Bank

Attacks on Palestinian communities by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, which are often supported by Israeli forces, have gathered pace over the past month since settlers from the Havat Gilad settlement attacked Palestinian homes on the eastern edge of Tal, southwest of Nablus.

On Sunday and Monday, the Israeli military raided multiple towns, villages and refugee camps across the occupied territory, and reports of arrests, home searches and settler attacks have continued to mount.

A 15-day siege on three families comprising 15 people, including two children, in the village of Qusra, which is ongoing, drew a rare public condemnation this month from the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israel and its West Bank settlements.

Israel is also pushing ahead with plans for the so-called E1 settlement expansion close to Jerusalem, which human rights organisations warn would essentially sever the West Bank in two, further hampering the freedom of movement of Palestinians on either side of it and endangering the possibility of a Palestinian state.

The West Bank attacks increasingly fit the definition of a pogrom, experts said. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese described these Israeli attacks against Palestinians as “pogroms against defenceless civilians”.

So why are experts calling settler attacks pogroms, and do they fit the formal definition of one?

What’s happening in the West Bank?

Settlers, frequently supported by the Israeli military, have been attacking Palestinian homes, businesses, and agricultural fields across the occupied West Bank. Such attacks have been commonplace for decades as settlements have expanded across the territory, but they gathered pace after October 7, 2023 when Israel launched it genocidal war on Gaza, and have become particularly violent and frequent over the past month.

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

According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, however, Israeli settlers now number roughly 780,000 across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, living among 192 settlements and 400 outposts, rising to 71 percent of Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control, and 91 percent of the Jordan Valley.

Settlers often set up outposts without formal approval around Palestinian villages from which they launch a campaign of harassment, including killing livestock, cutting supply lines and damaging property, in order to drive local residents out. Once they establish a more formal settlement, they often receive retrospective approval from the Israeli government for the settlement.

In some places more recently, illegal settlers have laid siege to individual family homes – such as in the Ras al-Ein area of Qusra – cutting off water and other supplies and damaging orchards or harming livestock.

This has set a new pattern: settlers establish a tent adjacent to individual homes; Palestinians’ homes are besieged, with essentials cut off; and Israeli soldiers arrive not to remove the settlers, but rather to remove the family – through arrest or ostensibly for their “protection”.

In Qusra, the three besieged families were forced together into one of the family houses. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have occupied one of the other homes for use as a military post and thrown furniture and belongings from its windows, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The UN humanitarian affairs office recorded more than 1,330 settler-related attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank between January and late July this year, averaging six a day and marking the fastest pace since the agency began systematic tracking two decades ago.

Separately, a UN-appointed commission of inquiry has found that the Israeli authorities have repeatedly failed to prevent foreseeable settler attacks and, in some cases, have directly enabled them through army protection and the provision of weapons and funding.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has found that settler attacks, demolitions and evictions forcibly displaced more Palestinians in the first four months of this year than in the whole of 2025.

OCHA reported that 107 communities, comprising 5,900 Palestinians, had been completely or partially displaced as a result of settler violence since January 2023. It also found that the Israeli military have expelled another 32,000 Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank since January 2025, essentially emptying the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps.

What is the definition of a pogrom?

Major US and UK dictionaries vary to some degree on the definition of a “pogrom”.

The British Collins Dictionary identifies a pogrom as “organised, official violence against a group of people for racial or religious reasons”, with a notable inclusion of official, or state-backed violence.

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary calls it “the organised killing of large numbers of people, because of their race or religion”, without mention of state-sanctioned violence.

Merriam-Webster says it is “an organised massacre of helpless people” – “specifically: such as a massacre of Jews”.

Cambridge Dictionary says it is “an act of organised cruel behaviour or killing that is done to a large group of people because of their race or religion”.

The word is understood to have been introduced via Yiddish and was at first used to describe the wave of violent, organised mob attacks on Jewish communities in the Russian Empire following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

It is important to note that unlike legal terms including “crimes against humanity” or “genocide,” “pogrom” has no established legal definition under international law.

Can attacks in the West Bank be referred to as pogroms?

Besides Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, who has described Israeli attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as “pogroms against defenceless civilians”, Israeli officials themselves have described such attacks as “pogroms”.

On February 26, 2023, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked Huwara and surrounding Palestinian communities after two Israeli settlers were killed. A Palestinian was killed, hundreds were injured, and homes, businesses and cars were burned.

The Israeli military’s then-commander in the occupied West Bank, Yehuda Fuchs, called the settlers’ attack a “pogrom”, and it was also recorded as such by the US State Department.

Israeli-Palestinian human rights group B’Tselem has also previously described Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank as “pogroms”, especially after the February 2023 attacks. Later, it followed up with a report titled, “The pogroms are working – the transfer is already happening”, which argued that settler attacks were contributing to the displacement of Palestinian communities.

“Settler violence is not a new phenomenon. But over the past three years, it has become more violent, more systematic and, most importantly, part of a state mechanism intended to ethnically cleanse large parts of the West Bank,” said Yair Dvir, the spokesperson for B’Tselem.

“The government funds and arms the settlers, while the Israeli military stands by and, in many cases, actively participates in the attacks,” he told Al Jazeera. “So far, these militias have expelled 64 Palestinian communities and taken control of around one million dunams of land.”

Dvir also told Al Jazeera that the Israeli settlers are “now carrying out organised attacks on established Palestinian villages and towns in order to drive out their residents”.

“These are armed militias operating as an unofficial arm of the state, with a shared goal: to ethnically cleanse as much of the West Bank as possible,” he added.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, which is named after Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who is credited with coining the term genocide after the Holocaust, referred to settler attacks on Al-Mughayyir, a Palestinian village in Ramallah, as “pogroms”, reporting that hundreds of armed settlers attacked residents and burned buildings and cars while soldiers stood by earlier this year. In 2025, the Israeli military uprooted thousands of Palestinian olive trees at Al-Mughayyir.

Raheel Dhattiwala, an Indian scholar who focuses on collective violence, told Al Jazeera: “West Bank attacks fit the characteristics of a pogrom – systematic targeting of one civilian group by another with state approval. A few senior Israeli army officers have called it ‘pogroms’ in the past too, for example after attacks in Huwara.

“One might want to debate the use of the term, ‘pogrom’, but it is accurate to call settler violence systematic attacks of occupiers, with government approval, on groups of occupied people.”

Israeli forces launch wide search in Jordan Valley after stabbing incident in the occupied West Bank village of al-Auja.

Israeli forces have launched search operations in the Jordan Valley after an Israeli man was wounded in a stabbing attack in a village in the eastern occupied West Bank.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Sunday, citing a security source, that the man was stabbed at a commercial complex on the main road near the village of al-Auja.

The victim, a man aged in his 20s, was moderately wounded, Israeli police said.

The suspect escaped from the scene after carrying out the attack, according to the Israeli army, which launched a large-scale search operation in the area, supported by a substantial police presence.

The army said it had set up roadblocks in the village and the surrounding areas. The military is “in constant contact with the residents and security forces in the area”, it said in a post on Telegram.

The incident comes amid a rise in state-backed Israeli settler violence against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023.

Data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) shows that between January 1, 2025, and June 31, 2026, there were 3,033 Israeli settler attacks.

Some 1,291 settler attacks were recorded in 2023, rising to 1,449 in 2024, 1,835 in 2025, and 761 in the first four months of 2026. That equates to an average of 190 attacks per month in 2026, up from 153 per month in 2025 – a 24 percent increase in the monthly rate.

