IsraelPalestine

On Tuesday morning, 12-year-old Sundus al-Hamamdeh left her home in the Masafer Yatta village of Khirbet al-Fakhit, and went to school.

It was the third day of the new school year in the occupied West Bank.

But when the sixth-grade student at al-Fakhit Secondary School returned from her classes, the house she had left behind was gone.

Israeli forces had carried out a large-scale demolition operation in Khirbet al-Fakhit, destroying homes, livestock shelters, water infrastructure, and solar-power installations.

For al-Hamamdeh, her house was more than four walls and a roof. It was her safe space, the place she came back to every day.

For children in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the spectre of demolition is always present.

Much of Masafer Yatta lies in Area C of the West Bank, where Israel has control over planning and construction. Israeli authorities justifies the demolition orders by saying that the structures were built without permits; Palestinians, backed by the United Nations, note that such permits are nearly impossible for them to obtain.

And it’s not just their homes that are under threat, but their schools.

On August 4, Israeli forces surrounded Shaab al-Butum school, according to Bassam Jabr, the director-general of education in Masafer Yatta.

An Israeli military bulldozer then demolished two rooms used by teachers and administrators, and a storage room.

The UN independently documented the demolition of the rooms, saying Israeli authorities had cited the lack of an Israeli-issued building permit.

Things could still get worse; the main school building remains under a demolition order.

Focus of attacks

Established in 2015, the school serves about 60 students from kindergarten through 11th grade. Its remote location makes transferring students to other schools particularly difficult, Jabr said.

Education officials have appealed to Israeli courts, and called on the United Nations and foreign governments to intervene.

But the schools remain under threat. Even as the Israeli military and settlers’ pogroms against Palestinians continue across the West Bank, Masafer Yatta is especially targeted.

The remote communities there have little ability to defend themselves and conditions are harsh. In addition, the Israeli military has designated large parts of the area a military firing zone, another justification for forcing out the Palestinian population.

Masafer Yatta’s schools are a central part of the effort to keep Palestinians here – ensuring that families do not have to travel far for their children to be educated. Palestinians argue that is why the schools have been particularly targeted.

Intisar Omar Abu Sabha, an administrative director at the Masafer Yatta Directorate of Education, says schools in the communities of Zif, ar-Rifaiyah, Umm Qussa, Umm al-Kheir, Jinba, Shaab al-Butum, Khirbet al-Daba, and al-Majaz are among those facing demolition orders.

In addition to the threats to their schools, students and teachers also have to navigate road closures, checkpoints, and the presence of settlers to reach their classrooms.

Abu Sabha said schools have also faced damage and settler incursions or harassment in and around their grounds. She describes a cycle in which children risk losing both their homes and their schools.

“Imagine a student who is at school, then returns home and finds their home demolished … and comes back the next day to find their school demolished,” she said.

Yasmeen Sallaq, a Palestinian lawyer, says the threat to the Masafer Yatta schools directly undermines children’s right to education.

But Sallaq says that Israeli restrictions on movement, military raids, arrests, displacement, and attacks affecting students and education workers make that right increasingly difficult to exercise.

“We face the demolition of schools every day, making the continuation of the educational process almost impossible,” Sallaq said.

‘The only outlet’

At Zif Secondary School for Girls, headteacher Hanaa al-Salameen says about 250 students attend the school.

It first received a demolition notice in 2016. Years of legal proceedings followed, but an appeal against demolition was dismissed this year, with efforts continuing to obtain an interim injunction.

The uncertainty has already taken a toll. Some girls are experiencing fear and anxiety, while others have transferred to different schools, al-Salameen said.

“The school is not just a place for education,” she said. “This school is the students’ only outlet.”

She fears the school’s demolition could push some girls out of education altogether if alternative schools are too far away or require them to travel along unsafe roads.

At Zif, 10th-grade student Rabiha Yousef Jibril described the school’s importance.

“I am growing up in this school, and my dreams are growing with me day by day,” Jibril said, adding that while students fear its demolition, they insist they will continue to attend.

“Even if they demolish the school, we will continue to study, even under the trees,” she said. “Even if they confiscate the books, we will keep them in our hearts, as well as our minds.”

