Israel

Knockback deals potential blow to US diplomat Thomas Barrack’s efforts to press on with ‘go-forward plan’ for Israel-Lebanon peace.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem appeared to dismiss a proposal that his group disarm, as presented by the United States to Lebanon’s leadership last month.

Qassem argued on Friday that the Israeli army would expand in Lebanon if there was no “resistance” in the country.

“We will not surrender or give up to Israel; Israel will not take our weapons away from us,” he said in a video message.

Qassem’s comments dealt a potential blow to US diplomat Thomas Barrack’s efforts last month to secure a deal between Lebanon and Israel that would involve disarmament of the Lebanese armed group.

Barrack, Washington’s ambassador to Turkiye and special envoy to Syria, had declared he was “unbelievably satisfied” earlier this month after receiving a response to his proposals from the Lebanese authorities, adding that a “go-forward plan” was in the works.

Lebanese leaders who took office after more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah have promised a state monopoly on bearing arms, while demanding Israel adhere to a ceasefire with the group reached last November.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in an interview with Al Jadeed TV on Friday that fear of Israeli escalation was warranted, but that the US proposal was an “opportunity” that could lead to Israel’s withdrawal.

Salam acknowledged Hezbollah’s weapons played a leading role in liberating South Lebanon from Israel in 2000, but insisted that they must now be under the command of the Lebanese state.

Qassem, however, said Lebanon is facing an existential danger that should be prioritised over the issue of giving the state monopoly over using weapons.

“After we address that danger, we are ready to discuss a defence strategy or a national security strategy,” he said.

Hezbollah claims the Lebanese armed forces have failed to confront Israeli abuses since Israel’s inception in 1948.

‘Ready for a defensive confrontation’

Under the ceasefire, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani River, some 30km (18 miles) from the Israeli frontier.

Israel was to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, but has kept them deployed in five areas that it deemed strategic and has breached the ceasefire on a near-daily basis with deadly strikes.

Israel dealt Hezbollah significant blows in last year’s war, assassinating its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with other commanders and destroying much of its arsenal.

Qassem appeared to acknowledge that Hezbollah was not in a position to hit back or attack Israeli troops occupying parts of South Lebanon.

But he said the group would not disarm under the threat of a renewed all-out war.

“We are proceeding, prepared and ready for a defensive confrontation,” the Hezbollah chief said.

Washington, DC – New media reports in the United States, citing intelligence assessments, have cast doubt over President Donald Trump’s assertion that Washington’s military strikes last month “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme.

The Washington Post and NBC News reported that US officials were saying that only one of the three Iranian nuclear sites – the Fordow facility – targeted by the US has been destroyed.

The Post’s report, released on Friday, also raised questions on whether the centrifuges used to enrich uranium at the deepest level of Fordow were destroyed or moved before the attack.

“We definitely can’t say it was obliterated,” an unidentified official told the newspaper, referring to Iran’s nuclear programme.

Trump has insisted that the US strikes were a “spectacular” success, lashing out at any reports questioning the level of damage they inflicted on Iran’s nuclear programme.

An initial US intelligence assessment, leaked to several media outlets after the attack last month, said the strikes failed to destroy key components of Iran’s nuclear programme and only delayed its work by months.

But the Pentagon said earlier in July that the attacks degraded the Iranian programme by one to two years.

While the strikes on Fordow – initially thought to be the most guarded facility, buried inside a mountain – initially took centre stage, the NBC News and Washington Post reports suggested that the facilities in Natanz and Isfahan also had deep tunnels.

‘Impenetrable’

The US military did not use enormous bunker-busting bombs against the Isfahan site and targeted surface infrastructure instead.

A congressional aide familiar with intelligence briefings told the Post that the Pentagon had assessed that the underground facilities at Isfahan were “pretty much impenetrable”.

The Pentagon responded to both reports by reiterating that all three sites were “completely and totally obliterated”.

Israel, which started the war by attacking Iran without direct provocation last month, has backed the US administration’s assessment, while threatening further strikes against Tehran if it resumes its nuclear programme.

For its part, Tehran has not provided details about the state of its nuclear sites.

Some Iranian officials have said that the facilities sustained significant damage from US and Israeli attacks. But Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said after the war that Trump had “exaggerated” the impact of the strikes.

The location and state of Iran’s highly enriched uranium also remain unknown.

Iran’s nuclear agency and regulators in neighbouring states have said they did not detect a spike in radioactivity after the bombings, suggesting the strikes did not result in uranium contamination.

But Rafael Grossi, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, did not rule out that the uranium containers may have been damaged in the attacks.

“We don’t know where this material could be or if part of it could have been under the attack during those 12 days,” Grossi told CBS News last month.

According to Grossi, Iran could resume uranium enrichment in a “matter of months”.

The war

Israel launched a massive attack against Iran on June 13, killing several top military officials, as well as nuclear scientists.

The bombing campaign targeted military sites, civilian infrastructure and residential buildings across the country, killing hundreds of civilians.

Iran responded with barrages of missiles against Israel that left widespread destruction and claimed the lives of at least 29 people.

The US joined the Israeli campaign on June 22, striking the three nuclear sites. Iran retaliated with a missile attack against an air base housing US troops in Qatar.

Initially, Trump said the Iranian attack was thwarted, but after satellite images showed damage at the base, the Pentagon acknowledged that one of the missiles was not intercepted.

“One Iranian ballistic missile impacted Al Udeid Air Base June 23 while the remainder of the missiles were intercepted by US and Qatari air defence systems,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told Al Jazeera in an email last week.

“The impact did minimal damage to equipment and structures on the base. There were no injuries.”

After a ceasefire was reached to end the 12-day war, both the US and Iran expressed willingness to engage in diplomacy to resolve the nuclear file. But talks have not materialised.

Iran and the US were periodically holding nuclear talks before Israel launched its war in June.

EU-Iran talks

During his first term in 2018, Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The agreement saw Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for lifting international sanctions against its economy.

In recent days, European officials have suggested that they could impose “snap-back” sanctions against Iran as part of the deal that has long been violated by the US.

Tehran, which started enriching uranium beyond the limits set by the JCPOA after the US withdrawal, insists that Washington was the party that nixed the agreement, stressing that the deal acknowledges Iran’s enrichment rights.

I had a joint teleconference with E3 FMs & EU HR last night, in which I made the following points clear:

It was the US that withdrew from a two-year negotiated deal -coordinated by EU in 2015- not Iran; and it was US that left the negotiation table in June this year and chose a… pic.twitter.com/NFQdK2HZD4

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) July 18, 2025

On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he held talks with the top diplomats of France, the United Kingdom and Germany – known as the E3 – as well as the European Union’s high representative.

Araghchi said Europeans should put aside “worn-out policies of threat and pressure”.

“It was the US that withdrew from a two-year negotiated deal – coordinated by EU in 2015 – not Iran; and it was US that left the negotiation table in June this year and chose a military option instead, not Iran,” the Iranian foreign minister said in a social media post.

“Any new round of talks is only possible when the other side is ready for a fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial nuclear deal.”

Tehran denies seeking a nuclear bomb. Israel, meanwhile, is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal.

It has been painfully obvious, ever since the presidential election last November, that the Democratic Party’s brand is in tatters.