Gas bombs fired, entrance closed at al-Mughayyir

In a separate incident on Sunday, Israeli forces used gas bombs and closed the western entrance of al-Mughayyir village, north of Ramallah, according to video footage and Palestinian officials.

Video clips documented Israeli forces firing gas canisters while blocking the western entrance to the village. The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli troops prevented residents from entering or leaving al-Mughayyir, subjected a number of them to field interrogations, mistreated young men, and fired gas bombs towards vehicles.

The agency added that the western entrance is currently the only outlet for the village after Israeli forces closed its eastern entrance in October 2023.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 21 (UPI) — The World Bank said Friday that the recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict has severely disrupted Lebanon’s fragile recovery, predicting a 6.4% contraction in the crisis-ridden economy this year and a rise in inflation to 17.5%.

The international financial institution said in a report that Lebanon entered 2026 “on firmer footing,” after an estimated 4.2% expansion in real gross domestic product in 2025.

It was the country’s fastest growth since the onset of the 2019 financial crisis, driven by stronger consumption, investment and tourism, as well as improved high-frequency indicators, according to the report.

It noted that the rebound was sharply interrupted by the military escalation between Hezbollah and Israel on March 2, causing further damage to housing and infrastructure, displacing some 1.2 million people, disrupting supply chains, and severely affecting tourism and domestic demand.

Dahlia Khalifa, World Bank Middle East director, said Lebanon’s recovery has been “sharply set back by the renewed conflict,” adding to an already severe social and economic crisis.

The report projects that Lebanon’s economy will contract by 6.4% in 2026, while inflation is expected to rise to 17.5%, driven by supply disruptions, higher shipping costs and rising oil prices, further eroding purchasing power.

According to the latest casualty count released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, some 4,348 people have been killed and 12,703 others injured since March 2. Israel’s intensive military campaign has caused massive destruction to property and infrastructure, with some 70 border villages in southern Lebanon reduced to rubble and rendered uninhabitable.

Lebanese Finance Minister Yassine Jaber has estimated that the combined direct and indirect losses resulting from the conflict in Lebanon since 2023, including the 2024 and 2026 escalations, could reach $20 billion.

Lebanon was still struggling to recover from a protracted financial crisis — described by the World Bank as a “deliberate depression” and the worst globally since 1850 that limited access to bank deposits, caused prices to soar, unemployment to soar and public services to deteriorate.

Moreover, the population faced eroded purchasing power after the Lebanese pound lost more than 95% of its value against the U.S. dollar,

The World Bank report said the government recorded an overall surplus of 3.9% of GDP in 2025. However, rising humanitarian and reconstruction needs after the recent war, pressure to increase public sector wages and slower revenue growth are expected to place additional strain on public finances in the second half of this year.

The report noted that continued progress on reforms remains essential to restoring confidence, reviving growth and supporting a durable economic recovery.

“Advancing reforms — particularly on banking sector restructuring and fiscal management –will be critical to restoring confidence, protecting stability and mobilizing the financing needed for reconstruction and recovery,” the World Bank’s Khalifa said.

The report noted that the banking sector remains deeply weakened despite some progress in advancing its restructuring agenda and warned that the exchange rate could come under pressure “if foreign inflows decline or conflict-related shocks persist.”

Israeli settlers fatally shot 17-year-old Karim Sanad Shalaldeh in Hebron, while Israeli forces killed 58-year-old Fathi Khazem in Jenin.

A Palestinian teenager in Hebron and a former colonel in Jenin have been shot and killed in separate incidents involving Israeli settlers and soldiers, as escalating attacks and the rapid expansion of illegal settlements drive a wave of forced displacement in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Friday that 17-year-old Karim Sanad Shalaldeh was fatally shot in an Israeli settler attack in Khirbet Hamroush.

Shalaldeh sustained a gunshot wound to the chest and was reported to be in critical condition before he was announced dead. A 70-year-old man was also shot and injured during the attack.

Local sources told the Palestinian news agency, Wafa, that large groups of armed Israeli settlers raided the Khirbet Hamroush area, opening fire at residents and setting Palestinian homes on fire.

In a separate incident on Friday morning, the Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs informed the Health Ministry that 58-year-old Fathi Khazem was fatally shot by Israeli forces in Jenin. The Israeli military was raiding the home of retired colonel in the Palestinian National Security Forces when the shooting occurred.

The Israeli army claimed Khazem attempted to stab Israeli troops during a military operation before the soldiers opened fire and killed him.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the Israeli army did not release the body to the victim’s family for burial, and Wafa reported that Israeli forces prevented emergency services from reaching the house after the shooting.

Earlier, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said its crews treated a 14-year-old boy who was shot with live ammunition in the chest and back during an Israeli raid near Jenin. The boy was transferred to a hospital, it added.

The Israeli military also arrested six people during a separate raid on the city on Friday.

The ‘most immoral’ army

Amid new attacks and Israeli army raids across the occupied West Bank, in Qusra, south of Nablus, Israeli settlers continue to besiege three Palestinian homes for a 13th consecutive day under the protection of Israeli forces.

Qusra Mayor Abdel Azim Wadi said Israeli forces and settlers were preventing families in the Ras al-Ain area from entering or leaving their homes, while one of the houses had been seized and turned into a military post. The area has also been declared a closed military zone.

Wadi said the families were running short of food and medicine because Israeli forces were preventing supplies from reaching them, Wafa reported.

Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, called the Israeli military “the MOST IMMORAL ARMY” in a post on X.

“In the West Bank, soldiers and settlers cut water pipes, while Qusra’s siege continues,” she wrote. “In Gaza the pulverization continues and so the massacres. Since the ceasefire Israel has killed 1,200+ people, including 300 children.”

A report by Human Rights Watch on Thursday found state-backed Israeli settler violence fully or partially displaced 107 Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank since January 2023.

The US-based rights group said increased settler attacks, along with the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law, are driving a wave of forced displacement of Palestinians.

Israeli plans to build a major new illegal settlement under the E1 settlement project, which would cleave the occupied West Bank in two, have provoked widespread condemnation from around the world.

The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Norway on Thursday called Israel’s opening of construction tenders for more than 1,200 housing units under the project “unacceptable” and in violation of “the territorial contiguity of the Palestinian Territories”.

“Not only will they take us further from peace, but they further undermine Israel’s international standing,” the statement said.

Uber have launched stylish open-top convertible rides for newlyweds this August Bank Holiday after research claimed 72% of couples suffer from severe stress over their big day.

Travel giants Uber say many are ditching traditional country-estate weddings and instead fleeing to sleek, fast-track town hall ceremonies like pop star Dua Lipa had.

Research claims 72% of couples experience severe stress leading up to their big day and 42% have considered cancelling it completely.

Top drivers for the shift include slashing exorbitant costs (28%), keeping the vows quick and meaningful (24%), and paring down the guest list (23%).

Despite this, 72% of brides still demand an ‘iconic, internet-breaking photo moment’, while 46% worry a low-key wedding lacks that signature ‘wow’ factor.

Uber says it’s stepping in to give registry office couples the ultimate post-ceremony upgrade via rides in their open-top convertible ‘Hitch ‘n Ride’ service

Couples getting married during the August Bank Holiday are being promised a paparazzi-style entrance and exit from the registry office.

They’ll let couples step straight from their doorstep into a luxury convertible ride directly to their ceremony and onwards to their reception venue.

