Live: Israeli soldiers kill unarmed Palestinians as they surrender in Jenin
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Israel has confirmed receipt of a casket from Gaza on Thursday that belongs to a deceased Israeli captive.
The casket was delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross, as has been routine.
The body has not yet been identified.
Two Palestinian boys have been shot dead by Israeli forces in Beit Amr, north of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, on Thursday.
Local media have identified them as Mohammed Abu Ayyash and Bilal Baha'a Bouran.
In separate statements, both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) swiftly condemned the killings.
"The occupation's attempts to terrorise the West Bank through systematic killing will fail and will only increase our people's resolve and steadfastness, and strengthen the will to resist," Hamas said.
"We call upon our loyal people in Hebron, and our free and proud people throughout the West Bank, to escalate the resistance, avenge the blood of the martyrs, deter the settlers, and protect our land and holy sites from the terrorism of the occupier."
The PIJ said "the killing of the two martyrs... [and the] withholding of their bodies is a summary execution and a clear war crime".
Hamas representative Hazem Qassem gave assurances on Thursday that the group remains committed to returning the bodies of all Israeli captives in Gaza, per the ceasefire agreement.
"We are continuing to work on the complete handover of the bodies of the Israeli prisoners, despite the difficulties and obstacles... as quickly as possible," he said.
Hamas has previously said that the scale of destruction in Gaza - and the subsequent losses it incurred among its ranks that were guarding the Israeli captives - meant locating the bodies has taken longer than expected.
Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque near the occupied West Bank city of Salfit on Thursday, in the latest attack amid a wave of escalating violence against Palestinians.
Residents were shocked when they arrived at the Hajja Hamida Mosque, located between the towns of Kafr Haris and Deir Istiya, for dawn prayers, to find the door broken and flames raging inside.
“I tried to go inside the mosque to put out the fire, but I couldn’t because of the thick plumes of smoke and the intense heat,” Imam Ahmad Ahed Salman, who leads prayers at the mosque, told Middle East Eye.
“I immediately called the Civil Defence in Deir Istiya, who managed to bring the blaze under control.”
Mesalman, a resident of the town, told MEE that settlers had poured flammable materials inside the mosque before Fajr, or dawn prayer.
Read more: Israeli settlers torch West Bank mosque and spray racist slogans
In a vote held on 12 November 2025, Phoebe Nyawade Okowa, a prominent Kenyan international-law scholar, was elected a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
She becomes the first Kenyan, the eighth woman, and one of only a handful of Africans to sit as a judge on the UN’s principal judicial organ.
Okowa most recently represented Namibia as counsel in the ICJ advisory-opinion proceedings on the obligations of Israel in relation to the presence and activities of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.
In her presentation before the ICJ in May, Okowa argued that Israel’s legal ban on Unrwa violated its international obligations under the UN Charter.
“The conduct entails a blatant refusal to co-operate with the UN, to facilitate Unrwa’s work, and to respect its lawfully established mandate,” she said.
Read more: Who is Phoebe Okowa? The newly elected ICJ judge and her opinions on Israel-Palestine
The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (Arij) said Israel has advanced plans to build more than 26,000 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year.
These plans cover over 30,000 dunums (around 3,000 hectares) of Palestinian land.
In its report, Arij said that between the start of 2025 and the end of October, 194 settlement plans were proposed - most of them concentrated in the Jerusalem governorate, signalling one of the largest expansion drives in recent years.
The analysis shows that the new plans mainly target areas around occupied East Jerusalem, with the settlements of Maale Adumim, to the east, and Givat Zeev, to the northwest, identified as key centres of expansion.
The moment Israeli authorities sentenced Mahmoud al-Arda to life imprisonment, he began planning his escape.
Rejecting the legitimacy of Israel’s occupation courts, the 50-year-old Palestinian viewed breaking out as another act of resistance in his struggle for freedom.
After 25 years behind bars - marked by long stints in solitary confinement and a failed escape attempt - Arda finally made it out.
On 6 September 2021, he led five other Palestinian inmates in a daring breakout from the maximum-security Gilboa Prison.
The escape, achieved through a tunnel dug over ten months using mainly spoons, stunned Israel and made international headlines.
Read more: Jailbreak, freedom, exile: Life of Mahmoud al-Arda, architect of daring Israeli prison escape
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that although he appreciated US President Donald Trump’s letter to President Isaac Herzog urging a pardon, he would not accept it if it required admitting guilt in the corruption case against him.
"Nobody suggests I would accept a pardon, and I certainly won't," Netanyahu said in an interview with Australian TV host Erin Molan.
Netanyahu called the corruption trial against him "politicised and unjust".
