Palestine

Khan Younis, Gaza – A few metres from the sea, near al-Qarara port on Gaza’s coast, Anas al-Shami, 33, is trying to keep his family of six warm and dry in a dilapidated tent. It offers little protection from wind and rain, while the damp seeps into their bedding and belongings at every moment. The swelling waves in the sea also pose a constant threat as winter approaches.

The beach was not al-Shami’s choice of place to live, but the refuge his family took shelter in after being displaced from their home quickly became overcrowded. They can’t afford anything safer than this tent.

Now, he and his family are living in constant fear of a repeat of last winter’s flooding.

Al-Shami and his family were forced to leave Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, when it became part of Israel’s so-called “Yellow Zone” beyond which Palestinians are not permitted to go.

“I searched for land in displacement areas where I could pitch a tent, but overcrowding and high rental costs made that impossible,” he tells Al Jazeera. “I was therefore forced to stay on the beach, despite the dangers facing my family and me.”

Al-Shami recalls last winter, when seawater and rain flooded his tent while the family was asleep. He would wake to find his children lying in water. Their bedding and belongings were repeatedly soaked, leaving him unable to protect them from the cold as the tent turned into a pond.

Despite trying all year, the family has been unable to find anywhere else to go, leaving them facing another winter on the beach.

“My children’s repeated exposure to water, cold and damp caused serious illness which threatened their lives,” he says.

‘I feel helpless in front of my children’

It’s a familiar story along this stretch of coastline.

Ibrahim Abu Tair, 47, whose family has also been displaced from eastern Khan Younis, is sharing a cramped tent with his seven children on the port’s shoreline. The dilapidated shelter lacks any basic necessities and offers little protection from the cold, rain and wind.

“What hurts me most is feeling helpless in front of my children,” he says. “I cannot provide winter clothes to protect them from the cold or even a dry mattress for them to sleep on.”

The strong wind and the sound of the rising waves keep him awake at night, he says, and he is terrified of another flood like last year’s, when water inundated the tent and forced the family to endure the cold in the open. His greatest wish is to find safe shelter where his children can sleep without fear.

Some families have found a makeshift solution to keep the water at bay.

By filling damaged cooking pots with earth, they have forged a barrier against encroaching seawater alongside the tents.

Mayasem Association, an aid organisation which works in cooperation with World Central Kitchen, has seized on this innovation and is now producing these pot-barriers for families in this area close to al-Qarara port.

The initiative reuses large pots rendered unusable by repeated exposure to flames, corrosion and holes. Three pots, donated by World Central Kitchen, are filled with soil and stacked on top of one another, reaching approximately 150 centimetres in height to form barriers that hold back the incoming water and prevent waves from reaching shelter sites.

“The initiative initially involved building barriers to protect the association’s safe space, which hosts its education programmes, school, cultural activities, arts and heritage programmes,” Khalil Abu Lahia, the association’s emergency response coordinator, tells Al Jazeera. “The idea later developed into an attempt to protect the displaced families’ tents along the coastal strip.”

A winter fraught with risk

While this is an example of the innovative thinking which can help families who are destitute and at risk in Gaza, it is nevertheless only a temporary measure which cannot make up for the widespread lack of safe shelter.

The initiative comes amid a warning from Gaza’s Winter Emergency Committee of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe, as tents and caravans remain in critically short supply as Israeli authorities continue to prevent their entry into the Gaza Strip, alongside the delivery of critical construction materials and fuel.

The committee has reported that Israeli forces have also destroyed about 70 percent of municipalities’ essential operational equipment and 90 percent of civil defence rescue equipment. The fuel crisis means machinery and generators will soon stop functioning altogether, further limiting the ability to respond to floods, carry out rescue operations and clear roads.

In all, there are about 200,000 dilapidated tents sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including children, women and people with disabilities.

Some 7,800 of them are located in extremely hazardous areas, the committee has warned, including on dry riverbeds which may now flood, rainwater collection ponds and beaches exposed to crashing winter waves. These need to be urgently relocated to safer locations.

