Israel seizes about 30 hectares of Palestinian land in West Bank

The Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission reports that Israel has confiscated more than 70 acres (28.3 hectares) of Palestinian land near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, declaring the area off-limits for military purposes.

“Data from the commission indicates that since the beginning of 2025, the occupying state has issued a total of 53 seizure orders for various military purposes, a significant increase in the use of this type of order, which uses military pretexts to seize control of Palestinian lands,” the group said in a statement.


Palestinians pick olives as settlers intimidate them


_{An Israeli soldier speaks to a Palestinian woman as he tries to stop the harvest at a Palestinian olive field near the illegal Israeli settlement of Elazar, south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank on Monday}

Hamas officials to meet mediators in Cairo

A Hamas delegation is scheduled to meet officials from Qatar and Egypt in Cairo today to discuss the continuation of a fragile Gaza ceasefire, AFP news agency is reporting, citing a source close to negotiations.

Israel carried out multiple deadly attacks across Gaza yesterday after claiming its soldiers were targeted by Hamas fighters. The Palestinian group denied any knowledge of an attack.

The delegation, headed by Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, would discuss “the dozens of air strikes that killed dozens in the Gaza Strip” on Sunday. It will also meet Egyptian officials to discuss an upcoming intra-Palestinian dialogue hosted by Egypt and aiming “to unify the Palestinian factions”.

US delegation aims for full implementation of ceasefire agreement

The White House insists that the VP’s visit was already scheduled and has nothing to do with the recent tensions and the concerns about the ceasefire.

What the White House is saying is that JD Vance will lead this delegation, which ultimately will include Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and that this is to push for the full implementation of the agreement to end the war.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of criticism of Israel, whether it is the White House or the US media. There seems to be a selective starting point where the blame for any violations of the ceasefire in recent days has been squarely put on Hamas.

Israeli PM refutes allegations he could have had Gaza truce a year ago

Speaking to Israel’s parliament, Netanyahu rejected accusations that he avoided getting a ceasefire done a year ago with Hamas and returning the captives from Gaza.

“Let me be very clear: some claim this ceasefire was on the table a year ago. This is not correct at all. Such a deal was never on the table. Hamas was never ready to accept a ceasefire and return the hostages in one go,” said Netanyahu.

“And the majority of the Gaza Strip now witnesses our presence, and this has been accepted by some Muslim and Arab countries. The majority of the Muslim world wants Hamas to give up its weapons.”

Netanyahu later told parliament that US Vice President JD Vance will arrive on Tuesday for discussions on “two things … the security challenges we face and the diplomatic opportunities before us”.

“We will overcome the challenges and seize the opportunities,” he said.

More evidence Hamas had nothing to do with Sunday's Rafah 'attack'

Trump says Hamas will be ‘eradicated’ if they breach Gaza deal

US President Donald Trump said he would give Hamas a “little chance” to honour the Gaza truce deal with Israel, but warned the Palestinian group would be “eradicated” if it fails to do so.

Hamas are going to be “very good, they’re going to behave, they’re going to be nice – and if they’re not, we’re going to go in and eradicate them if we have to. They will be eradicated, and they know that,” Trump said at a news conference at the White House alongside Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Trump said any operations against Hamas in Gaza would not directly involve US troops but that “Israel would go [back] in in two minutes if I asked them to … but we’re going to give it a little chance.”

Body of Israeli soldier handed over to Red Cross in Gaza

Al Jazeera Arabic reports that the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has announced the handover of the body of an Israeli soldier to the Red Cross in Gaza.

Israel confirms it received captive’s body

The office of the Israeli prime minister has confirmed the Israeli army has received through the Red Cross the coffin of a missing captive inside Gaza.

From there, the body will be transferred to Israel and then to the Ministry of Health’s National Center for Forensic Medicine for the identification process, after which the family will be notified officially.

It is believed the bodies of 15 other captives remain in Gaza, with Hamas attempting to locate them in the ruins after two years of Israeli bombardment.

Mountains of waste in Gaza pose severe public health risk

More than two years of war have left areas in Gaza buried under mountains of waste, which are now posing a severe health risk.

