Middle East

Israeli forces have bombed Gaza’s only Catholic church, killing three people and wounding at least ten others, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said, as the military continues its assault across the besieged enclave.

At least one person is in critical condition as a result of Thursday’s strike on the Church of the Latin Monastery in Gaza City – known as the Holy Family Church, the Patriarchate said in a statement. The church’s priest was also lightly wounded, it added.

Among those killed were the parish’s 60-year-old janitor and an 84-year-old woman who was receiving psychosocial support inside a Caritas tent in the church compound, according to the Catholic charity Caritas Jerusalem.

Israeli attacks have killed at least 32 Palestinians on Thursday, including 25 in Gaza City alone, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Footage of the Holy Family Church attack published by a Palestinian activist and verified by Al Jazeera shows Father Gabriel Romanelli, the church’s pastor, following the Israeli attack. The video shows the priest with his right leg bandaged but otherwise in good condition.

“The people in the Holy Family Compound are people who found in the Church a sanctuary – hoping that the horrors of war might at least spare their lives, after their homes, possessions, and dignity had already been stripped away,” the Patriarchate said in its statement after condemning the deadly attack.

Shadi Abu Dawoud, a 47-year-old Palestinian Christian, said the church’s main hall was housing dozens of displaced citizens, mainly children and elderly people, and that all were “peaceful civilians”.

“My mother suffered serious injuries in the head; she was wandering in the church’s yard with other elderly women [when Israeli forces attacked],” he told Al Jazeera.”We were taken by surprise by this Israeli air strike. This is a barbaric and unjustifiable act.”

Mohammed Abu Hashem, a 69-year-old man who lives beside the church, said he was in the ruins of his home when there was a huge explosion that covered the area in black smoke, adding that he never thought the Israelis would attack the church.

“The Israeli air strike was massive, totally horrifying,” he said. “The horror we are living in is beyond description. No words could describe what we are living through. It is not even close to what you watch [on TV] or hear.”

‘War of extermination’

Pope Leo, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, said he was “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life and injury caused by the military attack” on the Gaza church, according to a telegram signed on his behalf by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.

Pope Leo “assures the parish priest, Father Gabriele Romanelli, and the whole parish community of his spiritual closeness”, the telegram said.

The pontiff renewed his “call for an immediate ceasefire, and he expresses his profound hope for dialogue, reconciliation and enduring peace in the region”.

His predecessor, the late Pope Francis, had held nightly calls with the church’s parishioners in a show of solidarity with them. The last call took place the day before he died in April.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, said in comments to Vatican News that an Israeli tank hit the church “directly”.

“What we know for sure is that a tank – the [Israeli army] says by mistake, but we are not sure about this – they hit the church directly, the Church of the Holy Family, the Latin church,” he added.

Since the start of the war on Gaza, Israel has repeatedly attacked religious sites, including mosques and churches. In October 2023, just days after the deadly assault began, the Israeli army bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Gaza Strip’s oldest, killing at least 18 people.

The Israeli military acknowledged Thursday’s attack and claimed the incident was “under review”. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered a rare apology and confirmed an investigation was under way.

It also said Israel did not target churches or religious sites and regretted harm to them or civilians, even though it has attacked dozens of mosques and churches since the start of the war on Gaza.

An independent United Nations commission report said last month that Israel has committed the crime against humanity of “extermination” by attacking Palestinian civilians sheltering in religious sites and schools in Gaza.

The report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, said Israel has destroyed more than half of all religious and cultural sites in the territory, as well as more than 90 percent of school and university buildings in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas slammed the attack as “a new crime committed against places of worship and innocent displaced persons”.

“It comes within the context of the comprehensive war of extermination against the Palestinian people,” the group said in a statement shared on Telegram.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also blamed Israel for the strike, saying attacks against “the civilian population that Israel has been carrying out for months are unacceptable”.

Only about 1,100 Christians live in Gaza, according to a US Department of State report in 2024. The majority of Palestinian Christians are Greek Orthodox, but there are also Roman Catholics living there.

This summer in Western Europe, there is constant talk of “unprecedented heatwaves”. According to the media, authorities are working hard to help people cope with and protect themselves from the adverse effects of sweltering temperatures.

As someone in Gaza, it is hard not to be grimly amused by this panic.

After all, as temperatures began to rise, my homeland – at least what remains of it – has been transformed into an open-air furnace.

Now, in the middle of another hot, humid Mediterranean summer, we don’t even have the bare minimum to shield ourselves from the heat. I read report after report advising Europeans to stay indoors, stay hydrated, use sun cream and avoid strenuous outdoor activity. Meanwhile, we in Gaza have no homes, no water, no shade and no escape.

We cannot “limit outdoor activity” because everything we need to survive is outside: water trucks that may come twice a week if we’re lucky, food distributions, firewood to scavenge. We cannot “stay hydrated” because water is scarce, rationed and often polluted. And sunscreen? We would sooner find medicine on Mars.

Summer in Gaza used to be a season of joy with beach days, courtyard gardens, a breeze under the trees. But the ongoing Israeli onslaught has turned it into a season of torment. The beaches are blockaded. The courtyards are rubble. The trees are ash. Israel has flattened most of Gaza, turning soil into dust, parks into deserts and cities into graveyards. Gaza is now a shadeless city.

The heat itself has become a silent killer. But Gaza’s deadly summer is not natural. It is not just another consequence of climate change either. It is Israel’s making. The endless bombing has created greenhouse gas emissions and thick layers of dust and pollutants. Fires burn unchecked. Garbage piles rot in the sun. Farmland is razed. What was once a climate crisis is now climate cruelty, engineered by military force.

The irony is bitter: Europe blames its heatwaves on a meteorological “heat dome”, a bubble of trapped hot air. But Israel has trapped us in another kind of dome: overcrowded nylon tents that act like ovens in the sun. These camps are not shelters – they are slow-cooking chambers. They trap heat, stink, fear and grief. And we, the displaced, have nowhere else to go.

Summer is no longer a season I look forward to. It is a dilemma I endure. The sun hangs overhead like a sentence. It scorches the ground beneath my feet so that even my slippers burn. I cannot stay inside the tent during the day. It is too hot to breathe. But I cannot be outside for long either. I must go. I must wait in long lines for water, then again for food – under a sun so punishing I fear sunstroke as much as starvation.

We are told to queue with discipline, but how can you queue when your body is faint and your child is hungry? I push forward through crowds, not out of greed, but desperation. I scavenge for fuel – wood, plastic, anything to burn. I return to my tent only to collapse into more heat.