About 2,000 cracked buildings are also at risk of collapse, threatening families who have sought refuge inside them. Building materials, caravans, shelter and fuel are all urgently needed, the committee says.

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.”

In the October 27 Israeli elections, 38 parties ran for office. Of these, only two supported peace, equality and an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories. Both were “Arab parties” – made up of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

These two parties earned a historic result, securing 19 seats in the Knesset, after some 80 percent of Palestinian citizens cast a vote.

This unprecedented turnout contributed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to secure a majority.  His bloc won 53 seats, while the Jewish-led opposition won 48.

The electoral mobilisation of Palestinians was immediately spun as a threat and Palestinian communities now face intensified incitement by members of Netanyahu’s camp. The pro-Netanyahu camp has alleged that the election was “stolen” and is now calling for restrictions on the “Arab vote”.

Thus, Palestinian electoral success exposed an uncomfortable question for Israeli politics: what happens when citizens who are informally isolated on the political scene but whose vote is formally equal become powerful enough to determine who governs?

Palestinian citizens face a fundamental question: Can they truly determine the political outcome and if they can, does that make them equal citizens?

Formal inclusion, informal exclusion

Palestinian citizens of Israel have long faced a dilemma over voting. If they do not mobilise to vote, the risk is that the Jewish right would come to power is high. If they do vote, there is no guarantee that their participation would translate into policies that protect or benefit their communities.

In 1999, Arab turnout reached approximately 75 percent in the elections and Palestinian citizens overwhelmingly supported Ehud Barak of the Labour Party against Netanyahu. A year later, after Ariel Sharon’s visit to Al-Aqsa compound and the outbreak of the second Intifada, Israeli police killed 13 Palestinian citizens. Outrage and disillusionment contributed to an Arab boycott of the 2001 election, when turnout fell to about 19 percent. Sharon won.

Today, Palestinian electoral participation still retains its sway. Higher turnout among Palestinians means fewer seats for two main blocs – the pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps – which could tip the balance in the Knesset. This is what happened on October 27 .

But this potentially powerful position of the Palestinian parties has been diminished by the refusal of Jewish-led parties to work with them on government formation.

The logic of this exclusion was made clear in April 2021, when far-right politician Bezalel Smotrich rejected Netanyahu’s attempt to establish a government supported by one of the Palestinian parties, Ra’am. Smotrich argued that doing so would encourage greater Palestinian turnout which would allow the Palestinian community to enable the return of the left to power in Israel. Accepting Palestinian parties would therefore challenge the Jewish right’s political dominance.

Ra’am eventually joined the short-lived coalition government formed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, without making any national demands, but its participation came at the cost of significant concessions on national issues. For the first time, Palestinian political leaders recognised Israel as a Jewish state and were even willing to set aside the national question in favour of addressing civil and socioeconomic issues.

Despite these concessions, the Bennett–Lapid government ultimately collapsed following the resignation of two coalition members who opposed sitting in a government alongside Palestinian representatives.

Netanyahu then realised that to prevent the formation of any future government of change, he needed to delegitimise the Palestinian parties and limit their political representation.

Following October 7, 2023, Palestinian citizens experienced a sharp contraction of political space. Students faced disciplinary proceedings over social-media posts; employees lost jobs; antiwar speech prompted police investigations and arrests.

The electoral process itself reflected this climate. Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted to disqualify both Palestinian electoral lists, along with lawmaker Ofer Cassif and Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh. The Supreme Court eventually reversed the bans on the lists.

Meanwhile, attacking Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, became a political staple. Ahead of this election, media outlet Arabic Post conducted an analysis of more than 10,000 election-related social-media items. It reported that 40 percent of posts by candidates from Netanyahu’s camp concerned Arabs or Palestinians, and that 94 percent of those were hostile.

More troubling were the police raids on the homes of Ra’am activists in the Negev, following suspicions of electoral bribery which led to the arrest of three men.

Police acknowledged searches without warrants and later reports questioned the strength of the evidence. All three men were released. But the ripple effect of those allegations helped shape a narrative of suspicion against the Palestinian community.

