IsraelPalestine

Four children and a woman were killed after heavy rain caused a sandbank to collapse on their tent.

Palestinian authorities have criticised global “indifference and inaction” after a landslide killed five displaced people sheltering in tents in the central Gaza Strip following heavy rains.

“This is a scene that should shame the conscience of humanity and reflects the extent of the complicity and abandonment to which our […] people are subjected,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement on Monday.

Four children and a woman were killed and two people remain missing after a sandbank collapsed onto their tent in Deir el-Balah on Sunday. The landslide happened after heavy rains brought by the first winter storm of the year hit the besieged territory on Friday, causing widespread flooding.

Floodwaters have inundated displacement camps and weakened buildings already damaged by Israeli air raids.

Restrictions imposed by the Israeli military mean specialist search and rescue equipment is in short supply, and Gaza residents were forced to dig using their bare hands to try and reach survivors.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the victims were living in flimsy tents, on exposed ground, with no protection from the heavy rain.

“When the embankment collapsed, those people had no chance to escape or protect themselves, and this raises difficult conditions about what people on the ground are left to endure,” he said.

About 70,000 tents were flooded when the storm hit Gaza at the weekend. According to data from Save the Children, more than half a million children are living in “critical or catastrophic” shelter conditions.

In a statement, Save the Children said, “While the so-called ceasefire announced over a year ago stipulated the entry of caravans as a more durable alternative to tents, Israeli authorities have repeatedly blocked their entry into Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of children exposed to another winter of hardship.”

The Government Media Office held Israel, the United States and the international community “fully and directly responsible”, citing their “absolute silence regarding the occupation’s crimes and their complicity in preventing the entry of shelter supplies, construction materials, caravans, fuel, and spare parts required to operate municipal and Civil Defence machinery and equipment”.

“We strongly condemn and denounce the state of inaction and the complete absence of the Board of Peace and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, as though this catastrophe were of no concern to them. Their complete failure to act and their flagrant abdication of the responsibilities entrusted to them raise serious questions about the very purpose of these bodies, which remain passive observers in the face of the suffering of the Palestinian people.”

More than 74,600 people have been killed since Israel’s genocidal war began on October 7, 2023, in response to a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Since a “ceasefire” took effect in October 2025, Israel has killed more than 1,600 Palestinians.

In the occupied West Bank, a barrier of concrete and fencing cuts Palestinians off from their land, their families and nearby towns.

Israel began building its separation wall in 2002. Planned to stretch 712km (442 miles), it runs deep inside Palestinian territory rather than along the boundary with Israel. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled it illegal.

Today’s date carries extra weight. Thirty-seven years ago on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.

Built by East Germany in 1961 to stop its citizens fleeing to the West, it encircled West Berlin for 155km (96 miles), dividing the city and its people for 28 years.

Since 2003, Palestinians have marked the same date as an international day of action against Israel’s wall, which is more than four times as long and still being built. In urban areas, its concrete rises to about 9 metres (30ft), more than twice the height of Berlin’s.

But the wall is more than a physical structure. It operates alongside a wider network of checkpoints, roadblocks, gates and permits that restricts Palestinian movement across the occupied territory.

Where does the wall run?

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 456km (283 miles), or 64 percent, of the planned route had been built by April.

About 85 percent of it runs inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line separating Israel from the West Bank. That route determines which communities, roads and farmland are cut off from their surroundings.

In some urban areas, the barrier is a concrete wall. Elsewhere, it is made up of fences, patrol roads, ditches and other security infrastructure.

For Palestinians, the comparison with Berlin carries a message. “It doesn’t matter how high the barriers will be, they will fall,” a Palestinian activist in Bir Nabala told Al Jazeera. “Like the Berlin Wall fell, the Palestinian wall will fall.”

How many people are cut off from their land?

The wall’s impact reaches far beyond the structure itself. Its route cuts Palestinian communities off from neighbouring towns, workplaces and farmland, disrupting livelihoods and everyday life.

More than 14,000 Palestinians live between the wall and the Green Line in an area known as the Seam Zone. To reach basic services, markets and relatives on the other side, they must pass through checkpoints.

Farmers are among the hardest hit. According to OCHA, about 150 Palestinian communities have land in this area. Reaching it depends on permits, prior coordination with Israeli authorities and access through designated agricultural gates.

There are about 62 such gates along the wall, and most stay closed for much of the year. During the 2025 olive harvest, 74 percent opened only on a limited number of days.

