International West Bank thread

Four journalists among 20 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital, say health officials​

Deaths take the number of Palestinian journalists killed in the conflict since 7 October 2023 to at least 192

William Christou

Four journalists were among at least 20 people killed by Israeli strikes on al-Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, health officials said.

The strikes on Monday killed Hussam al-Masri, who worked for Reuters, Mariam Abu Dagga, who worked for the Associated Press, the Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed Salam, and Moaz Abu Taha from NBC. Another Reuters journalist, Hatem Khaled, was also wounded in the attack.

A video from the news agency al-Ghad TV showed civil defence workers wearing bright orange vests and journalists being hit by a bomb while they were attempting to rescue the body of al-Masri, who was killed in an earlier strike on the fourth floor of the hospital. In the moments before their deaths, they raised their hands to shield themselves, but were killed by the explosion.

The second bomb struck the same spot on the fourth floor as the first, after rescue crews had arrived, the Gaza health ministry said. A video later showed a pile of bodies lying where the journalists and civil defence workers were standing at the moment of the strike.


The Associated Press said in a statement that it was shocked and saddened to learn of Dagga’s death, as well as the deaths of the other journalists killed alongside her.

“We are doing everything we can to keep our journalists in Gaza safe as they continue to provide crucial eyewitness reporting in difficult and dangerous conditions,” the agency said.

Reuters said in a statement that it was devastated at the news of the death of al-Masri and wounding of Khaled.

”We are urgently seeking more information and have asked authorities in Gaza and Israel to help us get urgent medical assistance for Hatem,” a spokesperson said.

At least 192 Palestinian journalists have been killed since 7 October 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), more than the number who died globally in the previous three years. The CPJ said in August that Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza was “a deliberate and systematic attempt to cover up Israel’s actions”.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said the chief-of-staff had ordered a preliminary investigation into the strike and said Israel “expressed regret for injury to uninvolved personnel”. Israel did not target journalists, they said.

Israeli inquiries into misconduct by its military rarely ensure accountability. A report published this month shows that 88% of investigations into war crimes allegations in Gaza were shut down or left unresolved. Israel’s investigation into the killing of the Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper in 2022 was never finished.

Dagga, 33, freelanced for the AP since the Gaza war began, as well as other news outlets. She reported on Nasser hospital doctors struggling to save children with no prior health issues who were wasting away from starvation.

Al Jazeera confirmed that its Salam was among those killed in the Nasser hospital strike. Reuters reported that al-Masri, a contractor cameraman, was also killed. Khaled, a photographer who was also a Reuters contractor, was wounded, the news agency reported.

Israel has prevented international media from covering the 22-month conflict, an unprecedented ban in the history of war reporting. Palestinian journalists in Gaza who work with international outlets carry out their duties while facing starvation and the risk of death.


The Palestinian ministry of health said Monday’s strikes on Nasser hospital had disrupted surgery in the operating theatre, and condemned the attack, which it said was part of a “systematic destruction of the health system”. Nasser hospital is the only functioning public hospital left in southern Gaza.

Health officials also reported gunfire which killed people seeking aid in central Gaza and airstrikes in Gaza City.

At least six people were killed and 15 wounded while trying to reach an aid distribution site in central Gaza ran by the private US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Shootings by Israeli soldiers near GHF sites are a near daily occurrence, though the Israeli military and GHF deny targeting people seeking aid.

A strike on a residential neighbourhood in Gaza City killed at least three people, including a child. Israel is preparing for an invasion of the city in the coming days, which it says it will occupy and take control of.

Aid groups have said the operation would lead to displacement and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, which is already in the throes of famine.

At least 62,686 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the Gaza war 22 months ago. Israel launched its assault after the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ple-killed-by-israeli-strike-on-gaza-hospital
 

Mariam Dagga, AP freelance journalist in Gaza, was killed by an Israeli strike​


BY SAM MEDNICK AND SAMY MAGDY
Updated 6:21 PM BRT, August 25, 2025

Mariam Dagga, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other news organizations and produced harrowing images of the war in Gaza, was killed Monday by an Israeli strike on a hospital. She was 33.

Through photographs and video, Dagga captured the lives of ordinary Palestinians facing extraordinary challenges: families displaced from homes, people crowding around aid trucks, mourners attending funerals and doctors treating wounded or malnourished children.

During the war, Dagga regularly based herself at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. She was among 20 people, including five journalists, killed there Monday by Israeli strikes, according to health officials and news organizations.

“She worked under incredibly difficult circumstances to bring stories from Gaza to the world, particularly coverage of the war’s impact on children,” said Julie Pace, AP’s Executive Editor and Senior Vice President. “We are devastated by her death and urgently seeking more clarity on the strike.”