This week, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed that congressional Democrats have a minuscule 19% approval rating — an all-time low in the history of that particular poll. Earlier in the week, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll similarly found that the party as a whole has an approval rating of 40% — considerably lower than the Republican Party’s 48% approval rating found by the same poll. Nor can Democrats necessarily rely on any GOP infighting to redound, in seesaw-like fashion, to their own benefit; for all the sturm und drang generated by the “Epstein files” affair, President Trump’s approval ratings have actually increased among Republicans this month.

The issue for Democrats is that their current unpopularity is not a byproduct of the political scandals of the day or the vicissitudes of Trump’s polarizing social media feeds. Rather, the problem for Democrats is structural — and it requires a rethink and a reboot from soup to nuts. As this column argued last November, it is clear that Barack Obama’s winning 2008 political coalition — comprising racial and ethnic minorities, young people and highly educated white voters — has completely withered. “Obamaism” is dead — and Democrats have to reconcile themselves to that demise. At minimum, they should stop taking advice from Obama himself; the 44th president was Kamala Harris’ top 2024 campaign trail surrogate, and we saw how that worked out.

In order for the party to rise up anew, as has often happened throughout American history following a period of dominance from a partisan rival, Democrats are going to have to move beyond their intersectional obsessions and woke grievances that have so greatly alienated large swaths of the American people on issues pertaining to race, gender, immigration, and crime and public safety. And the good news, for conservative Americans who candidly wish the Democratic Party nothing but the worst, is that Democrats seem completely incapable of doing this.

Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old recent winner of New York City’s much-discussed Democratic mayoral primary, is a case in point.

The Ugandan-born Shiite Muslim Mamdani is a democratic socialist, but he is better understood as a full-fledged communist. That isn’t hyperbole: One merely needs to consider his proposed policies for New York City and review his broader history of extreme far-left political rhetoric. Mamdani won the primary, and is now seeking the mayor’s office, on a genuinely radical platform: support for citywide “free” bus rides, city-owned grocery stores, a full rent freeze on certain low-income units, outright seizure of private property from arbitrarily “bad” landlords, race-based taxation (an assuredly unconstitutional proposal), a $30 minimum wage and more. A true Marxist, Mamdani has said “abolition of private property” would be an improvement over existing inequality. And he has something of a penchant for quoting Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” too.

But Mamdani’s communism is only part of his overall political persona. He also emphasizes, and trades in, exactly the sort of woke culture warring and intersectional identity politics that have defined the post-Obama Democratic Party. Mamdani is a long-standing harsh critic of Israel who had declined to distance himself from the antisemitic rallying cry “globalize the intifada.” Most recently, he also opposed Trump’s decision to have the U.S. intervene in last month’s Israel-Iran war, condemning it as a “new, dark chapter” that could “plunge the world deeper into chaos.” (In the real world, there were zero American casualties, and the bombing run was followed promptly by a ceasefire.)

There is, to be sure, nothing good down this road for denizens of New York City. If Mamdani wins this fall, expect a massive exodus of people, businesses and capital from the Big Apple — probably to the Sun Belt. But even more relevant: There is nothing good down that road for the national Democratic Party, as a whole. In order to demonstrate that the party has learned anything from its 2024 shellacking and its current abysmal standing, it will have to sound and act less crazy on the tangible issues that affect Americans’ day-to-day lives.

That isn’t happening. If Mamdani’s rise is representative — and it may well be, especially as other far-left firebrands like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) continue to make outsize noise — then Democrats seem to be moving in the exact opposite direction: full-on Marxism and woke craziness. If the party continues down this path, it will experience nothing but mid- to long-term political pain. But as one of the aforementioned conservatives who wishes the Democratic Party nothing but the worst, I’m not too upset about that.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

As fighting continues between factions in southern Syria and the country’s army faces threats from Israel if it intervenes, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr says Israel’s posture poses a major challenge to the Syrian government.

At least 26 Palestinians have been killed since dawn across Gaza in Israeli attacks, medical sources have told Al Jazeera, as the besieged and bombarded enclave’s decimated health system, overwhelmed by a daily flow of wounded, is forcing doctors to make decisions on who to treat first.

In the latest killings on Friday, three people died in an Israeli attack on the Tuffah neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City. Five people were also killed in an Israeli air attack in Jabalia an-Nazla, in northern Gaza.

Earlier, an Israeli attack hit tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi, southern Gaza – previously designated a so-called “safe zone” – igniting a major fire and killing at least five people, including infants. Al-Mawasi has come under repeated, deadly Israeli fire.

The death toll also includes includes six people who were desperately seeking aid.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud said the injured, including children, were transferred to Nasser Hospital. Some showed wounds compatible with drone attacks.

“Drone missiles are packed with nails, metals and shrapnel that explodes at high speed, causing internal bleeding,” Mahmoud said. “These attacks are on the rise and target people in large crowds, in markets or while queueing for water.

“While Israel claims to be using sophisticated weapons, when we look on the ground, we see the number of casualties contradicting what Israel is [saying],” he added.

‘What should we do? Die at home?’

Israel’s ongoing, punishing blockade of Gaza is forcing doctors in crammed medical facilities to make difficult decisions about who to treat.

Patients with chronic illnesses are often the first to miss out because emergency departments are overwhelmed by people wounded in Israeli attacks.

“Before the war, I used to receive dialysis three times a week, with each session lasting four hours. At that time, the situation was stable, the treatment was effective, and we would return home feeling well and rested,” Omda Dagmash, a dialysis patient, told Al Jazeera at the barely functioning al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

“Now we can barely make the journey to the hospital, particularly since we are not eating well.”

At al-Shifa, the dialysis schedule has been scaled down to shorter and less frequent sessions. For some, it is a matter of life and death.

“The journey here is long and costly,” said Rowaida Minyawi, an elderly patient. “After all this exhaustion, we sometimes can’t find treatment. I have heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Even the medicine we get is not good. What should we do? Die at home?”

Besides prioritising patients, healthcare workers say they have to scale back operations to the minimum, as no fuel means no power – and no way to save lives.

“Only a few departments are working. We had to cut electricity to the rest,” said Ziad Abu Humaidan, from the hospital’s engineering department.

“The hospital’s yards turned into graveyards rather than a place of care and healing. Without electricity, there is no lighting, no functioning medical equipment, and no support for other essential services.”

Waning support in Israel for war

According to a public opinion survey conducted by the Israeli news outlet Maariv, about 44 percent of the Israeli public said the continued war in Gaza will not achieve the country’s goals.

A total of 42 percent of those surveyed said they believe the fighting will lead to achieving the goals, while 11 percent of the respondents said they are undecided.

Maariv also noted that of those who support the current coalition government, 73 percent think the military will achieve its goals, while 70 percent of opposition supporters think otherwise.

In the meantime, Israel faced a rare backlash on Thursday after it bombed Gaza’s only Catholic church, killing three people and wounding at least 10.

United States President Donald Trump contacted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after having “not a positive reaction” to the strike, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

After the call, Netanyahu attributed the strike to “stray ammunition” and added that Israel was investigating the incident.

Hamas slammed the attack as “a new crime committed against places of worship and innocent displaced persons” that comes in the context of a “war of extermination against the Palestinian people”.

Syrian security forces are preparing to redeploy to Suwayda to quell fighting between the Druze and Bedouin tribes, the Syrian Interior Ministry spokesperson has said.

Israel has previously warned the Syrian government to withdraw from the south and its forces carried out an attack Friday on Syria’s Palmyra-Homs highway, targeting a convoy of Bedouin fighters who were reportedly making their way towards restive Suwayda in the south of the country, according to Israel’s public broadcaster Kan News.

This comes just two days after Israel carried out heavy attacks on Damascus.

Bedouin fighters in Syria said they launched a new offensive against Druze fighters late on Thursday, despite the withdrawal of Syrian government forces from the southwestern province of Suwayda, and an attempt by the Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to draw a line under a recent eruption of deadly violence that killed hundreds.

A Bedouin military commander told the Reuters news agency that the truce only applied to government forces and not to them, adding that the fighters were seeking to free Bedouins whom Druze armed groups had detained in recent days.

Bedouin fighters have managed to reach the Suwayda area in the last few hours, the Kan report said, confirming earlier reports from Arabic-language news media.

Syria’s leadership has condemned Israel’s attacks as a violation of its sovereignty amid attempts to cement a ceasefire between Bedouin and Druze fighters.

Israel has justified its latest bombing of Syria under the pretext that it is protecting the Druze minority. But the country has more self-serving reasons.

Israel has long attacked Syria, even before the latest outbreak of violence involving the Druze in Suwayda.

Since the removal of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad after a devastating 14-year war, Israel has struck Syria hundreds of times and invaded and occupied about 400sq km (155sq miles) of its territory, excluding the western Golan Heights, which it has occupied since 1967.

Leading analysts within Israel suggest that these latest attacks may not have been entirely motivated by concern for the welfare of the Druze, so much as the personal and political aims of the Israeli government and its embattled prime minister.

The latest reports of violence come despite a ceasefire agreed on Wednesday, after Israel had conducted its own attacks on Syria, striking the Ministry of Defence and near the presidential palace in Damascus.

Al-Sharaa said in a televised speech on Thursday that protecting the country’s Druze citizens and their rights was a priority as he announced that local leaders would take control of security in Suwayda in a bid to end sectarian violence in the south and stop Israel from attacking.

Sheikh Hikmat Al Hijri, one of the spiritual leaders of the Syrian Druze community said, ” We are not sectarian, and we have never wanted to cause division. We hold full responsibility for anyone who tampers with security and stability. We affirm that whoever engages in sabotage or incitement represents only himself, and we reject that his actions be attributed to any sect or region.”

Condemnation from Qatar, Turkiye; US ‘did not support Israeli strikes’

In the meantime, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has condemned Israel’s days of attacks on Syria in a phone conversation with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The emir described Israel’s bombing of Syria as a “flagrant violation” of the country’s sovereignty, international law, the United Nations Charter, “and a threat to regional stability”, according to a statement from Sheikh Tamim’s office on Friday.

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that Turkiye would not allow Syria to be divided or its multicultural structure and territorial integrity harmed, after Israel’s actions sought to “sabotage” a ceasefire in the country.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian leader al-Sharaa discussed Israel’s attacks on Damascus in a phone call on Thursday, the presidency said, adding Erdogan had voiced support for Damascus.

Turkiye played a crucial role in securing a ceasefire in Syria following Israeli air attacks on Damascus. Turkish intelligence officials held talks with Syria’s Druze leader, a Turkish security source said on Thursday.

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce has said the United States condemns violence in Syria and called on the Syrian government to lead the path forward.

“We are engaging diplomatically with Israel and Syria at the highest levels, both to address the present crisis and reach a lasting agreement between the two sovereign states,” she said on Thursday.

Bruce continued that “regarding Israel’s intervention and activity” in Syria, the US “did not support recent Israeli strikes”.

It was unclear if Bruce’s comments referred to just US logistical support for the Israeli military’s attacks against Syria.

Israel has attacked Syrian government forces in a wave of deadly air strikes, at the same time as violence has gripped the southern province of Suwayda. In the spotlight is Syria’s Druze minority, also present in Israel. What does the fighting spell for Syria’s future?

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – Eighteen-year-old Hani Hammad never imagined that his daily search for flour would end with him suffocating and being trampled.

On Wednesday morning, he left his tent in the al-Mawasi area of southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, where he’s been displaced from Rafah along with his seven siblings, heading to a food distribution point run by the much-criticised, United States-backed GHF.

“We left at dawn and stood among the thousands gathered. About 5am [02:00 GMT], they [US staff and Israeli army] signalled to open the gate, and people rushed forward,” Hani told Al Jazeera.

“The gate was open, but people were packed into a very narrow corridor leading to it – only about seven metres wide,” he said, struggling to catch his breath after arriving at Nasser Hospital gasping and barely conscious.

“I got in with the crowd with difficulty. Suddenly, American guards started spraying pepper spray and firing gas bombs, and people began stampeding through the corridor,” he added.

‘I collapsed. They trampled my face.’

“I felt like I was dying. I couldn’t move forward or backwards. I collapsed. My face and side were trampled. No one could pull me out. But God gave me a second chance,” Hani said.

He was rushed unconscious to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on a tuk-tuk and initially placed beside the bodies of others who had died, some from suffocation, others from bullet wounds.

“I was unconscious, couldn’t see or hear. I drifted in and out. They put me beside the dead. I thought I was one of them.”

Early Wednesday, 21 Palestinians were killed, including 15 by suffocation, while trying to collect food aid.

The incident occurred near a gate managed by the GHF in western Khan Younis. Dozens more were reportedly injured, with some still in intensive care.

Hani is the oldest of eight siblings who live next to their uncle’s tent – their parents remain in Jordan, where they travelled for medical treatment just a month before the war began.

“I feel like I carry a huge burden. We’ve endured the pressures of displacement and war without our parents and without any help from them,” he said.

Though he acknowledges that lining up for aid from the GHF is a major daily risk, he adds: “Our intense hunger pushes me to go every day.”

“There’s no other choice. I have no money to buy the overpriced goods available in the markets. My only option is to try my luck with aid distributions,” says the young man.

“Each time is a near-death experience. There’s gunfire, tanks, drones and attacks. What kind of aid distribution is this? We are exhausted, truly exhausted.”

“We’re shot at like animals”

Mohammed Abedin, 24, now lies in a hospital bed with a leg wound after heading to the same aid centre in Khan Younis early Wednesday.

For the first time, he says, he chose to turn back after sensing the danger of the crowd surge.

The young man, a first-year accounting student, arrived about 3am (00:00 GMT) at the distribution site, but he noticed that things looked different. The same site had been closed for two days before reopening.

“Before, we used to enter from several access points, and the entryway was wide. But this time, we were funnelled through one long, narrow corridor, fenced in with metal,” he says.

“When the gates opened, everyone rushed forward, and people began falling underfoot.”

Mohammed described a terrifying scene of people crushed against the metal barriers, screaming and gasping for help, as pepper spray and gas bombs were fired by American guards and quadcopters above.

“I was standing close to my cousin, watching. We decided not to go in because of the overwhelming numbers. I saw kids screaming, choking, men and youth trapped. No one could move forward or back.”

“The fenced corridor, with gas bombs raining down and people being pushed through, became a death trap,” he says.

Mohammed and his cousin tried to leave, but just as he thought he had made a wise choice, a quadcoptor shot him in the leg. His cousin was also injured.

“There’s always random gunfire from quadcaptors, tanks, or soldiers in the area. This time, I was the unlucky one,” he said. “But thank God, I survived.”

