Palestinian

A girl is taken to hospital in critical condition in what PM Burnham calls a ‘terrible family tragedy’.

Three members of a Palestinian British family have drowned after entering the sea off England’s Sussex coast, the Palestinian embassy in London says.

The embassy announced their deaths on Wednesday, a day after the family went for a swim near Shoreham Fort in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex.

The father, Hossam al-Khawas, was a Palestinian refugee from the Rashidieh Camp in southern Lebanon near Tyre, the Press Association news agency reported.

Police, paramedics, coastguard crews and a lifeboat were deployed at the scene where four people were pulled from the water.

Al-Khawas, a woman and a teenage girl were pronounced dead. A younger girl was taken to hospital in a critical condition.

“The Embassy is closely monitoring the incident and is making the necessary contacts with the relevant British authorities to ascertain its circumstances and to check on the condition of the injured girl,” the Palestinian mission in the United Kingdom said in a statement.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham on Wednesday warned of the dangers of open water swimming after the incident, which he described as “a terrible family tragedy”, the BBC reported.

He said he sends his “best wishes and love” to the family and friends of those who died as well as the girl who remains in critical condition.

Drownings have surged across Europe as people seek relief from the heatwave on the continent with incidents reported in France, Germany and the UK. Experts warned that open-water swimming can carry hidden risks, including cold water shock, strong currents and sudden changes in depth.

The United Nations human rights agency and the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates have condemned a days-long Israeli settler siege of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank village of Qusra.

The two statements were issued on Thursday, as dozens of Israeli settlers continue to besiege three Palestinian families in the Ras al-Ain area in western Qusra for a fifth night.

“These criminal actions by the settlers, supported or acquiesced to by Israel, the Occupying Power, are making life unbearable for these Palestinian families and are clearly aimed at forcing them to leave their homes and their land,” the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

The three families – comprising 15 people, including two children – have been confined to their homes with their water and power cut off since Sunday, the agency said.

“Time is running out for these three families before they are forcibly displaced,” it warned.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning the settlers for carrying out “systematic assaults that can only be described as terroristic”.

It also accused Israel of using the settlers as an “unchecked tool to implement its criminal policies” of forced displacement and annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Earlier on Thursday, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also referred to the settlers’ actions as acts of “terror”.

‘This is all a charade’

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from the scene of the siege on Thursday, said Israeli soldiers initially tried to move the trapped families out of their homes while settlers remained camped outside.

The families refused, not trusting that the Israeli soldiers would allow them back into their homes, and were eventually grouped together in one home. Residents have watched settlers push families out and then take over their properties in the past, she reported.

Qusra has faced settler attacks for decades, Ibrahim explained, and residents tie the rise in violence to the spread of illegal settlements and the lack of accountability for attackers.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said its troops dismantled “two illegal outposts” in Qusra and a nearby village, and detained one Israeli. It said more soldiers were sent to “carry out defensive missions and patrols”.

However, Ibrahim said most Palestinians believe the Israeli army is staging its response to the settler siege for the cameras, and they expect the settlers will eventually return.

Abdel Azim Wadi, the mayor of Qusra, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army has been protecting and helping the settlers. “We saw them praying together, barbecuing together and dancing together,” he said. “They are not very interested in helping the besieged families.”

Qusra resident Abdul Kareem Hassan told Al Jazeera that he had been sleeping in his car for seven months in order to protect his home.

“This is all a charade,” he said. “If they [the Israeli army] were serious, the whole operation would not take them one hour. We’re talking about 20 settlers. If they would treat them the same way they treat Palestinians, they could finish in less than an hour.”

Another day without respite

Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Israeli settlers and soldiers continued their elevated campaign of violence against Palestinians, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Israeli forces issued demolition notices for homes in Kafr Sur, the Jalazone camp and farmers’ shelters in al-Jiftlik.

In Qalqilya, soldiers detained seven relatives of a Palestinian fighter killed in a 2024 strike. Soldiers also detained three Palestinians amid a settler incursion in Burqa, east of Ramallah.

Settler attacks took place across several towns and villages, including an incident in which three Palestinians, including a child, were pepper-sprayed in their car.

Settlers also re-established a settlement near Jenin and erected a new outpost on land belonging to a town near Tulkarem.

Ein el-Hilweh, occupied West Bank – Adel Daraghmeh lies on his side on a thin mattress laid straight onto the dusty ground, one arm flung out, a sandal hanging half off his foot. “We don’t sleep, we barely drink, we barely eat,” he says weakly.

Above him, a patchwork of dark tarpaulins and old blankets is tied together between a few bent wooden poles – the only thing standing between his family and a sun pushing past 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) in the early afternoon.

They are homeless again – their home destroyed days before by an Israeli bulldozer despite a court injunction they believed protected them. Beside him, his wife, Kheirieh, sits on a chair, a small plastic cup of water cradled in both hands.

About 30 metres up a slope, a settler-built fence now cuts across the hillside, cutting Adel and his brothers off from land their flocks grazed for generations. Past the fence, on the crest of the hill, an Israeli flag flies – visible from where Adel lies. “Isn’t this a disgrace, what we are living in?” he asks, more than once, over the course of an hour.

