Israeli

Hamas confirms the death of Rafah brigade commander Samir Abu Younis in an attack on Khan Younis on Saturday.

Hamas has confirmed that Rafah brigade commander Samir Abu Younis was killed in an Israeli air strike on the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Israel’s military and Shin Bet security agency earlier said in a joint statement that they had targeted a senior Hamas military commander in a drone strike in Khan Younis on Saturday.

The attack that hit a tent sheltering displaced people wounded two others.

The casualties were taken to Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, medical personnel told Al Jazeera on Saturday.

Video footage verified by Al Jazeera and posted by Palestinian journalists from the vicinity of the hospital showed ambulances inside the grounds and stretchers that appear to be stained with blood.

Al-Mawasi, a coastal strip on the Mediterranean, is crowded with displaced Palestinians living in tents. Israel has repeatedly attacked the area despite previously designating it a humanitarian zone.

Latest toll

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said in its latest update on Saturday that Israeli attacks have killed 16 people and injured 68 others over the past 48 hours.

Since the “ceasefire” in Gaza took effect on October 11, 2025, Israel has killed at least 1,643 Palestinians and injured 5,964. At least 850 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble.

Since Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, at least 74,695 people have been killed and 176,093 injured, according to the Health Ministry.

The ministry also reported that the number of deaths related to cold has risen to 11 after a nine-month-old baby died from hypothermia, the first this winter.

Gaza’s residents, most of whom have been displaced, are living in tents and damaged buildings as water damage from recent heavy rains has set in.

Israeli attacks have escalated across Gaza, despite the October ceasefire.

New Delhi, India – India has exempted an Israeli phone-hacking company from New Delhi’s own rules, allowing it to sell phone-extraction products and surveillance technology to government agencies and sparking concerns and criticism from rights groups and activists.

An investigation by the digital-rights group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) found Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, a close confidante of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, signed off on exemptions from “make in India” procurement rules, clearing the way for government forensic institutions to buy at least 422 items of foreign technology, including products made by the Israeli firm Cellebrite.

Modi’s federal government and state governments ruled by his Bharatiya Janata Party are not the only ones who bought this Israeli technology. States governed by the opposition Indian National Congress party, including Himachal Pradesh, Keralam and Karnataka, also purchased similar phone-extraction and cloning tools.

A review of documents revealed that India’s expansive surveillance capabilities extend far beyond just cloning phones and extracting data without passwords to accessing cloud-based data from social media platforms – such as Instagram, X and Tinder – as well as data from connected devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home.

Experts argued that India’s current laws offer no guardrails against overreaching surveillance and the data extractions happen in a legal grey zone.

“It is clear that there is an expansion of India’s surveillance capabilities and it is becoming both wider and deeper,” said Vrinda Bhandari, a lawyer in the Supreme Court who works on digital rights and privacy issues.

“It’s now easier to conduct mass surveillance rather than targeted, specific surveillance and also possible to do more intrusive surveillance,” she told Al Jazeera. “[Today,] surveillance gives you a richer picture of an individual’s life.”

The IFF reviewed a letter also seen by Al Jazeera from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs dated January 7 in which Shah signed off on a wide-ranging, one-year waiver of “make in India” rules to clear a path for buying at least 422 forensic items.

Under “make in India” procurement rules, preference must be given to eligible Indian manufacturers over foreign suppliers in awarding government contracts. However, the rules allow exemptions with the approval of the minister in charge of the procuring department.

Another letter by the ministry dated January 20 showed Shah permitted the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to buy Israeli company Cellebrite’s Premium Tool on a three-year licence for about 50 million rupees ($529,947).

In specifications demanded by the government that were revealed in a review of tender bids, “solution” software must be capable of using login tokens recovered from seized phones or computers to access more than 100 cloud services. Login tokens are in effect digital keys that keep users signed in to online accounts.

Although an exemption for a company does not confirm whether a certain product was purchased by any government agency, it points to the range of forensic capabilities that opened up for procurement by Indian agencies.

From the 422-item exemption list, the IFF identified 118 items under digital and multimedia forensics, including Israeli company Cellebrite’s Pathfinder, Inseyets On-Prem Pro and Inseyets Offline.

Cellebrite’s tools have been used against journalists and activists in countries like Serbia, Jordan, Kenya and Russia.

Other products included tools from foreign digital-forensics companies like Magnet, MSAB, Oxygen Forensics and Belkasoft as well as software for open-source intelligence, dark-web monitoring and cryptocurrency investigations.