In Qalqiliya, the wall wraps around much of the city, cutting it off from nearby Palestinian communities and the land around it. Journeys to neighbouring towns that were once short can now mean passing through checkpoints or taking long detours.

The wall restricts more than movement. It reshapes how communities relate to their land and places that are part of their everyday lives.

Israel’s wider system of control

The wall is only one part of a much wider network restricting Palestinian movement across the West Bank.

As of December, OCHA documented 925 checkpoints, road gates, earth mounds and other obstacles across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. They restrict the movement of about 3.4 million Palestinians, often forcing long detours to reach work, school, hospitals and other services.

The network includes 89 permanently staffed checkpoints, 218 partial checkpoints, 232 road gates, 167 earth mounds, 114 linear closures and 105 roadblocks.

Checkpoints and road gates now make up nearly 60 percent of these obstacles, up from 15 percent two decades ago when temporary blockages, such as earth mounds and roadblocks, were far more common.

Crossing the wall itself requires permits. Of its 13 checkpoints, only three can be used by Palestinians with West Bank IDs and Israeli-issued permits to enter East Jerusalem and Israel. OCHA said these permits are hard to get and many have been revoked or suspended since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel and the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.

The wall stretches for hundreds of kilometres, but its impact cannot be measured by distance alone. It is measured in the farmland farmers struggle to reach, the communities cut off from nearby towns and the checkpoints between people and the places they need to go.

Az-Zawayda, Gaza Strip – On Saturday night, water began rushing into Jaber al-Kaseeh’s tent in central Gaza’s az-Zawayda area, waking him and his family as heavy rain swept across Gaza. Soon the tent’s floor was flooded, soaking mattresses, carpets, blankets and spoiling what little food the family had managed to keep.

“Everyone woke up and stayed awake, asking their neighbours about the extent of damage and inquiring about children,” Jaber, who is in his 70s, told Al Jazeera.

He described the area outside the displacement camp, where thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge, as a swimming pool.

More than 70,000 tents have been flooded since heavy rains began late on Friday, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering in locations considered “highly vulnerable” to more flooding.

More than a year after the so-called “ceasefire” deal was signed between Israel and Hamas, Israel has continued to flout the terms of the agreement, blocking the entry of goods into Gaza, including 60,000 mobile homes and 200,000 tents.

Only 20,000 tents have been allowed in, and mobile homes have remained parked on the Egyptian side of the border, many of them for more than two years.

Fourth winter in tents

This is the fourth winter for Jaber and his family living in a tent house in the az-Zawayda area. Originally from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, Jaber has been displaced several times, like most Palestinians since Israel launched its genocidal war on October 7, 2023.

More than 90 percent of Palestinians have been displaced, many of them multiple times, by the war that has attracted global condemnation.

Jaber says his camp was flooded three or four times last winter, forcing many families to leave. Around 40 tents still remain there, but the latest flooding has left them in even worse condition.

“All the tents are now damaged, torn and covered in mud,” Jaber told Al Jazeera.

“We urgently need tents, tarpaulins, plastic sheets, mattresses, blankets and carpets to protect us from the difficult days ahead.

“We keep hearing about tents and tarpaulins being distributed, but we have received nothing.

“We had hoped the mobile homes and temporary housing units promised under the ceasefire deal would allow us to rest and return to a life of safety and peace. But it was all just words in the air. We have seen nothing.”

Promised shelter, unmet needs

Jaber’s experience reflects the wider shelter crisis facing displaced Palestinians across Gaza. Despite the “ceasefire” agreement, which included provisions for temporary housing units, tents and heavy machinery to clear rubble, large numbers of families remain in makeshift shelters exposed to winter weather.

Under the first phase of the agreement, along with temporary housing units and tents, heavy equipment was also supposed to be allowed in to remove rubble and help restore damaged infrastructure.

But the arrival of mobile homes and heavy machinery has been delayed as Israel has found excuses to restrict their entry into the enclave of 2.3 million people.

Trucks carrying mobile homes and equipment have reportedly been waiting on the Egyptian side of the border while Palestinians live in misery in dilapidated tent camps.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Gaza requires approximately 121,000 tents and 561,000 tarpaulins, while available stocks remain far below what is needed.

For Om Hani Hamouda, a displaced woman from Beit Lahiya now sheltering in al-Zawayda, replacing her worn-out tent with a caravan has become a dream.

