As international isolation deepens over reports of sexual abuse and the widening seizure of Gaza, Israel presses on with strikes, demolitions and settler attacks through the Muslim holiday.
Even Eid al-Adha — one of the two major holidays of Islam, which took place last week — has not been able to stem a relentless tide of Israeli attacks, demolitions and incursions across occupied Palestine.
At least 33 Palestinians were killed and more than 130 wounded over the four days of Eid, from May 27 to May 30, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, despite a ceasefire covering the enclave.
Among the dead was Ahmad Ali Helles, 37, who was reportedly the sole surviving member of his immediate family and was killed in a drone strike on Shawa Square in Gaza City. Dr Jamal Abu Aoun, head of anesthesia at Yafa Hospital, was also killed by Israeli forces near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.
In Khirbet Masoud, near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, a settler torched a Palestinian home and car. “Mazel tov” — Hebrew for “congratulations” — was spray-painted across the walls in apparent mockery of Eid holidays.
Israeli soldiers also fired tear gas at families visiting relatives’ graves in Jenin, a common custom during Eid Al-Adha, while Israeli security forces pulled the headscarf off a woman visiting Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Several Israeli entities were added on May 28 to the annual blacklist of parties maintained by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, following credible suspicions of patterns of rape and conflict-related sexual violence. The same list also includes the Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Guterres’s accompanying report, covering 2025, documented UN-verified cases affecting 14 men, seven women, nine boys and one girl from Gaza and the West Bank. These cases were attributed to the Israeli military, the Israel Prison Service and special police units.
The notorious Sde Teiman military camp and several facilities used to detain Palestinians have also been cited as sites of abuse. Israel responded by cutting ties with Guterres.
The report coincides with growing international outrage over the Global Sumud Flotilla scandal, in which Israeli forces violently detained activists travelling onboard ships attempting to provide Palestinians in besieged Gaza with essential humanitarian aid.
France this week asked prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into the treatment of its citizens detained from the flotilla.
The European Union sanctioned four additional entities and three individuals who it described as extremist settlers. Those sanctioned included Nachala and its director Daniella Weiss, as well as Regavim, another settler movement co-founded by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signalled an intent to entrench Israel’s hold over Gaza in a direct contravention of the October “ceasefire”.
On May 28, he publicly directed the army to expand its control of the Gaza Strip from approximately 60 to 70 percent in footage aired by Israel’s Channel 12. When an audience member shouted that Israel should take the whole of Gaza, he replied: “We are going in order — first 70 percent.”
Netanyahu’s declaration was just a semiformal acknowledgement of creeping Israeli expansionism in Gaza. In mid-March, the Israeli army quietly sent maps to aid organisations showing it had pushed roughly 11 percent beyond the “yellow line” of demarcation agreed under the October ceasefire. This brought 64 percent of Gaza, rather than the 53 percent stipulated in the October agreement, under direct Israeli control.
In response, Germany’s Foreign Ministry expressed opposition to any permanent division of the enclave, according to the Times of Israel, while Hamas called the order a “dangerous escalation”, according to AFP.
Two Likud Party ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet, May Golan and Amichai Chikli, separately called for Israeli settlements to be rebuilt inside Gaza, according to the Times of Israel.
In Gaza, Israel has intensified an assassination campaign against the Hamas leadership amid growing fears of a return to full-blown war.
On May 26, Israel killed Mohammed Odeh, the newly appointed head of Hamas’s armed wing, along with his wife and children in a strike on Gaza City. This came just 11 days after the killing of his predecessor, Izz al-Din al-Haddad.
Israeli military radio has framed the assassinations as preparation for “the resumption of fighting”. At the same time, footage released this week showed an anti-Hamas militia in Gaza operating military drones. Some believe these drones could have been provided by Israel. If this is true, it would mark an escalation in the direct armed support that Israel provides to such groups.
Hours after Odeh’s funeral on 27 March, an Israeli air raid on a residential building in Gaza City killed at least 10 people, including four children.
A day earlier, a drone strike on a gathering in eastern Maghazi killed five — reportedly targeting a group of Palestinians planning to confront one of the Israeli-backed militias.
On May 31, an Israeli helicopter struck a crowded cafe near Gaza City’s fishermen’s port, where people had gathered to escape the heat. The attack killed at least two Palestinians and wounded around 18. On the same day, a drone strike on the Abu Dhaher family home in Bureij refugee camp killed Khaled Abu Dhaher and wounded four people, including a child who is in critical condition, according to Gaza activist Hamza al-Masri.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian enclave’s humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate, with aid inflows severely restricted by Israel. The director of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital — the only government hospital in central Gaza, which serves half a million people — announced that operating rooms had ceased functioning after a fourth backup generator failed, with the dialysis, neonatal and intensive care units at risk of shutting down.
Eight months into the ceasefire, reconstruction efforts by the Board of Peace appointed by US President Donald Trump remain stalled. The Financial Times reported that none of the $17bn pledged has reached the board’s World Bank fund, with the fraction of funds actually delivered routed to a private JPMorgan account outside UN oversight.
Since the October 11 ceasefire, as of June 1, at least 932 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. At least 72,941 have been killed since October 7, 2023, with many other bodies still buried under the rubble.
In the West Bank, the Eid holiday saw a surge of settler violence, concentrated in the south and the villages around Ramallah and Nablus. The most serious attack came on May 30 in Madama, south of Nablus, where dozens of settlers from a newly established illegal outpost shot and wounded seven Palestinians.
Three brothers were hit by live fire, and a 72-year-old was shot in the foot. Settlers stole more than 100 sheep, according to separate reports from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Wafa and Israeli field monitor Jonathan Pollack. Israeli soldiers reportedly fired alongside them and blocked Red Crescent crews from reaching the wounded.
On May 31, Israeli forces also killed 26-year-old Imad Ishtayeh as he attempted to cross Israel’s separation barrier near ar-Ram in search of work. Videos that circulated on social media showed his limp body being carried down from the wall.
Elsewhere, field reports described settlers torching homes and vehicles — including one filmed incident in which settlers pushed a Palestinian’s car off a cliff near Deir Abu Mash’al after the owner, who survived the ordeal, refused to hand over the keys of his car.
Reports from Wafa and local activist networks described repeated settler raids on Bedouin communities across Masafer Yatta, including the assault of a woman and her grandson in Khirbet al-Markaz. There were also reports of soldiers detaining shepherds, in
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