Al Jazeera reviewed a request for a bid proposal by the Delhi Police for software for its National Cyber Forensic Laboratory, which comes under the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, an initiative of the Home Ministry.

Consider the capabilities the police department was seeking in its request: software that bypasses passwords on Apple’s macOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems; recovers internet activity, browser histories, deleted files and identifies traces of VPNs; bypasses screen locks; performs full file system extractions; decrypts backups; and extracts information from messaging applications.

The Delhi Police demanded another “all-in-one” system to access more than 100 cloud services, including Google, Apple, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Discord and dating platforms such as Tinder, Grindr and OkCupid or platforms like Slack and OnlyFans using account credentials or login tokens recovered from devices. Its specifications also sought the extraction of data from drones, wearable devices and devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

Al Jazeera reached out to officials at the NIA, the Home Ministry and home departments of opposition-ruled states of Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Keralam for comments. The Delhi Police reports to Shah’s mInistry.

None of them had responded to Al Jazeera by the time of publication.

‘How did they get inside my phone?’

For some, the lack of transparency in the surveillance capabilities of India’s security agencies is not just a theoretical concern.

Last month, when Modi’s government faced street protests demanding the election chief resign, popular YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, a Modi critic, landed in New Delhi to participate in the demonstrations.

On the morning of the protest, he was detained by Delhi Police while still at home. His phone was taken from him. Speaking on a podcast later, Rathee said he believed police had tried to clone his iPhone using Israeli company Cellebrite’s tools but the attempt may have failed because his device was running a newer version of the iOS operating system than what the tool was capable of tricking.

Al Jazeera could not verify Rathee’s account, but Rathee is not alone in this suspicion.

Mohammad Aslam Hussain, a reporter with the newspaper Siasat Daily, told Al Jazeera that he was detained with a cameraperson on October 10 in New Delhi and his phone was confiscated at the scene.

“When I got my device later in the evening, all recorded footage of our reporting had been selectively deleted from the device,” Hussain said. The reporter uses Samsung’s Android-operated Galaxy S24 secured with a pattern lock and fingerprint authentication.

Hussain added that he cannot say conclusively what tools the police used to bypass his phone’s authentication requirement. “But it raises several questions with no one willing to respond to them,” he added. “How did they get inside my phone?”

The Indian government has faced accusations that it has used sophisticated spyware against journalists, activists, lawyers and political opponents during Modi’s years in power.

In 2019, WhatsApp disclosed that the Pegasus spyware, developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, had been used to target Indian journalists and human rights defenders. Forensic examinations by Amnesty International later confirmed Pegasus infections on the phones of journalists Siddharth Varadarajan and Anand Mangnale. The government has denied allegations of unauthorised surveillance.

Bhandari told Al Jazeera that another problem in holding overarching surveillance to account is identifying the affected party. Often, she pointed out, the person placed under surveillance “does not know about it, so what does one do?”

‘Friction for surveillance’?

The central legal gap identified by digital rights group IFF is that India has no statute or protocol that specifically authorises or regulates the forced unlocking and full extraction of data from a mobile phone seized by law enforcement agencies.

Existing seizure powers under criminal law do not explicitly address bypassing passcodes, copying an entire file system, harvesting login tokens to access cloud accounts or establishing rules for the retention and deletion of extracted data.

The Supreme Court in a 2017 judgement recognised privacy as a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution. The judgement established that any state intrusion into privacy must have a legal basis, pursue a legitimate state aim and be proportionate to that aim.

Bhandari told Al Jazeera that when the government agencies “deploy these capabilities without any proper meaningful oversight, the net of surveillance is cast wider and deeper and a lot more people are affected without either legislative, parliamentary or judicial oversight”.

Bhandari noted that while some countries like the United Kingdom or Germany “have some element of either parliamentary oversight or judicial oversight, India only has an internal review mechanism in executive oversight”.

“The whole point of having any oversight is to create a friction for surveillance,” she said, “so that it’s not easy for the government to just target everybody.”

“The current legal framework fails in this safeguard,” Bhandari said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a national unity government – at least among Jewish Israelis – during the swearing-in of Israel’s new parliament, or Knesset, on Tuesday, hoping to cling to power. The opposition to him, which now has a majority of seats but has yet to form a government, reacted with heckles, catcalls, and walkouts.

Citing supposed internal and external threats, Netanyahu called for unity with the opposition bloc that has been tasked with forming a government to replace him. Netanyahu pointed to the threat posed by Iran and the increased number of democratically elected lawmakers who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, whom he accused, without evidence, of seeking Israel’s destruction.

