Israel-Palestine conflict

Thousands of Palestinians have taken part in a mass funeral in Gaza City for 112 members of the Hassayna and Abu Sharia families, whose remains were recently recovered from beneath the rubble nearly three years after an Israeli air raid.

Mourners gathered on Tuesday as bodies wrapped in Palestinian flags were carried through the streets of the besieged city before burial, in what local media described as one of the largest funerals since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023.

Gaza’s civil defence said its crews spent two weeks excavating a destroyed residential building in the Sabra neighbourhood, eventually retrieving the remains of 112 people, including at least 40 children.

The families were killed in an Israeli strike in November 2023 that flattened their homes.

Relatives used the funeral to renew accusations that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza and demanded international investigations into the attack and the hundreds of bodies still believed to be buried under rubble across the territory.

Netanyahu and board director Maldenov meet amid tensions over Gaza disarmament roadmap and recent Israeli attacks.

The US-led Board of Peace has said that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will only take place after the disarmament of Hamas is complete, following a meeting between the body’s director, Nickolay Mladenov, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The meeting on Monday in West Jerusalem came as Israeli politicians signalled their displeasure with the deal, announced by US President Donald Trump last Thursday.

“Contrary to inaccurate reports, we note that the withdrawal of the [Israeli military] beyond the Yellow Line will take place only once decommissioning is complete, as Hamas committed to the mediators,” the Board of Peace, established by Trump in January to oversee the administration of Gaza after Israel’s genocidal war, said. “This applies to light weapons, heavy weapons, and the tunnels alike.”

The “Yellow Line” is the term used to refer to the demarcation line behind which Israeli forces continue to base themselves in Gaza.

“The goal is clear and is not in question: the complete decommissioning of weapons in the Strip and the transition away from rule by the gun to civilian governance,” the Board of Peace added in a social media post after the meeting.

For its part, Hamas has insisted that the deal will not be implemented unless Israel implements its part of the agreement.

During the talks, Mladenov urged Netanyahu to stop attacks on Gaza, two people familiar with the meeting told The Associated Press news agency. Israel has steadfastly refused to do so, despite an October 2025 “ceasefire”, since which it has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians, including more than 36 after the disarmament deal was announced.

Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza since its genocidal war began in October 2023.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu’s office said that the version of the agreement made public “does not reflect Israel’s positions”, and that its concerns had been shared with the US.

Members of the Israeli prime minister’s far-right government have already signalled that they want to backtrack on the deal.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the agreement was “completely different” to the one the Israeli government had approved, and demanded a new vote “immediately”.

Israel has repeatedly flouted agreements and has been accused of being unwilling to make concessions during negotiations. The latest reversal comes despite a push from Trump to secure a deal, but months ahead of an Israeli election in which the government is under pressure from its base to demonstrate it has achieved total victory in Gaza.

Mladenov criticised the strikes over the weekend, without directly naming Israel. “Achieving a lasting peace is hard but achievable if everyone makes their best efforts,” he wrote.

Egypt, Qatar, and Turkiye, which mediated the disarmament deal, issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s targeting of civilians and healthcare facilities as a “flagrant violation of international law”.

Hamas said it and other Palestinian factions remained committed to the completion of the second phase of the ceasefire, and were awaiting a clear, official response from Mladenov and the mediators.

Dearborn, Michigan – Yemeni-American activist Samraa Luqman has no regrets about voting for President Donald Trump in 2024.

While the United States president has been a disappointment to Arab Americans in Michigan with his pro-war and anti-immigration policies, she stressed that it was untenable for the community to vote for Democrats as Israel’s genocide unfolded in Gaza.

“There had to be accountability for the genocide. We’re OK with what we voted for,” Luqman told Al Jazeera.

“I said from the beginning, I’m willing to live through another four years of Trump, that we expected him to be bad on our issues, but it was a pill we were willing to swallow in order to hold the Democratic Party accountable.”

Luqman is not alone.

Despite Trump’s staunchly pro-Israel policies and unpopular war on Iran, many say supporting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in 2024 was out of the question, and it was the right choice for the community to break with the Democratic Party.

“I could not – with a good heart, good conscience – tell someone to vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump”, but the approach of “lesser of two evils” no longer works to sway Arab voters, Hussein Dabajeh, a prominent political strategist in the Detroit area, home to large Arab and Muslim communities, told Al Jazeera.

Democrats’ popularity amongst Arab Americans nosedived in 2024 as President Joe Biden ignored calls to compel a ceasefire in Gaza and continued to provide Israel with weapons and military aid as it killed tens of thousands in Palestine and Lebanon.

Then, Vice President Harris refused even to consider an arms embargo against Israel.

As a result of these policies, many Arab Americans, who had been reliable Democratic voters for years, ditched the party and refused to support Harris in her presidential bid.

Trump swept in, presented himself as a “peace” candidate, and his campaign forged ties with Arab community advocates.

Trump’s policies

At a rally in Michigan ahead of the 2024 vote, Trump brought local Muslim imams to the stage and praised the community.

The Republican leader also visited the predominantly Arab and Muslim Detroit suburb of Dearborn ahead of the election.

Trump ended up winning Michigan as many Arab voters in the Dearborn area refused to back Harris. Some voted for him, while others voted for a third party, left the top of the ticket blank, or skipped the election altogether.

According to an Al Jazeera analysis of election results in heavily Arab precincts in east Dearborn, about 45 percent of the votes went to Trump, 29 percent to Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and 16 percent to Harris.

As president, Trump allowed Israel to continue its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon and launched an unprovoked war against Iran that has sent petrol prices soaring.

He has also intensified the crackdown on Palestinian rights advocacy at home with a campaign to deport noncitizen student activists critical of Israel.

In February, he also terminated immigration protections for Yemeni nationals, sowing fear and uncertainty in a community where many leaders had endorsed him in 2024.

Asked how Arab Americans feel about Trump now, Dabajeh said: “They hate him. There’s no other way of putting it. I don’t think there is a single person I know that voted for Trump from the Arab and Muslim community specifically that looks at what Trump is doing and is happy with what he’s doing, or what he’s done.”

