Far-right Israeli ministers have moved beyond rhetoric to propose concrete mechanisms for the forced removal of Palestinians from Gaza, while violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank continues to intensify. Defence Minister Israel Katz told a conference last week that expelling Palestinians from Gaza is "the only solution", stating that Israel is prepared to do it "by sea, by air and by every way possible". He added that US President Donald Trump has merely "frozen" — not abandoned — his support for the idea. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir went further, unveiling a seven-year plan he called "Disengagement 710" to remove Gaza's roughly two million residents through what he termed "voluntary emigration", and pledging to establish a Migration Ministry if re-elected. The US State Department said it "does not support any plan or proposal for the forced displacement, expulsion, or mandatory transfer of the population of Gaza" but stopped short of directly condemning either minister by name.
In Gaza, near-daily strikes have continued to drive up the death toll. Strikes over the past week killed multiple civilians, including a three-year-old boy struck by an artillery shell at a school sheltering displaced families in Deir el-Balah, and a young girl, Wafaa Akila, killed alongside her father in a drone strike near Gaza City. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports 73,658 people killed and 174,622 wounded since October 2023, with more than 1,340 deaths occurring since an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire announced in October 2025. Gaza civil defence chief Raed al-Dahshan said his teams could recover an estimated 8,000 bodies still beneath the rubble within 90 days if given heavy equipment, warning that without it "this work will continue for years". The World Health Organization has reported that water contamination has nearly tripled since January, and all five of Gaza's wastewater treatment plants have shut down entirely.
In the occupied West Bank — Palestinian territory under Israeli military control since 1967 — the village of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, has become a focal point of settler violence. Six residents, including three pupils from the local school, have been killed this year. On the first day of the new school year, barbed wire had been installed around the school compound, ambulance crews stationed outside, and parents volunteered to stand watch all day. An ambulance driver in the village described a clear shift in the behaviour of Israeli forces: "At the beginning of 2025, settler attacks were few, due to the army's interventions. In 2026, the situation changed completely: the settlers became fully protected by the occupation soldiers." A UN Commission of Inquiry published in June found that settler attacks have "instrumentalized children as part of a broader coercive strategy to drive Palestinians off their land"; Israel dismissed the report as a "libellous sham".
Broader demolitions and sieges have meanwhile continued across the West Bank. Israeli forces demolished all 12 remaining homes in the community of Khirbet al-Tabban in Masafer Yatta, leaving 70 people homeless, and destroyed water wells and greenhouses in Beit Ummar. In East Jerusalem, a four-apartment building in the al-Bustan neighbourhood was demolished — the 60th such demolition there since October 2023. Within the Israeli military itself, there are signs of unease: according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, senior officers have warned that the proliferation of new settler outposts — many built without adequate security infrastructure — is stretching already overstretched forces and raising fears that a mass-casualty settler attack on Palestinians could trigger a wave of reprisals across the West Bank. The number of Israeli military battalions deployed in the West Bank is set to reach 26, a record figure, even as forces remain heavily committed in Gaza and on Israel's northern fronts.