“We must do one thing – set aside every other consideration and form a national unity government. Only such a government will be able to meet challenges of this magnitude. It is impossible to handle them with a narrow government,” he said of the potential for a minority government that many analysts consider likely after coalition negotiations are complete.

“I say this because here in this parliament they are seriously talking about forming a narrow government like this, a government that includes within it terror supporters, haters of Israel, or that would be dependent on them,” he said, referring to the parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Even by the standards of Israeli politics, where analysts say personality has long overshadowed party and policy, Tuesday’s session was unusually contentious.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett heckled Netanyahu while trading barbs with the latter’s wife, Sara, and his hard-right ally Itamar Ben-Gvir, while many of the Palestinian lawmakers attacked by the prime minister during his speech walked out in protest.

Gadi Eisenkot, who has been given the first chance to form a new government, subsequently cancelled previously scheduled coalition talks with Netanyahu and declared him “unfit for office”.

Personality politics

Netanyahu has long played an outsized role in Israeli politics, helping transform the political system into one that is highly based on personalities, with voters typically identifying a leader they like first, and then focusing on policy discussions. Nevertheless, despite having contributed more to that change than any other politician, Netanyahu now finds himself fighting for his political life.

If Eisenkot is able to form a viable new government – which still hangs in the balance – Netanyahu faces being frozen out of power, and a future in which his corruption trial continues without the protection of the prime minister’s office. There will also likely be an inquiry into his and his government’s failings in the run-up to the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.

His potential downfall, however, does not mean an end to personality politics in Israel. Instead, it may be one of the most lasting parts of his legacy, said Roi Zur, an Israeli specialist in voting behaviour and election strategies at the University of Essex.

“Netanyahu Americanised the party system in Israel and made Likud a populist party,” he said of the influences the country’s longest-serving prime minister has had on Israel and his own party.

“It is a clear case in Israel that the person at the head of the list or the head of the party is very important, and politics evolve around the head of the party,” Zur said. “We see it in how people think about political parties or voting in general in Israel. When you ask people, ‘Who are you voting for?’, they say, ‘I vote for Netanyahu, I vote for Bennett, I vote for Eisenkot,’ whilst in the past it was ‘I vote for Likud, I vote for Labor,’ and so on.”

Toxic populism

Dahlia Schneidlin, an American-Israeli pollster, noted that Israeli political campaigns had become more personalised in the past few decades even though elections in the country are almost all based on voting for a party slate, and not individuals.

That had led to many cases where voters focus on the personality rather than the party, and vote accordingly.

However, the Israeli electoral system almost always leads to coalition governments. And bringing other parties into a coalition often needs leaders to demonstrate “political neogitiating and bargaining skills”, Schneidlin said, as they try to encourage others to join them.

Eisenkot, Schneidlin said, will have to demonstrate those skills if he is to form a government, rather than simply being focused on his own personality.

But the emphasis on differences in political personality over policy positions has fuelled a culture where personal differences, such as those between Netanyahu and opposition stalwart Avigdor Lieberman – whose shared animosity is well known but whose right-wing political positions are in some ways very close – contribute to a populist politics easily understood by a public eager to see itself as politically engaged.

“The stress on the personal makes everything so much worse,” Yossi Mekelberg, a senior fellow at Chatham House, said. “With party structures so centralised, leaders can become almost dictatorial and get to act without constraint. This is how it becomes possible for a prime minister to accuse 19 elected members of the Knesset of being terrorist sympathisers and nobody thinks it’s extraordinary. It’s become toxic,” he said.

Caracas, November 11, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The acting Delcy Rodríguez government and ExxonMobil signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday as the oil giant prepares to return to Venezuela nearly two decades after having its assets nationalized.

“We welcome [ExxonMobil] back, hoping that synergy will develop and produce benefits for Venezuela and the United States,” she said in a televised broadcast.

Rodríguez stated that the “very important” agreement followed “months of negotiations.”

“This return takes place under very favorable conditions, in a context of legal guarantees for foreign investments,” she added. The acting president also saluted US Chargé d’Affaires John Barrett, who attended the ceremony

For his part, Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil Upstream Company, expressed confidence that the firm’s “unique capabilities” and Venezuela’s “extraordinary results” would yield “significant benefits for all parties involved.”

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods had previously called Venezuela “uninvestable” and demanded industry reforms before the talks leading to the company’s imminent return.

