Palestine weekly: After Kushner departs, Israel escalates Gaza attacks

Within hours of United States envoy Jared Kushner leaving discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aimed at salvaging the Gaza "ceasefire", Israeli strikes were again hitting residential areas in the enclave, and by week's end, senior officers were describing a return.

Key points

• Hamas notes Israel's ongoing attacks and refusal to withdraw its forces from Gaza are a violation of Trump's 15-point plan unveiled on July 30.
• The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Norway called the tenders "unacceptable" and cautioned of "legal and reputational consequences" for participants.
• Netanyahu's office echoed the warning, declaring Gaza "will not return to the situation before October 7, 2023".
• UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese described the attacks as "pogroms against defenceless civilians".
• The campaign continued all week: a drone attack killed a man Israel remarked was a Hamas commander in Deir el-Balah on Saturday.

Kushner's August 17 discussions produced two working groups – on disarmament and humanitarian matters – but exposed rather than resolved the core problems: Israel's unwillingness to withdraw from Gaza as it believes Hamas will not disarm alongside its refusal to allow the aid, supplies and construction materials required to rebuild the territory. Hamas notes Israel's ongoing attacks and refusal to withdraw its forces from Gaza are a violation of Trump's 15-point plan unveiled on July 30.

Kushner remarked he would not object to attacks against "imminent threats" but cautioned against interpreting that broadly. The attacks that followed suggested that Kushner's warning had done little to constrain Israel's interpretation of what constituted an "imminent threat".

Hours after Kushner left, a strike on a crowded cafe at the Gaza City port – itself a displacement camp – killed at least seven Palestinians, including a child.

Notably, the next day, a strike on Gaza City's former police headquarters killed at least nine individuals, including the acting director of Gaza's police force, the head of its women's police division and a 13-year-old girl.

Meanwhile, a Hamas source informed Al Jazeera the office-holders had gathered to prepare for the weapons handover pressed under US President Donald Trump's peace plan – meaning, if accurate, Israel killed the highly individuals organising the disarmament it demands. A separate strike that day killed a man Israel called a Hamas commander in Nuseirat.

Notably, the campaign continued all week: a drone attack killed a man Israel remarked was a Hamas commander in Deir el-Balah on Saturday.

For context, the week's final trigger for Israel's return to such bellicose footing in Gaza was, improbably, kites. After a number of landed in an Israeli border community, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Sunday ordered the military to treat any kite, balloon and drone from Gaza as "an act of war", threatening attacks and neighbourhood displacements, according to The Times of Israel.

Netanyahu's office echoed the warning, declaring Gaza "will not return to the situation before October 7, 2023". Subsequent attacks on Sunday killed at least three Palestinians, among them four-year-old Muhammad Abdel Salam Taha. A predawn attack on a family's tent in Deir el-Balah killed two brothers on Monday, according to Palestinian reports.

Gaza's Ministry of Health put the number of casualties since the October "ceasefire" at 1, 288 killed and 4, 290 wounded as of Monday, with a cumulative toll of at least 73, 422 Palestinians killed since October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, Israel has continued to advance its illegal settlement project in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, widely seen as a death knell for the prospect of a Palestinian state along 1967 lines as part of the so-called two-state solution.

On August 18, Israel issued a tender for 1, 234 units in the southern section of the East1 plan in occupied East Jerusalem, moving the long-frozen project on the path towards active construction. The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission remarked the plan would sever East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank by fusing it with the Maale Adumim illegal settlement bloc and fragmenting the northern and southern West Bank.

Notably, the move has drawn global condemnations. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Norway called the tenders "unacceptable" and cautioned of "legal and reputational consequences" for participants. The European Union was reportedly preparing a sanctions package should construction commence.

Eight Arab and Muslim-majority states issued a joint rejection, and more than 100 former French and British ambassadors wrote in Le Monde on Saturday that settler violence and demolitions "amount to ethnic cleansing", calling for suspended trade and an arms embargo.

When asked regarding E1 specifically, its Department of State repeated only its standard line that the US "does not support Israel annexing the West Bank" without naming the project, as for Israel's strongest ally, the United States.

Days earlier, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a longtime settlement supporter, had invoked the Ten Commandments to warn settlers against seizing Palestinian American property, threatening sanctions against those besieging homes in the West Bank village of Qusra, including one belonging to US citizen Loui Abu Ridi. Huckabee has condemned settlers holding the Palestinian homes under siege as "terrorists".

That gap – a right-wing Christian Zionist ambassador willing to call settlers "terrorists" and a State Department unwilling to specifically name the Israeli government's flagship illegal settlement project – captured Washington's bind: reining in Israel's worst excesses while remaining its principal guarantor.

Notably, the gap between condemnation and consequence was visible elsewhere too, including in Israel's handling of its own war crimes record in Gaza. On Wednesday, the military confirmed investigations into the January 2024 killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab and six of her family members – the first time Israel admitted firing on their car – and the March 2025 killing of 15 medics in Rafah. Nevertheless, meanwhile, Israel closed three other cases, including the April 2024 killing of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers.

For context, the Hind Rajab Foundation remarked it had no confidence Israel's investigations would produce justice. The UK, Australia and Canada called the WCK investigation closure – confirmed on World Humanitarian Day – "shameful". Sieges, arson and land seizure in the West Bank.

In practice, a Human Rights Watch report last week discovered more Palestinians were displaced by settler attacks, demolitions and evictions in the first four months of 2026 than in all of 2025. It accused Israeli authorities of "arming, funding and granting impunity" to settlers. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded 216 settler attacks causing casualties or damage in July alone.

That pattern continued this week. According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa and local activists, in al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, a series of attacks included settlers overturning a vehicle carrying women, children and elderly individuals on Thursday, injuring five residents, and ramming a second vehicle two days afterwards. By Sunday, Israeli forces had sealed the village's only remaining entrance.

In Qusra, south of Nablus, a siege of three homes entered its third week, leaving families cut off from food, water and medicine. Field activist videos indicated soldiers throwing a family's belongings from a home they now occupy.

Settler attacks and arson spread throughout the week. In Sa'ir, northeast of Hebron, armed settlers killed 17-year-old Karim Sanad Shalaldeh and critically wounded a man in his 70s during a raid that additionally set a home ablaze. In Khallet al-Farra, west of Yatta, settlers set fire to a home with a family of five asleep inside.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese described the attacks as "pogroms against defenceless civilians". Experts now back her position, saying the West Bank attacks increasingly fit the definition of a pogrom. It refers to "the organised violence" against a group of individuals as of their "race or religion".

Meanwhile, Israel's territorial grip continued to expand. New or expanding outposts were documented at Tal al-Asur and Marj Sia, east of Ramallah; Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah; and Mount Tarousa, west of Hebron, where the "Doron" outpost, one of 19 settlements approved last year, received its first caravans, according to Wafa. Israeli settlements and outposts are illegal under international law.

In the northern Jordan Valley, Israeli NGO B'Tselem documented that armed forces and settlers had cut the last water pipelines supplying a number of Bedouin communities, placing 47 families – more than 300 individuals – at imminent risk of displacement in the shadow of Israel's Crimson Thread Barrier project.

Israeli forces additionally killed two Palestinians this week. Fathi Zedan Khazem was shot during a raid on his Jenin home on Friday and left to bleed to death after soldiers blocked ambulance access, according to Wafa. Two days afterwards, 14-year-old Islam Ahmad Ajjouri was shot dead during a raid on Askar al-Jadid refugee camp, east of Nablus.

Taken together, the developments around palestine weekly: After Kushner departs, Israel escalates Gaza attacks point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.