Palestine Weekly: Gaza Celebrates the Year of 'Ceasefire' with More Israeli Killings

One year after the Gaza ceasefire, Israeli attacks continue as settler violence disrupts olive harvests in the West Bank.

The Gaza "ceasefire" celebrated its first anniversary on October 10, but more than 100 humanitarian and human rights organizations said it existed "in name only".

Islamic Aid noted that Israeli forces have killed or wounded a Palestinian in Gaza every 90 minutes since the ceasefire was implemented.

List of 3 items List 1 of 3 Gaza: still being reported

List 2 of 3 explosions in northern Israel left at least 1 dead and 19 injured

List 3 of 3 Israeli university and Al Jazeera contributor Avery Goldberg has died at the age of 50

The end of the list, Gaza's health ministry put the death toll since the ceasefire at 1,493 and 5,299 wounded as of October 12, up from 1,460 the week before. The cumulative death toll since October 2023 has reached 74,382.

Among the Palestinians killed in Gaza during the past week:

Four Palestinians were killed in a drone strike near the Panda shopping center in western Gaza City on Saturday, which Israel said targeted members of the Hamas elite.

Also, on Saturday, eight-year-old Shahed al-Najjar was killed by Israeli fire inside his tent in the west of Gaza City.

Seven-year-old Jihad al-Ghandour died from injuries sustained in a separate shooting near the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza City on Sunday.

A child and his mother were killed on Thursday when Israeli warplanes attacked a house in al-Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City after an evacuation warning.

According to Ambassador Arjan Wafa, a drone attack on Sunday on a charging point west of Khan Yunis killed four people.

Two other men were killed in Monday's attack near a mosque in al-Mawasi in the south.

In statements describing the attacks, the Israeli military claimed that some of those killed this week were Palestinian fighters.

The Israeli military said the two men killed near a Jordanian field hospital were Islamic Jihad operatives. Wafa identified one as a recently released ex-prisoner.

Separately, it said a civil defense worker killed while responding to the wounded near the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza was a Hamas sniper. Hamas denied the claim and it has not been independently verified.

Gaza's health system continued to collapse:

Gaza's Ministry of Health announced that 44 percent of essential medicines had been completely destroyed.

A report by Doctors for Human Rights Israel shows that a year after the ceasefire, none of Gaza's 36 hospitals are operating at full capacity.

According to a joint statement by non-governmental organizations, more than 18,500 patients require medical evacuation and more than 1,000 people have died waiting.

The Ministry of Health said this week that no patients were allowed to leave the Rafah crossing last week.

Israeli forces have also this week continued to push the so-called Yellow Line, which extends Israeli control further into residential neighborhoods in Gaza City, causing fresh displacement.

A year into the cease-fire, the peace council — Gaza's transitional watchdog — has failed to meet most of its key commitments: Without international stabilization, the force has been deployed, aid trucks are arriving at roughly a third of the agreed-upon rate, and Israel now controls nearly two-thirds of the strip — well above the roughly 50 percent it was supposed to retain before further withdrawals and handing future control to the Palestinians.

The Palestinian olive harvest - traditionally a time for family and celebration - has sped up as Israeli settlers and soldiers intensify efforts to disrupt it. Harvesters were killed, attacked and blocked, while isolated families faced days of siege by settlers.

On October 7, Ali Hassan Yaser al-Bazari, 44, was killed when settlers and soldiers opened fire on olive pickers in farmland between Burqa and Ramin, northwest of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. According to Ambassador Arjan Wafa, at least 16 other people were injured during this massacre.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces attacked ambulance crews trying to attack injured olive pickers and briefly detained three rescuers. The soldiers later raided a nearby village and were captured, while the settlers who carried out the raid passed through unchallenged.

According to Wafa, the Palestine Wall's Colonization and Resistance Commission recorded 19 settler attacks on Friday alone, 12 more on Saturday, and 18 more on Sunday.

Israeli human rights group Yesh Din previously documented 109 settlement incidents related to harvest in 75 Palestinian communities in a 10-day period between September 27 and October 6.

The commission says settlers and soldiers have destroyed about 50,000 trees so far this year.

According to Wafa reports and field reports of local residents and activists, these attacks were carried out from village to village in a familiar way:

Settlers in Kasra stole a farmer's olives before bulldozing more than 50 of his trees.

In Birin, settlers from the recently established Adorim outpost set a dog on a 79-year-old woman harvesting nearby and hospitalized her.

Migrants from the same outpost cut power to approximately 20 homes repeatedly throughout the week.

In al-Maghir, northeast of Ramallah, soldiers followed settlers into the village's residential streets on Sunday, kicked an elderly woman trying to reach her home, and fired live bullets and tear gas into homes "for no reason," according to Israeli field monitor Jonathan Pollack. The daily raids are part of a months-long campaign by the settlers against the villagers there.

According to Wafa, in Deir Abu Mashal, a solidarity protest organized by the Wall and Settlement Commission was attacked by settlers in area B, injuring eight people, including a photojournalist who was shot in the thigh.

Israeli forces also frequently prevented harvest. Soldiers used drone loudspeakers to evict farmers from Wadi Abouin and drove away collectors in several other locations.

Israeli settler chat groups themselves show how they frame such attacks in reverse – through a messianic lens, casting Palestinian harvesters arriving on their land in Deir Abu Mashal as an attempt to “seize” the land, and harvesting olives as cover for Palestinians gathering “intelligence,” not picking olives that families have harvested there for generations. Since the unofficial harvest began late last month, settlers have been repeatedly stealing olives from Palestinian lands.

Once again, Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, postponed the Palestinian parliamentary elections - this time to September - citing Israel's restrictions on electoral materials and the entry of observers into Gaza and East Jerusalem and the continuous violence of the settlers. Mustafa Barghouti, of the Palestinian National Initiative, said the decision showed that "everything is concentrated in the hands of the executive," without an independent parliament or judiciary to check it.

In Israel, with high-stakes parliamentary elections scheduled for Oct. 27, Joint List leader Yosef Jabarin said his coalition — made up mostly of Palestinian citizens of Israel — is ready to back a coalition against current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from outside the government.

The Times of Israel reported that the support was offered in exchange for political commitments, including a path to Palestinian statehood — a potential path to a majority that polls suggest neither bloc can achieve without the support of Arab parties.