Attacks on the Palestinian vote

In this election, after years of repression and incitement, Palestinian citizens did not retreat. They organised, voted in unprecedented numbers and achieved a remarkable result. They took a gamble by taking their citizenship seriously and by asserting their right to full political equality and a meaningful say in shaping the country’s future.

However, the parties they voted for face isolation unless they fulfil the conditions set by the Jewish-led opposition: namely, recognising Israel as exclusively Jewish, labelling Hamas a “terrorist” organisation and accepting compulsory military or national service, from which Palestinian citizens are now exempt.

In other words, Palestinians can access the political power they should have only if they fully capitulate on the Palestinian question, embrace Zionism and accept their own status as unequal citizens.

In parallel, the Palestinian community also faces intensified incitement, particularly by the pro-Netanyahu camp. Politicians and public figures are throwing claims of electoral manipulation, insisting “the Arabs stole the election”.

Former Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin went as far as declaring that the Palestinian electoral mobilisation was the “October 7” of Israeli politics. Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, called Palestinian citizens of Israel “the greatest danger to the survival of the State of Israel—aside from the Iranian nuclear threat”.

Many Palestinian citizens now fear that political success could bring further intimidation, restrictions or violence rather than recognition.

Thus, the high voter turnout among Palestinian citizens has forced Israeli society and its political establishment to confront the inherent contradiction between Israel’s identity as a Jewish state and its claim to be a democracy.

This fundamental dilemma may ultimately be resolved in favour of Jewish political dominance, leading to legislation that further undermines Palestinian civil rights and expands the system of apartheid and Jewish supremacy.

It would not be surprising if a bill were introduced in the next Knesset aimed solely at restricting Palestinians’ voting rights. There are already calls on social media for such a move.

A July survey by Israel Democracy Institute found that only 46 percent of respondents in the right-wing Jewish camp supported Palestinian citizens’ right to vote.

In the current reality, following the genocide in Gaza, there is a growing sense among Jewish Israelis that there are no longer any limits to what they can do, pushing the state to act with virtually no restraint towards Palestinian citizens.

If Israeli society does not change direction, its pretence of democracy may soon no longer hold.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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.

Gaza City— Mohammed Hamad, 14, was on his way home from school in Deir el-Balah on October 17 when an Israeli strike targeted the road he was travelling along.

He had finished classes at the makeshift school and was walking home through the al-Baraka neighbourhood with his 10-year-old brother, Abdullah. Mohammed was killed in the strike along with another man. Abdullah survived.

Mohammed was Riyad Hamad’s third child, an eighth-grade student among the top pupils in his class. His loss is difficult for the 44-year-old father to comprehend.

“He was not just my son, he was my friend,” Hamad told Al Jazeera from his family tent in Deir el-Balah. “He was doing so well. May God have mercy on him.”

The family has struggled to come to terms with the death of a boy whose schoolwork and achievements had been a source of pride.

“Mohammed used to ask me: ‘How am I with you?’ I swear, I never asked him for anything more,” he said.

The loss has also left a deep mark on Abdullah, who now fears losing his father, too.

“He has become very afraid of going to school. They used to go together every day and come back together. Now he cannot come to terms with having to go on his own,” Hamad said.

“We are living in fear. When I go out into the streets, I swear I am afraid. Even when I am walking or sitting in a car, my heart is filled with fear … Why should our children have to live with this constant fear and anxiety, even until the last moment?

“Enough is enough. The child is supposed to bury his father, not the father bury his child. They have turned the order of things upside down.”

The gradual return of children to school – even in makeshift classrooms and tents – had offered families in Gaza some hope of restoring a sense of normality after years of disruptions.

But Israeli air raids and sniper fire have continued, despite a ceasefire being established last October for Gaza. Since then, Israel has killed at least 1,574 Palestinians and injured 5,687 in Gaza, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.

The academic year resumed in Gaza on September 19, after nearly three years of disruptions caused by Israel’s war – and with it came more Israeli strikes.

Ten children aged from six to 16 and a teacher were killed between October 18 and 24. In a statement last Sunday, the Ministry of Education said that two girls were wounded during morning assembly at Muradiya School in Jabalia on October 21. Five students were also injured, some critically, in an attack on the Islamic University campus in Gaza City on Sunday.

