Occupied West Bank

Israeli forces raided a Palestinian wedding ceremony in occupied East Jerusalem, firing live ammunition and stun grenades at attendees. Several men, including the groom, were detained.

Severe weather warning is issued by the Palestinian Meteorological Department, with heavy rain and hail expected across Palestine.

Incursion follows Israeli defence minister’s order for military to ‘act forcefully’ against the Palestinian town.

Israeli forces have carried out mass arrests and forced dozens of families from their homes in the town of Qabatiya in the occupied West Bank, on the second day of a sweeping military operation ordered by Israel’s defence minister.

Israeli forces sealed off entrances to Qabatiya while rounding up and interrogating dozens of residents on Saturday, local sources told Al Jazeera. They converted several homes into military interrogation centres, displacing their occupants, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.

Israel’s Army Radio reported that the town is subject to a “full curfew”.

The crackdown follows an order by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ​to “act forcefully … against the village of Qabatiya”, where he claims a Palestinian alleged of carrying out a stabbing and car-ramming attack in northern Israel hails from.

In a statement on Friday, Israel’s military said it had deployed troops from multiple divisions, along with border police and members of the Shin Bet security service, into Qabatiya. It said forces had raided the attack suspect’s home and were preparing to demolish it.

Rights groups have long condemned Israel’s practice of demolishing the family homes of Palestinians accused of attacks against Israelis, describing it as an illegal form of collective punishment.

Israel’s military claimed its forces would “scan additional locations in the village” and “work to arrest wanted individuals and locate weapons”.

“There is a sense of fear among people in town,” one resident told Al Jazeera. “There are Israeli threats and Israeli incitement.”

The Israeli military raids on Saturday also extended elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, including to several villages surrounding Ramallah and Hebron, Wafa reported. Israeli forces assaulted and arrested eight people from the towns of Dura, Abda and Imreish near Hebron, according to the news agency.

Israeli military incursions and attacks across the occupied West Bank have been a near-daily occurrence during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Since October 7, 2023, Israeli authorities have arrested nearly 21,000 Palestinians. As of December 1, some 9,300 Palestinian prisoners were in Israeli jails, more than a third of them detained without charges.

Palestinian prisoners have been tortured, sexually abused and even killed in custody.

Attack comes a day after an Israeli army reservist in civilian clothes rammed his vehicle into a Palestinian man praying on the roadside.

Two people have died in a stabbing and car-ramming attack in northern Israel, officials say.

Israeli police and emergency workers said a Palestinian from the Israeli-occupied West Bank attacked and killed a man and a woman on Friday before he was shot and wounded.

The attack came a day after an Israeli military reservist dressed in civilian clothes rammed his vehicle into a Palestinian man who was praying on a roadside in the West Bank after earlier firing shots in the area.

“Footage was ⁠received of an armed individual running over a Palestinian ​individual,” the Israeli military said in a statement about Thursday’s attack, adding ‍that the Israeli reservist’s military service had been terminated. The Palestinian man went to hospital for checks after the attack before returning ​home.

In Friday’s incident, Israeli police said the attacker first crashed his vehicle into people in the northern city of Beit Shean, killing a 68-year-old man, and then sped onto a highway.

Later, he fatally stabbed a 20-year-old woman near the highway, “and the suspect was ultimately engaged with gunfire near Maonot Junction in Afula following intervention by a civilian bystander,” police said, adding that the attacker was taken to a hospital.

Both the victims were pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics, Israel’s rescue services said. A teenage boy was hospitalised with minor wounds sustained in the car-ramming, according to bystanders.

The Israeli military said the attacker had “infiltrated into Israeli territory several days ago”.

Since Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began in October 2023, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed there.

At the same time, Israeli settlers have escalated violence in the West Bank, seizing Palestinian land and harassing civilians while Israeli forces conduct regular raids and arrests.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank ‌since October 7, 2023, mostly in operations by security forces and some by settler violence, according ‍to the United Nations.

In the same period, 57 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks.

After Friday’s incident, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had instructed the military ​to respond forcefully in ‌the West Bank town of Qabatiya, where he said the assailant came from.

The Israeli military said it was “preparing for an operation” ‌in the area.

Eight-month-old among multiple Palestinians wounded in attacks across the occupied West Bank.

