West Bank | Pakistan

Prosecutors charged an Israeli settler on Thursday in the killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in the occupied West Bank, the first such indictment since the outbreak of the Gaza war in 2023, activists say. “Yinon Eliya Levi [33], from Ma’on, has been charged with allegedly firing toward an area where people were present during a confrontation that developed over earthworks on private land, causing the death of the late Awdah Hathaleen,” Israel’s Ministry of Justice said on X. “The Southern District Prosecutor’s Office has filed an indictment against him … on charges of reckless manslaughter, trespassing, and willful property damage.” Hathaleen, an activist who took part in the production of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was killed in July 2025 during a settler attack on his village of Umm al-Khair, in the southern West Bank. Umm al-Khair sits in the region of Masafer Yatta, where Palestinian communities have faced frequent settler violence and home demolitions by the military, which...

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met his Jordanian counterpart on Wednesday, with the “deteriorating situation in the occupied West Bank” coming under discussion, according to the Foreign Office (FO). The FO said Dar met Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Safadi on the sidelines of a Ministerial Meeting in Amman to discuss the situation in occupied Jerusalem. The FO said that the foreign ministers exchanged views on regional developments, in particular on the deteriorating situation in the occupied West Bank. Dar appreciated Jordan’s role in safeguarding the Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and its support for the Palestinian people, it added. “The two leaders welcomed the growing momentum in Pakistan–Jordan bilateral relations and reaffirmed [their commitment] to further enhancing cooperation across political, defence, economic, educational, cultural and people-to-people domains,” it added. Dar and Safadi also discussed the si...

Data shows attacks on mosques in the occupied West Bank surged over the past decade, with a sharp rise after Oct 2023

Palestinian officials said Israeli settlers set fire to two mosques in the occupied West Bank overnight on Sunday. Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has surged since the Israeli assault on Gaza began in October 2023. Abdel Azim Wadi, mayor of the town of Qusra, south of the city of Nablus, told AFP that settlers torched a mosque under construction in the southern part of the town. “The fire destroyed the mosque’s entrance and even damaged its stonework,” Wadi said. He added that the attackers spray-painted Hebrew graffiti on the mosque’s walls, including the word “revenge”. The Israeli military said troops were dispatched to the outskirts of Qusra after receiving a report that a mosque had been set ablaze. “The soldiers searched for suspects who had fled prior to their arrival and identified signs of arson and graffiti at the scene,” it said, adding that Israeli police would investigate and collect evidence. In a separate incident, Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque in the village of Kour, near Tu...

Settlers torch mosque, factory in West Bank

A 17-year-old Palestinian footballer died on Saturday, a week after he was shot during an attack by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, according to officials and relatives. Dozens of mourners dressed in black carried the body of Fadi Hamdallah al-Nassan — a player for Al-Mughayyir Club and a member of the Palestinian national youth team — from the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah to his village for burial. The Palestine Football Association accused Israeli forces of shooting Nassan while settlers were attacking the village on July 11. The young player was reportedly shot in the thigh during the attack. His leg was amputated, and he later died from his injuries, the association said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment Saturday. A relative mourns over the body of 17-year-old Fadi al-Naasan during his funeral in the village of Al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on July 18, 2026. — AFP “He loved football,” his father, Hamdall...

US Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna said he was detained by Israeli settlers armed with US-made rifles during a West Bank visit this week that he cast as an unfiltered look at the human toll of Israeli occupation as he weighs a 2028 presidential run. Speaking with Reuters on Thursday in a Palestinian village, Khanna said his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles a day earlier while touring a part of the southern West Bank, where residents face frequent settler attacks. “We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” said Khanna, a progressive lawmaker from California in the US House of Representatives. “And these hoodlums come in with machine guns, M4, an American-made machine gun, and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF, and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said, referring to the Israeli military. US Democratic Represen...

RIYADH: Muslim-majority countries including regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Turkiye said on Thursday that they held Israel responsible for arson attacks on two West Bank mosques, which Palestinian officials said were torched by settlers. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt and Turkiye lambasted “the continued and escalating settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank”, pointing to the mosques that were set on fire a day earlier. “The Ministers hold Israel — as the occupying power — responsible for these attacks,” they said in a joint statement. On Wednesday, Israeli settlers set fire to mosques in the West Bank villages of Jiljiliya, north of Ramallah, and neighbouring Mazari an-Nubani, their mayors said, with journalists at one site seeing scorched walls and graffiti. Israel’s military confirmed the arson and graffiti on the mosques, but did not identify the perpetrators. Journalists who visited one torched mosque saw graffiti d...

