An Israeli drone struck a funeral procession near the Ahmad Yassin Mosque in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp on July 17, killing eight mourners and wounding 20. The funeral was for a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces earlier the same day. It was one of a series of attacks on markets, funerals, homes and civilian gatherings that killed more than 25 Palestinians in 72 hours — all of it carried out with U.S. weapons, U.S. money and U.S. protection.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said July 18 that Israeli violations of the October 2025 “ceasefire” have killed 1,144 Palestinians. Haaretz reported that 274 of them were children — an average of one Palestinian child killed every day since the “ceasefire” began.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project recorded more than 40 Israeli air and drone strikes in Gaza during June, about 40% more than in April and the highest monthly level since the “ceasefire” took effect. Shelling declined, making the U.S.-backed assault easier to ignore from a distance but no less deadly. The U.S. war on Iran has turned attention away from Gaza and given Washington more cover to expand the assault there.
Gaza’s population cannot escape. Israel seals the borders, controls food and medicine and drives families across a shrinking map with U.S. weapons.
Israel seizes more of Gaza
During the night of July 16, Israeli forces entered Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, firing heavily. They killed one Palestinian, wounded three, destroyed homes and shops and forced families to flee, according to Drop Site News.
The October agreement drew a withdrawal boundary called the Yellow Line, leaving Israel in control of roughly half of Gaza. By July 17, Israeli forces had pushed the line westward to Salah al-Din Road, Gaza’s main north-south artery.
Israeli forces are steadily seizing more of Gaza. They controlled 53% when the “ceasefire” began, about 60% by June and between 67% and 70% by July 16. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced a goal of taking 70%. Within about a month, Israel said it had reached it and they are not stopping. The seizure is being carried out with U.S. arms and political support.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said he felt “good” seeing Jabaliya and Shuja’iyya destroyed. He said Israeli forces would remain in Gaza.
The weapons are named
An Al Jazeera investigation published Feb. 10 reported that Gaza Civil Defence had identified 2,842 Palestinians who were known to have been at Israeli strike sites but whose bodies could not be recovered. After exhaustive searches, rescue crews found only blood spray or small fragments of flesh. The investigation attributed this pattern to thermal and thermobaric weapons that generate extreme heat and pressure.
The report named U.S.-made weapons used in Gaza, including the 2,000-pound MK-84 bomb, the BLU-109 bunker buster and the GBU-39. Washington keeps replenishing the arsenal used to bomb Gaza.
The assault does not end when the bombs fall. Israel’s prisons are another front of the same U.S.-backed war.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, former director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, has been held without charge since December 2024. Israeli forces seized him after he refused to abandon his patients during a raid. He told lawyers July 14 that guards had beaten him again. He remains in underground solitary confinement, without treatment for an eye injury or pain medication. “Do everything possible to get me out of this place,” he said.
A U.N. commission reported June 23 that Israeli forces had deliberately killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children — and kept killing children after the “ceasefire” began. A case accusing Israel of genocide remains before the International Court of Justice. U.N. bodies and major human rights organizations have concluded that Israel’s campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide.
West Bank: raids, funerals and land seizure
The same U.S. political protection covers the seizure of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
Seventeen-year-old Fadi Hamdallah al-Naasan died July 18, a week after Israeli forces shot him in the village of al-Mughayyir. Occupation forces sealed the village before his funeral and fired tear gas toward a local school, as raids and arrests continued across Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem, Tulkarm, Nablus and Al-Khalil.
As of July 14, as U.S. bombing of Iran dominated the news, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced $434 million for 34 settlements in the West Bank had already been approved, with another $358 million planned for roads. The 34 settlements bring the number established under Smotrich to 103. Washington also subsidizes the settlement drive through its tax code. An investigation by Haaretz documented a network of U.S. tax-exempt nonprofits channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to settlements, with the U.S. government subsidizing every deductible donation. An undercover Al Jazeera investigation released the week of July 13 found donors in Britain and Canada evading charity law. They funded settlements, Palestinian home demolitions and military equipment for settlers.
The U.N. humanitarian office recorded at least 35 settler attacks causing injury or property damage in a single July week. The 2026 total has passed 1,200 incidents in more than 240 Palestinian communities — about six attacks a day. The settlement drive and settler attacks continue under Washington’s protection.
Israel functions as a U.S. military garrison in West Asia, and Washington remains responsible for what Israel does in Gaza and the West Bank. The U.S. supplies the aircraft and bombs that kill Palestinians, the money and political protection that sustain Israel’s war on the Palestinian people, and the cover under which Palestinian land is seized.
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