The nights offer no mercy. With most of Gaza’s population now crammed near the coastline, the tents radiate heat back at each other. Unlike the earth, they do not cool after sunset. They store the suffering. I feel my neighbours’ breath, their sweat, their sorrow as if the heat itself is contagious. Insects swarm us in waves, drawn to the warmth. My mother and sister swat them away as if they were the bombs we can still hear in the distance.

Living in a tent for a second summer should make it easier. It doesn’t. It makes it worse.

Last summer, after being displaced from our home in eastern Khan Younis, we at least had some food variety. There were still deliveries of aid. We could still cook. But since March 2 when Israel blocked humanitarian aid again, we have descended into engineered starvation.

The United States and Israel now stage a grotesque theatre called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” to distribute flour. They place sacks of flour inside metal cages as if we are livestock. People are forced to queue for hours under an open sky, stripped of shade and dignity. Soldiers scream at them to take off their hats, lie face down on blazing asphalt, crawl for food. After all that, you might still leave empty-handed – if you’re not shot first.

They have lowered the bar of our existence. We no longer ask for safety or shelter. We ask only: Do we have enough food to last the day?

Israel has combined every tool of deprivation: heat without shade, thirst without water, hunger without hope. There is no electricity to run desalination or pumping stations. No fuel to chill the little water that comes. No flour, no fish, no markets. For many of us, this summer could be our last.

This is not a climate crisis. This is weather used as a weapon – a war waged not only with bombs and bullets but also with heat, thirst and slow death. Gaza is not just burning – it is being suffocated under a man-made sun. And the world watches, calls it a “conflict” and checks the forecast.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s prison release on July 25 is conditional: He must leave France and never return. 

A French court has ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese fighter Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who has been imprisoned for 40 years for his role in the killings of two foreign diplomats in France in the early 1980s.

The Paris Appeals Court ordered on Thursday that Abdallah, 74, be freed from a prison in southern France on July 25 on the condition that he leave French territory and never return.

The former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for complicity in the 1982 murders of United States military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris and the attempted murder of US Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg in 1984.

First detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987, Abdallah is one of the longest serving prisoners in France as most prisoners serving life sentences are freed after less than 30 years.

The detainee’s brother, Robert Abdallah, told the AFP news agency in Lebanon on Thursday that he was overjoyed by the news.

“We’re delighted. I didn’t expect the French judiciary to make such a decision nor for him to ever be freed, especially after so many failed requests for release,” he was quoted as saying. “For once, the French authorities have freed themselves from Israeli and US pressures.”

Abdallah’s lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset also welcomed the decision: “It’s both a judicial victory and a political scandal that he was not released earlier.”

Abdallah is expected to be deported to Lebanon.

Prosecutors may file an appeal with France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, but it is not expected to be processed quickly enough to halt his release next week.

Abdallah has been up for release for 25 years, but the US – a civil party to the case – has consistently opposed his leaving prison. Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said Abdallah should be freed from jail and had written to the appeals court to say they would organise his return home to Beirut.

In November, a French court ordered his release on the condition Abdallah leaves France.

But French prosecutors, arguing that he had not changed his political views, appealed the decision, which was consequently suspended.

A verdict was supposed to have been delivered in February, but the Paris Appeals Court postponed it, saying it was unclear whether Abdallah had proof that he had paid compensation to the plaintiffs – something he has consistently refused to do.

The court re-examined the latest request for his release last month.

During the closed-door hearing, Chalanset told the judges that 16,000 euros ($18,535) had been placed in the prisoner’s bank account and were at the disposal of civil parties in the case, including the US.

Abdallah, who has never expressed regret for his actions, has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal”.

The Paris court has described his behaviour in prison as irreproachable and said in November that he posed “no serious risk in terms of committing new terrorism acts”.

Abdallah still enjoys some support from several public figures in France, including left-wing members of parliament and Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux, but has mostly been forgotten by the general public.

The Syrian government has announced that local leaders will take control of security in the southern city of Suwayda in an attempt to defuse violence that has killed hundreds of people and triggered Israeli military intervention.

Syrian forces had entered Suwayda, reportedly to oversee a ceasefire after deadly clashes between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes killed more than 350 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

Witnesses, however, reported that government forces had aligned with Bedouin groups in attacks against Druze fighters and civilians.

Israel carried out deadly strikes on Syria on Wednesday, including on its army headquarters in Damascus, saying they were aimed at defending Syria’s Druze minority. It threatened to intensify its attacks unless Syrian government forces withdrew from the south.

On Wednesday, Syria announced its army’s withdrawal from Suwayda while the United States – Israel’s close ally working to rebuild Syrian relations – confirmed an agreement to restore calm, urging all parties to honour their commitments.

Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced on Thursday in a televised address that security responsibility in Suwayda would transfer to religious elders and local factions “based on the supreme national interest”.

“We are eager to hold accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people because they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” he said.

Before government intervention, Druze fighters largely maintained control of their areas.

Al-Sharaa emphasised to the Druze community that it is “a fundamental part of the fabric of this nation. … Protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities.”

Al-Sharaa blamed “outlaw groups” whose leaders “rejected dialogue for many months” of committing the recent “crimes against civilians”.

He claimed the deployment of forces from the Ministries of Defence and Interior had “succeeded in returning stability” despite Israel’s intervention, which included bombings in southern Syria and Damascus.

Israel, with its own Druze population, has positioned itself as a protector of the Syrian minority although analysts suggested this may justify its military objective of keeping Syrian forces away from their shared border.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed concern about the Israeli bombings on Wednesday, stating, “We want it to stop.”

Rubio later announced on X that all parties had “agreed on specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end”, adding that implementation was expected without detailing specifics.

Al-Sharaa praised US, Arab and Turkish mediation efforts for preventing further escalation.

“The Israeli entity resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities,” he said, adding that it would have triggered “large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate”.

He did not specify which Arab nations participated in the mediation.

Turkiye strongly supports Syria’s new leaders, and Arab states, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have also demonstrated backing for the new government.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has said that protecting the country’s Druze citizens and their rights is a priority, as he announced that local leaders will take control of security in the city of Suwayda in a bid to end sectarian violence in the south and in the wake of deadly Israeli strikes in Damascus.

The Syrian leader made the statements in a televised speech on Thursday, addressing days of fierce clashes between Druze armed groups, Bedouin tribes and government forces in the predominantly Druze city of Suwayda that have killed more than 360 people, according to UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Israel, which sees the Druze as an ally, launched a series of powerful strikes near Syria’s presidential palace and on the military headquarters in the heart of Damascus on Wednesday, warning Syria it would escalate further if it did not withdraw from the south and halt attacks against the Druze community.

“We are keen on holding accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people, as they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” Sharaa said in the speech, describing the minority as “a fundamental part of the fabric of this nation.”

“We affirm to you that the protection of your rights and freedoms is among our top priorities, and we reject any attempt aimed at pulling you toward an external party.”