“We are suffering with the strong smell of waste everywhere – the foul odour and the growing number of insects are unbearable,” Jamal Nassar, a displaced Palestinian, told Al Jazeera in Gaza City. “New types of pests have appeared, including small cockroaches, bugs and mosquitoes. It feels like we are dying slowly in these conditions.”

Municipal workers say dozens of rubbish trucks were destroyed during the fighting, while fuel shortages and the lack of spare parts have crippled cleanup operations, even during the ceasefire.

“The municipality is struggling with two important things: First, it does not have access to the main landfill in eastern Gaza City, as the Israeli military is controlling the area. As a result, rubbish is piled all across the city,” Gaza City municipal officer Maher Salem told Al Jazeera.

“Second, we do not have enough donors to assist the municipality and its operations.”

Fathi Hussain, an emergency physician, says skin diseases such as scabies and hepatitis are spreading. “We have also come across cases of respiratory disease due to burning rubbish in the streets. These cases need immediate medical attention and sometimes intensive care,” he said.

Israel army shoots and kills four Palestinians near ‘yellow line’

The yellow line is the boundary behind which Israeli troops pulled back and remain stationed under the ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defence rescue service, said four people were killed earlier in two separate attacks, both times “by Israeli gunfire as they were returning to check on their homes” in eastern Gaza City.

Israel’s military said it opened fire at Palestinian fighters who allegedly crossed the yellow line and approached troops in the Shujayea neighbourhood.

Hamas denied knowledge of any such attack, with one official accusing Israel of fabricating “pretexts” to resume the war on Gaza.

Confusion over ‘yellow line’ as Israeli soldiers shoot more Palestinians

It’s been another deadly day in Gaza with Palestinians approaching the so-called “yellow line” ceasefire demarcation gunned down by Israeli troops. Gaza City residents reported confusion over the line’s location because of a lack of a visible boundary.

“The whole area is in ruins. We saw the maps but we can’t tell where those lines are,” said Samir, 50, who lives in Tuffah in the city’s east were the shootings took place.

Hamas accuses Israel of maintaining ‘policy of starvation’

Hamas has called on the international community to demand that Israel to carry through with its ceasefire commitments in Gaza.

The Palestinian group also said it’s working to complete the handover of Israeli captives’ remains despite “major challenges because of the extensive destruction” of Gaza. Hamas has already released 20 living Israeli abductees and the remains of 13 others.

Hamas “abides by all details of the ceasefire in Gaza, especially in the first phase by handing over all living captives at once”, spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement on the group’s Telegram channel.

“One of the main obstacles we face in delivering the remains is the absence of heavy machinery needed to remove the rubble. We have made this clear to the mediators,” said Qassem.

“All parties that want calm in the region must pressure the [Israeli] occupation to ensure it fulfills its commitments.”

Israel “has not abandoned its policy of starvation against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”, he added.

Israel asks US to delay Gaza reconstruction: Report

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority reports that Israel has asked the United States not to begin rebuilding Gaza until Hamas demonstrated its willingness to disarm.

The state broadcaster added that neutralising the tunnels in Gaza is one of the issues being discussed with the US. It reported that the US wants to begin a pilot project regarding tunnels in Rafah, and that Israel has agreed to this.

'Neutralizing' tunnels is now part of disarming? What are they going to do, pour thick concrete all over Gaza? Confiscate all shovels?

The tunnel excuse has been used and debunked countless times throughout the genocide. Sure there a lots of tunnels, yet the IDF has demonstrated to just as easily lie about non existing tunnels under hospitals and schools. 

This 'peace' plan is not going anywhere.

UNRWA chief calls for investigations into ‘blatant’ Israeli crimes in Gaza

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has called for independent investigations into “blatant” Israeli breaches of international humanitarian law in the Gaza Strip.

“The fragile ceasefire in Gaza must be upheld,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement on X.

“Yesterday, four people were killed following shelling by Israeli forces of an UNRWA school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat refugee camp. More are reported injured,” he wrote.

“Since the war began, more than 800 people have been killed and nearly 2,600 injured in separate incidents affecting 300 UNRWA premises,” Lazzarini said, calling the attacks a grave violation of international law.