"It hurts both American and Israeli interests, which is also what he said," Netanyahu said. "My time has to be free to pursue the things that will determine Israel’s future and the future of peace in the Middle East."
"I will not admit guilt – that will not happen. I am grateful for the gesture, but my integrity is intact."
The Israeli army carried out a drone strike targeting a minivan in Toul, a village in the Nabatieh district, wounding one person and leaving unexploded ordnance around the area.
Overnight, Israeli forces struck a restaurant in the town of Tayr Filsey in the Sour district, along the Litani River, according to L’Orient Today.
The strike caused debris to fall into the riverbed, obstructing water flow at several points, the Litani River National Authority said.
Israeli jets also targeted a house in Aitaroun village, in the Bint Jbeil district, near a house that had been hit two days earlier.
The UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories has accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of enabling Israel's genocide in Gaza, accusing the British government of helping to "manufacture consensus" domestically on the matter.
Speaking in an interview with Middle East Eye's Expert Witness podcast on 3 November, Albanese discussed the findings of her latest report, Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime.
The report, presented to the UN General Assembly last month, accused 63 states of enabling Israeli breaches of international law.
It said the UK "has played a key role in military collaboration with Israel, despite internal opposition".
The report pointed to Britain having flown "over 600 surveillance missions over Gaza throughout the genocide, sharing intelligence with Israel".
It also added that the fact the flights often coincided "with major Israeli operations suggest detailed knowledge and cooperation in the destruction of Gaza, extending beyond hostage rescue".
Albanese added that Britain "threatened [the International Criminal Court's] funding" under the previous Conservative government.
That accusation cites Middle East Eye's revelation in June that in April 2024, in a phone call with ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, then-Foreign Secretary David Cameron privately threatened to defund the court if it proceeded with arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.
Read more: Francesca Albanese says Starmer helped 'manufacture' consensus for Israeli genocide
Palestinian workers have begun restoring a former medieval fortress-turned-museum in Gaza City, damaged by Israeli strikes, clearing away sand and crumbling mortar.
A dozen workers in high visibility jackets worked by hand to excavate the bombarded buildings that remain of the Pasha Palace Museum - which reputedly once housed Napoleon Bonaparte during a one-night stay in Gaza - stacking stones to be reused in one pile, and rubble to be discarded in another.
Around 114 sites were damaged by Israeli attacks in over two years of war, according to the UN's cultural heritage agency, Unesco.
More than 70 percent of the Pasha Palace's buildings were destroyed.
Other damaged sites include the Saint Hilarion Monastery complex - one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the Middle East - and Gaza City's Omari Mosque.
Reporting by AFP.
The UN Committee Against Torture questioned Israel on Tuesday in Geneva over reports of "torture and ill-treatment" of Palestinian detainees.
Peter Vedel Kessing, the committee's rapporteur, stated that Israel has intensified its use of torture since October 7, 2023. This includes severe beatings, electric shocks, waterboarding, and threats of sexual violence.
Kessing emphasised that reports of systematic abuse and torture also involve children.
Numerous reports from the UN and rights groups indicate that, during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Palestinian detainees held in Israeli facilities have been subjected to systematic torture.
Released detainees gave accounts of rape, forced stripping, filmed assaults, sexual abuse using objects and dogs, and psychological humiliation by Israeli guards.
Last month, dozens of Palestinian bodies returned by Israel as part of the ceasefire agreement showed signs of abuse and torture.
Currently, an estimated 10,800 Palestinians are being held across 23 prisons, detention facilities and interrogation centres, more than double the number held before 7 October 2023.
Since the ceasefire came into force on 10 October, Israel has killed 260 Palestinians and wounded 632 others, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Thursday.
The ministry said in a statement that the bodies of 533 Palestinians killed in earlier Israeli attacks have also been recovered from the rubble.
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli aggression since October 2023 has risen to 69,187, and 170,703 others have been wounded, the statement added.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote to top officials of the United Nations on Thursday, accusing the US of directing Israeli attacks on his country.
In a formal letter addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the president of the UN Security Council, Iran held Washington responsible for the Israeli attack in June that triggered a 12-day war.
Araghchi described US President Donald Trump's recent remarks that he was "very much in charge" of the Israeli attack against Iran as clear evidence of US leadership and control over what he termed illegal actions by Israel.
The attack by Israel killed more than 1,000 people in Iran, including senior military commanders and prominent nuclear scientists.
The armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, Al-Qassam Brigades, on Thursday said that it will hand over the body of an Israeli captive found in Gaza.
The organisations said in a statement published on Telegram that the body was found in the Morag area, north of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Hamas, along with Al-Quds Brigades, said the body will be handed over at 8pm in the Gaza Strip.