Mohammed reflects on the tragic situation faced by Palestinians, caught between starvation and death, forced to risk their lives for food. He supports his displaced family of nine, originally from Rafah and now sheltering in al-Mawasi.

“We dream daily of eating bread. I go for aid almost every day and usually return empty-handed. But the days I brought home just a few kilos of flour felt like ‘an eid’ [a celebration] for my family.”

Flour is the top priority for Mohammed, especially with Gaza being under siege for four months, the borders sealed, and humanitarian and commercial goods blocked by Israel.

“Bread is what drives me to risk death. There’s no alternative,” he said, awaiting surgery at Nasser Hospital to remove a bullet from his leg. “Has the world failed to provide a safe channel for aid delivery?”

“There’s no system, no organised relief, no police or UN intervention. We’re shot at like animals. If we don’t die of hunger, we die in the chaos and stampedes.”

In late May 2025, the GHF launched its aid distribution efforts in Gaza following an Israeli-imposed near-total blockade, which is still in effect and has prevented the entry of humanitarian supplies.

According to United Nations figures, at least 798 Palestinians have been killed since then while trying to reach or receive aid from the organisation’s distribution points.

Widespread criticism has emerged from UN agencies and rights organisations that argue the operation is politicised and endangers civilians. The UN has stated that the GHF’s operations violate humanitarian neutrality and are inherently unsafe, highlighted by the hundreds of deaths at their sites.

“Either we return with flour, or we don’t return at all”

Ziad Masad Mansour, 43, displaced with his wife and six children from central Gaza to al-Mawasi in Khan Younis after their home was destroyed in the war, is another frequent visitor to the aid lines.

“I head there at 10 at night and sleep on the sand like thousands of others. We endure the dust and humiliation,” said Mansour, who was wounded in the head on Wednesday.

“Sometimes I manage to get flour, sometimes a few cans. Other times, I return empty-handed. I even help others carry their bags in exchange for some food.”

“Yesterday, there was horrific crowding: gas bombs, bullets, and we were packed tightly in the narrow corridor. I was trying to escape the crush when I got shot in the head and lost consciousness.”

Mansour is now recovering at Nasser Hospital. “More than 20 people died today – for a bag of flour. What more is there to say?”

Washington, DC – The family of Sayfollah Musallet, the United States citizen who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank last week, is calling for justice.

Musallet’s relatives want Washington to launch its own investigation into the incident to ensure accountability.

The Florida-born 20-year-old is the ninth US citizen to be killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers since 2022. None of the previous cases have led to criminal charges or US sanctions against the perpetrators.

That lack of response is what advocates call a “pattern of impunity”, wherein Washington demands a probe without placing any significant pressure on Israel to produce results.

In Musallet’s case, the administration of President Donald Trump urged Israel to “aggressively” investigate the killing.

“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, said in a statement on Tuesday.

It is not clear if the US has taken any further actions to seek justice in the aftermath of the fatal beating.

Critics say the “pattern of impunity” stems in part from the historically close bonds between the US and Israel. Successive presidential administrations in the US have affirmed their “unwavering” support for Israel, and the US provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually.

Here, Al Jazeera looks at who the eight other victims were, how the US has responded to their killing and where their cases stand.

Omar Assad

Assad, a 78-year-old Palestinian American, was driving home in the occupied West Bank after visiting friends on January 12, 2022, when Israeli soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint.

According to the autopsy report and his family’s account, the troops dragged Assad out of his car and then handcuffed, gagged and blindfolded him, leaving him to die at a cold construction site.

The administration of then-President Joe Biden called on Israel to launch a criminal investigation into the incident.

But Assad’s relatives and lawmakers from his home state of Milwaukee wanted Washington to conduct its own probe – a demand that never materialised.

As is often the case, Israel’s investigation into its own soldiers’ conduct did not lead to any criminal charges.

In 2023, the Israeli army said that it found no “causal link” between the way its soldiers treated Assad and his death.

The Biden administration also declined to apply sanctions under US law to the Israeli unit that killed Assad: the Netzah Yehuda, a battalion notorious for its abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Last year, the US Department of State announced that the battalion will still be eligible for US aid under the Leahy Law, which prohibits military assistance for security units involved in human rights violations.

Shireen Abu Akleh

Abu Akleh, a veteran Al Jazeera reporter, was fatally shot by Israeli forces during a raid in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on May 11, 2022.

Owing to her status as one of the most celebrated journalists in the Middle East, her killing sparked international outrage from rights groups and press freedom advocates.

Despite the global attention, Israeli forces attacked her funeral in Jerusalem, beating the pallbearers carrying her coffin with batons.

Israel initially denied killing Abu Akleh, 51, falsely claiming that the reporter was shot by armed Palestinians.

Months later, after multiple visual investigations showed that Israeli soldiers targeted Abu Akleh, Israel acknowledged that its forces likely killed the reporter, dismissing the incident as an accident.

The Biden administration faced waves of pleas by legislators and rights groups to launch its own investigation into the killing, but it resisted the calls, arguing that Israel is capable of investigating itself.

In November 2022, Israeli media reports claimed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating the shooting of Abu Akleh, but the US Department of Justice never confirmed the probe.

More than three years after Abu Akleh’s killing, her family and supporters say justice in her case has not been served.

Tawfiq Ajaq

Born in Louisiana, Ajaq was 17 when he visited the occupied West Bank to see his relatives last year.

On January 19, 2024, he was driving a pick-up truck with his friends when Israelis sprayed the vehicle with bullets and killed him.

Mohammed Salameh, who witnessed and survived the attack, said the shooting was unprovoked.

While it is not clear which individual shot Ajaq, Israel said the incident involved “an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier and a civilian” and was sparked by “rock-throwing activities” – a claim that Salameh has denied.

The US State Department called for an “urgent investigation to determine the circumstance” of the incident.

But more than 19 months after the shooting, Israel has not publicly released any findings or charged any suspect in the shooting.

“We feel abandoned by our government,” Ajaq’s uncle, Mohammad Abdeljabbar, told Al Jazeera last year.

Mohammad Khdour

Khdour was also 17 when he was killed under almost identical circumstances to Ajaq just weeks later.

According to his cousin Malek Mansour, who witnessed the attack, an unidentified assailant opened fire at their car in the occupied West Bank from a vehicle with an Israeli number plate.

Mansour said the attack was unprovoked. Khdour died on February 10, 2024.

The two had been eating cookies and taking selfies moments before the shooting.

Once again, Washington called for a probe.

“There needs to be an investigation. We need to get the facts. And if appropriate, there needs to be accountability,” then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at that time.

But advocates say that, while normally Israel launches sham investigations into such incidents, Israeli authorities have not acknowledged Khdour’s killing at all.

The Israeli military and police told the publication Haaretz last year that they are not familiar with the case.

Jacob Flickinger

An Israeli air strike targeted a World Central Kitchen (WCK) vehicle in Gaza on April 1, 2024, killing seven aid workers, sparking anger and condemnation across the world.

Among the victims was Flickinger, a 33-year-old US-Canadian dual citizen.

Biden called for a “swift” Israeli investigation into the attack, which he said “must bring accountability”.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the blast a “tragic accident”.

The Israeli military said the commander who ordered the strike had “mistakenly assumed” that gunmen in the area were in the aid vehicle.

