conflict

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.”

Pyongyang has accused the US of pushing the world ‘to the brink of nuclear war’.

North Korea has denounced major United States-South Korea military drills set to start next week as a provocation that heightens tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The US-Japan-South Korea military cooperation is turning into a nuclear alliance, and North Korea will respond to a new level of threat with a new level of deterrent, a spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Pyongyang routinely denounces military drills in the south as a provocation that heightens tensions.

The drills – named “Ulchi Freedom Shield” – are due to start on August 17 and will last until August 27. They will incorporate exercises to counter drones, GPS disruption, and cyberattacks as the US and its allies adapt to North Korea’s evolving capabilities.

“The US announced that the forthcoming exercises are quite different from the ones of the past five years and intended to master the ability of fighting a war on the basis of the new aspects of modern warfare,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in the statement.

“It is our consistent principle of ensuring security to respond to a new level of a threat with a new level of a deterrent,” the statement, published by KCNA, added.

Lessons learned in Russia-Ukraine

North Korea sent an estimated 12,000-15,000 soldiers to fight for Russia in its war against Ukraine, and the country is now thought to be preparing the deployment of another 10,000.

Thousands died, but the deal provided North Korea with valuable battlefield experience, as well as payment in arms, energy and direct financial support, according to reports.

Colonel Ryan Donald, spokesperson for the US and South Korean Combined Forces Command, said this week that North Korea’s deployment to the European war had changed the threat his soldiers may face on the Korean Peninsula.

“They’ve taken those lessons they learned there and brought them back to North Korea,” he told reporters. “Our training accounts for that threat.”

Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry statement said the US-South Korea drills are being staged “at a time when military and political situation is becoming more serious with each passing day in Europe, the Middle East and other parts of the world”.

North Korea also said on Friday that it would further strengthen its nuclear deterrence, accusing the US of lowering its threshold for nuclear weapons usage and pushing the world “to the brink of nuclear war”.

On Wednesday, North Korea fired a ballistic missile towards the sea off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast, just six days after firing another missile.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield drills will include 18,000 South Korean soldiers and counterparts from the 28,500-strong US contingent in the country.

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.

A series of Houthi attacks in recent weeks, which are among the deadliest in years, is raising fears that Yemen could be sliding back towards all-out war as conflict spreads across the Middle East.

A 2022 truce led to the end of heavy fighting between the pro-Iranian Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces, which had been ongoing since September 2014.

But a series of clashes over the last month between the two sides – intensifying in the last two weeks – has led to civilian and military casualties and threatened to reignite the war.

Here is what we know.

What are the latest attacks?

The Houthis have killed a number of civilians in a series of attacks on the government-controlled west coast port of al-Makha, also known as Mocha.

There was also an attack on a commercial vessel in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait on Tuesday, which Yemen’s coastguard said killed six people and injured 10 others. The Houthis said the vessel was carrying weapons.

It followed the Houthis targeting Yemeni government military sites in eastern Yemen with drones and rockets, killing at least 30 government soldiers and causing further clashes. The Houthis have also attacked Saudi Aramco’s Jazan oil refinery.

In response, Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), said the internationally -recognised government would not accept “a new truce that reproduces previous experiences”.

“No action by the Houthi militias will go unanswered or unchecked,” al-Alimi said, according to Yemen’s Saba news agency.

But he also appeared to leave space for a political way back, saying the Houthis could still “lay down their arms, engage in political life and compete through the ballot box on an equal footing with all other Yemenis”.

What is behind the latest tensions?

The Houthis seized the capital Sanaa in 2014 and have since fought a war with the government for control of the country.

Although the intensity of the war declined significantly after the 2022 truce, no comprehensive peace settlement followed.

The fragile status quo came under increasing pressure after the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28 .

On July 13 , Yemeni government forces – which are backed by Saudi Arabia – attacked Sanaa airport, reportedly to prevent an Iranian aircraft carrying a Houthi delegation from landing. The government accuses Iran of arming the Houthis.

The rebel movement responded by launching missiles towards Saudi Arabia. Then, on July 20 , the Houthis announced a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia, threatening oil shipments diverted towards the Red Sea and attacking Saudi Aramco facilities in Jizan and Yanbu.

Is Saudi Arabia changing its approach?

As the attacks have intensified, Saudi Arabia has begun to take a more proactive approach to its security – both in Yemen and across the region, according to experts.