‘The genocide matured us’

Many Arab Americans stress that withholding support for Harris in 2024 was not out of love for Trump.

“No one understands the horrors of Trump’s policy more than us. We were his first victims in 2017,” said Amer Zahr, a comedian and Dearborn Board of Education trustee.

Shortly after starting his first term in 2017, Trump implemented a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.

“No one is more aware of the harm that Trump can cause than we are,” Zahr added. “But the genocide matured us in a way that we finally got to the point where we were willing to tell politicians ‘no’.”

As the election season returns to Michigan, Arab Americans once again find themselves at a political crossroads.

The community is rallying behind Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed – who had previously endorsed Harris – but some are keeping their political options open.

Luqman, the Yemeni activist, said she will certainly vote for El-Sayed and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib – who are outspoken critics of Israel – in the Democratic primary on Tuesday and in the general elections in November.

Luqman said Democratic voters’ support for progressive candidates will help the party regain credibility with Arab voters.

“Those are things that do bring the Democratic Party a little bit of relevance and credibility within our community,” Luqman told Al Jazeera.

“It has kind of brought the community back to centre, whereas they were kind of swinging to the right by a large margin.”

Palestine or bust

While some political commentators have been questioning why US support for Israel has become a decisive issue in US politics, particularly Democratic primaries, the answer in the Arab community is clear.

Advocates say domestic policy takes a backseat when their loved ones are being killed, and their hometowns are being wiped out by their own tax dollars via military aid to Israel.

“Gaza and Palestine and Middle Eastern issues have now become the forefront, the top of everybody’s issues, and it’s become a red line for my community,” Luqman said.

“So if you’re a Republican or Democrat and you hate AIPAC and you value Palestinians’ rights to self-determination, then you’re going to be getting our vote, regardless of what party you’re in,” she said, referencing the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby group.

Zahr echoed that message.

“People want us not to be single-issue voters. In other words, they want us to forgo our main issue, get screwed on it, watch our families die because Trump’s bad, and accept all that,” he said.

“Well, we said ‘no’. The blood of the children of Gaza had to mean something.”

Zahr emphasised that Arab Americans are not alone in centring Palestine in their electoral choices, pointing to the defeats that pro-Israel incumbents have suffered across the map in this primary season.

“You’ve gotten to a point where if somebody says, ‘Stop bombing hospitals’, everyone knows you’re talking about Israel. That’s because of Israel. That’s not because of us. That’s because of what Israel did,” he told Al Jazeera.

“And so, people are keying into the truth. And when you learn the truth, something that comes along with that is you learn that you’ve been lied to, and you get angry. A lot of righteous anger is pushing a lot of this.”

Dabajeh, the political strategist, said that while Arab voters care about the economy, affordability and infrastructure – like all Americans – they cannot overlook US policy on Israel.

“Are we supposed to call our family members overseas and be like, ‘Listen, khalto [auntie], this guy over here that’s running for office might kill some of your neighbours, might kill some of your kids, but don’t worry about it, he’s going to take care of the flooding in our homes’?”

“It’s not going to work. We can’t do that.”

Islamophobia and racism

Republicans tried to court Arab and Muslim voters in 2024 and capitalise on the discontent over Gaza policies, but now, many conservatives have returned to demonising the community as an electoral strategy.

Weeks after he was elected, Trump endorsed Randy Fine, a Florida politician with a history of anti-Muslim statements, for Congress. Fine would go on to win and call for the “destruction” of all Muslims.

Meanwhile, Republican governors in Florida and Texas have designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a “terrorist” group.

In Michigan, Republican Congressman John James, who is running for governor, has also pledged to blacklist the group.

Luqman said James had spoken to community members and promised to engage voters in Dearborn before that announcement.

“There was a really big opportunity for the Republican Party to solidify the swing of the pendulum, if you will, and they lost that option. They really missed that opportunity,” she said.

Israelis head to the polls in October for the country’s first election since the war on Gaza began. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces mounting pressure over the October 7 attacks, corruption charges, international isolation, and divisions within his coalition.

Residents searching through the rubble of an Israeli strike in western Gaza City recovered the body of an unborn baby after the attack killed a pregnant woman, her husband and their five-year-old son.

On Thursday, United States President Donald Trump announced that Hamas had agreed to disarm and move to the next phase of the ceasefire deal in Gaza. The announcement was received positively by various regional actors while the US president characterised it as a “historic agreement”.

The problem is that the disarmament is unlikely to take place. That is because Hamas has made clear that it has conditioned relinquishing its weapons on Israel abiding by its obligations under the agreement, which the latter has failed to do since it was reached in October. The Board of Peace, the body tasked with overseeing the ceasefire and Gaza’s reconstruction, has done nothing to pressure it into compliance.

This is one of the many failures of this body, which has very little to show for its six-month existence. It lacks the power, financing, enforcement mechanisms and legal standing within the international legal system to fulfil its self-declared mandate. Rather than creating a pathway towards de-escalation, it has created an appearance of diplomatic progress that provides political cover for the continuation of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The only way to move forward is for the board to be abandoned and responsibility returned to the United Nations.

Achieving nothing

The Board of Peace was established under Article 9 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, announced in October. Its mandate is to oversee a temporary Palestinian technocratic body that would manage Gaza and an International Stabilization Force (ISF) of multinational peacekeepers. In theory, the board would supervise Gaza’s reconstruction and Israel’s gradual withdrawal. In practice, it has not achieved any progress on either of these processes.

Despite lofty promises from the Trump administration about transforming Gaza into a modern urban landscape, there has been no movement in that direction. The majority of the population still lives in abhorrent conditions in tents.

Last month, the board scaled down the reconstruction plan to a pilot project near Rafah, close to the Egyptian border, which is under the control of the Palestinians who collaborate with Israel. Israel would vet the Palestinians who are allowed to stay in that development.

Worse still, the board is trying to give itself the right to confiscate Palestinian properties or use them “free of charge”. This signals its willingness to serve as a facade for continuing Israeli theft of Palestinian land.

