Palestinian factions have signed a “national unity” agreement aimed at maintaining Palestinian control over Gaza once Israel’s war on the enclave concludes.

The deal, finalised on Tuesday in China after three days of intensive talks, lays the groundwork for an “interim national reconciliation government” to rule post-war Gaza, said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The agreement was signed by long-term rivals Hamas and Fatah, as well as 12 other Palestinian groups.

“Today we sign an agreement for national unity and we say that the path to completing this journey is national unity,” said senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk at a news conference in Beijing. Blocking Israeli control of Gaza

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, one of the 14 factions to sign the accord, told Al Jazeera the agreement goes “much further” than any other reached in recent years.

He said its four main elements are the establishment of an interim national unity government, the formation of unified Palestinian leadership ahead of future elections, the free election of a new Palestinian National Council, and a general declaration of unity in the face of ongoing Israeli attacks.

The move towards a unity government is especially important, he said, because it “blocks Israeli efforts to create some sort of collaborative structure against Palestinian interests”.

Reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah would be a key turning point in internal Palestinian relations. The two main Palestinian political parties in the Palestinian territory have been bitter rivals since conflict arose in 2006, after which Hamas seized control of Gaza.

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The Israeli army killed three Palestinian military commanders – including one from Hamas’s Qassam Brigades and two from Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – and a mother and her child during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Monday, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.

Several army convoys and bulldozers also stormed Tulkarem refugee camp, where the five were killed, to destroy homes, markets and entire neighbourhoods during the attack.

Like all of the West Bank, Tulkarem has been subjected to Israeli army raids and settler attacks that intensified following the return of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm of a far-right government at the end of 2022. The devastation brought on by these raids intensified further after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7.

Israel claims that its nearly daily raids are necessary to capture Hamas cells and ensure Israeli security. But critics say that raids are exacerbating the root causes that fuel armed resistance – in particular, Israel’s decades-long occupation – declared last week as unlawful by the International Court of Justice.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has killed 203 people in the West Bank between January and June 6 this year. That’s 75 more people killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers compared to the same period last year.

Activists and experts believe that Israel is playing up the threat of what it calls “terrorism” to justify the increasing violence, which leads to mass displacement and the expansion of illegal settlements.

Here is all you need to know about the uptick in violence as a result of operations in the West Bank.

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Minnesota keeps its place as the least bad state

As politicians laud US president’s character, critics say Biden will be remembered for his support for Israeli ‘crimes’.

Democratic politicians and commentators in the United States have heaped praise on President Joe Biden since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday.

Representative Maxine Waters, for instance, called Biden a “kind and decent man”. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, extolled his “vision, values and leadership”.

But while political leaders showered Biden with compliments, bombs continued to rain down on Gaza, killing dozens and sparking another wave of mass displacement in Khan Younis.

For many Palestinian rights advocates, the carnage and abuses in Gaza will define Biden’s place in the history books, as the US remains steadfast in its support of Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory.

“He’ll be remembered for the hundreds of thousands killed, injured and displaced in Gaza,” said Abed Ayoub, the executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

“There is no way around it. ‘Genocide Joe’ is what he’s going to be remembered as.”

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by Sonam Lama Hyolmo on 18 July 2024

• Aboriginal elders in the far north of Australia’s Queensland state are preparing the next generation of junior rangers to conserve endangered southern cassowaries, take care of their traditional land, safeguard their culture, and hold on to millennia of acquired knowledge.
• Along with declining southern cassowary numbers, traditional knowledge and values are diminishing in youth who put more attention on Western knowledge and technology.
• The young rangers not only spend time learning in classrooms; they also go out into the traditional country with elders who help shape their character and identity as caretakers of their people, land, Mother Earth and themselves.
• Ranger Manni Edwards says the way to effective conservation in his community, and in Australia, is by bringing together scientific and traditional ecological knowledge, which includes wisdom and values that forge a connection between people and nature.

Manni Edwards credits his journey to preserving the wisdom of his elders to an encounter with goondoi 40 years ago.