“I reiterate my call for independent investigations into these blatant breaches of international humanitarian law,” he said.

“The guns must fall silent, and accountability must come.”

UK protesters demand release of 100 Palestinian health workers in Israeli jails

Doctors and healthcare professionals have gathered in London to demand the release of the more than 100 Palestinian medics currently held without charge or trial in Israeli jails.

This includes Dr Hussam Abu Safia, a prominent hospital director in Gaza, who was abducted by Israeli forces in December 2024.

Since then, he has been held in detention despite growing calls for his release and reports by his lawyer that was tortured in prison.

“The strategy of targeting healthcare workers and the whole hospital infrastructure is targeting what is sustaining life in Gaza,” said Dr Rebecca Inglis of Healthcare Workers Watch.

“So we know that our friends and colleagues in Gaza say that walking out in scrubs, in what I’m wearing right now, is the same as putting a target on their back.”

Southern EU countries call for ‘immediate release’ of Gaza aid

Leaders from nine EU countries around the Mediterranean Sea say they fully expect Israel to open crossings into Gaza for the immediate release of humanitarian aid following the ceasefire.

Countries of the so-called MED9 group – Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain – met on Monday in the Slovenian town of Portoroz.

It called for “the immediate release of all the humanitarian aid to flow to Gaza”, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob told a press conference.

“There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to block such humanitarian aid,” he said, adding the countries “fully expect” Israel to open land crossings.

The reopening of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt remains on hold despite calls from the UN and aid groups.

Golob said the MED9 group also wanted to make sure the ceasefire agreement is “fully respected”, including by finding a way to put reporters on the ground.

Settlers who brutally attacked Palestinian farmers were like a ‘lynch mob’ journalist says

Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist and writer, captured footage of settlers beating Palestinian olive farmers in the occupied West Bank village of Turmus Aya on Sunday, including 53-year-old Afaf Abu Alia, who suffered a brain haemorrhage from the assault.

Nathaniel said the settlers carrying out the attack were “a lynch mob” and that while he did not expect the Israeli authorities to take action, it was still vital to demand justice.

“A couple of months ago, a famously violent settler, Yinon Levi, shot [activist and journalist] Awdah Hathaleen to death in the [Palestinian] village of Umm al-Khair. Nineteen of the villagers were arrested, but Yinon Levi was back in the village doing illegal construction the next week,” he told Al Jazeera from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

“The impulse is to think that no one will be arrested for what happened yesterday, but I’m actually not willing to accept that, and the people that I’ve spoken to in the village today agree. So there’s not a good history of settlers being held accountable, but it should not be so hard to identify the man who clubbed that woman and I know that I and a lot of other people will not leave it alone.”

Nathaniel said he faces “constant” harassment and intimidation from settlers while trying to report. Three days ago, he was threatened when visiting the town of where Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet was beaten to death by settlers in July.

“It was just a few minutes before a group of Hilltop Youth settlers emerged from the hills carrying huge metal rods and surrounded our car and tried to block us from being able to get out,” he said.

The week before that he was in Umm al-Khair, where settlers walk through the village carrying machine guns.

“They are not actively menacing you the way settlers around here are, but they have a constant presence; they are constantly building [illegally],” Nathaniel said. “It’s a different form of threat – you know that they are capable of violence, and they will kill you if they want to.”

“Yesterday it was about as plain as it gets – within the first five minutes, there was a man holding a gun standing in the middle of the street and staring at us. It’s a pretty direct threat, I think.”




The danger of olive harvest season in occupied Palestine

October is olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank, but Israeli settler attacks have been increasing, scaring Palestinians off their land. Here are a few figures:

VP Vance heads to Israel ‘to check on how things are going’ with Gaza truce

Vice President JD Vance, soon on his way to Israel, adds another layer of US pressure on the Netanyahu government to live up to its obligations under the Gaza ceasefire. Vance made no comments on Monday.

After heavy Israeli bombardment killed more than 40 Palestinians on Sunday, Vance told reporters that “we’re trying to figure it out” and “check on how things are going” with the Gaza truce.

He said that Muslim and Arab nations are expected to play a major role in keeping the truce going.