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

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

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

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

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

Settlements dividing Palestinian territory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israeli ‘consensus’ against Palestinian state

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two states are the ‘only alternative to violence’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How much do these countries trade with Israel?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ireland

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

The Netherlands

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

United Kingdom

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

France

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

Spain

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

What are Israeli settlements?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaza: Rising death toll amid airstrikes

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

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

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

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

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

The recovery of bodies has slowly continued alongside the killings.

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

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

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

West Bank: Demolitions and villages under siege

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weaponising livestock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Military complicity

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

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

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

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

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

A forced exodus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blocking access to Qusra

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does the embassy move matter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heat is better than high costs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Difficult choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tunisian side secured the league title in May.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Stop these crimes and end impunity’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farah, Mohammed and Jawad are getting ready for the new school year in Masafer Yatta in the southern occupied West Bank.

The children, aged 17, 8, and 7 respectively, attend Shaab al-Butum school in a village with the same name. But the building they’ll return to will be missing two administrative rooms and a storage room after Israeli forces demolished them on August 4.

According to the United Nations, Israel justified the demolitions by saying that the structures were constructed without Israeli-issued building permits. These are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain in the Area C of the occupied West Bank, which is under Israeli administrative and military control.

The rest of the school isn’t safe either – it has also been threatened with demolition, with a court case scheduled for September 15.

The children’s return to education is now uncertain, as they worry about losing the village’s only school completely, and more confrontations with Israeli forces.

Constant fear

The start of the academic year at the beginning of September is supposed to mean a return to learning, but enthusiasm in Shaab al-Butum has now been mixed with anxiety.

Farah explained to Al Jazeera that the school was the only one she had ever attended, and was fearful about what would now happen.

Mohammed echoed that fear and said that he was worried Israeli forces would “return to demolish what remains” of the school. Jawad, meanwhile, spoke of his sadness at seeing the school damaged and said he hoped it could “return as it was”.

For Nidal Younis, the head of the Masafer Yatta local council, those concerns reflect a much wider threat facing education across the area, which has repeatedly been targeted by the Israeli state and settlers over the years. Masafer Yatta was declared part of a closed Israeli military firing zone in the 1980s, which has been used as justification in repeated attempts to force local Palestinians out.

“It is a test renewed with every school year, amidst unprecedented escalation by the occupation authorities,” Younis told Al Jazeera.

“This year comes amid the tightening of the occupation’s policy of demolishing schools, and rampant settler violence that targets everything in these villages,” he added.

That violence, Younis said, follows children throughout their daily lives, targeting “students going to their schools, students while in class, and even inside the home”.

According to Younis, all seven schools in the wider Masafer Yatta area are now threatened with demolition.

“We do not know whether these schools will survive to the end of this academic year, let alone still be standing when the next one begins,” he said, stressing the determination of local Palestinians to stay “despite the pain and [Israeli] barbarism”.

Settler violence

Activist and teacher Tariq Hathaleen said the uncertainty surrounding demolitions, coupled with the continued expansion of settlement outposts, had deepened the sense of insecurity among residents.

“The occupation authorities do not usually tell the residents or the school administration in advance when the bulldozers will arrive,” Hathaleen told Al Jazeera.

Hathaleen added that settlers had stormed Ras Ein al-Auja school in the Jordan Valley the previous academic year, assaulting staff and students.

The attack and the demolition confirmed that schools are “no longer immune from attack”, Hathaleen said.

“[Israel’s actions] do not target merely one aspect, but affects education, housing, freedom of movement and livelihoods,” Hathaleen explained.

Hathaleen described the targeted schools – built by the Palestinian Ministry of Education to serve marginalised areas – as “more than just educational buildings”.

Systematic pattern

Figures from the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission underscore the scale of the threat, with 84 Palestinian schools serving nearly 13,000 students currently facing Israeli demolition or stop-work orders.

Amir Dawoud, a senior official with the commission, said the schools facing the most immediate legal threats were concentrated in the southern Hebron area, particularly Masafer Yatta, as well as at al-Walaja school near Bethlehem, which Israel says lacks a building permit.

“These are not schools that can simply be closed and their students easily transferred elsewhere,” Dawoud told Al Jazeera.

The impact of demolition orders, he said, begins long before any building is actually destroyed, creating uncertainty and disruption for students, teachers, and their families.