ExxonMobil left Venezuela in the late 2000s after refusing to comply with reforms introduced by the Hugo Chávez government to assert state sovereignty over the oil industry. The Texas-based multinational refused compensation offers and pursued international arbitration after its assets were nationalized. The company received a US $908 million arbitration award from the International Chamber of Commerce, significantly below its demands. It is likewise attempting to enforce a separate $985 million award.

Caracas had likewise denounced ExxonMobil after it spearheaded offshore drilling projects in the territorial waters of the disputed Essequibo Strip.

The Venezuelan government and ExxonMobil have not disclosed the projects under consideration. But reports suggest the company will take over its former projects, light and medium-crude La Ceiba in the Maracaibo Lake Basin and extra-heavy-crude Cerro Negro in the Orinoco Oil Belt, later relaunched as Petromonagas. The oil giant is also linked to Carabobo block oilfields adjacent to the latter. 

According to Petroguía, ExxonMobil is eyeing concession-type “Productive Participation Contracts” and has engaged in negotiations with Russian state-owned company Roszarubezhneft to acquire its 40 percent stake in the Petromonagas joint venture.

Since the January 3 US attacks and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuelan authorities have enacted a pro-business overhaul of the energy industry in consultation with Washington, while signing dozens of agreements with Western corporations. Chevron, Repsol, and Shell are among the companies to have struck new deals or renegotiated old ones to expand their foothold in the country.

Rodríguez has also radically shifted Caracas’ foreign policy, including reestablishing ties with Israel.

Recent reports have revealed that NewMed Energy, a subsidiary of the multi-billion Delek Group conglomerate and one of Israel’s largest energy firms, is negotiating a 60 per stake in an unnamed Venezuelan “oil-producing company.”

NewMed has an exclusivity window to negotiate with the Venezuelan counterpart until January 1, 2027. The undisclosed firm is said to hold “onshore oil rights” as well as additional “onshore and offshore oil and gas assets.”

Venezuelan legislation imposes a state-owned majority in any joint ventures. However, the recent reforms allow foreign corporations to take over operations and sales in concession-type agreements despite being minority shareholders.

Notwithstanding the opening of the industry to foreign capital under exceedingly favorable conditions, Venezuela’s oil output has stagnated in recent months. The latest monthly OPEC report placed October’s production at 1.158 million barrels per day (bpd) according to secondary sources. The figure is on a par with the previous month’s 1.147 million bpd output.

Venezuelan authorities had pledged to reach 1.3 million bpd before the end of the year.

In addition to overseeing legislative changes and mediating oil agreements, the US has taken control of Venezuela’s export revenues, with Trump officials deciding when and how much of the funds to return to Caracas.

A New York Times article published on Tuesday claimed that, according to a report from auditing firm KPMG, the Trump administration has managed $12 billion of Venezuelan export revenues through the end of September, with nearly all the funds returned to Caracas to be supplied to the private sector via commercial banks.

Traders Vitol and Trafigura, which secure Venezuelan crude below market price before reselling it, have been the biggest depositors into the US Treasury account at Citibank.

However, the total figure contradicts a previous Financial Times investigation that estimated $13 billion of US-controlled Venezuelan funds in the first half of the year alone. Additionally, Venezuelan government advisor Luigi Pisella stated that the Trump administration deducted around $4.7 billion from the revenues to cover the costs of its January 3 military operation.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Philadelphia, USA.

Abdel-Malek, the captain and goalkeeper of Gaza Sports Club, recently played in the Thousand Martyrs Cup final.

Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Kamal Fares Abdel-Malek has been killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) has confirmed.

The PFA said Abdel-Malek, the captain and goalkeeper of Gaza Sports Club, was targeted in Tuesday’s attack on Gaza City’s southern Sabra neighbourhood.

The 20-year-old was the 1,017th person involved in sport to be killed in Gaza in Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave, according to figures provided by the PFA.

Abdel-Malek’s death came five days after he played in the final of the Gaza and Northern Gaza division of the Thousand Martyrs Cup, a tournament named after the more than 1,000 athletes and sports officials killed in the Strip since October 2023.

“Club legend and goalkeeper of the first team Mahmoud Kamal Fares Abdel-Malik was martyred moments ago,” the club wrote in a social media post announcing his death.

Gaza Sports Club finished as runners-up in the final of the tournament that Al Jazeera covered last week.

More than 200 clubs competed, including 146 from the occupied West Bank, 44 from Gaza, and 36 from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

The tournament kicked off simultaneously in the three locations.

PFA President Jibril Rajoub said the event showed that Palestinians had not lost their “national will”.