At the age of 8, Edwards says, he saw up to 14 colorful goondoi, or southern cassowaries (Casuarius casuarius) moving together in herds, socializing and breeding across the vast wetlands of the cassowary coast in Dyirribarra Bagirbarra Country, what is today the far north of Australia’s Queensland state.

But over the years, these sights have become rare. Along with the bird’s declining numbers, traditional knowledge and the cultural significance of cassowaries have diminished among the young. Also fondly known as a “rainforest gardener” for spreading the seeds of the fruits that it eats, the southern cassowary is listed as endangered in Australia, with only 4,400 left in the wild in the wet tropics region there.

To stop the ongoing loss of knowledge and culture, local leaders bought part of their ancestral land from the state in 1982. They then created a conservation area where the young act as rangers and are taught the traditional ways to conserve it.

full article

Several countries call on international community to pressure Israel in wake of ‘watershed’ opinion by top UN court.

International reaction has poured in since a ruling by the top United Nations court that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should swiftly be brought to an end.

Palestinian officials have hailed the International Court of Justice ruling as a “watershed moment” in their decades-long fight for justice. Israel quickly condemned Friday’s decision, while its top ally the United States criticised the ruling on Saturday after initial silence.

While nonbinding, the advisory ruling by the 15 judges found that Israel has no right to sovereignty over the occupied territory, has violated international laws against acquiring territory by force and is blocking Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

It further determined countries are obligated not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s presence in the territory.

Here’s how the world has reacted:

full article

by Ruth Kamnitzer on 16 July 2024

• Canada’s tar sands are the fourth-largest oil deposit in the world, but separating the bitumen creates large volumes of toxic wastewater, which is stored in tailings ponds that now cover 270 km² (104 mi²). Many experts warn that contaminants from mining and the tailings ponds are entering the environment
• In 2023, 5.3 million liters (1.4 million gallons) of industrial wastewater breached a tailings pond at a tar sands site in Alberta province, raising fears in an Indigenous downstream community. Then the town learned a second tailings pond had been leaking toxic wastewater for at least nine months.
• In March 2024, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation sued the Alberta Energy Regulator over its poor handling of the spills along with alleged regulatory failures. The case is ongoing.
• The incident highlights continuing concerns about the impacts of the tar sands industry on human health and the environment. Experts say government and industry plans for tailing pond cleanup and landscape restoration are far behind schedule, with no viable options now on the table to deal with the fast-growing volume of stored toxic wastewater.

Living downstream from one of the world’s largest industrial projects isn’t easy — especially when things go wrong. When the community of Fort Chipewyan in Alberta, Canada, learned there had been a major spill of toxic wastewater from Imperial Oil’s Kearl tar sands site, it was chaos, says Melaine Dene, acting director of the Mikisew Cree First Nation’s department of government and industry relations.

The remote community of nearly 800 mostly Indigenous people, better known simply as Fort Chip, sits on the southwest shore of Lake Athabasca, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) downriver from the oil sands, a sprawling industrial complex of open-pit mines, smokestacks and tailings ponds in the boreal forest.

In January 2023, 5.3 million liters (1.4 million gallons) of toxic water filled with mining waste, or tailings, overflowed from one of the drainage ditches at the Imperial facility.

But the public didn’t learn of the spill until days later, when the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), the provincial agency that oversees energy development, posted an environmental protection order (EPO) on its website. And the EPO came with another shocking surprise: a second drainage ditch had been seeping toxic wastewater into groundwater for at least nine months.

Neither AER nor Imperial Oil directly notified Indigenous leadership about the spill or the ongoing leakage.

Full article

There is growing concern that a culturally significant and nationally important wetland is under threat from Adani’s controversial coalmine in Queensland, with an Indigenous group demanding the government investigate alleged breaches of the conditions that protect the site.

Scientists say drops in water levels in bores around the Doongmabulla Springs have been detected hundreds of times since mining started, and allege hydrocarbons associated with coal have been found in bores and the springs themselves.

Adani rejected the claims, saying the springs had not been damaged by the Carmichael coalmine, operated by Bravus – a subsidiary of the Indian-owned Adani Group – and the company was fully compliant with environmental conditions.