“We did not expect that the first rainfall would leave us in this condition,” she told Al Jazeera. “These tents do not protect us from the cold, storms or rain. Whenever winter comes, everyone holds their breath.”

Hamouda had hoped the ceasefire agreement would allow her family to return to northern Gaza or at least receive a caravan or building materials to secure better shelter. But she said there had been no sign of progress.

“We are asking for a dignified life. We want these tents to be replaced with caravans. Even a simple caravan would be better,” she told Al Jazeera.

Hamouda’s family has been displaced around 15 times during the war. She spent more than 15 years living and working in the United Arab Emirates before returning to Gaza nearly two years before the war began.

“My children cry because they miss the life we had there,” she said. “Life here is so difficult. There is no life in any sense.”

Families left exposed to the rain

Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera that large quantities of tents, caravans, prefabricated housing units and shelter equipment remain stranded at Gaza’s borders because of Israeli restrictions.

He said that while more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians were facing another winter in worn-out tents, even people living in houses and apartments remained exposed to the elements because of the extensive damage to homes and infrastructure.

“Today, we cannot even say that those living in houses and apartments are safe from extreme weather because, with around 85 percent of homes destroyed or damaged, every family is exposed to some degree of harsh weather conditions,” Abdu said, adding that Israel continues to reject shipments containing timber and emergency shelter kits, depriving families of the ability to repair homes that could otherwise accommodate them.

Abdu said Israel, as the occupying power, was legally obligated under the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure essential supplies reached civilians and to facilitate humanitarian relief.

Jihad Dawwas, 51, says he felt helpless as he could not do anything as his children had nowhere dry to sleep amid the rains.

Water poured into the tents at the displacement camp where he is sheltering, while strong winds blew away many of the surrounding tents. His children ended up sleeping while standing, he said, after rainwater soaked their mattresses and the plastic sheets covering their shelter.

“They slept standing up. By morning, some of my children had become ill because of the cold and the storm,” he told Al Jazeera.

Dawwas, who was displaced from northern Gaza, is sheltering with seven of his own children and three orphaned children of his brother. He said he had bought the family’s tent with his own money and had received no tent from any charity or aid initiative.

“A tent cannot replace a home, not even by one percent,” he said. “We are living in what is left of our lives.”

He said he had seen no caravans or temporary housing units arrive to help displaced families, despite the expectations raised by the ceasefire agreement.

“Our lives are a daily hell. We are completely forgotten. There is no fair distribution of aid, and no one is really asking about us,” Dawwas said.

He questioned why even basic shelter supplies had become so difficult to obtain.

“Do tents and tarpaulins really need all this pressure and effort just to become something we can ask for?” he asked. “They should provide us with tents and tarpaulins, and give us at least a dignified life.”

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.”

The election night highs for Palestinian citizens of Israel – Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats – turned into a week of delegitimising rhetoric from Israeli politicians.

Nearly 840,000 people voted for Ra’am and the Joint List, a 64 percent increase on 2022, and adding them to opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc would give an anti-Netanyahu coalition 67 seats; without them, only a unity deal between the main Zionist blocs or another election is possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud alleged the election had been “stolen” by Palestinian parties with unproven claims of Qatari financing. Qatar denied such accusations, as police sources told The Times of Israel that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. By Sunday, election committee chairman Noam Sohlberg declared the election “conducted properly”.

However, the rhetoric delegitimising the Palestinian vote is now being reflected in the coalition negotiations under way. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, has ruled out Palestinian partners, and Eisenkot has presented four conditions for anyone joining his coalition that would be anathema to the Palestinian parties, including recognising Israel as “a Jewish, democratic, liberal, and egalitarian state”, and mandatory national service for all citizens, including Palestinians.

However, Palestinian politicians continue to express a willingness to back an Eisenkot government from outside – if only to enable the departure of Netanyahu and the far right. Meanwhile, thousands rallied in Tel Aviv for a coalition that includes the parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.

10 days of siege in Hebron

While the Israeli electorate was consumed by the election’s unclear results, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank continued enduring a variety of sieges, most prominently in Hebron. By October 29, Al Jazeera’s data unit counted 10 entrances sealed and about 5,000 people displaced. The city saw at least 120 arrests and 13 businesses demolished by Friday, when the army also blew up the homes of two men it blamed for an attack. Palestinian officials accused the government of using the operation to win settler votes; no Israeli official has said so outright.

On November 2, Governor Khaled Dudin announced the army had withdrawn from Hebron, and that displaced families could return. The Jerusalem Post reported that the army’s chief of staff recommended leaving Hebron before the election, but that Netanyahu refused.

