Israel-Palestine conflict

Israeli prime minister denies claim that UAE president warned him of Hamas plans before the 2023 attacks.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will sue the Haaretz newspaper over a report that claimed he was warned of Hamas’s plans for an offensive days before the attacks of October 7, 2023.

In a statement on X on Wednesday, Netanyahu called the report “fabricated” and “false” and said he had instructed his lawyers to also sue Haaretz and the authors of the report, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yaval.

The report, published on Tuesday, claimed that the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed had warned Netanyahu about a possible attack by Hamas 10 days before the events of October 7, 2023.

Palestinian fighters killed at least 1,195 people in southern Israel on that day, and took some 251 others captive. The attacks prompted Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, in which at least 73,669 Palestinians have been killed.

The Haaretz report claimed that the UAE president, who is also known as MBZ, spoke to Netanyahu by phone and warned him of a threat from then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

According to Haaretz, Sinwar – who was angered by stalled prisoner exchange talks and Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza – had relayed the warnings to the UAE through an intermediary. He said he was preparing a “huge surprise” and told contacts to tell Israel “to expect an earthquake”, according to the report.

It said MBZ and his aides read this as a sign of an impending full-scale attack and passed the intelligence to Israel’s Shin Bet agency. But the internal security agency dismissed the threat.

MBZ then raised the warning directly with Netanyahu, who also brushed it aside, the report said.

The UAE has declined to comment on the allegations.

Its Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Tuesday saying that “the UAE government does not comment on media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders”.

The Haaretz report comes at a time when Netanyahu is trying to secure his position as prime minister in the upcoming Knesset elections in October. Netanyahu has been trailing in the polls, facing a fierce challenge from former military chief Gadi Eisenkot.

Netanyahu on Wednesday called the Haaretz report “politically motivated” and part of the “left’s election campaign”.

He also denied its claims of a phone call with MBZ.

“The National Security Council and the Military Secretary meticulously reviewed the Prime Minister’s call log for those days—and found no trace of it whatsoever,” he said.

In a separate statement, Netanyahu also claimed that the person responsible for Haaretz’s “false report” was the Palestinian political figure, Muhammad Dahlan.

Dahlan was expelled from the Fatah party in 2011 after a power struggle with the current president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and lives in the UAE.

Dahlan’s representatives have rejected the claim, according to Israeli media.

British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has said the United Kingdom will sanction illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, describing the move as “overdue” and necessary to “salvage” a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He made the comments on Tuesday as 11 nations joined the UK in supporting or ⁠considering curbs on trade in goods with settlements that are a barrier to a future Palestinian state.

But analysts say the step is far from enough to drive momentum for Palestinian statehood, threatened by ever-expanding settlements in the West Bank and an increasingly hostile Israeli political environment.

Tahani Mustafa, a lecturer in international relations at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera the latest anti-settlement measures are “modest” and unlikely to have a significant impact on ambitions for Palestinian statehood.

“After three decades of breakneck settlement expansion, Palestinian territory is only being held together by its sinews,” said Mustafa. “If what remains is still territorially viable as a state, it is only barely so. Much more decisive action is needed to salvage the two-state solution and a durable lasting solution to the conflict.”

Settlements dividing Palestinian territory

More than 30 years after the Oslo Accords set out a negotiating process aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel has remained the foundation of international efforts to forge peace.

But since the Oslo process began in 1993, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, has ballooned from about 260,000 to more than 700,000, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, posing a glaring roadblock to the plan.

The challenge is not just the raw number of settlers, but their geographic spread. Today, many Israeli settlements are embedded deep inside West Bank areas that would be needed for a contiguous Palestinian state, including near major Palestinian urban centres such as Nablus, Salfit and Hebron.

Israel’s recent E1 settlement plan, which would build thousands of illegal housing units between the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim and East Jerusalem, is a case in point. The plan would effectively split the West Bank in two and fully sever it from East Jerusalem, which Palestinians seek as their future capital.

Experts have long said Israel will need to dismantle some of its West Bank settlements, as it did in the Gaza Strip in 2005, to make room for a cohesive Palestinian state. But many Israeli settlements, especially those closer to Israel’s pre-war 1967 borders, would likely need to be addressed through land swaps.

“A complete withdrawal from some of the deeply embedded settlements is highly unlikely,” so land swaps would be the only way to create some form of Palestinian “territorial integrity”, Andreas Krieg, associate professor at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.

However, such an arrangement – under which Israeli settlements close to the pre-1967 borders would become part of Israel and some “northern Arab-Israeli communities would be integrated into a Palestinian state” – would be “highly controversial” and face blowback from multiple communities, said Krieg.

He argued that Israelis would be certain to oppose any forced withdrawal from West Bank settlements, while some “Arab-Israelis may not want to live within a Palestinian state”.

Palestinian citizens of Israel make up approximately 21 percent of Israel’s overall population but are treated as second- or third-class citizens at the institutional level. According to rights groups, several dozen Israeli laws actively discriminate against Palestinian citizens across a number of issues, including education and housing.

Israeli ‘consensus’ against Palestinian state

Beyond the physical obstacle created by settlements is the Israeli political landscape, in which the idea of a Palestinian state has become toxic.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be among the most hardline in Israel’s history on the issue. Netanyahu has emphatically ruled out the prospect of a Palestinian state, while his far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also oversees Israeli settlements in the West Bank, has celebrated blocking Palestinian statehood as a badge of honour.

The views of Netanyahu’s most influential domestic critics do not deviate much. His top rival in elections slated for October, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, has promised not to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. And Naftali Bennett, a Netanyahu rival from the far right, fervently opposes Palestinian statehood.