The springs, located mostly on a nature refuge, are a nationally important wetland and a culturally important site for Wangan and Jagalingou people, and their protection was a condition of the project’s 2016 federal approval by the then environment minister, Greg Hunt.

Burragubba, who has long campaigned against the mine, said the springs, lagoon and a nearby ochre deposit were a sacred place for Indigenous ceremonies.

“We go to reconnect with our ancestors and to hand on the stories of how we began,” he said. “The [state] government’s job is to make sure our human rights are not limited.”

Burragubba’s Nagana Yarrbayn Cultural Custodians group is in Queensland’s supreme court trying to force the state government to act on their warnings about risks to the springs. Part of the push for a judicial review argues the group’s human rights are being restricted.

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Israel has illegally seized more land this year than over the past 20 years combined.

In 2024, Israel illegally seized 23.7sq km (9.15 sq miles) of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, amid its ongoing war on Gaza.

That’s more than the land it took over the past 20 years combined.

On July 2, Israeli authorities announced the largest single seizure in more than 30 years – 12.7sq km (4.9sq miles) in the Jordan Valley.

It was the latest in a series of land grabs announced this year by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oversees settlement planning.

Israel has seized more than 50sq km (19.3sq miles) of Palestinian land since 1998 according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog.

In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera unpacks the land Israel has stolen from Palestinians.

full article

Federal rules and a lack of protection for sacred places left the Indigenous nation with an impossible choice.

When Yakama Nation leaders learned in 2017 of a plan to tunnel through some of their ancestral land for a green energy development, they were caught off guard.

While the tribal nation had come out in favor of climate-friendly projects, this one appeared poised to damage Pushpum, a privately owned ridgeline overlooking the Columbia River in Washington. The nation holds treaty rights to gather traditional foods there, and tribal officials knew they had to stop the project.

Problems arose when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency in charge of permitting hydro energy projects, offered the Yakama Nation what tribal leaders considered an impossible choice: disclose confidential ceremonial, archaeological and cultural knowledge, or waive the right to consult on whether and how the site is developed.

This put the Yakama Nation in a bind. Disclosing exactly what made the land sacred risked revealing to outsiders what they treasured most about it. In the past, disclosure of information about everything from food to archaeological sites enabled non-Natives to loot or otherwise desecrate the land.

Even now, tribal leaders struggle to safely express what the Pushpum project threatens. “I don’t know how in-depth I can go,” said Elaine Harvey, a tribal member and former environmental coordinator for the tribal fisheries department, when asked about the foods and medicines that grow on the land.

The process known as consultation is often fraught. Federal laws and agency rules require that tribes be able to weigh in on decisions that affect their treaty lands. But in practice, consultation procedures sometimes force tribes to reveal information that makes them more vulnerable, without offering any guaranteed benefit.

full article

• In the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, Mario Luna Romero faces constant threats to his life for fighting to protect his community’s rights to its water in the region.
• Within the Yaqui Territory are the remnants of the Yaqui River, which is sacred to the Indigenous tribe and has been drained of all its water after decades of overexploitation, unequal water distribution and droughts.
• Luna was arrested in 2014 and spent a year and 11 days in a maximum-security prison; meanwhile, other colleagues have been harassed by government officials or killed by criminals.
• Mexico, including the Yaqui Valley, is experiencing a deadly heat wave, drought and water shortages.

YAQUI VALLEY, Mexico — On Sept. 11, 2014, Mario Luna Romero was arrested by state judicial police in Obregón, a city on the periphery of his tribe’s territory in Sonora, and transported to a maximum-security prison. They accused him of being involved in the kidnapping of a man with links to the state government and car theft. Despite presenting little evidence to back up those claims, they kept him in an isolated cell for one year and 11 days.