“Nor have we lost our belief that sport will remain a symbol of hope and life,” he added.

Abdel-Malek’s death comes days after Israeli forces killed 15-year-old Mohammad Nidal Barbak on Friday, shooting him while he was playing football with his friends in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis.

The incident has highlighted FIFA’s inaction towards Israel, despite its multiple breaches of the global football body’s anti-discrimination rules.

In March, the PFA called for the Israeli Football Association (IFA) to receive a ban after a report by FIFA’s disciplinary committee found that the IFA “failed to take meaningful action against Beitar Jerusalem” for “persistent and well-documented racist behaviour”.

“We maintain our right and continue our efforts to ensure that the Israeli Football Association is expelled from all international institutions,” Rajoub, who also heads the Palestine Olympic Committee, said at the time.

On the alleged criminal activity of Israeli sports officials, Rajoub said he was referring to instances of players killed during the three years of genocide in Gaza, and the destruction of many of the territory’s sports facilities.

Israeli attacks have devastated Gaza’s sports infrastructure, destroying stadiums, clubs, sports halls and academies as well as bulldozing several sports facilities, Palestinian sports officials say.

The human losses and destruction have left Palestinian sport in an “existential” crisis, according to Palestinian Sports Media Federation Secretary-General Mustafa Siam.

Israel has destroyed more than 50 of Gaza’s 56 sports clubs and about 20 five-a-side football fields established by the PFA with support from FIFA, he told the Anadolu news agency in August.

At least 74,645 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023, while 175,978 have been injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Herzog calls for an inquiry into the October 7 attacks during a Knesset session amid political gridlock following elections.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has urged lawmakers to “leave no stone unturned” and launch an investigation into the October 7 attacks by Hamas in a speech opening the new parliamentary session, after the election left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc short of a majority.

Herzog called on party leaders to “make concessions” and do “everything possible to avoid a repeat election” at the swearing-in of newly elected members in the 26th Knesset on Tuesday.

The Israeli president tasked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming the country’s next government on Sunday, starting the clock for him to cobble together a coalition within 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension.

While also short of a parliamentary majority, Eisenkot and his allies hope to use their newfound legislative power to move rapidly to establish an independent inquiry into the October 7 attacks.

“I am committed in this complex situation to form a national emergency government as quickly as possible,” Eisenkot said, ahead of the Knesset session.

Netanyahu has previously refused to form a commission to investigate the attacks, arguing that a panel appointed by the Israeli Supreme Court would be biased against the government.

On Iran, Herzog said in his speech that Tehran “does not stop even for a moment in its plots and threats, whether directly or through its partners”, repeating the notion from his speech officially delegating Eisenkot to form the new government.

The president said Israel “must fortify the alliance” with the United States amid increasing disapproval of Israel among the US public due to the genocidal war on Gaza and the US-Israel war on Iran.

“Alongside the stubborn and determined war against those who seek to harm us, we must build a stable political horizon in the region with our neighbours,” he said, adding that Israel must “strengthen and even add to the peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain”.

Political gridlock

The speaker of the Knesset, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, will remain in the caretaker position until a new vote is held.

“Yashar, Eisenkot’s party, has already submitted 61 signatures of new parliamentarians demanding that the vote take place as soon as possible,” said Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu and his bloc continue to protest the result of the October 27 elections, claiming foreign interference after Palestinian-Israeli parties secured a 19-seat bloc.

“Those protests have gone unanswered because the results have been certified and every relevant authority has dismissed the allegations that there were widespread violations,” Odeh said.

Eisenkot has yet to strike deals with parties that could bring him to the 61-seat majority needed to form a government. If neither Eisenkot nor Netanyahu forms a coalition, another round of elections could follow.

Abed Abou Shhadeh says his detention was part of Israel’s political measures ‘to indimidate Arab society as a whole’.

Israeli authorities have released Palestinian journalist Abed Abou Shhadeh after detaining him for five days without charge.

Speaking after his release, Abou Shhadeh said on Sunday that his detention was part of “political measures” intended not only for him “but to intimidate Arab society as a whole”.

“In my view, the most appropriate response is to reaffirm among ourselves that we are on the right side, that our path is the path of truth,” he said, adding that he would continue his work as a journalist.

Abou Shhadeh was held in a Shin Bet intelligence facility in Petah Tikva, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, after being detained on Tuesday on suspicion of “contact with a foreign agent”.

He was suspected of receiving money from foreign sources in order to support Israel’s Arab voters, according to the legal rights group Adalah, which is part of his defence team.