An Israeli withdrawal – the other major process the board should oversee – has been all but forgotten. Instead, Israel has continued to kill Palestinians in regular bombardments and encroach on more and more Palestinian land.

Since the ceasefire began in October, Israel has killed more than 1,100 Palestinian civilians. It has continued to carry out demolitions of Palestinian homes and to move its “Yellow Line”, expanding its control to about 70 percent of Gaza’s territory, up from 53 percent at the start of the ceasefire.

The Board of Peace has taken no action in response to these Israeli colonial practices and has not issued any public statements condemning them.

Meanwhile, the board has framed Palestinians as responsible for the lack of progress. Its high representative, Nickolay Mladenov, has described Hamas as the “principal obstacle” to implementing the ceasefire despite no recorded Palestinian attacks since its beginning.

This one-sided scrutiny reveals the board’s function: not peacemaking but providing cover for the ongoing occupation.

The Board of Peace has also maintained arrangements that allow Israel to control the flow of aid into Gaza. Although Trump’s plan stipulates that neither Hamas nor Israel should interfere with the entry and distribution of assistance, the Israeli military continues to determine both the quantity and type of assistance allowed into the Gaza Strip.

Major European countries and China have declined to join the Board of Peace. States that initially signalled a willingness to contribute to the ISF have since frozen or withdrawn their commitments.

This lack of confidence is also reflected in funding failures. Despite initial pledges of $10bn from the US and a further $7bn from other countries, the World Bank account established for the board reportedly has received no funds. Instead, it has relied on a few million dollars deposited into a private JP Morgan account, much of which has been spent on salaries and administrative overhead rather than reconstruction or civilian protection.

The return of the UN

Perhaps the starkest sign of the failure of the Board of Peace is that it is seeking to give itself immunity from prosecution. In a draft resolution, the board appears to pursue protections for its members and administrative bodies, including the Office of the High Representative, Palestinian technocrats, international military forces and nonresident contractors.

In other words, the board wants to operate above the law. The goal is clear: impose a foreign governance structure that obscures Israeli colonisation of Gaza behind an international body.

The continuing existence of such a body is an international disgrace, and it needs to end.

The appropriate response is a collective push by states that support the two-state solution and the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to bring the process back to the United Nations umbrella. Palestinian factions should be at the forefront of this effort.

The UN should assume responsibility and transfer any relevant functions away from the board to established UN bodies.

Critics may counter that the UN has failed to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for more than seven decades. That is true. But its umbrella offers an international legal framework that anchors action in international law and readily identifies violations. That provides structure and legal levers the Palestinians can use to continue pushing for their rights.

What is more, there is a dedicated UN agency – UNRWA – that deals with Palestinian refugee problems and is best equipped to handle the vast challenges of a displaced and impoverished population. The return of UNRWA is important not only as a service-provision body but also as an entity that protects the rights and status of Palestinian refugees.

The UN and its associated bodies have established accountability and transparency mechanisms that can minimise the misuse of resources needed for rebuilding Gaza. While ending the occupation depends on the political will of the world’s foremost powers, the UN umbrella maintains the legal status of Gaza as occupied territory and protects the rights of the occupied population.

The UN can also play a role in the deployment of the ISF. The force should be deployed not just in Gaza but also the West Bank to protect Palestinians from settler attacks. Giving the ISF a UN mandate would encourage more countries to contribute to its creation and help build a wider coalition of countries invested in the stabilisation and protection of Gaza and the West Bank. This could be a preliminary step that sets up Israel’s withdrawal from these occupied territories.

The international community must act now. The Board of Peace must be abandoned, and all responsibility for Gaza must be transferred back to the UN system. The UN must be empowered to take the lead in any future arrangements.

Continuing to maintain the current situation in Gaza means the continuation of Palestinian suffering and the deepening of uninhabitability, in effect paving the way for the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land. What is urgently needed is a UN-led mechanism that is immediately enforceable and grounded in international law.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Strikes hit Gaza homes two days after US unveiled plan for Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawal.

Israeli forces have killed at least five Palestinians in strikes across the Gaza Strip.

At least two people were killed and several wounded in a strike on a house in central Deir el-Balah, while three others were killed in a strike on an apartment in northern Gaza City, according to local officials.

The strikes came on Sunday, two days after US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace published a 15-point roadmap for implementing last year’s Gaza ceasefire agreement, extending a pattern of continued Israeli strikes despite diplomatic breakthroughs.

The roadmap has yet to be implemented on the ground. Hamas has said it will hand over its weapons for storage only after Israel halts military operations and withdraws its forces in line with last year’s agreement. An Israeli official told the Reuters news agency there would be no withdrawal from current positions unless Hamas undergoes “genuine disarmament”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not publicly commented on the initiative, but far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called it unacceptable and said Israel should continue targeting Hamas leaders.

Former senior Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan, based in the United Arab Emirates, said Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser on the US initiative, told him he was working with Israel to halt the attacks on Gaza. Dahlan said talks with Washington were continuing, and that the agreement’s success now depended on Israel fully ending its daily strikes.

Separately, Israeli strikes destroyed a medical supply warehouse in central Gaza on Saturday, leaving a crater 20 metres (66ft) wide and 10 metres (33ft) deep, part of a broader wave of attacks that has continued despite the ceasefire push.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israeli settlers, meanwhile, were active on parallel fronts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Israeli air strike has destroyed a warehouse full of medical supplies for Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, according to hospital staff. The Israeli army had no immediate comment.

United States President Donald Trump has been triumphal since the announcement that Palestinian group Hamas had agreed to hand over its weaponry in Gaza.

But the terms of Thursday’s disarmament agreement also stipulate that Israel should withdraw from the Palestinian enclave, and gradually transfer power to a Palestinian administration – conditions that have been met with a frosty reception by Israeli politicians and in the Israeli press.

The Israeli government has yet to officially comment, but one unnamed senior Israeli official told reporters on Friday that, despite “various publications” reporting “diplomatic progress in the Gaza Strip”, there would be no withdrawal from Israel’s current positions within Gaza before what it determines to be “the genuine disarmament of Hamas”.