Adel manages diabetes with daily medication, but it’s been a struggle to obtain it in recent days. “They bulldozed the medication [in the house],” says Adel. “Our things, our household goods – all gone. They destroyed us. Our phones, the solar panels – no electricity, no water.”

As the family has learned in recent weeks, as Israel gears up for fiercely contested elections in October, even an Israeli Supreme Court injunction may not stop the bulldozers from coming now.

‘Five minutes to clear the whole area’

The wreckage of the Daraghmehs’ house is still scattered: clothes, a pulverised medicine cabinet, a hollowed-out mini-fridge with its door hanging open, and split cinderblocks.

Even after their son Hilal’s home was demolished shortly before without warning, the July 28 demolition of Adel and Kheirieh’s home came as a shock. With Adel a short drive away in Tubas collecting medication, Kheirieh was home with their daughter, Hanaa, when Israeli soldiers, settlers and Civil Administration officials arrived with a bulldozer and about 10 other vehicles. “They came while I was asleep,” she says.

Kheirieh walked out to meet them with the family’s legal papers – proof, she believed, that the home was protected by an earlier Israeli Supreme Court order barring demolition until the family’s case was resolved.

The court had suspended a 2022 demolition order while a case brought forward by the family progressed.

Soldiers took the documents, read them, conferred among themselves, and handed them back.

Then the bulldozer started anyway.

“Five minutes to clear the whole area,” one of them told her, she says.

“I told him: I can’t. I can’t clear the area. I’m on my own, and I’m ill,” she says. Already sick, and now seeing the bulldozers bearing down on her home with nearly everything she owned inside, she blacked out, waking up three hours later in an ambulance.

“And before I knew it, the bulldozer had started,” she says. “The whole house – all of it. All our belongings. Gone.”

“No order, no law,” added Adel weakly from the ground. “No humanity.”

‘Discriminatory’ system

“The army and the settlers demolished … despite the existence of a court order prohibiting it,” says Tawfiq Jabareen, the lawyer representing the Daraghmeh family, referring to the initial July 2 demolition of Hilal’s home. “The prosecution claimed it was a mistake by the army, and that it would not happen again – but the demolition was repeated.”

“The law and court rulings mean nothing to the settlers,” adds Jabareen, “who try to circumvent them by every means, believing that imposing facts on the ground is stronger than any law or court ruling.”

The Daraghmehs are herders of livestock who have lived along the Ein el-Hilweh spring, in the northern Jordan Valley, for generations. Four brothers and their families live in the area. “I was born here,” Adel says. “My father was born here.”

Nearby are the illegal Israeli settlement of Maskiyot and several settler outposts established in recent years, subjecting the extended family to numerous attacks, thefts and raids.

Like herding communities across Area C of the West Bank – under complete Israeli military and administrative control – the family has spent years navigating demolition orders under a planning system that leaves Palestinians almost no legal path to build.

Adel has had his home demolished before and spent significant money to rebuild it, he explains. What’s different now, they say, is that even that limited process – a warning, a demolition order, followed by a chance to appeal – has stopped applying to them at all. No demolition order was presented for either Hilal’s home or Adel’s when they came to bulldoze them despite the court injunctions.

Soldiers, settlers and Civil Administration officials arrived together during the demolitions, according to the family and activists present.

Allegra Pacheco, chief of party of the West Bank Protection Consortium and a lawyer who has represented Palestinians before Israeli courts for decades, says the irregularity of such demolitions is no aberration in an otherwise functioning system.

“This is a continuation of the deterioration of any pretence of legal protection for Palestinians,” she says. Even the ordinary planning process was built to fail Palestinians, she argues. Under a zoning system inherited from Jordanian and British Mandate-era law, Israel changed some of the laws to the detriment of Palestinians, leaving most Palestinian areas in Area C without approved building plans, while Israeli settlements – illegal under international law – are zoned and built freely.

“The Israelis set up the system to be discriminatory and to fail Palestinians,” says Pacheco. “So people build anyway, get the stop-work order, then demolition [order] – which you can appeal. But you’re appealing to the one who made the rule to discriminate against Palestinian construction.

“There’s no way for Palestinians in general to win under the current Israeli legal framework.”

As lines blur between authorities and settlers, who exactly spearheaded the demolition – soldiers, settlers, the Civil Administration – was unclear even to the family. “They’re all the same when they come,” says Hilal. “They’re all together.”

According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since January 2023, more than 6,200 Palestinians, including more than 3,000 children, have been forcibly displaced, including more than 2,300 people since the beginning of 2026 alone. More than 907 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank have already been demolished this year.

Al Jazeera reached out to Israeli authorities and the military for comment on the events described in this article, but no response has yet been received.

‘Nothing is holding them back’

A short walk from the rubble of his parents’ home – and his own – Hilal sits under the shade of a tree beside the spring that sustained his family for generations, one that he and his flocks can no longer use.

Minutes earlier, he’d watched two settlers cool off at the spring, dousing themselves with water as one of them changed into a military uniform on the bank.