Some analysts believe the prospect of the Houthis ultimately blocking Bab al-Mandeb – the narrow strait connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean – may have helped push the Saudis to change their strategy.

Saudi Arabia was somewhat insulated from Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz because it could use its East-West Pipeline to transport oil from fields in the east to the Red Sea, bypassing the strait.

If the Houthis were to severely restrict shipping through Bab al-Mandeb, that would threaten the Red Sea route for one of the world’s largest oil exporters.

Last month, Riyadh announced a new international alliance intended to protect shipping in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks. Dozens of countries were invited, with the kingdom saying 13 had agreed to participate.

It is also deepening its security relationships with Pakistan and Turkiye through a new joint defence agreement, while Saudi coordination with Washington also appears to be strengthening.

The Saudi Defence Minister, Khalid bin Salman, recently met US Vice President JD Vance amid reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had secured US support for potential military action against the Houthis.

But in Yemen, the shift in the Saudi position may have been more visible when the Saudis intervened against the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) at the end of last year. That allowed Yemen’s fractious anti-Houthi coalition to coalesce around the Yemeni government and present a more united front against the rebels.

Simon Mabon, professor of international relations at Lancaster University in the UK, said Saudi policy on the issue has changed significantly.

“After years of attempting to de-escalate and work towards an accommodation with the Houthis, Riyadh appears to have concluded that approach is no longer viable,” Mabon told Al Jazeera.

“Saudi Arabia’s concern has become particularly acute because conflict around the Strait of Hormuz has increased the importance of alternative oil and shipping routes through the Red Sea.”

But rather than trying to totally defeat the Houthis and retake the capital Sanaa, Mabon said Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni government now appear to be focused on pushing Houthi forces away from the coast.

“That’s a marked shift from what we had been seeing previously,” he said.

Could Pakistan and Turkiye be drawn into the war?

The Saudi-Pakistan-Turkiye agreement potentially raises the stakes of any further Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Al Jazeera’s Yousef Mawry, reporting from Sanaa, said the latest attacks were being interpreted by some experts as a direct defiance of the new defence pact.

Pakistan has been directly affected by the recent escalation. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said three Pakistanis were killed and another person injured in a Houthi attack on a vessel in the Red Sea.

“Pakistan strongly condemns the Houthi attack on a non-combatant commercial vessel,” Dar said, adding that the government was in contact with Saudi and Yemeni authorities.

But experts say the defence pact does not mean that Pakistani or Turkish troops will join the war in Yemen on behalf of their ally.

Wolfgang Pusztai, a security policy and defence analyst, told Al Jazeera that the agreement so -far is “just ink on paper”.

What role is Iran playing?

Iran has long cultivated a so-called “axis of resistance” of governments and groups opposed to Israel and the United States, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, armed groups in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis in Yemen.

The Houthis supported Iran towards the end of March by launching attacks towards northern Israel and have since threatened to expand their operations in the Red Sea.

Last month, Iran reportedly asked the Houthis to prepare to close the Red Sea oil route if the US attacked Iranian power infrastructure.

A source close to the Houthis told Reuters that missiles and drones had been positioned near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in Yemen’s highlands overlooking Hodeidah and the Gulf of Aden.

Mohammed Albasha, a Yemeni American analyst and former spokesperson for Yemen’s embassy in Washington, said the Houthis’ attacks on Saudi Arabia should therefore also be understood within the broader US-Iran confrontation.

“By threatening Saudi shipping there, the Houthis can increase pressure on both Riyadh and Washington, while supporting Iran in its wider confrontation with the United States,” Albasha said.

Is another all-out war imminent?

Analysts say the crucial question is whether the latest attacks are intended to pressure the Saudi and Yemeni governments, or whether the Houthis believe they are simply taking the initiative in a new potential ground war.

The Houthis also say Saudi Arabia is using the port of al-Makah to reinforce and resupply government forces and believe Riyadh and its Yemeni allies are preparing an offensive against Houthi-held territory.

Nadwa Al-Dawsari, Associate Fellow at the Middle East Institute, said those fears may be fuelling the current escalation.

“Since January, there has been significant progress towards bringing Yemen’s different government forces under a more unified command,” Al-Dawsari told Al Jazeera.

“Government forces have also demonstrated growing air capabilities, carrying out air and drone strikes against Houthi missile and drone launchers and other military sites.”