Five Israeli settlers have been arrested over their alleged involvement in an attack on a Palestinian home that wounded an eight-month-old baby in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the infant suffered “moderate injuries to the face and head” in the attack that took place late on Wednesday involving “a group of armed settlers” who were throwing stones at homes and property in the town of Sair, north of Hebron.

Israeli police on Thursday said five settlers were arrested after they received reports of “stones being thrown by Israeli civilians toward a Palestinian home”.

Israeli settlements and outposts are Jewish-only communities built on Palestinian land that are illegal under international law. They can range in size from a single dwelling to a collection of high rises. About 700,000 settlers live in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, a 17-year-old boy was shot and dozens of Palestinians suffered tear gas inhalation during an Israeli army raid in the town of Beit Furik, east of Nablus, Wafa reported.

The report added that “Israeli forces carried out a widespread incursion into the town, firing live bullets and tear gas canisters across its neighborhoods”.

Israeli forces also detained three Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, after settler attacks.

Also in Masafer Yatta, Israeli forces raided homes and tents belonging to residents, searched them and vandalised their contents before detaining one resident.

Another Palestinian man was wounded in a settler attack in the town of Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah.

Local sources said armed settlers attacked homes near the village entrance, resulting in minor injuries to a young man.

Pope Leo has decried conditions ‍for Palestinians in ‍Gaza in his first Christmas sermon as pontiff, in an unusually direct appeal during what is normally a solemn, spiritual service on the day Christians across the globe celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

Leo, the first American ⁠pope, said on Thursday that the story of Jesus being born in a stable showed that God ​had “pitched his fragile tent” among the people of the world.

“How, then, ‍can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?” he asked.

Leo, celebrating his first Christmas after being elected in May by the ‍world’s cardinals to ⁠succeed the late Pope Francis, has a quieter, more diplomatic style than his predecessor and usually refrains from making political references in his sermons.

But the new pope has also lamented the conditions for Palestinians in Gaza several times recently and told journalists last month that the only solution in the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestine must include a Palestinian state.

Israel ​and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October ‌after two years of intense bombardment and military operations in Gaza, but humanitarian agencies say there is still too little aid getting into the largely destroyed Strip, where nearly the entire population is homeless after being displaced by Israeli attacks.

In Thursday’s service with thousands in ‌St Peter’s Basilica, Leo also lamented conditions for the homeless across the globe and the destruction caused by the wars ‌roiling the world.

“Fragile is the flesh of defenceless ⁠populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds,” said the pope.

“Fragile are the minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the ‌front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths,” he ‍added.

In a later appeal during the “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message and blessing given by the pope at Christmas and Easter, Leo called for an end to all global wars, lamenting conflicts, ‌political, social or military, in Ukraine, Sudan, Mali, Myanmar, and Thailand and Cambodia, among others.

‘The wounds are deep’

Ahead of the pope’s mass, in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the Christian community began celebrating its first festive Christmas in more than two years, as the Palestinian city and biblical birthplace of Jesus emerges from the shadow of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Throughout the war, a sombre tone had marked Christmases in Bethlehem. But celebrations returned on Wednesday with parades and music. Hundreds of worshippers also gathered for mass at the Church of the Nativity on Wednesday night.

With pews filled long before midnight, many stood or sat on the floor for the traditional mass to usher in Christmas Day.

At 11:15 pm (21:15 GMT), organ music rang out as a procession of dozens of clergymen entered, followed by Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who blessed the crowd with signs of the cross.

In his homily, Pizzaballa urged peace, hope and rebirth, saying the Nativity story still held relevance in the turbulence of modern times.

He also spoke of his visit to Gaza over the weekend, where he said “suffering is still present” despite the ceasefire. In the Strip, hundreds of thousands of people face a bleak winter in makeshift tents.

“The wounds are deep, yet I have to say, here too, there too, their proclamation of Christmas resounds,” Pizzaballa said. “When I met them, I was struck by their strength and desire to start over.”

In Bethlehem, hundreds also took part in the parade down the narrow Star Street on Wednesday, while a dense crowd massed in the square. As darkness fell, multi-coloured lights shone over Manger Square and a towering Christmas tree glittered next to the Church of the Nativity.

The basilica dates back to the fourth century and was built on top of a grotto where Christians believe Jesus was born more than 2,000 years ago.

Bethlehem residents hoped the return of Christmas festivities would breathe life back into the city.

Christmas celebrations return to Bethlehem as thousands gather in Manger Square for the first time since 2022.