Al-Sharaa said that “responsibility” for security in the violence plagued would be handed to religious elders and some local factions “based on the supreme national interest”.

Troops withdraw

The remarks came after the Syrian government and Druze leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou announced a new ceasefire in the city, and said the army had begun withdrawing from Suwayda.

But there does not appear to be consensus in Suwayda among the Druze, a small but influential minority in both Syria and Israel.

While Sheikh Jarbou said he agreed to the ceasefire deal and spoke out against the Israeli strikes on Syria, telling Al Jazeera Arabic that “any attack on the Syrian state is an attack on the Druze community”, another influential Druze leader in the city said he rejected the ceasefire.

Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajari promised to continue fighting until Suwayda was “entirely liberated”.

‘Unknown fate’ avoided

In the speech, al-Sharaa called for national unity, saying that “the building of a new Syria requires all of us to stand united behind our state, to commit to its principles, and to place the interest of the nation above any personal or limited interest.”

Addressing the Druze community, he said the government rejected “any attempt to drag you into the hands of an external party”, in a reference to Israel’s intervention in the conflict.

“We are not among those who fear the war. We have spent our lives facing challenges and defending our people, but we have put the interests of the Syrians before chaos and destruction,” he said.

He added that Israel’s extensive strikes, including those that killed three people and injured 34 in Damascus on Wednesday, could have pushed “matters to a large-scale escalation, if it were not for the intervention of US, Turkish and Arab mediators “which saved the region from an unknown fate”.

The US, which has softened its stance towards Syria and is attempting to re-engage and support the country’s reconstruction after more than a decade of conflict, has been eager to de-escalate the conflict, which State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce called “a misunderstanding between new neighbours”.

Actions ‘louder than words’

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mohamad Elmasry, professor of media studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said al-Sharaa’s speech contained encouraging messages about the place of the Druze minority in Syrian society.

“He said that the Druze are an essential component,” said Elmasry. “He said it’s the Syrian government’s responsibility to protect them and to hold to account those who have transgressed against them in recent days.”

But, he said, it would all come down to how his government behaved in the aftermath of the speech.

“II think their actions will speak louder than words for those minority groups in Syria.”

He said the speech also contained a note of warning to Israel that it did not fear war and that “anyone who starts a war with Syria … would regret it”.

“These were messages directed at Israel, and it marked a very significant departure from what we’ve heard from him and at times not heard from him when Israel has attacked Syria,” Elmasry said.

“I think we’re at a potentially dangerous tipping point and it really will come down to, I think, the extent to which Donald Trump and the United States are willing to kind of rein in Israel,” he said.

“It’s a very difficult situation in Syria. You are talking about a very multiethnic society. You have outside forces, starting with Israel, trying to basically fragment the country and establish a separatist system, if you will, in Syria,” Elmasry said.

Cycle of violence

The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between Druze armed factions and local Sunni Bedouin tribes in Suwayda province.

Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze, with reports of Syrian troops committing abuses, according to local monitors and analysts.

The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria as it builds military bases in the demilitarised buffer zone with Syria seized by its forces.

What started as a local conflict in southern Syria between local Druze and Bedouin communities over the weekend escalated on Wednesday into Israel bombing Syria’s Ministry of Defence and other targets in the capital Damascus.

At least three people were killed in the Damascus attacks, the Syrian Ministry of Health said. Other Israeli air attacks on Wednesday hit the southwestern provinces of Suwayda and Deraa.

Suwayda – where the majority of the population are members of the Druze religious group – had been the epicentre of the violence in recent days. Israel had already struck Syrian government forces there earlier this week.

Israeli officials claim their attacks on Syria aim to protect the Druze community in Suwayda, where scores of people have been killed in clashes involving local armed groups, as well as government forces.

However, local activists and analysts say Israel is fueling internal strife in Suwayda by continuing to bomb Syria – as it has done repeatedly since former President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December. And Israel has continued to attack Syrian government forces, despite ceasefire agreements between some Druze leaders and the Syrian authorities.

“Not only is Israel now painting the entire [Druze] community as pro-Israel, but they are painting them as supporting Israel’s bombardment of Damascus,” said Dareen Khalifa, an expert on Syria and a senior adviser with International Crisis Group.

Exploiting strife

The recent violence in Suwayda began after Bedouin armed groups kidnapped a Druze trader on the road to Damascus on July 11, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based monitor.

The abduction quickly turned into more widespread violence between the two communities – which have a longstanding rivalry due to land disputes – eventually dragging in Syrian government forces.

Syria’s new government has been attempting to impose its authority after a 14-year civil war and the end of half a century of al-Assad family rule. However, it has found it difficult to do so in Suwayda, partly because of Israel’s repeated threats against the presence of any government forces in the province, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Suwayda’s Druze initially welcomed the deployment of government forces following the weekend’s violence, but clashes soon began between some Druze fighters and those forces, with reports of the latter carrying out human rights abuses, according to civilians, local monitors and analysts.

The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria in an attempt to keep the country weak and divided, as well as to pander to its own Druze citizens who serve in the Israeli army, experts say.

“From the Israeli perspective – and how they view Syria and how Syria should be – they prefer a weak central government and for the country to be governed and divided into sectarian self-governing enclaves,” said Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an expert on Syria who has extensively researched local dynamics in Suwayda.

Al-Tamimi added that reactions in Suwayda have been mixed regarding Israel’s conduct, which speaks to the lack of trust many in the province have in the new government in Damascus – which is led by members of Syria’s Sunni majority, many of whom, including President Ahmed al-Sharaa, were members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former affiliate of al-Qaeda.

Civilians in Suwayda said that part of the distrust stems from the government’s failure to hold fighters accountable for either allowing or partaking in the killing of hundreds of Alawites on Syria’s coast in March.

Alawites belong to an offshoot of Shia Islam, a sect that al-Assad and his family hailed from. The government has launched an investigation into the fighting, in which more than 200 Syrian government security personnel were also killed after attacks by pro-Assad forces, with the findings expected in October.

Abuses and fear

Government forces have been accused of carrying out human rights abuses in Suwayda, including carrying out “field executions,” according to SOHR and other local monitors.

“I personally wanted the government forces to restore order, but not like this,” said Fareed*, a young man from the Druze community.

The local outlet Suwayda24 reported that fighters believed to be linked to the government executed nine unarmed civilians after raiding a family compound on July 15.

Al Jazeera’s verification unit, Sanad, confirmed the reports.

Written questions were sent to Uday al-Abdullah, an official at Syria’s Ministry of Defence, asking him to respond to accusations that government forces carried out execution-style killings.

He did not respond before publication.