Israel’s hardline finance minister announced on Wednesday a major expansion by more than 2,000 homes of three Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank that Palestinians hope will be part of a future independent state. Most nations consider Israeli settlements there to be illegal under international law and a major obstacle to a two-state solution for long-term peace. Bezalel Smotrich, who holds authority over parts of Israel’s civilian administration in the West Bank, said a planning committee approved the construction of 2,162 new Jewish homes. They include 1,006 units in a new settlement near Jerusalem, 922 near the Palestinian city of Nablus and 234 near Hebron. “We are continuing to build the Land of Israel in practice,” said Smotrich, an ultra-nationalist sanctioned by Britain, France and others who accuse him of inciting violence against Palestinians. Smotrich has denounced the sanctions against him, saying the measures would not change Israeli policy. The new homes would “strengthen our hold on the...

The United Nations condemned on Tuesday the toll from “escalating” Israeli military operations and settler attacks in the occupied West Bank on children, with 70 Palestinian children killed since the start of 2025. “Children are paying an intolerable price for escalating military operations and settler attacks across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” UN children’s agency spokesman James Elder told reporters. Since the start of 2025, when Israel began a large-scale military operation in the West Bank, “at least one Palestinian child has been killed on average every single week” there, adding that another 850 children had been injured during that period. “Most of those killed or wounded were done by live ammunition,” he said. Israeli forces were responsible for a full 93 per cent of the deaths, Elder said, highlighting that the scaled-up military operations had come amid “historic levels of settler attacks”. According to the UN, March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by Israe...

European Union (EU) foreign ministers reached an agreement on Monday on new sanctions targeting violent Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, as well as leading Hamas figures, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. The sanctions package, which targets three settlers and four settler organisations whose identities have yet to be publicly disclosed, had been blocked for months by the previous Hungarian government, which lost an election last month. European governments have raised concerns about a rise in reports of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. “It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery,” Kallas said in a post on X. “Extremisms and violence carry consequences,” she added. Reacting to the development, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on X that the EU had “chosen, in an arbitrary and political manner, to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and entities because of their political views and without any basis.” “Equally outrageous is the unacceptable comparison ...

Under the bleachers of a West Bank stadium, a dozen men from Gaza live in a former changing room, blocked from returning home by the war that erupted more than two-and-a-half years ago. Among those stranded is Sameer Abu Salah, 54, who had been working odd jobs in Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv, where wages are far higher than in his home city of Khan Yunis in Gaza. He had then gone to Nablus, in the north of the occupied West Bank, where he is now trapped. “I entered (Israel) only four days before the war,” he said from the little space he had set up under the stands of Nablus city stadium. “I was respected and honoured. Then the war happened,” he added, referring to Israel’s relentless military campaign in the Palestinian enclave following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack. Abu Salah now makes a living collecting and reselling recyclables, sending money to his family after losing two sons to Israeli airstrikes. A Palestinian man sits inside a damaged building, a day after of an Israeli strike at the Shati...

Pakistan has raised alarm at the systematic annexation of the occupied West Bank, expansion of illegal settlements and the forced displacement of Palestinians, calling for the intervention of the global community. The stance was expressed by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad at the Arria-formula meeting on the situation in the occupied territory. “While international attention is consumed by multiple crises across the region, the systematic annexation of the occupied West Bank, expansion of illegal settlements, demolitions, land seizures and forced displacement of Palestinians continue unabated, and this requires our attention,” he said, according to the statement shared by Pakistan’s UN mission on X. “Israeli policies and illegal actions, unprecedented in scale and impact, are undermining the prospects for a viable Palestinian state,” he said. The ambassador said that Pakistan condemned Israel’s ongoing legislative and administrative measures aimed at en...

TECH giant Microsoft has removed misleading Israeli designations used in the occupied West Bank and included Palestinian geographical names in its digital maps in accordance with international law, Anadolu Agency reported quoting an Arab rights organisation. In a statement, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media (7amleh) said the changes included location-based services, including the search engine ‘Bing’, where labels that previously listed locations in the West Bank under ‘Judea and Samaria, Israel’ were replaced with the term ‘West Bank’. ‘Judea and Samaria’ is an Israeli term to designate the occupied West Bank, which is in contrast to international law that dictates that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, must be recognised as a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel. The West Bank is a key component of the future Palestinian state. The changes represent a “necessary correction,” said Lama Nazeeh, 7amleh’s advocacy manager, calling on technology companies to comply with international...

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes killed more than a dozen people in Lebanon and Gaza on Saturday, while an Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, according to officials. The widespread violence came a day after plans were announced for potential ceasefire talks between Lebanon, Israel and the United States. Israeli strikes on a village near Sidon in south Lebanon on Saturday killed eight people and wounded nine others, five of them seriously, the Lebanese health ministry said. Lebanon’s health ministry also said a total of 10 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the country’s south on Saturday, with state media reporting Israeli raids on more than a dozen locations. Earlier in the day, officials said strikes killed 10 people in the Nabatiyeh district. The ministry said the dead included a member of the Lebanese civil defence and two paramedics from the Islamic Health Committee, decrying Israel’s “systematic” targeting of emergency workers. Hezbollah slams planned negotiations with I...

Israel has approved the establishment of 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to Israeli media reports and the watchdog Peace Now, which said the decision was taken “secretly” in early April. “The security cabinet secretly decided to establish 34 new settlements,” Peace Now said in a statement released late on Thursday. The 34 settlements come on top of 68 others already approved since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government came to power in 2022. The decision has not been officially published by any government body, and the defence ministry, in charge of settlements in the occupied West Bank, declined to respond to AFP’s questions. “We are not addressing this issue,” a spokesperson for the ministry told AFP. According to news channel i24News, 10 of the 34 settlements are already existing outposts, which are illegal under Israeli law, but will now be retroactively legalised under the decision. The remaining 24 are yet to be built. All settlements are illegal under internat...

An international media association on Saturday condemned what it described as a “violent assault” by Israeli soldiers who detained a CNN crew in the occupied West Bank this week. A CNN team was reporting on the aftermath of an assault by Israeli settlers and the establishment of an illegal outpost near the Palestinian village of Tayasir on Thursday when Israeli soldiers detained it, the Foreign Press Association (FPA) said. “The soldiers aggressively targeted the crew and Palestinian civilians present, pointing their rifles at them,” the FPA said, even after the journalists identified themselves. “The soldiers repeatedly tried to infringe the CNN crew’s right to film, ordering the crew to stop filming and threatening to confiscate the camera. “Later, an IDF (Israeli Defence Force) soldier approached CNN’s photojournalist from behind, placed him in a chokehold, slammed him to the ground, and damaged his camera,” said the association, which represents hundreds of journalists in Israel and Palestinian territorie...

Diplomats from 13 European countries and Canada on Saturday slammed growing “terror” by settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, after a surge in deadly attacks. Since the start of March, six Palestinians have been shot dead in settler attacks in the West Bank, according to a tally of data from the health ministry. “We strongly condemn increasing settler terror and violence by the Israeli security forces inflicted upon Palestinian communities,” said a joint statement from the diplomatic missions of countries including France, Spain and Britain. “We are especially appalled by the killings of Palestinians over these past weeks. This violence by settler militias, aimed at taking over land and creating a coercive environment, forcing Palestinians to leave their homes, must end.” The statement called on the Israeli authorities to “prevent and prosecute the lethal violence, raids and attacks”. Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, on Wednesday criticised the increase in settler att...

Over 500,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, deemed illegal under international law

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Thursday arrived in Saudi Arabia on a two-day visit to attend an extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Council’s (OIC) Executive Committee. The Extraordinary Open-Ended Ministerial Meeting of the OIC Executive Committee is set to be held tonight in Jeddah. It will “consider the illegal decisions of the Israeli occupation authorities aimed at expanding settlements, pursuing annexation, and attempting to impose Israeli sovereignty over the Occupied West Bank”, according to the Foreign Office (FO). Dar was received at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the OIC Ambassador Fawad Sher, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Ahmad Farooq, and Consul General in Jeddah Syed Mustafa Rabbani, FO said. The meeting is taking place against the backdrop of the Israeli government approving a proposal to register large areas of the occupied West Bank as “state property” for the first time since the occupation of the...