Hilal’s own remaining cattle – most of the herd already stolen, confiscated or sold – scrounge instead for whatever run-off is left once the settlers are gone. “We used to drink from this spring, and carry water on the donkey,” he says. “But they stopped us. The settlers fenced it off.”

Later, he rides his donkey across the road to what remains of his home. What had been walls and a roof is now a field of scorched rubble and gnarled metal piping, bent and knotted where the bulldozer dragged it. On his donkey, Hilal points to where each room had stood. He estimates the losses at 170,000 shekels ($57,000).

“Not a single thing I got to take – all of it is gone,” he says.

Next door, at the home of Adel’s brother, Qadri – which was previously demolished in August last year – several relatives, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, describe an extended family bracing for its turn.

“Nothing is holding them back now,” one son says. “They don’t even need an order any more. Of course we are scared they will come for us next.”

Prevented from rebuilding by nearby settlers and soldiers, Adel and Kheirieh now rely on relatives for help getting basic supplies. “All of our family helps each other,” says one relative, “but it is so hard when we don’t have enough, and we might be next.”

Following earlier thefts by settlers and confiscations from authorities a year and a half ago, the family had another 50 head of cattle stolen by settlers, they say.

Amid deteriorating health, an exhausted, heat-stricken Adel sits up from lying on the ground only when the topic of past weddings comes up. His hoarse voice strengthens, and he breaks into a wide smile. Softly, he begins clapping out the rhythm of a dahiyyeh – the sung, chanted line-dance of Bedouin celebrations – his wavering voice rising over the sound of his own hands.

“What beautiful times together,” he says. “Beautiful.”

Then, as if that singing expended the last of his dwindling energy, he sinks back onto the sweat-stained mattress and exhales. “Inshallah those times will return,” he says. “Inshallah.”

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Sohair al-Bordani was displaced and living in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, trying to take care of her four children, as war raged all around her.

And while she survived, her 10-year marriage has not. Al-Bordani, 30, explained that the arguments between her and her ex-husband had intensified since the war began in 2023, as the stress of merely existing in Gaza weighed down on them.

But al-Bordani encountered a problem. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – in which Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians – has devastated many aspects of the Palestinian enclave’s administration, including its legal system.

To get a court-ordered divorce, with the accompanying financial claims she would be eligible for, al-Bordani would have to go before a religious court and establish her case. She said that she initiated legal proceedings in February 2025. But, because of delays to the judicial process brought on by the war, the case dragged on.

And so, al-Bordani chose the speedier option available to her – khulu, a form of divorce initiated by the wife that can involve relinquishing financial rights. In her case, this meant that she returned her dowry to her ex-husband and gave up the financial support she would have been entitled to.

“I gave up everything because obtaining my rights under these circumstances had become extremely difficult,” al-Bordani said. “I only wanted to find peace and start a new life away from everything I experienced during that period.”

Legal delays

Al-Bordani’s story reflects the experience of many women in Gaza who have found themselves trapped between delayed legal cases and a war that has disrupted access to the justice system, leaving decisions that are supposed to determine their futures suspended until conditions allow courts to resume their work fully.

Some personal status cases – including divorces – have reached Gaza’s religious courts, which oversee the matters.

According to Sheikh Hassan al-Jojo, the head of the Supreme Council of Sharia Judiciary in Gaza, courts have handled more than 8,700 divorce cases from the beginning of the war in October 2023 until the end of May.

That is despite the many challenges they face, including – but not limited to – damage to court buildings and shortages of judges and other staff.

Al-Jojo also said that courts had returned to near-full judicial work, while services continued even during periods when court buildings were closed.

But he also pointed out that the courts were operating with severely limited resources. Each court – according to al-Jojo – has only one computer, while repeated power cuts, shortages of printed materials and a lack of basic office supplies continue to affect their work.

“Essential services, including marriages and divorces, and other procedures needed by citizens, did not stop,” al-Jojo said. “But the priority at this stage is to keep providing the service, rather than improving it.”

Troubling consequences

Yet divorce figures alone do not reflect the full impact of the war on families. The delays in accessing the legal system have meant that women like al-Bordani have been unable to pursue their legal rights after separation, particularly in cases involving child custody, spousal and child maintenance, and other financial payments that are typically due to the wife.

Mohammad al-Talaa, a lawyer in Gaza, says that the war has significantly affected the functioning of judicial institutions, leading to the postponement of thousands of hearings and the suspension of many cases.

He added that thousands of files and documents have been lost due to Israeli bombing and the destruction of offices, making it difficult to prove rights, particularly in civil and property-related cases.

And with regard to personal status cases, al-Talaa pointed out that the suspension of enforcement departments in courts has left women entitled to payments without that financial support, and has also affected child visitation and custody cases, leaving some parents unable to implement decisions related to maintaining contact with their children.

The problems are not just legal. Al-Talaa explained that the continued delay in divorce and separation cases has left some women trapped in marriages they want to get out of. It has also prevented them from moving on with their lives, while delays in access to financial payments they are owed have increased the burden on families, and a lack of resolution on cases involving children has led to increased psychological stress for all involved, alongside the trauma caused by the war itself.

Suad al-Naami was not willing to deal with being stuck in limbo, and decided to get a khulu divorce even if it meant giving up on the rights a court-mandated divorce would have granted her.