But even with the operation over, the damage remains following more than 120 arrests and daily economic losses the governor put at 10 million to 12 million shekels ($3.2m to $3.8m) in a city responsible for about 40 percent of Palestinian industrial output.

Sieges in homes, expulsions from land

But Hebron was only the largest of many closures that continue to plague the West Bank. In Masafer Yatta, at least 12 villages were cut off, and the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that forces detained 10 teachers from the Jinba school on Sunday.

Yousef Shanaran – who has been besieged in his home with his family in Wadi Rakhim for four weeks now – told Al Jazeera on Monday that settlers have now poisoned the well outside his family home, which the family already was unable to access for days at a time due to the siege. “No water, no food, nothing at all I’ve got,” he said. “Nobody is allowed to bring anything to us.”

These sieges continue as settlers, and increasingly Israeli forces, disrupt the olive harvest across the West Bank. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented 397 settler attacks causing casualties or damage in the first 26 days of October – a monthly high since OCHA began tracking such incidents in 2006.

Across villages, a familiar pattern has emerged: settlers attack pickers, the army declares a closed military zone and orders the farmers out, and the harvest is lost.

Amid reports of detentions and deportations of solidarity activists who came to the West Bank to assist in the olive harvest in recent days, activists accused settlers of assaulting three activist journalists at Umm al-Khair, and Israel revoked Brad Lander’s travel authorisation after he was detained while harvesting olives two weeks ago.

Gaza: Deadly ‘ceasefire’ continues

In Gaza, attacks continued on a daily basis as the UN human rights office warned on October 30 that Palestinians are being pushed into an ever smaller area, calling the “Yellow Line” a “kill zone” that is moving westward.

By November 2, the Ministry of Health put the death toll since last year’s ceasefire at 1,593. Sunday was the deadliest day of the week, with at least eight killed. Among those reported killed over the past week:

• Government and police personnel were among those killed. On October 28, a drone strike on a Ministry of Economy facility in al-Mawasi, Rafah, where staff and security personnel had gathered, killed five people, including Ministry of Agriculture official Wajdi Abu Bakr, who died on Sunday from injuries sustained in the attack.
• On November 1, a drone strike in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, killed five men whom Gaza’s Interior Ministry said were police officers.
• Israeli attacks also killed children. Six-year-old Tahani Shalalfeh died of a gunshot wound in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, on October 27, and Yamen Saqr, eight, died on October 30 of wounds from Israeli fire in Khan Younis, according to Wafa and local activists. The young child Zain Owais was reported killed on November 1 with his father, Mohammed Ali Owais, and a third man in a strike near Taj Mall in Gaza City.
• On October 27, a young man was killed in an air strike in west Rafah, and a member of the Bseiso family died of earlier wounds in Gaza City, Gaza Now reported. Mohammad al-Bayouk was killed in Khan Younis on October 28, and Mohammed al-Najjar was killed near Jabalia on Thursday.
• On Friday, the body of a 47-year-old man killed in an air strike at al-Waha, north of Gaza City, was recovered, Wafa reported.
• Ibrahim Saeed died on Sunday of wounds from tank fire in al-Musaddar, and Yusuf Abu Younis died Monday of wounds from a drone strike in Khan Younis the day before, according to local activist Hamza al-Masri.
• On Monday, Mahmoud Qaffa and Asaad Qeshta were killed in separate air strikes in Khan Younis and Ibrahim al-Saayida, 40, in al-Musaddar, according to Wafa and Haaretz.

Israeli authorities claimed many of those killed this week were Hamas fighters, though no evidence was provided. Among those were Diaa Abu al-Rous, killed north of Nuseirat on Saturday, and Mohammed Qudeih, killed in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis the same day, who the military claimed were members of Hamas’s Nukhba Forces; Palestinian reports describe Abu al-Rous as a teacher.

Such killings take place with winter closing in and humanitarian conditions struggling to improve: two infant girls died of burns in a tent fire in al-Mawasi on Friday, and the shelter picture is dire, with Gaza’s Social Development Ministry saying about 200,000 tents are needed, yet only dozens have arrived due to Israeli entry restrictions.

With no hospitals in Gaza fully functioning, the Red Crescent warned on Monday that the health system is at risk of collapse after 26 hospitals went out of service – with fuel shortages threatening the remaining facilities.

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.”