The accusation came after Abou Shhadeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, spoke on the al-Midan podcast for the Arab48 website and appeared as an analyst on Al Jazeera.

He addressed topics similar to those discussed in Israeli media outlets, according to Hadeel Abu Salih, his legal counsel and a human rights lawyer with Adalah.

“It was obvious from the first day, from Thursday, that the police doesn’t have, any evidence in this context,” Abu Salih said. All of the suspicion relied on a public conversation he had with Palestinian intellectual Azmi Bishara when he was in Qatar.

“This is now being criminalised only because the speakers are Palestinians,” Abu Salih said. “Or when Palestinians are asking to analyse their political reality. The Israeli system turned that discussion and analysis into a criminal suspicion.”

“They were trying to say that he’s not a journalist, that he’s a political counsel.”

The lawyer said Abou Shhadeh was arrested in the middle of the night on Tuesday after 15 Israeli security officers raided his home in Jaffa and confiscated personal belongings, such as electronic devices and books, in front of his two children.

‘Campaign against the votes of… Palestinians’

His five-day detention was “part of the campaign against the votes of the Arabs and Palestinians in Israel”, Adalah founder Hassan Jabareen told Al Jazeera.

Jabareen said Israel sought to “delegitimise their votes” by the claims against Abou Shhadeh.

“He travelled to Doha as a journalist … he came back as a journalist. But he was arrested as an Arab political person,” Jabareen said. “They tried to use him in order to say that Arabs use illegal [means] in their political participation in the Israeli elections.”

Hebron, occupied West Bank – Nour al-Natsha knew there was a chance his home wouldn’t be in the best condition upon his return after 10 days of displacement.

Israeli forces had taken over Hebron’s al-Jalada neighbourhood on October 24, a day after Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers nearby. Al-Natsha’s family were given 20 minutes to leave, taking only their money, gold and important documents, and leaving behind most of their clothes, everyday belongings and family photographs.

After hearing that Israeli forces had withdrawn, al-Natsha tentatively returned to check on the house on Monday.

He found the doors wide open, and the house turned upside down. Belongings were missing, as well as his young daughter’s pet bird.

“When we entered the house, it was a mixture of emotions,” the 35-year-old orthopaedic surgeon said. “You couldn’t tell whether you were happy to be back home or heartbroken by what had happened to it.”

The Israeli military operation in Hebron appears to be over – but al-Natsha and his family, and thousands of others in the city, are left to pick up the pieces.

Anxious return

Al-Natsha explained that families and neighbours had gathered on Sunday evening in the nearby Wadi al-Karm area, close to their homes, waiting until around midnight after reports emerged that the military operation had ended. But seeing no signs of a withdrawal, they returned to their temporary accommodation, despite holding on to the hope of going home soon.

Then, in the early hours of the morning, it was confirmed that the military had withdrawn. Al-Natsha decided to head towards the neighbourhood at around 6am. There, he found several neighbours making their way home and waited for relatives to arrive before entering the area and inspecting their houses.

Al-Natsha was initially accompanied by his father and two brothers as they inspected the property, looking for suspicious objects or potential hazards after finding the doors open.

Once they were satisfied that the house was safe, family members began cleaning and putting things back in order, removing belongings they feared might have been damaged or contaminated, in an effort to make the house habitable again and resume their daily lives.

But the family’s return was not without anxiety, particularly for al-Natsha’s four-year-old daughter, Ilya. Her biggest concern was the fate of her pet bird, “Natosh”, which she had left inside the house when the family was forced to leave.

Al-Natsha has no idea where the bird is, whether it is dead, or whether the Israeli soldiers released it. Ilya, meanwhile, keeps asking about her pet.

‘Our paradise on earth’

The return of families to al-Jalada came after 10 days of military restrictions and evacuations affecting several neighbourhoods in Hebron.

During the operation, hundreds of families were forced to leave their homes, while shops and institutions in the areas were closed.

According to previously released figures from the Hebron Governorate’s Support and Relief Committee, 537 families, comprising approximately 3,300 people, were displaced.

With residents now returning, the extent of the damage to homes and belongings, and the lasting effects of the days spent away, remain part of the experience of families trying to rebuild their lives.

For 68-year-old Khaled Shawer, who also lives in the neighbourhood, the damage to homes and the debris and destruction left behind by the military operation could be dealt with. What mattered most was that residents had returned and could begin to regain a sense of stability.