It added that the commander did not identify the car as associated with World Central Kitchen, a well-known hunger relief initiative founded by celebrity chef Jose Andres.

A World Central Kitchen logo was displayed prominently on the top of the vehicle before the attack.

Israel said it dismissed two commanders over the incident, but there were no criminal charges.

Since then, Israel has killed hundreds of aid workers in Gaza, including Palestinian staff members from World Central Kitchen.

Last year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza as well as other alleged war crimes.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi

Eygi, born in Washington state, was participating in a protest against an illegal settler outpost in the West Bank on September 6, 2024, when an Israeli soldier shot her in the head.

She was 26.

While there were reports of a scuffle during a crackdown on the demonstration by Israeli forces, several witnesses have said that Eygi was shot during a calm period after the chaos had ended.

The State Department called on Israel to “quickly and robustly” investigate Eygi’s killing, but it ruled out conducting its own probe.

Biden dismissed her death as an “accident”, but Blinken condemned it as “unprovoked and unjustified”.

On the same day that Eygi was fatally shot by Israel, the US Justice Department ​filed charges against Hamas leaders after the killing of US-Israeli captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Gaza.

The Israeli military said its soldiers likely killed Eygi “indirectly and unintentionally” – a conclusion that her family called offensive, stressing that she was targeted by a sniper.

“The disregard shown for human life in the inquiry is appalling,” the family said in a statement.

Trump ally Randy Fine, now a Congress member, celebrated the killing of Eygi. “One less #MuslimTerrorist,” he wrote in a social media post, referring to the shooting.

Kamel Jawad

When Jawad, a celebrated leader in the Lebanese American community in Michigan, was killed by an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon on October 1 of last year, the Biden administration initially denied he was a US citizen.

Washington later acknowledged that Jawad was American, expressing “alarm” over his killing.

“As we have noted repeatedly, it is a moral and strategic imperative that Israel take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm. Any loss of civilian life is a tragedy,” the US State Department said at that time.

Israel has not commented publicly on the strike that killed Jawad.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) slammed the Biden administration’s handling of the case, including the US government’s initial “smug” response.

“It’s as if they’re intentionally trying to see our people killed, intentionally downplaying us and dehumanising us,” ADC executive director Abed Ayoub told Al Jazeera last year.

Amer Rabee

On April 6, Israeli forces in the West Bank fatally shot 14-year-old Rabee, a New Jersey native, and called him a “terrorist”. Two of his friends were also injured in the attack.

While the Israeli military accused Rabee and his friends of throwing rocks at Israeli vehicles, the slain teenager’s family insisted that he was picking almonds on the side of the road.

The Trump administration failed to pursue accountability in the case or even publicly press for further details about the incident.

Instead, the State Department cited the Israeli account about the 14-year-old’s killing.

“We offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss,” the State Department said at that time. “We acknowledge the [Israeli military’s] initial statement that expressed that this incident occurred during a counter-terrorism operation.”

Israeli warplanes have struck Damascus – part of a wave of cross-border strikes that have put the region on edge.

Israel says the attacks are to protect the Druze minority in the southern city of Suwayda.

But Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa warns Israel is trying to sow conflict and division between the Syrian people – for its own benefit.

As part of a ceasefire agreed with Druze religious leaders, he’s ordered the withdrawal of government forces from Suwayda and promised to safeguard the Druze community.

But how will Israel’s intervention shape Syria’s future?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Akiva Eldar – Author of Lords of the Land: The War for Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007

Gamal Mansour – Lecturer and political scientist at Toronto University

Stephen Zunes – Professor of politics at the University of San Francisco

Foreign minister says Slovenia acted after EU foreign ministers failed to agree on joint action against Israel.

Slovenia has banned far-right Israeli cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country.

Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon declared the pair personae non gratae on Thursday in what she said was a first for a European Union country.

“We are breaking new ground,” she said.

In a statement, the Slovenian government accused Israel’s National Security Minister Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Smotrich of inciting “extreme violence and serious violations of the human rights of Palestinians” with “their genocidal statements”.

It also noted that both cabinet ministers “publicly advocate the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the forced evictions of Palestinians, and call for violence against the civilian Palestinian population”.

There was no immediate reaction from Israel’s government.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, key coalition partners in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, have drawn international criticism for their hard-line stance on the Gaza war and on illegal settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

Smotrich, who lives in a West Bank settlement, has supported the expansion of settlements and has called for the territory’s annexation.

Settlements are illegal under international law. Last July, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s continued presence in occupied Palestinian territory was unlawful, a decision Israel has ignored.

Smotrich has previously called for “total annihilation” in Gaza and said that a Palestinian town in the West Bank should be “wiped out”. Ben-Gvir was an open admirer of Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli who massacred 29 Palestinians as they prayed in Hebron in 1994. He has been convicted multiple times by Israeli courts for “incitement to racism”.

Despite the ministers’ positions, Netanyahu relies heavily on support from the two and from their factions in parliament for the survival of his government.

On May 21, Slovenia’s President Natasa Pirc Musar told the European Parliament that the EU needed to take stronger action against Israel, condemning “the genocide” in Gaza.

Fajon said Slovenia had decided to make the move after EU foreign ministers did not agree on joint action against Israel over charges of human rights violations at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.

She said other measures were being prepared, without going into detail.

In June, Britain, Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Canada imposed sanctions on the two Israeli ministers, accusing them of inciting violence against Palestinians.

Last year, Slovenia announced it was recognising a Palestinian state, following on the heels of Norway, Spain, and the Republic of Ireland.

Israeli forces have bombed Gaza’s only Catholic church, killing three people and wounding at least ten others, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said, as the military continues its assault across the besieged enclave.

At least one person is in critical condition as a result of Thursday’s strike on the Church of the Latin Monastery in Gaza City – known as the Holy Family Church, the Patriarchate said in a statement. The church’s priest was also lightly wounded, it added.

Among those killed were the parish’s 60-year-old janitor and an 84-year-old woman who was receiving psychosocial support inside a Caritas tent in the church compound, according to the Catholic charity Caritas Jerusalem.

Israeli attacks have killed at least 32 Palestinians on Thursday, including 25 in Gaza City alone, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Footage of the Holy Family Church attack published by a Palestinian activist and verified by Al Jazeera shows Father Gabriel Romanelli, the church’s pastor, following the Israeli attack. The video shows the priest with his right leg bandaged but otherwise in good condition.

“The people in the Holy Family Compound are people who found in the Church a sanctuary – hoping that the horrors of war might at least spare their lives, after their homes, possessions, and dignity had already been stripped away,” the Patriarchate said in its statement after condemning the deadly attack.

Shadi Abu Dawoud, a 47-year-old Palestinian Christian, said the church’s main hall was housing dozens of displaced citizens, mainly children and elderly people, and that all were “peaceful civilians”.

“My mother suffered serious injuries in the head; she was wandering in the church’s yard with other elderly women [when Israeli forces attacked],” he told Al Jazeera.”We were taken by surprise by this Israeli air strike. This is a barbaric and unjustifiable act.”

Mohammed Abu Hashem, a 69-year-old man who lives beside the church, said he was in the ruins of his home when there was a huge explosion that covered the area in black smoke, adding that he never thought the Israelis would attack the church.