Hebron’s economic losses surpass $3.8m as Israeli forces demolish West Bank homes and close hundreds of businesses.

Israeli forces are maintaining their siege on Hebron for the 10th consecutive day, threatening to expand their offensive and forcing more Palestinian families from their homes.

The lockdown in the occupied West Bank city was enforced after an attack on October 23 near Hebron in which two Israeli soldiers were killed.

More than 3,300 Palestinians have since been displaced or affected, with homes destroyed and businesses shut, according to the local municipality.

Mayor Yousef al-Jabari told Al Jazeera on Saturday that daily economic losses were estimated to exceed 12 million shekels ($3.8m), with more than $1.9m worth of damage to infrastructure, along with losses in the health and environmental sectors estimated at about $160,000.

He said Israeli forces have demolished 15 homes and other structures and forced 327 businesses to close. About 80,000 students have been unable to attend school for 10 days, he added.

The mayor said Hebron accounts for about 40 percent of the Palestinian economy and the siege amounts to “collective punishment”.

Palestinian families in and around the city fear the army could soon extend its attacks.

Raids and settler attacks

Israeli arrests of Palestinians in Hebron and other cities in the occupied West Bank continued on Sunday.

Israeli forces arrested 10 Palestinian teachers in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron and seized their vehicle, reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Video shared by Palestinian media and verified by Al Jazeera showed the Israeli military raiding a school run by the United Nations in the Shufat refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem.

The United Nations humanitarian office, OCHA, said Israeli settlers carried out 397 attacks on Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in October, the highest monthly figure since monitoring began in 2006, Wafa said.

Between October 20 and 26, settler attacks targeted 49 Palestinian communities, mostly while Palestinians harvested olives on their land.

Nine children were among 57 Palestinians injured by settlers and Israeli forces: 34 by military gunfire and physical assaults and 23 in settler attacks.

Since the start of 2015, Israeli authorities have issued 9,518 demolition or stop-work notices against Palestinian property in the occupied West Bank, reported the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission. The Palestinian government commission added that 344 of those notices were given in the first nine months of this year.

UNRWA’s West Bank director, Roland Friedrich, said the scenes in Hebron carry “alarming echoes” of the mass displacement in the northern occupied West Bank in early 2025, when Israeli military operations emptied the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps.

More than 34,000 Palestinian refugees from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps remain displaced, according to UNRWA, more than a year after Israel’s “Iron Wall” operation began in January 2025. The operation destroyed more than half of the camps’ residential buildings.

OCHA’s demolition records capture only a fraction of that destruction. Between 2009 and October 2026, the agency recorded 1,399 buildings demolished in the Jenin and Tulkarem governorates, displacing 4,139 people. Those records mainly track demolitions carried out for lack of permits or as punishment, not buildings destroyed during military raids.

An investigation by the research group Forensic Architecture found evidence of deliberate, systematic destruction. Researchers verified more than 200 incidents involving the destruction of buildings and streets across four refugee camps, using armoured bulldozers, controlled demolitions and air attacks. They found that roads were widened through homes and gardens to create routes for military vehicles. The group concluded that Israel was applying tactics in the occupied West Bank similar to those it had used in Gaza.

In February 2025, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tulkarem and Jenin would come to resemble Jabalia and Shujayea, two of Gaza’s most devastated areas.

The raids have not stopped. Last week, Israeli forces detained four Palestinians in Tulkarem, and in the village of Burin, south of Nablus, troops converted several homes into military barracks, as they have in Hebron.

Near Jenin, the army has ordered the residents of an entire village to leave permanently. “I have sheep and cows. Our entire lives are tied to this land,” said farmer Jabri Yahya. “Last year they uprooted our olive trees, and this year they want to force us to leave. We don’t know where to go.”

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.

For more than two years, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri has been barred from occupied East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, unable to pray or deliver sermons at the holy site.

And with his latest exclusion order extending the ban until April 2027, the Palestinian preacher – the head of the Higher Islamic Council in Jerusalem – is among those facing Israeli restrictions at the site – the third holiest in Islam and a Palestinian national symbol.

Sabri has faced repeated exclusion orders since August 2024. The latest order, issued on October 20, prevents Sabri from praying or delivering sermons at Al-Aqsa until April 2027.

At the same time, far-right Jewish religious activists have increasingly been allowed to pray at the site under Israeli police protection, going against a longstanding status quo and opposition from ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious authorities.

The restrictions began after Israeli police detained Sabri in August 2024 over a sermon in which he mourned the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel.