The Israel-Hamas war has been one of the deadliest conflicts for media workers, with at least 189 Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli fire in Gaza in the 22-month conflict, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Comparatively, 18 journalists have been killed so far in Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to the CPJ.

In an April interview with Eye on Palestine — a social media platform — Dagga appealed to the international community to protect journalists in Gaza and to help end the war. In a video message Sunday, one of her last social media posts, she warned that nowhere in Gaza was safe.

“Every place is dangerous, is hit by airstrikes ... In every home there is a story. In every home there is a detainee. In every home there is suffering.”

Born in Khan Younis, Dagga studied journalism and graduated from the Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. She began working as a journalist in 2015, and was among the few women visual journalists covering the war in Gaza.

She is survived by a 13-year-old son who moved at the start of the war to the United Arab Emirates to live with his father.

When she wasn’t working, she was often on the phone with her son, who wanted to return to Khan Younis to be with her, she told colleagues. In her will, which Dagga had shared with a friend, she addressed her son directly: “Never forget me and remember that your mother did everything she could to make you happy, comfortable, and at ease.”

At her funeral Monday, relatives and colleagues caressed her cheeks through tears. Her body lay shrouded in white, a single red flower placed gently beside her face.

Before the war, she had given a kidney to her father, according to her sister, Nada Dagga.

Displaced from home, she was forced to move multiple times during the war, but she never stopped working.

“She was always ready,” said AP reporter Sarah El Deeb, who is based in Beirut. “Dagga stayed close to Nasser hospital and was able to see through the cruelty of the war with the skills and patience to report on its cost to the people of Gaza, its doctors, children and mothers,” she said.

For her recent coverage of malnourished children in Gaza, Dagga won an internal AP award recognizing the strongest work produced each week.

Dagga’s editor at the Independent Arabia media outlet, Adhwan Alahmari, said she was among the most ethical, dedicated reporters and photographers. He called the strike a “flagrant violation of international laws.’'


Wafaa Shurafa, AP’s senior producer in Gaza who worked with Dagga daily, said she never hesitated to help anyone. Dagga never complained despite the severe hardships she faced, was always quick with a laugh, and was deeply respected and loved by her colleagues, friends and family, Shurafa said.

Shurafa said that she missed a call from Dagga after the first strike hit the hospital on Monday. When she called back, Dagga didn’t answer.

“I was nervous at first because she didn’t answer, I was super worried, I thought she was filming, but I never imagined she was killed,” she said.

“She didn’t answer, and she never will again.”

https://apnews.com/article/mariam-dagga-journalists-killed-gaza-c751959deca9aa87cad9d29e7444b145
 
It's not stealing if ur the "good guys" right ?

 
"only democracy in the middle east. But we also torture children."

 
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Every week another Palestinian village gets bulldozed to make space for Israeli settlers

 
Imitating their parents. Emboldened by Israeli army protection. They'll shoot Palestinians at sight when they become adults

 
Imagine living like this. Triple locking your reinforced door not knowing if you will be able to access your house again or if it will be taken. Being on the watch of an israeli settler gang attack every night. Not being able to access water normally and freely. Getting everybof you movement monitored and spied upon. It's not life, would totally drive your average man crazy.

 
‘There will be no Palestinian state’: PM signs plan cementing E1 settlement expansion
Netanyahu declares ‘this place belongs to us’ during signing ceremony in Ma’ale Adumim, as Smotrich vows that the next step is annexation of the West Bank

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Thursday evening that “there will be no Palestinian state,” as he signed an agreement to push ahead with the controversial E1 settlement expansion plan that will cut across West Bank land Palestinians seek for a state.

“We are going to fulfill our promise that there will be no Palestinian state; this place belongs to us,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the West Bank, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where thousands of new housing units would be added.

“We will safeguard our heritage, our land and our security… We are going to double the city’s population,” he added.

Netanyahu said that the project is about “realizing a vision… something very big is happening here.”

Last month, the E1 project, which would bisect the West Bank and cut it off from East Jerusalem, received final planning approval. Thursday’s signing ceremony was largely symbolic, but it allowed authorities to move forward with construction.

The Civil Administration of the Defense Ministry approved the plans, which would see 3,412 housing units built in a new neighborhood of Maale Adumim on the western side of the city, just east of East Jerusalem. Total investment in the project, which will include adding roads and upgrading major infrastructure, is estimated at nearly $1 billion.

Advocates of a two-state solution have argued for decades that the E1 project would in effect divide the West Bank in two for its Palestinian population, sever Palestinian East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and severely harm the future viability of a Palestinian state — something celebrated by the government’s ministers.