“The Israeli air strike was massive, totally horrifying,” he said. “The horror we are living in is beyond description. No words could describe what we are living through. It is not even close to what you watch [on TV] or hear.”

‘War of extermination’

Pope Leo, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, said he was “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life and injury caused by the military attack” on the Gaza church, according to a telegram signed on his behalf by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.

Pope Leo “assures the parish priest, Father Gabriele Romanelli, and the whole parish community of his spiritual closeness”, the telegram said.

The pontiff renewed his “call for an immediate ceasefire, and he expresses his profound hope for dialogue, reconciliation and enduring peace in the region”.

His predecessor, the late Pope Francis, had held nightly calls with the church’s parishioners in a show of solidarity with them. The last call took place the day before he died in April.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, said in comments to Vatican News that an Israeli tank hit the church “directly”.

“What we know for sure is that a tank – the [Israeli army] says by mistake, but we are not sure about this – they hit the church directly, the Church of the Holy Family, the Latin church,” he added.

Since the start of the war on Gaza, Israel has repeatedly attacked religious sites, including mosques and churches. In October 2023, just days after the deadly assault began, the Israeli army bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Gaza Strip’s oldest, killing at least 18 people.

The Israeli military acknowledged Thursday’s attack and claimed the incident was “under review”. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered a rare apology and confirmed an investigation was under way.

It also said Israel did not target churches or religious sites and regretted harm to them or civilians, even though it has attacked dozens of mosques and churches since the start of the war on Gaza.

An independent United Nations commission report said last month that Israel has committed the crime against humanity of “extermination” by attacking Palestinian civilians sheltering in religious sites and schools in Gaza.

The report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, said Israel has destroyed more than half of all religious and cultural sites in the territory, as well as more than 90 percent of school and university buildings in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas slammed the attack as “a new crime committed against places of worship and innocent displaced persons”.

“It comes within the context of the comprehensive war of extermination against the Palestinian people,” the group said in a statement shared on Telegram.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also blamed Israel for the strike, saying attacks against “the civilian population that Israel has been carrying out for months are unacceptable”.

Only about 1,100 Christians live in Gaza, according to a US Department of State report in 2024. The majority of Palestinian Christians are Greek Orthodox, but there are also Roman Catholics living there.

This summer in Western Europe, there is constant talk of “unprecedented heatwaves”. According to the media, authorities are working hard to help people cope with and protect themselves from the adverse effects of sweltering temperatures.

As someone in Gaza, it is hard not to be grimly amused by this panic.

After all, as temperatures began to rise, my homeland – at least what remains of it – has been transformed into an open-air furnace.

Now, in the middle of another hot, humid Mediterranean summer, we don’t even have the bare minimum to shield ourselves from the heat. I read report after report advising Europeans to stay indoors, stay hydrated, use sun cream and avoid strenuous outdoor activity. Meanwhile, we in Gaza have no homes, no water, no shade and no escape.

We cannot “limit outdoor activity” because everything we need to survive is outside: water trucks that may come twice a week if we’re lucky, food distributions, firewood to scavenge. We cannot “stay hydrated” because water is scarce, rationed and often polluted. And sunscreen? We would sooner find medicine on Mars.

Summer in Gaza used to be a season of joy with beach days, courtyard gardens, a breeze under the trees. But the ongoing Israeli onslaught has turned it into a season of torment. The beaches are blockaded. The courtyards are rubble. The trees are ash. Israel has flattened most of Gaza, turning soil into dust, parks into deserts and cities into graveyards. Gaza is now a shadeless city.

The heat itself has become a silent killer. But Gaza’s deadly summer is not natural. It is not just another consequence of climate change either. It is Israel’s making. The endless bombing has created greenhouse gas emissions and thick layers of dust and pollutants. Fires burn unchecked. Garbage piles rot in the sun. Farmland is razed. What was once a climate crisis is now climate cruelty, engineered by military force.

The irony is bitter: Europe blames its heatwaves on a meteorological “heat dome”, a bubble of trapped hot air. But Israel has trapped us in another kind of dome: overcrowded nylon tents that act like ovens in the sun. These camps are not shelters – they are slow-cooking chambers. They trap heat, stink, fear and grief. And we, the displaced, have nowhere else to go.

Summer is no longer a season I look forward to. It is a dilemma I endure. The sun hangs overhead like a sentence. It scorches the ground beneath my feet so that even my slippers burn. I cannot stay inside the tent during the day. It is too hot to breathe. But I cannot be outside for long either. I must go. I must wait in long lines for water, then again for food – under a sun so punishing I fear sunstroke as much as starvation.

We are told to queue with discipline, but how can you queue when your body is faint and your child is hungry? I push forward through crowds, not out of greed, but desperation. I scavenge for fuel – wood, plastic, anything to burn. I return to my tent only to collapse into more heat.

The nights offer no mercy. With most of Gaza’s population now crammed near the coastline, the tents radiate heat back at each other. Unlike the earth, they do not cool after sunset. They store the suffering. I feel my neighbours’ breath, their sweat, their sorrow as if the heat itself is contagious. Insects swarm us in waves, drawn to the warmth. My mother and sister swat them away as if they were the bombs we can still hear in the distance.

Living in a tent for a second summer should make it easier. It doesn’t. It makes it worse.

Last summer, after being displaced from our home in eastern Khan Younis, we at least had some food variety. There were still deliveries of aid. We could still cook. But since March 2 when Israel blocked humanitarian aid again, we have descended into engineered starvation.

The United States and Israel now stage a grotesque theatre called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” to distribute flour. They place sacks of flour inside metal cages as if we are livestock. People are forced to queue for hours under an open sky, stripped of shade and dignity. Soldiers scream at them to take off their hats, lie face down on blazing asphalt, crawl for food. After all that, you might still leave empty-handed – if you’re not shot first.

They have lowered the bar of our existence. We no longer ask for safety or shelter. We ask only: Do we have enough food to last the day?

Israel has combined every tool of deprivation: heat without shade, thirst without water, hunger without hope. There is no electricity to run desalination or pumping stations. No fuel to chill the little water that comes. No flour, no fish, no markets. For many of us, this summer could be our last.

This is not a climate crisis. This is weather used as a weapon – a war waged not only with bombs and bullets but also with heat, thirst and slow death. Gaza is not just burning – it is being suffocated under a man-made sun. And the world watches, calls it a “conflict” and checks the forecast.

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

What started as a local conflict in southern Syria between local Druze and Bedouin communities over the weekend escalated on Wednesday into Israel bombing Syria’s Ministry of Defence and other targets in the capital Damascus.

At least three people were killed in the Damascus attacks, the Syrian Ministry of Health said. Other Israeli air attacks on Wednesday hit the southwestern provinces of Suwayda and Deraa.

Suwayda – where the majority of the population are members of the Druze religious group – had been the epicentre of the violence in recent days. Israel had already struck Syrian government forces there earlier this week.

Israeli officials claim their attacks on Syria aim to protect the Druze community in Suwayda, where scores of people have been killed in clashes involving local armed groups, as well as government forces.

However, local activists and analysts say Israel is fueling internal strife in Suwayda by continuing to bomb Syria – as it has done repeatedly since former President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December. And Israel has continued to attack Syrian government forces, despite ceasefire agreements between some Druze leaders and the Syrian authorities.