Sabri, one of the most prominent Palestinians in East Jerusalem, has faced repeated Israeli interrogations.

Palestinians say this is part of a campaign against them at Al-Aqsa. The Wadi Hilweh Information Center, a Palestinian human rights monitoring group, says Israeli authorities have issued more than 1,000 exclusion orders barring Palestinians from Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old City since the beginning of 2026, including against religious figures and Islamic Waqf employees.

The centre reported an increase in exclusion orders ahead of Jewish holidays, documenting more than 40 issued over five days in early September.

Sabri told Al Jazeera that the latest extension was the fifth time Israeli authorities have issued an exclusion order against him.

He described the decision as unjust, illegal, inhumane and uncivilised, saying it was intended to silence those speaking out about Al-Aqsa.

Sabri said that he would continue defending Al-Aqsa despite the restrictions, describing the mosque as an integral part of his Islamic faith.

“These measures are aimed at diminishing the Palestinian presence at the mosque, while simultaneously allowing settlers to carry out incursions in large numbers,” Sabri said. “Such actions represent an aggressive policy targeting the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Islamic presence within it.”

Prohibited activities

Ibrahim al-Natsheh was released by Israeli police earlier this month after spending a week in detention after he was arrested while attending funeral prayers for his cousin at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

He told Al Jazeera that officers took him to a police room and handed him a six-month exclusion order barring him from East Jerusalem’s Old City. He said no specific charge was brought against him.

According to al-Natsheh, the order warns that he could face arrest and further penalties, including a fine or imprisonment, if he enters the prohibited area.

Al-Natsheh said he has received so many exclusion orders that he has lost count. He said the restrictions began about nine years ago, following an Israeli crackdown on Islamic study circles at the mosque.

Palestinian students, teachers and activists associated with the activities have faced arrests and exclusion orders.

“The orders banning us from the mosque provide no specific reason; they simply cite ‘disturbing the peace’, even though we are there solely to pray,” al-Natsheh told Al Jazeera. “Ahead of the Jewish holidays, they sent a message to me and a group of other worshippers, warning us not to approach the mosque or else we will be arrested.”

Even when he is not subject to a formal exclusion order, al-Natsheh said, Israeli police have prevented him from entering Al-Aqsa. He also alleged that officers have repeatedly arrested him at Al-Aqsa’s gates and severely beaten him while in detention.

“The path to the mosque has become incredibly difficult; it is swarming with soldiers and settlers,” he said. “We are denied the ability to reach it with any ease, and if we try, we face arrest and beatings with batons. It is deeply painful to witness what is happening to Al-Aqsa now.”

Al Jazeera has reached out to Israeli authorities for comment, but has yet to receive a response.

Diminishing Waqf role

Al-Aqsa Mosque has seen an escalation in Israeli restrictions and violations throughout 2026.

After the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28, Israeli authorities closed Al-Aqsa to most worshippers for 40 days, reopening the compound on April 9.

Meanwhile, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate, almost 28,000 visits by Israeli settlers were recorded at Al-Aqsa between July and September.

Ma’rouf al-Rifai, an adviser to the Jerusalem Governorate, told Al Jazeera that during recent Jewish holidays, Israeli restrictions on Muslim worshippers had intensified.

These measures included closing the mosque for periods of time, preventing noon prayers on at least one occasion, and restricting access for residents of the Old City during visits to the site by Israeli settlers and Jewish religious activists.

Al-Rifai said the Islamic Waqf Department faces mounting constraints on its role in managing the mosque’s affairs.

He said Israeli police have prevented Waqf officials from accompanying Jewish groups when they entered the site, curtailed the authority of mosque guards, and arrested or barred several employees from the compound.

As a result, he said, fewer than 15 guards are now on duty during the morning shift, compared with approximately 50 previously.

He pointed out that the closure of the mosque for 40 days during the war with Iran took place without consulting the Waqf or providing prior notification, which he said demonstrated the Waqf’s diminishing role in the mosque’s administration.

“Settler incursions have undergone a shift over the past three years; they now include Jewish prayers and religious rituals, the raising of Israeli flags, and attempts to bring in sacrificial offerings,” al-Rifai said.

These changes have undermined longstanding arrangements at the compound, under which the Waqf manages Muslim religious affairs while Israeli police oversee security and access.

According to al-Rifai, Israeli authorities have prevented the Waqf from carrying out restoration work at the Bab al-Rahma prayer hall and restricted maintenance of the compound’s trees and gardens. He said the committee responsible for restoration work at Al-Aqsa has been unable to carry out its duties for years.