As for the Israeli public, a June poll by the Council for a Secure America found that only 22 percent of Jewish Israelis favour a two-state solution, while 63 percent oppose it.

“The consensus within Israel, socially and politically, does not allow for any party to make any steps towards a Palestinian state,” said Krieg.

Meanwhile, Israel’s closest ally, the United States, is unlikely to apply significant pressure over Israel’s settlement policy so long as President Donald Trump remains in office for the next two and a half years, he added.

Krieg said a “best-case scenario” is for Israel’s next elected government to reverse some of the country’s recent settlement advances.

John Strawson, professor at the University of East London, said that any new Israeli government is “unlikely to support a Palestinian state”, but that a more moderate Israeli government may at least “stop the ethnic cleansing and other moves which are aimed at making that impossible”.

“Removing Netanyahu is the first step towards a two-state solution,” said Strawson.

Two states are the ‘only alternative to violence’

If the two-state model is still alive at all, it is largely due to pressure from the international community.

More than 150 countries, including the majority of European Union nations, have recognised Palestinian statehood. And several Arab states with whom Israel seeks better ties have indicated Palestinian statehood is a precondition for normalisation with Israel.

Krieg said Tuesday’s move by the UK and the 11 other mostly European nations is an “overdue step in the right direction”, but also “shows the laziness and lack of creativity on the part of the international community to actually think outside the box in terms of a two-state solution”.

Anders Persson, a political scientist specialising in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said that while the settlement sanctions are concerning to Israel, other previous anti-settlement measures, such as 2013 EU restrictions on funds for Israeli entities operating in occupied Palestinian territory, “changed little on the ground”.

He said the latest sanctions may be “too late” and “too limited … to save the two-state solution”.

Strawson said that while a two-state solution may “seem optimistic”, it is the only alternative to “permanent war and violence”.

The United Kingdom has announced a ban on the import of all goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in Parliament on Tuesday.

It comes in response to an intensifying wave of Israeli settler pogroms and settlement expansions in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The ban, set to come into effect within six to nine months, would target settlement exports such as dates, olive oil and agricultural products, with Miliband saying he did not believe “the British people want us supporting the occupation by accepting products from settlements in our shops”.

The International Court of Justice in July 2024 called Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory “unlawful”. Months later, the United Nations passed a resolution calling for an end to the Israeli occupation within a year.

Israel’s response was furious, as it announced four “counter-measures”, including banning 12 British MPs from entering Israel and closing the British consulate in Jerusalem.

After Miliband’s speech, 11 more countries: Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, shared a joint statement supporting the so-called two-state solution and announcing their own intentions to impose restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements.

Spain and Ireland had already announced their own national bans earlier this year, alongside the Netherlands and Belgium.

How much do these countries trade with Israel?

Aside from Canada and the UK, the rest of the countries considering or already banning settlement goods are European Union members.

The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for 31.7 percent of Israel’s total trade in goods in 2025 (43.3 billion euros, or $50.4bn), according to the European Commission. The EU supplied 33.1 percent of Israel’s imports (28 billion euros, or $32.6bn) and received 29.4 percent of Israel’s exports (15.3 billion euros or $17.8bn).

Israel is the EU’s 27th largest trade partner, with Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany being its biggest individual trade partners.

According to a 2026 report by Global Echo Litigation Center, a Palestinian rights legal advocacy group, roughly 5,900 shipments from Israel were headed to Europe, with more than 17 percent containing products originating from settlements.

While no specific figures for settlement trade alone are known, it is understood to be a tiny fraction of total EU-Israel trade, meaning the ban’s impact is much more symbolic than economic.

The table below shows each country’s total trade with Israel for the European countries that have banned, or are introducing bans on, illegal Israeli settlement goods.

The top five European trading partners with Israel either enforcing or set to introduce settlement bans are Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK, France and Spain.

Ireland

Ireland-Israel bilateral trade totalled $5.36bn in 2025. Ireland is Israel’s second-largest export market for goods after the United States, driven largely by tech, particularly semiconductors and integrated circuits.

The Netherlands

Netherlands-Israel bilateral trade totalled roughly $4.8bn in 2025. The Netherlands is also Israel’s largest single foreign investor, accounting for roughly two-thirds of all EU investment in the country.

United Kingdom

According to UN Comtrade, UK-Israel bilateral trade totalled $3.73bn in 2025. An Al Jazeera investigation found at least 17 companies linked to illegal Israeli settlements hold more than 2.1 billion pounds ($2.85bn) in UK public-sector contracts.

France

France-Israel bilateral trade totalled $3.62bn in 2025. A large part of France’s trade with Israel constitutes export licences for surveillance and military technologies.

Spain

Spain-Israel bilateral trade totalled $2.79bn in 2025. In September that year, Spain banned the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, as well as the trade of arms.

What are Israeli settlements?

Israeli settlements are Jewish-only communities built illegally on Palestinian land.

Settlements are illegal under international law as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans an occupying power from transferring its population to the area it occupies.

Illegal Israeli settlements continue to grow, decades after the 1993 Oslo Accords, which established limited Palestinian self-rule and were meant to lead to a permanent peace settlement.

At the time, about 270,000 settlers lived across the occupied territory. Today, that figure has more than doubled to between 600,000 and 750,000 people, about 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, living across some 250 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Far-right Israeli ministers began more forcefully advocating the wholesale removal of Palestinians in Gaza last week, offering timelines and government mechanisms to conduct illegal forced expulsions while displacement, demolitions and killings continued across Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz told a conference on Wednesday that removing Palestinians from Gaza is “the only solution”, saying Israel is prepared to do it “by sea, by air and by every way possible”, and that US President Donald Trump has merely “frozen” – not cancelled – his support for the idea.

