Palestine weekly: Israel accelerates land grabs in Gaza, West Bank

SaveSharefacebookxwhatsapp-strokecopylinkA vehicle in Gaza on fire as a result of a January 26 Israeli air strike, killing three people [Adam Bilal/Anadolu Agency]By Al Jazeera StaffPublished On 30 Jun 202630 Jun 2026Earlier this month, Israeli ministers had described their expanding colonial project in the language of intent – with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announcing the “cancellation” of the Hebron Accords, and Israeli broadcasters reporting on the government cabinet’s intended “quiet annexation” of Gaza. This week, that vision began to take physical shape.In Hebron, Israeli forces brought heavy machinery into the Ibrahimi Mosque and began installing steel beams over its open courtyard – a structural alteration the mosque’s director called a fundamental change to the ancient site’s historic character; Israeli authorities have also blocked the Muslim call to prayer there for a week and a half.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Israeli attacks kill eight people in Gaza and a teenager in the West Banklist 2 of 3The next British PM should steer clear of Starmer’s shameful legacylist 3 of 3The Take: The path from Gaza to Trump’s returnend of listIn Gaza, Smotrich announced that the Settlement Administration he heads had “completed plans” for three settlements in the north of the Strip and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to approve them. And along the so-called “Yellow Line” demarcating Israeli control within Gaza, Israeli forces pushed their cement markers further west, expanding the territory under their control. Annexation, from blueprint to buildIf the Ibrahimi Mosque works were the week’s most visible construction, the quieter colonialist building happened across the West Bank’s outpost system, where the state moved to entrench settlement infrastructure that even Israeli law had viewed as illegal. Israeli authorities declared 465 dunums (0.465 square kilometers) of land near Sinjil, north of Ramallah, as “state land”, a designation the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said was intended to retroactively legalise the Givat Haroeh outpost – converted into an official settlement in 2023 – and to stitch it into the surrounding settlement bloc along Route 60.Settlers, meanwhile, carved new bypass roads on private Palestinian land near Kobar and Beitillu and erected fencing to seize land for a new outpost between al-Mazraa ash-Sharqiya and Kafr Malek, according to Wafa and local activist networks.In Gaza, Israel’s land-grabbing project advanced. Smotrich said the groundwork for three northern settlements was complete, arguing Jewish settlement would form a security belt for Israeli border communities. Netanyahu, separately, said Israel was pushing towards taking 70 percent of Gaza.The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that around midnight on June 23, near Beit Lahiya, a quadcopter reportedly dropped incendiary munitions that set three displacement tents ablaze, after which forces placed a yellow cement block near the families’ shelters – an expansion of the line, OCHA noted, along which the UN human rights office has recorded the killing of nearly 200 Palestinians since October. OCHA now assesses 65 percent of Gaza as “access-restricted”. A war on children, named and countedOn June 23, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry found that Israeli forces had deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children – at least 20,179 between October 2023 and October 2025, roughly 30 percent of all of those killed. The commission said the deliberate killing of children was a key element establishing genocidal intent. Israel rejected the report as a “libelous sham”.Days later, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reported that Israeli forces had killed 241 Palestinian children and teenagers in the occupied West Bank since October 2023, describing it as the product of a policy enabling the killing of Palestinians with virtually no accountability.Recent days supplied new names for both reports. On June 29, in el-Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah, 15-year-old Ahmad Jawad Jaber was shot in the head and chest during an Israeli raid and died on the way to hospital; the governor of Ramallah, Laila Ghannam, called it “a clear-cut execution in broad daylight”. In Gaza, according to medical sources and Wafa, 13-year-old Eileen al-Farra died of shrapnel wounds, eight-year-old Malik Abu Shaweesh was killed near Deir el-Balah, and on the evening of June 29, an Israeli strike on a tent in al-Mawasi – a zone designated “safe” under the ceasefire – killed Diana Abu Daraz, 23, and her infant daughter Suwar. Settlers, fires and a rare prosecutionIn the Ramallah-area communities of Dar Fazaa and East Taybeh, OCHA’s latest report recorded 11 settler attacks since a new outpost was established nearby in May, with settlers seizing the only water points and cutting supply to more than 200 people – part of a slow emptying that has cleared nine of 10 Bedouin communities along the same road.The state’s response to the wave of settler violence was, in isolated instances, punitive. Israeli prosecutors charged six settlers – five minors and an 18-year-old – over the June 14 arson at Deir Dibwan, in which masked assailants torched vehicles and a mosque, and Israeli forces demolished homes in a settler outpost at Beit Anot on June 25.But both the charges and the settlement demolitions drew protests from settler leaders, and they took place during a week in which, Wafa reported, settler raids and arson continued daily – and in which an Israeli parliament bill to ban Red Cross visits to Palestinian prisoners failed only because ultra-Orthodox lawmakers were boycotting coalition votes. Gaza: ceasefire killingsIn Gaza, nearly nine months into a nominal ceasefire, the post-ceasefire death toll climbed to at least 1,045, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Israeli strikes in the past week – separate to those previously mentioned – have included a June 25 strike on Beit Lahiya that killed one person, a June 26 strike that hit a vehicle near Maghazi camp, killing three police officers, a June 27 strike that in al-Mawasi that killed two siblings.The Ministry of Health warned that roughly half of Gaza’s dialysis machines had stopped working for lack of supplies, as Israel continues to bar entry of critical medical supplies; OCHA reported the humanitarian effort in Gaza remains less than 25 percent funded.