This week’s events offered a glimpse of what the coming autumn may hold for Palestinians: Israeli ministers and settlers asserting themselves at Al-Aqsa Mosque; a pardon granted to a soldier convicted of killing a wounded Palestinian; and a tender advanced for a crucial settlement project timed to close just days before Israelis vote on October ۲۷. As Israeli politicians stake out expansionist and even messianic ambitions during Judaism’s holiest days, attacks, demolitions and closures have continued across the occupied territories — with the consequences likely to extend well beyond the changing of the seasons.
Occupied East Jerusalem: A holy day consumed by campaigning and closures
On the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured a network of excavation tunnels running beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the Old City, before joining thousands of settlers for prayers at the Western Wall behind bulletproof glass. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed the mosque compound itself the following morning under heavy police protection; roughly ۵۷۰ settlers entered to perform religious rituals in violation of the site’s status quo, with more than ۴۵۰ storming the compound the morning after, according to the news agency Wafa. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, which holds custodianship over the site, condemned the incursions as an attempt “to impose a temporal and spatial division” of the compound.
Recommended Stories
list of ۳ itemsend of list
The same holiday period saw Israeli forces close the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron to Muslim worshippers from Sunday afternoon until Monday night, while granting settlers free access for holiday celebrations; the mosque’s call to prayer has now been banned for ۹۰ consecutive days.
West Bank: Killings and villages under siege
On September ۲۰, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man near the illegal Ganim settlement east of Jenin after accusing him of attempting a vehicular attack. Hours earlier, an Israeli settler had been fatally shot near the illegal Halamish settlement; Israeli forces detained a suspect, Qadri Muhammad Samara from Biddu, after violently raiding a hospital where he was receiving treatment after being injured. Soldiers then raided Samara’s home village, where soldiers forced members of three families into a single house and assaulted four men inside, according to local reports.
Ben-Gvir immediately demanded that Samara face the death penalty, calling it the “first case that meets the criteria” of a law the Knesset passed in March — one that permits military courts to sentence to death Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis, but carries no equivalent provision for Israelis convicted of killing Palestinians. Netanyahu ordered the demolition of Samara’s family home and a surge of forces into the West Bank; Israeli forces subsequently sealed all entrances to Ramallah and el-Bireh and conducted a sweeping predawn arrest raid in Biddu on Monday, according to Wafa.
In the same week that Ben-Gvir called for the death penalty, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog expunged the criminal record of Elor Azaria, the soldier convicted in ۲۰۱۷ of manslaughter for shooting dead a wounded, incapacitated Palestinian, Abdul Fattah al-Sharif, in Hebron in ۲۰۱۶. Israel’s own military chief of staff opposed the pardon, noting Azaria “has refrained from expressing remorse… even a decade after his conviction”; Defence Minister Israel Katz welcomed the move as sending “an important message… [that] we do not abandon our fighters.”
Separately, a Palestinian prisoner, Moataz al-Atrash, ۲۱, from Hebron, died this week in Ofer Prison after more than ۱۱ months held under administrative detention without charge; his family said he had no known health problems. The Palestinian Prisoner’s’ Society said the number of confirmed prisoner deaths since October ۲۰۲۳ has now reached ۹۲.
Beyond the killings, settler pogroms continued across the West Bank as security forces stood aside or actively assisted them. Attacks were concentrated in villages like Burqa, near Ramallah, where settlers attacked September ۱۹, then returned the next afternoon to occupy an agricultural structure on the village’s eastern edge, appearing to prepare it for habitation — a possible new illegal outpost in the making.
With the olive harvest season fast approaching, Israeli settlers cut Palestinians’ trees in Yabad, Nilin and Khirbet Firasin near Jenin this week, while grazing sheep through Palestinians’ olive groves in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, according to field reports.
All the while, demolitions and displacement continued in parallel. According to local field reports, Israeli forces razed a community structure in Deir Ballut, west of Salfit, and a two-story home in Masafer Yatta housing eight people, most of them children; settlers then prevented the displaced family from erecting a replacement tent. In Tulkarem, occupation forces posted notices seizing land around the Banat Yacoub shrine and other sites under the pretext of archaeological preservation — the shrine is registered as property of the Islamic Waqf, according to Wafa.
Gaza: Infrastructure collapses amid mounting shortages
In Gaza, meanwhile, deadly strikes continued while infrastructure collapsed in systemic and quite literal terms. An Israeli drone strike on September ۱۹ killed the eldest son of Gaza’s Health Ministry director-general, moments after he stepped out of his displacement tent. The same day, a drone strike on a civilian vehicle in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan market killed one person and wounded four; the body was burned beyond recognition after the vehicle caught fire for half an hour before rescuers could reach it.
Days earlier, in what was described by Gaza-based activists as an apparent double-tap strike, a ۱۵-year-old boy was killed as he rushed to help a paramedic who had just been wounded in an earlier attack — part of a pattern in which Israel has killed roughly one child a day in Gaza since an October ۲۰۲۵ “ceasefire” took hold. By September ۲۱, ۲۰۲۶, Gaza’s Ministry of Health put the death toll in Gaza since the “ceasefire” at ۱,۳۹۴ killed and ۴,۸۳۹ wounded; a total of ۷۳,۹۱۴ have been killed since October ۲۰۲۳, with thousands of bodies still thought to be buried under the rubble.
Following several other similar collapses in recent weeks, a six-storey building in Gaza City’s al-Sinaa district, already weakened by earlier Israeli strikes, collapsed onto residents and nearby displacement tents on September ۱۶, killing ۲۱ people — ۱۲ of them children. Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Al Jazeera that nearly ۱۰۰ people remained under the rubble as crews worked with severely inadequate equipment. A second building collapsed in al-Sabra two days later. Gaza’s Ministry of Public Works warned that more than ۲,۰۰۰ damaged buildings across Gaza remain at risk of similar collapse.
Alongside physical collapse, Gaza’s health system continued to see a deterioration in basic capabilities. Seventy percent of hospital generators are now out of service for lack of fuel and spare parts, according to medical sources cited by Wafa, while al-Ahli Arab Hospital’s main generator has failed for lack of oil and spare parts — taking offline the only functioning CT scanner in northern Gaza.
On September ۱۷, Israeli authorities blocked the exit of part of a medical evacuation convoy, cutting the number of patients and family members permitted to travel to Egypt for treatment from ۱۳۶ to ۶۱; the Health Ministry accepted only the most critical cases and sent the rest back in protest, warning the policy amounts to “a flagrant violation of the right to medical treatment” that exposes patients to “the risk of death”, according to Wafa.
