On July 17, hours after Israel’s parliament formally dissolved itself and set an October 27 election date, an Israeli drone struck a funeral procession outdoors Ahmad Yassin Mosque within the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing no less than eight mourners as they buried a person killed hours earlier.
The UN human rights office said Israeli assaults have killed no less than 57 Palestinians, together with six kids and eight girls, between July 13 and 20, warning that the sample “raises considerations of constant violations of worldwide humanitarian legislation, struggle crimes and different potential atrocity crimes in Gaza”.
Beneficial Tales
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In the identical week, Israel’s army carried out day by day killings, ministers raced to go laws earlier than parliament dissolved, the Civil Administration issued demolition and land-seizure orders, and settlers attacked Palestinians with near-total impunity.
All of this factors in direction of an unrelenting few months of violence and dispossession earlier than elections happen.
A mass-casualty week in Gaza
Past the Nuseirat funeral strike, the week’s Gaza toll included a string of air assaults on houses and displaced households.
On July 15, an Israeli helicopter assault killed Omar Sami Abu Qassem, his spouse Asmaa Ghazi and their six-year-old daughter Habiba in Deir el-Balah; their three-year-old son was the one survivor. On July 18, an Israeli warplane struck a residential building in Gaza Metropolis’s Nassr neighbourhood with out warning, killing Adham Nasman, his spouse Marwa and three of their kids; a 3rd youngster survived solely as a result of he was not dwelling. Israel claimed that Nasman was a Hamas commander – the group has not issued a press release confirming that.
A day later, Rida Abu Asr was killed by Israeli artillery shelling in Zeitoun, considered one of a number of folks killed within the neighbourhood that day as tanks superior in direction of Dawla Junction, in line with the Palestinian information company Wafa. Israeli strikes additionally killed seven cops, together with the director of Jabalia’s police station, in an assault on a checkpoint on July 14, and repeatedly hit tents sheltering displaced households in al-Mawasi all through the week, in line with Wafa.
Then, an overnight Israeli air attack on July 21 killed Firas al-Masri, his spouse Salsabeel and their 4 kids as they slept in Gaza Metropolis, in line with medical officers.
Amid this string of mass-casualty assaults, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz advised Channel 14, whereas touring northern Gaza, he felt satisfaction from the scenes of destruction, which he stated resulted from a deliberate Israeli coverage. He added that Israel was finding out the institution of three military-style settlement outposts in northern Gaza.
Katz’s statements coincided with a march on Sunday by the Nachala settler motion to the Gaza border fence, wherein right-wing Israelis – accompanied by greater than a dozen ministers and legislators, together with Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud celebration – referred to as for the re-establishment of settlements inside Gaza.
On the opposite facet of the fence, the Israeli-controlled “Yellow Line” has continued increasing westward, with new blocks positioned close to al-Qarara and reaching the Abu Miri roundabout east of Deir el-Balah, forcing lots of extra households to flee Israel’s advance, in line with native sources.
Amid such developments, the humanitarian image in Gaza, specified by the United Nations Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ (OCHA) July 16 state of affairs report, continues to deteriorate.
Sixty-three p.c of households in Gaza now entry lower than six litres of consuming water a day, whereas 60 p.c reside inside 10 metres of uncovered sewage. Livestock feed imports have been blocked for greater than a month, the UN’s Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO) confirmed, tripling barley costs and threatening a die-off in August that may reverse the modest herd restoration recorded between October 2025 and Could 2026.
Israeli settler roads open – and Palestinian gates shut
The escalation in Gaza parallelled a sharpening marketing campaign to create “details on the bottom” throughout the occupied West Financial institution. This previous week, the Israeli safety cupboard authorized 1.3 billion shekels ($426.3m) to establish 34 new illegal settlements. On July 15, it authorized an extra 1.075 billion shekels ($352.5m) for settler highway infrastructure, Wafa reported, which can help a lot of the brand new settlements and outposts reaching far-flung areas of the West Financial institution. Smotrich referred to as the choice a “settlement and safety revolution”, aiming to determine greater than 100 settlements and 160 agricultural and pastoral outposts.
That funding framework supplied the context for this week’s wave of demolitions, whose acknowledged goal has moved past allow enforcement to clearing land for the proliferating settlement infrastructure marketing campaign.