The 22-year-old had only been married for five months, but with disputes with her ex-husband increasing, she left.

“I never imagined my married life would begin this way,” al-Naami said. “I hoped we would have a home and a stable life, but displacement and living in a tent made everything more difficult.”

For the young woman, the promise of a new start, amid all the destruction around her in Gaza, was better than a drawn-out case.

“Giving up on my rights was not an easy matter, but I felt that entering a long legal process and waiting for years would only increase my suffering,” al-Naami said. “I only wanted to end the disputes and start over, because staying in a relationship full of problems under these circumstances would have been harder than the decision to separate itself.”

Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian families inside their homes in the occupied West Bank, cutting off water and electricity in a campaign residents described as an attempt to steal their land.

Security camera footage from the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, on Wednesday shows Israeli settlers surrounding one of the houses.

Trapped residents said Israeli soldiers had failed to disperse the settlers despite intervening earlier in the day.

Aisha Abu Rida, one of the residents under siege, told Al Jazeera that the siege began on Sunday, with settlers blocking all entrances to her home.

“We are surrounded by settlers, but we are steadfast, God willing. We will not leave our home, no matter what happens. Despite the water and electricity being cut off, we will remain steadfast,” she said.

“Despite their repeated attacks, which are aimed at displacing us, God willing, we will remain steadfast and stay in our homes, even if we are martyred,” she added.

‘Living in fear’

Loai Ridi, an American-Palestinian who owns a house in the village, said his brother Qusai Abu Rida and 18-year-old nephew, Ahmed, were among those trapped.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Toledo, in the United States, he said the family was relying on a temporary solar power system and leftover well water from the winter after supply lines were cut.

“He [Qusai Abu Rida] does not want to leave the home. Because if he leaves the home, the settlers will take over immediately,” Ridi said. “It’s really very, very difficult. He just told me, ‘I only have supplies for two to three days left. And if no one is able to provide us with food, I am not sure what else I can do’.”

Ridi said Israeli forces had done little to intervene when his brother had called for help on Sunday, and alleged the soldiers had knelt to pray alongside the settlers at the scene, in footage that has since circulated on social media.

“They basically did nothing,” he said.

Earlier on Wednesday, more Israeli forces arrived on the scene, dismantled the settlers’ tent and clashed with about 50 to 60 of the group before withdrawing. “They were unable to evacuate the settlers because they were not firm with them,” Ridi said. “They should have picked them up in vans and taken them away.”

The Israeli military said later on Wednesday that it would deploy an additional infantry battalion to the area, with its chief of general staff ordering continued efforts “to strengthen order and operational control” and prevent further incidents.

A day earlier, the Israeli military had said it received reports of settlers entering and seizing Palestinian homes and land in the area, describing the activity as “illegal, reprehensible and unacceptable” and disruptive to residents’ daily lives. It added that disciplinary action would be taken against security personnel filmed at the site in preceding days.

Ridi said his family was “living in fear”.

“They are being harassed and attacked by the settlers,” he said. “I cannot do anything about it.”

‘Ethnic cleansing’

Qusra sits in Area B of the occupied West Bank, nominally under Palestinian civil administration. The village has faced a string of recent attacks, including the burning of a newly built mosque last month.

In the neighbouring village of Jalud, a similar two-week siege in July forced two Palestinian families off their land before settlers took over the property.

Violence and land seizures in the occupied West Bank have intensified over the past months, with Jewish settlers emboldened by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has overseen a rapid expansion of settlement construction in the territory.

More than 500,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank in settlements that are considered illegal under international law, alongside roughly three million Palestinians. Israel has occupied the territory since 1967.

According to the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, there are 146 illegal settlements in the West Bank and a further 390 smaller outposts.

Breaking the Silence, an Israeli rights group, said on X that while settlers commit “daily terror against Palestinian men, women, and children … neither this terror nor ethnic cleansing would be possible without the [Israeli] army’s support”.

The United Nations has also warned that the situation in the occupied West Bank has reached a “breaking point”.

According to UN figures, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, in the occupied territory so far this year. About 3,800 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, have also been displaced by settler violence, demolitions and evictions.

UN’s Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Ramiz Alakbarov said on Tuesday that the UN has documented more than 1,430 settler attacks resulting in casualties or property damage across roughly 260 Palestinian communities in 2026, with many carried out in the presence of Israeli forces.

He also noted that Israeli authorities have also advanced or approved roughly 12,360 settlement housing units across the West Bank this year, including 5,160 in occupied East Jerusalem.

“These are interconnected steps, not isolated developments,” Alakbarov said, warning that they were reshaping the occupied West Bank, weakening Palestinian governance and advancing “de facto annexation”.

Israeli far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has posted an AI-generated video depicting a starving Palestinian prisoner as well as real videos mocking detainees who describe poor jail conditions. It’s part of a campaign to promote his harsh treatment of Palestinians ahead of October’s elections.

Palestinian Christians are facing violence and displacement across Gaza, Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. Attacks, including those targeting churches and clergy, are causing the Palestinian Christian population to shrink.

The U.K. electronic band Massive Attack has been banned from Singapore because of its pro-Palestinian activism onstage, the group said.

The group unfurled a Palestinian flag during a performance at the Star Theatre in Singapore on July 29. The band said police detained them after the show, and that an investigation led to the band being forbidden from performing in the country.

The nation of Singapore has strict laws against displaying foreign flags or national symbols without a permit.

Massive Attack, which consists of Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, described the event as a “surreal experience” in a post on Instagram.

“We were surprised and disappointed that our entire band was detained by the police, isolated and separately questioned – with some members subjected to hotel room searches and temporary passport confiscation,” it read.

“Before we set foot on the stage and again at the end of the show, large sections of the auditorium organically led chants of ‘Free Palestine’, presumably aware but undeterred that this spontaneous expression alone could violate their government’s censorship laws.”

“For our part,” the statement continued, “we did not imagine that merely holding up the flag of a sovereign state recognised by 157 countries would violate any law.”

In a statement issued Saturday, cited by the Guardian, Singapore police and the local Infocomm Media Development Authority said that Del Naja and Marshall had been investigated for “their actions of support for a political cause and unfurling of a foreign flag,” violating Singapore’s Foreign National Emblems (Control of Display) Act and the Public Order Act.

The police said they “take a serious view of acts which could potentially harm the racial and religious harmony in Singapore and urge the public, including foreigners, to refrain from importing foreign politics as this can undermine our social cohesion and the rule of law.”

The statement said Del Naja and Marshall would “be banned from re-entering Singapore” and are forbidden from performing there again.

The band did not back down from its onstage gesture or its longstanding pro-Palestinian activism, stating that “On reflection, we are proud to have made this impromptu expression with our fans in Singapore who clearly felt a moral imperative to show solidarity with the people of Palestine in their ongoing reality of illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide, and we salute their courage in doing so. Right across the world, the continued inaction of the ‘international community’ is moving citizens to personal risk.”

Del Naja was recently arrested at a recent protest in support of the group Palestine Action in London.

Thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza are enduring extreme temperatures amid a heatwave. Families sheltering in makeshift plastic tents are using whatever means they can to cool down amid appalling living conditions.

Seven Palestinians, including two children, have been detained by Israeli forces in overnight and predawn raids across the West Bank, according to Palestinian local sources.

Israeli settlers separately assaulted a Palestinian man and his wife on their own farmland on Saturday.

The couple was attacked in the al-Zarqa area of Beitillu, northwest of Ramallah, when a group of settlers stormed the farm where they were working, leaving both with injuries and bruising that required hospital treatment.

The latest settler attacks and raids by Israeli forces are a single day’s snapshot of activity now unfolding “in every direction” across the occupied West Bank, said Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah.

Odeh said Israeli military jeeps were roaming constantly through Ramallah on Saturday, as soldiers used tear gas inside a supermarket in the city. This level of everyday disruption, she said, has become difficult to separate from the settlement expansion driving it.

Settlers have erected another illegal outpost this week, Odeh added, the 12th such construction in the past seven days alone.

The military raids that produced Saturday’s detentions spanned three governorates at once. In Tubas, forces searched a family home in the town of Tammun and detained a 16-year-old; in Nablus, four Palestinians were picked up in predawn raids on the villages of Urif, Einabus and Burqa; and in Bethlehem, a second 16-year-old was detained in Wadi Fukin, with another man held at the Container Checkpoint.

In the nearby town of Asira ash Shamaliya, troops went further still, storming dozens of homes overnight and converting one house into a makeshift field interrogation centre, security sources told Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Further south, in Khashem al-Daraj near Hebron, Israeli forces chased down and detained 11 workers, beating them in the process, according to local activist Osama Makhamreh.

Israeli settlers, meanwhile, were active on parallel fronts.

In Surif, near Hebron, residents from the Bat Ayin outpost set fire to one car, damaged another, and sprayed racist graffiti on a house, the town’s mayor, Hazem Ghneimat, said.

Later on Saturday, three young Palestinian men were assaulted with pepper spray on the road between al-Mughayyir and Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, after settlers rammed their vehicle with an all-terrain vehicle – an attack that village council head Amin Abu Aliya said has become almost a daily occurrence along that stretch of road.

In Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, Israeli authorities forced three residents to demolish their own homes rather than face the fines and costs of a state-led demolition, which, Palestinians say, is a practice used routinely to sidestep Israel’s near-total refusal to grant them building permits.

Saturday’s events fit a pattern that rights monitors have been documenting for months. Palestinian sources recorded more than 11,000 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers across the West Bank in the first half of this year alone, with Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus the worst affected.

The figures echo recent United Nations warnings – including from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has said settler violence and forced displacement are accelerating alongside plans to expand and legalise outposts, all of which the UN maintains have no legal validity under international law.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham added his own criticism on Saturday, calling the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Palestine “unacceptable” and saying his government was weighing further measures on Israeli settlements, including possible restrictions on arms exports.

Israeli settlers vandalised a Palestinian cemetery, smashing stonework marking the graves of deceased Palestinians during a march near the village of Tal in the occupied West Bank.

Residents said Israeli forces accompanied the march and fired tear gas at Palestinians.