Uber say they’re working with ‘expert chauffeurs’ who will provide direct transport for the couple and two witnesses.

They add a chilled bottle of premium English sparkling wine will be provided for the drive between the registry and the reception.

Uber say the experience is available to couples getting hitched at registry offices in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham, Bristol, Sheffield and Leicester.

This news comes as registry office couples say cutting the traditional guest list saved them an average of £2,171 in venue and catering costs.

They say couples are opting to reallocate that budget where it actually counts, such as 28% putting it toward house deposits, while 22% are prioritising dream honeymoons.

Uber UK’s general manager, Andrew Brem, said “At Uber, we believe showing up for our riders matters, whether it’s for the everyday trip or one of life’s biggest moments.

“For couples saying ‘I do’ at their local town hall, ‘Hitch ‘n Ride makes getting to the celebration easier, while adding a little extra magic to the journey.”

‘Hitch ‘n Ride’ will run exclusively over the August Bank Holiday [August 28-31] across the UK.

Tickets will go live on www.hitchnride.co.uk at 10am on August 24 on a first-come-first-served basis.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have given preliminary approval for a cryptocurrency venture tied to President Trump and his family to operate a digital-asset bank, a decision that has drawn immediate condemnation from Senate Democrats who are now pushing legislation to bar such an action.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and nine other Senate Democrats introduced a bill Saturday that would bar the president, the vice president, their immediate family members and other senior government officials from owning or controlling banks.

The measure was proposed a day after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — which is part of the Trump administration — granted conditional approval for World Liberty Trust Co. to become a trust bank. The firm was founded in 2024 by two of Trump’s sons and the sons of Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East.

If the firm gets final approval, it would not act like a conventional bank and take deposits or make loans. Instead, the chartered bank would be able to issue and manage cryptocurrencies and digital assets. But the move would grant new financial powers to the Trump family’s crypto business, which has already shown to be profitable for the president in his first year back in the White House.

Trump’s financial disclosures show the president has earned more than $1.2 billion from crypto-related projects as he has pushed to deregulate the digital-asset industry. He hauled in more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products and is a significant owner of the firm through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, which holds about a 38% stake.

Aside from World Liberty Financial, Trump last year took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his likeness.

Trump’s crypto windfall has lately fueled Democrats’ argument that the president stands to personally gain from the same regulatory apparatus he oversees, and has led to acrimonious negotiations in Capitol Hill over how to regulate the industry.

The White House said Tuesday “there are no conflicts of interest.” But the recent decision by federal regulators in relation to World Liberty Financial is now giving more ammunition to Democrats, who have pushed for more ethical guardrails to crack down on the Trump family’s crypto ventures.

“This is the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen — and Congress cannot allow it to stand,” Warren said in a statement. “The Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act will close the door on this kind of unprecedented corruption.”

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) said the decision to allow a Trump-linked crypto firm to charter its own bank is “injecting risk into our financial system and fueling the Trump family’s business endeavors.”

“It is Congress’ responsibility and duty now to rein in this corruption and ensure that bank charters, deposit insurance, and other banking licenses cannot be handed out to entities influenced or controlled by any President’s family,” Alsobrooks said in a statement.

David Wachsman, a spokesperson for World Liberty Financial, disputed the criticism, saying the preliminary approval is “great news for consumer and investor protection advocates and for the American financial services industry.”

“Critics are missing the point: World Liberty Financial is running towards regulation and continuous oversight, not away from it,” Wachsman said in a statement. “World Liberty Trust Company’s national charter will ensure robust and permanent regulatory supervision from the OCC, a federal banking regulator, that will outlast the Trump administration.”

Wachsman said World Liberty will be required to provide weekly reports about its operations that will be subject to independent reviews. He added that federal banking laws such as anti-money-laundering rules and consumer protection statutes will be “directly applicable and enforceable.”

The White House did not comment directly about the administration’s involvement with the World Liberty application to charter a bank. But in a statement, the White House disputed claims that the president’s decisions in office have financially benefited him and his allies.

“All of President Trump’s investment holdings are in held in fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement. “The President only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.”

Kelly added: “There are no conflicts of interest.”

Israeli settlers have erected tents for a new illegal settlement outpost near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, as separate groups of settlers have besieged the village of Qusra for a week.

Settlers pitched tents in the Wadi Zeytun area near the village of Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, on Sunday in an attempt to establish a new settlement outpost, said Al Jazeera’s Tharwat Shakra.

Reporting from Ramallah, she said settlers also began establishing a separate outpost in the village of Burqa on the same day.

If a new outpost is established, the number of outposts surrounding the two neighbouring villages will rise to six, said the Palestinian news agency Wafa, which also reported the encroachment in Wadi Zeytun.

Settlers have seized roughly 4,700 of Umm Safa’s 4,800 dunams (about 470 of 480 hectares, or 1,160 of 1,186 acres), and 10,000 of Burqa’s 12,000 dunams (1,000 of 1,200 hectares, or 2,471 of 2,965 acres), according to Shakra.

Meanwhile, in the Ras al-Ain area of the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, an Israeli settler siege on three families has entered a second week, with 15 Palestinians, including two children, besieged in their homes.

Israeli soldiers rotated their positions and erected a tent in front of residents’ homes after spending the previous two days dismantling one that settlers had tried to put up there, Shakra reported. Municipal crews later restored electricity and water lines to the besieged families.

In separate incidents on Sunday, Al Jazeera reporters in the West Bank said settlers attacked a Palestinian home in the town of Beit Imrin, north of Nablus, and detained those inside. Israeli forces then arrived and arrested nine people from the house before withdrawing. Soldiers also blocked Palestinian Red Crescent teams from reaching the area and confiscated the keys to ambulances and medical-relief vehicles, Shakra reported.

There were also attacks in the Nab’a al-Kaabneh community near Taybeh, Shakra said, and an attempted raid on a home in Turmus Aya, both in the Ramallah district. Attacks in Hebron’s al-Jaabari neighbourhood left Palestinians injured, including some by gunfire, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces have escalated arrests in towns where illegal settler outposts have been established, targeting residents who confront the attacks.

Israel using settlers ‘to advance ethnic cleansing’

Israeli settler violence and the ongoing siege of three Palestinian homes in Qusra should be understood as part of Israel’s decades-long rule of “impunity”, which has now reached a “climax”, said Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Sunday, she said Israel has no right to carry out military incursions on Palestinian territory and is instead obligated to protect civilians from military action. Israeli officials, however, appear to be collaborating with settlers rather than restraining them, she said.

“Israel has outsourced coercion to the settlers and is using them to advance ethnic cleansing,” Albanese said. “This is a crime… This is utter terrorism; these settlers should be investigated and prosecuted.”

She said that while Israel’s endgame may be “ethnic cleansing”, it is using “war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide as the means to continue the Nakba” – the catastrophic ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948, during the creation of Israel.

Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera the situation in the West Bank was “extremely dangerous”, saying settler groups were carrying out “an average of 30 attacks every day” as they “spearhead” a campaign to seize land and displace Palestinians.

Barghouti said the goal of the campaign was “annexation and displacement”, and called for Arab and international pressure on Washington to halt Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank as well as Gaza.

Israeli attacks in the West Bank have intensified since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, according to Wafa. About 750,000 Israeli settlers live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 illegal outposts across the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

The UN recognises Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory as illegal under international law.