However, on Wednesday, the Syrian Health Ministry said that dozens of bodies had been found in Suwayda’s National Hospital, including security forces and civilians.

Ceasefires have been repeatedly agreed between Druze factions and the Syrian government. The most recent, on Wednesday, included an agreement that Suwayda be fully integrated into the Syrian state, according to Youssef Jarbou, a Druze leader.

However, as in the case of a ceasefire agreed on Tuesday, Israel has continued to attack.

What’s more, several Druze religious and armed factions retreated from the Tuesday ceasefire primarily because government forces continued to carry out violations in Suwayda, according to al-Tamimi.

During the civil war, clerics and armed Druze factions were able to negotiate de facto autonomy while repelling attacks by groups such as ISIL (ISIS).

After al-Assad fell in December 2024, one notable Druze religious leader, Hikmat al-Hijri, demanded that the new authorities in Damascus change the constitution to ensure greater regional autonomy for Suwayda and secularisation.

His position had significant backing, but not the majority, said al-Tamimi.

“His specific position – that the government needed to rewrite the constitution – was not the majority position in Suwayda,” he told Al Jazeera, saying there were pragmatists willing to engage with the government to safeguard a degree of autonomy and integrate with the new authorities.

“[But after these government violations], al-Hijir’s positions will likely enjoy more sympathy and support,” al-Tamimi warned.

Calls for intervention

As fighting continues in al-Suwayda, al-Hijri has controversially called on the international community to protect the Druze in Syria.

Critics fear that his call is a veiled request for Israeli intervention, a position that many people in Suwayda disagree with.

Samya,* a local activist who is living in a village several kilometres away from where the clashes are unfolding, said Israel’s attacks make her “uncomfortable” and that she doesn’t support intervention.

At the same time, she said she is increasingly worried that government forces will raid homes, endangering civilians.

“We don’t know what to expect,” she told Al Jazeera.

“We don’t know who may come to our house and who that person will be, and what he might ask us once he enters. We don’t know how that person or soldier might treat us, you know? So, there is fear. Honestly, we are all really terrified,” she added.

Al-Tamimi warned that Israel’s discourse of “protecting” the Druze of Syria could exacerbate internal strife, leading to collective punishment.

“[What Israel is doing] is inflaming sectarian tension, because it gives fuel to the suggestions that Druze are secretly working with Israel to divide the country,” he said.

Some names have been changed to protect sources from reprisal

At least 21 Palestinians were killed at a US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution site. GHF blamed armed “agitators” for the crush. Footage shows scores of people being rushed to the hospital, including numerous children.

Sayfollah Musallet was a brother, a son and an ambitious young man who was just at the beginning of his life.

That is the message his family has repeated since July 11, when the 20-year-old United States citizen was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the village of Sinjil in the occupied West Bank.

That message, they hope, will prevent the Florida-born Sayfollah from becoming “just another number” in the growing list of Palestinian Americans whose killings never find justice.

That’s why his cousin, Fatmah Muhammad, took a moment amid her grief on Wednesday to remember the things she loved about Sayfollah.

The two united over a passion for food, and Muhammad, a professional baker, remembers how carefully Sayfollah would serve the delicate knafeh pastry she sold through the ice cream shop he ran in Tampa.

“Just in the way he plated my dessert, he made it look so good,” Muhammad, 43, recalled. “I even told him he did a better job than me.”

“That really showed the type of person he was,” she added. “He wanted to do things with excellence.”

‘The love he gave all of us’

Born and raised in Port Charlotte, a coastal community in south central Florida, Sayfollah – nicknamed Saif – maintained a deep connection to his ancestral roots abroad.

He spent a large portion of his teenage years in the occupied West Bank, where his two brothers and sister also lived. There, his parents, who own a home near Sinjil, hoped he could better connect with his culture and language.

But after finishing high school, Sayfollah was eager to return to the US to try his hand at entrepreneurship. Last year, he, his father and his cousins opened the dessert shop in Tampa, Florida, playfully named Ice Screamin.

But the ice cream shop was just the beginning. Sayfollah’s ambition left a deep impression on Muhammad.

“He had his vision to expand the business, to multiply it by many,” she said, her voice at times shaking with grief. “This at 20, when most kids are playing video games.”

“And the crazy thing is, any goal that he set his mind to, he always did it,” she added. “He always exceeded everyone’s expectations, especially with the love he gave all of us.”

Sayfollah’s aunt, 58-year-old Samera Musallet, also remembers his dedication to his family. She described Sayfollah as a loving young man who never let his aunts pay for anything in his presence – and who always insisted on bringing dessert when he came for dinner.

At the same time, Samera said he was still youthful and fun-loving: He liked to watch comedy movies, shop for clothes and make late-night trips to the WaWa convenience store.

One of her fondest memories came when Sayfollah was only 14, and they went together to a baseball game featuring the Kansas City Royals.

“When we got there, he could smell the popcorn and all the hot dogs. He bought everything he could see and said, ‘We’re going to share!’” she told Al Jazeera.

“After he ate all that junk food, we turned around, and he was sleeping. I woke him up when the game was over, and he goes: ‘Who won?’”

‘I really want to get married’

Another one of his aunts, 52-year-old Katie Salameh, remembers that Sayfollah’s mind had turned to marriage in the final months of his young life

As the Florida spring gave way to summer, Sayfollah had announced plans to return to the West Bank to see his mother and siblings. But he confided to Salameh that he had another reason for returning.

“The last time I saw him was we had a family wedding, and that was the weekend of Memorial Day [in May],” Salameh told Al Jazeera.

“I asked him: ‘Are you so excited to see your siblings and your mom?’ He said, ‘Oh my god, I’m so excited.’ Then he goes, ‘I really want to get married. I’m going to look for a bride when I’m there.’”

To keep the ice cream shop running smoothly, Sayfollah had arranged a switch with his father: He would return to the West Bank while his father would travel to Tampa to mind the business.

But that decision would unwittingly put Sayfollah’s father more than 10,000 kilometres away from his son when violent Israeli settlers surrounded him, as witnesses and his family would later recount.

Israeli authorities said the attack in Sinjil began with rock-throwing and “violent clashes … between Palestinians and Israeli civilians”, a claim Sayfollah’s family and witnesses have rejected.

Instead, they said Sayfollah was trying to protect his family’s land when he was encircled by a “mob of settlers” who beat him.

Even when an ambulance was called, Sayfollah’s family said the settlers blocked the paramedics from reaching his broken body. Sayfollah’s younger brother would ultimately help carry his dying brother to emergency responders.

The settlers also fatally shot Mohammed al-Shalabi, a 23-year-old Palestinian man, who witnesses said was left bleeding for hours.

