him to leave within 24 hours. He refused, so that night, settlers returned and brutally assaulted him.

“He nearly died,” Thaer said. “After they attacked him, they talked about tying him to a rope behind a vehicle. They took everything he owned.”

With authorities working assiduously to keep observers from documenting or photographing the ‘Crimson Thread’ operation, excavation has uprooted hundreds of olive and grape trees while repeatedly severing irrigation pipelines serving tens of thousands of dunams. On the morning of July 14 alone, Israeli authorities destroyed three wells in al-Buqaia – including one belonging to Bisharat’s relative – and confiscated pumps and equipment.

The Atuf village council – one of those affected by the new barrier – put that single day’s damage at more than four million shekels ($1.3m).

Already, this destruction has decimated the local economy in weeks, wiping out the summer harvest. “There’s no agricultural season to speak of,” Daraghmeh said. “Most of the land hasn’t been cultivated and what has been cultivated is for the settlers’ benefit.”

When the trench is finished, cutting communities off from each other and their farmland, residents fear it will mark the end of a Palestinian presence here. “Our communities will have no services, no infrastructure whatsoever,” said Daraghmeh. “No hospital, no emergency centre, no schools; for all of that, people have to go to the neighbouring town and that will be impossible.”

“Once this trench cuts people off,” he said, “the people here will effectively be in a prison.”

‘Give us the rights of the animals’

With Israeli authorities having shut off water into the area for weeks, one tank now costs Thaer more than 300 shekels ($100), more than triple the previous price. But even transporting water is a perilous pursuit; his brother was recently beaten and held at gunpoint by marauding settlers, who he said stole his phone and robbed him of his money.

Thaer estimates that agricultural production in the area has collapsed by as much as 90 percent, while many families have already lost half their livestock because they can no longer reach grazing land.

But among neighbouring communities now erased, Thaer has seen this playbook before: once Palestinians are removed, he says, the settlers take over their lands. “Then suddenly there’s no more ‘firing zone,’” Thaer said. “A road appears, water arrives, sheep arrive. Life comes back to the place, thank God!

“So why do I get told it’s all a military zone?”

Thaer looked out at the Israeli settlement farms, lush and green in the distance. Around his own property, the ground was parched, littered with half-abandoned equipment. “Under their ‘law’, we are treated like animals,” he remarked.

Thaer paused. “Israel always talks about ‘rights’, ‘rights’, ‘rights’,” he said. “When someone hits a dog, suddenly, there’s animal rights advocates everywhere.”

“So actually, we don’t even want human rights,” he said. “Just give us the animal rights they talk so much about. At this point, we’d settle for living under that.”

Pressure is growing on the EU to sanction Israel for its expansion of illegal settlements and violence against Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank.

The European Union has renewed its call on Israel to halt the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank, warning that continued construction and other unilateral measures threaten the viability of a future Palestinian state.

An EU spokesperson on Friday urged Israel to stop the legalisation of settlement outposts, land appropriation, demolitions, forced evictions of Palestinians, and other actions that “undermine the viability of the two-state solution”.

The statement came days after Israel’s security cabinet approved the allocation of 1.3 billion shekels ($427.8m) to establish 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The funding package marks one of Israel’s largest recent investments in settlement expansion and has drawn criticism from Palestinian officials and international partners.

The United Nations, the International Court of Justice and most countries consider Israeli settlements in territory occupied by Israel since 1967 to be illegal under international law. Israel rejects that interpretation.

The EU has long maintained that it does not recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the territories it occupied in 1967. However, the 27-member bloc remains divided over whether to take stronger measures against Israel’s settlement policy.

EU foreign ministers this week failed to reach a consensus on proposals that could restrict trade with settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite growing calls from several member states for tougher action.

The renewed diplomatic pressure comes amid continuing violence in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians, including children, have been injured in separate incidents involving Israeli settlers and Israeli forces.

On Friday, two Palestinian children were taken to hospital after suffering head and facial injuries when Israeli settlers allegedly hurled stones at their family’s vehicle in the Wadi al-Sha’er area, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

In another incident, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy was shot by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. He remains in hospital.

“Everybody agrees that the situation in the West Bank is really intolerable,” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said ahead of talks among EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

“What is happening in the West Bank is actually making it more and more impossible that the two-state solution ever can come into effect,” she added.