Thousands of people have gathered in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve for the first public celebrations since 2022 after the city cancelled or muted festivities for two years out of respect for the thousands killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Families filled Manger Square in the occupied West Bank city as a giant Christmas tree returned to the plaza, replacing a nativity display used during the war that showed baby Jesus amid rubble and barbed wire, symbolising the devastation in Gaza.

The celebrations were led by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the top Catholic leader in the Holy Land, who arrived in Bethlehem from Jerusalem in the traditional Christmas procession and called for “a Christmas full of light”.

Scout bands from towns across the West Bank marched through Bethlehem’s streets, their bagpipes draped with tartan and Palestinian flags.

Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, its forces have carried out near-daily raids across the West Bank, arresting thousands of Palestinians and sharply restricting movement between cities.

Palestinians say the intensified military presence, road closures and checkpoint delays have deterred visitors, paralysing the tourism sector on which Bethlehem’s economy depends.

The vast majority of those celebrating were local residents, with only a small number of foreign visitors.

Unemployment in Bethlehem surged from 14 percent to 65 percent during the genocidal war on Gaza, Mayor Maher Nicola Canawati said earlier this month. As economic conditions deteriorated, about 4,000 residents left the city in search of work, he added.

Israeli raids and settler attacks

The return of Christmas celebrations comes despite continued raids and large-scale military incursions across the occupied West Bank, even after a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which has been repeatedly violated by Israeli forces, took hold in October.

The raids often entail mass arrests of Palestinians, home searches and demolitions, as well as physical assaults that sometimes lead to deaths.

Attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have reached their highest level since the United Nations humanitarian office began recording data in 2006. The attacks have involved killings, beatings and the destruction of property, often under the protection of the Israeli military.

Earlier on Wednesday, more than 570 Israeli settlers entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem under police protection, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Palestinians say such incursions violate the longstanding status quo governing Islam’s third-holiest site.

Israel’s security cabinet has also signed off on plans to formalise 19 illegal settlements across the West Bank, in a move Palestinian officials say deepens a decades-long project of land theft and demographic engineering.

The United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and other countries condemned the move on Wednesday.

“We call ‍on ⁠Israel to reverse this decision, as well as the expansion of settlements,” said a joint statement released by the UK, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain.

“We ‌recall that such unilateral actions, ‌as part ⁠of a wider intensification of the settlement policies in the West Bank, ‌not only violate international law but also risk fuelling instability.”

Commercial premises among buildings facing demolition as military incursions intensify near Qalandiya and Kafr Aqab.

Israeli forces have begun demolishing shops in the vicinity of the Qalandiya refugee camp, north of occupied East Jerusalem, as part of a wider military incursion across several Palestinian neighbourhoods, witnesses and medical officials say.

The raids, which began early on Tuesday, have extended into the nearby town of Kafr Aqab, where Israeli troops deployed in large numbers, carried out house searches and forcibly evicted residents from their homes, according to local media reports.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its medical teams treated at least three people injured during the raids in Qalandiya and Kafr Aqab. The injuries included a bullet wound to the thigh, wounds caused by shrapnel from live ammunition, and injuries resulting from physical assault.

The Jerusalem governorate reported that at least three Palestinians were injured by Israeli forces’ gunfire, in addition to dozens of cases of suffocation caused by the firing of tear gas and stun grenades, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.

Several Palestinians were detained during the large-scale incursion that was also accompanied by the deployment of military vehicles and bulldozers.

Among those arrested are Anan Mohammed Taha and his father, Mohammed Taha, residents of the Qalandiya refugee camp, Wafa said.

‘Intimidation’ and ‘anxiety’

Residents said Israeli forces ordered several families to evacuate their homes, with at least three houses converted into temporary military outposts in Kafr Aqab. Homeowners were reportedly told the operation would continue until at least Wednesday morning.

Israeli forces also stormed the youth club inside the Qalandiya refugee camp and turned the facility into a military base, according to Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent.

Journalists covering the operation were also targeted, including Al Jazeera Arabic reporters, with Israeli forces firing stun grenades and tear gas canisters in their direction during the raid in Kafr Aqab.

According to the Jerusalem governorate authorities, stun grenades were also fired directly towards students in the area as they were returning home from school, while private surveillance cameras were seized.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Kafr Aqab, said Israeli forces are continuing to “intimidate” Palestinians.