Then, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir unveiled a seven-year plan, branded “Disengagement 710”, to remove Gaza’s roughly two million residents through what he called “voluntary emigration”.

Ben-Gvir added that, if re-elected, he would establish a Migration Ministry to expel Palestinians.

The US State Department said it “does not support any plan or proposal for the forced displacement, expulsion, or mandatory transfer of the population of Gaza” – but stopped short of directly condemning Katz or Ben-Gvir.

Gaza: Rising death toll amid airstrikes

Gaza’s death toll has continued climbing through near-daily strikes. An Israeli special forces raid near Gaza City’s American hospital on Tuesday killed at least four Palestinians, including two children and a woman, ending with the capture of Moin al-Arabeed, described by Israel as the head of Hamas’s internal security. A drone strike killed a child in Jabalia refugee camp on Wednesday, the same day an attack on a tent in Khan Younis killed one person.

On Thursday, two Palestinians, including a 13-year-old, were shot dead near Beit Lahia after Israel said they had crossed into an Israeli-controlled area, while a separate drone strike killed a man near a church compound in Gaza City’s Remal neighbourhood.

Strikes continued through the week’s end: On Sunday alone, Israel attacked near a school in Gaza City, wounding several, and a separate drone strike on a car near Gaza City’s Hamid intersection killed Youssef Akila and his young daughter, Wafaa.

Before dawn on Monday, at least five more Palestinians in Gaza were killed including three-year-old Saadi Ghalia, who was killed when an artillery shell struck a school in Deir el-Balah sheltering displaced people.

By Monday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that 73,658 people have been killed and 174,622 wounded since October 2023, after 160 additional deaths were certified and added to the casualty figures. Of those, more than 1,340 have been killed since the October 2025 Israeli-Hamas “ceasefire”.

The recovery of bodies has slowly continued alongside the killings.

Families in northern Gaza held funerals on Sunday for around 100 people, including 60 children, whose remains were pulled from the rubble of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, many of them members of the extended Malaka family.

Gaza civil defence chief Raed al-Dahshan told Al Jazeera his teams could recover an estimated 8,000 more bodies still under the rubble within 90 days if given proper heavy equipment, but warned that without it, “this work will continue for years”. Between 10,000 and 14,000 people remain missing under Gaza’s rubble.

In the strip, humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate without sufficient aid getting in. The World Health Organization warned that water contamination in Gaza has nearly tripled since January. The Palestinian Water Authority reported all five of Gaza’s wastewater plants have shut down entirely, with roughly 55,000 cubic metres of untreated sewage discharged daily.

West Bank: Demolitions and villages under siege

Meanwhile, Israeli forces carried out demolitions this week in the West Bank. In the community of Khirbet al-Tabban in Masafer Yatta, those demolitions were absolute – demolishing all 12 homes left  70 people, including 30 children, homeless.

“It’s wiping the village off the face of the earth,” council head Nidal Younis said. Residents, he added, intend to rebuild.

Israeli forces also destroyed four water wells and several greenhouses in nearby Beit Ummar in Hebron in the occupied West Bank, causing an estimated $60,000 in losses, and demolished a home in Nahalin in Bethlehem governorate.

Around Jenin, the bulldozing of hundreds of farmers’ trees continued along the Arraba-Yabad and Jenin-Nablus roads, part of six military orders issued in August to clear vegetation from across four Jenin-area villages, according to to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.

In occupied East Jerusalem’s al-Bustan neighbourhood, community representative Fakhri Abu Diab said municipal bulldozers demolished a four-apartment building – the 60th demolition there since October 2023. On Monday morning another home was demolished in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina, according to Wafa, and authorities forced a Palestinian man in the city’s Jabal al-Mukaber area to demolish his home.

Despite all of the land and property destruction, last week’s most sustained violence centred on al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah. Settlers and soldiers raided the village on the evening of Wednesday after accusing residents of stealing livestock.

Snipers took rooftop positions and opened fire as residents tried to stop settlers stealing sheep, killing Khalil Abu Alia, 16, and Mohammad Nassan, 19.

The Israeli military told the Times of Israel that troops were “securing the retrieval of livestock belonging to Israeli civilians” when a “violent riot” broke out and soldiers “fired at key instigators”. Eyewitnesses said Nasan was shot in the back.

In the days after, mourners were beaten and pepper-sprayed and their vehicle stolen, with an ambulance also attacked.

Wafa also reported late on Sunday that Israeli settlers killed Omar Tubasi, 20, and injured three people when they raided and opened fire on the village of Hajja, east of Qalqilya governorate in the occupied West Bank.

Elsewhere, settlers stormed Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills on Friday, injuring a child. Soldiers who arrived declared the area a closed military zone that was enforced for Palestinians, not the settlers who remained.

In Turmus Ayya north of Ramallah, a settler wearing a T-shirt bearing the logo of the outlawed Kach movement was filmed atop a Palestinian home declaring “this land is Jewish” after US Ambassador Mike Huckabee visited the town and called settler violence “a form of terrorism”.

In Qusra, south of Nablus, a month-long siege of three homes continued, with the army initially blocking roughly 100 peace activists from delivering food and medicine. Settlers also stole water tanks and livestock in the Jordan Valley and sabotaged water lines serving a Bedouin encampment near Tayasir in the northern West Bank, according to reports and photos from local Palestinian activists.

In East Jerusalem’s Old City, Israeli police shot and killed Ibrahim al-Hendi, 33, from Beit Hanina, near Damascus Gate on Friday, claiming he had tried to stab an officer.

