GAZA, May 31, 2026 (WAFA) – The death toll from the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza has risen to 72,939 Palestinians killed and 172,927 injured since October 2023, medical sources in the Gaza Strip announced on Sunday.
Archiv: Palestine (East Jerusalem / West Bank / Gaza) / Palästina
‘To call it a ceasefire is a joke‘: Israeli soldiers share rare accounts from Gaza with AP
(May 30, 2026)
The Israeli combat soldier saw his teammates yelling in celebration, congratulating one another. They had just struck a vehicle of Palestinians driving near the Israeli-controlled part of the Gaza Strip, killing everyone inside.
The reservist said scenes like this had become common after a fragile ceasefire took effect in October. In the weeks he was stationed in Gaza, he said, he saw soldiers relishing the chance to go after those who crossed — or came close to crossing — the so-called yellow line that divides the strip into Israeli-controlled and Palestinian areas.
“It was a jungle,” the soldier, in his 20s, told The Associated Press. “After the ceasefire, the order was: If someone crosses the line, you shoot them.”
Gaza death toll rises to 72,938 as Israeli attacks continue
The number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip has risen to 72,938, with 172,919 people wounded since 7 October 2023, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The ministry added that Israeli strikes have killed 929 Palestinians and wounded 2,811 others since a nominal ceasefire took effect on 11 October.
Red lines not red carpets: Why Italy & Germany must support suspending EU-Israel Agreement
(May 11, 2026)
Millions of people around the world are demanding that their leaders act to stop Israel’s violations. Humanity must win.
Occupying State launches online system for registration of the territory of State of Palestine
JERUSALEM, May 27, 2026 (WAFA) – Israel, the occupying state, launched on Wednesday morning an online system for the registration of the territory of the occupied State of Palestine (occupied West Bank).
Israel launched the “Land Registry and Settlement of Rights” online system, codenamed “ Grenade,” amid open endorsement from Jewish supremacist Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strook, who described it as “a central pillar in applying sovereignty in the territory and strengthening Israeli hold on Judea and Samaria.”
Israel uses the Jewish nationalist name “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank to reinforce its bogus claims to the territory and to give them a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy.
Israel launches electronic system for registering Palestinian land in West Bank ahead of annexation push
The project aims to register nearly 58 per cent of land in Area C, equivalent to around 35 per cent of the occupied West Bank, excluding occupied East Jerusalem, as part of what Israel describes as a “settlement of property rights” process.
‘World is letting Israel get away with escalation in Lebanon’
Israel is escalating in Gaza “because it knows it will not encounter severe opposition”, and in Lebanon “because so far the world is letting Israel get away with it”.
Israel’s Netanyahu orders army to seize 70 percent of Gaza
“At this point, we are fully in control of 60 percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu said during a conference hosted by the pre-military Ein Prat leadership academy.
“My directive is to get to… 70 percent,” he added.
When audience members shouted in support of full Israeli control over Gaza, Netanyahu replied: “We’re going in order. First 70 percent… we’ll start with that.”
Israel Has Physically Divided Gaza With Over 25 Kilometers of Earthen Barriers
(May 25, 2026)
As part of the October 2025 deal, Israeli troops withdrew to the “yellow line” that runs roughly parallel to Gaza’s coastline and cuts off large chunks of territory at the northern and southern ends of the enclave, giving Israel control of 53% of the Gaza Strip. Since then, they have encroached further west and now effectively control over 60% of the territory.
The farce of Israel’s ‘liberal’ investigative journalism
Two weeks ago, the investigative program HaMakor on Israel’s Channel 13 aired a 60-minute report on the December 2023 killing of three Israeli hostages — Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz, and Samer Al-Talalka — who were shot by Israeli soldiers in Shuja’iya, eastern Gaza City, after emerging from a hiding place carrying a white flag.
Even without intimate knowledge of the details, one thing should have been clear from the outset: When soldiers fire from inside buildings at three shirtless men carrying a white flag, kill two of them, then pursue the third, call him out of hiding, and shoot him dead, the issue is not merely “mistaken identity.” The issue is that Israeli soldiers routinely shoot innocent people. One would have to be extraordinarily naïve to believe that the single time this happened, the victims just happened to be Israelis.
Gaza casualties – live death toll: 72,842
Last update: 2026-05-24
20,179 Children killed
12,500 Women killed
262 Press killed
1,701 Medical killed
172,787 Injured (total)
463 Starved (total)
Source: TechForPalestine
Five civilians killed in Israeli airstrike on gathering of citizens in central Gaza City
GAZA, May 26, 2026 (WAFA) – Five Palestinians were killed and others wounded on Tuesday when Israeli forces opened fire and launched an airstrike on a group of civilians in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Medical and local sources told WAFA that Israeli soldiers and a drone targeted a group of civilians in the al-Maghazi camp, resulting in the killing of five Palestinians and casing the injury to multiple.
