Inside hours of United States envoy Jared Kushner leaving talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aimed toward salvaging the Gaza “ceasefire”, Israeli strikes had been once more hitting residential areas within the enclave, and by week’s finish, senior officers had been describing a return to pre-ceasefire guidelines of engagement.
Kushner’s August 17 talks produced two working groups – on disarmament and humanitarian points – however uncovered quite than resolved the core points: Israel’s unwillingness to withdraw from Gaza because it believes Hamas is not going to disarm alongside its refusal to permit the help, provides and building supplies required to rebuild the territory. Hamas says Israel’s ongoing assaults and refusal to withdraw its forces from Gaza are a violation of Trump’s 15-point plan introduced on July 30.
Beneficial Tales
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Kushner mentioned he wouldn’t object to assaults in opposition to “imminent threats” however warned in opposition to deciphering that broadly. The assaults that adopted recommended that Kushner’s warning had completed little to constrain Israel’s interpretation of what constituted an “imminent menace”.
Hours after Kushner left, a strike on a crowded cafe on the Gaza Metropolis port – itself a displacement camp – killed at least seven Palestinians, together with a toddler.
The next day, a strike on Gaza Metropolis’s former police headquarters killed not less than 9 individuals, together with the appearing director of Gaza’s police power, the pinnacle of its ladies’s police division and a 13-year-old lady.
A Hamas supply instructed Al Jazeera the officers had gathered to organize for the weapons handover referred to as for underneath US President Donald Trump’s peace plan – which means, if correct, Israel killed the very individuals organising the disarmament it calls for. A separate strike that day killed a person Israel referred to as a Hamas commander in Nuseirat.
The marketing campaign continued all week: a drone assault killed a person Israel mentioned was a Hamas commander in Deir el-Balah on Saturday.
The week’s closing set off for Israel’s return to such bellicose footing in Gaza was, improbably, kites. After a number of landed in an Israeli border group, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Sunday ordered the army to deal with any kite, balloon and drone from Gaza as “an act of battle”, threatening assaults and neighbourhood displacements, based on The Occasions of Israel.
Netanyahu’s workplace echoed the warning, declaring Gaza “is not going to return to the state of affairs earlier than October 7, 2023”. Subsequent assaults on Sunday killed at least three Palestinians, amongst them four-year-old Muhammad Abdel Salam Taha. A predawn assault on a household’s tent in Deir el-Balah killed two brothers on Monday, based on Palestinian studies.
Gaza’s Ministry of Well being put the variety of casualties for the reason that October “ceasefire” at 1,288 killed and 4,290 wounded as of Monday, with a cumulative toll of not less than 73,422 Palestinians killed since October 7, 2023.
E1 settlement advances
In the meantime, Israel has continued to advance its unlawful settlement undertaking within the occupied West Financial institution and East Jerusalem, widely seen as a death knell for the prospect of a Palestinian state alongside 1967 traces as a part of the so-called two-state answer.
On August 18, Israel issued a young for 1,234 items within the southern part of the East1 plan in occupied East Jerusalem, transferring the long-frozen undertaking on the trail in the direction of energetic building. The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Fee mentioned the plan would sever East Jerusalem from the occupied West Financial institution by fusing it with the Maale Adumim unlawful settlement bloc and fragmenting the northern and southern West Financial institution.
The transfer has drawn international condemnations. The UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Norway called the tenders “unacceptable” and warned of “authorized and reputational penalties” for individuals.
The European Union was reportedly making ready a sanctions bundle ought to building start.
Eight Arab and Muslim-majority states issued a joint rejection, and more than 100 former French and British ambassadors wrote in Le Monde on Saturday that settler violence and demolitions “quantity to ethnic cleaning”, calling for suspended commerce and an arms embargo.
As for Israel’s strongest ally, america, when requested about E1 particularly, its Division of State repeated solely its customary line that the US “doesn’t help Israel annexing the West Financial institution” with out naming the undertaking.
Days earlier, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a longtime settlement supporter, had invoked the Ten Commandments to warn settlers in opposition to seizing Palestinian American property, threatening sanctions in opposition to these besieging houses within the West Financial institution village of Qusra, together with one belonging to US citizen Loui Abu Ridi. Huckabee has condemned settlers holding the Palestinian houses underneath siege as “terrorists”.
That hole – a right-wing Christian Zionist ambassador keen to name settlers “terrorists” and a State Division unwilling to particularly title the Israeli authorities’s flagship unlawful settlement undertaking – captured Washington’s bind: reining in Israel’s worst excesses whereas remaining its principal guarantor.
The hole between condemnation and consequence was seen elsewhere too, together with in Israel’s dealing with of its personal battle crimes file in Gaza. On Wednesday, the army introduced investigations into the January 2024 killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab and 6 of her members of the family – the first time Israel admitted firing on their automobile – and the March 2025 killing of 15 medics in Rafah. Nevertheless, on the identical time, Israel closed three different instances, together with the April 2024 killing of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) employees.
The Hind Rajab Basis said it had no confidence Israel’s investigations would produce justice. The UK, Australia and Canada referred to as the WCK investigation closure – introduced on World Humanitarian Day – “shameful”.
Sieges, arson and land seizure within the West Financial institution
A Human Rights Watch report last week discovered extra Palestinians had been displaced by settler assaults, demolitions and evictions within the first 4 months of 2026 than in all of 2025. It accused Israeli authorities of “arming, funding and granting impunity” to settlers. The United Nations Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded 216 settler assaults inflicting casualties or harm in July alone.
That sample continued this week. Based on the Palestinian information company Wafa and native activists, in al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, a collection of assaults included settlers overturning a automobile carrying ladies, youngsters and aged individuals on Thursday, injuring 5 individuals, and ramming a second automobile two days later. By Sunday, Israeli forces had sealed the village’s solely remaining entrance.
In Qusra, south of Nablus, a siege of three houses entered its third week, leaving households minimize off from meals, water and medication. Area activist movies confirmed troopers throwing a household’s belongings from a house they now occupy.
Settler assaults and arson unfold all through the week. In Sa’ir, northeast of Hebron, armed settlers killed 17-year-old Karim Sanad Shalaldeh and critically wounded a person in his 70s throughout a raid that additionally set a house ablaze. In Khallet al-Farra, west of Yatta, settlers set fireplace to a house with a household of 5 asleep inside.
UN Particular Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese described the assaults as “pogroms in opposition to defenceless civilians”. Specialists now again her place, saying the West Financial institution assaults more and more match the definition of a pogrom, which refers to “the organised violence” in opposition to a bunch of individuals due to their “race or faith”.
In the meantime, Israel’s territorial grip continued to develop. New or increasing outposts had been documented at Tal al-Asur and Marj Sia, east of Ramallah; Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah; and Mount Tarousa, west of Hebron, the place the “Doron” outpost, one in all 19 settlements accepted final yr, acquired its first caravans, based on Wafa.
Israeli settlements and outposts are unlawful underneath worldwide legislation.
Within the northern Jordan Valley, Israeli NGO B’Tselem reported that armed forces and settlers had minimize the final water pipelines supplying a number of Bedouin communities, putting 47 households – greater than 300 individuals – at imminent threat of displacement within the shadow of Israel’s Crimson Thread Barrier undertaking.
Israeli forces additionally killed two Palestinians this week. Fathi Zedan Khazem was shot throughout a raid on his Jenin dwelling on Friday and left to bleed to loss of life after troopers blocked ambulance entry, based on Wafa. Two days later, 14-year-old Islam Ahmad Ajjouri was shot dead throughout a raid on Askar al-Jadid refugee camp, east of Nablus.