“Not only is Israel now painting the entire [Druze] community as pro-Israel, but they are painting them as supporting Israel’s bombardment of Damascus,” said Dareen Khalifa, an expert on Syria and a senior adviser with International Crisis Group.

Exploiting strife

The recent violence in Suwayda began after Bedouin armed groups kidnapped a Druze trader on the road to Damascus on July 11, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based monitor.

The abduction quickly turned into more widespread violence between the two communities – which have a longstanding rivalry due to land disputes – eventually dragging in Syrian government forces.

Syria’s new government has been attempting to impose its authority after a 14-year civil war and the end of half a century of al-Assad family rule. However, it has found it difficult to do so in Suwayda, partly because of Israel’s repeated threats against the presence of any government forces in the province, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Suwayda’s Druze initially welcomed the deployment of government forces following the weekend’s violence, but clashes soon began between some Druze fighters and those forces, with reports of the latter carrying out human rights abuses, according to civilians, local monitors and analysts.

The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria in an attempt to keep the country weak and divided, as well as to pander to its own Druze citizens who serve in the Israeli army, experts say.

“From the Israeli perspective – and how they view Syria and how Syria should be – they prefer a weak central government and for the country to be governed and divided into sectarian self-governing enclaves,” said Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an expert on Syria who has extensively researched local dynamics in Suwayda.

Al-Tamimi added that reactions in Suwayda have been mixed regarding Israel’s conduct, which speaks to the lack of trust many in the province have in the new government in Damascus – which is led by members of Syria’s Sunni majority, many of whom, including President Ahmed al-Sharaa, were members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former affiliate of al-Qaeda.

Civilians in Suwayda said that part of the distrust stems from the government’s failure to hold fighters accountable for either allowing or partaking in the killing of hundreds of Alawites on Syria’s coast in March.

Alawites belong to an offshoot of Shia Islam, a sect that al-Assad and his family hailed from. The government has launched an investigation into the fighting, in which more than 200 Syrian government security personnel were also killed after attacks by pro-Assad forces, with the findings expected in October.

Abuses and fear

Government forces have been accused of carrying out human rights abuses in Suwayda, including carrying out “field executions,” according to SOHR and other local monitors.

“I personally wanted the government forces to restore order, but not like this,” said Fareed*, a young man from the Druze community.

The local outlet Suwayda24 reported that fighters believed to be linked to the government executed nine unarmed civilians after raiding a family compound on July 15.

Al Jazeera’s verification unit, Sanad, confirmed the reports.

Written questions were sent to Uday al-Abdullah, an official at Syria’s Ministry of Defence, asking him to respond to accusations that government forces carried out execution-style killings.

He did not respond before publication.

However, on Wednesday, the Syrian Health Ministry said that dozens of bodies had been found in Suwayda’s National Hospital, including security forces and civilians.

Ceasefires have been repeatedly agreed between Druze factions and the Syrian government. The most recent, on Wednesday, included an agreement that Suwayda be fully integrated into the Syrian state, according to Youssef Jarbou, a Druze leader.

However, as in the case of a ceasefire agreed on Tuesday, Israel has continued to attack.

What’s more, several Druze religious and armed factions retreated from the Tuesday ceasefire primarily because government forces continued to carry out violations in Suwayda, according to al-Tamimi.

During the civil war, clerics and armed Druze factions were able to negotiate de facto autonomy while repelling attacks by groups such as ISIL (ISIS).

After al-Assad fell in December 2024, one notable Druze religious leader, Hikmat al-Hijri, demanded that the new authorities in Damascus change the constitution to ensure greater regional autonomy for Suwayda and secularisation.

His position had significant backing, but not the majority, said al-Tamimi.

“His specific position – that the government needed to rewrite the constitution – was not the majority position in Suwayda,” he told Al Jazeera, saying there were pragmatists willing to engage with the government to safeguard a degree of autonomy and integrate with the new authorities.

“[But after these government violations], al-Hijir’s positions will likely enjoy more sympathy and support,” al-Tamimi warned.

Calls for intervention

As fighting continues in al-Suwayda, al-Hijri has controversially called on the international community to protect the Druze in Syria.

Critics fear that his call is a veiled request for Israeli intervention, a position that many people in Suwayda disagree with.

Samya,* a local activist who is living in a village several kilometres away from where the clashes are unfolding, said Israel’s attacks make her “uncomfortable” and that she doesn’t support intervention.

At the same time, she said she is increasingly worried that government forces will raid homes, endangering civilians.

“We don’t know what to expect,” she told Al Jazeera.

“We don’t know who may come to our house and who that person will be, and what he might ask us once he enters. We don’t know how that person or soldier might treat us, you know? So, there is fear. Honestly, we are all really terrified,” she added.

Al-Tamimi warned that Israel’s discourse of “protecting” the Druze of Syria could exacerbate internal strife, leading to collective punishment.

“[What Israel is doing] is inflaming sectarian tension, because it gives fuel to the suggestions that Druze are secretly working with Israel to divide the country,” he said.

Some names have been changed to protect sources from reprisal

At least 21 Palestinians were killed at a US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution site. GHF blamed armed “agitators” for the crush. Footage shows scores of people being rushed to the hospital, including numerous children.

Sayfollah Musallet was a brother, a son and an ambitious young man who was just at the beginning of his life.

That is the message his family has repeated since July 11, when the 20-year-old United States citizen was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the village of Sinjil in the occupied West Bank.

That message, they hope, will prevent the Florida-born Sayfollah from becoming “just another number” in the growing list of Palestinian Americans whose killings never find justice.

That’s why his cousin, Fatmah Muhammad, took a moment amid her grief on Wednesday to remember the things she loved about Sayfollah.

The two united over a passion for food, and Muhammad, a professional baker, remembers how carefully Sayfollah would serve the delicate knafeh pastry she sold through the ice cream shop he ran in Tampa.

“Just in the way he plated my dessert, he made it look so good,” Muhammad, 43, recalled. “I even told him he did a better job than me.”

“That really showed the type of person he was,” she added. “He wanted to do things with excellence.”

‘The love he gave all of us’

Born and raised in Port Charlotte, a coastal community in south central Florida, Sayfollah – nicknamed Saif – maintained a deep connection to his ancestral roots abroad.

He spent a large portion of his teenage years in the occupied West Bank, where his two brothers and sister also lived. There, his parents, who own a home near Sinjil, hoped he could better connect with his culture and language.

But after finishing high school, Sayfollah was eager to return to the US to try his hand at entrepreneurship. Last year, he, his father and his cousins opened the dessert shop in Tampa, Florida, playfully named Ice Screamin.

But the ice cream shop was just the beginning. Sayfollah’s ambition left a deep impression on Muhammad.

“He had his vision to expand the business, to multiply it by many,” she said, her voice at times shaking with grief. “This at 20, when most kids are playing video games.”

“And the crazy thing is, any goal that he set his mind to, he always did it,” she added. “He always exceeded everyone’s expectations, especially with the love he gave all of us.”

Sayfollah’s aunt, 58-year-old Samera Musallet, also remembers his dedication to his family. She described Sayfollah as a loving young man who never let his aunts pay for anything in his presence – and who always insisted on bringing dessert when he came for dinner.

At the same time, Samera said he was still youthful and fun-loving: He liked to watch comedy movies, shop for clothes and make late-night trips to the WaWa convenience store.

One of her fondest memories came when Sayfollah was only 14, and they went together to a baseball game featuring the Kansas City Royals.

“When we got there, he could smell the popcorn and all the hot dogs. He bought everything he could see and said, ‘We’re going to share!’” she told Al Jazeera.

“After he ate all that junk food, we turned around, and he was sleeping. I woke him up when the game was over, and he goes: ‘Who won?’”

‘I really want to get married’

Another one of his aunts, 52-year-old Katie Salameh, remembers that Sayfollah’s mind had turned to marriage in the final months of his young life

As the Florida spring gave way to summer, Sayfollah had announced plans to return to the West Bank to see his mother and siblings. But he confided to Salameh that he had another reason for returning.

“The last time I saw him was we had a family wedding, and that was the weekend of Memorial Day [in May],” Salameh told Al Jazeera.

“I asked him: ‘Are you so excited to see your siblings and your mom?’ He said, ‘Oh my god, I’m so excited.’ Then he goes, ‘I really want to get married. I’m going to look for a bride when I’m there.’”

To keep the ice cream shop running smoothly, Sayfollah had arranged a switch with his father: He would return to the West Bank while his father would travel to Tampa to mind the business.

But that decision would unwittingly put Sayfollah’s father more than 10,000 kilometres away from his son when violent Israeli settlers surrounded him, as witnesses and his family would later recount.

Israeli authorities said the attack in Sinjil began with rock-throwing and “violent clashes … between Palestinians and Israeli civilians”, a claim Sayfollah’s family and witnesses have rejected.

Instead, they said Sayfollah was trying to protect his family’s land when he was encircled by a “mob of settlers” who beat him.

Even when an ambulance was called, Sayfollah’s family said the settlers blocked the paramedics from reaching his broken body. Sayfollah’s younger brother would ultimately help carry his dying brother to emergency responders.

The settlers also fatally shot Mohammed al-Shalabi, a 23-year-old Palestinian man, who witnesses said was left bleeding for hours.

“His phone was on, and he wasn’t responding,” his mother, Joumana al-Shalabi, told reporters. “He was missing for six hours. They found him martyred under the tree. They beat him and shot him with bullets.”

Palestinians cannot legally possess firearms in the occupied West Bank, but Israeli settlers can. The Israeli government itself has encouraged the settlers to bear arms, including through the distribution of rifles to civilians.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has recorded the killings of at least 964 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023.

And the violence appears to be on the rise. The OHCHR noted that there was a 13-percent increase in the number of killings during the first six months of 2025, compared with the same period last year.

‘Pain I can’t even describe’

An Al Jazeera analysis also found that Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least nine US citizens since 2022, including veteran reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

None of those deaths have resulted in criminal charges, with Washington typically relying on Israel to conduct its own investigations.

So far, US President Donald Trump has not directly addressed Sayfollah’s killing. When asked in the Oval Office about the fatal beating, Trump deferred to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We protect all American citizens anywhere in the world, especially if they’re unjustly murdered or killed,” Rubio replied on Trump’s behalf. “We’re gathering more information.”

Rubio also pointed to a statement issued a day earlier from the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. The ambassador called on Israel to “aggressively investigate” the attack, saying “there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act”.

It was a particularly jarring sentiment from Huckabee, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and has even denied the very existence of a Palestinian people.

Nevertheless, no independent, US-led investigation has been announced.

According to Israeli media, three Israeli settlers, including a military reservist, were taken into custody following the deadly attack, but all were subsequently released.

It has only been four days since Sayfollah’s killing, and his family told Al Jazeera the initial shock has only now begun to dissipate.

But in its place has come a flood of grief and anger. Muhammad still struggles to accept that he “died because he was on his own land”. She sees Sayfollah’s death as part of a broader pattern of abuses, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza, where Israel has led a war since 2023.

“I see it on the news all the time with other people in the West Bank. I see it in Gaza – the indiscriminate killing of anybody in their way,” she said.

“But when it happens to you, it’s just so hard to even fathom,” she added. “It’s pain I can’t even describe.”

Israel has carried out powerful air strikes near Syria’s presidential palace and on the military headquarters in the heart of Damascus, a major escalation in its bombardment of the neighbouring country.

At least three people were killed and 34 others were wounded in the attacks on Damascus on Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, citing the Ministry of Health.

While targeting Damascus, the Israeli military continued to pound areas in southern Syria, including Suwayda, where a new ceasefire deal has been struck after four days of clashes between Druze armed groups, Bedouin tribes and government forces, which left hundreds dead.

Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Israeli attacks on Damascus and Suwayda were “part of a systematic Israeli policy to ignite tension and chaos and undermine security in Syria”, calling on the international community to take “urgent action” against Israeli aggression.

Israel said its bombing campaign is aimed at protecting the Druze minority, and it has called on the Syrian government to withdraw its troops from the city of Suwayda, where much of the violence has taken place.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said on X that the Israeli military would “continue to operate vigorously in Suwayda to destroy the forces that attacked the Druze until they withdraw completely”.

Later on Wednesday, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the parties to the fighting in southern Syria had agreed on “specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end tonight”.

“This will require all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made and this is what we fully expect them to do,” Rubio said on X of the ceasefire deal, reached one day after an earlier iteration had collapsed.

More than 300 people had been killed in fighting as of Wednesday morning, including four children, eight women and 165 soldiers and security forces, according to the UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Army withdrawal from Suwayda

The Syrian Ministry of Interior and Druze leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou confirmed on Wednesday that they had reached a ceasefire. But the new deal was rejected by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajari, another Druze leader, who promised to continue fighting until Suwayda was “entirely liberated”.

According to the ministry, the deal declares a “total and immediate halt to all military operations”, as well as the formation of a committee comprising government officials and Druze spiritual leaders to supervise its implementation.

That evening, the Syrian Ministry of Defence said it had begun withdrawing the army from Suwayda “in implementation of the terms of the adopted agreement after the end of the sweep of the city for outlaw groups”.

Speaking shortly before Rubio’s announcement of a deal, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce had said that the US wanted Syrian government forces to “withdraw their military in order to enable all sides to de-escalate and find a path forward”.

But while Syrian troops are withdrawing, the government will be maintaining a presence in the city,

Reporting from Syria’s capital Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said the deal included the “deployment of government forces”.

“They will set up checkpoints, and this area will be fully integrated into the Syrian state,” she said.

A complete withdrawal by the government would, she said, “mean a failure in efforts by the new authorities to unite a fractured nation and extend its authority across Syria”.

“But staying could open a much bigger conflict with Israel that has promised more strikes if, in the words of Katz, the message wasn’t received.”

Pretext to bomb

The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between Druze armed factions and local Sunni Bedouin tribes in the southern province of Suwayda.

Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze, with reports of the former carrying out human rights abuses, according to local monitors and analysts.

The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria as it builds military bases in the demilitarised buffer zone with Syria seized by its forces.

Haid Haid, consulting fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera that Israel had been clear since the ouster of Bashar al-Assad last year that they did not want Syrian forces “to be deployed to the deconfliction line in southern Syria”.

“One way Israel is trying to advance that plan is to present itself as the ‘protectors’ of the Druze community,” Haid said.

Ammar Kahf, the Damascus-based executive director of the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, said: “It’s a clear message to the Syrian government that the Israelis are not going to be silent.

“The Israelis are not going to allow the Syrian government to spread its authority all over the territory.”