Sunday marks one week since Israeli settlers began their siege of Qusra, a Palestinian village south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Since August 9, dozens of Israeli settlers have surrounded three Palestinian homes in the Ras al-Ain area on the edge of the village, cutting off water and electricity as food and other supplies run low. About 15 Palestinians from the Abu Rida and Hassan families live in these homes, among them two children under the age of seven and one belonging to a dual US citizen. Residents said settlers from nearby outposts have been trying to take the properties for months.

On Thursday, the Israeli military ordered the residents of two of the houses to leave and forced them all into the third. That same day, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, described the settlers besieging the homes as “Israeli terrorists“. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the siege, calling it criminal and inhumane.

Over the course of the week, the Israeli army declared the area a closed military zone and blocked Israeli and foreign activists from reaching the besieged families. Reporting from Qusra on Sunday, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the UN was able to bring in some aid that morning after coordinating with the Israeli military.

Where is Qusra?

Qusra sits in Area B, which makes up about 21 percent of the West Bank. It is where the Palestinian Authority runs civil affairs, such as education, healthcare and the economy, but Israel retains full security control and its forces can enter at will.

Odeh said the sequence in Qusra is following a pattern repeated across the West Bank: The Israeli army deploys to an area, takes over Palestinian homes and dispossesses residents of their properties while settlers face no arrests.

Average of six settler attacks each day

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, from January 2025 to June 2025, there were at least 3,033 settler attacks in the occupied West Bank – an average of six per day.

Settlements built illegally on Palestinian land

Last month, a similar siege in the neighbouring village of Jalud displaced Palestinian families from their land, which settlers then took over. Qusra itself has faced repeated attacks, including the burning of a newly built mosque last month.

Since October 7, 2023, when Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began, settler attacks and land grabs have intensified in the West Bank under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which has backed a rapid expansion of settlements.

About 700,000 Israelis live in settlements, which are illegal under international law. About three million Palestinians also live in the West Bank. Israel has occupied the region since 1967.

Palestinian politicians and analysts have warned against what they describe as an Israeli plan to illegally annex the occupied West Bank by implementing a series of decisions and actions under different pretexts.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz, on Friday, ordered the military to prepare a plan for transferring civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli police.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the decision follows criticism over the army’s handling of Israeli settlers who besieged a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra.

Katz justified the shift, saying, “The army’s role is to combat Palestinian terrorism … and not chase hilltop youth.”

The Defence Ministry indicated the police would establish a dedicated force to handle these civilian matters.

However, Palestinian officials and a wide array of political experts warn this structural shift represents a dangerous acceleration of illegal annexation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera that the settlers are the “spearhead in the process of annexation and Judaisation”.

He drew direct historical parallels to the mass displacement of Palestinians, stating, “They repeat what the Zionist terror gangs did in 1948, like the Haganah and the Stern Gang.”

Barghouti warned that placing security in the hands of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and illegal Israeli settlements under Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich amounts to “handing over the West Bank to the settlers”.

He stressed that this is an open war on the population, adding, “The actual ruler in the West Bank is the known fascist terrorist Smotrich.”

De facto annexation

Analysts argue that replacing military occupation law with domestic civilian law fundamentally alters the legal reality of the territory. Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the decision legally erases the borders.

“The government is dealing with the West Bank not as an occupied territory,” Mustafa said. He explained that by transferring power to a civilian police force, “this means that the government has annexed the West Bank”.

He noted this move absolves the military of its obligations under international law, placing enforcement under Ben-Gvir.

Mustafa warned that Ben-Gvir, who previously oversaw the demolition of thousands of Arab homes in Israel, will now command the police to “support the settlers more and more and push them more and more towards deepening their repression and terrorism against the Palestinians”.

Palestinian leadership strongly condemned the mandate. Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, described the move as a blatant violation of international agreements and an attempt to “impose Israeli law and sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to entrench the illegal annexation of Palestinian land”.

The Palestinian group Hamas echoed this sentiment, releasing a statement calling the order a “dangerous step on the path to imposing de facto annexation” that provides “cover and more protection for the escalating attacks and crimes of the settlers”.

Fascist militias

The Palestinian Authority has accused the Israeli government and its military of sponsoring settlers’ violence. Even Israeli members of parliament have accused the army of being complicit.

Analysts stress that relieving the military of its duties essentially deputises settler violence, turning them into an armed extension of the state.

Nihad Abu Ghosh, an expert in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that there is no contradiction between the army and the settlers. He noted that the settlers have evolved into “fascist militia formations” that perform the state’s dirty work.

“These are fascist militia formations, and there are similar precedents in many countries that were ruled by fascism, whether in Spain, Italy, Germany, or even Chile,” Abu Ghosh said.

He added that these militias carry out roles that “require evading any discipline, rules, or laws” to achieve a “creeping, gradual annexation to make it a reality”.

Apartheid and displacement

The dual legal framework resulting from this shift has drawn sharp international and local criticism. Shadi al-Shurafa, a researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the situation is a textbook definition of segregation.

“We are facing an application of an overt racist apartheid system in the West Bank,” al-Shurafa said, noting it involves one regime operating with two entirely different laws based on ethnicity.

He added that the ultimate goal of the current government is carrying out complete ethnic cleansing and trapping Palestinians in “isolated cantons and isolated Bantustans”.

Other experts argue that the move completely alters the international legal status of the territory, pushing the crisis into a new, more dangerous phase.

“The subject has bypassed the issue of annexation to a post-annexation phase and creating a reality where the Palestinian finds himself forced to think about migration,” said Adel Shadid, expert in Israeli affairs.

International complicity

Analysts also pointed to the role of the international community, particularly the United States, in enabling this systemic shift.

Shadid dismissed recent US condemnations of settler violence as mere theatre to “mislead global public opinion”.

He argued that the underlying project has full US backing, noting that “all that is happening now is an American-Israeli plan and there is harmony between the two right-wing administrations in Washington and here in Israel”.

Andrew Whitley, a former United Nations official and director of the Balfour Project, stressed that the planned transfer is “completely illegal” and urged immediate global intervention.

He told Al Jazeera that the “Palestinian state is disappearing before our eyes”, demanding that the international community move beyond rhetoric.

“We have to do much more than just wring our hands and complain that governments are not doing anything about this,” Whitley said, calling for concrete sanctions to halt the rapid erasure of the Palestinian presence.

Israeli settlers have marauded across the occupied West Bank for months, attacking Palestinian towns and villages with impunity.

Events in Qusra, a village south of Nablus, where Israeli settlers have laid siege to three Palestinian households since Sunday, have even led to a rare condemnation of settler behaviour by the Israeli government, with spokesperson David Mercer calling the settlers’ actions “deplorable” and “unacceptable”, and promising that Israeli authorities would investigate and arrest those responsible.

Analysts, campaigners, and Israeli parliamentarians who spoke to Al Jazeera have reacted to that with disbelief and incredulity, pointing to the inability of the Israeli military to stop the siege, in which the settlers have cut off water and electricity to Qusra. Israeli soldiers were initially even seen mingling and even praying with settlers in Qusra.

Complicity

“Government attempts to distance themselves from the violence are ridiculous,” Aida Touma-Sliman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the left-wing Hadash party, told Al Jazeera. “They can say what they want, but they’re complicit.”

“If you look at the West Bank, you can no longer differentiate between the army and the settlers,” she said, adding that many of the settlers had been allowed to carry out their military service protecting the same illegal settlements they had come from. “The government is supplying them, protecting and arming them. It isn’t opposed to them. Supporting them is policy,” she added.