“The Houthis’ objective in this recent escalation is to disrupt these preparations before government forces are ready, degrade their capabilities and force them onto the defensive.”

Ultimately, she said, the Houthis are trying to shape the rules of any coming confrontation so that “if escalation takes place, it happens on their own terms”.

While a Saudi-led ground offensive is not inevitable, the Houthis have also shown over the past decade that they cannot be defeated by air power alone, Mabon said.

“Yemen’s mountainous terrain makes a ground campaign exceptionally difficult, while Riyadh has little appetite to become trapped again in a prolonged war,” he said.

A Saudi-backed offensive led by Yemeni government forces is still more plausible than a large Saudi ground deployment, he added.

The consequences of major fighting on the ground between the two sides will inevitably mean that civilians will suffer most.

“Amidst all of this, the tragedy is that people in Yemen are paying the price,” Mabon said.

“It wasn’t long ago that Yemen was facing one of the worst humanitarian crises since the Second World War. People are struggling, and continued fighting will make it far worse.”

Iran continues to deny claims by the United States that it controls the Strait of Hormuz as talks aimed at negotiating a peace deal between the two sides falter.

US President Donald Trump repeated his claim that the US is in “total control” of the critical waterway on Wednesday, but was met with angry denials from Iran, which has stated that it will not reopen the strait until demands regarding US aggression, reparations and sanctions are met.

“Claims and repeated posts by US officials that the Strait of Hormuz is no longer blocked do not change the reality,” Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) posted on X on Wednesday.

“The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked and will not be reopened until Iran’s conditions are accepted,” it added.

Here’s what we know about the latest developments in the strait, through which one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies are shipped during peacetime, and the prospects for ongoing talks.

What’s the latest on the US-Iran standoff?

Iranian forces are currently preventing ships that do not have its express approval from navigating through the narrow strait, which passes through territorial waters of Iran and Oman.

Despite Trump’s claim that the US has control over the strait, shipping traffic through the key waterway has dropped to a one-week low as a result of Iran’s blockade.

Meanwhile, the US is operating a naval blockade on Iranian ports both in and around the strait. On Tuesday, US forces targeted a Panama-flagged vessel they said was headed for an Iranian port, in the Gulf of Oman, and which they alleged had failed to respond to warnings.

On Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the US “has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures”, including when launching its war on Iran, which it did alongside Israel with strikes on Tehran on February 28.

In a post on X, Araghchi said Washington’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz were “an even bigger miscalculation”.

“Worse than fake news is fake intelligence,” he said.

Hojjatoleslam Hossein Taeb, the commander of the paramilitary Basij Organisation – an affiliate of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – reiterated that the strait is “under Iran’s control and management”.

“Today you see that the Strait of Hormuz is under the management and control of the Islamic Republic, and our country continues on its path in complete security,” Taeb said on Thursday, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.

“The Americans saw the power of the Islamic revolution,” he added.

What do we know about Iran-Oman talks?

Iran says it is not talking directly to the US about the strait. Instead, it says it is holding talks with Oman, which it proposes to share in the future management of the strait.

Following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Iran and the US on June 17, under which Iran undertook to keep the strait open for 60 days, there were soon disagreements about control of the waterway and the routes that ships should take. Iran fired on some ships it said had not followed its permitted route, leading to a renewal of hostilities with the US.

Iran also disagreed with the US over whether it could charge fees to ships passing through the strait. As a result, the strait – which was fully and freely open to all shipping before the US launched its war on Iran – has become the main obstacle to the progression of wider peace talks.

Now, talks between Iran and Oman are aimed at ironing out these issues.

On Tuesday, Qatar said negotiations between Iran and Oman over the strait had reached “an advanced stage”.

“As mediators, we want the Strait of Hormuz reopened as soon as possible,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said during a news conference.

Negotiators are trying to reach a compromise that would allow commercial shipping to resume while addressing the security concerns of both Iran and Oman.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman has said talks with Oman are focused on “establishing safe inbound and outbound shipping lanes” that “uphold sovereign rights while also addressing the national security considerations of both Iran and Oman”.

Last week, Iran said it had agreed on the coordinates for these shipping lanes with Oman.

What do we know about broader peace talks between Iran and the US?

Iran says it is not speaking directly to the US because it has violated the June 17 MoU by restarting strikes on Iran in July.