Israel has long had ambitions to build on the roughly 12 square kilometer tract of land known as E1, but the plan had been stalled for years in the face of international opposition.

Speaking at Thursday’s ceremony, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich averred that Israel will soon celebrate the annexation of the West Bank.

“The prime minister told me, ‘I’m staying here to hear what you have to say, and I know what you intend to say,'” said Smotrich. “Prime minister, all of us, soon, will thank you and congratulate and celebrate together the application of sovereignty throughout Judea and Samaria,” he added, using the biblical name for the West Bank.

A number of right-wing ministers have called in recent weeks for the annexation of parts or all of the West Bank as a response to several Western governments, including the UK and France, announcing that they intend to recognize the State of Palestine at the United Nations later this month.

Israeli NGO Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank, said last week that infrastructure work in E1 could begin within a few months, and housing construction within about a year.

It said the E1 plan was “deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution.”

The West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians, as well as about 500,000 Israeli settlers.

www.timesofisrael.com

‘There will be no Palestinian state’: Netanyahu signs plan for E1 settlement expansion

PM declares 'this place belongs to us' during signing ceremony in Ma'ale Adumim, as Smotrich vows that the next step is annexation of the West Bank
www.timesofisrael.com www.timesofisrael.com
 

‘We took the gloves off’: ex-IDF chief confirms Gaza casualties over 200,000​

Retired general Herzi Halevi says ‘not once’ had legal advice constrained Israel’s military decisions in the strip

Julian Borger in Jerusalem

A former Israeli army commander, Herzi Halevi, has confirmed that more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured in the war in Gaza, and that “not once” in the course of the conflict were military operations inhibited by legal advice.

Halevi stepped down as chief of staff in March after leading the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first 17 months of the war, which is now approaching its second anniversary.

The retired general told a community meeting in southern Israel earlier this week that more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population had been killed or injured – “more than 200,000 people”. That estimate is notable as it is close to the current figures provided by Gaza’s health ministry, which Israeli officials have frequently dismissed as Hamas propaganda, though the ministry figures have been deemed reliable by international humanitarian agencies.

The current official toll is 64,718 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 163,859 injured, since the start of the war on 7 October 2023. Many thousands more are feared dead, with their bodies buried in the rubble. At least 40 people were reported killed on Friday in Israeli strikes, mostly around Gaza City.

The Gaza ministry statistics do not distinguish between civilians and fighters, but leaked Israeli military intelligence data on casualties until May this year suggested that more than 80% of the dead were civilians.

About 1,200 people were killed in the original 7 October Hamas attack, which ignited the war, of whom 815 were Israeli and foreign civilians.

“This isn’t a gentle war. We took the gloves off from the first minute. Sadly not earlier,” Halevi said, suggesting the Israel should have taken a tougher line in Gaza before the 7 October attack.

The former commander was talking on Tuesday night to residents of Ein HaBesor moshav (agricultural cooperative), who succeeded in repelling the Hamas attackers two years ago. A recording of his remarks was published by the Ynet news website.

“No one is working gently,” Halevi said, but insisted the IDF operates within the constraints of international humanitarian law. That claim has been repeated throughout the war by Israeli officials, who have said that military lawyers are involved in operational decisions.

However, Halevi denied that legal advice had ever affected his or his immediate subordinates’ military decisions in Gaza or across the Middle East.


“Not once has anyone restricted me. Not once. Not the military AG [advocate general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi] who, by the way, hasn’t the authority to restrict me,” he said.

In a quote that was not on the recording but was cited by Ynet, Halevi appeared to suggest that the main importance of Israel’s military lawyers was to convince the outside world of the legality of the IDF’s actions.

“There are legal advisers who say: We will know how to defend this legally in the world, and this is very important for the state of Israel,” he is quoted as saying.

The IDF was approached for comment on Halevi’s remarks about the death toll and the role of military lawyers, but had not replied by Friday evening.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said Halevi’s remarks “confirm that the legal advisers serve as rubber stamps”.

“The generals see them as ‘regular’ advisers whose advice one can adopt or dismiss, not as professional lawyers whose legal positions present the boundaries of what is permissible and what is prohibited,” Sfard said.

On Wednesday, the Haaretz newspaper reported that Halevi’s successor as IDF chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, had ignored Tomer-Yerushalmi’s legal advice. The advocate general had reportedly said that the displacement orders to an estimated 1 million Gaza City residents to leave before an IDF offensive should be postponed until there were facilities in southern Gaza to receive them.

