Israel to establish more settlements in the West Bank – Middle East crisis live

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Baby born after his mother was murdered on October 7 attacks dies

Relatives and friends of Tzeela Gez, who was shot dead in the West Bank while driving to hospital with her husband to give birth, mourn during her funeral in Jerusalem, May 15, 2025. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

A baby who was delivered after his mother died during Hamas’ attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 has died.

He has “fought to live” until today, the IDF said.

“A mother murdered on her way to give life and a baby who never got the chance to live it.

“Hamas celebrated the attack. And this is who we fight.”

“It is with great sadness and pain that we learned this morning of the death of baby Ravid Chaim, son of Tzeela and Hananel Gez,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “There are no words that can offer consolation for the murder of a newborn baby along with his mother.”

Meanwhile, three Palestinian children were slaughtered by Israeli airstrikes overnight, according to local hospitals.

Occupation forces demolished Palestinian structures in A home and a livestock farm in the town of Yatta, south of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, on May 28, 2025. Photograph: APAImages/Shutterstock

Palestinians in the West Bank are sharing their stories of being exiled from their homes by occupying forces as Israel announces 22 new illegal settlements in the region.

Salaam Ka’abneh, a lifelong resident of the Bedouin village of Ras al-Ayn in the Jordan Valley, told Sky News that even though he and his family have lived on the land for over half a century, he fears they could be forcibly evicted by Israeli “settlers”.

Ka’abneh said:

About a year and four months ago, settlers cut off our access to water and grazing land. They also stole more than 2,000 sheep from us in the Tel Al-Auja compound. We face daily assaults, day and night.

They terrorise our children and women, throwing stones, firing bullets, and creating chaos with their vehicles. We are under siege. We no longer have access to pasture or water, and our sheep remain caged.”

Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, told Sky that Israel doesn’t hold settlers accountable.

On the contrary - settlers know that if they act violently, they’ll receive support from all branches of the government. There’s full impunity. In fact, it’s more accurate to say settlers function as a branch of the government.

It’s daylight robbery of land - sanctioned by Israeli authorities,” Michaeli continues.

And it amounts to ethnic cleansing - displacing large parts of the Palestinian population to make the area available for Israeli use.”

In response to the Israeli Cabinet’s decision to establish 22 new settlements, Israeli NGO Peace Now tells the Guardian that the annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is Israel’s “central goal.”

My colleague Bethan McKernan has written about her time as the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent.

Three days before Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, I was helping friends who live in Gaza City gather armfuls of guava in their orchard in Beit Hanoun, in the north of the Strip, when something strange happened.

Hamid and Rania* had bought the small plot the year before. It was overgrown, but over the changing seasons they’d worked hard on their expensive acquisition. I called it the secret garden, a tiny oasis in the midst of the dry, dirty misery of Gaza.

As well as guava, there were apple, fig, lemon, orange and olive trees. The couple planted grapefruit and pomegranate saplings, and dug vegetable beds for tomatoes, herbs and spices. Rania also put in yellow and red chrysanthemums in flowerpots made out of stacks of worn-out car tyres.

Read more about Bethan’s experiences here…

An Israeli excavator demolishes a Palestinian house in the town of Yatta, south of the West Bank city of Hebron, on May 28, 2025. Mideast Hebron Palestinian House Demolition - 28 May 2025 Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

Human rights groups and anti-settlement NGOs say a slide towards at least de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank has quickened since the war in Gaza began following Hamas’s attack on Israel back in October 2023.

“The Israeli government no longer pretends otherwise: the annexation of the occupied territories and expansion of settlements is its central goal,” the Peace Now group said in a statement.

They added that the move “will dramatically reshape the West Bank and further entrench the occupation”.

In an announcement, Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Yoel Smotrich, preemptively defended the move, arguing: “We have not taken a foreign land, but the heritage of our ancestors.”

Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, delivered an emotional address to the security council.

He broke down in tears as he described the suffering of Palestinian children and the ongoing war in Gaza. He slammed his fist on the table, pausing his speech, and told the summit: “I have grandchildren, I know what they mean to their families.”

It has been 600 days since the war in Gaza began, killing more than 54,000 Palestinians

A picture says a thousand words. And the imagery slowly seeping out of Gaza tells a story that many politicians and media figures are still doing their best to ignore or obfuscate.

Israel kills thirteen Palestinians in overnight strikes

Here’s a reminder of what the World Food Programme has said about the desperate humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.

The WFP says 100% of people in Gaza face acute levels of food insecurity; 70,000 children in the region are expected to require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition; $265 million is needed for WFP operations in Gaza and the West Bank from March to August 2025, and famine threatens people across the region as violence intensifies, border crossings remain closed and food is dangerously scarce.

The WFP calls on the prioritisation of civilians by allowing adequate aid into Gaza immediately.

