The Israeli occupation forces intensified their attacks on the Gaza Strip between May 20 and 26, 2025. According to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Media Observatory on Israeli Crimes against Palestinians, the number of Palestinians murdered during the period reached 491, with 1,489 injured. The total number of Israeli occupation crimes reached 2,801 across the Palestinian territories.
In seven days, the Israeli occupation forces targeted the Musa Bin Nusair School, which is affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and the Al-Nasr Model School in western Gaza, in addition to committing a massacre in the Al-Jarjawi School in the Al-Daraj neighborhood, a popular market in Dabr Al-Balah, a hospice in central Gaza, and a diesel plant, in addition to bombing and besieging Al-Awda Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli forces committed many massacres in north Gaza, especially in the Jabalia camp, amid the extermination of entire families due to bombing, murdering, and burning, the most prominent of which was the murdering of 9 children of a Palestinian mother in southern Gaza, along with the 18,000 Palestinian children who have been murdered since the beginning of the aggression, more than a year and a half ago.
The Israeli occupation forces murdered the director of civil defense operations in the Gaza Strip and prevented civil defense personnel from reaching targeted areas in Rafah. A journalist was also murdered during this period, coinciding with the occupation forces’ deliberate shelling of civilian gatherings. The number of Palestinians murdered from October 7, 2023, to May 26, 2025, has reached 55,411, with 130,986 injured.
The repercussions of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip varied between international action, amid the impotence of international relief organizations, and brutality on the other hand, represented by a member of the US House of Representatives’ call to bomb “Gaza with nuclear weapons.” This came as European countries reviewed their relations with Israel, the occupying power, and coincided with a Western rush to recognize the State of Palestine. Meanwhile, United Nations organizations confirmed that the aid entering Gaza represents a “drop in the ocean” of the Strip’s needs, while the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on Israel, the occupying power, to show “mercy.”
In the West Bank and occupied Al-Quds, the occupation forces carried out 362 raids, arresting 174 Palestinians, including 7 children, and injuring 6 others. They also raided the Bedouin al-Kaabneh School northwest of Jericho. Settlers, backed by extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, also stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as part of the daily incursions into the compound.
In just one week, Israeli occupation forces demolished three houses, one of them in Al-Quds, a park that included a wedding hall in Bethlehem, an agricultural facility in the village of Deir Jarir, and burned two shops in the town of Kafr al-Labad in Tulkarm. They also demolished seven agricultural barns and commercial warehouses, and razed lands in Tel Asour, the Farsh al-Hawa area, and the town of Halhul in Hebron. They also demolished greenhouses in Tulkarm, damaged a water tank in the Al-Mu’arrajat area in Jericho, bulldozed a road being paved between the town of Qaffin and the village of Nazlat Issa, uprooted olive trees from a street between the villages of Burin and Madama in Nablus, caused material damage to vehicles during their raid on the Jalazone refugee camp in Ramallah, and confiscated three vehicles in the town of Al-Khader in Bethlehem.
The number of settlement attacks and activities reached 77, as the Israeli occupation forces and settlers carried out 10 settlement activities through construction and renovation works inside the settlement outpost in the Old City of Al-Quds, setting up tents in the plain of Turmus Ayya in Ramallah, east of Asira al-Qibliya village in Nablus, and near Halhul town in Hebron, and placing mobile homes on agricultural lands belonging to the town of Bruqin in Salfit, in addition to settlers setting up a tent near the archaeological site of Tel Ma’in in the Masafer town of Yatta. Other settlers paved a half-kilometer-long road on the lands of the village of al-Mughayyir in Ramallah to expand a new settlement outpost.
Meanwhile, settlers bulldozed lands adjacent to the Karmi Tzur settlement in Halhul, and the occupation forces bulldozed dozens of dunams of land in the Al-Rakeez area in the Masafer area of Yatta town in preparation for seizing them. Settlers seized an area of land, plowed it, and extended an agricultural irrigation network inside it, in the Al-Auja waterfall area in Jericho. Others placed electricity poles in lands east of Yatta town, all the way to the Evigal settlement in Hebron.
In terms of settler attacks, settlers also set fire to agricultural crops covering an area of 70,000 square meters in the village of Birin in Hebron, an area of 35,000 square meters in the village of Farata in Tulkarm, and an area of 40,000 square meters in the village of Sebastia in Nablus, in addition to lands in the village of Madama and the plain of the village of Salem, and in the town of Deir Dibwan, the village of Al-Mughayyir, Khirbet Abu Falah, the town of Beit Ur al-Tahta, and the town of Sinjil in Ramallah.
Other settlers stole agricultural crops in the town of Beit Furik in Nablus, in addition to agricultural crops in the Ma’in area in the Masafer area of Yatta town. They forced a Palestinian family to evacuate their home in the village of Khalayel Al-Loz in Bethlehem. Other settlers burned the home of a Palestinian south of the town of Bani Na’im in Hebron, and six homes, five cars, and vehicles in the town of Bruqin in Salfit, in addition to a car near the town of Aqraba in Nablus. They also demolished three tents and three huts in the town of Yatta, while other settlers destroyed a water line that supplies the Al-Auja waterfall in Jericho. In addition, settlers attempted to burn down the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque and wrote anti-Arab slogans in Hebrew on its walls.
May 27, 2025
Photo: Anadolu Agency