“Everything can be replaced: the destruction, the damage, the dirt, everything,” Shawer said. “But the most important thing is that we have returned to our homes, our paradise on earth, the place where we find our psychological and physical stability.”

Election body says deadlocked result won’t be undermined even if foreign interference claims are found to be true.

The head of Israel’s elections commission has said the results of the country’s general election would still stand even if claims of foreign interference were substantiated.

“Our position is that even if the suspicions are substantiated, this would not undermine the integrity of the electoral process or the election results as a whole,” Central Elections Committee head Noam Sohlberg said in a video on Sunday, in which he appeared with the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, and the attorney general.

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party had questioned the results after saying, without providing evidence, that Arab-led parties, which made significant gains in Tuesday’s elections, “stole” the vote and accepted funding from Qatar to do it.

Qatar has rejected the allegations, calling it a disinformation campaign.

Also on Sunday, Israeli police released two out of three political activists arrested before Tuesday’s polls opened. They were carrying envelopes of cash, allegedly to bribe voters, police said.

One was released on unspecified conditions, while another was ordered to remain on house arrest.

Police said the suspects were connected to the Arab-led Ra’am party, which won eight seats.

Its leader, Mansour Abbas, denounced the arrests as undemocratic and “an attempt to influence the election results”.

‘Orchestrated and organised campaign’

Main opposition leader Eisenkot on Sunday accused Netanyahu of launching an “orchestrated and organised campaign to delegitimise the results”.

Eisenkot has previously ruled out forming a coalition with Arab parties, but a deadlock in Tuesday’s elections means siding with the parties could help him form a government.

Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats in Tuesday’s elections, while the opposition bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot, won 48, meaning neither side can form a government in Israel’s 120-seat parliament alone.

Israel’s three Arab-led parties, including the Ra’am party, won a record 19 seats.

A coalition of Arab parties with Eisenkot would provide a comfortable majority of 67 in parliament. However, for many in Israel, the idea of siding with Arab parties is politically unpalatable.

The results are due to be officially certified this week, after which President Isaac Herzog must nominate a candidate to form a new government.

Israeli strikes in Gaza have killed at least eight people, including a child, according to hospitals, despite a year-old ceasefire.

In Gaza City to the north, hospital officials said a missile attack hit a group of civilians next to Cairo School in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood, killing three people, including a four-year-old boy.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, the Hamas-run ministry of interior said a drone attack targeted a group of police officers in the Al-Mawasi area, killing five, as they were carrying out their routine duties.

The Israeli military said it had carried out two attacks on what it described as military operatives but has not yet provided evidence or further information.

Outside Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, video showed a crowd of men gathered to pray next to two body bags and the tiny body of the child, which was wrapped in a white towel.

“My son and his child were martyred. They were sitting in their tent, bothering no one, and nothing else was happening in the area when suddenly, a missile struck them, and they were martyred,” Ali Oweis told AFP news agency. “There is no ceasefire; the war is ongoing — don’t you see?”

At Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, women despaired as body bags lay on the floor, video showed. The interior ministry named the five police officers killed, who were between the ages of 23 and 53, and called the attack a “horrific massacre”.

A ceasefire came into force in Gaza in October last year, but Israeli air strikes have continued almost every day.

Since then, 1,580 people have been killed, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN. Israel says it is targeting Hamas, but often civilians are also killed.

Meanwhile, a peace plan for Gaza, brokered by the Trump administration, has stalled.

The ceasefire saw thousands of Palestinians held by Israel released in return for all of the 48 remaining hostages held in Gaza, and an agreement to end the war – which was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

Since the war began, 74,594 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Additional reporting by Jacob Phillips

Israel carried out several attacks in Gaza, including shelling the Nuseirat refugee camp.

At least four Palestinians in Gaza have been killed as Israel continues to attack the enclave, despite a so-called “ceasefire” that has been in place for over a year.

Israel carried out several attacks in Gaza on Saturday, including shelling the Nuseirat refugee camp, in which Palestinian teacher Diaa Abu al-Rous was killed, al-Awda Hospital confirmed.

Separately, another man, Arafat al-Arair, died after sustaining serious injuries days earlier when Israel struck a vehicle in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, southwest of Gaza City. A medical source at al-Shifa Hospital confirmed his death.

Meanwhile, two girls also died on Saturday from injuries sustained the previous evening when their tent caught fire at a camp for displaced people in al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis. Nasser Medical Complex confirmed their deaths. It is not clear what caused the fire.

At least six Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the past 48 hours, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health, bringing the number of people killed since the October 2025 ceasefire to 1,580.