“There is nothing new in what’s happening in Qusra,” Yair Dvir of the Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem said. “We’ve been seeing this for decades. When there’s international criticism of the violence, the government condemns it, the settlers withdraw, and then return as soon as attention shifts.”

“Let’s be clear, settler violence is state violence,” Dvir added. “They both have the same aim: to displace Palestinians and to take their land.”

The speed and brutality of the Israeli government’s encroachment upon Palestinian land, in defiance of both international law and the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it should stop its illegal settlement of Palestinian territory, has increased in recent months. United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs monitoring shows settler violence to be increasing with every week that Israel’s October election – and the potential end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government – draws nearer.

“We’re definitely seeking an escalation of violence across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and in other areas, such as Gaza, in the build-up to the election,” saidNeve Gordon, a professor of International Law at Queen Mary University, London, and the author of “Israel’s Occupation”.

“The vote is like a rallying cry for that entire [settler] constituency that they have to do as much as they can, while they can,” he said of fears among settlers and the radical Israeli right that they might lose what many regard as their allies in Netanyahu’s coalition.

Settlement unchained

The Israeli government has done little to distance itself from the actions of the settlers. Instead, prominent members of Netanyhu’s Likud party have attended prominent settlement conferences, including those explicitly focused on ethnically cleansing Gaza. Netanyahu himself responded to recent violence in the Palestinian village of Tal – which prompted the United Nations to warn that the entire West Bank was at “breaking point” – by promising to recognise even more illegal settlements.

At the heart of government policy on settlements have been the polarising figures of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Smotrich has proven to be one of the most consequential Israeli politicians in history in promoting the cause of illegal settlements.

As well as normalising political references to the annexation of the Palestinian territory, Smotrich made being granted partial administrative control over the occupied West Bank a key condition of his joining Netanyahu’s coalition. He has since overseen the expansion of illegal settlements at an unprecedented rate.

Smotrich has also boasted of making the two-state solution a practical impossibility with the announcement of the E1 settlement project, joining occupied East Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement, in August of last year.

However, focusing on just two of the coalition’s more controversial figures was to miss the point, Gordon argued.

“It’s too easy to say it’s all the fault of these few people and if they were gone it would all be OK,” Gordon said. “It goes far wider.”

“The ethnic cleansing we’re seeing of the West Bank, as well as that being undertaken by the army in the territory’s refugee camps, such as Jenin, needs the complicity of the police, the attorney general, the military and, ultimately, the public,” the professor noted. “Without the umbrella they provide, none of this would be possible.”

Taybeh, occupied West Bank – Underneath a painting of Jesus and his disciples, Sandra Basir brought out what she and her husband, Roland, now keep to protect their home: a couple of fire extinguishers.

They keep them because the last time Israeli settlers set fire to a neighbour’s car outside their house, no one else came. “Civil defence – when did they even show up? After everything was already over,” Roland says.

The couple’s nightly routine in their Palestinian Christian town is now similar to the majority-Muslim rural Palestinian communities besieged by settler attacks and nighttime military raids for years. Sandra checks the doors more than once before bed. They got a dog to stay outside to alert them of any trespassers. Sandra is, by her own description, always half-awake – listening for whoever might be coming for her four small children while they sleep.

Their seven-year-old son has stopped playing outside, Sandra says, and for months, the little boy told his father not to go to work – scared he might not return. “That’s what our life has become,” says Sandra, who was on the verge of tears throughout the conversation. “A child that age should just be playing.”

For more than 20 years, Roland built up a stone quarry and concrete-block factory on the edge of town, investing an estimated $5m in the business. After employing 40 local Palestinians, he has found his life’s work snatched by marauding settlers, both armed adults and some barely teenagers.

In the past three years – and with the situation deteriorating even more severely this past year – he and his workers were frequently chased off by settlers at gunpoint, with his quarry’s heavy-machinery equipment set on fire. The most brazen attack came in March, when Roland says some 30 to 40 settlers stormed the quarry site in a coordinated mass incursion. Videos and photos show them raising Israeli flags over the grounds and performing prayers on the land. Before leaving, they smashed his office, destroyed electrical panels, and pulled cameras from the walls.

Roland documented everything on video, filed complaints with the liaison office, the police, and every institution he could reach. All his efforts to mobilise help to protect his land, however, were for naught. The settlers were back the next day, with their attacks continuing ever since.

Meanwhile, Roland showed Al Jazeera donation pages online for the settlers that he says carried out the attacks. He also alleges that stone taken from his land was registered under a settler’s name and resold.

This past week, he finally stopped trying to continue operations, leaving his stone quarry business all but abandoned.

“They’ve taken the quarry, taken the factory, taken the land,” Roland says. “What’s left for them to take? My children? My house?”

A once-safe haven now in the crosshairs

A few years ago, nobody in Taybeh thought trouble like this was coming their way.

Madees Khoury, who runs the Taybeh Brewery her family founded in 1994, lived in Taybeh through the second Intifada, the Arab Spring, and every war on Gaza – but none of it ever really touched the quaint town filled with centuries-old churches, well-built homes, and street-corner statues of Mother Mary and Jesus. “Taybeh was always safe, untouched – never, never, never did I imagine it would come to this,” says Madees.

The town is traditionally identified with biblical Ephraim – the place Jesus is said to have withdrawn to before his final journey to Jerusalem – and is the last Palestinian town left in the West Bank whose population is entirely Christian, home now to roughly 1,200 people and to the ruins of the fifth-century Church of St George, one of the oldest Christian sites in the Holy Land.

Things began to change as Israeli settlers, after driving Bedouin and herding communities from areas to the east, increasingly turned their attention to the hills around Taybeh itself, commencing attacks within the town last year. Mayor Suleiman Khourieh estimates roughly seven settler outposts now surround the town – four or five, by his count, sitting directly on Taybeh’s municipal land.

The attacks that followed mirror those taking place across the rural West Bank, with Sandra – who says her mother’s arm was broken by a settler during last year’s olive harvest – and Roland showing Al Jazeera photographs and videos of the frequent settler incursions within the town’s central confines.

Repeatedly, settlers graze cattle, sheep and camels on private agricultural land. Last year, Christian leaders say fires were deliberately set near the church and its adjoining cemetery. A couple of months ago, armed settlers set large fires along the village’s farmlands and prevented firetrucks from reaching them, according to local residents who drove to the scene.

Residents of Taybeh now face routine restrictions on accessing their farmlands and resources, including the now depopulated Ein Samiya spring. The spring supplies all the water to Taybeh Brewery and other Palestinian communities in the area, but settlers have since taken control of it.

Madees Khoury remembers one morning, in February this year, when a group of settlers walked into the centre of town claiming to search for a horse that didn’t exist – while her cousin’s actual horse and its foal, kept in a small structure on her father and uncle’s land for years, stood a few metres away. When she and her family called Israel’s Civil Administration to have the settlers removed, she says the officials who arrived instead walked in alongside them, broke open the door, and helped carry the horses out. “Instead of removing them,” she says, “the officials who came walked alongside the settlers onto my father and uncle’s private property … took the horse and the foal, and walked out.”

The newest outpost, established just last week, sits on the western edge of town, in Area B of the West Bank – nominally under Palestinian civil administration, though security in these hills has long since fallen to whoever is willing to enforce it on the ground.

On his own land in Area B, Mayor Khourieh has watched a settler take over his vineyard and its well over the past month, following the establishment of a settler outpost nearby. Sitting in his office, Khourieh described the settlers cutting his locks, bringing sheep there to graze, at one point pitching a tent by the well and furnishing it with sofas, and even bathing in the water meant for his vines.