Trump, for his part, has said that Israel was “very happy” with the deal.

Electoral suicide

Many Israelis continue to espouse a hard line towards Palestinians in Gaza after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, which was launched from the territory. That is despite Israel subsequently conducting a genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than 73,000 Palestinians and destroying the enclave.

A May poll found that 82 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Gaza – the same poll found that 56 percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homes too.

Another poll, a month later, found that 64 percent of those surveyed believed there were “no innocents” among the Palestinians in Gaza.

And many Israeli politicians – including government ministers – have said that illegal Jewish settlements, akin to the ones dividing the occupied West Bank, will soon come to Gaza.

The prospect, therefore, of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and steps towards the enclave’s reconstruction are unpalatable to many Israelis, with politicians quick to condemn the disarmament agreement.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir denounced it as “unacceptable”.

“A commitment to stop the assassinations of [Hamas’s] murderers is tantamount to agreeing to Hamas organising for the next massacre,” Ben-Gvir wrote on social media. “The assassinations in Gaza must continue, the encouragement of emigration must happen. Israel must win.”

The term “encouragement of emigration” is widely regarded as referring to ethnic cleansing.

Politicians regarded as centrists, such as former chief of staff and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leading rival in the coming election, Gadi Eisenkot, were equally sceptical. He said that any deal that stopped short of the war’s objectives – the destruction of Hamas’s military-political power – was a total failure.

“Nearly three years have passed since the morning of October 7,” Eisenkot wrote, “and Hamas has renewed its strength with a number of terrorists similar to the evening of October 6.”

Politics of peace

Netanyahu has yet to comment, but US-Israeli pollster and consultant Dahlia Scheindlin suggested the stakes are high for the prime minister with an election only a few months away.

Netanyahu’s likely best chance of avoiding a jail sentence if he is found guilty of numerous corruption charges rests on him winning the October elections.

But the opposition are currently leading in many polls, and may be able to gain enough seats to form a government.

“Netanyahu’s considerations have nothing to do with public trauma [from the October 7 attack],” Scheindlin said, and everything to do with politics. “He will care primarily – probably exclusively – about what his current coalition partners think.”

Withdrawing from Gaza was out of the question, Scheindlin said, adding that whatever gambit Netanyahu undertook to maintain his coalition and encourage right-wing voters to support him had to be accomplished without further alienating his allies in the US, who appear to have grown increasingly frustrated with him.

“[Netanyahu] will not want to be seen by Trump and the Americans as undermining any possible moves towards implementing this agreement. And so, therefore, he might manage some very symbolic moving of the Israeli army within Gaza,” she said.

One tactic, Scheindlin suggested, could be for the Israeli military to withdraw back to the positions it was supposed to be in as part of the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. Israel has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians since that agreement, and also repeatedly expanded the territory under its control, ignoring the deal.

Keeping Trump happy

Managing US expectations of Israel is likely to be a problem, not just for Netanyahu, but for all of the politicians vying for leadership of the country.

One anonymous US official has already said that Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Israel did not adhere to the disarmament agreement.

“Netanyahu already faces an uphill battle in forming any government, more so if he agrees to this,” said Dov Waxman, professor of Israel studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Netanyahu has previously been able to sidestep requirements placed on Israel when it comes to Gaza, maintaining unity within his far-right coalition, with some members repeatedly threatening to bring the government down if the war ended without Hamas’s total defeat.

He may be silent on the latest deal for now, but he will eventually have to speak.

“That could be a real problem,” Waxman said, “because, if he criticises the deal, he risks angering Trump who – though he hasn’t endorsed him [in the Israeli election] yet – he must be hoping will deliver him some kind of present during the election cycle, whether that’s a further call for his pardon or normalisation with Saudi Arabia, maybe both. But he has to keep Trump on his side.”

And while the Israeli public has grown sceptical that Israeli security remains at the forefront of the Trump administration’s priorities, the need for the US security umbrella is accepted by the vast majority of the public and political establishment, elements of which have seized upon any potential fracturing in it as a means to criticise Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu has shown himself to be very good in the past at handling these kinds of things,” Nimrod Goren, president and founder of Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, said.

“He’ll make sure Trump gets his announcement, his signing ceremony and all the optics are in place, but I don’t see him withdrawing from Gaza,” Goren said.

“I think the idea of him withdrawing goes further than just public opinion,” the Israeli analyst added. “It goes against his whole philosophy, ideology and worldview: that Israel needs to be present beyond its borders and everywhere bad intentions could be turned into action. If anything, I see him escalating in the build-up to the election rather than discussing withdrawal.”

Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least two Palestinians and wounded at least 10 others, hours after Hamas agreed to a draft peace deal drawn up by US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. The agreement would have Hamas disarm in phases, matched by Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

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

Hamas has agreed to gradually disarm in Gaza as part of Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The US president called the deal ‘historic’. Here’s what we know.

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

Dozens of Israeli soldiers have abandoned their weapons and walked out of the Sde Teiman military base in a dispute with a senior commander reportedly trying to restore discipline. Soldiers at the base have long been accused of flagrant violations of laws, including torture of Palestinian detainees.

Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori has been granted permission to challenge the UK government’s decision to designate the group a terrorist organisation at the Supreme Court.

Israeli strikes hit multiple areas across Gaza overnight, including tents sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. In Gaza City, an attack on a residential apartment injured many Palestinians, most of them children, according to eyewitnesses.

Deir el-Balah, Gaza – For years, Nuha Abu Lebda dreamed of becoming a mother. But Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has turned that dream into loss, time and time again.

As she was forcibly displaced several times across the Gaza Strip since the war began in October 2023, Abu Lebda lost three pregnancies. She says the losses came after months of air strikes, hunger, fear and living without proper medical care.

“I miscarried because of the air strikes, the displacement, the difficult conditions, the lack of clean water and malnutrition,” she tells Al Jazeera.

After each miscarriage, she hoped she could still become a mother.