“They have raided Palestinian stores, Palestinian shops, and they’ve destroyed some of the plaques, some of the advertisement billboards that were here”, in an attempt to further cripple the Palestinian economy, Ibrahim said.

“This is part of the anxiety that Palestinians live through day in and day out as these Israeli raids continue on a daily basis,” she added.

Israeli incursions across the West Bank average “60 raids per day”, Ibrahim said.

In addition to the demolitions, Israeli forces confiscated goods from commercial shops in the Qalandiya refugee camp, Kafr Aqab and parts of northern Jerusalem, citing alleged unpaid municipal taxes.

Most Palestinians living in these areas hold Jerusalem residency identification cards. Residents say they are subject to high municipal taxes while receiving few basic services.

Separately, confrontations were also reported in the town of Beit Furik, east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, after Israeli forces stormed the area.

Israel Katz says military units will be established inside the Palestinian enclave, in contravention of the truce agreement.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said the Israeli military will never fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip and that an army unit will be established inside the Palestinian enclave.

Speaking on Tuesday, Katz said Israeli forces would remain deployed throughout Gaza, despite a United States-backed peace plan signed by Israel and Hamas in October that calls for a full Israeli military withdrawal and rules out the re-establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the territory.

“We are located deep inside Gaza, and we will never leave all of Gaza,” Katz said. “We are there to protect.”

“In due course, we will establish Nahal [an Israeli infantry brigade] outposts in northern Gaza in place of the settlements that were uprooted,” Katz added, according to Israeli media.

Hours later, he issued a statement in English to the Reuters news agency, saying Nahal units would be stationed in Gaza “only for security reasons”. The Israeli media reported that US officials were displeased with Katz’s initial comments and demanded clarification.

Nahal units are military formations that combine civilian service with army enlistment and have historically played a role in the creation of Israeli communities.

Katz was speaking at a ceremony in the occupied West Bank marking the approval of 1,200 housing units in the illegal Israeli settlement of Beit El.

Addressing settlement expansion in the West Bank, Katz said: “Netanyahu’s government is a settlements government … it strives for action. If we can get sovereignty, we will bring about sovereignty. We are in the practical sovereignty era.”

“There are opportunities here that haven’t been here for a long time,” he added.

Israel is expected to head into an election year in 2026, with illegal settlement expansion a key political issue. Far-right and ultranationalist members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition have repeatedly said they intend to reoccupy Gaza and expand illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Under international law, all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal. The transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory is considered a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, violence by Israeli forces and settlers has continued across the West Bank, while killings continue in Gaza despite the ceasefire. Palestinian officials say more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, about 11,000 wounded and more than 21,000 arrested.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that since a ceasefire began on October 11, at least 406 Palestinians have been killed and 1,118 injured. Since the start of Israel’s war on October 7, 2023, the ministry said, 70,942 Palestinians have been killed and 171,195 wounded.

The Israeli security cabinet has approved 19 new settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank as the right-wing government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moves to prevent the formation of a viable Palestinian state.

As Netanyahu’s government has made the annexation of occupied Palestinian territory a priority, the United Nations has said Israeli settlement expansions in 2025 have reached their highest level since 2017.

“These figures represent a sharp increase compared to previous years,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, noting an average of 12,815 housing units were added annually from 2017 to 2022.

Under the current far-right government, the number of settlement and outposts in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem has risen by nearly 50 percent – from 141 in 2022 to 210 now. An outpost is built without government authorisation while a settlement is authorised by the Israeli government.

Nearly 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population of 7.7 million people lives in these settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.

Here’s everything you need to know about the newly approved settlements and what they mean for the future of Palestinian statehood.

Where are the new settlements?

The new settlements are spread across the West Bank – home to more than three million Palestinians – from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south.

Most of them are close to the densely populated Palestinian villages of Duma, Jalud, Qusra and al-Lubban Asharqiya in the Nablus governorate and Sinjil in the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate, according to Peace Now, an antisettlement watchdog group based in Israel. Other locations identified by the watchdog for the new settlement areas are in the northwestern West Bank, in the Salfit governorate, near the Palestinian towns of Sa’ir and Beit Sahour, and other areas near Bethlehem and in the Jericho governorate.

Israel’s construction spree is entrenching the occupation and squeezing Palestinians out of their homeland. Settlements dot the West Bank and are often connected by Israeli-only highways while Palestinians face roadblocks and security checks, making their daily commutes harrowing experiences.