In its daily statistical report on Saturday, the ministry said another 26 people were injured over the same period.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned on Friday that Israeli forces in Gaza were continuing to displace Palestinians and that their actions continued to raise concerns of ethnic cleansing.

The OHCHR said in a statement that Palestinians were increasingly being forced into a shrinking area of the territory, which has been decimated following three years of Israeli siege.

The office said Israeli forces were destroying what remained of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. The Israeli military is working to expand its control over Gaza’s territory to 70 percent, following an order from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel was targeting civilians as it sought to displace Palestinians from the city.

“We have testimonies from people who have evacuated their homes in the eastern part of Deir el-Balah city, confirming that the Israeli military has adjusted the yellow demarcation line by opening fire on civilians to push them from these areas,” Abu Azzoum said.

Since a nominal “ceasefire” came into effect a year ago, Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,580 Palestinians and injured 5,711 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Talks aimed at permanently ending Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza under United States President Donald Trump’s peace plan have stalled. Reconstruction efforts have yet to begin amid disputes between Hamas and Israel over the implementation of Trump’s plan.

Hamas says it will not fully disarm until Israel withdraws entirely from Gaza. However, Israel maintains it will not leave the territory until Hamas forfeits its weapons.

Israeli forces and settlers have escalated pogroms and raids across the occupied West Bank, attacking and injuring Palestinians, restricting their movement, carrying out arrests and demolishing homes.

This comes as a military offensive and siege on the Hebron governorate entered its seventh day – an operation that has displaced or besieged hundreds of Palestinian families and kept tens of thousands of students out of classrooms.

In the Qalandiya refugee camp just north of occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces carried out a raid that triggered clashes on Thursday. Two children were wounded, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.

It said its teams treated a 15-year-old boy who was shot with live ammunition in both legs, and a child, aged 12, who was injured by live-bullet fragments. Both were taken to hospital.

In a separate incident, Israeli soldiers and settlers beat disabled Palestinian Mohammad Ahmad Ayesh Thawabta in the village of al-Maniya, southeast of Bethlehem, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

In the northern West Bank, Israeli forces detained 13 Palestinians, including three brothers, in raids before dawn on Thursday, the Palestinian Prisoners Media Office and local sources said. Most of the raids were in the Nablus governorate, where soldiers searched homes and harassed families.

Hebron offensive

In Hebron, Israeli forces continued raids and closures that began last week after two Israeli soldiers were killed in a gun attack. Both Palestinian suspects were also killed.

Hebron Governor Khaled Dudin said on Thursday that 537 families, comprising 3,361 people, have been forced from their homes, Wafa reported.

They include 232 infants, 326 older people, 147 pregnant or breastfeeding women and 213 people with chronic illnesses. Municipal figures put the total number affected, including those under siege, at about 5,000 people from 780 families.

Dudin said the offensive has disrupted education for about 262,000 students across 589 schools in the governorate this week, forcing schools to move to remote learning. Officials estimated daily economic losses at 10 million to 12 million shekels ($3.2m to $3.9m).

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israeli forces detained 110 Palestinians in the governorate from Friday to Wednesday. Soldiers beat two men in Dura and Wad al-Saman and arrested two brothers while they were ploughing their land east of Yatta, it said. Israeli forces also raided homes in Taffuh and Halhul, and settlers attacked vehicles at the city’s closed northern entrance, it added.

Memorials demolished

In nearby Masafer Yatta, armed settlers attacked US journalist Jasper Nathaniel and two activists in the village of Umm al-Khair on Wednesday. Russian activist Adele Shoko said on X that the settlers beat and threatened them and stole their equipment and Nathaniel was pepper-sprayed and arrested.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Israeli forces are still operating in Hebron, blocking access and imposing tight restrictions on movement across the governorate.

They are “disrupting Palestinians’ access to livelihoods, education and healthcare. Most displaced families are staying with relatives,” OCHA said, calling for the prevention of further forced displacements and demolitions.

Israeli forces also demolished memorials to Palestinians in several parts of the Hebron governorate on Thursday. In Dura, south of Hebron city, soldiers fired a heavy barrage of tear gas before bulldozing a mural bearing the images of several of the town’s dead, including Bajis Abu Atwan, who was killed in the 1970s.

The targeting of memorials “appears to be a new pattern recently adopted by Israeli forces across all West Bank governorates – though at a higher rate here in Hebron”, Al Jazeera’s Muntasir Nassar said, reporting from Dura.

Israeli military and settler attacks across the West Bank have intensified since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023.