“When I lost my baby, I was exhausted. I woke up hoping my baby was still inside me. But the dream I carried for 10 years was gone.”

Abu Lebda sold her gold and almost everything she owned to pay for injections of heparin, a drug prescribed to some women to prevent blood clotting during pregnancy. She hoped the treatment would help her bring her pregnancies to term, but she lost the babies despite it.

“I cried so much because I lost the baby I dreamed of every single day,” she laments.

Even after the fighting slowed, her dream remained the same. “I dream of bringing a baby into this world. I want to be a mother and have children. Every time I see my husband playing with children, I start crying.”

Medical officials in Gaza say they are treating a surge in miscarriages, which they link directly to Israel’s genocidal war and blockade. The trend has worsened as Gaza’s health system has collapsed under bombardments and Israeli ground operations with malnutrition and psychological strain cited as key drivers.

Dr Yasser Saadeddine, the maternity director at al-Awda Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, told Al Jazeera roughly 70 percent of pregnancy losses his team treats are linked to the war and blockade.

‘I lost my daughter during childbirth’

Abu Lebda is one of many women in Gaza who say they have lost pregnancies during the war. They describe miscarriages, premature births and losing newborns while trying to survive bombardments, displacement, hunger and the collapsing healthcare system.

Mai Zaqout tells Al Jazeera she lost her daughter because she could not access the medical care she needed.

“I lost my daughter during childbirth. She had already died inside my womb for a month, but I could not deliver her because the medical resources and support I needed were not available,” she says.

Her loss came shortly after another tragedy. “All of this happened within a very short time after my husband was killed.”

For Sara al-Awad, she had a scare when she was eight months pregnant. She says powerful explosions in Tal al-Hawa, a neighbourhood in Gaza City, caused extreme fear and stress, leading to severe bleeding.

“Because of the fear, anxiety and the power of the explosions, I started bleeding. My placenta had separated.”

Al-Awad says no ambulance could reach her, and she waited for hours before her brother took her to al-Quds Hospital in a wheelchair. “The doctors decided I needed an emergency C-section immediately.”

Her baby, Muhammad, was born weighing only 1.1kg (2.4lb) and was placed in an incubator. But as fighting continued around the hospital, Sara and her family were separated from him.

“My brother had to leave for the south while Muhammad stayed alone in the incubator. We could only check on him through messages from the medical staff,” she says.

After more than a month, al-Awad was finally reunited with her baby. “Thank God, the ceasefire came. … Muhammad left the incubator after 37 days.”

‘I witnessed horrific situations’

Across Gaza, other women have similar stories.

For Iman Badah, the loss was of the child she had waited years for.

“I am a mother who lost my only son. I waited six years to have him. I gave birth prematurely while I was being displaced,” she tells Al Jazeera.

Nuha Salameh was carrying twins during the war. “Fear and trauma caused me to lose them.”

She says doctors told her that, before the war, her babies may have survived.

“The doctor told me that if the situation had been normal, we would have placed them in the incubator, and they would have lived.”

Nidaa Seyam says she experienced her second miscarriage during the war. “I lost a baby girl, and this is the second time I have miscarried.”

She says doctors told her the war conditions affected her pregnancy. “They told me it was because of the psychological stress we are living through and malnutrition.”

She also describes surviving intense bombardment.

“I witnessed horrific situations where I was trapped under air strikes. I inhaled a lot of toxic fumes.”

‘War, blockade, malnutrition, displacement’

Palestinian doctors say these stories are becoming more common.

They report more miscarriages and pregnancy complications linked to hunger, stress, displacement and the lack of medical care.

At al-Awda Hospital, doctors say they have seen a major increase in pregnancy losses.

“During the war, there was a significant increase in miscarriage cases we received,” Saadeddine says.

He says the causes include “the war and the blockade, including malnutrition, poor hygiene, environmental contamination and continuous displacement”.

Doctors say miscarriages are only one part of the crisis. They are also seeing more babies dying in the womb, more premature deliveries and more dangerous pregnancy complications.

Many women lost their homes, medical records and access to regular check-ups during repeated displacements. Hospitals are also struggling with shortages of medicines, equipment and medical staff.

For many mothers, the war has left wounds that continue to hurt even after most of the fighting has stopped. For women in Gaza, the war has not ended with October’s “ceasefire”. It continues with every pregnancy lost, and every dream of motherhood left unfulfilled.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington, DC, and will visit the White House on Tuesday, with the war on Iran topping the agenda.

Netanyahu’s visit is his first for talks with President Donald Trump since the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran with strikes on Tehran on February 28. It also comes amid increasing Israeli raids and arrests in the occupied West Bank and three months before elections in Israel.

He has visited the White House more times under the Trump administration than under any other US president. Political analysts say Netanyahu is seeking Trump’s support for re-election.

What are the two leaders likely to discuss and what happens next in the US-Israel war on Iran?

Here’s what we know:

Why are Trump and Netanyahu meeting now?

Netanyahu is primarily in the US to attend the funeral ceremony of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who died on July 11.

Graham was a close Trump ally in the Senate, both on domestic and international matters, including the war on Iran, as well as a staunch supporter of Israel. His funeral ceremony will take place on Tuesday in Washington, DC, beginning at 2pm (19:00 GMT).

Before attending Graham’s memorial, Netanyahu is also expected to meet Trump at 11am (15:00 GMT) in Washington, DC, where protesters have lined the streets in anticipation of his visit.

He is scheduled to fly back to Israel on Wednesday.

What are Trump and Netanyahu likely to discuss?

A White House official told the Reuters news agency that the two leaders were likely to discuss the war on Iran as well as Israeli strikes and occupation of Lebanon, whose president Trump hosted last week. Israel says it is targeting strongholds of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into its north shortly after the war on Iran began. However, Iran says it will not agree to a peace deal unless Israeli forces withdraw from Lebanon.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said many people in Israel believe the US should not make a deal with Iran and should instead resume the war. He said some in the US support this view.

