Palestine Weekly: West Bank on fire – and Gaza’s tents under water

Heavy rains battered the Gaza Strip, turning makeshift shelters into disaster zones. The storm flooded about 70,000 tents in just 12 hours, killing at least five people and causing about $3m in damage, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

By Monday, Gaza’s Civil Defence had logged more than 2,100 distress calls, warning that more than 2,000 buildings risk collapse. Nearly 400,000 displaced people shelter in areas judged highly vulnerable.

Among the dead were Tahrir Nabhan and her daughter Maryam, and Habiba al-Zein, who were buried under a sand embankment that fell onto tents at a displacement site southwest of Deir el-Balah on November 8.

The humanitarian situation is compounded by Israel’s restrictions. Israel is blocking 60,000 mobile homes and 200,000 tents, allowing only 20,000 tents into Gaza, where about 85 percent of homes have been destroyed or damaged by Israel’s three-year war.

Gaza’s Crossings and Borders Authority said Israel also let in no aid trucks or commercial goods on November 6 and 7; five trucks of cooking gas entered the next day.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says Israel notified the UN on November 1 that it would suspend shipments from Egypt, and aid groups warn daily cooked meals could fall from about 600,000 to 330,000 as a result.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health says 20 more Palestinians were killed over the past week, bringing the toll since the October 2025 “ceasefire” to 1,613 as of November 9.

The toll includes Rimas al-Madhoun, 16, who was killed in a strike on a tent in Gaza City on November 3, and Noura Sheikh al-Eid, who was killed by tank fire in al-Mawasi on November 5.

On November 8, Nermin al-Amour and Mahmoud Abu Hammad were killed in a Khan Younis strike, and 12-year-old Adnan al-Qirnawi was shot and killed east of Bureij the same day.

The weekend storm came as Hamas urged mediators and the Board of Peace not to link reconstruction to political or security conditions.

Political deadlock in Israel

The storm’s devastation in Gaza coincides with a political crisis in Israel. President Isaac Herzog gave opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot the mandate to form a government over the weekend after 67 members of parliament recommended him, against 46 for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Eisenkot wants a “national emergency government” open to any party accepting four principles, including recognition of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state, and Hamas as a “terrorist” group to be destroyed.

For his part, Netanyahu gave a speech seeking a “national unity” government with Eisenkot, Likud, and his Haredi and far-right allies, warning that a government reliant on Arab-led parties would be backed by those who “want to eliminate Israel”.

One of the Arab-led blocs, the Joint List, has said its priority is to topple the Netanyahu government, but that it cannot join an administration that violates international law.

It has also said it expects action on education, welfare and crime if it is to support Eisenkot from outside government.

In discussions with Herzog, Mansour Abbas, the leader of the other Arab-led party, the United Arab List (Ra’am), declined to call Hamas a “terror” group, citing fear for his family, while backing its disarmament.

Avigdor Liberman, leader of the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, repeated that no government should rely on either Palestinian-led party.

Beyond the rhetoric, journalist Abed Abou Shhadeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was released without charge on November 8 after five days in the custody of the domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, saying his arrest was meant “to intimidate Arab society as a whole”.

The Shin Bet chief sought to question leaders of the Palestinian-led parties, but Israel’s attorney general says the fraud probes would not “even remotely” change the result of the election.

Tensions on the streets led to a far-right march through a Palestinian neighbourhood in the mixed city of al-Lyd (Lod) on the evening of November 8, which ended in a brawl and 11 arrests.

West Bank escalation

The West Bank is also witnessing a surge in violence. On November 4, about 30 settlers backed by the settler group Nachala entered Ein a-Duyuk a-Tahta, near Jericho, and took over eight Palestinian homes.

Peace Now, citing reports, said settlers shot a Palestinian man in the leg, and the UN said the army declared a closed military zone, blocking humanitarian access.

Settlers say they bought the homes through Nachala; Jericho Governor Hussein Hamayel called the sale a forgery.

For months, the state has backed settlers’ land razing and takeover efforts in the area, and that continued this week.

Haaretz reported that Central Command chief Major General Avi Bluth knew of the entry in advance and told the settlers not to alert senior officers until they were inside, with three army platoons diverted to protect the settlers during the takeover of houses.

The army called the Haaretz report false.

But Jericho was only the most dramatic case of a multi-pronged escalation in which land seizures, demolitions, attacks and arrests unfolded in the West Bank, with settlers, soldiers and the Civil Administration often working in concert.

OCHA counts 377 harvest-related attacks since September 1, more than any previous season. In October alone, OCHA documented 457 attacks causing casualties or damage in the West Bank, the most in any month since it began counting in 2006.

In Burqa, northwest of Ramallah, settlers set olive groves on fire on November 5 while forces stopped residents from putting them out.

Near Salfit, settlers beat three young men with clubs on November 8, and on November 9 they drove farmers off land near Silwad and injured one near Tayasir.

Demolitions continued with the destruction of 21 structures belonging to three families in the northern Jordan Valley on November 4, and five homes in Biddu the next day.

On November 9, a 200-square-metre house, its well and fruit trees were razed in al-Hijra, near Dura.

Sieges and closures also intensified. Settlers entered the sixth week of a nearly complete siege of Yusuf Shanaran’s home in Wadi al-Rakheem.

A similar settler siege continues of the Abayet family home in Umm Safa, which recently received demolition orders from the Israeli Civil Administration, despite it being built before Israel’s occupation began in 1967.

In the south, forces closed Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque to Palestinians for two days during a Jewish holiday, days after the army ended a 10-day operation in the city.