Escalating Violence Across Palestine: Raids, Al-Aqsa Incursions, and Gaza Infrastructure Collapse

Israeli soldiers were documented during an army raid in the occupied West Bank refugee camp of al-Ein, near Nablus, on Thursday, September 17, 2026. This week’s events offered a stark glimpse of the coming autumn for Palestinians, marked by 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 just days before Israelis vote on October 27.

As Israeli politicians stake out expansionist ambitions during Judaism’s holiest days, attacks, demolitions, and closures have continued across the occupied territories. In occupied East Jerusalem, on the eve of Yom Kippur, 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. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir subsequently stormed the mosque compound under heavy police protection, while roughly 570 settlers entered to perform religious rituals in violation of the site's status quo. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the incursions, and Israeli forces simultaneously closed the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron to Muslim worshippers.

Across the West Bank, violence escalated further. On September 20, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man near the illegal Ganim settlement east of Jenin. Hours earlier, an Israeli settler had been fatally shot near the illegal Halamish settlement, prompting the detention of Qadri Muhammad Samara from Biddu. Itamar Ben-Gvir demanded the death penalty under a newly passed Knesset law, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the demolition of Samara’s family home. Concurrently, 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. Additionally, Palestinian prisoner Moataz al-Atrash died in Ofer Prison after more than 11 months under administrative detention.

In Gaza, deadly strikes continued alongside systemic infrastructure collapse. An Israeli drone strike on September 19 killed the eldest son of Gaza’s Health Ministry director-general, while another strike in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan market killed one person and wounded four. By September 21, 2026, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported that the death toll since the October 2025 ceasefire had reached 1,394 killed and 4,839 wounded. Furthermore, structural instability led to the collapse of a six-storey building in Gaza City’s al-Sinaa district, killing 21 people, predominantly children, as Gaza's health system faced severe shortages of fuel and medical evacuation capabilities.