Amid the grapevines that once provided a steady income for her family, 56-year-old Palestinian farmer Theeba al-Sabaa spends much of her day guarding her home and farmland in the occupied West Bank from settlers.

From dusk till dawn, she works on her land in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, known by locals as “Jabal Sabaa”.

Theeba is engaged in a daily battle against the encroaching settler outposts that have emerged among the rolling hills that surround her, and which block access to sections of her land.

“By God, the land has taught me patience, and to cling to my right, for as long as I have a right, I must take it and never let it go,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I will never leave it because I worked hard on it, I toil and sweat on it, so I will not leave my toil and sweat, or the toil of my children and my husband, to go to someone else.”

Weaponising livestock

Since mid-2024, when settlers established new outposts on the nearby hills, every one of Theeba’s moves has been monitored.

Settlers frequently approach the perimeter of her home and deliberately release livestock into the cultivated fields.

“They enter with their sheep into our land after we plow and fix it, grazing in it, trampling the crops, and stomping on them with their sheep, leaving nothing,” Theeba said.

“As soon as they feel any movement or anyone entering the land, you find them attacking us immediately.”

This intimidation extends to the adjacent fields, where 59-year-old Anwar Sabarneh lives with his extended family of seven brothers.

Due to the repeated settler violations, two of his brothers have been forced to abandon their land.

Sabarneh, who supports a family of 14, owns several dunams of vineyards located just 300 metres (980 feet) from his home. With aggressive settlers around, reaching them has become a dangerous ordeal.

Military complicity

Sabarneh said that the Israeli army even demands permits from Palestinians to work on their own land.

“The army came with the settlers to ask me for a permit so I can work in my home, in front of my house’s door, and on my land where I am the rightful owner,” Sabarneh said.

Farmers are also barred from building anything on their land. Sabarneh’s sheep have also been locked in a barn for over eight months due to the dangers posed by settlers.

“If they see me taking the sheep out, the settlers chase me, kidnap them, and steal them,” he said.

When Sabarneh’s children have tried to retrieve their stolen sheep, Israeli soldiers have arrested and beaten them.

A forced exodus

Repeated pogroms by settlers against Palestinian farmers reflect a broader strategy targeting agriculture across the southern West Bank.

Settlers and the Israeli troops carried out 11,074 attacks in the West Bank during the first half of 2026, according to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission. This includes 3,488 carried out by settlers.

Hasan Breijieh, a settlement affairs expert and director at the commission, told Al Jazeera that continuous settlement expansionism, alongside restrictions on Palestinian movement, are the primary reasons that so many Palestinians have been forced to flee their farms.

“Military gates erected at the entrances of Palestinian communities have tightened control over…  access to their orchards and vineyards,” he said.

Bypass roads, built by Israel, have also hindered “connectivity between Palestinian communities”, Breijieh said.

Under such restrictions, Palestinian farmers have faced a fourth consecutive season without being able to harvest olives, grapes, or guava. Their lands have been “neither plowed nor pruned”, and have been forcibly abandoned.

In the face of such oppression, Palestinian women like Theeba al-Sabaa have continued to play a pivotal role in protecting their land, particularly when men have been killed or detained by Israeli forces.

“They continue to maintain their leadership role in preserving the family’s agricultural legacy today,” Breijieh said. “This land was historically the primary source of livelihood for families, and a Palestinian cannot leave it voluntarily, no matter the sacrifices.”

He recalled his own grandfather, who went to his fields to bid farewell before dying. “Goodbye, vineyard,” he said to his land.

Gaza City — Whenever Mervat Radwan hears the community kitchen in her displacement camp will serve lunch that day, she breathes a sigh of relief.

She takes a cooking pot and walks to the community kitchen with her nephew, six-year-old Ubay.

The meal is rarely enough for the seven people in her household, so she has to supplement it with whatever else she can find. A can of tuna, beans or peas from an aid parcel can help make the meal stretch further.

“Sometimes they give us a cooked meal, but it isn’t enough for seven people, so I try to find something besides it,” she told Al Jazeera.

Community kitchens are a vital source of food for families with little or no income in Gaza, but their operations have fluctuated sharply in recent months.

The kitchen near Radwan’s displacement site was closed for almost two months before resuming services for just two days a week.

Daily production in Gaza fell from about 1.5 million meals via 165 kitchens in mid-March to 698,000 served by 102 kitchens by July, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

This substantial reduction in the number of community kitchens operating in the Gaza Strip and the meals they serve has been attributed to severe funding shortages and rising operational costs, with charities facing difficulties securing sufficient food or cooking supplies.

Tinned food and charity

Radwan, 45, became the guardian of her three nephews when an Israeli air attack in northern Gaza on October 18, 2024, killed her 38-year-old brother Mohammad and his wife, Anwar, 33, and their one-year-old son, Yosuf.

Their three other children survived, but Nayef, now 14 years old, had shrapnel lodged in his head; Habib, 11, suffered burns to his body, while Ubay, who is now aged four, had also sustained severe burns.

For the past nine months, they have lived in a tent in Deir el-Balah with Radwan, her 70-year-old father, and her 40-year-old sister, Sanaa.

None of the carers has a regular source of income, so they are reliant on aid and charity to make it through to the next day.

The children have been left psychologically scarred by the loss of their parents, and their frail state is compounded by the family’s inability to source the basic necessities for existence, including food.

“It’s not just about taking them in; there is a lot of responsibility … food, drink, expenses, everything they need,” Radwan said.

When food is scarce, the adults skip meals so the children have enough to eat.