Israel has also built Separation Barrier that stretches for more than 700km (435 miles) through the West Bank restricting movement of Palestinians. Israel says the wall is for security purposes.

Under a dual legal system, Palestinians are tried in Israel’s military courts while crimes committed by settlers are referred to a civilian court.

Israel’s latest approval also includes settlements in Ganim and Kadim, two of the four West Bank settlements east of Jenin that were dismantled as part of Israel’s 2005 disengagement plan, a unilateral withdrawal ordered by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Five of the 19 settlements already existed but had not previously been granted legal status under Israeli law, according to a statement from the office of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Israel controls most of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory Palestinians want to be part of a future state along with Gaza. Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in a 1967 war. It later annexed East Jerusalem, which Palestinians see as their future capital.

Israeli settlements and outposts are Jewish-only communities built on Palestinian land and they can range in size from a single dwelling to a collection of high-rises. About 700,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Peace Now.

The latest approval comes at a time when the United States has been working with Israel and Arab allies to move the Gaza ceasefire into a second phase. After a meeting on Friday of top officials from the US, Egypt, Turkiye and Qatar in the US city of Miami, Florida, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Israel of committing repeated violations of the ceasefire that began in October.

Israel still controls nearly half of Gaza’s territory since a ceasefire was announced on October 10 after more than two years of a genocidal war killed more than 70,000 Palestinians.

Has settlement construction spiked in recent years?

The new settlements bring the total number approved over the past three years to 69, according to a statement from the office of Smotrich, who is a vocal proponent of settlement expansion and a settler himself.

In May, Israel approved 22 new settlements in the West Bank, the biggest expansion in decades.

The UN chief has condemned what he described as Israel’s “relentless” expansion of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. It “continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian state”, Guterres said this month.

Palestinians have also been facing increasing settler violence since Israel’s war on Gaza began.

According to data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settlers have attacked Palestinians nearly 3,000 times over the past two years.

Settler attacks often escalate during the olive harvest from September to November, a vital time of year that provides a key source of income for many Palestinian families.

Settlers are often armed and frequently accompanied or protected by Israeli soldiers. In addition to destroying Palestinian property, they have carried out arson attacks and killed Palestinian residents.

Every West Bank governorate has faced settler attacks over the past two years, data from OCHA shows.

Are the settlements legal under international law?

No. The UN, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Committee of the Red Cross all consider Israeli settlements as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which outlaws settler activity.

In a landmark judgement in July 2024, the ICJ, the UN’s top court, found that Israel’s occupation, settlement activity and annexation measures are illegal. In its nonbinding advisory opinion, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s continued presence in occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”.

The judges pointed to a wide list of policies – including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians – all of which it said violated international law.

Two months later, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Israel end its occupation of Palestinian territory within a year.

But Israel has defied the resolution by the global body backed by its ally – the United States. Washington has extended diplomatic cover to Israel against numerous UN resolutions.

Since returning to power in January, US President Donald Trump has adopted a permissive stance towards Israeli settlement activity, breaking with longstanding US policy.

In 2019, he said Israeli settlements in the West Bank were not inherently illegal under international law. Trump also revoked his predecessor President Joe Biden’s sanctions on several settlers and groups accused of perpetrating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

US sanctions on settlers under Biden came under Washington’s long-held policy that settlements are the biggest impediments to the two-state solution to the conflict.

However, Trump and his officials have repeatedly said Israel cannot annex the West Bank. “It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” Trump told Time magazine in October. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”

What will the new settlements mean for the future of a Palestinian state?

The growing settlements – together with other projects undertaken by Netanyahu’s government like the E1 settlement plan that will split the West Bank – are further squeezing Palestinians in occupied territory.

Settlement expansions have drawn criticism from the international community, including Israel’s European allies, who said the steps undermine prospects for a two-state solution.

But Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet, including Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have doubled down on their rhetoric against a Palestinian state.

“On the ground, we are blocking the establishment of a Palestinian terror state,” Smotrich said in his statement on Sunday.

In June, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway slapped sanctions on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir for inciting violence.

Several European nations, including the UK and France, as well as Australia recognised Palestinian statehood in September in a push for the two-state solution.

Israel condemned the move, and Netanyahu said he won’t allow a Palestinian state. He has previously boasted how he scuttled the 1993 and 1995 Oslo peace accords by boosting settlement expansion in occupied territory.