Now, Pakistan is making efforts to mediate peace talks. It said on Tuesday it was working to bring the US and Iran “to the negotiating table”, as Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi held talks with senior Iranian officials in Tehran.

In April, the US and Iran held face-to-face negotiations, with US Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf attending talks in Islamabad. On June 17, the two sides remotely signed the MoU, which was supposed to kick-start a 60-day negotiation process. However, various disagreements prevented that process from getting off the ground, and talks have stalled since then.

Alan Eyre, a distinguished diplomatic fellow with the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera earlier this month that the only important negotiations taking place right now are Iran-Oman talks over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran says it is not worth talking directly because it “can’t count on anything the US says”, Eyre said.

Commenting on the possibility of future talks between the longtime foes, Negar Mortazavi, senior fellow at the US-based Center for International Policy, said the key question is whether the escalatory rhetoric from both sides is “opening negotiating positions or actual red lines”.

“If both sides are prepared to compromise, there is still a path towards ending the conflict and reopening the strait,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

“If they are not, Hormuz could remain restricted, and the confrontation risks becoming another prolonged, open-ended conflict in the Middle East.”

What are the latest demands from Iran and the US?

At the end of last week, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council set out new conditions it says the US must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can fully reopen.

The six conditions include an end to US threats against Iran and insults to what Zolghadr described as the country’s national and religious values; a permanent end to attacks against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq; the lifting of the US naval blockade and withdrawal of naval and air forces from around Iran; compensation for damage from what he called two “imposed wars”; the lifting of sanctions; and the unconditional release of frozen Iranian assets.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that his administration was going to seek payment for “50 years” of damage caused by Iran, framing the move as a direct response to Tehran’s claims.

The payments, he said, would cover deaths among US forces in the region as well as civilian protesters in Iran, claiming that 52,000 people have been killed in Iran in the past four months. Tehran says some 3,117 people died in antigovernment protests that swept the country in January, prior to the launch of the US-Israel war. In February, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported about 7,000 deaths, including 6,500 protesters.

On Thursday, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Assidi reported, citing observers, that Iran is focused on two primary issues.

“First was the security assurances Iran sought, ensuring that a reached deal could pave the way for a period of stability in the country,” Assidi said.

“Second were economic concerns, primarily articulated in demands for the US naval blockade to be removed and sanctions frozen, which represented the key demands coming from the Iranian side,” he added.

Despite the rhetoric from Trump, analysts have told Al Jazeera that the US may have to concede to some of Iran’s demands as it faces growing pressure domestically to avoid another escalation.

The US media have reported that concerns over dwindling defensive munitions have contributed to Trump’s decision not to carry out his threatened large-scale strikes against Iran.

Ein el-Hilweh, occupied West Bank – Adel Daraghmeh lies on his side on a thin mattress laid straight onto the dusty ground, one arm flung out, a sandal hanging half off his foot. “We don’t sleep, we barely drink, we barely eat,” he says weakly.

Above him, a patchwork of dark tarpaulins and old blankets is tied together between a few bent wooden poles – the only thing standing between his family and a sun pushing past 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) in the early afternoon.

They are homeless again – their home destroyed days before by an Israeli bulldozer despite a court injunction they believed protected them. Beside him, his wife, Kheirieh, sits on a chair, a small plastic cup of water cradled in both hands.

About 30 metres up a slope, a settler-built fence now cuts across the hillside, cutting Adel and his brothers off from land their flocks grazed for generations. Past the fence, on the crest of the hill, an Israeli flag flies – visible from where Adel lies. “Isn’t this a disgrace, what we are living in?” he asks, more than once, over the course of an hour.

Adel manages diabetes with daily medication, but it’s been a struggle to obtain it in recent days. “They bulldozed the medication [in the house],” says Adel. “Our things, our household goods – all gone. They destroyed us. Our phones, the solar panels – no electricity, no water.”

As the family has learned in recent weeks, as Israel gears up for fiercely contested elections in October, even an Israeli Supreme Court injunction may not stop the bulldozers from coming now.

‘Five minutes to clear the whole area’

The wreckage of the Daraghmehs’ house is still scattered: clothes, a pulverised medicine cabinet, a hollowed-out mini-fridge with its door hanging open, and split cinderblocks.

