Human Rights Glance
Israeli occupation forces carried out a series of invasions, abductions, and movement restrictions across the occupied West Bank on Sunday, targeting communities in Salfit in the central West Bank, Qalqilia in the northwestern West Bank, Ramallah in the central West Bank, Nablus in the northern West Bank, and occupied Jerusalem.
Local sources reported that Israeli forces abducted several young men in the Wadi Qana area near the town of Deir Istiya in the central West Bank district of Salfit.
The men, who were from towns and villages in Qalqilia in the northwestern West Bank, were collecting desert truffles when soldiers invaded the area, detained them, and later abducted them without explanation.
In the central West Bank, Israeli forces invaded the village of Dura al‑Qare‘ north of Ramallah, spreading through several neighborhoods without reporting any abductions or break‑ins.
Similar invasions were carried out in the village of Beitin, east of Ramallah, and in the city of al-Bireh, where military units moved through the al-Jinan neighborhood and Jabal al-Tawil.
Israeli Forces Invade Multiple Areas Across West Bank
Tents supplied to displaced Palestinians ‘inadequate for Gaza winter’
Thousands of tents supplied by China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to shelter displaced Palestinians in Gaza offer only limited protection against rain and wind, an assessment compiled by shelter specialists in the devastated territory has revealed.
The assessment will undermine claims that Palestinians in Gaza are being supplied with adequate shelter. Fierce storms in recent weeks blew down or damaged thousands of tents, affecting at least 235,000 people, according to UN estimates.
Prepared by the Palestine Shelter Cluster, which coordinates the activities of nearly 700 non-government organisations in Palestine and is chaired by the Norwegian Refugee Council, the assessment found that newly delivered tents housing hundreds of thousands of people would “likely need to be replaced”.
“The fabric [of the Egyptian tents] tears easily as sewing quality is poor,” it reported. “The fabric is not waterproof. Other issues include small windows, weak structure, no flooring, the roof collects water due to the design of the tent, and no mesh for openings.”
UN chief Guterres calls on Israel to reverse NGO ban in Gaza, West Bank
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on Israel to reverse a pending ban on 37 nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) working in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In a statement on Friday, Guterres called the work of the groups “indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work”, according to spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. He added that the “suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire”.
Israel banned the humanitarian groups for failing to meet new registration rules requiring aid groups working in the occupied territory to provide “detailed information on their staff members, funding and operations”. It has pledged to enforce the ban starting March 1.
Experts have denounced the requirements as arbitrary and in violation of humanitarian principles. Aid groups have said that providing personal information about their Palestinian employees to Israel could put them at risk.
The targeted groups include several country chapters of Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym, MSF), the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the International Rescue Committee.
The Guardian view on Gaza’s winter: the world must take heed as Palestinian suffering deepens again
As Gaza enters the bleakest period of winter, children are dying of hypothermia, drowning in flooded camps and burning to death as their families try to cook in flimsy tents. Israel destroyed nine out of 10 homes over more than two years of war. Camped amid the ruins, Palestinians struggle against strong winds, heavy rain and freezing temperatures.
Aid deliveries resumed following the ceasefire, staving off the famine that had taken hold in parts of the territory, but remain wholly insufficient: 1.6 million people face acute food insecurity. The sanitation infrastructure has collapsed.
The UK, Canada, Japan, France and six other nations have jointly warned that the situation is catastrophic. Yet Israel is now deepening one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. On Tuesday, it announced that it is deregistering 37 NGOs active in Gaza. They must cease all operations there by 1 March unless they meet its new “security and transparency standards” – including by disclosing the personal details of staff. Many of the listed groups are among the best-regarded in their field, including Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, was right to describe this as outrageous – and as part of a pattern of unlawful restrictions on humanitarian access. Israeli NGOs have warned that it breaks the principles of independence and neutrality for humanitarian organisations.
Israel says it will halt operations of several humanitarian organizations in Gaza starting in 2026
Israel on Tuesday said it had suspended more than two dozen humanitarian organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and CARE, from operating in the Gaza Strip for failing to comply with new registration rules.
Israel says the rules are aimed at preventing Hamas and other militant groups from infiltrating the aid organizations. But the organizations say the rules are arbitrary and warned that the new ban would harm a civilian population desperately in need of humanitarian aid.
Israel has claimed throughout the war that Hamas was siphoning off aid supplies, a charge the U.N. and aid groups have denied. The new rules, announced by Israel early this year, require aid organizations to register the names of their workers and provide details about funding and operations in order to continue working in Gaza.
The new regulations included ideological requirements — including disqualifying organizations that have called for boycotts against Israel, denied the Oct. 7 attack or expressed support for any of the international court cases against Israeli soldiers or leaders.
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs said more than 30 groups — about 15% of the organizations operating in Gaza — had failed to comply and that their operations would be suspended. It also said that Doctors Without Borders, one of the biggest and best-known groups in Gaza, had failed to respond to Israeli claims that some of its workers were affiliated with Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
Young Palestinian boy drowns in muddy water flooding his Gaza tent camp, UN says
The U.N. said Thursday that a Palestinian boy in the Gaza Strip drowned in floods that engulfed his tent camp, with videos showing rescuers trying to pry his body out of muddy waters by pulling him by the ankle. It was the latest sign of the miseries that winter is inflicting on the territory’s population, with many left homeless by the devastation from two years of war.
Health officials also reported the death of another 9 year-old boy in Gaza Thursday, but the circumstances were not clear.
As 2026 begins, the shaky 12-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has largely ended large-scale Israeli bombardment of Gaza. But Palestinians are still being killed almost daily by Israeli fire, and the humanitarian crisis shows no signs of abating. At least three Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the ceasefire came down, killed by militant attacks or explosive detonations.
UNICEF said Thursday that 7-year-old Ata Mai had drowned Saturday in severe flooding that engulfed his tent camp in Gaza City. Mai’s was the latest child death reported in Gaza as storms, cold weather and flooding worsen already brutal living conditions. Almost the entire population of more than 2 million people have lost their homes, and most are living in squalid tent camps with little protection from the weather.
UNICEF said Mai had been living with his younger siblings and family in a camp of around 40 tents. They lost their mother earlier in the war.
Video from Civil Defense teams, shown on Al Jazeera, showed rescue workers trying to get Mai’s body out of what appeared to be a pit filled with muddy water surrounded by wreckage of bombed buildings. The men waded into the water, pulling at the boy’s ankle, the only part of his body visible. Later, the body is shown wrapped in a muddy cloth being loaded into an ambulance.
US judge halts ending of temporary protected status for South Sudanese migrants
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked plans by the Trump administration to end temporary protections from deportation that had been granted to hundreds of South Sudanese nationals living in the United States.
US district judge Angel Kelley in Boston granted an emergency request by several South Sudanese nationals and an immigrant rights group to prevent the temporary protected status they had been granted from expiring as planned after 5 January.
The ruling is a temporary victory for immigrant advocates and a setback for the Trump administration’s broader effort to curtail the humanitarian program. It is the latest in a series of legal challenges to the administration’s moves to end similar protections for nationals from several other countries, including Syria, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua.
Kelley, who was appointed by the Democratic former president Joe Biden, issued the order after four migrants from South Sudan along with African Communities Together, a non-profit group, sued. The lawsuit alleged that action by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was unlawful and exposed them to being deported to a country facing a series of humanitarian crises.
Kelley issued an administrative stay that temporarily blocks the policy pending further litigation.
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