The ministry called for urgent international action to protect students, schools and universities in Gaza.

The risks are particularly high for schools located near the so-called “Yellow Line”, a point that divided Gaza’s territory between Israeli and Palestinian control as part of the October 2025 “ceasefire” agreement. The line has moved westward to give Israel control of more than 65 percent of Gaza, according to the United Nations, up from the 53 percent agreed upon a year ago

At least 66 Palestinian children have been killed close to the Yellow Line, and pupils and teachers travelling near this zone remain in mortal danger from Israeli snipers and bombs.

On October 21, Suad Abd Rabbo, a fourth-grade student, went to school carrying her bag and books. Not long afterwards, her older sister rushed home shouting that Suad had been shot.

“I ran out barefoot,” Suad’s mother, Aliaa Abd Rabbo, recalled. “When I saw her, I was confused. I didn’t know what to do. She was bleeding, crying and screaming.”

The bullet struck Suad above the knee and lodged in a sensitive area close to her nerves and tendons. She was rushed to hospital, where doctors warned that trying to remove it could cause paralysis. They operated on Suad but were still unable to extract the bullet, which remains in her leg.

Abd Rabbo remembers when Suad came round from the anaesthesia after surgery and started reciting a passage she had been preparing for a school dictation exercise.

“‘O symbol of generosity and resilience … When I feel tired, I sit under an olive tree in the yard of our home, and feel rested after the exhaustion,” her mother recalled her saying.

Suad has since been discharged from hospital and has returned to her tent, where she remains unable to walk or move around. She needs surgery abroad to fully recover, but with Israel tightly controlling exit and entry from Gaza, her prospects of proper treatment are remote.

“Suad is now deeply frustrated. She cries and asks: ‘Why did this happen to me? Why was I targeted? What did I do?’” Abd Rabbo said.

Israeli tanks, military vehicles and cranes regularly open fire close to their tent in northern Gaza, particularly after sunset. Families often have to lie flat on the ground for hours to avoid the stray bullets that ricochet through the camp.

“My heart hurts when I send the girls to school. I told my husband I regret coming back from the south,” Abd Rabbo said about their return home to Jabalia after fleeing to Deir el-Balah during the war.

Another girl was also injured on the same day as Suad as students at Muradiya School were preparing for assembly at about 10:30am, Naim Aloush, the school’s principal, said.

“The girls had formed two lines … one suddenly screamed and fell to the ground … another girl standing nearby was struck by a bullet in her side,” she told Al Jazeera.

Teachers rushed to the girls and found that Suad had been shot while the second pupil, Amina Khader, a fifth-grade student, sustained a minor injury to her abdomen.

Aloush said the shooting sent fear through the school, with parents rushing to collect their children.

Pupils who had witnessed the incident were left terrified, and the school saw a marked increase in absenteeism in the days that followed.

The principal sees this incident as part of wider dangers facing the school in the al-Ghubari area, west of Jabalia al-Balad, consisting of 20 educational tents and serving about 1,000 pupils in the surrounding community, close to the Yellow Line.

Aloush said stray bullets or projectiles – from Israeli artillery, quadcopter drones and snipers – still regularly hit the school.

“Education is under fire, and our whole lives are under fire. At any moment, there can be gunfire. It is not light … it comes down like rain,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Every day, I come to school with my hand over my heart, afraid that one of my pupils or a member of the teaching staff might be hit.”

Amina, the other child injured along with Suad, has been left deeply traumatised by the incident, her father, Khaled Khader, said.

Khader said he rushed to the school after hearing that Amina had been injured and carried his daughter to a nearby clinic.

“There was terror, absolute terror. My daughter was in shock. She broke down, started screaming and collapsed,” Khader told Al Jazeera.

“Thank God she is safe … but the psychological impact of what happened will take years to overcome.”

Amina has since been afraid to return to school. Her family tried taking her back once, but she left early, unable to bear the sound of the gunfire.