“Before we actually can ensure that Hamas is properly disarmed, that’s going to require … some of these Gulf Arab states to get forces in there, to actually apply some law and order and security keeping on the ground,” said Vance.

That's not what Netanyahu wants, he wants gangs to destroy civil order. US will have to stop the IDF from sending guns to clans and providing them safe harbor behind the yellow line in order to perform hit and run attacks on aid convoys.

Ceasefire may collapse as Israel blocks aid at scale into Gaza

If US envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law adviser Jared Kushner and Vice President JD Vance intend to make the ceasefire work, they’ll have to demand that Israeli authorities abide by the deal and allow more aid into Gaza, an analyst says.

“They have to allow in 600 trucks a day, minimum. It means they need to allow in the heavy equipment and the fuel for it, very crucially, to begin this process of digging out the thousands of Palestinian bodies and the 14 bodies of Israeli hostages that are left under the rubble,” Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies told Al Jazeera.

“There’s no way that the Palestinians can do that without getting that equipment in,” she added.

Bennis said the US officials will have to take “a very different approach where they actually put the pressure on [Israel] to get the aid in”.

“[Otherwise], this partial ceasefire, which is already teetering on the brink, is likely to collapse entirely,” she said.



Or will Gaza turn in another South Lebanon, no reconstruction allowed, daily assassinations, regular bombings.

Israel still fires on Lebanon almost a year after ceasefire

As a tenuous ceasefire took hold in Gaza this month, Israel launched more air strikes on southern Lebanon, 11 months into a ceasefire there.

Near-daily Israeli attacks have become the new normal in Lebanon, nearly a year after a US-brokered truce halted the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Mona Yacoubian, the director of the Middle East programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said that Lebanon “could well serve as the model for Gaza, essentially giving leeway to Israeli forces to strike whenever they deem a threat without a full resumption of conflict”.

Yacoubian said she doesn’t see the situation in Lebanon changing any time soon, “barring a breakthrough in behind-the-scenes negotiations brokered by the US”.

With the Gaza ceasefire, she said, the difference could be the “significant role” of fellow mediators Qatar, Egypt and Turkiye.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported that more than 270 have been people killed and 850 wounded by Israeli military attacks since the ceasefire last November. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has called Israel’s air strikes a “blatant aggression against civilian facilities”.

Main events on October 20th

• US Vice President JD Vance is on Air Force Two heading to Israel where US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law adviser Jared Kushner held talks today with Israel’s leaders over the faltering Gaza ceasefire.
• Has has returned another body of an Israeli captive to Israel as per the truce deal, with Palestinian factions now releasing 20 living abductees and the remains of 13 others.
• The Israeli military launched an artillery attack on Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, the latest violation of the ceasefire currently in place across the Strip.
• Israeli forces shot dead four Palestinians in Gaza for approaching the so-called “yellow line” ceasefire demarcation.
• Israeli warplanes launched three air strikes on southern Lebanon in the latest infraction of the truce with Hezbollah.
• The head of the UN agency for Palestine refugees called for an independent investigation into “blatant” Israeli breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.

Trump links Iran attack to Gaza ceasefire amidst rare defence for Hamas fighters

US President Donald on Monday surprised many when he put up a defence for Hamas fighters saying that those involved in alleged violation of ceasefire were the rebels within the group and not senior leaders. This was in sharply contradiction with what the Netanyahu regime claimed to justify its ceasefire violation by blaming Hamas fighters to break the peace deal. Trump also said that the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was key to achieving peace in Gaza.

ISRAEL KILLS BUS FULL OF KIDS, BLAMES HAMAS FOR VIOLATING CEASEFIRE

US Embassy ABANDONS Journo After Israeli Mob Attack

""I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of ‘blood and soil’ in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria. The various forms of collective punishment visited upon the Palestinian people – coerced ghettoization behind a ‘security wall’; the bulldozing of homes and destruction of fields; the bombing of schools, mosques, and government buildings; an economic blockade that deprives people of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival – force me to recall the deprivations and humiliations that I experienced in my youth.

This century-long process of oppression means unimaginable suffering for Palestinians.” Dr. Hajo Meyer - 2010 Meyer was a survivor of Auschwitz"