He warned of efforts to alter the status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque, pointing to several proposals and developments, including demands to allow Jewish visitors into the compound on Saturdays, plans advanced by Israeli politicians to divide access to parts of the site between Muslims and Jews, and an Israeli police recruitment drive for volunteers tasked with escorting Israeli incursions at the site.

Al-Rifai said these developments represented a further erosion of the Waqf’s authority and warned that they could eventually transform the arrangements governing worship and access at the holy site.

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.

Al-Bureij, Gaza Strip – A Sack of Flour, an 11-minute documentary by the emerging filmmaker Mona Abu Qass, draws on her personal experience to examine Israel’s use of starvation against Palestinians in Gaza during Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave.

The film is one of five documentaries by Palestinian women screened Monday at the opening of the second Gaza International Women’s Film Festival, which also marked the official launch of the Gaza Cinema Academy.

The event took place at the site of the al-Nakheel Hall in al-Bureij, central Gaza, under the slogan “Women Creating Life from Death”. The hall is destroyed, like the majority of buildings in Gaza, after three years of Israel’s war, which has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians.

The film captures Palestinians’ struggle to find food in Gaza, the dangers at aid distribution points and the lives lost while trying to obtain flour.

Through Abu Qass’s own experiences, A Sack of Flour explores how the trauma of hunger continues to affect families even after food becomes available again.

Those experiences have renewed relevance as Israeli restrictions on goods entering Gaza and cuts to food assistance have caused shortages and fears of a return to famine.

“The idea for the film stems from a personal experience and a true story,” Abu Qass told Al Jazeera. “It documents daily life in Gaza, weighed down by bombardment, destruction, siege, hunger, and loss.”

“I want to capture details that reveal suffering and people’s determination to hold on to their life,” she added. “I seek to show reality as people experience it and help viewers understand what the war has done to their relationships, dreams, and hopes.”

Highlighting struggles of the disabled

Another film, Beyond Silence, by emerging filmmaker and journalist Raghda al-Buhaisi, explores wartime struggles in Gaza for people with disabilities through the story of a deaf artist who never learned to read, write or communicate through sign language. His art studio in southern Gaza’s Rafah was destroyed by Israel, and his parents and several family members were killed.

After being displaced to Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, another family took him in and set up a modest studio by the roadside. His paintings reflect loss and displacement, expressing what words cannot through colour and line.

“I want to highlight the additional challenges people with disabilities face during war, including displacement, family loss, and the destruction of livelihoods,” al-Buhaisi told Al Jazeera. “Art can cross barriers of language and silence, turning an individual experience of pain into a visual message that conveys Gaza’s suffering to the world.”

Alongside those films were three others by emerging Palestinian women filmmakers – Soso: The Lifeline, Remnants of Light, and Dandana. The films document life in Gaza and the suffering brought by war.

Soso: The Lifeline follows an orphaned child and his donkey, who help people survive in Gaza. Remnants of Light follows a filmmaker struggling with the loss of her family and home, while Dandana tells the story of a mother whose eight children were killed, and who turns to Palestinian songs with her surviving family to cope with her grief.

The five documentaries were produced through a filmmaking diploma programme that began in March and brought together 25 young Palestinian women.

Preserving Gaza’s stories

Festival director Ezzedine Shallah said the films draw on experiences women and girls lived through during the war, offering visual testimony to daily life and giving women space to tell their stories in their own voices.

“Though their subjects differ, the films turn individual pain into broader human stories, revealing war’s psychological and social scars,” he told Al Jazeera. “They preserve stories that might otherwise never reach the screen, transforming suffering into cinematic testimony and bringing Gaza’s stories to audiences beyond its borders.”

The festival, which runs until October 31, features 73 films from 24 countries and offers a broader platform for filmmakers from Gaza and beyond.

But even with events like the festival, filmmaking in Gaza comes with formidable challenges. The destruction of cultural institutions, scarce equipment, limited funding, power and internet outages, and the pressures of war and displacement have severely restricted opportunities for film production. Women filmmakers also struggle to access training, production opportunities and international festivals.

Filmmaker Rima Mahmoud, a co-founder of the festival, said that war and the Israeli siege on Gaza – which predates 2023 – have hindered young women’s filmmaking, pushing some to use simple methods, self-fund projects and document Gaza’s reality even with the difficulties.