“She is now afraid of the school itself. She keeps dreaming about her classmate lying there with blood running from her,” Khader said.

He said the incident had also left him afraid for the rest of his children and his wife, with Israeli air raids, random gunfire and shelling continuing to affect streets near the school.

“We are confused about what to do. Do we keep our children away from school and deprive them of their education, or do we send them out, knowing that they could be targeted at any moment?” Khader said. “A student needs stability to be able to learn. But we have no stability, and there are no alternatives.”

Dock and port workers have long had a tradition of solidarity with the oppressed, upheld by strong labour unions and workers’ rights.

In February 2025, nearly a year and a half into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, dockworkers’ unions from Mediterranean countries came together to disrupt weapons shipments to Israel and Western countries’ military support of the onslaught.

“Weapons need transport, infrastructure, and workers’ hands to reach their destination,” Markos Bekris, leader of Greece’s dockworkers’ union, ENEDEP, at the Port of Piraeus in Athens, told Al Jazeera. “That is where our power lies.”

Now, dock and port workers in 22 countries across five continents are holding a strike on Friday, which workers and researchers told Al Jazeera is expected to be “historic” in scale. The International Day of Action of Dockworkers and Port Workers – also called “Dockworkers do not work for war” – involves 110 ports and 25 trade unions.

“Every union will do what they choose, but be connected to the same principles and struggle,” Francesco Staccioli, the national secretary of transport and ports in Italy’s USB trade union, told Al Jazeera.

The unions’ main demand is “an immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and all imperialist wars”.

Mohammed al-Attar, a dockworker who left Gaza in 2015 and is now based in Hamburg, Germany, said the workers “are the power”.

“We can save thousands of lives if we stop working just for two days,” he said.

Al-Attar feels hopeful about the global strike, but is “deeply disappointed” in his trade union Ver.di in Germany, which he accused of “incomprehensible silence” over Gaza.

What is the International Day of Action of Dockworkers and Port Workers?

In early 2025, dockworkers in the Mediterranean area came together to discuss how to concretely act “against privatisation, and against the genocide in Palestine”.

The original meeting included five unions organising in 20 ports across five countries, but continued to grow. The unions met several times, first in Athens, then in Genoa, and later in Istanbul. That was where unions from more than 35 ports published the Istanbul Declaration in May this year, and declared October 30 as their day of action.

In a statement, the unions called for the “recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognised by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital”, and “an end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the Middle East and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan”.

“Refusing the war is giving humanity a chance to live better. This is what I’m really convinced about,” the USB’s Staccioli told Al Jazeera.

How many ports and unions are taking part?

More than 25 dockworkers’ trade unions, representing more than 110 ports in 22 countries and regions across five continents, are taking part. Most of the strikes will happen at regular working hours, but in France, Italy, India, Greece and Turkiye, 24-hour strikes have been called.

Strikes of up to two hours have also been announced in Morocco, Cyprus and other ports.

Organisers told Al Jazeera that workers and trade unions from other sectors have been called on to join with port workers, notably in Greece, while in Italy the USB has called for a general strike.

“It’s bigger than we thought,” Staccioli said. “This has spread all over the world.”

No Harbour for Genocide (NHG), a campaigning collective that researches weapon supply chains, supports the action. A spokesperson told Al Jazeera that maritime infrastructure was important in “facilitating military trade within the context of the genocide in Palestine”.

Dockworker unions in India, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and the west coast of the United States have all pledged to take part, the spokesperson added.

The Palestinian labour movement endorsed the strike and called on more to join, urging unions to “escalate Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) pressure to end all state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.”

How are these ports involved in wars?

Of the ports participating, Genoa, Livorno and Gioia Tauro in Italy, Marseille in France, Piraeus in Greece, and Tangier in Morocco all have proven links to weapons shipments to Israel, according to No Harbour for Genocide.

The group said that between August 2025 and September 2026 it tracked 315 shipments of components for Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, moving through 56 commercial ports in 29 countries. All these 56 ports are expected to be on strike on October 30 , representing a major disruption, even if only for a day.

NHG said it expects that more than $2bn worth of cargo will sit idle on October 30 .

“Up to 95 percent of Israel’s imports and exports travel by sea, relying on port infrastructure across the Mediterranean,” the campaign’s spokesperson said. “Tangier, Piraeus, Gioia Tauro and Genoa, where the largest vessels unload containers onto smaller ships for the rest of the sea, are a few of the Mediterranean’s most frequently used transshipment hubs. All four are taking part on Friday.”

“The participating Mediterranean ports handle 63 percent of all container activity in the sea,” the spokesperson added, noting that “between southern France and Piraeus, the striking ports hold 74 percent of container activity. Worldwide, the ports taking part [in the strike] handle 13.5 percent of global shipping.”

Linda Maggiore, an Italian journalist and activist, said that she has discovered several examples of increasing weapons shipments from Italy’s major ports to Israel since the start of the war on Gaza.

“In Europe, a regulation on military mobility is about to be approved, which will make it even easier for arms to be transferred without scrutiny,” Maggiore told Al Jazeera. “Blockades are essential actions, because they make it clear that civil society does not wish to be complicit.”

From the Vietnam war to Iraq, the USB’s Staccioli said that “dockworkers have a long tradition of rallying against any imperialist war or aggression in the world.”

Are protest actions prosecuted?

In Greece, union leader Bekris is facing prosecution for a protest in which he and other workers blocked the loading of a container holding 21 tonnes of ammunition destined for Israel in October 2024.

“We carry forward the tradition of workers who refuse to load weapons against other people,” Bekris told Al Jazeera on the eve of the global strike. “Our hands get covered in grease and sweat every day. We refuse to let them be stained with the blood of other people.”

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.

Israel’s parliamentary election on Tuesday produced no clear winner, with nearly 90 percent of ballots counted and both major political blocs falling short of the 61 seats needed to form a government.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc is on course to win 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, while the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot is expected to secure 48 seats.

The Arab-majority parties won 19 seats, a historic high, driven by record turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel of about 80 percent. That has placed the Arab parties at the centre of coalition arithmetic, even as several party leaders ruled out governing with them.

So what did the main contenders say in the run-up to and during the vote, and how did they fare? Here is a look:

Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud: Elections ‘stolen by Arab parties’

Pre-election: In the build-up to the election, Netanyahu expressed confidence, telling The Jerusalem Post on October 22, “I’m gonna have five more terms.”

On Sunday, he targeted the opposition, with Haaretz citing a broadcast on Israel’s Channel 14 that Netanyahu warned if they win, they will “give citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians”, a move that would signal the “end of the Jewish state”.

Election day: On Tuesday, he said forming a government with Arab-led parties would be “a shame and a disgrace”.

“It is forbidden – simply forbidden – to endanger Israel and to establish a government that relies on anti-Zionist Arab parties,” he told supporters.

Post-election day: After the elections, Netanyahu’s Likud party took aim at Palestinian citizens of Israel who voted.

In a party statement shared by Netanyahu, it claimed the elections “were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offences”. According to The Times of Israel, police and the Central Elections Committee have already dismissed these claims.

What the results show: Likud is on course for 26 seats, the largest party, with 20.65 percent of the vote. But his bloc has 53 seats, eight short of a majority.

Gadi Eisenkot, Yashar Party: ‘I do not see an Arab party that accepts my principles’

Pre-election: In a September interview with The Jerusalem Post, he dismissed the idea he would need to form a coalition with Arab parties: “I believe the majority we receive will be much larger than what the polls currently show,” adding “I do not see an Arab party that accepts my principles.”

He also said his “inner feeling is that I now have the ability to defeat Netanyahu”.

Election day: Eisenkot rallied Israelis to get rid of “the worst government Israel has known”.

However, he acknowledged how tight the race was, saying, “We are on perhaps the most critical day since the founding of the state.”

Post-election day: On Wednesday, Eisenkot told his supporters the Israeli public “voted against” Netanyahu and promised, “to ensure that the people’s decision is translated into a Zionist government”.

What the results show: Yashar is on course for 21 seats, with 16.16 percent. His bloc has 48, 13 short of a majority, and he cannot reach 61 without the Arab-led parties.