Nearly eight decades after the establishment of Israel, the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state remains the defining question of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Wars have been fought, peace treaties signed and diplomatic initiatives launched, yet this central strategic issue remains unresolved.

Today, Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of the efforts to establish a Palestinian state and deliver a lasting peace arrangement with Israel. Its commitment to the issue is made clear by its decision to cosponsor the creation of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution in 2024, which is currently meeting in Rome.

King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are following in the footsteps of successive Saudi monarchs. For more than half a century, the kingdom has maintained a remarkably consistent position. The question has never been whether peace with Israel is possible, but whether the political conditions required to make such a peace comprehensive, legitimate and irreversible were present.

Within that framework, recognition of Israel and the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state are parallel components of a single settlement. Neither is intended to precede the other.

That doctrine originated under King Faisal, who made Palestinian self-determination a central pillar of Saudi national security policy. His successors preserved the principle while adapting its diplomatic expression to changing regional realities. The objective remained constant even as the diplomatic environment evolved.

The Fahd Plan of 1981 – named after King Fahd – translated that doctrine into a formal peace proposal calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab territories and recognition of Palestinian national rights. Two decades later, the Crown Prince and later King Abdullah expanded the same strategic logic through the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. Israel was offered comprehensive peace and normal relations with the Arab world in return for withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

The current Saudi leadership therefore inherits an established strategic doctrine rather than an unresolved policy debate. Their responsibility is to determine whether today’s diplomatic environment can finally satisfy conditions that have remained fundamentally unchanged for decades.

That continuity also reflects a broader question of state legitimacy. For the Saudi monarchy, support for Palestinian statehood has never been solely a matter of foreign policy. It has become one of the enduring pillars of the kingdom’s political and religious legitimacy, rooted in the monarch’s role as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and reinforced by the kingdom’s longstanding position within both the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The significance of that continuity became clearer after the Abraham Accords of 2020. By establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, later joined by Morocco and Sudan, the accords demonstrated that Arab-Israeli normalisation could advance without progress on Palestinian statehood. They reshaped regional diplomacy, but they neither resolved the Palestinian question nor completed the wider peace process.

Successive US administrations have regarded Saudi participation as the decisive missing element. The Abraham Accords could expand without Riyadh, but they could not acquire their full strategic significance without the kingdom’s participation.

The Trump administration has once again placed Saudi-Israeli normalisation at the centre of its regional diplomacy. But this diplomatic push has to be evaluated in the larger post-October 7 context.

The war in Gaza created an entirely new diplomatic environment. The subsequent ceasefire initiative and the establishment of the Board of Peace introduced a framework intended to end the conflict, stabilise the territory and begin reconstruction. Their significance lies not in replacing a political settlement, but in creating conditions under which one might become possible.

For the kingdom, however, the essential political requirement remains unchanged: the actual and irreversible establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.

That position rests upon mutually reinforcing political, religious and economic foundations. The monarch governs not only as head of state but also as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, a responsibility carrying religious authority throughout the Islamic world. Any decision concerning recognition of Israel would therefore require both political approval and broad religious legitimacy. Such legitimacy could not credibly rest upon promises of future negotiations. It would require the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.

The kingdom’s wider influence reinforces that position. It is by far the Arab world’s largest economy, representing about one-third of total Arab economic output. The kingdom is the only regional member of the G20, one of the world’s leading energy superpowers and the world’s leading crude oil exporter. It is also the Middle East’s principal economic engine. Combined with its religious standing, these factors give Saudi decisions consequences extending far beyond bilateral diplomacy.

The implications would reach well beyond the kingdom itself. Several major Arab states, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Algeria, have not recognised Israel. Their decisions are sovereign, but a Saudi-Israeli settlement founded upon Palestinian statehood would nevertheless transform the political environment in which those decisions are made.

Lebanon illustrates the point. Washington is encouraging Beirut to move towards formal relations with Israel as part of a broader effort to stabilise the Israeli-Lebanese frontier. The domestic political cost of such a decision, however, would look fundamentally different after a Saudi-backed settlement based upon Palestinian statehood than before one.

The same logic extends across the wider Muslim world. Major influential countries such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia have withheld recognition of Israel because the Palestinian question remains unresolved. A settlement accepted by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and accompanied by the establishment of a Palestinian state would compel those governments to follow. It would remove the principal political and religious obstacles to reconsidering their positions.

This is what ultimately distinguishes Saudi Arabia from the earlier Abraham Accords. Saudi Arabia’s participation would be different in kind, not merely in scale, carrying political, economic and religious significance across the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Whether the current diplomatic process can ultimately reach that point remains uncertain. Israel, the Palestinians, the United States, the European Union and certain regional governments all have indispensable roles to play. The final Saudi decision, however, rests with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Within the strategic framework they have inherited, Palestinian statehood and recognition of Israel are not sequential steps but parallel obligations. Neither can acquire lasting legitimacy without the other.

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

A large-scale settler attack targeted the Palestinian town of Turmus Ayya and Jalud, with properties set on fire and live ammunition reportedly fired toward homes.