“My elderly father won’t eat until he knows his grandchildren have had enough … Maybe this is the most we can do in these difficult circumstances,” Radwan said.

Meat is an unaffordable luxury, and even fresh vegetables are difficult to find due to their scarcity and high costs. Some organisations operating in Gaza occasionally distribute vegetables, but their supply is sporadic.

For little Habib, his recovery relies on the food he eats, with a doctor telling Radwan that he must drink water frequently and eat foods with high water content, such as cucumbers, regularly.

But 1kg of cucumbers costs about 15 shekels ($4.50) and tomatoes cost 10 to 12 shekels ($3-3.60), prices the family can barely afford.

“If Ubay wants cucumbers, and the children like cucumbers, I buy three cucumbers, that’s it,” she says.

The World Food Programme said in July that even when there was food in markets, many households in Gaza struggled to source fresh vegetables, fruit and protein due to high prices.

About 77 percent of households in Gaza reported difficulties in this area, because their limited incomes were not enough to secure these costly staples.

The family’s limited diet is now affecting the children’s health. Habib has been suffering from kidney stones for about a year, which doctors said is due to his diet that is high in salt and almost completely based on canned goods.

Changing Habib’s diet is difficult when fresh food items are expensive and aid supplies, which the family relies on, consist mostly of tins of food.

For families like the Radwans, food assistance from charities helps them live another day, but a lack of diversity in their diets is costing them their health.

Israeli PM says money he facilitated Qatar in sending to Gaza was recommended by Israeli security agencies for humanitarian purposes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has boasted about bombing Qatar, while dismissing domestic accusations that funds sent to Gaza were used for anything other than aid.

In an interview with Israel’s i24NEWS that he shared on social media on Saturday, Netanyahu said Qatar was a “hostile” state that did not dictate Israeli policy during its genocidal war on Gaza.

“I attacked Qatar, I also bombed it and attacked them during the war, and they attacked me,” Netanyahu boasted.

The interview comes just days before the one-year anniversary of Israel’s September 9, 2025, strike on Doha. The bombing killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer during a meeting to discuss the United States-backed Gaza ceasefire proposal.

Qatar, which has long served as a mediator in Middle East conflicts and beyond, has hosted Hamas’s political office since 2012, after what it says were requests from the US.

Doha condemned the strike as a “blatant violation of all international laws and norms”, with Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari calling it a “cowardly” assault.

Several countries in the region, including Iran and Pakistan, also condemned the attack, with leaders from Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia visiting Qatar shortly afterwards in a show of solidarity.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the strikes a “flagrant violation” of Qatar’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

During a meeting later that month at the White House, Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump called Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani to apologise for the strike.

During the i24NEWS interview, Netanyahu also defended the transfer of millions of dollars in Qatari funds to Gaza that Israel had facilitated, saying the funds were intended for humanitarian purposes and had been transferred on the recommendation of Israeli security agencies Mossad and Shin Bet.

“All this money is worth 2 percent – 2 percent of all the money that entered the Strip,” the prime minister said.

Some of Netanyahu’s detractors have alleged that the funds were used to help Hamas prepare its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which precipitated its genocidal war on Gaza.

Qatar denies such allegations, saying any claims that it funds Hamas are unfounded and pointing to the strict oversight governing its aid transfers.

“Today, when they [Israel] are claiming that this is the financing of Qatar to Hamas, it has no basis,” Sheikh Mohammed said during last year’s Doha Forum.

“All our aid … went to Gaza, went to the people, and was under a very transparent process that the United States is fully aware about.”

Netanyahu made the remarks weeks before Israelis head to the polls on October 27, in the country’s first general election since its war on Gaza began in 2023.

With the October vote approaching, Netanyahu faces mounting pressure at home over his government’s handling of the Gaza war, the economy and the war with Iran — all shaping up as central issues in the campaign.

Critics and analysts have long accused Netanyahu of stoking tensions with foreign states ahead of elections to rally nationalist support.

Israeli forces bar Israeli and Palestinian activists from delivering food and medicine to homes besieged by settlers.

Israeli police have killed a Palestinian man in Jerusalem and the Israeli army has blocked humanitarian assistance from reaching an occupied West Bank village besieged by settlers for weeks.

Officers opened fire on a 33-year-old Palestinian near Damascus gate in Jerusalem on Friday. Israeli police said its border guard “neutralised” the man, claiming he was attempting to stab one of them.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency identified the man as Ibrahim al-Hendi from East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighbourhood. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Following the incident, Israeli forces deployed around Damascus Gate and the surrounding area of Jerusalem’s Old City, Palestinian sources told Al Jazeera.

Separately, the Israeli army said that it arrested Palestinians in the town of Qabatiya in the West Bank, alleging they were “planning to carry out an attack” against Israelis and security forces.

Ten other Palestinians were arrested during a 48-hour Israeli army operation in Nablus in the West Bank. The Israeli army said it seized more than “30 weapon production machines used to manufacture weapons” during the operation.

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers and soldiers carried out attacks across the occupied West Bank on Friday, Wafa reported. Settlers stormed the Khirbet al-Hamra community in the northern Jordan Valley and assaulted one resident.

Israeli settlers, accompanied by soldiers, also attacked Khalet a-Nahlah in southern Bethlehem. Israeli forces also fired tear gas and concussion grenades at a crowd of Palestinians who gathered to resist the attacks.

Blocking access to Qusra

As violence and harassment of Palestinians continues across the occupied territory, the Israeli army on Friday also prevented around 100 peace activists from delivering food and medicine to Palestinians who have been under siege in the town of Qusra for 28 days.