Even after their son Hilal’s home was demolished shortly before without warning, the July 28 demolition of Adel and Kheirieh’s home came as a shock. With Adel a short drive away in Tubas collecting medication, Kheirieh was home with their daughter, Hanaa, when Israeli soldiers, settlers and Civil Administration officials arrived with a bulldozer and about 10 other vehicles. “They came while I was asleep,” she says.

Kheirieh walked out to meet them with the family’s legal papers – proof, she believed, that the home was protected by an earlier Israeli Supreme Court order barring demolition until the family’s case was resolved.

The court had suspended a 2022 demolition order while a case brought forward by the family progressed.

Soldiers took the documents, read them, conferred among themselves, and handed them back.

Then the bulldozer started anyway.

“Five minutes to clear the whole area,” one of them told her, she says.

“I told him: I can’t. I can’t clear the area. I’m on my own, and I’m ill,” she says. Already sick, and now seeing the bulldozers bearing down on her home with nearly everything she owned inside, she blacked out, waking up three hours later in an ambulance.

“And before I knew it, the bulldozer had started,” she says. “The whole house – all of it. All our belongings. Gone.”

“No order, no law,” added Adel weakly from the ground. “No humanity.”

‘Discriminatory’ system

“The army and the settlers demolished … despite the existence of a court order prohibiting it,” says Tawfiq Jabareen, the lawyer representing the Daraghmeh family, referring to the initial July 2 demolition of Hilal’s home. “The prosecution claimed it was a mistake by the army, and that it would not happen again – but the demolition was repeated.”

“The law and court rulings mean nothing to the settlers,” adds Jabareen, “who try to circumvent them by every means, believing that imposing facts on the ground is stronger than any law or court ruling.”

The Daraghmehs are herders of livestock who have lived along the Ein el-Hilweh spring, in the northern Jordan Valley, for generations. Four brothers and their families live in the area. “I was born here,” Adel says. “My father was born here.”

Nearby are the illegal Israeli settlement of Maskiyot and several settler outposts established in recent years, subjecting the extended family to numerous attacks, thefts and raids.

Like herding communities across Area C of the West Bank – under complete Israeli military and administrative control – the family has spent years navigating demolition orders under a planning system that leaves Palestinians almost no legal path to build.

Adel has had his home demolished before and spent significant money to rebuild it, he explains. What’s different now, they say, is that even that limited process – a warning, a demolition order, followed by a chance to appeal – has stopped applying to them at all. No demolition order was presented for either Hilal’s home or Adel’s when they came to bulldoze them despite the court injunctions.

Soldiers, settlers and Civil Administration officials arrived together during the demolitions, according to the family and activists present.

Allegra Pacheco, chief of party of the West Bank Protection Consortium and a lawyer who has represented Palestinians before Israeli courts for decades, says the irregularity of such demolitions is no aberration in an otherwise functioning system.

“This is a continuation of the deterioration of any pretence of legal protection for Palestinians,” she says. Even the ordinary planning process was built to fail Palestinians, she argues. Under a zoning system inherited from Jordanian and British Mandate-era law, Israel changed some of the laws to the detriment of Palestinians, leaving most Palestinian areas in Area C without approved building plans, while Israeli settlements – illegal under international law – are zoned and built freely.

“The Israelis set up the system to be discriminatory and to fail Palestinians,” says Pacheco. “So people build anyway, get the stop-work order, then demolition [order] – which you can appeal. But you’re appealing to the one who made the rule to discriminate against Palestinian construction.

“There’s no way for Palestinians in general to win under the current Israeli legal framework.”

As lines blur between authorities and settlers, who exactly spearheaded the demolition – soldiers, settlers, the Civil Administration – was unclear even to the family. “They’re all the same when they come,” says Hilal. “They’re all together.”

According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since January 2023, more than 6,200 Palestinians, including more than 3,000 children, have been forcibly displaced, including more than 2,300 people since the beginning of 2026 alone. More than 907 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank have already been demolished this year.

Al Jazeera reached out to Israeli authorities and the military for comment on the events described in this article, but no response has yet been received.

‘Nothing is holding them back’

A short walk from the rubble of his parents’ home – and his own – Hilal sits under the shade of a tree beside the spring that sustained his family for generations, one that he and his flocks can no longer use.

Minutes earlier, he’d watched two settlers cool off at the spring, dousing themselves with water as one of them changed into a military uniform on the bank.

Hilal’s own remaining cattle – most of the herd already stolen, confiscated or sold – scrounge instead for whatever run-off is left once the settlers are gone. “We used to drink from this spring, and carry water on the donkey,” he says. “But they stopped us. The settlers fenced it off.”

