Rights and Accountability 7 November 2025
Palestinians who have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s attacks struggle to cope with difficult living conditions as winter approaches. Israel continues to block proper shelter materials from entering. Nuseirat refugee camp, Gaza, 5 November.
APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 6 November livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
In Gaza, Israel has continued to routinely kill and injure Palestinians in spite of the 10 October ceasefire, while desperately needed humanitarian aid, including shelter materials, medicine, basic food items and supplies for infrastructure repair remain blocked, and as most of the crossings remain closed.
On 5 November, Israel killed two Palestinians in separate incidents, claiming that they had crossed the so-called yellow line where the Israeli army maintains control. Al Jazeera reported that little information has been given about the location of this line, and it is still being physically marked on the ground, presenting another deadly hazard for Palestinians.
Reporter Ebrahim Saeed documented the invisible partition in northern Gaza, where Palestinians explain that they cannot reach their homes and belongings, and are constantly threatened by Israeli snipers and tanks.
On 4 November, one Palestinian was killed and another was wounded when an Israeli quadcopter drone opened fire in eastern Gaza City, and another was killed in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, again with the Israeli army claiming that it fired on the individual for crossing the so-called yellow line.
Palestinians were shot and wounded by Israeli forces on Monday, 3 November, in southern Gaza.
Civil defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said that Israeli forces opened fire on a wedding in the eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Shujaiya that same day, wounding several children including an 8-year-old girl, Sundus Heles.
Basal said that the attack took place inside the so-called “safe yellow line” zone in that part of eastern Gaza City, “an area designated under the US-brokered ceasefire as a first-phase boundary where Israeli occupation forces were meant to withdraw and halt all aggression.”
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stated on 31 October that since the beginning of the ceasefire, 219 Palestinians had been killed, including 85 children.
Across the eastern, northern and southern parts of the Gaza Strip, beyond where the Israeli army has designated the vague yellow line boundary, Israel has continued to use bombs and airstrikes to evaporate entire blocks and destroy any trace of Palestinian homes, agricultural land and infrastructure.
Euro-Med said that these actions “suggest Israel is consolidating a new reality, allowing itself to conduct continuous military operations in areas it controls, covering roughly 50 percent of Gaza, while removing these areas from the ceasefire framework, without engaging in combat operations aimed solely at destruction or eliminating future livelihoods.”
Five Palestinian fishers were arrested on Tuesday after Israeli gunboats opened fire on their fishing boats just off the Gaza Port, “forcing fishermen to jump into the water … before being bound and arrested,” according to a statement by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees.
Israel continues to ban Palestinians from fishing despite the ceasefire agreement.
Palestinian bodies returned
Palestinian bodies that were returned to Gaza by Israel this week were so badly decomposed that they were difficult to identify, according to a Gaza health ministry official who spoke to Al Jazeera on Wednesday.
The official said that one of the returned bodies was missing a head.Bodies have been routinely returned to Gaza with visible signs of field executions and torture. Health officials say efforts to identify the remains have also been hindered because Israel is not allowing DNA testing equipment into Gaza, Al Jazeera noted.
The Ministry of Health said that 285 Palestinian bodies have been received since 10 October, but only 84 of those have been identified.
Fraction of expected humanitarian aid enters Gaza
Israel continues to use food and healthcare as weapons, 25 months into the genocide and nearly four weeks into a so-called ceasefire.
The Gaza government media office stated that since 10 October, only 145 trucks are entering Gaza daily on average, which is fewer than one-quarter of the agreed-upon minimum of 600 trucks that should be entering in order to meet the basic needs of Palestinians.
The media office added that only 10 percent of the anticipated 1,100 fuel trucks have entered as well, “reflecting the continued policy of deliberately restricting and obstructing the vital energy supplies needed to operate hospitals, bakeries and essential facilities.”The Norwegian Refugee Council says that it is one of nine international humanitarian aid agencies that have faced repeated rejections by Israel, blocking them from bringing in lifesaving shelter materials as winter and the rainy season approach.
“Since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October, Israeli authorities have rejected 23 requests from nine aid agencies to bring in urgently needed shelter supplies such as tents, sealing and framing kits, bedding, kitchen sets and blankets, amounting to nearly 4,000 pallets. Humanitarian organizations warn that the window to scale up winterization assistance is closing rapidly,” the group said on Wednesday.