On Tuesday, the Chairman of the Knesset’s Education Committee, Zvi Sukkot of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, arrived at a Palestinian school in East Jerusalem for a “surprise visit” – his second in two weeks. He did not come to evaluate pedagogy or classroom conditions or needs. Instead, he smashed the school’s entrance sign because it featured a Palestinian flag and publicly pledged to shut it down.

This storming of the school was more than just a publicity stunt meant to appeal to his political base ahead of Israel’s October 2026 elections. It was the physical embodiment of a sweeping state campaign targeting Palestinian education in unlawfully occupied and annexed East Jerusalem.

Sukkot is using his position to physically police Palestinian schools. This move comes on top of the Knesset’s aggressive legislative campaign to destroy Palestinian education in East Jerusalem that lawmakers have pushed in recent years.

One such law, passed in January 2026, bars graduates of Palestinian universities in the West Bank from working as teachers in Israel and in East Jerusalem. This law is based on racist ideology and extremist claims that graduates of these universities are inherently dangerous and morally unfit to be educators.

The motives of the law’s proponents were made clear during Knesset deliberations: advancing what several MKs called the “Israelisation” of the educational system and of the students, even at the expense of access to education. In a May 2025 Education Committee session, one Likud MK claimed that this law is needed as teachers who graduate from Palestinian universities “do not cultivate Israelisation” among their students.

The law passed despite the devastating consequences it is bound to have on the already fragile and disadvantaged Palestinian education system in East Jerusalem. This system is largely dependent on graduates of West Bank universities – who are overwhelmingly women – and it already has a serious shortage of teaching staff and classrooms.

Another law, passed in November 2024, which is widely referred to as the “Silencing Law”, gives the Israeli Ministry of Education full discretion to suspend or dismiss teachers through a fast-track administrative process. It targets speech the ministry deems to be “incitement to terrorism”, based on the ambiguous and arbitrary clauses of the Israeli Counter-Terrorism Law, which has become a catch-all mechanism to criminalise Palestinian speech.

The 2024 law also gives the ministry the right to revoke funding from schools on these same grounds, potentially leading to their closure.

Here too, the Knesset Committee’s deliberations on this law revealed an explicit targeting of the Palestinian education system in East Jerusalem and lawmakers’ views that this system is a security threat that must be dealt with. As a Likud MK said during an early 2024 Education Committee discussion on this proposed legislation: “It’s very important that they become Zionists… If I was an Arab from East Jerusalem, the first thing I would be is a Zionist. Above all”.

MK Sukkot’s pledge to shut down the school he attacked is not an idle threat. It follows the closure of six schools in East Jerusalem and its outskirts in 2025, which left 800 Palestinian children suddenly without access to formal education. These closures were the immediate result of the 2024 and 2025 anti-UNRWA laws passed by the Knesset.

The legislation and MK Sukkot’s physical vandalism of a Palestinian school demonstrate the state’s efforts to impose “Israelisation” on young Palestinian students living under occupation, and to erase any trace of Palestinian education and identity, even at the cost of trampling on every legitimate pedagogical need along the way.

Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – is currently challenging all of these laws before the Israeli Supreme Court, with pending petitions against the ban on Palestinian university graduates, the “Silencing Law” targeting teachers’ political expression, and the anti-UNRWA laws.

We will continue to do all that we can to legally resist the campaign against Palestinian education. But the state’s assault on Palestinian schools will not stop until there is genuine international pressure on the Israeli government to stop its violations of nearly all the human rights of the occupied Palestinian population in East Jerusalem, including the right to education and the right to dignity.

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

Umm al-Khair, occupied West Bank – The Palestinian villagers of Masafer Yatta, a collection of hamlets in the southern West Bank, feel Israel’s military and settlers closing in on them on a daily basis.

In one of those villages, Umm al-Khair, the presence of a newly established illegal settlement outpost nearby is the latest evidence that they are being replaced in their own land.

Salem and Ikhlas al-Hathaleen live with their eight children in a modest home covered with sheet metal. The land around their home had been somewhere the family could use for agriculture and grazing. But the illegal outpost, an extension of the nearby settlement of Carmel established last September, was set up on that land, roughly 20 metres (66 feet) away from their house.

Ikhlas explains that her old morning routine used to involve taking the family’s sheep out of their enclosure, providing them with food and water, milking them, and allowing them to graze.

The tasks were simple – but that is no longer the case.

Now, thanks to the new Israeli outpost, reaching the enclosure – which lies just behind the house – has become difficult, and at times, impossible.

According to Ikhlas, the family was initially prevented for four consecutive days from reaching the livestock enclosure and then was only allowed to access it once, while accompanied by Israeli soldiers, in order to provide food and water for the animals. They were then prevented from accessing the enclosure for two days. This pattern of occasional visits interspersed with days of not being allowed to access the animals has continued, and Ikhlas says they have only been able to check on the animals three times in July.

“I look every morning to see whether the sheep are still alive,” Ikhlas says. “I only wish I could reach them and take care of them like I used to.”

Struggle for a bathroom

It is not just sheep enclosure that is a struggle to get to for the al-Hathaleen family.

Even the family’s bathroom, which is a freestanding structure a few metres away from their home, has become difficult to reach.