Joint Statement from the leaders of the E4 + Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and the Netherlands on the situation in the West Bank
(May 22, 2026)
We call on the Government of Israel to …
UN chief denounces Israeli takeover of UNRWA compound for army base
The United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has condemned Israel’s move to set up an Israeli army base in occupied East Jerusalem at the site where an UNRWA office once operated for besieged Palestinians.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general, said….
Gaza casualties — live death toll: 72,826
Last update: 2026-05-19
20,179 Children killed
12,500 Women killed
262 Press killed
1,701 Medical killed
172,707 Injured (total)
463 Starved (total)
Source: TechForPalestine
They Tried to Demonize the Flotilla. They Exposed Their Own Crimes to the Entire World Instead.
(May 19, 2026)
The 428 abducted flotilla participants are currently unaccounted for. They have had no contact with legal counsel. They have been denied consular access. Their families have not been informed of their whereabouts.
We call on their governments and world leaders to demand their immediate and unconditional release and to ensure their right to consular and legal access without further delay.
Their detention is an extension of the same system that has kept nearly 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners and hostages held under an even more brutal architecture of confinement, coercion, and colonial violence. What has already been documented is not aberration. It is a pattern. Testimonies from flotilla participants released after the previous interception earlier this month, describe torture, physical assault, and sexual violence.
Independent rights organizations, including Save the Children, have documented that more than half of the Palestinian children detained by israel report sexual abuse, sexualized violence, and systematic torture. This pattern of sexual violence is systematically operating without interruption.
Gaza and the West Bank are where that structure is most illustrative. They are where weapons are tested, surveillance systems refined, and techniques of enclosure normalized before being exported into policing regimes, border infrastructures, prison systems, and governance models across the world.
President Abbas: The Palestinian cause will remain the greatest test of the international system and its credibility
Excellencies, Heads of Delegations and Representatives of States and International Organizations
Ladies and Gentlemen
Today, in these difficult circumstances that our people are enduring, we commemorate the seventy-eighth anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe that is ongoing until this very day, and the crime of ethnic cleansing inflicted upon our Palestinian people. This crime, carried out by Zionist militias with the support of colonial powers, led to the uprooting of 950,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages, and their removal from the land of their ancestors, which they had inherited and inhabited for thousands of years, to be displaced and replaced, transforming them into a people of refugees, witness to the attempts to steal, falsify and erase their history and heritage.
This heinous crime, the Nakba, was accompanied by numerous massacres during which tens of thousands of our people were slaughtered and killed, and their cities and villages destroyed. More than 531 towns and villages, once vibrant with cultural, economic, social, and political life, were erased.
We will not leave, and we will not forget.
We, the Palestinian people and our refugees, did not emigrate from Palestine nor leave it voluntarily in 1948, as Israel and the Zionist movement have claimed, rather, we were forcibly and coercively expelled from it. The truth is that the Palestinian people rose up repeatedly to defend their historic homeland and their existence on their land. We still remember the Palestinian revolution of 1936–1939, but colonial powers provided the Zionists with every means and force necessary to seize the land of Palestine by force of arms.
The Zionist movement’s reliance on false narratives, mythology, and the infamous Balfour Declaration from the colonial era, along with the selective manipulation of fabricated historical events does not create rights, nor does it nullify the deeply rooted historical and legal rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination. It also does not negate international law or the Charter of the United Nations.
Statement by President Mahmoud Abbas before the United Nations 78th Nakba Commemoration
(…)
CCTV footage has captured the moment a group of Israeli settlers spat towards the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Jerusalem.
The incident occurred on the day of “Flag March,” a national holiday marking the occupation of East Jerusalem by Israeli forces following the 1967 war
Video footage circulating online shows Israeli settlers spitting towards the Shrine of the Virgin Mary, located opposite the Church of the Shepherds of the Saviour in the Bab al-Jadid area of occupied East Jerusalem.
(…)
On Politics, Ideology and Anti-Zionism
Moreover, we have allies in Israel and around the world, who share the same fundamental political goals we strive for – self-determination for the Palestinian people, the end of the occupation, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and the rejection of all discrimination against Palestinians in Israel. Some of these allies consider themselves Zionist, because they subscribe to a minimalist understanding of Zionism – self-determination for a Jewish collective in Israel. This right was recognized by the international community in the 1947 partition plan of Palestine and was realized by the state of Israel itself.
We do not reject this right, yet as Friedrich Engels said: “A people which oppresses another cannot emancipate itself.” Israel is still preventing the right of self-determination for Palestinians – the right for an independent Palestinian state with real borders and an end to the suffering. We need to work together with those who believe in the rights of both peoples – and some of them are Zionists.