“The psychological and educational impact begins before the bulldozer arrives,” he said.

“It is a systematic pattern that transcends individual cases,” Dawoud added, noting that it starts with planning restrictions, accompanied by road restrictions and settler attacks.

“It does not only threaten school buildings,” he said. “It targets the ability of Palestinian communities to survive.”

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has condemned an Israeli seizure of its East Jerusalem training centre, calling the raid part of a campaign designed to weaken the agency and, in turn, eliminate Palestinian rights.

In comments to Al Jazeera, acting Commissioner-General Christian Saunders on Wednesday accused Israel of violating UN premises, but insisted that “might doesn’t win out” in resolving the conflict and that the agency is “not going anywhere”.

Israeli forces raided and seized the Qalandiya Training Centre in the Kafr Aqab neighbourhood on Tuesday, expelling UNRWA employees and ordering them not to return.

Five Palestinians were injured by Israeli gunfire near the site, according to the Jerusalem governorate.

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir took part in the raid and said there was “no place for the agency in Jerusalem and Israel”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the evacuation was lawful and carried out under legislation passed by Israel.

The takeover of the facility deprives hundreds of young Palestinians of education and violates the protections afforded to UN premises under international law, Saunders said.

“Three hundred and forty young people are not going to get the education, not going to get the training they need,” he remarked. He lamented that the students – mostly from disadvantaged families – will now miss out on learning the skills to give them the “opportunity to lead a full and dignified life”.

The Qalandiya centre is part of UNRWA’s wider network of services for Palestinian refugees. It serves about 16,000 refugees from Qalandiya refugee camp and other parts of the occupied West Bank.

The raid followed the closure of the nearby Qalandiya checkpoint and a heavy Israeli military deployment in the area.

Israeli authorities said the property was owned by the Jewish National Fund and has now been allocated to the Jerusalem Municipality for a planned educational and community complex. They also cited Israeli legislation, passed in October 2024, restricting UNRWA’s activities.

UNRWA rejected the claims and maintained that the centre is a United Nations facility protected under international law.

Wider campaign

UNRWA has come under severe pressure amid Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and abuse in the occupied West Bank, with several workers having been killed.

Saunders said the wider campaign against UNRWA is intended to weaken the agency and cut its funding, and links these efforts to the broader question of Palestinian refugee rights.

“If UNRWA is defunded and UNRWA is eliminated then they are hoping that the issue of the refugees, the Palestine refugees, will go away,” Saunders said. “Which means that the right of return, reparations, and compensation would go away, as well.”

The aid group chief pointed out that its mandate comes directly from the United Nations General Assembly and its role is to provide humanitarian and public services while the wider political dispute between Israel and Palestinians remains unresolved.

“We’re a humanitarian organisation; we’re a development organisation. We are given our mandate by the United Nations General Assembly to provide critical services,” Saunders said.

UNRWA will continue doing so “until the General Assembly decides otherwise, or there is a durable solution to the Palestine question,” he declared.

However, Saunders also acknowledged the limits of the UN’s ability to prevent further incursions without collective action from member states.

“I don’t think the United Nations has the power to say: ‘You know, this is not going to continue to happen,’” he said.

“The United Nations is the sum of its member states, and its member states need to have the collective determination to address this issue. And for over seven decades, this has not happened.”

Israeli forces have raided the Qalandiya Training Centre, operated by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem in what officials and analysts describe as a pivotal step towards dismantling international refugee protections and consolidating control over the occupied West Bank.

Tuesday’s storming of the UNRWA facility, led by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was justified by Israeli authorities under October 2024 legislation banning the UN agency, prompting sharp condemnation from Qatar, which warned of systematic efforts to strip millions of Palestinians of essential services.

Strategic annexation

Israeli affairs expert Adel Shadid identified broader territorial ambitions behind the raid, carried out on the boundary line between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He told Al Jazeera the assault serves a larger geopolitical scheme involving a historic airport close to the training centre.

“The institute is directly adjacent to the historic Qalandiya Airport, which was built more than 106 years ago,” Shadid said.

“The occupation aims to gain complete control over the airport adjacent to the institute to establish a massive settlement comprising over 9,000 settlement units in addition to a Jewish heritage centre and to erase the historical and geographical Jordanian landmarks of the airport,” he explained.

“By controlling these two areas and annexing them to the occupation municipality, the pillars of the ‘Greater Jerusalem’ project are completed. This project alone will carve out between 12 to 13 percent of the total area of the West Bank,” he added.

Shadid noted that this expansion would allow the municipality to control an area exceeding 800sq km (310sq miles), essentially destroying Palestinian continuity.

“The ultimate goal of the occupation exceeds preventing the establishment of a future Palestinian state. Rather, it aims explicitly to prevent the establishment of any independent Palestinian entity or presence on this land,” he said.

Echoing this assessment, retired Lebanese Brigadier General and military analyst Elias Hanna pointed to Israel’s tactical encirclement of urban Palestinian hubs.

“The importance of Qalandiya is linked to the broader settlement project in the West Bank, which is based on creating settlement blocs aiming to control geographical continuity between Palestinian areas and isolate them from each other,” Hanna told Al Jazeera.

“The control over the area can affect the movement and connection between the two cities,” he added, referring to Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Targeting refugee rights

Detailing the immediate impact on UNRWA’s institutional mandate, the agency’s media adviser Adnan Abu Hasna outlined the unprecedented nature of the takeover.

“UNRWA was not informed [in advance] of any action by the Israeli government against the UNRWA institute and complex in Qalandiya,” Abu Hasna told Al Jazeera.

“This measure is unprecedented as the UN flag is lowered and this headquarters is taken over in this unusual manner, and it represents a dangerous escalation against international humanitarian law, against UN laws and against the mandate granted to UNRWA by the UN General Assembly,” he said.

Abu Hasna underscored how the raid violated historic bilateral frameworks that long governed UN operations.

“There is an agreement signed between UNRWA and Israel on June 14, 1967, providing for facilitating UNRWA’s operations and protecting its facilities and its employees and headquarters enjoying immunity and privileges, but unfortunately, all of this has ended now under the weight of escalating Israeli measures,” he said.

The agency operates schools and provides healthcare, social services and microfinancing for Palestinians. Compounding the Israeli raids, destructions of its compounds and offices, and restrictions on its operations, the agency is also facing a financial crisis. Abu Hasna cited major political defunding campaigns, particularly by the United States.

“We have a large deficit, especially after the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers cut $360m, which constitutes about 30 percent of UNRWA’s annual budget,” he noted.

Settler-military cooperation

Regarding the operational dynamics on the ground, Israeli affairs specialist Anas Abu Arqoub highlighted the deepening alignment between state forces and armed settlers.

“It is a division of roles accompanied by a state of complete integration,” Abu Arqoub told Al Jazeera.

“The settler phenomenon … [is] in fact armed organisations with a clear leadership hierarchy, a system of regular and reserve fighters called upon when needed, and they possess a military combat doctrine,” he explained.

“A large part of them are elements from within the Israeli army, armed with its weapons, and undergo joint military training,” he added.

Abu Arqoub said Israeli research institutions, such as the Institute for National Security Studies, have recognised the severe implications of this convergence.

“The Institute for National Security Studies recently pointed out that this military force of settlers has become capable, under the cover of ‘loss of control’, of executing complete ethnic cleansing in the West Bank,” he observed.

US green light

Examining the international impunity enabling these actions, Birzeit University political science Professor Ghassan Khatib emphasised Washington’s decisive role.

“The weakness of the United Nations position is one of the two main factors driving Israel to persist and increasingly rebel against international laws and violate the rights of the Palestinian people,” Khatib told Al Jazeera.

“The first and most important factor is the American position, the actual sponsor of this Israeli rebellion,” he stressed, pointing out a “direct correlation between the rising pace of Israeli violations and the reascent of [President Donald] Trump to the leadership of the United States about two years ago”.

“These settler militias have become an integral part of the occupation system, and the danger will inevitably escalate,” Khatib added.

Electoral basis

From the local community’s perspective, Mohammed Saeed – public relations director for the popular committee of the Qalandiya refugee camp, which Israeli forces also raided on Tuesday – framed the raid as both diplomatic defiance and domestic political posturing.

The Israeli incursion, he said, was a clear message of defiance stating: ‘We are the owners of the land, and we decide its fate,’” Saeed told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.