Many of the 40 Palestinian victims of Friday’s Israeli strikes appeared to have been people who were unable to move south, or unwilling to abandon their homes or shelters to risk of going somewhere in Gaza where there was no shelter or protection against Israeli bombing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...s-palestinian-casualties-are-more-than-200000
 

Netanyahu calls UK’s Palestine recognition ‘absurd prize for terrorism’​

Opposition leader Yair Golan blames government’s political recklessness and refusal to end the war in Gaza

Jason Burke in Jerusalem

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, called the UK’s recognition of Palestine on Sunday “an absurd prize for terrorism”.

In remarks to ministers released by his office, he said Israel would have “to fight both in the UN and in all the other fronts against the slanderous propaganda aimed at us, and against the calls to create a Palestinian state that will endanger our existence and constitute an absurd prize for terrorism”.


In a post on X, Israel’s foreign ministry wrote that the UK recognising Palestine as a state was “nothing but a reward for jihadist Hamas”.

“Hamas leaders themselves openly admit: this recognition is a direct outcome, the ‘fruit’ for the October 7 massacre. Don’t let Jihadist ideology dictate your policy,” the post read.


Israeli officials have been making this argument in recent weeks as they sought to head off the growing momentum in the UK, France, Canada, Portugal and others towards recognition.

Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu, said Hamas could now say to the Palestinians that without its 2023 attack, which killed about 1,200, the recognition of Palestine by the UK and others would not have happened.

“It will be understood as a reward to them, and Starmer has lost any leverage that he had … and [a Palestinian state] is not going to happen anyway,” said Amidror, an analyst at the conservative Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America in Washington.

“Israel is determined to destroy the terrorist organisation that is called Hamas. Some of our friends around the world have decided that Hamas should survive and Israel should leave the Gaza Strip, taking our hostages … There is a gap here that cannot be bridged with nice words.”

But successive opinion polls in Israel have shown strong demand for a negotiated end to the conflict in Gaza. Support for Netanyahu’s coalition government, the most rightwing in Israel’s history, has declined further since the prime minister called last week on Israelis to accept the country’s growing international isolation and become a “super-Sparta”.

Tens of thousands demonstrated in Israel at the weekend against the government and for a deal that would bring back the Israeli hostages seized during the 2023 raid and held since by Hamas in Gaza.

A coalition of groups representing the hostages’ families said on Sunday it condemned “various nations’ unconditional recognition of a Palestinian state while turning a blind eye to the fact that 48 hostages remain in Hamas captivity following the October 7th massacre”.

The leader of the opposition Democrats party, Yair Golan, said the recognition by the UK was a grave political failure by Netanyahu and his far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

“This is a direct result of Netanyahu’s political recklessness: refusal to end the war and the dangerous choice of occupation and annexation,” Golan said. “The issue of a demilitarised Palestinian state can and should be part of a broad regional arrangement led by Israel that guarantees our security interests.”

A question now is how Israel responds. Analysts in Israel suggest that Netanyahu will make a decision only after his forthcoming trip to Washington at the end of the month.

Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, called for wholesale annexation of the occupied West Bank.

“The days when Britain and other countries would determine our future are over … The only response to this anti-Israeli move is sovereignty over the historic homeland of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria, and permanently removing the folly of a Palestinian state from the agenda,” Smotrich said on X.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...palestinian-recogniton-absurd-prize-terrorism
 
LeonardoBjj said:
In a post on X, Israel’s foreign ministry wrote that the UK recognising Palestine as a state was “nothing but a reward for jihadist Hamas”.

“Hamas leaders themselves openly admit: this recognition is a direct outcome, the ‘fruit’ for the October 7 massacre. Don’t let Jihadist ideology dictate your policy,” the post read.


Israeli officials have been making this argument in recent weeks as they sought to head off the growing momentum in the UK, France, Canada, Portugal and others towards recognition.
Click to expand...


This is such bullshit. (Very) Hypothetically, if the Israeli response had been to do nothing (I know, unthinkable), Oct 7 would have set the cause of Palestinian statehood back a decade or more, IMO. Israel coulda just put those pictures out any time a Palestinian state was mentioned, and all those dead festival-goers would have shut it down straight away.

I also find myself absolutely bewildered by the very idea that Israel conducts (in their own words, IIRC) 'revenge', against the Palestinian people, by saying they should occupy the West Bank, in response to the UK et all announcing the recognition of Palestine. I mean, its entirely on-brand, and I guess maybe even coming from a place of slight panic, like they have to enact their territorial ambitions in Palestine on a more accelerated schedule now, but its like.... what better way to demonstrate that a Palestinian state is *needed*, to protect against exactly the territorial greed Israel is nakedly showing under the guise of, what? we'll punish country A for the actions of countries B - E?
 
I posted about that before. It's really being done.

 
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