Rights and Accountability 31 October 2025
Palestinians mourn their loved ones who were killed in Israeli strikes, Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, 29 October
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 30 October livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
In Gaza, Israel continued to break the ceasefire by killing and injuring Palestinians in airstrikes and drone attacks, and by sustaining the brutal siege on humanitarian aid and necessary equipment to feed people, rebuild infrastructure and save lives.
On 28 October, Israel claimed that Palestinian resistance forces killed an Israeli soldier in Rafah, and alleged that the body of an Israeli captive transferred from Gaza by Hamas did not match one of the 13 to be handed over as part of the ceasefire.
The Israeli government stated that it would resume wide-scale attacks, and that night, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 104 Palestinians, including 46 children, and injured more than 250.
Journalist Mohamed Al-Jabary filmed Palestinians carrying the bodies of their loved ones, including many children wrapped in small white shrouds, to cemeteries on Wednesday morning.
Hamas rejected Israel’s claims, saying its armed wing had no connection to any attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, and called on the international mediators to take immediate action to rein Israel in.
The political party called Israel’s airstrikes “an extension of a series of violations committed over the past few days, including attacks that resulted in deaths and injuries, and the continued closure of the Rafah crossing, which confirms the insistence on violating the terms of the agreement and attempting to sabotage it.”
Since the ceasefire took hold on 10 October, at least 211 Palestinians have been killed and approximately 600 injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The Gaza government media office tallied at least 125 violations by Israel of the ceasefire before Tuesday’s attacks.
Included in that number were at least 52 shooting operations directly targeting civilians, nine incursions of its vehicles into residential neighborhoods, crossing the so-called Yellow Line, in addition to 55 shelling and targeting operations and 11 bombings of civilian buildings. Twenty one citizens were arrested in various areas of the Gaza Strip as well, the media office stated.
On 27 October, an Israeli drone strike near Khan Younis in the south killed at least two Palestinians.
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s airstrikes, Gaza’s civil defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said that rescue workers were still trying to recover the dead and wounded from underneath massive amounts of rubble. Hospitals were overwhelmed with injured people, he said.
Reporter Ahmed Kaheel captured this clip of a rescue operation on Tuesday night:
“What is happening in Gaza today is a disgrace to humanity and highlights the international community’s complicity through its silence in these violations,” Basal stated.“The continuation of these crimes amidst the world’s silence is an unforgivable moral and humanitarian failure,” he said.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud stated on 29 October that emergency medical staff at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City were reporting that their patients were coming in with severe shrapnel injuries from the Israeli missile strikes.
“The bombs and drone missiles fired by the Israeli military are packed with shrapnel – nails and pieces of metal – and when they explode, that flies at very high speed and pierces through bodies.”
“Many patients are bleeding internally. That’s increasing the pressure on medical staff,” Mahmoud said.“And the fear did not end. There are still drones here in the skies of Gaza City. The kamikaze drones are hovering at a very dangerous, low level, causing panic and fear.”
On Wednesday, 29 October, two Palestinians were killed in the northern city of Beit Lahiya after Israel claimed it targeted a weapons storage facility, in direct continuation of attacks even after it announced it was back to abiding by the ceasefire following the massacres on Tuesday.
Unidentified bodies buried
More Palestinian bodies were returned to Gaza this week by the Israeli military, many showing indications of torture and field executions and many were returned unidentified.
Forty one bodies were buried with dignity in southern Gaza on 27 October.
Journalist Tamer Qeshta captured this clip of civil defense workers preparing the bodies for burial.
The health ministry in Gaza announced that it was opening up a new civil office to work on identifying the remains of hundreds of Palestinians who have been returned to Gaza by Israel without any identifying information.
The ministry also launched an online portal to help families identify their missing relatives.
Over the past week, approximately 100 bodies of Palestinians belonging to the al-Shaheibar family, who were massacred in November 2023 in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, were finally recovered and buried by their surviving relatives and community nearly two full years after they were slaughtered.
Reporter Saed Hasballah filmed the preparations:
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor had carried out initial documentation of the series of massacres. According to its research, the attacks, “which took place over two days – 17 and 18 November 2023 – saw the use of aircraft and drones to target residential buildings, civilians inside their homes, and those attempting to bury relatives killed in earlier attacks.”As civil defense crews try to recover thousands of Palestinians still missing and buried under the rubble caused by two years of Israel’s ongoing assault, Israel maintains a total blockade on heavy machinery and recovery equipment.
But it did allow in several heavy vehicles from Egypt in order to only locate and retrieve the bodies of the remaining Israeli captives.
Reporter Issa Syam filmed Egyptian heavy machinery operating in central Gaza on Monday.
Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill talked about the double standards in the context of whose bodies are deemed more important to recover, on Democracy Now! earlier this week.
Escalating settler attacks in West Bank
Turning to the occupied West Bank, we continue our reporting on the escalating attacks by Jewish Israeli settlers and soldiers on Palestinians.
The Electronic Intifada’s Tamara Nassar reports that in the first two weeks of the olive harvest season, which began in October, the UN monitoring group OCHA documented more than 85 harvest-related settler attacks on Palestinians and their property across 50 towns and villages in the occupied West Bank.
Settlers stormed the village of Tuba in Masafer Yatta, in the southern West Bank, earlier this week. The local activist organization Youth of Sumud uploaded this clip on 25 October.On Wednesday, Israeli settlers reportedly destroyed hundreds of ancient olive trees in the village of Qaryout, south of Nablus, according to the Wafa news agency.
Farmers said they were shocked to find their olive trees destroyed when they entered their lands in the western area of the village after obtaining a two-day access permit from the Israeli army.
The lands are located near the illegal colony of Eli, built on the lands of the villages of Qaryout, al-Sawiya and al-Lubban al-Sharqiya.
Local sources noted that this is the second consecutive year that settlers have carried out similar acts of destruction in the same area, Wafa reported.
On Wednesday evening, Israeli settlers attacked the village of Burqa, east of Ramallah, Wafa stated.Settlers attacked the outskirts of the village and attempted to storm it before being confronted by local residents. Israeli forces later stormed the village following the attack, Wafa added.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army raided the village of Umm al-Kheir in Masafer Yatta on Tuesday morning, and handed residents a stack of demolition orders – the latest in a decades-long series of attacks and plans to completely destroy the Masafer Yatta villages and expand the nearby settlement colonies.
Village resident Eid Hathaleen recorded this clip on Tuesday, showing the demolition orders.
Highlighting resilience
Finally, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Gaza and around the world.
In Gaza, volunteers with the Sameer Project, a mutual aid organization, recently kicked off their new initiative – called “Let’s Build It” – to rebuild areas in Gaza City and the north.
They sang songs in honor of the homeland, and cleared rubble by hand, with shovels, and with small tractors.
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