Israel’s Crimson Thread barrier project continued with the systematic destruction of Palestinian water infrastructure within the northern Jordan Valley, with Israeli forces and settlers destroying three artesian wells close to Atuf, confiscating pumps and mills, and severing roughly 800 metres of pipeline serving 4,500 dunams (4.5 sq. kilometres) of farmland, in line with the Atuf Village Council.
In Masafer Yatta, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Fee has tied a wave of demolition and stop-work orders in Advert-Deirat and Ar Rifaiyya on to a deliberate settlement highway to run alongside Route 356 – a undertaking that places three of 5 native faculties serving 700 kids in danger, together with Ar Rifaiyya’s, which misplaced a courtroom enchantment in opposition to demolition on July 8.
Israeli authorities additionally issued a army order seizing land in Jaba, north of occupied East Jerusalem, for what Palestinian officers say is one other settlement highway linking Route 60 to the Nabi Yaqub settlement – the newest in a string of army seizure orders used to facilitate settlement infrastructure.
The identical infrastructure drive has more and more formed the geography of violence within the occupied West Financial institution, together with in al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, the place 17-year-old nationwide youth soccer participant Fadi al-Naasan died on July 18 of wounds from a settler-and-army raid on July 11 – the seventh al-Mughayyir resident killed since October 2023, together with 4 minors. Israeli activist Jonathan Pollack has tied the repeated killings there to a deliberate marketing campaign to carve a settlement hall linking the Shilo bloc to the Jordan Valley.
Likewise, the West Financial institution noticed quite a lot of whole cities sealed behind army gates. Sinjil, north of Ramallah, bore the complete brunt of this marketing campaign. Israeli forces sealed Sinjil’s entrances with earth mounds and a barbed-wire fence that has swallowed farmland, after which raided the city nightly, in line with Wafa and native activist Ayed Jafry. On the night time of July 16, greater than 100 armed settlers attacked the city’s outskirts; residents confronted them at shut vary and compelled them to flee amid what Jafry described as gunfire “from each course”. Settlers returned at daybreak beneath military safety to burn crops.
As well as, Israeli forces sealed the western entrance to Bethlehem’s countryside with a brand new iron gate at al-Shouli, slicing off Husan, Battir, Nahhalin and Wadi Fukin; closed the Atara and Ein Siniya checkpoints – the latter one of many final dependable open routes for Ramallah residents – concurrently for hours; and bolstered a three-year-old gate closure at Idhna, west of Hebron, with concrete blocks, in line with Wafa.
Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah, noticed its personal deadly raid the night time of July 19, when a big army raid mixed with an tried settler theft of roughly 70 sheep left two males, Ahmad Abu Makhou, 26, and Odeh Farakhna, 53, useless from gunshot wounds; Pollack stated witnesses gave conflicting accounts of whether or not troopers or settlers fired the deadly photographs.
Livestock theft beneath army escort recurred so usually this week, together with the seizure of greater than 180 sheep from a single household in Khirbet Emneizal and repeated raids on flocks in close by Wadi al-Rakheem, that it has develop into an anticipated situation of life in Masafer Yatta, within the phrases of native activist Osama Makhamreh.
In at-Tawani, additionally in Masafer Yatta, settlers burned the village mosque, with one assailant boasting in graffiti that “I’m beneath home arrest”, two houses and a dairy manufacturing facility on July 18 and 19, in line with Makhamreh, Murad Samara and Wafa.
Crimson meat for the bottom
In the meantime, on July 20, Hamas elected Khalil al-Hayya as head of its political bureau, ending practically two years of collective management following Yahya Sinwar’s killing.
In its last hours earlier than the Israeli authorities’s dissolution, Netanyahu’s outgoing coalition pushed by means of a legislative blitz, together with a Communications Regulation handing the federal government management over broadcast media and protections shielding ultra-Orthodox males from conscription.
And through the identical week, ministers joined activists calling to resettle Gaza, Surroundings Minister Idit Silman reclassified the Nile crocodile as a “tended” species, a authorized class for wild species bred and managed in captivity for industrial functions. That clears a authorized path for Ben-Gvir’s proposal to encompass detention amenities for Palestinians with the reptiles – beginning with Ktziot Jail, the place imprisoned Gaza doctors, amongst others, are held with out cost.