“His phone was on, and he wasn’t responding,” his mother, Joumana al-Shalabi, told reporters. “He was missing for six hours. They found him martyred under the tree. They beat him and shot him with bullets.”

Palestinians cannot legally possess firearms in the occupied West Bank, but Israeli settlers can. The Israeli government itself has encouraged the settlers to bear arms, including through the distribution of rifles to civilians.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has recorded the killings of at least 964 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023.

And the violence appears to be on the rise. The OHCHR noted that there was a 13-percent increase in the number of killings during the first six months of 2025, compared with the same period last year.

‘Pain I can’t even describe’

An Al Jazeera analysis also found that Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least nine US citizens since 2022, including veteran reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

None of those deaths have resulted in criminal charges, with Washington typically relying on Israel to conduct its own investigations.

So far, US President Donald Trump has not directly addressed Sayfollah’s killing. When asked in the Oval Office about the fatal beating, Trump deferred to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We protect all American citizens anywhere in the world, especially if they’re unjustly murdered or killed,” Rubio replied on Trump’s behalf. “We’re gathering more information.”

Rubio also pointed to a statement issued a day earlier from the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. The ambassador called on Israel to “aggressively investigate” the attack, saying “there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act”.

It was a particularly jarring sentiment from Huckabee, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and has even denied the very existence of a Palestinian people.

Nevertheless, no independent, US-led investigation has been announced.

According to Israeli media, three Israeli settlers, including a military reservist, were taken into custody following the deadly attack, but all were subsequently released.

It has only been four days since Sayfollah’s killing, and his family told Al Jazeera the initial shock has only now begun to dissipate.

But in its place has come a flood of grief and anger. Muhammad still struggles to accept that he “died because he was on his own land”. She sees Sayfollah’s death as part of a broader pattern of abuses, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza, where Israel has led a war since 2023.

“I see it on the news all the time with other people in the West Bank. I see it in Gaza – the indiscriminate killing of anybody in their way,” she said.

“But when it happens to you, it’s just so hard to even fathom,” she added. “It’s pain I can’t even describe.”

Israel has carried out powerful air strikes near Syria’s presidential palace and on the military headquarters in the heart of Damascus, a major escalation in its bombardment of the neighbouring country.

At least three people were killed and 34 others were wounded in the attacks on Damascus on Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, citing the Ministry of Health.

While targeting Damascus, the Israeli military continued to pound areas in southern Syria, including Suwayda, where a new ceasefire deal has been struck after four days of clashes between Druze armed groups, Bedouin tribes and government forces, which left hundreds dead.

Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Israeli attacks on Damascus and Suwayda were “part of a systematic Israeli policy to ignite tension and chaos and undermine security in Syria”, calling on the international community to take “urgent action” against Israeli aggression.

Israel said its bombing campaign is aimed at protecting the Druze minority, and it has called on the Syrian government to withdraw its troops from the city of Suwayda, where much of the violence has taken place.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said on X that the Israeli military would “continue to operate vigorously in Suwayda to destroy the forces that attacked the Druze until they withdraw completely”.

Later on Wednesday, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the parties to the fighting in southern Syria had agreed on “specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end tonight”.

“This will require all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made and this is what we fully expect them to do,” Rubio said on X of the ceasefire deal, reached one day after an earlier iteration had collapsed.

More than 300 people had been killed in fighting as of Wednesday morning, including four children, eight women and 165 soldiers and security forces, according to the UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Army withdrawal from Suwayda

The Syrian Ministry of Interior and Druze leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou confirmed on Wednesday that they had reached a ceasefire. But the new deal was rejected by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajari, another Druze leader, who promised to continue fighting until Suwayda was “entirely liberated”.

According to the ministry, the deal declares a “total and immediate halt to all military operations”, as well as the formation of a committee comprising government officials and Druze spiritual leaders to supervise its implementation.

That evening, the Syrian Ministry of Defence said it had begun withdrawing the army from Suwayda “in implementation of the terms of the adopted agreement after the end of the sweep of the city for outlaw groups”.

Speaking shortly before Rubio’s announcement of a deal, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce had said that the US wanted Syrian government forces to “withdraw their military in order to enable all sides to de-escalate and find a path forward”.

But while Syrian troops are withdrawing, the government will be maintaining a presence in the city,

Reporting from Syria’s capital Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said the deal included the “deployment of government forces”.

“They will set up checkpoints, and this area will be fully integrated into the Syrian state,” she said.

A complete withdrawal by the government would, she said, “mean a failure in efforts by the new authorities to unite a fractured nation and extend its authority across Syria”.

“But staying could open a much bigger conflict with Israel that has promised more strikes if, in the words of Katz, the message wasn’t received.”

Pretext to bomb

The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between Druze armed factions and local Sunni Bedouin tribes in the southern province of Suwayda.

Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze, with reports of the former carrying out human rights abuses, according to local monitors and analysts.

The actions committed by members of the security forces – acknowledged as “unlawful criminal acts” by the Syrian presidency – have given Israel a pretext to bombard Syria as it builds military bases in the demilitarised buffer zone with Syria seized by its forces.

Haid Haid, consulting fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera that Israel had been clear since the ouster of Bashar al-Assad last year that they did not want Syrian forces “to be deployed to the deconfliction line in southern Syria”.

“One way Israel is trying to advance that plan is to present itself as the ‘protectors’ of the Druze community,” Haid said.

Ammar Kahf, the Damascus-based executive director of the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, said: “It’s a clear message to the Syrian government that the Israelis are not going to be silent.

“The Israelis are not going to allow the Syrian government to spread its authority all over the territory.”

Israel has launched a series of intense strikes on Damascus, Syria’s capital, intensifying a campaign it says is in support of an Arab minority group.

Syria, on Wednesday, strongly condemned Israeli attacks, denouncing the strikes as a “dangerous escalation.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Israel of pursuing a “deliberate policy” to  “inflame tensions, spread chaos and undermine security and stability in Syria”.

The strikes killed three people and injured 34, according to Syrian officials.

Here is what we know:

What happened in Syria on Wednesday?

Israel carried out a series of air strikes on central Damascus, hitting a compound that houses the Ministry of Defence and areas near the presidential palace.

The Israeli military also struck targets in southern Syria, where fighting between Druze groups, Bedouin tribes, and Syrian security forces has continued for more than four days. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 250 people have been killed in Suwayda province during the clashes.

Israel, which already occupies the Syrian Golan Heights, says its operations aim to protect the Druze minority – whom it considers potential allies – and to strike pro-government forces accused of attacking them. Syria rejected this and called the attack a “flagrant assault”.

Where did the attacks happen?

The main attacks focused on central Damascus: the Defence Ministry, military headquarters and areas surrounding the presidential palace. Additional strikes were carried out further south.

Syria’s Defence Ministry headquarters: The compound was struck several times, with two large strikes about 3pm (12:00pmGMT), including its entrance, causing structural damage and smoke rising visibly over the city.

“Israeli warplanes [were] circling the skies over the Syrian capital,” Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said, reporting from Damascus. “There was panic in the city,” she added.

Near the presidential palace (Umayyad Square): Strikes also hit areas immediately around the presidential palace in central Damascus. Another air strike landed near the presidential palace in Damascus.

In a post on social media, Israel said “a military target was struck in the area of the Syrian regime’s Presidential Palace in the Damascus area”.

In the south: Israeli drones also targeted Syria’s city of Suwayda, a mainly Druze city close to the border with Jordan.

Why did Israel bomb Syria?

Israel’s air strikes followed days of deadly clashes in Suwayda between Syrian government forces and local Druze fighters. The violence began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes. When government troops intervened to restore order, they ended up clashing with Druze groups – and, in some cases, reportedly targeted civilians.

The Druze, a small but influential minority in both Syria and Israel, are seen in Israel as loyal allies, with many serving in the Israeli military. A ceasefire declared on Tuesday quickly collapsed, and fighting resumed the next day.

Suwayda’s Druze appear divided. One leader, Yasser Jarbou, declared that a ceasefire had been agreed with the Syrian government. Another, Hikmat al-Hijri, rejected any ceasefire. And many Druze in Syria do not want Israel to intervene on their behalf.

Israel has its own considerations and has been attempting to expand its control in southern Syria since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in December. Israel has shunned any attempts to come to a security agreement with Syria and has instead repeatedly bombed the country this year. Many analysts believe that Israel would prefer a weak Syria over a country it believes could potentially threaten it should it grow strong.

Intensifying attacks

Israel, citing a commitment to protect the Druze and prevent hostile forces from gaining ground near its borders, warned Wednesday it would escalate its operations unless Syrian troops withdrew from Suwayda. The province sits near both the Israeli and Jordanian borders, making it a key strategic zone.

“This is a significant escalation,” Khodr, Al Jazeera’s correspondent, said. “This is the Israeli leadership giving a very, very direct message to Syria’s new authorities that they will intensify such strikes … if the government does not withdraw its troops from southern Syria.”

As part of its campaign, Israeli forces struck the General Staff compound in Damascus, which it said was being used by senior commanders to direct operations against Druze forces in Suwayda.

Israeli officials said the strikes were also aimed at blocking the buildup of hostile forces near Israel’s frontier.

Shortly after the Damascus attacks, Syria’s Ministry of Interior announced a new ceasefire in Suwayda. According to state media, government troops began withdrawing from the area.

Syrian response

Syria condemned the Israeli strikes as a violation of international law, a stance echoed by several Arab governments.

Syria’s new government has been trying to assert control, but it has struggled to do so in Suwayda, in part due to repeated Israeli threats against any government military presence in the province.

“The Israelis are not going to allow the Syrian government to spread its authority all over the territory,” said Ammar Kahf, executive director of Omran Center for Strategic Studies, who is based in Damascus.

With the fall of al-Assad’s government and the infancy of a new one, Israel is trying to impose its will on the new leadership, he said.

“We are still in the early stages, but this requires all Syrians to come together. For a foreign government to come in and destroy public property and destroy safety and security is something that’s unexplainable,” Kahf told Al Jazeera.

The Syrian government has now announced that army forces will begin withdrawing from the city of Suwayda as part of a ceasefire agreement. It did not mention any pullout of other government security forces.

Israel is ploughing ahead with a plan to build what critics have described as a “concentration camp” for Palestinians on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza, in the face of a growing backlash at home and abroad.

The suggestion, first mooted by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier this month, anticipates an area that could accommodate an initial group of some 600,000 already displaced Palestinians in Gaza, which would then be expanded to accommodate all of the enclave’s pre-war population of some 2.2 million people. It would be run by international forces and have no Hamas presence.

Once inside Katz’s self-styled “humanitarian city”, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave to other areas in Gaza, but would instead be encouraged to “voluntarily emigrate” to other unspecified countries, the minister said.

Katz’s plan has already received significant criticism. Labelled a “concentration camp” by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and illegal by Israeli lawyers, it has even been criticised by the military that will be responsible for implementing it, with the military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, reportedly calling it “unworkable” with “more holes in it than cheese”.

Internationally, a British minister said he was “appalled” by the plan, while Austria and Germany’s foreign ministers expressed their “concern”. The United Nations said it was “firmly against” the idea.

But members of the Israeli government have defended the idea, and leaks continue to emerge in the Israeli media over the debate surrounding it within the government – with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asking only for a plan that was speedier and less costly than a plan presented by the Israeli army.

An Al Jazeera investigation has found that Israel has recently increased the number of demolitions it is conducting in Rafah, possibly paving the way for the “humanitarian city”.

Long planned

Depopulating Gaza has long been an ambition of some of Israel’s more hardline settler groups, who believe themselves to have a divine mandate to occupy the Palestinian territory. The Israeli far-right was encouraged to press ahead with the idea when United States President Donald Trump suggested in February that Palestinians in Gaza could be displaced and moved elsewhere.

Since then, both Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have backed calls for displacement.

When Netanyahu announced in May the creation of the controversial US-backed GHF, a body intended to deliver limited aid into the enclave his forces had been besieging since early March, Netanyahu referred to a future “sterile zone” that Gaza’s population would be moved into, where they would be allowed aid and food.

Later the same month, Smotrich, who has criticised the current plan as too costly but is not opposed to the idea in principle, also suggested that plans were under way to push Gaza’s population into a camp.

Addressing a “settlement conference” in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich told his audience that what remained of Gaza would be “totally destroyed” and its population pressed into a “humanitarian zone” close to the Egyptian border, foreshadowing the language used by Katz.

Part of the Israeli plan

Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flashenberg told Al Jazeera that – for the Israeli government – there was merit to the plan, both from a security perspective, and “from the perspective of ethnically cleansing” Gaza, and providing an end goal that Israel’s leaders could define as a success.

“As I understand it, parts of the military regard removing civilians from the [non-Israeli controlled parts] of Gaza and concentrating them in a single space as an ideal first step in locating and eliminating Hamas,” Flashenberg said of the Palestinian group that Israel has failed to eliminate in 21 months of conflict, despite the killing of more than 58,000 people.

Flashenberg added that the plan would effectively create an “ethnic cleansing terminal”, from which, once people were separated from their original homes, “it makes it easier to move them elsewhere”.

“Of course it complicates ceasefire negotiations, but so what?” Flashenberg said, referring to the ongoing talks aimed at bringing about an initial 60-day ceasefire. “Nothing has really changed. It’s possible, of course, that with work on the concentration camp under way, Hamas might still accept the ceasefire and hope that things might change.”

“It’s part of their entire mentality,” Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the Hadash-Ta’al party, said. “They really do believe that they can do anything: that they can move all of these people around as if they’re not even humans. Even if imprisoning just the first 600,000 people suggested by Katz is inconceivable. How can you do that without it leading to some kind of massacre?”

“That they’re even talking about criminal acts without every state in the world condemning them is dangerous,” she added.

But lawyers in Israel have questioned the legality of the move. Military lawyers are reported to have “raised concerns” that Israel might face accusations of forced displacement, and an open letter from a number of Israeli legal scholars is more explicit, slamming the proposal as “manifestly illegal”.

‘Nothing humanitarian’

According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people, about 90 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population, have been displaced as a result of Israeli attacks. Many have been displaced multiple times.

Earlier this month, Amnesty concluded that, despite the militarised delivery of limited aid into the strip, Israel is continuing to use starvation as a weapon of war. According to the rights agency, the malnutrition and starvation of children and families across Gaza remain widespread, with the healthcare system that might typically care for them pushed to breaking point by Israel.

“Humanitarian city? I despise all these euphemisms. There’s nothing humanitarian about this. It’s utterly inhumane,” Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said. “There would be nothing humanitarian about the conditions that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be pushed into or about the idea you can only leave by going to another country.”

“This has to be condemned and there has to be consequences,” he continued.  “It’s not true when people say there’s no international community any more. If you trade with Israel, cooperate militarily or diplomatically with it, you have leverage. The US has leverage, the EU [European Union] has leverage. All these actors do.”

“By shrugging your shoulders and saying it’s just anarchy,” he concluded, “you’re handing the keys to Smotrich, Katz and Netanyahu and saying there’s nothing you can do.”

The Al-Jaleel Society for Care and Community-based Rehabilitation has provided essential services to disabled Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp for decades. But now, after repeated Israeli attacks, the centre has been destroyed, and its staff have discovered that it sits in an Israeli-designated demolition zone.

Al-Jaleel’s staff have received no official notice, but in early June, the Israeli army published an aerial map showing several buildings in the area that were set to be destroyed, including the rehabilitation centre.

Zaid Am-Ali, senior advocacy officer for Palestine operations at Humanity and Inclusion, Al-Jaleel’s partner organisation, told Al Jazeera the reason the organisations were given was that the area was being secured for military and security purposes.

“This is not the first time the centre has been targeted, the Israeli military has destroyed parts of it during previous acts of demolition in the refugee camp and has breached and ransacked the centre and tampered with assistive devices meant for persons with disabilities,” Am-Ali said.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli military but has not received a response at the time of publication.

Supporting thousands of Palestinians

Al-Jaleel is a “critical lifeline”, Am-Ali said, describing how the demolition of the centre would deprive vulnerable communities in Jenin and the wider northern West Bank of its essential services.

It was established in 1991 as the Local Rehabilitation Committee, which became an independent NGO in 2010 under the name Al-Jaleel.

Since it first opened its doors, Al-Jaleel has provided thousands of Palestinians with a wide range of support and services, especially to those with mobility impairments resulting from injury, illness, or conflict-related trauma.

As well as prosthetics, orthotics and physical and occupational therapies, Al-Jaleel also offers psychological support for those affected by disability and continuing violent assaults perpetrated by the Israeli military, which has been attacking Jenin on a regular basis for years, but has intensified operations since the start of 2025.

“This is the same area that has been subject to an ongoing Israeli military operation for years now, causing a lot of casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure,” Am-Ali said.

Al-Jaleel’s ability to function and provide care was severely compromised in April when an Israeli attack damaged the building.

Although staff have since relocated and started operating from another location due to their displacement from the camp, they have not yet been permitted to re-enter the organisation’s original building to retrieve any equipment that was spared during the April attack.

Staff were told they would be allowed to evacuate their equipment on July 12, but were then not allowed to do so by the Israeli military.

It is unclear when or if staff will be able to collect Al-Jaleel’s belongings before the demolition takes place. With the area now declared a closed military zone, Al-Jaleel’s staff are being denied information about the building’s status.

At the time of writing, the centre has not been demolished, but other buildings in its vicinity have been torn down.

Violence in Jenin

Violence in Jenin has escalated significantly since January 21, when the Israeli military launched “Operation Iron Wall” in the city and the nearby refugee camp.

According to Israeli forces, the operation is an “antiterrorism” offensive, attempting to crush Palestinian resistance efforts in the area.

The Israeli military has for years attempted to root out any form of armed resistance in the occupied West Bank, conducting raids that have escalated in severity since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023. At least 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in that period.

“Operation Iron Wall” – targeting Palestinian fighters in the northern West Bank – started in Jenin, but has since spread to Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and al-Fara refugee camps.

On March 22, just 60 days after the beginning of the offensive, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported that 40,000 Palestinian refugees had been displaced from refugee camps in the northern West Bank.

In addition, earlier this year, Israeli authorities announced that they planned to wipe out the Jenin refugee camp completely.

Since then, Israeli bulldozers have been tearing down commercial buildings and homes at an alarming rate.

Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, reported on June 30 that more than 600 homes and 15 roads in Jenin camp had been demolished.

On June 17, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by Adalah, a legal centre for Palestinian minority rights in Israel, on June 12 to halt the demolition of Jenin refugee camp.

The Supreme Court authorised the Israeli military to proceed with the destruction of nearly 90 civilian buildings that housed hundreds of Palestinian families.

“The Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to uphold these operations, including its 7 May 2025 rejection of Adalah’s petition against the mass demolitions in Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps, provides a false legal cover for policies of forced displacement and entrenched impunity,” said Adalah.

Bigger picture

The potential demolition of Al-Jaleel fits into a wider pattern of Israeli attacks on Palestinian healthcare institutions.

The targeting of health facilities, medical personnel and patients has been widespread during Israel’s war on Gaza. These actions are considered war crimes under the 1949 Geneva Convention. Israel has justified the attacks as being part of its fight against Hamas and other armed groups, accusing them, without any overwhelming evidence, of using health facilities as cover for their bases and operations.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 94 percent of all hospitals in Gaza are damaged or destroyed.

Between October 7, 2023, and July 2, 2025, WHO recorded 863 attacks on healthcare in the West Bank. These attacks affected 203 institutions and 589 health transports

In a statement to Al Jazeera, WHO reported that, of the 476 government health service delivery units assessed by WHO and partners in the West Bank in June 2025, only 345 are fully functional, 112 are partially functional, nine are non-functional, and 1 has been destroyed.

That, Am-Ali believes, is being overlooked amid the understandable focus on Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians. And it is allowing Israel to get away with its devastation of Palestinian life in the West Bank, and its destruction of vital centres like Al-Jaleel.