“Now, Trump has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu and has said several times that he feels the Israeli leader is not seeing the big picture. And sometimes you’re not sure whether both men are on the same page or whether they are diametrically opposed to one another. So it will be interesting to see if we get any readout from either side after that meeting,” he said.

Fisher, however, added that the outcome of the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu is currently not expected to be made public.

The White House official also told Reuters that the two leaders would also discuss the Abraham Accords, the series of agreements between Israel and Arab and other nations which Trump began brokering during his first term as US president to normalise diplomatic relations. So far, only the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and Kazakhstan have agreed to sign.

Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, DC comes amid intensifying pogroms and violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank over the weekend following a deadly shootout in the town of Tal, in which two Israelis and four Palestinians were killed.

Israeli settlers have been making a push to increase the number of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank since 2022, when Netanyahu formed the most far-right government in the country’s history, including ministers who are leading figures in the settler movement.

Expanding the illegal settlements would help Netanyahu garner the far right’s support in the upcoming elections, political observers say.

However, in a letter published on Tuesday, about 600 former Israeli officials appealed to Trump, saying he is the only one capable of helping to avoid the “calamity” of escalating violence in the West Bank and its implications for Israeli, US and regional security.

“Unless arrested swiftly and decisively, escalating violence in the West Bank is poised to ignite the region and carries severe ramifications for both Israeli security and US regional interests,” the letter, written by lobby group Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), stated.

“It is our professional judgment that no one but you, Mr President, can avert this calamity.”

CIS is a movement of more than 550 retired Israeli army colonels and generals, as well as equivalent ranks in the intelligence agency Mossad, the internal security agency Shin Bet, police, the foreign service and other corps.

What do Trump and Netanyahu currently disagree on?

The two leaders once appeared politically inseparable, with Netanyahu describing Trump as the “greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House” last October. Trump returned the praise. During a 2025 appearance in Israel, he joked, “He’s not easy – not the easiest guy to deal with – but that’s what makes him great.”

But Israel’s hostilities with Iran have showcased a crack in Netanyahu and Trump’s alignment.

War on Iran

Last month, Trump reportedly called Netanyahu “f****** crazy” during a phone call and accused him of undermining US diplomatic efforts to end the war on Iran by continuing attacks on Lebanon, among other issues. He warned that Israel’s military escalation risked derailing peace talks with Iran.

“He will have no choice,” Trump told the Financial Times when asked about the likelihood of Netanyahu approving a possible peace agreement with Iran. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots.”

Political observers say the two leaders are each driven by their own political interests, which are on a collision course. In the US, the war with Iran is deeply unpopular, so Trump needs to reach a deal with Iran to end the war. Netanyahu, on the other hand, could benefit politically at home if it were to continue.

‘Regime change’ in Iran

“Regime change” in Iran appears to be a major sticking point between the two leaders.

Alex Vatanka at the Middle East Institute told Al Jazeera that Netanyahu is likely to try and “sell the idea of regime change again in Tehran” when he meets Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

“I don’t think it will go down well with President Trump because he doesn’t want to do that,” Vatanka said. “Politically, in the US, this war is hugely unpopular, so it remains to be seen what Prime Minister Netanyahu gets out of this meeting.”

He added that previous meetings between Trump and Netanyahu in Washington, DC, have often preceded a flare-up in tensions with Iran, and it remains to be seen whether this one breaks that pattern.

Vatanka said Israelis are still unhappy with the Trump administration about the memorandum of understanding agreed with Tehran, because they “have a different sense of threat perception when it comes to Iran”.

Israeli officials will want Netanyahu to continue to press Trump on Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programmes, he said.

“The Trump administration’s counter to that is there is only so much the US can do militarily unless they decide to go in and occupy Iran, and this is something nobody really takes seriously,” he added.

But in a video statement before departing for Washington, DC, Netanyahu said: “In these complex times, you need to act with both great determination and great wisdom. We will discuss all the issues ⁠on the agenda, primarily Iran.”

“Of course, our goal is to protect our security and also to expand the circle of peace around us,” he added.

Lebanon

Israel has also refused to withdraw from Lebanon, insisting that it has the right to bomb the country at any time to respond to “threats”.

According to Axios, in a phone call in early June, Trump told Netanyahu: “Everybody hates you now … everybody hates Israel because of this.”

According to an Israeli official quoted by CNN, Netanyahu told his security cabinet on Sunday that the Trump administration wants Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza but he would oppose the idea.

US-Turkiye aircraft deal

Al Jazeera’s Fisher noted that another point of friction between the two leaders is Washington’s sale of F-35 aircraft to Turkiye.

“Netanyahu doesn’t want that to happen. Trump was asked about it in the last few hours, and he said we will sell to whoever he wants. So it could be a very interesting meeting at the White House on Tuesday,” Fisher said.

In July, in an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu said: “I don’t think they [Turkiye] should be given F-35s or the engines for their fighter jets because that’ll upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority, and also by, I think, by America’s posture in the Middle East.”

So, do Trump and Netanyahu agree on anything?

Currently, there are frictions between the two leaders’ policies towards the June 17 MoU between the US and Iran that made provision for a regional ceasefire, including in Lebanon.

In February, a White House official told reporters that the Trump administration also opposes any Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu has, however, brushed off frictions with Trump and said their ties are “fine”.

In an interview with Fox News in early July, Netanyahu heaped praise on the US and Trump.

“America has been a tremendous force for good, and without America, there won’t be any democracy in the world, and there won’t be any freedom in the world,” he said.

Netanyahu said there may be some differences between the US and Israel, but the two countries are “model allies”.

“My relationship with the president is fine, and we have a way of ironing out our differences as allies who respect each other,” he said, adding that he would smooth things over.

But an Israeli official told CNN on Monday that it had taken time to schedule the meeting with Trump, and that Netanyahu got confirmation only once Graham’s funeral had been announced.

Speaking to reporters about the war on Iran on board Air Force One while travelling to Michigan on Monday, Trump said Israel “needs the US”.

“You know who wouldn’t survive without us? Israel. Bibi’s coming, he’ll tell you,” he said.