Since August 9, Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian homes in the northern occupied West Bank village, while the Israeli army has also prevented the families from entering or leaving them, claiming the area is a “closed military zone”.

“Day 28 of the blockade on Qusra. About 100 activists arrived to deliver supplies to the besieged families,” the Israeli Peace Now movement said in a post on X.

“The army blocked us at first, claiming Qusra was a ‘closed military zone.’ Then let us in but on the way back detained us for ‘violating a closed military zone’,” it added.

Qusra Mayor Abdel Azim Wadi also told the state-run Turkish Anadolu news agency that the Israeli army has been “preventing the delivery of basic necessities to three families trapped on Mount Ras al-Ain”.

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Israeli public broadcaster Kan on Friday that settler violence against Palestinians is “damaging the image of Israel as a nation and a people, warning that Israel “needs all the friends it can get” and “doesn’t need more enemies”.

Around 750,000 Israeli settlers live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and carry out attacks aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinians, according to Palestinian figures.

The announcement revives a 2023 commitment by President Tshisekedi and comes as several governments signal plans to deepen diplomatic ties with Israel.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reiterated its decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, becoming the latest country to announce such plans.

Following a visit to Israel by President Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, both countries said in a statement on Thursday that they would take steps towards “the relocation of the embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem”, AFP news agency reported.

The plan dates back to September 2023, when Tshisekedi met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

In 2020, the DRC president announced plans to appoint an ambassador to Israel after two decades and establish an economic section of the embassy in Jerusalem while the embassy remained in Tel Aviv.

The relationship has since expanded. Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the DRC capital, Kinshasa, in November. Tshisekedi has spoken warmly about Israel for years, saying his support is driven by his Christian faith. He has also been eager for support from the United States, which has increasingly pressured Rwanda over armed rebel advances in the DRC.

Why does the embassy move matter?

The announcement comes weeks after Colombia’s new hard-right president, Abelardo de la Espriella, also announced that he would move his country’s embassy to Jerusalem, a sharp shift from his leftist predecessor who criticised Israel over its genocidal war on Gaza.

The United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term. Fiji, Guatemala, Honduras, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay have followed.

Kosovo and Somaliland, which are not UN member states, also maintain missions they consider embassies in the city.

Most countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel keep their embassies in the Tel Aviv area, maintaining that Jerusalem’s final status should be determined through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel considers the entire city its capital and has encouraged foreign governments to establish embassies there. Palestinians want occupied East Jerusalem to serve as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

The UN Security Council has rejected measures seeking to alter the status of Jerusalem and has called on countries not to establish diplomatic missions there.

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – In the stifling heat of Gaza City, Dr Rizq Sufyan Abo Halima sits in a small tent pitched in an alleyway, waiting for his next patient.

The tent was a last resort for the doctor, given that the high demand and low supply of properties in the Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s genocidal war have made finding an affordable surgery impossible.

“The stifling rise in temperatures was my first challenge,” he told Al Jazeera. “I had to adjust the corners of the tent and lift it at the ends to allow air to pass through.”

His old clinic, Smile One, in Sheikh Zayed City in northern Gaza, was bombed during the early days of the war in 2023.

The 31-year-old built a new clinic in May last year, next to where his current tent is pitched, in Gaza City’s al-Nasr neighbourhood. But three months later, it too was destroyed when Israeli forces assaulted the area, just weeks before the ceasefire last October.

He is now forced to conduct operations and other emergency dental procedures in the tent close to the ruins of his former surgery. When the electricity supply stops, which is frequent, there is little he can do but sit in his tent and wait for the power to come back on.

Finding another office would be the obvious solution, but residential and commercial units are hard to find in Gaza and those few that remain are unaffordable.

More than four in five buildings in Gaza City and northern Gaza have been completely destroyed or severely damaged in Israel’s war, according to the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).

Fewer than one in five buildings in Gaza can still be used and Israel’s ban on building materials has made repairs impossible. That has created a skewed supply situation, which has made prices of office spaces or homes unaffordable.

“Before the war, I used to rent an entire apartment for my clinic for 500 shekels ($166) a month, but today I cannot afford the prices of remaining apartments at all,” he said. Now, the cost is closer to $1,000.

Heat is better than high costs

Using a tent is the cheapest alternative Dr Abo Halima could find, and he does not want to pass on what he calls the excessive price of building rent to his customers, who are already suffering immense personal and financial hardships.

“If I had rented an apartment for my clinic instead of a tent, the cost of one filling to teeth would have doubled for the patient,” Dr Abo Halima said.

“I am here, enduring the harsh summer heat, so that I can protect people from the high prices that I will inevitably have to charge if I rent an apartment, in addition to the fact that I have no other options at all.”

Dr Abo Halima treats his instruments with care. He sterilises them regularly to protect them from dust and germs and hires a security guard. After all, the thin canvas walls offer little protection from thieves.

Despite his best efforts, the collapsed, resource-starved economy in Gaza means that dental care is a luxury for many patients.

One of them, 25-year-old Yousef Abo Halima, sums up the situation in a few simple words: “I can handle the harsh heat inside the tent, but I certainly cannot afford the high costs of fillings at clinics that operate inside apartments”.

Difficult choices

After Heba Rihan, 23, graduated from Al-Aqsa University with a major in general nursing, she struggled to find work in her field.

So she made an arduous daily journey from the south of the Gaza Strip to the west on foot, looking for work. She eventually found Dr Abo Halima’s clinic in May and began working there.

Now, one of the most regular parts of her job is explaining to patients that the high cost of treatment is due to the scarcity of materials and other issues related to the war and Israel’s siege on Gaza.