According to the mayor, the army eventually removed the settlers’ tent, but the settlers still come back daily to water their flock from Khourieh’s own well. “We still don’t know whether I’m even allowed to go to my own vineyard or not,” says the town mayor inside his office.

Israeli officials have, at least on paper, acknowledged the problem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this year that outposts established in Area B should be evacuated. But despite reported pressure from career military officials to remove the outposts over security concerns, enforcement has frequently been blocked amid opposition from officials in Netanyahu’s far-right government. By Peace Now’s latest count, of the approximately 390 illegal outposts and farms across the West Bank, at least 21 sit in Area B.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli authorities for comment on the attacks on Taybeh, and the accusations that their response has not been sufficient, but has yet to receive a response.

Hollow protections from the state

Following attacks in the area – including the invasion of a then-empty home of a Taybeh family on August 5 – on August 9, the Israeli army declared Taybeh, along with the neighbouring village of Rammun, a closed military zone.

The order itself has confused almost everyone tasked with living under it. It bars entry to Israelis and foreigners without a specific connection to the village, and the army has offered little clarity on the terms and enforcement. “It’s unclear,” Madees Khoury says. “The whole thing was strange.”

What almost no one in Taybeh believes is that the order will actually keep settlers out. Especially in the past year, such closed military zone orders have been issued in cases where settlers are attacking local Palestinians – only for those orders to be enforced selectively to remove activists attempting to offer protective presence to local Palestinians, while doing little to remove the violent settlers themselves.

Instead, the removal of visitors adds to the town’s growing isolation.

“The decision hasn’t amounted to anything practical,” the mayor says, “because the settler is still exactly where he was.” Father Bashar Fawadleh, priest of Taybeh’s Christ the Redeemer Church, put it more bluntly: “We don’t feel that they’re actually forbidding the settlers from coming to Taybeh.”

According to Roland, the day the military zone closure was announced, settlers broke into his office at the stone quarry and smashed cabinets, equipment, and anything they could reach inside. The following morning, he tried to go back to what remains of his quarry, but settlers confronted him again. He called the police; two and a half hours later, he says, they arrived, but the settlers had already left.

‘The cross we have to carry’

Emigration of Palestinian Christians has been an issue in Taybeh and elsewhere for years, as the Palestinian Christian population has shrunk to about 40,000 in the West Bank, or just more than 1 percent of the entire population. But under the pressures of severe restrictions on land access by Israeli authorities and settlers, movement restrictions, and the threat of unchecked settler attacks, in Taybeh, the quiet of emptiness is being replaced by a quiet borne of fear.

Madees Khoury says people avoid the roads now because no one wants to risk a checkpoint that might swallow four hours of their day, or a stretch of road where a settler’s car might slow down alongside theirs.

Tourism is gone; a well-known hiking trail that begins at the brewery sees almost no visitors any more. Among a wider economic depression and skyrocketing export costs imposed by Israeli authorities, Taybeh Brewery’s revenues are down 80 percent compared with before October 2023, according to Madees Khoury.

Fifteen families have already left Taybeh in the past two years, according to Father Bashar, along with dozens of individuals who left parents behind and moved on alone, mostly to the United States and Europe.

And yet almost no one who spoke to Al Jazeera described leaving as a real option for themselves. “Where is there to go?” asks Roland Basir, reiterating a common refrain heard across the West Bank these days.

“This land is ours,” says Father Bashar. “We cannot leave it easily … we want to resist by staying rooted in this land, to be part of this land, for dignity, for security, for peace, and for justice.”

Mayor Khourieh, whose own vineyard now sits behind a settler’s fence, put it in starker terms. “We are Palestinian Christians,” he says. “We have been in this town since the Lord Christ walked in it. This is our town. We will not leave it. Even if we die, we’ll be buried in it, because it’s holy ground.”

These days, Father Bashar frames the threats to this bastion of the wider Palestinian Christian community in the context of the suffering that Jesus endured. “For me, our cause, our problems, are the cross we have to carry on our shoulders,” he says.

He pauses before offering the line he says he carries into every house he visits after a new attack: “In the midst of this cross, in the hardest time, still we have hope. Inside our hearts, we have to put hope instead of the fear.”

The United Nations human rights agency and the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates have condemned a days-long Israeli settler siege of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank village of Qusra.

The two statements were issued on Thursday, as dozens of Israeli settlers continue to besiege three Palestinian families in the Ras al-Ain area in western Qusra for a fifth night.

“These criminal actions by the settlers, supported or acquiesced to by Israel, the Occupying Power, are making life unbearable for these Palestinian families and are clearly aimed at forcing them to leave their homes and their land,” the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

The three families – comprising 15 people, including two children – have been confined to their homes with their water and power cut off since Sunday, the agency said.

“Time is running out for these three families before they are forcibly displaced,” it warned.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning the settlers for carrying out “systematic assaults that can only be described as terroristic”.

It also accused Israel of using the settlers as an “unchecked tool to implement its criminal policies” of forced displacement and annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Earlier on Thursday, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also referred to the settlers’ actions as acts of “terror”.

‘This is all a charade’

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from the scene of the siege on Thursday, said Israeli soldiers initially tried to move the trapped families out of their homes while settlers remained camped outside.

The families refused, not trusting that the Israeli soldiers would allow them back into their homes, and were eventually grouped together in one home. Residents have watched settlers push families out and then take over their properties in the past, she reported.

Qusra has faced settler attacks for decades, Ibrahim explained, and residents tie the rise in violence to the spread of illegal settlements and the lack of accountability for attackers.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said its troops dismantled “two illegal outposts” in Qusra and a nearby village, and detained one Israeli. It said more soldiers were sent to “carry out defensive missions and patrols”.

However, Ibrahim said most Palestinians believe the Israeli army is staging its response to the settler siege for the cameras, and they expect the settlers will eventually return.

Abdel Azim Wadi, the mayor of Qusra, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army has been protecting and helping the settlers. “We saw them praying together, barbecuing together and dancing together,” he said. “They are not very interested in helping the besieged families.”

Qusra resident Abdul Kareem Hassan told Al Jazeera that he had been sleeping in his car for seven months in order to protect his home.

“This is all a charade,” he said. “If they [the Israeli army] were serious, the whole operation would not take them one hour. We’re talking about 20 settlers. If they would treat them the same way they treat Palestinians, they could finish in less than an hour.”

Another day without respite

Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Israeli settlers and soldiers continued their elevated campaign of violence against Palestinians, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Israeli forces issued demolition notices for homes in Kafr Sur, the Jalazone camp and farmers’ shelters in al-Jiftlik.

In Qalqilya, soldiers detained seven relatives of a Palestinian fighter killed in a 2024 strike. Soldiers also detained three Palestinians amid a settler incursion in Burqa, east of Ramallah.

Settler attacks took place across several towns and villages, including an incident in which three Palestinians, including a child, were pepper-sprayed in their car.

Settlers also re-established a settlement near Jenin and erected a new outpost on land belonging to a town near Tulkarem.

Aug. 13 (UPI) — The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate 15 homes in the West Bank village of Qusra in a move to clear Israeli illegal outposts in the area.

The military rescinded the order to evacuate after it became public in the media. The settlers have been in the Palestinian homes since Sunday. It was not immediately made clear why the military needed to remove the Palestinians to get the settlers out of the area.

Some Palestinians were able to return to their homes, but one of the two families told The Times of Israel that they still can’t get to their house.

U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee called the Israeli settlers “terrorists” and said the military went to the area because of his request.

“Actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting. No excuse for such thuggish behavior,” Huckabee posted on X.

The military said troops were in Qusra since Thursday morning and are there “to protect the residents and maintain security in the area.”

A similar operation on Wednesday failed.

Residents said the military destroyed all the structures erected by settlers. But Palestinian residents said they’re still too afraid to leave their homes.

Qusay Abu Ridi, a trapped Palestinian, told the BBC that his house had been attacked again overnight and that a few settlers were still hiding from the military.

His brother, who owns the property, is a Palestinian-American businessman who complained to the U.S. embassy.

The siege in Qusra started Sunday when settlers blocked the road to the Palestinian families’ gates and cut off their electricity and water, the BBC reported. The first Israeli soldiers to arrive prayed with the settlers’ families. The Israeli military said they would face discipline for that later.

The Abu Ridi and Hassan families made appeals for help on social media.

The attacks happened in multiple Palestinian towns and villages, including Qusra, where a mosque was burned in late July. Footage from the scene showed graffiti left on the Al-Rahma Mosque in Hebrew reading “Benayahu’s revenge” and other messages.

The settlers have said their goal is to remove Palestinians from the area.

According to the United Nations, 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, have been killed in the West Bank this year by Israeli forces or settlers. Three Israelis have been killed.

Since January 2023, 127 Palestinian communities in the West Bank have been fully or partially displaced, affecting more than 6,390 Palestinians, the U.N. said.

Iran is set to join the New Development Bank (NDB), the development lender established by the BRICS group, Iranian central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati said on Wednesday, as Tehran seeks to deepen financial ties with emerging economies amid sweeping international sanctions.

Hemmati made the remarks ahead of a BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors meeting hosted by India, which holds the group’s rotating chairmanship this year.

Iran joined BRICS in 2024 as part of the bloc’s expansion and has since expressed interest in becoming a member and shareholder of the NDB. The bank was established in 2015 by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects.

“The most important result of cooperation among BRICS member countries is the establishment of the New Development Bank, and our country will soon become a member of this bank,” Hemmati said, according to Iranian state media.

Iran Seeks Alternative Financial Channels

Membership of the NDB would give Iran another avenue for economic cooperation outside traditional Western dominated financial institutions, although the extent of any benefit would depend on the bank’s ability to operate with a heavily sanctioned Iranian economy.

Iran remains under extensive U.S. and international sanctions and has yet to reach a peace agreement to end its current conflict with the United States and Israel. These pressures have increased Tehran’s incentive to strengthen economic relationships with non-Western powers and reduce its exposure to dollar based financial systems.

The NDB has expanded beyond its original five members to include countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, increasing its role as a financial institution connecting emerging economies.

BRICS Pushes for Local Currency Trade

Hemmati also said Iran supported greater use of national currencies in trade among BRICS members.

BRICS countries have increasingly promoted mechanisms intended to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar, including greater use of national currencies for bilateral trade and financial transactions.

Iran is also seeking bilateral and trilateral monetary cooperation with other BRICS members, Hemmati said.

A Strategic Financial Move for Tehran

Iran’s expected entry into the NDB is significant not simply as a development financing decision but as part of Tehran’s broader effort to build an alternative economic network amid Western sanctions.

For Iran, deeper integration with BRICS could provide additional channels for investment, infrastructure cooperation and financial transactions while strengthening economic ties with major emerging powers such as China, India and Russia. However, membership alone will not remove the restrictions created by U.S. sanctions or guarantee access to international capital.

The move also reflects the broader evolution of BRICS from an economic grouping into a platform through which its members can challenge aspects of the Western dominated financial order. Iran’s participation strengthens that trend, particularly as the group promotes greater use of local currencies and seeks to diversify international financial relationships.

For Tehran, therefore, joining the NDB would represent both an economic opportunity and a geopolitical signal: Iran is seeking to reduce its vulnerability to Western financial pressure by embedding itself more deeply within emerging non-Western economic institutions.

With information from Reuters.

Reports citing judicial sources say former commercial banker also indicted over alleged financial crimes.

Lebanon has indicted ⁠former central bank Governor Riad Salameh and a former commercial banker over accusations of financial crimes, including embezzlement and illicit enrichment.

A judge accused Salameh and Samir Hanna, the former head of Lebanon’s Bank Audi, of embezzling tens of millions in funds ‌from the Banque du Liban or Lebanese central bank, the Reuters and AFP news agencies reported on Monday, citing judicial sources.

Salameh, who headed the central bank for three decades, has already been indicted and arrested in Lebanon over other alleged financial crimes committed during his tenure. He has denied any wrongdoing, insisting he is being made a “scapegoat” for the country’s economic crisis.

This is the first time a commercial banker has been indicted in a financial crimes case related to Salameh, showing that Lebanese investigations into the former governor are expanding to the private sector, the source told Reuters.

The source added that the file includes accusations that Hanna bribed Salameh while he was central bank governor.

Salameh, 76, headed the central bank from 1993 to July 2023. He was placed in custody last month after missing a hearing over the case, ⁠but is currently under medical supervision at a government hospital outside Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.

Hanna, 88, paid a $1m bail and is not in custody as financial investigations continue, according to the reports.

In January, Lebanon’s current central ⁠bank governor Karim Souaid told reporters that the central bank had filed a criminal complaint against an unnamed former official of the central bank, ⁠a former banker and a lawyer over alleged illicit enrichment ⁠through misuse of public funds. He said the operations were carried out through four offshore shell companies in the Cayman Islands that he did not name.

Salameh was detained for about 13 months over alleged ‌financial crimes ‌committed during his tenure, but was released in September after paying a record bail of more than $14m.

He also faces investigations abroad, including in France, Switzerland and Germany.

ELLA Rae Wise’s new businessman boyfriend’s Instagram page is awash with snaps featuring sharp-tailored suits, flash classic cars and London luxury.

But latest accounts for his Belgravia tailoring company Lawrence & Winslade Ltd show the company has just £3,083 in the bank.

Filed in April and documenting the business’s finances up until September 2025, accounts show the company holds £18,941 in stock and spent £7,414 on assets, primarily made up of new fixtures and fittings.

It made a net profit of £1,214 for the year.

The business is heavily funded by its directors, Ricky and business partner Jack Winslade, whose £33,613 directors’ loans account for more than half of the business’s short-term debt.

The Sun has contacted the business for comment.

READ MORE ON ELLA RAE WISE

BAD BLOOD

Ella Rae Wise has defiant message after pals’ concern over ‘new husband’

is that wise?

Truth about Ella Rae Wise’s ‘new husband’ Ricky as pals reveals fears

Ricky, 34, and Towie star girlfriend Ella, 26, went public with their romance last week while on holiday with mutual pals Lorri Haines and Ferne McCann.

They were pictured kissing at Marbella’s luxury Don Carlos Hotel and even sparked marriage rumours when Ella was spotted wearing a gold band.

Since those public displays of affection, concerns have been raised by Ella’s pals about Ricky’s past.

Last year he was cleared of assaulting his ex girlfriend and former Miss Universe finalist Chloe Othen.

Jurors heard the model claim she was pinned down by Ricky and accused him of punching and biting her on her legs, arm and shoulder.

Ricky denied the charges and was cleared of assault causing actual bodily harm after an eight-day retrial in June of last year. 