“Despite limited resources, these films deserve international exposure,” Mahmoud said. “Their makers need technical and financial support, translation, and partnerships with festivals and platforms.”

Resisting attempts at erasure

Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri, based in Lebanon and another co-founder of the festival, said the films help young women tell their own stories, resist erasure and preserve collective memory, while building skills and accessing work in Gaza or through digital platforms.

The academy has also developed a filmmaking diploma in cooperation with al-Quds Open University and accredited by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

Masri said that the academy is also now trying to help directors reach international festivals.

“We are seeking agreements with distributors to screen these films in educational and cultural institutions outside Palestine, and through international platforms and festivals focused on women’s and human rights,” she said.

“This would bring the voices of Palestinian women to a global audience, shed light on their human experiences and artistic creativity, strengthen the presence of Palestinian cinema internationally, and open new horizons for young female directors to reach global screening platforms and film festivals,” Masri added.

The Farsh Al-Hawa area in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank is unrecognisable after Israeli forces demolished a three-story building and industrial facilities there. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds the West Bank portfolio in the Ministry of Defence, said he ordered their destruction.

It all started on Friday, when two Palestinians attacked an Israeli military checkpoint in Farsh Al-Hawa, killing two soldiers and injuring others.

Since then, Hebron, the West Bank’s economic capital, has been attacked and put under lockdown by Israeli forces.

Israel has announced a sweeping military assault in the city, targeting the neighbourhood of the gunmen, who were killed on Friday. Israeli forces have already forcibly displaced more than 2,000 Palestinians. City officials say almost half of the displaced are babies and children under 18, along with 81 pregnant women and 204 elderly.

Fahd Ahmaro was forced to leave his home, along with his family. He told Al Jazeera that he planned to stay but felt compelled to seek shelter outside his neighbourhood because the women and children were terrified.

“We left with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Our savings, belongings and documents are all in the house,” he said. “I tried to go back after I got my family out safely, but I couldn’t. It’s not safe any more.”

Palestinian authorities in Hebron have declared a state of emergency and created a crisis group, bringing together government agencies, the private sector and civil society, to respond after thousands of people in the city were forced to flee their homes.

Riyadh Khamis, who serves on the committee, told Al Jazeera that philanthropists who could not bear the thought of fellow Palestinians staying in temporary shelters opened their homes to the displaced.

“Hebron is known for its social solidarity and generosity. Our city was the first to provide aid during the COVID lockdown and during the genocide,” Khamis told Al Jazeera. “Today, our neighbours needed help so we all rallied.”

Real estate developer Mohamed Al-Rujoob is one of the philanthropists who sprang to action at the start of the assault on the city.

Al-Rujoob, who owns several apartments in Dura, a town close to Hebron, announced that the properties would be made available for displaced families, prompting other owners to do the same. He now hosts three extended families in his apartments, including 30 children.

“We must preserve people’s dignity. Today, we host these good people. Tomorrow, who knows? It might be us who need shelter. We’re all under the same occupation and we’re all vulnerable,” he said.

The Israeli army says Hebron is on lockdown, which affects nearly 1 million Palestinians who live in the city and the rest of the district.

Restrictions on movement have had a severe impact on the West Bank’s largest district. Schools have moved to online classes, while Hebron’s universities have made similar arrangements for their 18,000 students until the Israeli operation ends.

The measures are essential for Palestinian students who are stuck in their homes and neighbourhoods, including the besieged Fawwar refugee camp in Hebron, home to nearly 8,000 Palestinians. Israeli soldiers closed the camp’s entrance gate on Saturday, barring residents from entering or leaving, even on foot.

Abdel Fattah Al-Ttitti, a school teacher who lives in the camp and works in a Hebron school, said “we are locked in”.

“If, God forbid, somebody needs medical attention, we may be able to get them to the clinic in Masafer Yatta, but that clinic is poorly equipped. If there’s a medical emergency, they can’t help,” Al-Ttitti told Al Jazeera.

He is glad that schools announced online classes. “Until this campaign is over, there’s no other way,” he said.

Many in Hebron believe that Israel’s military campaign in the city has a political dimension, with Israelis heading to the polls on Tuesday for a general election.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition is vying for every right-wing vote. Violence against Palestinians has proved an expedient campaign tactic for politicians such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister of Settlement Affairs, Orit Strook.

Both right-wing ministers have homes in illegal settlements in the Hebron area and support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, which they refer to as “encouraging voluntary migration”.