Later, he rides his donkey across the road to what remains of his home. What had been walls and a roof is now a field of scorched rubble and gnarled metal piping, bent and knotted where the bulldozer dragged it. On his donkey, Hilal points to where each room had stood. He estimates the losses at 170,000 shekels ($57,000).

“Not a single thing I got to take – all of it is gone,” he says.

Next door, at the home of Adel’s brother, Qadri – which was previously demolished in August last year – several relatives, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, describe an extended family bracing for its turn.

“Nothing is holding them back now,” one son says. “They don’t even need an order any more. Of course we are scared they will come for us next.”

Prevented from rebuilding by nearby settlers and soldiers, Adel and Kheirieh now rely on relatives for help getting basic supplies. “All of our family helps each other,” says one relative, “but it is so hard when we don’t have enough, and we might be next.”

Following earlier thefts by settlers and confiscations from authorities a year and a half ago, the family had another 50 head of cattle stolen by settlers, they say.

Amid deteriorating health, an exhausted, heat-stricken Adel sits up from lying on the ground only when the topic of past weddings comes up. His hoarse voice strengthens, and he breaks into a wide smile. Softly, he begins clapping out the rhythm of a dahiyyeh – the sung, chanted line-dance of Bedouin celebrations – his wavering voice rising over the sound of his own hands.

“What beautiful times together,” he says. “Beautiful.”

Then, as if that singing expended the last of his dwindling energy, he sinks back onto the sweat-stained mattress and exhales. “Inshallah those times will return,” he says. “Inshallah.”

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Sohair al-Bordani was displaced and living in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, trying to take care of her four children, as war raged all around her.

And while she survived, her 10-year marriage has not. Al-Bordani, 30, explained that the arguments between her and her ex-husband had intensified since the war began in 2023, as the stress of merely existing in Gaza weighed down on them.

But al-Bordani encountered a problem. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – in which Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians – has devastated many aspects of the Palestinian enclave’s administration, including its legal system.

To get a court-ordered divorce, with the accompanying financial claims she would be eligible for, al-Bordani would have to go before a religious court and establish her case. She said that she initiated legal proceedings in February 2025. But, because of delays to the judicial process brought on by the war, the case dragged on.

And so, al-Bordani chose the speedier option available to her – khulu, a form of divorce initiated by the wife that can involve relinquishing financial rights. In her case, this meant that she returned her dowry to her ex-husband and gave up the financial support she would have been entitled to.

“I gave up everything because obtaining my rights under these circumstances had become extremely difficult,” al-Bordani said. “I only wanted to find peace and start a new life away from everything I experienced during that period.”

Legal delays

Al-Bordani’s story reflects the experience of many women in Gaza who have found themselves trapped between delayed legal cases and a war that has disrupted access to the justice system, leaving decisions that are supposed to determine their futures suspended until conditions allow courts to resume their work fully.

Some personal status cases – including divorces – have reached Gaza’s religious courts, which oversee the matters.

According to Sheikh Hassan al-Jojo, the head of the Supreme Council of Sharia Judiciary in Gaza, courts have handled more than 8,700 divorce cases from the beginning of the war in October 2023 until the end of May.

That is despite the many challenges they face, including – but not limited to – damage to court buildings and shortages of judges and other staff.

Al-Jojo also said that courts had returned to near-full judicial work, while services continued even during periods when court buildings were closed.

But he also pointed out that the courts were operating with severely limited resources. Each court – according to al-Jojo – has only one computer, while repeated power cuts, shortages of printed materials and a lack of basic office supplies continue to affect their work.

“Essential services, including marriages and divorces, and other procedures needed by citizens, did not stop,” al-Jojo said. “But the priority at this stage is to keep providing the service, rather than improving it.”

Troubling consequences

Yet divorce figures alone do not reflect the full impact of the war on families. The delays in accessing the legal system have meant that women like al-Bordani have been unable to pursue their legal rights after separation, particularly in cases involving child custody, spousal and child maintenance, and other financial payments that are typically due to the wife.

Mohammad al-Talaa, a lawyer in Gaza, says that the war has significantly affected the functioning of judicial institutions, leading to the postponement of thousands of hearings and the suspension of many cases.

He added that thousands of files and documents have been lost due to Israeli bombing and the destruction of offices, making it difficult to prove rights, particularly in civil and property-related cases.

And with regard to personal status cases, al-Talaa pointed out that the suspension of enforcement departments in courts has left women entitled to payments without that financial support, and has also affected child visitation and custody cases, leaving some parents unable to implement decisions related to maintaining contact with their children.

The problems are not just legal. Al-Talaa explained that the continued delay in divorce and separation cases has left some women trapped in marriages they want to get out of. It has also prevented them from moving on with their lives, while delays in access to financial payments they are owed have increased the burden on families, and a lack of resolution on cases involving children has led to increased psychological stress for all involved, alongside the trauma caused by the war itself.

Suad al-Naami was not willing to deal with being stuck in limbo, and decided to get a khulu divorce even if it meant giving up on the rights a court-mandated divorce would have granted her.

The 22-year-old had only been married for five months, but with disputes with her ex-husband increasing, she left.

“I never imagined my married life would begin this way,” al-Naami said. “I hoped we would have a home and a stable life, but displacement and living in a tent made everything more difficult.”

For the young woman, the promise of a new start, amid all the destruction around her in Gaza, was better than a drawn-out case.

“Giving up on my rights was not an easy matter, but I felt that entering a long legal process and waiting for years would only increase my suffering,” al-Naami said. “I only wanted to end the disputes and start over, because staying in a relationship full of problems under these circumstances would have been harder than the decision to separate itself.”

Ukraine has reported an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors since the US went to war with Iran in February.

Russian forces have struck Ukraine’s Izmail port in southern Odesa, setting off a fire, authorities said, a day after Kyiv pounded Russia’s Novorossiysk port.

In a statement on the Telegram app early on Thursday, the Izmail Regional State Administration said Russian forces struck “port infrastructure”, causing damage and a fire.

It said emergency personnel were at the scene to extinguish it.

Izmail, close to the Romanian border, is home to Ukraine’s largest Danube port, handling grain and other commodities.

The attacks came as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN that the country needs 5 percent of the United States’s Patriot interceptor missiles to get through the winter and 10 percent to destroy all of Russia’s ballistic projectiles.

Russia has recently been firing barrages at the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, roughly once a week, killing civilians and damaging or destroying homes.

In one attack, Ukraine failed to intercept any of the 28 ballistic missiles launched at it.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine this year “had two and a half times less interceptors than we had in 2025”.

“Russia has two times more ballistic missiles per month than they had before,” he said. “This year, I’m asking American partners to sell me 5 percent of missiles [that] they have in their stocks.”

“If they sell us 5 percent, we will go through the winter and save people’s lives,” he added. “If they can sell us 10 percent, we will destroy all the Russians’ ballistic missiles. I have 1 percent.”

Ukraine has reported an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran in February, diverting supplies of the advanced systems.

Ballistic missiles are much harder to intercept than cruise missiles or drones because they move faster and follow steep trajectories.

On Wednesday, Ukraine’s air force said it would stop publishing detailed figures on Russian ballistic missile strikes as Ukrainian forces struggle to intercept Russia’s heightened attacks.

The restrictions concern “the number of targets launched, shot down, suppressed or those that failed to reach their targets,” air force communications chief Yurii Ihnat said on Facebook. Real-time warnings would continue unchanged, he added, and the air force would keep providing generalised figures on Russian missile launches.

Last month, Russia fired more than 450 missiles at Ukraine, nearly 200 of them on ballistic trajectories.

Asked if the US had responded to his requests, Zelenskyy said he hopes that he gets the interceptors.

“From 1 percent to 5 percent, I have some months and millions [of] phone calls and anything else,” he said. “I do some things which I can’t even share. It doesn’t mean that it’s out of the law. But I can’t speak about it.”

The deaths on board the Egyptian-owned Tihamah mark first shipping deaths linked to Houthis since the US-Israel war on Iran began.

Yemen’s internationally recognised government has accused the Houthi rebel group of killing at least six people and wounding 10 others in a double-tap strike on a cargo vessel in the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

The attack on the Egyptian-owned Tihamah on Tuesday marks the first shipping deaths linked to the Iran-aligned Houthis since the United States and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28.

Yemen’s Transport Ministry said three Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian national were killed after the Houthis fired three ballistic missiles at the commercial ship, sparking a fire and causing “significant damage” to the vessel.