“If I didn’t get involved, and I didn’t blow up those nuclear, essentially, soon-to-be nuclear weapons to dust, Israel would have been terminated months ago.”

Trump added that he and Netanyahu remain “pretty close”.

What happens next?

Amid frictions, it is unclear whether the meeting will end with Israel and the US continuing their war on Iran and Israel continuing its attacks on southern Lebanon, Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.

Therefore, it is going to be a high-stakes meeting for Netanyahu.

Sources have also told Reuters that Netanyahu would use the meeting to lobby for Trump’s support for his re-election campaign ahead of an October 27 vote.

A meeting with Trump will, he hopes, showcase what has traditionally been ⁠a close relationship between the two leaders and could help Netanyahu at home, where he is struggling in opinion polls.

Months after the United Nations Security Council backed a comprehensive framework to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Israel’s security cabinet has approved a highly constrained pilot project to allow foreign security forces into a narrow pocket of the devastated territory.

Israeli media reported on Sunday that the so-called International Stabilization Force (ISF), part of United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point “peace plan”, will include 200 members from countries such as Morocco and Uganda deploying to a designated “test” zone in the southern city of Rafah.

While international officials have welcomed the move, analysts describe the limited deployment as a calculated diplomatic gesture with little practical effect that comes as the US-backed peace process has largely stalled and as Israel’s deadly attacks continue.

Instead of a genuine transition towards peace, they argue, the move is a political manoeuvre designed to deflect US pressure ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week, while simultaneously entrenching the geographic fragmentation of the Gaza Strip.

“Netanyahu is going to Washington to say ‘no’ to the broader demands of withdrawal” from the Strip, says Wissam Afifa, a Gaza-based political analyst. “Instead, he is offering this alternative: ‘Take this small appetiser, take this minor achievement, and play within this highly restricted space.’”

Scaled-back forces and ‘rubber batons’

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the original plan anticipated the deployment of 500 Moroccan troops to a refugee camp in the city. The drastic reduction to just 200 troops may indicate that Israel’s political-security cabinet has decided to divide the deployment into even smaller, heavily controlled stages.

The force will operate in full coordination with the Israeli military. According to the Israeli news outlet Ynet, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was the sole cabinet member to vote against the measure, arguing that the Palestinian group Hamas had failed to fulfill its commitment to disarm and insisting that “the solution in Gaza is to encourage migration”.

Israeli media also reported that the government maintains that the Israeli military will retain control of the “Yellow Line” – a unilaterally imposed boundary that effectively places up to 70 percent of the Gaza Strip under tight Israeli control – and that no withdrawal will take place until Hamas has fully disarmed.

The original framework endorsed by UNSC Resolution 2803 called for the deployment of an international force alongside a transitional Palestinian administration.

Earlier this month, Hamas announced it would dissolve its government in Gaza and hand over power to a new, Palestinian technocratic governing authority called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).

Analysts said Hamas’s move was likely designed to apply pressure on Israel and demonstrate the group’s commitment to handing over governance and allowing the rebuilding of the territory.

The pilot programme also envisions the NCAG’s entry to oversee civil affairs in Gaza. Yet, according to Haaretz, the Palestinian police accompanying them will be stripped of firearms, permitted to carry only “rubber batons and tasers”.

Meanwhile, preparations on the ground appear to be moving forward to accommodate this new security architecture. Israeli Army Radio recently broadcast a video showing a military base under construction in the southern “Gaza envelope” near the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing.

The station reported that the sprawling facility is being built specifically to host the incoming multinational forces before their deployment.

Despite the severe Israeli restrictions, Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the Board of Peace, welcomed the Israeli cabinet’s decision, praising it as a “critical part of the agreed framework for stabilizing Gaza, supporting demilitarization, and enabling the transition to effective Palestinian transitional administration”.

A ‘sweetener’ for Washington

To understand the timing and motivation behind the decision, experts pointed to the diplomatic deadlock surrounding the US-brokered peace initiative. Trump’s plan envisioned a phased approach, bridged by the handover of Gaza to a technocratic committee. However, this framework has been stalled by Israel’s refusal to link a ceasefire to the broader political situation and its rejection of a phased withdrawal.

Afifa said the “failure” of the US administration’s flagship initiative had left it “embarrassed” as the project that was repeatedly highlighted by Trump “as a great achievement, resulted in zero”.

With Netanyahu heading to Washington, the Israeli prime minister desperately needed a deliverable, said Afifa. The cabinet’s decision, passed hastily via a telephone vote during a Knesset recess to avoid internal coalition fractures, provides exactly that, he added.

Mamoun Abu Amer, an expert on Israeli affairs, echoed this assessment. He viewed the rushed cabinet vote as an attempt to preempt US pressure and present an image of compliance to Trump, while fundamentally altering the agreement’s core terms to suit Israel’s long-term security strategy.

Abu Amer also said that Israel has effectively turned Resolution 2803 upside down through selective and highly conditional implementation.

“This is an inverted process,” said Abu Amer. The original text implied that the NCAG would enter Gaza, the ISF would deploy and the Israeli military would withdraw to new lines to allow for stabilisation. Instead, Israel is demanding unilateral disarmament first, while keeping the technocratic committee besieged within an Israeli security envelope.

Abu Amer also suggested the requirement for the Palestinian police force to only carry rubber batons and tasers reflects a premeditated Israeli strategy to strip the Palestinian administration of genuine law enforcement capabilities, reducing them to subcontractors managing municipal decay in a thoroughly devastated environment under a strict military occupation.

The NCAG itself appeared to reject this Israeli paradigm. In a recent statement, the committee declared it would only assume responsibility for Gaza after UNSC approval of the force’s deployment and, crucially, a full Israeli military withdrawal.

‘False witnesses’

The spatial realities of the Israeli plan reveal a strategy of deep fragmentation and long-term control, experts said, pointing to the cabinet’s decision to explicitly restrict the ISF and the technocrats to operating strictly outside the “Yellow Line”.

