Gaza Genocide31 July, 20262 min read
Israeli Military Order Cuts Khirbet Umm Al-Khair Families Off From Sheep Pen And Home
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Israeli military order seals homes, sheep pen, and bathroom at Khirbet Umm al-Khair. Measures follow settler attacks and press residents to abandon the village.
Khirbet Umm al-Khair Sealed
Residents of Khirbet Umm al-Khair in the occupied West Bank said an Israeli military order imposed after a series of settler attacks left families cut off from their sheep pen, bathroom and parts of their home.
“‘Behind these iron bars, we are constantly prisoners. Impossible to go out in the evening.”
They said the measures are part of growing pressure to force them from their village, and the Al Jazeera report frames the restrictions as imposed by Israeli military action.
In Taybeh, Fouad Muaddi described a daily commute from Taybeh to Ramallah as a “gauntlet” with “Eighteen long, nerve-wracking kilometers” and waits at Israeli army checkpoints where passage permissions are uncertain.
Muaddi said, “Behind these iron bars, we are constantly prisoners. Impossible to go out in the evening. The best is to barricade ourselves to protect ourselves.”
Wall, Orders, and Land Loss
France Palestine Solidarité reported that Israel threatens to close Mount Tammun, expel Palestinian communities and de facto annex the area, where about 50,000 dunams (more than 1,200 acres) of open, elevated, and green lands remain for Palestinians—especially shepherds. The report says Major General Avi Bluth, head of the Israeli army's Central Command, signed nine land-seizure orders for the construction of a new barrier crossing Mount Tammun last August, and that the project is declared under the name Crimson Thread.
It also says the petition filed with the Israeli High Court argues the barrier will separate the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank and deprive Palestinians of about 50,000 dunams of their lands. In the same account, an Israeli army spokesperson told +972 that the project is based on a clear security need aimed at shaping the terrain and controlling and monitoring vehicle traffic between the eastern border and the valley.
Qabatiya Operation and Violence
Ouest-France reported that the Israeli army ended a two-day operation in Qabatiya, a town in the occupied West Bank, after a Palestinian attacker who killed two people in Israel originates there. The report says the army launched the operation on Friday immediately after a Palestinian, driving his vehicle, ran down a man in his sixties in northern Israel and then stabbed an 18-year-old Israeli woman, and that the attacker was wounded by gunfire shortly after and arrested.
It adds that the mayor of Qabatiya, Ahmed Zakarné, said 50 residents had been briefly detained as part of the operation, with the exception of the attacker’s father and his two brothers, and that the army’s bulldozers destroyed the roadway of several streets and erected barriers to block traffic. The same article ties the wider war context to Gaza, saying that since the Gaza war began, sparked by Hamas’s deadly attack carried out on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023, at least 38 people have been killed in Israel in attacks launched by Palestinians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.