Ikhlas explains that settlers in early July placed obstacles near the bathroom, including barbed wire and children’s playground equipment, all in an effort to make access harder, particularly for children and the elderly.

She adds that the situation has become more complicated since the Israeli army declared the area around the bathroom a closed military zone. As a result, the family – including the children, the youngest of whom is a year old – have been forced to use a neighbour’s toilet, despite the risks involved in reaching it.

The route requires crossing a road used by settler vehicles, Ikhlas says, adding that her five-year-old daughter Swar was injured after being hit on the road last August.

For Ikhlas, it is not just an issue of reaching a toilet or the family’s livestock, but about a family’s ability to live with dignity and have a normal life inside their own home.

“We will not leave our land,” she says. “Even if we have to live in a tent or under a tree, we will stay here.”

Growing settlements

Umm al-Khair has faced an increasing tide of settler attacks since October 2023, when Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began, as well as a simultaneous escalation in Israeli attacks in the occupied West Bank.

Jewish settlers, seeking to capture more land from Palestinians in the West Bank, have become a particular menace, with little pushback from the Israeli state – and often encouragement, particularly in light of the presence of far-right settler leaders, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, in the highest ranks of government.

Settlements continue to expand rapidly across the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, making any hope for a Palestinian state on these lands increasingly remote.

An Israeli court issued an order last October that the new illegal outpost next to Umm al-Khair be evacuated, but after the Israeli army did nothing to implement the order, it was cancelled.

The local Palestinians have little ability to push back against the Israeli settlers – if they do, they are at risk of being attacked more forcefully by the settlers, who have weapons, or arrested by soldiers.

Khalil al-Hathaleen, the head of Umm al-Khair’s village council, says that settlement expansion in the area has accelerated in recent years, including the establishment of the new illegal outpost, as well as the opening of roads for settlers, and expanding the areas under the control of existing settlements – all of which rely on expropriating Palestinian land.

Khalil explains that as a result, the number of livestock owned by Umm al-Khair’s residents has dropped from 3,000 to about 700, as a result of the difficult conditions facing herders and the growing challenges in accessing grazing areas.

He adds that more than 1,000 olive trees have been cut in the area, 50,000 square metres (538,000sq feet) of agricultural land taken over, and demolition orders issued against 14 homes and structures.

“For the people of Umm al-Khair, losing access to their land does not only mean losing property,” Khalil says. “It means losing an entire way of life that has existed for generations.”

Hisham al-Sharbati, a researcher at the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, says the organisation has been monitoring the situation in Umm al-Khair for years, and that challenges facing residents have intensified alongside settlement expansion in the area.

“The humanitarian impact is visible in every detail of daily life – from difficulties accessing sources of income to restrictions affecting homes and basic facilities,” he says, adding that the actions of Israel and its settlers directly contravene international law.

Children in fear

Ahmed al-Hathaleen, another resident of Umm al-Khair, works to track Israeli abuses in the village.

“I have a special folder on my phone called ‘Umm al-Khair File’,” he says, adding that it contains about 1,500 video clips and 1,200 photographs that he has collected since April 2025.

“Photography and video have become a way to tell our story and show people what is happening here,” he says.

Ahmed, who is 31 years old, says that it is the children – and he has three of them – who are most affected by the situation, with some experiencing nightmares as a result of the surrounding environment.

Sahm Khalil al-Hathaleen is one of those children. He says children in the community have lost much of their normal childhood, especially their right to education and safe spaces to play.

The 12-year-old boy says that he just wants to go to school and play without fear, but that is impossible in the current situation they face.

“The children here just want to live like other children,” he says.

Sahm sees some of those other children living normal lives – the children from the nearby Israeli settlements. While they play, he describes being woken up in the middle of the night scared whenever he hears a sound outside.

“Fear,” Sahm says, “has become part of our daily lives.”

Egypt head coach Hossam Hassan has called for players and reporters at the World Cup to speak out about the killing of children in Gaza and Palestine. Hassan made the comments after his team’s controversial 3-2 defeat to Argentina in the last 16.

Israel has rejected a UN Commission report that says its army deliberately targets Palestinian children. But there are cases of children being shot by precision weapons, making it difficult to argue they were accidents.
Al Jazeera’s @emmawithrow explains.

A United Nations commission of inquiry has accused Israel of systematically targeting Palestinian children in the occupied Palestinian territory, saying Israeli actions amount to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and war crimes in the occupied West Bank.

In a report released on Tuesday, the commission said about 30 percent of those killed in Gaza since Israel’s war began in October 2023 were children, and that attacks on maternity and neonatal units, along with an aid blockade, have devastated children’s chances of survival.

The commission says Israeli forces have destroyed orphanages and schools, and Palestinian children have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured and subjected to sexual abuse in detention. It warns that killings and serious injuries have continued even after the October 2025 “ceasefire”, in defiance of international law.

UNICEF estimates more than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded since the war began, with at least one Palestinian child killed on average every day in the eight months since the October “ceasefire” took effect.

These images document the lives and losses of Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank as they struggle to survive bombardment, displacement and imprisonment – and to hold on to a future that is being systematically stripped away.