Afifa warned that transforming a small pocket of Rafah into an “experimental bubble” subverts the idea of Gaza as a single, contiguous territorial entity.

“This raises a massive question about the fate of two million people,” he said. “If this entire project is reduced to a few thousand individuals selected under Israeli criteria, it means a tacit agreement from the international community to leave two million Gazans hostage to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis while Israel claims to be implementing a peace plan.”

This also carries significant diplomatic risks for the participating nations. Israeli media reported the cabinet’s decision stipulated that ISF contributors must be nations that have peace agreements with Israel and do not pursue legal actions against it in international forums.

“It is not wise for an Arab country like Morocco to be a party to helping Netanyahu implement his political agenda,” said Abu Amer, urging participating nations to reject the altered Israeli formula and insist on a comprehensive withdrawal.

Failing to do so, he cautioned, would reduce foreign troops to mere security buffers, acting as “false witnesses” to the continuation of the occupation and the destruction of the Palestinian society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

International condemnation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Germany has approved almost 800 million euros ($913m) in arms export licences to Israel in the first five months of 2026, more than in the previous 20 months combined, the government in Berlin has confirmed.

According to a Federal Foreign Office reply to a parliamentary question by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, nearly all the approvals were cleared in April and May.

The approvals portend a dramatic surge in weapons exports to Israel from one of the country’s most steadfast allies in Europe despite the German government’s insistence that it is concerned about the devastation wrought by Israel’s military in Gaza.

The big spend

The government said more than 60 percent of the value of the arms licences is earmarked for a single, unnamed “major maritime project”.

The most likely candidate, analysts said, is a submarine built by the German manufacturer TKMS.

The INS Drakon, a nuclear-capable Dolphin II-class submarine, underwent its maiden voyage last year at a shipyard in Kiel on the Baltic Sea. Its estimated value is 480 million euros ($548m). It was officially handed over to the Israeli Navy last week, according to German media reports.

According to several reports, it could feature a vertical launching system (VLS), enabling it to launch nuclear-tipped cruise missiles or ballistic missiles. Israel would become only the second navy after South Korea known to field a VLS on a modern, air-independent propulsion (AIP), conventionally powered submarine.

During its sea trials, the submarine’s tower was covered with tarpaulins and fibreglass plates to prevent observers from determining its weapons configuration. Strategically, submarines of this class could provide a sea-based second-strike capability – the ability of a country to fire back nuclear weapons after it has itself faced a nuclear attack.

In May, TKMS signed a memorandum of understanding on future collaboration with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private defence contractor.

The German Foreign Office and Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, under whose purview arms export licences fall, both declined to comment on the matter.

Max Mutschler, a senior researcher with the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, told Al Jazeera: “Unfortunately, the fact that the federal government does not explicitly mention this is also typical of the lack of transparency surrounding arms exports.”

Last year, reports conflicted over whether the export licence for the submarine had been granted. The order dates back to 2012. While TKMS indicated approval, the German government denied it at the time.

Germany’s shifting positions

The hesitation might have stemmed from legal concerns surrounding proceedings against Germany at the International Court of Justice in The Hague as well as shifting public opinion in Germany, which has largely turned against arms exports to Israel. According to media reports, Germany is helping finance about 30 percent of the costs for the Drakon and roughly one-third of those for the future Dakar class.

This month, TKMS was also selected by Canada as the preferred bidder to build up to 12 submarines in what would be the largest order in TKMS’s history. The value of the vessels alone is estimated at 12 billion euros ($13.7bn) to 18 billion euros ($21bn).

For years, submarine deals with Germany have been under investigation by the Israeli judiciary over bribery allegations involving close associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ruth Rohde from the British research organisation Shadow World Investigations told Al Jazeera: “Israel has used German ships to fire at Gaza, to blockade and starve Gaza, and is using submarines to station nuclear weapons. At a time when Israel is waging brutal wars on its neighbours and is committing a genocide in Gaza, this submarine export would give Israel another tool in its arsenal of mass destruction.”

Berlin’s arms export policy towards Israel has been marked by reversals. In early August, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Germany would issue no further licences for military equipment that could be used by Israel in the Gaza Strip. By that time, an Al Jazeera investigation had shown that Germany had already exported almost $12m worth of weapons consignments to Israel since October 2023 when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

And the partial suspension proved short-lived: In November, the government lifted the restrictions and returned to reviewing export applications on a case-by-case basis. Even during the suspension, previously approved deliveries continued. In September, for instance, a $794,000 weapons consignment from Germany landed at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.

Mutschler told Al Jazeera that some people in government “found the export of certain weapons to Israel problematic in light of numerous and credible reports of Israeli war crimes during the military operation in Gaza”. However, it was not enough to “bring about a generally restrictive arms export policy toward Israel”.

The economic calculation

Germany is one of the world’s largest arms exporters. In the first six months of 2026, licences were granted for arms worth 13.87 billion euros ($15.8bn), according to the Arms Export Report of the Ministry of Economics, published in mid-July. That is more than four times as much as during the same period in 2025. Ukraine remains the primary recipient of German arms exports.

Mutschler explained: “Arms exports have been and continue to be viewed by most federal governments primarily from an economic perspective and welcomed as a means of strengthening the defence industry.” He added: “The fact that these arms shipments can also be used to commit war crimes seems to play a significantly smaller role in the decision-making process.”

As a crisis in Germany’s economy – whose strength has relied primarily on exports, particularly in the car industry – has intensified, its defence industry has boomed in recent years. This development was publicly attributed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine although plans for increased defence spending had already been prepared beforehand, according to reports.

Pieter D Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, sees this as a general trend. He told Al Jazeera: “The demand for arms in Europe has increased dramatically over the past few years whereas the demand for arms in many other parts of the world does not seem to be decreasing or is likely to increase.”

The German market remains very important to the country’s arms industry as Germany is set to double its military spending from well below 2 percent of it gross domestic product to a stated goal of 3.5 percent of its GDP within a few years, Wezeman explained. “Germany is now the largest military spender in Europe [not counting Russia], and its arms industry is a core component of the European military-industrial base.”