A close pal of Ella’s told The Sun: “She knows what happened with Ricky in the past and has no concerns whatsoever about him, but it’s concerning for some of us that she’s linked to him now.

“He has a bit of a reputation and was in a relationship with someone else not too long ago.

“He really showered his last girlfriend with gifts and big gestures and was talking about marrying her all the time before he met Ella.

“There are constantly rumours about his wealth as well – he appears incredibly rich online and drives a Rolls Royce, but is just renting his place in Knightsbridge.

“We all just want Ella to be happy and just hope she knows enough about him.”

Umm al-Khair, Occupied West Bank — There were weddings in Umm al-Khair this week, but almost no one danced. The small Bedouin village, located in Masafer Yatta, was marrying off two of its sons. Cauldrons of slow-cooked lamb meat for mansaf – a large platter of traditional Arabic food – fed the whole community. But there was no dahiyya, the line dance and chant that normally opens a Bedouin wedding.

Residents said it did not feel right coming so soon after the first anniversary of the killing of Umm al-Khair activist and community leader Awdah Hathaleen, allegedly by Israeli settler Yinon Levi. The community continues to endure daily settler attacks, arrests and incursions by Israeli soldiers, and the threat of further demolitions by Israeli authorities looms.

During celebrations, families spread out in different areas rather than gathering in one place, wary of drawing any attention that, in the past, has brought soldiers to disrupt the celebrations.

“There is a wedding, but they are not letting us celebrate quietly,” said Tariq Hathaleen, an English teacher and community leader in Umm al-Khair.

On Thursday, the first day of the wedding, Shimon Atiya – the Israeli settler behind the illegal outpost of Havat Shorashim, established roughly 800 metres from the village in 2022, and who has been under a restraining order since July 2025 for harassing Umm al-Khair families — crashed the wedding in the only style he knows. He brought his livestock to graze in a resident’s vegetable garden, escorted by Israeli soldiers who stood by as it happened.

When villagers told the soldiers that the plot is recognised as Umm al-Khair land, they were told the maps had changed; when they asked to see the new maps, they were refused. That night, the outpost’s fence towards the village homes was torn down – a prelude to pushing the boundary further in, residents believe.

Hathaleen says the settlers’ timing was a reaction to Levi’s indictment days earlier — one of the few times an Israeli has been charged with the killing of a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank since October 2023.

Just a couple of days before, on Thursday, Hathaleen watched as buildings and vehicles in the nearby Palestinian community of Khirbet Tuba were set ablaze by settler arsonists.

“The occupation always tried very hard to erase the Palestinian Indigenous people and their history, their legacy, their heritage,” Tariq said. “This really reminds me of the Nakba, and how the Israelis destroyed Palestinian cities and villages”, he noted, even planting cactus over the ruins to bury the evidence. “Back then it wasn’t documented. Nowadays, it’s happening, but it is documented.”

Sunday marks the United Nations’ International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. In Umm al-Khair, the wedding felt symbolic of the threats to Indigenous Palestinians’ way of life and their basic presence on their own land.

‘They try to imitate us’

According to local Palestinians and watchdog NGOs, the threats facing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip include detentions, killings, demolitions, restrictions on movement and evictions.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed 1,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 242 minors, according to the Israeli NGO B’Tselem. Israel has also demolished more than 3,000 Palestinian homes since October 2023, the vast majority due to a lack of Israeli-issued permits that Palestinians in Area C are routinely denied.

According to the latest figures from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), demolitions and settler violence displaced an average of 17 people a day this year, double the rate of the previous three years.

A June report by the West Bank Protection Consortium, which includes the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and monitors more than 200 communities it judges at risk of forcible transfer, said 96 percent of those who had been forcibly displaced were previously dependent on farming or herding. They have mostly lost access to these lands or pastures.

However, residents and watchdogs say such dispossession takes place within a system of Israeli permits, demolition orders and land policies controlled by the state alongside hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding for settlements and outposts. Israeli NGO Peace Now counts 146 illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and 390 unauthorised outposts and farms.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice found Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful.

Amid dispossession of their traditional grazing lands, 13 structures in Umm al-Khair were issued demolition notices last October, following demolitions in 2024 that left a third of the village homeless. The restraining order against Atiya, residents say, has done little to stop him.

Tariq argues the erasure is not only physical, but cultural also, and that it comes paired with an attempt by settlers to claim the very Palestinian identity they are displacing.

“The settlers nowadays try to imitate that lifestyle, building tents that they probably stole from Palestinians somewhere, using tractors to bring water from far away,” he said.

Young men from the hilltop outposts can be seen grazing camels, goats and sheep. All the while, Tariq observes them wearing Palestinian scarves and even attempting the Bedouin dialect when leading their own flocks.

“They know the Indigenous people of this land are the Bedouins and other Palestinians. So, they try to imitate that – to show to themselves and to the world that they are the Indigenous people of this land,” he added. “[But] this land doesn’t relate to them, because only the Indigenous people of this land know how to live in this land.”

‘We are the Indigenous people of this land’

Many outpost settlers serve as military reservists while living on the farms themselves, Tariq noted – a status that comes with state-issued weapons.

He recalled Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly distributing all-terrain vehicles to South Hebron Hills outpost settlers. He also remembers the day Awdah was killed, when soldiers let Levi point out five community members for arrest.

“This is not only settler terrorism backed up by the state,” Tariq said. “It is the state’s plan, carried out by the settlers, well planned in rooms where officials sit around a table and tell them what to do.”

Yair Dvir, spokesperson for B’Tselem, said: “Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and an all-out assault on the Palestinian people. We see it on many levels: military violence and repression, home demolitions, and the funding and backing of settler militias.”

Shaina Low, a spokesperson for the NRC, described the same pattern as a coordinated strategy across the Israeli-occupied territories.

“For nearly 80 years, we’ve seen Israeli efforts to drive Palestinians from their land play out, starting with the Nakba and continuing to the present day,” she said. Low cited an acceleration of these actions since October 2023, when the genocidal war on Gaza began, that has seen expanding settlement infrastructure, rising West Bank demolitions alongside East Jerusalem evictions in neighbourhoods like Silwan. There has been an “astronomical increase” in settler violence documented, Low added.

Gaza shows the same agenda but taken to the extreme. Since the October 2025 “ceasefire”, more than 1,200 people have been killed in Gaza, on top of a cumulative death toll that has climbed past 73,000 since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

According to UN satellite analysis, roughly 81 percent of all structures in Gaza have been damaged. Even with the “ceasefire”, OCHA reports that some 59 percent of Gaza’s population faced crisis-level food shortages or worse between April and June, a share it projects will rise again by year’s end as aid funding shrinks.

Following successive campaigns of expansionism, the Israeli military now controls at least 64.9 percent of Gaza. “These policies are all working together,” Low said. “They may be different tactics, but it’s all part of the same agenda to force Palestinians from their land and increase Israeli control over the territory and expand Israeli presence.”

Still, on the eve of a day meant to mark the world’s Indigenous peoples, Tariq was resolute.

“They will try a million ways to erase the Palestinian Indigenous people, but they will fail because this land doesn’t speak their language, it doesn’t carry their colour, it doesn’t go by their ideologies,” he said.

“This is our land, and we have always been living here in harmony – with nature, the desert, the mountains, the valleys of Palestine – because we are the Indigenous people of this land, and we always will be. Their attempts are failing, and will fail. One day, we will get our freedom.”