More information is available on their website.

Palestinians receive aid from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Khan Younis
Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Responding to the chaos surrounding distributing aid in Gaza, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) say they are concerned that new aid mechanisms will prevent humanitarian aid to be delivered in the region in a way that conforms to established humanitarian principles like independence, impartiality and humanity.

In a statement on Thursday an ICRC spokesperson said:

The ICRC cannot work under any mechanism that doesn’t allow us to uphold those principles and our modalities of work. The ICRC and other humanitarian organizations have decades of experience in distributing aid safely and with dignity.

Humanitarian aid should not be politicized nor militarized. This erodes the neutrality required to ensure assistance is delivered based solely on need, not political or military agendas.

The level of need in Gaza right now is overwhelming, and aid needs to be allowed to enter immediately and without impediment. Aid must reach those who need it most, irrespective of where they are in Gaza, safely and with dignity.

The ICRC remains committed to responding to the humanitarian needs in Gaza, provided this can be done in line with its core humanitarian principles. The ICRC manages and distributes humanitarian supplies directly to conflict-affected persons or together with our partners, so we can verify where items go. Our deliveries of aid into Gaza are conducted in full transparency with all relevant authorities. Given the immense need for humanitarian assistance on the ground, we urgently call on authorities to speed up the process to deliver life-saving aid and to help facilitate a safe environment for delivery.”

“We’re not leaving areas we’ve conquered” says Israeli finance minister

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has voiced his disapproval of the new US proposal for a phased ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas.

“I object to giving a lifeline to Hamas,” Smotrich tells Radio 103FM. “Hamas is in distress. The new [Israeli-backed] system for handing out aid cuts off Hamas from the residents.

“We’re not leaving areas we’ve conquered,”

IDF strikes on Gazan refugee camp kill 19, health ministry says

A series of “major” Israeli strikes on residential buildings in Bureij refugee camp have killed 19 people, bringing today’s death toll to at least 37, Al Jazeera reports.

This is a developing story. More to follow.

In his 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth renders a rich plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, the French president. The conspirators are pied-noirs, the term used to describe Frenchmen born in Algeria during the colonial occupation there. They grieve De Gaulle’s exit from north Africa, which they regard as a betrayal. Unable to remain in the former colony, they return home – dejected and emasculated – and murderous. In many ways, the pied-noirs regard themselves as being more French than the French…

Here’s some background information on the conflict in the West Bank courtesy of the Associated Press:

Israel has already built well over 100 settlements across the territory that are home to some 500,000 settlers. The settlements range from small hilltop outposts to fully developed communities with apartment blocks, shopping malls, factories and public parks.

The West Bank is home to three million Palestinians, who live under Israeli military rule with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centres. The settlers have Israeli citizenship.

Israel has accelerated settlement construction in recent years — long before Hamas’ October 7 attack ignited the war in Gaza — confining Palestinians to smaller and smaller areas of the West Bank and making the prospect of establishing a viable, independent state even more remote.

The top United Nations court ruled last year that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and called on it to end, and for settlement construction to stop immediately. Israel denounced the non-binding opinion by a 15-judge panel of the International Court of Justice, saying the territories are part of the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

During his first term, President Donald Trump’s administration broke with decades of U.S. foreign policy by supporting Israel’s claims to territory seized by force and taking steps to legitimize the settlements. Former President Joe Biden, like most of his predecessors, opposed the settlements but applied little pressure to Israel to curb their growth.

Katz: Settlement expansion 'a step towards reinforcing our eastern axis'

Driven by Defence Minister Israel Katz and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, the decision will look to renew illegal settlement activity in northern Samaria and build new settlements on the Jordan Valley border.

Defence minister Katz, whose critics have accused him of using genocidal language directed at civilians in Gaza, said:

The decision to establish 22 new settlements in the West Bank strengthens our presence in the area and affirms our commitment to ensuring security for the population centres of Israel,” Katz said. “It is a step toward reinforcing our eastern axis and addressing ongoing security challenges.

Opening summary

Welcome to our ongoing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East

Israel has authorised 22 Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, including the legalisation of outposts already built without government authorisation, its defence minister has said.

We’ll be bringing you more on this shortly. In other developments:

• Four people have died as thousands of starving Palestinians burst into a United Nations warehouse in Deir al-Balah in Gaza. Two were fatally crushed and two others died of gunshot wounds, health officials said. It was not immediately clear if Israeli forces, private contractors or others had opened fire.

• Donald Trump has claimed he warned Israel against attacking Iran because he believed he was very close to a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme. As part of that deal US inspectors will be given unparalleled access to sites to ensure the country is not planning to build a nuclear bomb.

• Thousands of family members of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza held protests across the country, blocking traffic and calling for a deal securing the release of their loved ones from captivity and an end to the conflict.