The Norwegian Refugee Council’s regional director Angelita Caredda said, “We have a very short chance to protect families from the winter rains and cold. More than three weeks into the ceasefire, Gaza should be receiving a surge of shelter materials, but only a fraction of what is needed has entered. The international community must act now to secure swift and unimpeded access.”
At least 259,000 Palestinian families, more than 1.45 million people, need emergency shelter assistance, the group added.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces abducted a worker with UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency, on 30 October, while he was working at one of the only two crossings that are partially open for humanitarian aid deliveries.
Raed al-Afifi was detained and taken by Israeli forces, and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor says that “no information has been provided by Israeli authorities regarding his location or the charges against him.”Euro-Med says that in a related development, the Israeli army “had requested the agency [UNICEF] to withdraw its trucks and supplies from Kerem Shalom [crossing] a day before the arrest and subsequently prevented the entry of aid trucks carrying medical equipment for hospitals in northern Gaza, as well as vaccinations for newborns and nutritional supplements.”
The targeting of UNICEF, the group says, “is part of a broader campaign to restrict United Nations agencies and international humanitarian organizations, aiming to end their presence and operations after they witnessed widespread violations affecting Palestinian civilians during the war, and to further deprive the population of livelihoods and essential services in Gaza.”
Escalation of attacks, siege in West Bank
Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have escalated their attacks and destruction in the northern city of Tulkarm, with extensive bulldozing operations in the Tulkarm refugee camp which has been under siege for more than 280 days.
The Wafa news agency reported that Israeli soldiers have tightened military measures and closed all entrances to the camp, preventing residents from reaching their homes. Barriers, including iron gates and concrete blocks, have been installed in the camp and in the city’s neighborhoods adjacent to the camp, and have seized nearby homes and turned them into military bases.
Wafa reports, “This escalation comes as the aggression and siege on the nearby Nur Shams camp enter the 270th consecutive day.”
Local journalist Wafeya Ulhadi recorded a protest on Wednesday, as residents demanded the right to return to their homes and rejected forced displacement.
Wafa news agency said that the Israeli soldiers blocked the residents’ advance and forced them to disperse at gunpoint.
More than 5,000 families have been displaced from Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps in the past 10 months, and more than 600 homes have been destroyed, leaving the camps uninhabitable.
2,400 attacks by army and settlers in October
Israeli soldiers and settlers carried out nearly 2,400 attacks across the occupied West Bank during the month of October alone, according to statistics from the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission in Palestine. The army was responsible for nearly 1,600 of the assaults, and settlers carried out nearly 800.
“The attacks ranged from direct physical assaults, uprooting of trees, burning of fields, preventing olive pickers from reaching their lands, seizing property, and demolishing homes and agricultural facilities. On the other hand, the occupation forces are closing large areas of land under the pretext of enforcing ‘security,’ while the colonizers are granted expansion within said lands,” the commission stated.
Wafa news agency reported that Jewish Israeli settlers attacked and injured three Palestinians west of Yatta, south of Hebron on 5 November.
The settlers released their livestock into the fields, damaged crops and fruit trees, and then physically assaulted the residents, leaving three with injuries.
Settlers also destroyed olive groves in the village of Turmus Aya on Wednesday, setting fires that damaged fruit-bearing trees, causing losses for farmers and threatening this year’s olive harvest.
The Turmus Aya lands and surrounding areas are subjected to frequent and repeated attacks by settlers, especially in recent weeks.
And settlers carried out a gruesome attack on sheep owned by Palestinian farmers this past week in the southern West Bank.
Footage from a surveillance camera shows nine masked Israeli settlers, armed with clubs, raiding the property of the Dramin family, on the outskirts of the village of Samu in the South Hebron Hills.The video shows the settlers “shattering windshields and torching harvests, as three of the men enter the sheep pen and beat lambs in front of the ewes. The security camera filmed one of the settlers throwing lambs onto the floor, throwing concrete blocks at them and beating them, as another settler hit the others. Six lambs were killed and four others were severely injured,” the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported.
Other sources indicated that some of the lambs had their eyes gouged out by the settlers.
Highlighting resilience
And finally, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Gaza and around the world.
Students at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City are registering for classes, after two years of trying to complete their education – while also trying to survive a genocide.
In a short video produced by Middle East Eye, one student says that she hopes to finally obtain her right to education, including by taking in-person classes. Muhammad Shabbir, a university administrator, says that in the third year of this war, the college was happily surprised that the number of student registrants was higher than any year before.
He says “this demonstrates that there is living, undying Palestinian will in the hearts of all of our students.”
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