Naftali Bennett, Together Party: ‘The October 7 government is going home’

Pre-election: In February, months before the vote, Bennett told a closed conference of party activists that he stood by his 2021 decision to govern with Ra’am, but said he would not repeat it.

He said, “We will establish a unity government under my leadership … We are going to win, and we are going to form it,” Israel National News reported.

Election day: “Netanyahu has lost, and the October 7 government is going home,” Bennett told supporters in Tel Aviv.

Post-election: In a post on X, Bennett told Israelis to “lift your heads” and said he will do everything “to establish a Zionist Alliance of Servants government”.

What the results show: Together is on course for 12 seats with 9.07 percent, narrowly behind the Joint List.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Otzma Yehudit: Palestinians in Gaza ‘shouldn’t live’

Pre-election: In his election campaign, Ben-Gvir expressed his most genocidal views yet, saying in August that there are Palestinians in Gaza “who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.” He called for Israel to kill “30 to 40” people in Gaza every night.

Election day: “If you want this country to stay Jewish and Zionist, if you don’t want it to be in the hands of (Israeli Knesset members) Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi, go out and vote,” he told supporters at the entrance to the Arab city of Kafr Qasim.

What the results show: Otzma Yehudit is on course for seven seats, with 5.58 percent, less than half of the 15 he wanted.

Bezalel Smotrich, Religious Zionism-Zehut: ‘Jewish settlements will be established in Gaza’

Pre-election: In a statement he issued in August, he promised an expansion of his settlement “revolution” with a programme for the “Judaization of the Negev and the Galilee” at the expense of Palestinians, as part of his campaign.

Election day: He warned on Facebook of high turnout in communities of Palestinian citizens of Israel, claiming that failing to mobilise right-wing voters could let “terror supporters” into government.

That night, he told supporters “Jewish settlements will be established in Gaza.”

What the results show: Religious Zionism is on course for six seats, with 4.78 percent.

Yousef Jabareen, Joint List: ‘Change comes through Jewish-Arab partnership, a true and equal partnership’

Pre-election: In August, he stated that only “a large and strong Joint List will work with all its might to send the Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir/Smotrich government home”, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Election day, night: In a video statement, he said Netanyahu knew “we can put an end to his bloody reign.”

Post-election: He wrote on X  that his party was ready for the “ousting of the Netanyahu government”, which he called one of “bloodshed”.

“Against a politics of supremacy, racism, and exclusion, we offer a completely different alternative. The change comes through Jewish-Arab partnership, a true and equal partnership,” he wrote.

What the results show: The Joint List is on course for 12 seats with 9.14 percent, making it the third-largest party by vote share.

Mansour Abbas, Ra’am: Netanyahu uses ‘scare tactic to mobilise right-wing voters’

Election day, night: In July, Abbas set Ra’am a goal of at least seven seats, enough, he argued, to make it the balance of power in a “government of change”.

Election day: He hit back at Netanyahu’s posts about Palestinian citizens of Israel, stating in a video that he was “lying and inciting against Ra’am, using it as a scare tactic to mobilise right-wing voters and drive them to the polls”.

What the results show: Ra’am is on course for eight seats, with 6.09 percent, beating his target of seven.

Avigdor Lieberman, Yisrael Beiteinu: ‘We will reach 61 seats’

Pre-election: On October 15, he claimed: “We will reach 61 seats or more for the change bloc.”

Election day: He urged patience, saying on Friday, “we’ll be able to talk about a much better and more optimistic picture.”

What the results show: Yisrael Beiteinu is on course for seven seats, with 5.93 percent.

Yair Lapid, Together: Netanyahu is ‘busy fear-mongering’

Pre-election: In September, he posted a statement which said, “Netanyahu ignored every warning before October 7, and now, 28 days before the election, he’s suddenly busy fear-mongering.”

Election day: He declared victory, stating, “The Netanyahu bloc has suffered a crushing defeat.”

What the results show: Together, which he co-leads with Bennett, is on course for 12 seats, with 9.07 percent.