“One day [a patient] came in deep pain… When he asked how much the filling cost and was told it was 350 shekels ($116), he didn’t have the money. He asked directly about the tooth extraction, which is only 50 shekels ($17),” she said.

“He decided to extract his original tooth because he could not bear the pain or the cost. That was the most painful moment I’ve ever had here.”

Israeli forces have fired tear gas into a mosque in the occupied West Bank, leaving worshippers inside struggling to breathe, hours after settlers tried to set fire to a second mosque in the territory.

The Palestinian Ministry of Religious Affairs condemned the continued pogroms on Tuesday, calling them a flagrant violation of the sanctity of places of worship.

Footage, verified by Al Jazeera, showed worshippers at the mosque in Madama, near Nablus, coughing in the aftermath of the tear gas attack.

One elderly man was seen bent over as another tried to help him.

The ministry said Israeli forces “fired tear gas canisters” into the mosque as people gathered for their evening prayers. The attack “resulted in several elderly worshippers suffering from suffocation and caused widespread disruption to the congregation”, it added.

The attack in Madama came hours after Israeli settlers tried to set fire to another mosque in the nearby town of Bazariya.

Photos and videos from Nur al-Din Zanki Mosque showed blackened burn marks around a window of a room and Hebrew phrases sprayed on the exterior walls.

Majed Nasr, who lives near the mosque, said the attack took place early on Tuesday morning. “There was a small explosion that caused a fire inside the mosque building,” he told the AFP news agency. “We managed to contain the blaze before things could get worse and reach the main upper part of the building.”

The Religious Affairs Ministry condemned the “criminal attack” and said some 13 mosques have been “violated” by the Israeli military or settlers since the start of 2026.

Local sources told the Anadolu agency that the racist slogans sprayed at the site included threats against Palestinians and a message to the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, saying: “Huckabee, greetings from the terrorists.”

Last month, Huckabee had described Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the town of Qusra and other areas of the occupied West Bank as “terrorists”.

The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement following the Madama attack, warning of “the dangers of the continued and escalating religious war” waged by Israeli forces and settlers against religious sites in the occupied West Bank, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

The “systematic attacks … crossed all red lines and risked triggering a religious conflict with serious consequences for the region and the world”, it said.

Settlers also burned vehicles in the town of Beta, south of Nablus, and set fire to a Palestinian vehicle in Nahalin, west of Bethlehem, on Tuesday, according to media reports and footage posted online.

The attacks come amid a sharp increase in pogroms by Israeli forces and settlers across the occupied West Bank.

The United Nations said in August that at least 76 Palestinians have been killed in the territory this year and that some 3,800 people have been displaced by settler violence, as well as demolitions and evictions.

It also said settler violence had reached “unprecedented levels,” with more than 1,430 attacks resulting in casualties or property damage documented this year.

Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces arrested at least 14 Palestinians, including five in Rummanah, one at the Anab checkpoint, one in Tammun, three in Hebron, two in Bethlehem and two in Nablus.

Israeli forces also uprooted olive trees near Jenin, demolished greenhouses and issued a demolition notice for a home in the town of Idhna.

Madrid, Spain – A wealthy American donor to Palestinian causes who faces extradition from Spain to the United States over alleged financial support of Hamas is a victim of “political persecution”, his wife and lawyers have told Al Jazeera.

James “Fergie” Chambers was arrested on the Spanish island of Ibiza in July while searching for a school for his son with his wife, actress Stella Schnabel.

US authorities have linked Chambers to the transfer of $7.5m to Tunisia and allege that the funds were ultimately used to provide financial support to the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

The indictment remains sealed, so the specific allegations against Chambers – who denies wrongdoing – are not yet known.

Chambers, heir to one of the richest families in the US, has supported a handful of humanitarian projects in Gaza with funds totalling more than $1m, a member of his legal team said shortly after his arrest.

The extradition effort is believed to be the first of its kind involving a US citizen accused of providing support to Hamas.

Chambers, who describes himself as a Marxist-Leninist, has been held in a Madrid jail for six weeks as Spanish authorities consider the US extradition request.

Schnabel, who is also an activist, said she was driving through the Balearic island of Ibiza with her husband to search for a school for their five-year-old son, as they were moving from Ireland to Spain, when he was arrested.

“Suddenly, several unmarked cars cut us off. Police officers got out of the cars and told us to get out of the car. I got out my phone, and they told me not to phone,” she told Al Jazeera. “They handcuffed Fergie. We said we loved each other, and he said, ‘Tell the kids I love them’. And they bundled him into a car, and he was gone. That was July 10. Over six weeks ago.”

Schnabel said US President Donald Trump’s administration was targeting her husband for being one of the largest donors to humanitarian projects in Gaza. This included supplying bread, water and medical care.

“He should be at home with his family, continuing his humanitarian work. Instead, he is facing political persecution because he has stood with the Palestinian people,” she said. “This sets a terrifying precedent for repression of the wider movement for a free Palestine, including precedent for the Trump administration exporting its repression far beyond the US borders to target the people of Europe.”

The US Department of Justice declined to comment when contacted by Al Jazeera.

The US sent the indictment and documentation to Spain last week, in time to meet the 45-day deadline after Chambers’s arrest in July.

Al Jazeera understands that the indictment is still sealed and has not been revealed to his defence team.

Spanish authorities must now assess the US request. Among the issues they may consider is whether the extradition would amount to political persecution, a circumstance that could provide grounds for refusing it.

Chambers comes from the family behind Atlanta-based Cox Communications. In 2023, he reached an agreement with his relatives under which his stake in the family business was bought back for approximately $250m, following a break with the family.

