Israeli forces have withdrawn from the Qalandiya refugee camp, north of occupied Jerusalem, after a two-day military operation that injured at least 51 Palestinians, demolished homes and commercial structures, and resulted in the detention of more than 70 people. The Jerusalem Governorate described the operation as large-scale, saying forces raided and searched dozens of dwellings, converted several apartments into makeshift detention and interrogation centres, demolished seven homes and a number of other structures, and imposed a curfew on the neighbouring town of Kafr Aqab while sealing off roads connecting the area to Jerusalem.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported that 35 people were hospitalised after severe beatings, six more were treated at the scene, one person was struck by a rubber-coated steel bullet, and six others suffered tear gas inhalation. Ambulance crews were blocked from reaching the wounded for much of Wednesday night, though they eventually managed to evacuate several patients, including people requiring kidney dialysis. Israeli soldiers fired stun grenades at journalists stationed at the camp's entrance and ordered them to leave. The Palestinian Prisoner's Club said more than 60 people, including children and women, were subjected to field interrogations. Israeli forces also raided the city of Jenin on the same day, shooting one Palestinian and assaulting another, according to PRCS. Separately, in Khirbet al-Tuba, a community in the southern West Bank, around 40 settlers attacked Palestinian families late on Wednesday, setting fire to rooms inside homes and injuring at least five people, including a woman and her daughter.
The same week brought a rare legal development: Israeli prosecutors charged settler Yinon Levi with reckless manslaughter in the death of Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian community activist involved in the 2025 Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. Hathaleen was killed in July 2025 during a confrontation in the village of Umm al-Khair when settlers operated a large excavator on Palestinian land. It is the first such settler indictment since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. Rights group B'Tselem, while welcoming the charge, called it "the exception that proves the rule," arguing that impunity for settler and soldier violence is not a system failure but a deliberate policy.
The violence unfolds against a stark backdrop. Rights groups have recorded more than 11,000 Israeli military and settler attacks across the West Bank in the first half of this year alone, with more than 2,300 Palestinians displaced due to settler violence. UN figures show at least 18 Palestinians have been killed in settler-linked incidents so far this year. A UN commission of inquiry concluded in June that Israeli authorities have repeatedly failed to prevent foreseeable settler attacks and, in some cases, have directly enabled violence through army protection and the provision of weapons and funding to settlers. Several Western governments — including the United Kingdom, Canada and France — have imposed sanctions on individual settlers and ministers over their roles in the violence, though the United States revoked its limited settler sanctions earlier this year.