US says its forces ‘successfully’ completed a wave of strikes against Iranian targets, accusing the IRGC of attempted attacks on shipping and US service members.
Published On 2 Sep 20262 Sep 2026
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dutch group Christians for Israel is taking the government to court in the Netherlands over its plans to introduce a ban on importing goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights.
The ban, which was announced in July, is due to take effect on September 22 and will run for three years. It bars importing, buying and selling goods produced in Israeli settlements, as well as intermediary services and any attempt to circumvent the rules.
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But the Israel Product Centre (IPC), part of Christians for Israel (CvI), a Dutch evangelical organisation which a recent study found has donated about $300,000 to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, has responded by filing summary proceedings against the state, with the hearing due today.
Here’s what we know about this case.
The IPC has issued summary proceedings against the Dutch state, seeking to block the July decree.
The IPC argues the measure is “one-sided” and that the window it now has to clear its existing stock – some 20,000 bottles of wine – is too short.
It is also arguing that a national ban conflicts with the European Union’s principle of free movement of goods.
A verdict is not expected for about two weeks.
EU rules have long required goods from illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank to be labelled by their origin – Palestine – rather than as “product of Israel”, but the bloc has not placed an outright ban on trading with Israeli settlements. That remains up to individual countries.
In February 2020, the Dutch advocacy group DocP urged consumers to file complaints with the Dutch food safety authority, NVWA, if they found wine and Dead Sea cosmetics had been mislabelled.
Following complaints, the IPC changed its labelling to “product uit een Israelisch dorp in Judea & Samaria [product from an Israeli village in Judea and Samaria],” which it argued accurately reflected the exact geographical and administrative reality of the origins of the products without deceiving the buyer. Judea and Samaria is the biblical name used by the Israeli government to refer to the West Bank. DocP argued this fell short of the requirement to label products correctly, and continued its campaign.
In 2021, the NVWA agreed and fined the IPC 2,100 euros (about $2,500) for mislabelling goods.
Then, in July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible”.
This shifted the legal argument beyond mere consumer labelling, with the court saying countries should take steps to prevent trade or investment relations which help to maintain the unlawful presence of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian territories.
The lower house of the Dutch parliament acted on that in September 2025, proposing an import ban.
The national decree against importing goods from Israeli settlements was made in July this year.
CvI describes the West Bank as a “disputed territory” rather than accepting the international legal description of it as “occupied Palestinian territory”.
It says it believes that Israel has strong claims to sovereignty there and that Jews have a right to live there.
The vocabulary matters in a legal sense, as “disputed territory” is not the same as “annexed territory”, therefore, the legal apparatus which would make settlement trade unlawful doesn’t straightforwardly apply.
The group’s stated reasons for funding projects there, it says on its website, are rooted in the Bible; it cites Ezekiel 47:21-23: “Peace for the Jewish people and resident foreigners inheriting alongside the tribes of Israel.”
However, the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion is clear that the Fourth Geneva Convention’s Article 49(6) and successive Security Council resolutions treat the territories as occupied and the settlements as unlawful.
Western churches are split on the issue, with CvI sitting at one end of the spectrum.
Mainline Protestants, including the Presbyterian Church in the United States, have divested shareholdings in Caterpillar, HP and Motorola Solutions as early as 2014, and from Israeli bonds in 2024. The United Methodist Church has opposed Israeli settlements since 1996 and sold its Israeli bond holdings last August.
The World Council of Churches called for sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements in 2025, divestment and an arms embargo.
The Vatican calls settlements an obstacle to peace but has avoided divestment so far.
Christian Zionist bodies, however, including Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, send funding for settlements and fight against boycotts.
It is significant considering that the Netherlands is one of only four EU countries currently imposing a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements.
Trade from illegal settlements to the EU is estimated to be worth up to $400m per year.
The Netherlands is also a big market for the illegal settlements; a recent investigation by legal advocacy group Global Echo, which analysed thousands of shipments from Israeli settlements between 2017 and 2026, shows that within the EU, the Dutch market is the largest importer of goods from illegal settlements, with about 30 percent destined for or passing through the country.
Spain has banned all imports of products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, since September 2025. The decree also enforces an embargo on defence exports and dual-use technology to Israel, bans ships carrying military fuel for Israel from Spanish ports, and restricts advertising for services or goods linked to Israeli settlements.
Ireland’s parliament approved the text of its Israeli Settlements (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill in May and the bill was signed into law in July. It covers all goods produced in Israeli settlements, but excludes services.
Belgium’s federal government approved a draft royal decree in July introducing a specific regime for goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The precise details of the new law will be determined by the government in due course.
Slovenia imposed restrictions on imports from Israeli settlements under its previous government, but the new conservative government reversed them in June 2026.
The EU as a bloc remains deadlocked over whether a ban counts as foreign policy requiring unanimity or trade policy needing only a qualified majority, with ministers not meeting again in a decision-making format until October.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar last year described the push by some European governments to implement the ICJ advisory opinion as “shameful”.
Nearly all of them.
Outside the three European Union states which still have bans in place, settlement goods can be sold legally everywhere, including in most of the EU.
At a July 2026 meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, which addressed trade from Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories, Germany, Austria, Czechia and Hungary were opposed to an EU-wide ban.
Beyond the EU, the United Kingdom does not forbid trade with illegal Israeli settlements, although new Prime Minister Andy Burnham is reportedly considering a ban. In a recent parliamentary briefing, Amnesty International called on the UK government to implement a ban.
It said: “The argument for a UK ban on trade with settlements is clear. The UK government itself accepts it should take stronger action in response to settlement expansion and annexation. The International Court of Justice has directed states not to trade with Israel in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and there is precedent in UK law and policy to not trade with illegally occupied lands, ie Crimea and other illegally occupied parts of Ukraine.”
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Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for nightly killings in Gaza of dozens of people who he says are ‘not worthy of life’. It’s the latest in a series of attempts at making life unbearably harsh for Palestinians.
Published On 16 Aug 202616 Aug 2026
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President Trump again insists the US has ‘total control’ of the strait, while Tehran is resolute that Washington must meet its demands.
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