We also know that when a political solution is achieved, it will not be after Jewish Israelis reject Zionism, but when they decide that their collective and individual interests lie on the side of peace. We are materialists – we assert that Zionism, the ideology, will only be overcome after we begin to dismantle its material basis – that of apartheid and colonization.
Therefore, our focus must remain on practical actions against this reality – and not symbolic politics of denunciation. In the German case, this means advocating for concrete actions such as a ban on settlement products import, the suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement, and a complete ban on arms supply to Israel. These actions could challenge Zionism much more than the adoption of the antizionist label.
Global Sumud Flotilla Departs Marmaris for Gaza: Legal Team Places International Community on Formal Notice
The Flotilla serves as a critical test for the international community and the current „Board of Peace“ architecture. Legal experts argue that such frameworks cannot be used as colonial gatekeepers to convert the legal right of humanitarian access into a foreign-administered permission regime which perpetuates the denial of Palestinian self-determination. There is a growing demand for United Nations member states to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice regarding whether the Security Council may lawfully endorse a regime that displaces Palestinian self-determination. By sailing, the Flotilla forces a choice upon international institutions to either uphold the rule of law or be complicit in a system that conditions life-saving relief on political approval.
Freedom Flotilla Coalition Launches Boats for New Phase of Gaza Flotilla Mission
On May 13, 2026, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) is launching five vessels — Adalah, Kyriakos X, Lina Al Nabulsi, PERSEVERANCE and Tenaz Love Aqsa Bangladesh — from a Greek island as part of the broader international flotilla effort to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza and challenge the impunity enabling genocide, starvation, and the wholesale erasure of the Palestinian people. These vessels will join approximately 55 additional boats departing from Marmaris, Türkiye. While our five boats (sailing under French, Italian and Polish flags) carry symbolic amounts of food and medicine, we are not an aid organization. We sail in defiance of a brutal and unlawful blockade designed to isolate, imprison, and persecute Palestinians, and in rejection of the international community’s failure to stop Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people.
„Jeder hatte Angst, was Falsches zu sagen. Jeder hatte Angst, den Job zu verlieren“
Der Journalist Fabian Goldmann hat in seinem Buch „Staatsräsonfunk: Deutsche Medien und der Genozid in Gaza“ über das Versagen der sogenannten deutschen „Leitmedien“ in der Berichterstattung zum Gaza-Krieg geschrieben. Im hier abgedruckten Kapitel „Druck von allen Seiten“ (im Buch Kapitel 8.6.) berichtet Goldmann über die Angst in den Redaktionen und den Druck auf Journalisten – durch ihre Vorgesetzen, Social-Media-Kampagnen sowie israelische Regierungsvertreter und Organisationen. Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen, der zeigt, wie stark die Pressefreiheit beim Thema Israel und Gaza in Deutschland aktiv eingeschränkt wird und wie sehr auch die Journalisten selbst darunter leiden. Ein Buchausschnitt von Fabian Goldmann.
Israel uproots thousands of grapevines in Hebron to expand settler road
Zuhur Tarwa stood in shock as Israeli army markers appeared across her vineyard, declaring it confiscated.
The 68-year-old Palestinian had spent years tending the land with her two daughters in the fertile Baqa’a Valley, east of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
Their 200 grapevines once filled the plot with broad green leaves, promising a strong harvest.
Before that could happen, the confiscation order arrived – followed soon after by bulldozers.
“They razed the entire land, uprooting the grapevines and other crops,” Tarwa told Middle East Eye.
CAIR Says Congress, Trump Admin Must Act After New NYT Revelations of Israel’s Widespread Sexual Abuse of Palestinian Prisoners
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on Congress and the Trump administration to take immediate action after a New York Times report detailed horrifying allegations of widespread sexual abuse, rape, torture, and humiliation of Palestinians held in Israeli detention facilities.
This is a hard article to read, but I hope you‘ll do so.
(May 11, 2026)
I‘ve spent some time reporting on widespread rape and other sexual violence of Palestinian male and female prisoners by Israeli authorities, and the article is now published. The assault victims were warned not to give speak of what they endured — they were sometimes told they would be killed or raped if they gave interviews — but they found the courage to do so. One man described being raped three times in a single day in Israeli prison, the third time after he tried to protest. A young woman said the guards would come in at the beginning of each shift and strip her naked and abuse her. Another reported that she was shown photos of herself being raped and warned they would be released unless she cooperated with Israeli intelligence. Even three children who had been detained told me they had been sexually abused. Look, whatever our position on the Middle East, we should be able to agree on being anti-rape. Sexual assaults were horrific when Israeli women were targeted on Oct. 7, and they‘re equally horrific when Israeli authorities use them against Palestinians day after day after day. We should be able to find common ground in opposing rape. Here‘s a gift link to the article: