Palestine weekly: Violent disruptions from olive groves to Al-Aqsa Mosque

A new season approaches – religiously, politically and agriculturally – and with it comes corresponding escalation.

Israeli soldiers are seen during an army raid in the occupied West Bank refugee camp of al-Ein, near Nablus, Thursday, September 17, 2026 [Majdi Mohammed/AP Photo]

This week’s events offered a glimpse of what the coming autumn may hold for Palestinians: Israeli ministers and settlers asserting themselves at Al-Aqsa Mosque; a pardon granted to a soldier convicted of killing a wounded Palestinian; and a tender advanced for a crucial settlement project timed to close just days before Israelis vote on October 27. As Israeli politicians stake out expansionist and even messianic ambitions during Judaism’s holiest days, attacks, demolitions and closures have continued across the occupied territories — with the consequences likely to extend well beyond the changing of the seasons.

Occupied East Jerusalem: A holy day consumed by campaigning and closures

On the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured a network of excavation tunnels running beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the Old City, before joining thousands of settlers for prayers at the Western Wall behind bulletproof glass. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed the mosque compound itself the following morning under heavy police protection; roughly 570 settlers entered to perform religious rituals in violation of the site’s status quo, with more than 450 storming the compound the morning after, according to the news agency Wafa. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, which holds custodianship over the site, condemned the incursions as an attempt “to impose a temporal and spatial division” of the compound.

list 1 of 3 Child among four Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza

list 2 of 3 Israeli forces arrest dozens of Palestinians in occupied West Bank raid

list 3 of 3 Undeterred by fines, Al-Shaair pays tribute to Palestinian girl Wafaa Akila

The same holiday period saw Israeli forces close the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron to Muslim worshippers from Sunday afternoon until Monday night, while granting settlers free access for holiday celebrations; the mosque’s call to prayer has now been banned for 90 consecutive days.

West Bank: Killings and villages under siege

On September 20, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man near the illegal Ganim settlement east of Jenin after accusing him of attempting a vehicular attack. Hours earlier, an Israeli settler had been fatally shot near the illegal Halamish settlement; Israeli forces detained a suspect, Qadri Muhammad Samara from Biddu, after violently raiding a hospital where he was receiving treatment after being injured. Soldiers then raided Samara’s home village, where soldiers forced members of three families into a single house and assaulted four men inside, according to local reports.

Ben-Gvir immediately demanded that Samara face the death penalty, calling it the “first case that meets the criteria” of a law the Knesset passed in March — one that permits military courts to sentence to death Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis, but carries no equivalent provision for Israelis convicted of killing Palestinians. Netanyahu ordered the demolition of Samara’s family home and a surge of forces into the West Bank; Israeli forces subsequently sealed all entrances to Ramallah and el-Bireh and conducted a sweeping predawn arrest raid in Biddu on Monday, according to Wafa.

In the same week that Ben-Gvir called for the death penalty, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog expunged the criminal record of Elor Azaria, the soldier convicted in 2017 of manslaughter for shooting dead a wounded, incapacitated Palestinian, Abdul Fattah al-Sharif, in Hebron in 2016. Israel’s own military chief of staff opposed the pardon, noting Azaria “has refrained from expressing remorse… even a decade after his conviction”; Defence Minister Israel Katz welcomed the move as sending “an important message… [that] we do not abandon our fighters.”

Separately, a Palestinian prisoner, Moataz al-Atrash, 21, from Hebron, died this week in Ofer Prison after more than 11 months held under administrative detention without charge; his family said he had no known health problems. The Palestinian Prisoner’s’ Society said the number of confirmed prisoner deaths since October 2023 has now reached 92.

Beyond the killings, settler pogroms continued across the West Bank as security forces stood aside or actively assisted them. Attacks were concentrated in villages like Burqa, near Ramallah, where settlers attacked September 19, then returned the next afternoon to occupy an agricultural structure on the village’s eastern edge, appearing to prepare it for habitation — a possible new illegal outpost in the making.

With the olive harvest season fast approaching, Israeli settlers cut Palestinians’ trees in Yabad, Nilin and Khirbet Firasin near Jenin this week, while grazing sheep through Palestinians’ olive groves in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, according to field reports.

All the while, demolitions and displacement continued in parallel. According to local field reports, Israeli forces razed a community structure in Deir Ballut, west of Salfit, and a two-story home in Masafer Yatta housing eight people, most of them children; settlers then prevented the displaced family from erecting a replacement tent. In Tulkarem, occupation forces posted notices seizing land around the Banat Yacoub shrine and other sites under the pretext of archaeological preservation — the shrine is registered as property of the Islamic Waqf, according to Wafa.

Gaza: Infrastructure collapses amid mounting shortages

In Gaza, meanwhile, deadly strikes continued while infrastructure collapsed in systemic and quite literal terms. An Israeli drone strike on September 19 killed the eldest son of Gaza’s Health Ministry director-general, moments after he stepped out of his displacement tent. The same day, a drone strike on a civilian vehicle in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan market killed one person and wounded four; the body was burned beyond recognition after the vehicle caught fire for half an hour before rescuers could reach it.

Days earlier, in what was described by Gaza-based activists as an apparent double-tap strike, a 15-year-old boy was killed as he rushed to help a paramedic who had just been wounded in an earlier attack — part of a pattern in which Israel has killed roughly one child a day in Gaza since an October 2025 “ceasefire” took hold. By September 21, 2026, Gaza’s Ministry of Health put the death toll in Gaza since the “ceasefire” at 1,394 killed and 4,839 wounded; a total of 73,914 have been killed since October 2023, with thousands of bodies still thought to be buried under the rubble.

Following several other similar collapses in recent weeks, a six-storey building in Gaza City’s al-Sinaa district, already weakened by earlier Israeli strikes, collapsed onto residents and nearby displacement tents on September 16, killing 21 people — 12 of them children. Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Al Jazeera that nearly 100 people remained under the rubble as crews worked with severely inadequate equipment. A second building collapsed in al-Sabra two days later. Gaza’s Ministry of Public Works warned that more than 2,000 damaged buildings across Gaza remain at risk of similar collapse.

Alongside physical collapse, Gaza’s health system continued to see a deterioration in basic capabilities. Seventy percent of hospital generators are now out of service for lack of fuel and spare parts, according to medical sources cited by Wafa, while al-Ahli Arab Hospital’s main generator has failed for lack of oil and spare parts — taking offline the only functioning CT scanner in northern Gaza.

On September 17, Israeli authorities blocked the exit of part of a medical evacuation convoy, cutting the number of patients and family members permitted to travel to Egypt for treatment from 136 to 61; the Health Ministry accepted only the most critical cases and sent the rest back in protest, warning the policy amounts to “a flagrant violation of the right to medical treatment” that exposes patients to “the risk of death”, according to Wafa.

宗教、政治和农业都即将迎来新的季节，随之而来的是相应的局势升级。

2026年9月17日星期四，以色列士兵在被占领的约旦河西岸难民营纳布卢斯附近的艾因进行军事突袭。[Majdi Mohammed/AP Photo]

本周发生的事件预示着即将到来的秋季可能给巴勒斯坦人带来的后果：以色列部长和定居者在阿克萨清真寺展现强势姿态；一名因杀害受伤巴勒斯坦人而被定罪的士兵获得赦免；一项关键定居点项目的招标提前完成，截止日期恰好在10月27日以色列大选前几天。在犹太教最神圣的节日期间，以色列政客们大肆宣扬其扩张主义乃至弥赛亚式的野心，而袭击、拆毁和关闭行动仍在被占领土上持续进行——其后果很可能远远超出季节更迭的影响。

被占领的东耶路撒冷：圣日被竞选活动和封锁所吞噬

在犹太历中最神圣的赎罪日前夕，以色列总理内塔尼亚胡视察了阿克萨清真寺建筑群和老城下方的隧道网络，随后与数千名定居者在防弹玻璃后的西墙祈祷。第二天早上，国家安全部长伊塔马尔·本-格维尔在严密的警力保护下强行进入清真寺建筑群；据瓦法通讯社报道，约有570名定居者进入清真寺进行宗教仪式，违反了该地现状；第二天早上又有超过450人强行进入清真寺。约旦外交部作为该地的监护方，谴责这些入侵行为是企图“在时间和空间上分割”该建筑群。

名单1/3：在以色列对加沙的袭击中丧生的四名巴勒斯坦人中有一名儿童

以色列军队在被占领的西岸地区突袭，逮捕数十名巴勒斯坦人（共3条记录，此为第2条）

名单3/3：无视罚款，Al-Shaair向巴勒斯坦女孩Wafaa Akila致敬

在同一假期期间，以色列军队从周日下午到周一晚上关闭了希伯伦的易卜拉欣清真寺，禁止穆斯林信徒进入，但允许定居者自由进入庆祝节日；该清真寺的祈祷召唤已被连续禁止90天。

西岸：杀戮和被围困的村庄

9月20日，以色列军队在杰宁以东的非法定居点加尼姆附近枪杀了一名巴勒斯坦男子，指控他企图发动车辆袭击。数小时前，一名以色列定居者在非法定居点哈拉米什附近被枪杀；以色列军队暴力突袭了嫌疑人卡德里·穆罕默德·萨马拉所在的医院，萨马拉此前因受伤正在该医院接受治疗。随后，据当地报道，士兵们突袭了萨马拉的家乡，强迫三户人家的成员挤进一间房子，并殴打了屋内的四名男子。

本-格维尔立即要求判处萨马拉死刑，称这是“首例符合”以色列议会3月通过的一项法律规定的案件——该法律允许军事法庭判处杀害以色列人的巴勒斯坦人死刑，但对杀害巴勒斯坦人的以色列人却没有类似的规定。内塔尼亚胡下令拆毁萨马拉的家，并向西岸增派兵力；据瓦法通讯社报道，以色列军队随后封锁了拉马拉和比雷赫的所有入口，并在周一凌晨对比杜进行了大规模逮捕行动。

就在本·格维尔呼吁判处死刑的同一周，以色列总统伊萨克·赫尔佐格撤销了埃洛尔·阿扎里亚的犯罪记录。阿扎里亚是一名士兵，他于2017年因在2016年于希伯伦枪杀受伤且失去行动能力的巴勒斯坦人阿卜杜勒·法塔赫·沙里夫而被判过失杀人罪。以色列国防军总参谋长反对这项赦免，指出阿扎里亚“即使在被定罪十年后，也从未表达过悔意”；国防部长以色列·卡茨则对这一举动表示欢迎，认为这传递了一个“重要信息……那就是我们不会抛弃我们的战士”。

另据报道，一名来自希伯伦的21岁巴勒斯坦囚犯穆阿塔兹·阿特拉什本周在奥弗监狱去世。他已被行政拘留超过11个月，且未被提出任何指控。他的家人表示，他此前并无已知的健康问题。巴勒斯坦囚犯协会称，自2023年10月以来，已确认的囚犯死亡人数已达92人。

除了杀戮之外，针对定居者的种族清洗在西岸各地持续进行，而安全部队却袖手旁观甚至积极协助。袭击集中在拉马拉附近的布尔卡村等地。9月19日，定居者袭击了布尔卡村，第二天下午又返回并占领了村庄东侧的一处农业用地，似乎在为居住做准备——这可能是一个新的非法据点正在形成。

据实地报道，随着橄榄收获季节的临近，本周以色列定居者在杰宁附近的亚巴德、尼林和希尔贝特菲拉辛砍伐了巴勒斯坦人的橄榄树，同时在希伯伦以南的马萨费尔亚塔放羊穿过巴勒斯坦人的橄榄树林。

与此同时，拆迁和驱逐行动也在同步进行。据当地实地报道，以色列军队在萨尔菲特以西的代尔巴鲁特夷平了一处社区建筑，并在马萨费尔亚塔拆毁了一栋两层楼房，该房屋内居住着八人，其中大部分是儿童；随后，定居者阻止了这户流离失所的家庭搭建新的帐篷。在图勒凯尔姆，占领军以考古保护为借口，张贴公告，没收了巴纳特雅库布圣陵及其他遗址周围的土地——据瓦法通讯社报道，该圣陵登记在伊斯兰宗教基金会名下。

加沙：基础设施在物资短缺加剧的情况下崩溃

与此同时，加沙地带的致命袭击仍在继续，基础设施也从系统层面和实际意义上彻底崩溃。9月19日，以色列无人机袭击了加沙卫生部总干事的长子，他刚走出安置帐篷不久便被炸死。同一天，加沙城谢赫拉德万市场一辆民用车辆遭到无人机袭击，造成一人死亡，四人受伤；车辆起火燃烧了半个小时后，遇难者的遗体才被烧得面目全非，救援人员赶到时已无法辨认。

几天前，在加沙活动人士所描述的疑似“双重打击”中，一名15岁男孩在冲向一名刚刚在早些时候袭击中受伤的医护人员时被杀害——自2025年10月“停火”生效以来，以色列在加沙地带平均每天杀害一名儿童，这只是此类事件的冰山一角。截至2026年9月21日，加沙卫生部公布的数据显示，自“停火”以来，加沙地带已有1394人死亡，4839人受伤；自2023年10月以来，死亡总人数已达73914人，据信仍有数千具尸体被埋在废墟下。

继近几周发生多起类似倒塌事件后，9月16日，加沙城锡纳区一栋六层建筑倒塌，砸中居民和附近的难民营帐篷，造成21人死亡，其中包括12名儿童。该建筑此前已因以色列的空袭而受损。巴勒斯坦民防发言人马哈茂德·巴萨尔告诉半岛电视台，近百人仍被埋在废墟下，救援人员使用严重不足的设备进行救援。两天后，萨布拉区又发生一起建筑倒塌事件。加沙公共工程部警告称，加沙各地仍有2000多栋受损建筑面临类似倒塌的风险。

随着基础设施的崩溃，加沙的医疗卫生系统基本能力持续恶化。据瓦法通讯社援引医疗消息人士的话称，由于缺乏燃料和备件，70%的医院发电机已无法使用；而阿赫利阿拉伯医院的主发电机也因缺油缺件而发生故障，导致加沙北部唯一一台仍在运行的CT扫描仪停止工作。

9月17日，以色列当局阻止了部分医疗后送车队的出境，将获准前往埃及接受治疗的患者及其家属人数从136人减少到61人；卫生部只接收了病情最严重的患者，并将其余患者遣返以示抗议，并警告称，该政策“公然侵犯了获得医疗救治的权利”，使患者面临“死亡风险”，瓦法通讯社报道称。