The final stretch before Israel’s elections is unfolding in an increasingly charged political atmosphere, with parties and candidates keenly aware of how each move will affect voters. This week, ministers launched an illegal settlement in the West Bank in a ceremony that served as a campaign speech, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defiantly addressed the United Nations General Assembly as delegations left. filming himself threatening to kill imprisoned Hamas figure Hassan Salameh. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on the army to “go to war” in the occupied West Bank. This all unfolded around the time of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, which brought closures and raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Settlement openings, demolitions and closures for holidays. On September 23, Israeli ministers and members of parliament attended the founding ceremony of the new illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, Metzoke Eretz, Haaretz reported. Politicians, including Smotrich, argued that only a Netanyahu-led government would maintain the momentum of settlement construction. The site had previously been the Netzah Harel outpost, established in 2023, in the vicinity of the now ethnically cleansed Bedouin community of al-Muarrajat al-Wasat on private Palestinian land. Metzoke Eretz is one of 104 settlements that the Israeli government has legalized – even though they remain illegal under international law – during its mandate. Demolitions continued next to the settlement building, focusing on Masafer Yatta, a Palestinian community in the southern occupied West Bank, which has seen a large number of large-scale demolitions in recent weeks. Israeli forces razed 24 houses in the village of Jinba on September 23, displacing about 180 people, more than 80 of them children, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Meanwhile, after days of road closures for Palestinians throughout the occupied West Bank, Israeli authorities on Sunday announced a week-long closure of the territory and its crossings for the Jewish holidays. Forces closed roads and entrances to villages around Ramallah, including Turmus Aya, Aboud, Nabi Saleh, Atara and Taybeh, and set up checkpoints in Yabrud, Ein Siniya and Jaba. The Palestinian Wafa news agency described “severe and unprecedented” congestion that day, with hundreds of vehicles stranded at checkpoints. On Monday, soldiers in Atara prevented ambulances from crossing, forcing residents to transport patients in private cars and deliver them to the checkpoint, according to field activists Ayed Jafry and Fidaa Barghouthi. Jafry also reported that soldiers closed the Sinjil gate, the only entrance to the city. In occupied East Jerusalem, the Palestinian movement was further restricted to make way for the settler cult. On September 24, far-right Rabbi Yehuda Glick led a group in religious rituals inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which has since been visited by thousands of settlers during Jewish holidays. Tensions were already high after a Palestinian allegedly drove into a group of Israelis at a checkpoint west of Ramallah on September 23, seriously injuring Neria Leiter, son of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, before being shot dead. The grovesIsraeli settlers uprooted olive trees in Beit Ur al-Fauqa, and Israeli bulldozers razed groves in Nabi Saleh and Beit Rima, destroying hundreds of trees, many of them centuries-old, according to local activists. Israeli authorities called Nabi Saleh’s operation a security measure linked to the murder of a settler near the illegal settlement of Halamish on September 20, but activists noted that the grove is not even close to the spring where According to Wafa, as the harvest approached, settlers were seen and documented stealing olives in Sinjil, Turmus Aya and Umm Safa on Monday. Pogroms also continued, including in Farkha, where dozens of settlers, some carrying military rifles, beat two men on September 24. reported.Gaza: Killings continue under ‘ceasefire’In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, daily killings continued amid drone attacks on people’s homes and camps for displaced people. Among the dead of the week, according to local reports and accounts from activists, is Jabr Muqbil, 34, an exchange office owner killed in Deir el-Balah on September 24, when relatives who went to the scene were injured in a follow-up attack. Israel claimed that Muqbil was a member of Hamas. Separately, on September 23, Osama Abu Khater and Mohammad Abu Elwan were killed in a drone strike in al-Mawasi, with Israel describing the latter as a Hamas finance official. On Saturday, 12-year-old Muhammad Sief al-Din al-Shakhrit was reported dead in the al-Mawasi area. And on Sunday, 28-year-old Oday Adli al-Assar was killed in a drone strike in Khan Younis. Then, on September 28, an attack on the roof of a house housing displaced people in the al-Mashahara area of Gaza City killed Amal Khalid al-Ajla and injured others. Conditions in the besieged Strip continue to deteriorate, and Israel continues to prevent sufficient aid from arriving. A UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report this week found that 92 percent of Gaza’s economic establishments were damaged or destroyed. The US-created Peace Board had said it would not work with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, in Gaza. And although junta envoy Nickolay Mladenov announced a $2.45 billion reconstruction package for the Strip, he linked its full implementation to the disarmament of Hamas. Over the course of the week, the Gaza Health Ministry recorded the deaths of another 27 Palestinians, bringing the post-ceasefire death toll to 1,421. The number of Palestinians killed since the start of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023 surpassed the 74,000 mark, reaching 74,022 as of September 28.