Since then, he has been funding dozens of projects in 20 countries, Schnabel has said.

On the central allegation about funding Hamas, Schnabel said this was a “trumped-up charge” for which the US has not provided a “shred of evidence”.

“My understanding is that the US appears to rely on the fact that he transferred $7.5m of his own funds from the US to Tunisia. The reality is that this money was transferred to Tunisia because we were living there, and for philanthropic activities, including supporting Club Africain [a football team],” Schnabel said.

“The money sponsored the club, helped to pay its debts and overdue salaries, rebuild its training centre and develop football fields for young people.”

The Tunisian side secured the league title in May.

Lawyers for Chambers have also pointed to his outspoken views on Israel and its genocidal war on Gaza.

In the week after the October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, Chambers posted on X about Israel’s response: “Stop calling it ‘collective punishment’. There’s nothing to be ‘punished’ for. No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done anything wrong. It’s simply genocide. Like it has been.”

In the wake of the 41-year-old’s arrest, FBI agents raided the rented property in Ibiza where Chambers had been staying, The Guardian reported.

Chambers is represented by Spanish human-rights lawyer Baltasar Garzon, who has argued that the case against his client is politically motivated and connected to his humanitarian work in Palestine.

“We request our client’s provisional release and to file all necessary legal actions with the courts,” he told Al Jazeera.

In 1998, Garzon sprang to international attention when he sought the extradition from London of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. He has also acted in human rights cases in Spain and Argentina.

“We hope that Spain will not grant extradition in what we consider to be a case of political persecution based on our client’s ideas and humanitarian aid to Palestine,” he added, referring to Chambers.

US says its forces ‘successfully’ completed a wave of strikes against Iranian targets, accusing the IRGC of attempted attacks on shipping and US service members.

At least four Palestinians are trapped inside the home, while settlers have set fire to nearby Palestinian land.

Israeli settlers, backed by Israeli forces, have surrounded a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

At least four Palestinians are trapped inside the home while settlers have set fire to nearby land, according to Al Jazeera journalists.

Coordination is under way to allow ambulances to reach the area and evacuate one injured person.

Qusra has faced an escalating campaign of settler violence over the past month.

Settlers set fire to a mosque in the village in July, and since August 9 have besieged three Palestinian homes in the Ras al-Ain area, cutting access to water, electricity and other essential supplies.

“We’re not allowed to live freely in and out of our houses; no one is allowed to bring us any food or visit us from family members or friends,” Loui Abu Raideh, a resident trapped in his home, told Al Jazeera.

He said residents have to coordinate with the mayor of Qusra to get food and supplies, and it can take three to four days to get approval.

Israeli forces have declared the area a closed military zone and restricted Palestinians from entering and leaving, placing a gate at the main entrance of Qusra itself. Palestinians travelling into the village are forced to take alternative routes which are often blocked by Israeli forces.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military erected three new roadblocks at locations that encircled the top of the Ras al-Ain hill, disconnecting homes from the area below it.

Raideh said the feeling of being trapped is “a nightmare … 21 days, we can’t even sleep, we have to stay up at night [and] keep watching the security cameras, because those settlers can attack any time”.

Settler attacks – supported by the Israeli military – on Palestinian homes, businesses and farmland across the West Bank have been common for decades as illegal settlements have expanded across the territory.

The attacks have increased in intensity and frequency since Israel launched its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023, in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

Israel’s prime minister and defence minister praise the attack as Hamas calls for Israeli ‘crimes’ to stop.

The Israeli army has killed three Palestinians in Jenin in a rare air strike in the occupied West Bank, amid growing tensions in the territory.

In a statement, the Israeli military said it “eliminated” three people on Friday, one a Palestinian it described as a Hamas operative as well as two of his accomplices.

Hamas condemned the strike but did not claim the person targeted – whom the Israeli military identified as Qais Bitawi – as a member. Palestinian Islamic Jihad said in a statement Bitawi was a senior operative of its armed wing.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said the strike targeted a car carrying the men.

The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance service said Israeli ground troops ⁠raided the site of the drone strike, briefly detained medics and ⁠prevented them from transporting those wounded or killed to hospital.

The Red Crescent said its personnel were also detained after arriving at the scene.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that the Israeli drone strike had targeted a house under construction in the western area of Jenin City, and that three Palestinians were killed instantly.

Photos from the AFP news agency showed Israeli soldiers removing a body from a house under construction on the outskirts of Jenin.

‘Stop these crimes and end impunity’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the strike in a post on X, calling it a “successful thwarting” of the three targeted individuals.

After the attack, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz congratulated the military, police and Shin Bet for the strike and said the Jenin camp has been “evacuated of residents”. He added that the Israeli military is now “permanently stationed there, like other terrorist camps” in the West Bank.

Hamas condemned the strike in a statement mourning “the martyrs who fell in the occupation’s bombing of Jenin,” saying that Palestinians “will continue to cling to their land and rights”.

The group called on the international community “to take immediate action to stop these crimes and end impunity” and hold Israel “fully responsible for the repercussions”.

The occupied West Bank, home to the Palestinian Authority, has seen soaring violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers but has recently avoided Israeli military strikes that have devastated the Gaza Strip since the genocidal war began on October 7, 2023.

Military raids on Palestinian towns in the West Bank are common, but Israel last carried out a strike there in February 2025.

Friday’s strike in Jenin comes as separate Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least five people, and as Nikolay Mladenov, the high representative for the United States-led Board of Peace, warned that the failure of both sides to adhere to the roadmap for peace “threatens a collapse of the ceasefire in Gaza”.