“It’s not going to happen. There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said in an address in September. “For years, I have prevented the creation of that terror state against tremendous pressure, both domestic and from abroad.”

Palestinian officials condemn the actions as part of a ‘systematic policy of displacement’ in the occupied territory.

Israeli forces have stormed towns in the occupied West Bank and demolished a residential building.

Soldiers fired stun grenades and tear gas on Monday as they carried out the demolition in East Jerusalem. Palestinian officials accused Israel of a campaign of displacement in the city, saying the operation was part of a systematic attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land.

Scores of Palestinians were displaced as Israeli bulldozers tore through a four-storey residential building. Activists called it the largest such demolition in the area this year.

Three bulldozers destroyed the building with 13 apartments in the Wadi Qaddum neighbourhood of the Silwan district, south of Jerusalem’s Old City, Al Jazeera Arabic correspondents reported.

Israeli forces cordoned off surrounding roads, deployed heavily across the area and positioned security personnel on the rooftops of neighbouring houses. During the operation, a young man and a teenage boy were arrested.

Residents were told the demolition order was issued because the building had been constructed without a permit.

Palestinians face severe obstacles in obtaining building permits due to Israel’s restrictive planning policies, activists say, a policy that they assert is part of a systematic attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land.

Israel’s security cabinet has recently approved the recognition of 19 new settlements in the West Bank, expanding the total number approved this year to 69 as the government continues its settlement push.

‘Systematic policy of displacement’

The Jerusalem governorate, affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, condemned the demolition.

“The building’s destruction is part of a systematic policy aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinian residents and emptying the city of its original inhabitants,” the governorate said in a statement.

“Any demolition that expels residents from their homes constitutes a clear occupation plan to replace the land’s owners with settlers.”

The Jerusalem municipality, an Israeli authority whose jurisdiction over East Jerusalem is not recognised under international law, said the demolition was based on a 2014 court order.

Israeli human rights groups Ir Amim and Bimkom said the demolition was carried out without warning despite a scheduled meeting on Monday to discuss steps to legalise the building.

“This is part of an ongoing policy. This year alone, around 100 East Jerusalem families have lost their homes,” the groups said, calling Monday’s demolition the largest of 2025.

Escalated attacks

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli forces damaged agricultural land and uprooted trees in the northern town of Silat al-Harithiya.

In the city of Halhul, north of Hebron, Israeli forces stormed several neighbourhoods with large numbers of military vehicles, deployed sniper teams and took up positions across the city.

Al Jazeera Arabic journalists reported that Israeli vehicles entered Halhul through multiple checkpoints, including Nabi Yunis, while closing the Halhul Bridge checkpoint linking the city to Hebron.

Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have also sharply escalated attacks across the West Bank.

More than 1,102 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, about 11,000 wounded and more than 21,000 arrested, according to Palestinian figures.

Rescuers save six Palestinians, including two children, in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp after family home collapses.

A new wave of Israeli policies is changing the reality and boundaries on the ground in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli government has approved the formalisation of 19 so-called settlement outposts as independent settlements in the occupied West Bank. This is the third wave of such formalisations this year by the government, which considers settlement expansion and annexation a top priority. During an earlier ceremony of formalisation, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “We are advancing de facto sovereignty on the ground to prevent any possibility of establishing an Arab state in [the West Bank].”

Settlement outposts, which are illegal under international law, are set up by a small group of settlers without prior government authorisation. This does not mean that the settlers, who are often more ideological and violent, do not enjoy government protection. Israeli human rights organisations say that settlers in these so-called outposts enjoy protection, electricity and other services from the Israeli army. The formalisation opens the door to additional government funds, infrastructure and expansion.

Many of the settlement outposts formalised in this latest decision are concentrated in the northeastern part of the West Bank, an area that traditionally has had very little settlement activity. They also include the formalisation of two outposts evacuated in 2005 by the government of Israeli then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

While these government decisions may seem bureaucratic, they are in fact strategic in nature. They support the more ideological and often more violent settlers entrenching their presence and taking over yet more Palestinian land, and becoming more brazen in their attacks against Palestinians, which are unprecedented in scope and effect.

The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem estimates that settler attacks against Palestinians have forcibly displaced 44 communities across the West Bank in the past two years. These arson attacks, vandalism, physical assault and deadly shootings are done under the protection of Israeli soldiers. During these settler attacks, 34 Palestinians were killed, including three children. None of the perpetrators has been brought to justice. In fact, policing of these groups has dropped under the direction of Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a settler himself.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently sounded the alarm about Israel’s record-breaking expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the unprecedented levels of state-backed settler violence. In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Guterres reminded states that all settlements are illegal under international law. He also warned that they erode Palestinian rights recognised under this law, including to a state of their own.