Yemen’s coastguard said in a separate statement that the Houthis fired another missile at the ship as rescue personnel were evacuating the dead and wounded.

“The attack struck the site of the rescue operation and resulted in deaths and injuries among the forces participating in the response operation,” the coastguard said.

At least two troops were killed in the second strike.

Ten people were wounded in total, including seven crew members, it added.

Houthi-Saudi truce unravels

Yemen’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and called on the international community “to move from condemnation to effective and decisive action” against the Houthis.

There was no official comment from the Houthis.

But the Houthi-run news agency Saba reported that the ‌group had attacked a Saudi ship carrying military equipment in Bab al-Mandeb. It did not name the ship, and there was no immediate Saudi response to the report.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, the US military said it fired on a ship attempting to break its blockade of Iranian ports in the Gulf of Oman. The US Central Command said a Navy helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at the Panama-flagged Vela Nova cargo vessel, but did not say if any crew members were wounded.

The escalation in Yemen follows the collapse of a years-long truce in the country’s civil war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government.

The breakdown of the United Nations-backed 2022 truce followed a Saudi air strike on the runway of Sanaa airport on July 13, preventing the landing of an Iranian flight carrying a high-ranking Houthi delegation.

The Houthis then attacked the Abha airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia and announced a blockade on Saudi shipping in the Red Sea. They have also attacked Saudi vessels as well as oil facilities in the kingdom, adding further disruption to the global economy.

The Saudi-led coalition, in turn, has struck Houthi-controlled Hodeidah and Kamaran, Yemen’s largest island in the Red Sea.

The Houthis have also launched attacks on government-held areas in Yemen, including the port city of al-Makha (Mocha) on the Red Sea and the central city of Marib, killing dozens of troops and civilians.

Yemen’s internationally recognised government on Tuesday said the Houthis launched 10 missiles and four drones during a series of further attacks on sites on the country’s western coast.

The Houthis said they had launched ballistic missile and drone attacks “targeting Saudi military buildups, weapons depots and command posts” in al-Makha and the central Marib province.

The UN has called for restraint, saying the renewed hostilities risk “drawing the country into a broader regional confrontation, with devastating consequences for its people”.

Qatar says negotiations between Oman and Iran over the future of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz are making major progress.

Pyongyang conducts second weapons test in less than a week as Seoul, Washington gear up for annual military exercises.

North Korea has launched a ballistic missile towards the Sea of Japan, according to Seoul and Tokyo, marking the second such test from Pyongyang in less than a week.

The launch on Wednesday came as South Korea and the United States announced plans to hold their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield military drills starting on August 17.

“Our military detected at around 6:00 am [21:00 GMT Tuesday] a ballistic missile launched by North Korea from the Wonsan area towards the East Sea,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a message to reporters, referring to a body of water also known as the Sea of Japan.

South Korea’s military said the missile flew more than 700km (435 miles).

It said it has boosted its surveillance posture and that it was closely exchanging information on the launch with Washington and Tokyo.

Japan’s Defence Ministry said on social media that the suspected ballistic missile had “already fallen”, without providing further details.

“North Korea has never simply let a South Korea-US joint military exercise pass without a response,” Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University, told the AFP news agency.

“This is a message that Pyongyang is closely watching the upcoming drills and could stage a provocation if it deems one necessary.”

US-South Korea drills

The Ulchi Freedom Shield training is to start on Monday and run for 11 days. Its scale will be similar to previous years, with 18,000 South Korean soldiers taking part, according to South Korea’s military.

North Korea has in previous years denounced the exercises as a rehearsal for invasion, and responded to the drills with weapons tests and harsh rhetoric. Seoul and Washington, however, have repeatedly said their training is defensive in nature.

On August 6, South Korea, the US and Japan detected the launch of a short-range ballistic missile from North Korea in what was Pyongyang’s first ballistic weapons testing activity since late June.

North Korea did not confirm the reported launch.

Pyongyang has ratcheted up its criticism of Tokyo’s defence policy, issuing statements at least seven times since July.

On Tuesday, North Korean state media condemned Japan’s latest defence white paper as a “re-invasion-minded” document, saying it “groundlessly described” Pyongyang as ⁠the greatest strategic challenge to “justify its reckless arms buildup”.

North Korea has also been accused of playing a more active role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Moscow had used a North Korean ballistic missile during an attack that killed seven workers at a Ukrainian steel plant in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.