Palestine weekly: Israel attacks children, hospitals in bloody week in Gaza

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Children have been repeatedly killed in Israel’s attacks in Gaza over the past week, as the death toll since the October ceasefire reached at least 1,108.

Attacks include July 8 Israeli strikes that killed at least eight people, including a 10-year-old killed in a strike on a tent in the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone” and a six-year-old shot in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, Palestinian health officials said. A day later, a World Central Kitchen driver, Ahmad Nasser Saleem, was shot dead with his hands raised while transporting coordinated aid from the Karem Abu Salem crossing.

Claims and realities

Amid such daily field reports, COGAT, the Israeli military body coordinating aid, released a report claiming humanitarian supplies had entered Gaza in quantities that “significantly exceeded” the needs identified by the UN. Its chief, Major-General Yoram Halevy, said anyone disputing the figures COGAT released was “amplifying Hamas propaganda”, according to the Times of Israel.

By contrast, the UN’s own data, published the following day, described the scarcity-by-design of basic necessities in Gaza. In its July 10 situation report, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said food parcels distributed to more than 53,500 people in early July covered just 75 percent of minimum caloric needs, and that a top-up of high-energy biscuits had been suspended to preserve dwindling emergency stocks. Only 56 percent of aid cargo routed through the Egypt corridor was successfully offloaded at the Karem Abu Salem crossing. The number of families receiving shelter assistance had fallen 37 percent from May to June amid funding shortfalls and Israeli restrictions on materials.

Essential services for an estimated 350,000 people living with chronic disease remain severely disrupted amid entry restrictions. Relatedly, OCHA’s Health Cluster partners recorded more than 18,000 new cases of chickenpox, skin infection, and parasitic infestation in a single week.

On the ground, Gaza’s medical facilities were plunged into darkness by fuel shortages, with 38 hospitals already destroyed or rendered inoperable and surgeons forced to shorten operations. The Ministry of Health warned that its labs and blood banks face complete shutdown.

New elections promised

Just days after Gaza’s Hamas-run government announced its resignation to make way for a technocratic committee yet to enter Gaza, on July 9, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree setting Palestinian legislative elections for November 28 – the first such vote in 20 years. The announcement, widely seen as a response to international pressure for reform of the Palestinian Authority, faces considerable obstacles: Israel has yet to permit voting in occupied East Jerusalem, Gaza’s infrastructure lies in ruins, and its population registry is out of date.

Annexation by the numbers

A report published on July 7 by the Israeli advocacy and research groups Peace Now and Kerem Navot documented what it called de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank at an unprecedented pace: between 2023 and 2025, it found, 185 new outposts were established, 118 Palestinian herding communities were expelled, 102 new settlements were created, and illegal farm outposts came to control more than 1.1 million dunams (1.1 billion sq metres) of land -18 percent of all of the West Bank – functioning together as “a single, systematic government policy”.

Developments across the West Bank tracked that overarching policy in motion. In the northern Jordan Valley, Israeli bulldozers uprooted more than 300 olive and grape trees near Atuf and cut water lines serving some 45,000 dunams of farmland as part of the “Crimson Thread” military road and wall project, according to the Tubas official Mutaz Bisharat. Near Jenin, more than 1,500 olive trees were destroyed by Israeli forces in Zububa since the beginning of July, Wafa reported.

Demolitions ran in parallel: over the week, Israeli forces razed homes, agricultural structures and a four-apartment building across Shuqba, Jit, Nablus, Sur Baher, Khirbet al-Miyah and Bruqin, according to Wafa and local activist reports. Settlers demolished the Yanun Elementary School, which had served 15 children, some eight months after the community was ethnically cleansed, per Wafa. On July 13, Wafa reported that Israeli authorities forced the Abu Tir family to self-demolish their home in occupied East Jerusalem, fining them 80,000 shekels and leaving seven homeless.

The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said Israeli authorities had issued 49 military land-seizure orders in the first half of 2026 – already exceeding the 47 issued in all of 2025 – covering 2,093 dunams, mostly along settler bypass roads including Route 60.

Settler violence persists – unimpeded

Much of the week’s violence in the West Bank followed a familiar script: settlers attacking under Israeli military protection. For five consecutive days, activist Osama Makhamreh reported, settlers attacked the family of the elderly Ibrahim Ismail al-Jabour in the Huwara area of Masafer Yatta; soldiers arrived to protect the attackers, and by July 12 had detained al-Jabour himself while seven of his relatives, including two children, were injured by settlers. Across those days, no settler was arrested.

Elsewhere, about 150 settlers attacked Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah, from four directions on July 9 while Israeli forces blocked ambulances, according to Wafa. In al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, repeated raids left residents wounded by live fire, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades – including a 10-year-old boy struck in the head – as Israeli forces confiscated ambulance keys, per Wafa and local field sources. Near Jenin, settlers and soldiers together expelled four families from Khirbet Asaeed who had lived there more than 70 years, Wafa reported.

OCHA, in its latest report, recorded at least 35 settler incidents causing casualties or property damage in a single week, bringing the 2026 total to more than 1,200 across more than 240 communities – about six a day.

Harder to explain away

As scrutiny of Israel’s actions intensifies abroad, disputes over basic facts from the ground entangled even visiting US politicians. US Congressman Ro Khanna said he and his group were detained for more than an hour by settlers, before soldiers prevented him from leaving, while touring the emptied village of Khirbet Zanuta in the West Bank. The Israeli military said its soldiers “dispersed” the settlers on arrival; “the [Israeli military] is lying,” Khanna told NBC News.

The same apparent disregard for international observers extended to Israeli courts. Haaretz reported that the Israel Prison Service had imposed sweeping new restrictions on Red Cross visits to Palestinian detainees, despite the ruling of a unanimous High Court last month. Oded Feller of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the purpose of the decision was “to continue concealing the abuses taking place in IPS facilities”.

Even routine diplomacy was challenged; Israel barred the Arab League’s secretary-general from entering the West Bank to meet President Abbas, according to Wafa – another move that, alongside the outposts, the demolitions and the defied court orders, underscored a trajectory moving steadily in one direction: brazen defiance.

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