“These developments are not isolated incidents and are in clear violation of international law, including the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force under the UN Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he said.

Israel has bombed Syria, saying it is acting to ‘protect’ Syria’s Druze minority after fighting broke out between Syrian government forces and Druze fighters. But who are the Druze and what do they have to do with Israel? Osama Bin Javaid explains from Damascus.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

The Ultra-Orthodox Shas party says it will leave the government in response to dispute over mandatory military service.

A key partner in Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition says it is quitting, leaving the Israeli prime minister with a minority in parliament.

The Ultra-Orthodox Shas party said on Wednesday that it was leaving the coalition in protest against lawmakers’ failure to guarantee future exemption from military conscription for religious students.

“Shas representatives … find with a heavy heart that they cannot stay in the government and be a part of it,” the group said in a statement.

Leading a minority government would make governing a challenge for Netanyahu. But Shas said it wouldn’t work to undermine the coalition once outside it and could vote with it on some laws. It also wouldn’t support its collapse.

The departure of Shas comes one day after another ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism (UTJ),  resigned from the government over the same issue, which has sparked an explosive debate in the country after more than 21 months of war with Hamas in Gaza.

While ultra-Orthodox seminary students have long been exempt from mandatory military service, many Israelis are angered by what they see as an unfair burden carried by the mainstream who serve.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders say full-time devotion to holy scriptures study is sacrosanct and fear their young men will steer away from religious life if they are drafted into the military.

Last year the Supreme Court ordered an end to the exemption. Parliament has been trying to work out a new conscription bill, which has so far failed to meet the demands of both Shas and UTJ.

Their joint move leaves Netanyahu with a minority government but is not expected to usher in immediate elections or undermine efforts to secure a possible Gaza ceasefire.

However, the Israeli leader will be more susceptible to the demands of his far-right coalition partners, who oppose ending the war while Hamas remains intact.

This is a developing story. More to come…

A roundup of key international reactions after Israeli air strikes near the defence ministry and presidential palace in Syria’s capital.

Israel has launched several air strikes in the heart of the Syrian capital, Damascus, as clashes continued in the southwestern city of Suwayda after a truce between government forces and Druze armed groups collapsed.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israeli forces struck near the entrance to the Syrian Ministry of Defence on Wednesday, hours after he had demanded Syrian government forces withdraw from Suwayda.

Another strike hit near the presidential palace, on the outskirts of the city.

At least one person was killed and 18 others were wounded in the attacks, Syrian state media reported, citing the Ministry of Health.

The attacks on Syria’s capital come amid continuing unrest in the city of Suwayda, where local Sunni Bedouin tribes have been engaged in fierce clashes in recent days with fighters from Syria’s Druze minority, whom Israel views as a potential ally in Syria and claims to be intervening to protect.

Damascus deployed its forces to the city on Tuesday and declared a ceasefire, but the fighting quickly resumed.

Here is how the world is reacting to Israel’s attacks on Damascus:

United States

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was “very concerned” about the escalation in violence.

“We’re going to be working on that issue … I just got off the phone with the relevant parties. We’re very concerned about it, and hopefully, we’ll have some updates later today. But we’re very concerned about it,” Rubio said

Turkiye

Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attacks and said they were an attempt to sabotage Syria’s efforts to achieve peace, stability and security.

“The Syrian people have a historic opportunity to live in peace and integrate with the world,” the ministry said.

“All stakeholders who support this opportunity should contribute to the Syrian government’s efforts to restore peace.”

Omer Celik, spokesperson for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing AK Party, also condemned the attacks.

“Israel’s attacks pose a security threat to the entire region and the world,” Celik wrote on X.

GCC

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – condemned the attacks in the “strongest terms”.

In a statement, GCC Secretary-General Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi said the Israeli attacks were a “flagrant violation” of Syria’s sovereignty, “a breach of international laws and norms, and a serious threat to regional security and stability”.

Albudaiwi reiterated the GCC’s support for Syria’s territorial integrity, adding that the continuation of Israeli attacks constituted an “irresponsible escalation” and disregarded international efforts to achieve stability in Syria and the region.

Norway

The Norwegian foreign minister said that Israel’s recent strikes could undermine efforts towards a peaceful transition of power in Syria.

“Deeply concerned about recent Israeli airstrikes and rising domestic tensions. The escalation risks undermining efforts towards a peaceful, Syrian-owned transition,” Espen Barth Eide wrote on X.

He said he was “alarmed” by the “escalating violence” in Syria and urged all actors to exercise “maximum restraint”.

The airport, which has not been operational since the group seized Mosul in 2014, will have a main terminal and VIP lounge.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has inaugurated the northern city of Mosul’s newly restored airport, more than a decade after it was destroyed in a series of battles to dislodge the now vanquished ISIL (ISIS) group.

“The airport will serve as an additional link between Mosul and other Iraqi cities and regional destinations,” the prime minister’s media office said in a statement on Wednesday.

Al-Sudani’s flight landed at the airport, which is expected to become fully operational for domestic and international flights in two months. Wednesday’s ceremony was held nearly three years after then-Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi laid the foundation stone for the airport’s reconstruction.

Airport director Amar al-Bayati told the AFP news agency that the “airport is now ready for domestic and international flights.” He added that the airport previously offered international flights, mostly to Turkiye and Jordan.

In June 2014, ISIL seized Mosul, declaring its “caliphate” from Iraq’s second biggest city after capturing large swaths of Iraq and neighbouring Syria, imposing hardline rule over millions of people, displacing hundreds of thousands and slaughtering thousands more.

Nouri al-Maliki, who was the Iraqi prime minister at the time, declared a state of emergency and said the government would arm civilians who volunteered “to defend the homeland and defeat terrorism”.

At its peak, the group ruled over an area half the size of the United Kingdom and was notorious for its brutality. It beheaded civilians, massacred 1,700 captured Iraqi soldiers in a short period, and enslaved and raped thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities.

A coalition of more than 80 countries led by the United States was formed to fight the group in September 2014. The alliance continues to carry out raids against the group’s hideouts in Syria and Iraq.

The war against the group officially ended in March 2019 when US-backed, Kurdish-led fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz, which was the last sliver of land ISIL controlled.

The group was also defeated in Iraq in July 2017 when Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul. ISIL then declared its defeat across the country at the end of that year. Three months later, the group suffered a major blow when the SDF took back the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, its de facto capital.

The airport, which was heavily damaged in the battle, has not been operational since the initial fall of Mosul.

It now includes a main terminal, a VIP lounge and an advanced radar surveillance system, al-Sudani’s office said, adding that it is expected to handle 630,000 passengers annually.