A few months before his arrest, Luna had led a ferocious campaign against the construction of the Independencia Aqueduct that would drastically decrease the Yaqui River’s waters from reaching his tribe’s land, known as the Yaqui Territory. The 172-kilometer (107-mile) aqueduct was approved by the Mexican government to satisfy the water needs of Hermosillo, the state’s capital and largest city. This was done without the consent (or the free, prior and informed consent — FPIC) of the affected Yaqui tribe, as later confirmed by a Supreme Court ruling. The Yaquis, along with other affected groups, organized protests and legal actions to halt its construction.

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The Raven, the story goes, alighted on the beach and heard sounds coming from a giant clamshell. He found creatures cowering inside but, ever the trickster, he cajoled them out into the world. Liberated, they became the first people of the islands of Haida Gwaii.

The Haida people have lived for thousands of years on Haida Gwaii, a remote archipelago in the Pacific Ocean off Canada’s western coast, just south of Alaska.

Nearly wiped out by smallpox after the arrival of Europeans, the Haida clung to their land — so rich in wildlife it is sometimes called Canada’s Galápagos, coveted by loggers for its old-growth forests of giant cedars and spruce.

For decades, despite their geographic isolation, the Haida’s unwavering fight to regain control over their land drew outsize attention in Canada, raising questions about the country’s long unacknowledged, brutal colonial history.

The Haida opposed clear-cut logging, building ties with environmentalists. They forged alliances with non-Haida communities at home and found common cause with other Indigenous groups across the world.

They sued British Columbia for title to their land in 2002, and supported their claims of ancient ties to the archipelago with a museum that showcased their art, artifacts and foundation myths, like the story of the Raven.

Their methodical and painstaking quest came to fruition in May when the government of British Columbia passed a law — the first of its kind in Canada — recognizing the Haida’s aboriginal title throughout Haida Gwaii. No provincial or federal government in Canada had ever willingly recognized an Indigenous people’s title to their land.

Over the next few years, the provincial government’s authority over the land and resources is expected to be handed over to the Council of the Haida Nation, the Haida people’s government.

“On our side, we knew exactly what we wanted, who we were and why we were doing what we did,” said Frank Collison, 89, a hereditary chief who recalled facing unresponsive provincial and federal governments for decades. “They just weren’t interesting in doing anything and quite satisfied to keep us under their thumb.”

full article

Leonard Peltier, the 79-year-old Indigenous activist who has spent nearly 50 years in prison for the 1975 murders of two FBI agents, has been denied parole. Many fear the ruling all but ensures that the longest-imprisoned Indigenous American will die behind bars.

Peltier has maintained his innocence since he was arrested in connection with the deaths that occurred at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota. For decades, advocates such as Coretta Scott King, Nelson Mandela, Pope Francis and James H Reynolds, the US attorney who handled the prosecution and appeal of Peltier’s case, have fought for his release.

Despite evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and due process violations throughout his trial, Peltier will now remain in prison at least until 2026, when the US Parole Commission set his next hearing. His health has severely declined over the past few years, and his supporters considered his most recent hearing, which occurred last month, his last chance of not dying in prison.

On 26 June 1975, years-long tensions between Oglala Lakota traditionalists, who sought to govern in customary ways, and assimilationists, who wanted to adapt to American standards of governance, culminated in a standoff at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Two FBI agents in unmarked cars pursued a vehicle they believed to be operated by Jimmy Eagle, for whom they were serving an arrest warrant, onto a part of the reservation that was occupied by traditionalists.

In the chaos, a shootout erupted and the FBI agents were soon joined by more than 150 Swat team members and other law enforcement. By the end, two FBI agents and a member of the American Indian movement (Aim) – a cold war-era liberation group that supported the traditionalists – had been killed.

Peltier was among the four men who were indicted in connection with the agents’ murders.

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Indigenous land is disproportionately affected by wildfire and their isolated nature makes aid access difficult

When Robert Laboucan pictured his son taking his first steps he imagined it would be at home, maybe even in front of a camera in their living room. Instead, the one-year-old first walked in the hallway of the Flamingo Inn in High Level, the tiny Alberta town where the family have been living for more than a year after escaping the massive wildfires that devastated the Indigenous-owned Fox Lake Reserve.

“It was really hard,” said Laboucan, a member of the Little Red River Cree Nation.

Laboucan, his partner Jennifer, and their five children, aged one-16, are among dozens of fire evacuees still living at the hotel. While they will not get an exact replacement of the home they lost, Laboucan has been told that a new home will be ready for the family by July – approximately 14 months after the 2023 Paskwa fire tore through the Little Red River Cree Nation.

Last year saw Canada’s worst wildfire season ever: 6,132 blazes erupted across the country, destroying 16.5m hectares of land, according to Statistics Canada. A thousand of the fires broke out in Alberta.

And a year later, as Canada braces for another hot summer, many Indigenous communities in the northern parts of the western provinces are still displaced.

“It’s a pretty substantial challenge, actually, for our establishment,” said Flamingo Inn manager Tyceer Abou Moustafa. “At the beginning our suppliers didn’t have enough stock on hand to even maintain feeding the people. So that was a pretty hard challenge of finding new suppliers and new people who could keep up with what we needed.”

Research has shown that Indigenous land in Canada is disproportionately affected by wildfires. A 2019 study from the Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction found that 80% of Indigenous communities are located in fire-prone regions. Matters are further complicated by the isolated nature of many communities which are often outside the jurisdiction of local firefighters and lack infrastructure such as all-weather roads.

A tight-knit community of just over 2,000 people, Fox Lake sits in the forest along the south side of Peace River. After the spring thaw, access is only possible by water.

On 2 May, the blooming Paskwa wildfire drew closer and the population scrambled to evacuate. Residents were told they had just 30 minutes before the flames reached the ferry landing and were urged not to take anything except their families and essentials.

full article

At least six Palestinians have been killed in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), and several homes have been destroyed as Israeli forces pushed deeper into the city and pressed further into Shujayea in northern Gaza.

Israeli tanks, which re-entered Shujayea four days ago, fired shells towards several houses, leaving families trapped inside and unable to leave, residents said. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that “60,000 to 80,000 people were displaced” from Shujayea in recent days.

For those who remain, “our lives have become hell”, said 50-year-old resident Siham al-Shawa.

She told the AFP news agency that people were trapped as strikes could happen “anywhere” and “it is difficult to get out of the neighbourhood under fire”.

“We do not know where to go to protect ourselves,” she said.

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The Congo Civil War, or Congo Crisis, was a complex political tumult that began just days following Belgium’s granting of Congolese independence in 1960. Lasting four years, the associated violence claimed an estimated 100,000 lives including the nation’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, and UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjöld, who was killed in a plane crash as he attempted to mediate the crisis. Escalating with the secession of the southernmost province of Katanga, the conflict concluded five years later with a united Congo emerging under the dictatorship of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu.

On June 30, 1960, Belgium negotiated post-colonial mining rights in declaring an independent Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Yet within days, soldiers of the Congolese army mutinied, demanding increased pay and the removal of white officers from their ranks. When Belgium intervened militarily, more soldiers rebelled. Many of these soldiers gravitated toward the radical nationalist Prime Minister Patrice Emery Lumumba.

Then, dominated by Belgian business interests, the mineral-rich Katanga province under the leadership of Moïse Kapenda Tshombe seceded from the DRC with Belgian support. Congolese President Joseph Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba asked and received a peacekeeping force from the United Nations (UN).

The conflict also became the site of a dangerous Cold War “proxy” contest between western powers led by the United States and the Soviet Union-led Communist bloc. Under pressure from western nations and in exchange for UN support, President Kasavubu purged his government of radical elements including Prime Minister Lumumba. The ultra-nationalist Lumumba, though supported by the Congolese, was viewed by Western business leaders as an obstacle to their continued investments in Congolese diamond mines. Fearing Lumumba was secretly a Communist, the United States was particularly adamant about his removal from power.

Lumumba responded by firing Kasavubu as both leaders claimed control over the country, and Army Chief of Staff Joseph Mobutu in turn orchestrated a military coup d’état which ousted the two leaders. Mobutu’s government was supported by western governments. The Soviet Union and other Communist nations supported Lumumba who ultimately was killed by Katangan rebels.

With his chief rival removed, Mobutu pledged nominal support to President Kasavubu and the two led the successful effort to end the Katanga secession. UN forces eventually recaptured all of Katanga province. In 1964, a new rebellion began in the Eastern Congo when armed fighters (“Simbas”) began to spread across the region. Ironically, Moïse Tshombe, who had led the secessionist Katanga province, was made prime minister with the mandate to defeat these rebels and end other regional revolts. The Simbas were defeated in November 1964.

One year later, Mobutu seized power from President Kasavubu after having persuaded Western leaders that he was the most effective leader in the fight against communism. Kasavubu and Tshombe were exiled as Mobutu set up a one-party dictatorship, controlling the nation until 1997. Nonetheless, for the first time since independence, all of the country was ruled by one government.

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• After more than three years of legal wrangling, a court in Paris has ruled that a civil case brought by Indigenous communities in Mexico against French energy giant EDF can go ahead.
• The case was filed by Zapotec communities in Oaxaca state, who complain that EDF’s Gunaa Sicarú wind farm project violates their land rights and lacks reasonable consultation with communities.
• The case against EDF was filed under the recently approved French Corporate Duty of Vigilance Law, designed to hold French companies accountable for abuses overseas.
• Projects that support the energy transition and climate change mitigation can stir local conflicts similar to those associated with fossil fuels if community rights are not properly considered, experts warn.

JUCHITÁN, Mexico – Indigenous farmers from southern Mexico angry over landscape damage and poor consultations associated with a massive wind power project have had their day in court in France, where judges have allowed their case to proceed.

Zapotec communities from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca and their supporters in Europe launched a legal action against French energy giant EDF, alleging the company failed to prevent violence and intimidation of residents who opposed the wind farms on their ancestral land.

After more than three years of legal wrangling, judges at the Paris Court of Appeals authorized the civil case to go forward in a ruling issued June 18, according to a statement from the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

“This landmark decision sends a clear message for transnational corporations,” said Guillermo Torres, a senior lawyer with the Mexican campaign group ProDESC, which helped launch the court action. “Their activities can be subject to judicial review whenever they fail to comply with the law.”

full article

NICE, France (AP) — A pro-independence leader in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia was transferred to a prison facility in mainland France to await trial on charges relating to two weeks of unrest in May that left nine people dead, the public prosecutor in the territory said Sunday.

Christian Tein, an Indigenous Kanak leader of the pro-independence party known as The Field Action Coordination Unit, was flown to mainland France overnight Saturday, along with six other activists, prosecutor Yves Dupas said in a statement.

The seven Kanak activists were transferred to pre-trial detention on “a specially chartered plane” because of “the sensitivity of the procedure,” Dupas said. Moving the detained activists into custody 17,000 kilometers (10,500 miles) away from their homeland would allow the investigation into their alleged wrongdoings to continue “in a calm manner and without any pressure,” he said.

The Kanak people have sought for decades to break free from France, which first took New Caledonia in 1853.

The top United Nations human rights official has warned of the worsening situation for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the “unconscionable death and suffering” in the Gaza Strip.

“The situation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is dramatically deteriorating,” Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.

He said 528 Palestinians, 133 of them children, were killed by Israeli military forces or settlers from the start of the current war on Gaza in October to June 15, “in many cases raising serious concerns of unlawful killings”.

In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed in clashes with Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, including eight members of security forces, according to the UN’s high commissioner for human rights.

Two weeks ago, Turk said people in the West Bank were being “subjected to day after day of unprecedented bloodshed”.

He spoke as the Israeli military arrested at least five Palestinians during the storming of several towns and villages in Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, which also reported a settler attack on Palestinian farmland in the village of Yasuf, east of Salfit.

Overnight, Israeli forces arrested dozens of Palestinians in Qusrah near Nablus, also in the West Bank, taking them to a school where they were held and interrogated, Wafa reported.

Israeli forces have been rounding up an average of 35 Palestinians a day since the war started, with 9,112 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails as of June 1, nearly double the number of Palestinians jailed on October 1, according to tallies by Palestinian prisoners groups.

full article