In September, United States President Donald Trump said he “will not allow” Israel to annex the West Bank, without offering details of what actions he would take to prevent such a move.

But Israel is undeterred. The government continues to pursue its agenda of land grab, territorial expansion and annexation by a myriad of measures that fragment, dispossess and isolate Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and continues its genocidal violence in Gaza.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank for nearly a year. The Israeli army continues to occupy Nur Shams, Tulkarem and Jenin refugee camps and ban residents from returning. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have demolished and damaged 1,460 buildings in those camps, according to a preliminary UN estimate. This huge, destructive campaign has changed the geography of the camps and plunged more families into economic and social despair.

This is the state hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank find themselves in because of Israeli restrictions, home demolitions and land grabs. The Israeli army has set up close to 1,000 gates across the West Bank, turning communities into open-air prisons. This has a direct and devastating effect on the social fabric, economy and vitality of these communities, which live on land that is grabbed from under them to execute the expansion of illegal settlements, roads and so-called buffer zones around them.

According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Israeli practices and policies over the past two years have cost the Palestinian people 69 years of development. The organisation recently reported that the Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) has shrunk to 2010 levels. This is visible most starkly in Gaza, but it is palpable in the West Bank as well.

The results of these policies and this reality are Palestinians leaving their homes and Israel expanding. During the summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a local news station he was on a “historic and spiritual mission”, in reference to the vision of the Greater Israel that he said he was “very” attached to.

Israeli forces continue raids across occupied West Bank as Gaza reels from Israeli attacks and aftermath of a storm.

Rights groups say the demolition order, which will affect 100 Palestinian homes, is an attempt to ‘cage in’ Palestinians.

The Israeli military will demolish 25 residential buildings in the occupied West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp this week, according to local authorities.

Abdallah Kamil, the governor of the Tulkarem governorate where Nur Shams is located, told the AFP news agency on Monday that he was informed of the planned demolition by the Israeli Defence Ministry body COGAT.

Faisal Salama, the head of the popular committee for the Tulkarem camp, which is near Nur Shams, said the demolition order would affect 100 family homes.

Israel launched Operation Iron Wall in the occupied West Bank in January. It says the campaign is aimed at combating armed groups in refugee camps in the northern West Bank.

Human rights organisations have warned that Israel is using many similar tactics it used in its genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza to seize and control territory across the occupied West Bank.

“This is part of a wider campaign that has persisted for about a year, targeting three refugee camps and demolishing or damaging a total of about 1,500 homes in the past year, and forcibly displacing 32,000 Palestinians,” said Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from the West Bank’s Ramallah.

Palestinians and human rights organisations say such demolitions are an attempt to “cage in” Palestinians and alter the geography in the West Bank, she added.

On Monday, a dozen displaced Nur Shams residents held a demonstration in front of armoured Israeli military vehicles blocking their way back to the camp. They protested against the demolition orders and demanded the right to return to their homes.

The head of the Palestinian National Council, Rouhi Fattouh, said that the Israeli decision is part of “ethnic cleansing and continuous forced displacement”, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

‘Social death’

Omer Bartov, a professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, told Al Jazeera that Israel was “dehumanising” the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank.

“[It is creating] a growing situation of social death, which is a term that was used to describe what happened to Jewish populations in Germany in the 1930s. That is, that your population, the Jewish population of Israel, increasingly has no contact with the people on the other side, and it exists as if they don’t exist,” he said.

“It dehumanises the population because you treat it as a population that has to be controlled, and it dehumanises the people doing it because they have to think of that population as being lesser than human.”

Aisha Dama, a camp resident whose four-floor family home, housing about 30 people, is among those to be demolished, told the AFP she felt alone against the military.

“On the day it happened, no one checked on us or asked about us,” she said.

“All my brothers’ houses are to be destroyed, all of them, and my brothers are already on the streets,” said Siham Hamayed, another camp resident.

Nur Shams, along with other refugee camps in the West Bank, was established after the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes in what is now Israel.

With time, the camps they established inside the West Bank became dense neighbourhoods. Residents pass on their refugee status from one generation to the next.