In the Al-Taghreba shelter in Khan Younis, the displaced refused to let the rituals of Ramadan die. They made their own decorations, recycling cola cans into radiant lanterns that hung between the tents.
The Israeli military has said four soldiers were killed in combat in southern Lebanon, where its forces are clashing with Hezbollah fighters after launching a ground invasion of the country.
At least three Palestinians have been killed in Israeli drone strikes in war-battered Gaza, nearly two and a half years into Israel's genocidal war on the enclave, as severely limited medical evacuations restarted through the Rafah border crossing. Doctors at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said two people were killed in a drone strike in the Zeitoun neighbourhood, in the eastern part of Gaza City.
While the world's attention is on the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, the Israeli military has placed the West Bank under a functional lockdown. Checkpoints in and out of most major cities are closed, and Palestinians have been left to look for other travel arrangements. Some residents who spoke with Truthout said they traveled for hours through village back roads in an attempt to reach their destinations.
Rafah is the only crossing that connects Gaza to the outside world without passing through Israel, and it has been a vital passage for the delivery of humanitarian aid and the evacuation of patients and the wounded.
In October, Hamas and Israel signed a peace deal supposedly intended to stop two years of slaughter in Gaza. Since then, more than 420 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire-an average of about four people a day-in what international mediators continue to describe as a successful de-escalation. The distance between that official narrative and the facts on the ground reveals how the language of ceasefire has been repurposed: It no longer describes a pause in violence but rather a mechanism for managing it, sanitizing ongoing military force under the guise of restraint.
Through a new land registration drive, Israel is trying to secure through paperwork what warfare alone has failed to deliver. Israel always had a plan to annex more land in the occupied West Bank, and its actions prove it. This week, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to claim Palestinian lands in the West Bank as state land. The proposal, pushed by far-right Israeli leaders, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defence Minister Israel Katz, emphasises Israeli supremacy over Palestinians.
He said it twice, to leave no room for doubt. on Tuesday, in the Israeli parliament, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that, following the recovery of the body of the last hostage in Gaza, the next phase of the ceasefire is not the reconstruction of the devastated Strip, but the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza.