Hebron - Mayar Imriash, 24, was busy preparing for her wedding when the Israeli army demolished her family's home in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

What should have been a time of joyful anticipation has instead been marred by displacement, with Mayar now sharing a single room with seven relatives in her uncle’s home.

Among the possessions buried beneath the rubble was the handwoven tatreez dress that Mayar had planned to wear for her henna night, a traditional Palestinian celebration for female guests held the night before the wedding.

A litter of newborn kittens was also trapped inside the home when it was demolished, according to her younger brother, Ahmed Imriash.

“Their mother keeps coming back, day after day, meowing and looking for them,” he told The New Arab.

Following a shooting attack by Palestinian gunmen at an army checkpoint on 23 October, the Israeli army launched a major military operation in Hebron, placing the West Bank’s largest city under lockdown.

Entrances and exits to the city have been sealed, and large swaths of the city have been deserted. Civilian vehicles, reportedly stolen by the army, are being used as roadblocks into residential neighbourhoods. 

In the five days since the attack, the Israeli military has forcibly displaced nearly 5,000 people from al-Jilda and Deir Baha, the neighbourhoods where the gunmen reportedly hailed from.

The military subsequently demolished at least four structures, including the Imriash family home. 

The military operation has uprooted thousands of Palestinians who had nothing to do with the shooting, including the Imriash family.

“The Israeli occupation is using collective punishment against Hebron and its residents,” Yousef Jabari, head of Hebron’s municipality, told The New Arab.

“It is very clear that Netanyahu has used what happened in Hebron for his election campaign to get as many votes as possible from the extreme right, settler movement,” he said.

Family given 'two minutes' before demolition

Just a few hours after the shooting, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stood watch as the army demolished the Imriash family home.

In a video posted on his X account, he poses in protective gear as a hydraulic jackhammer tears into the stone house, and a dusty trampoline tumbles through the yard. 

"We're already here with the equipment on the ground, sending an unequivocal message to our enemies: If you mess with us, we will exact a very, very painful price from you,” the far-right minister says.

The family had two minutes’ notice to grab what they could before their three-story home was levelled, Ahmed told The New Arab. The army shot tear gas at the family as they fled to a nearby building, where they watched the demolition unfold.

In a video of the demolition, Mayar stands motionless, hands clasped behind her back, in what many have compared to Handala - the Palestinian cartoon symbolising resilience and stoicism.

Three days later, Mayar walked hand in hand with her fiancé through the ruins of her home, finding bits of their belongings strewn across the ground.

“Look, my shoes are everywhere… Just like any other girl, I was supposed to be preparing for my happiest moment," she said. "They didn't leave us any happiness, but we will still create joy, and we will continue, God willing.”

“What’s left here is only memories,” said 23-year-old Ahmed, sitting on a dusty chair in what was once his courtyard. “At least they left us with this,” he said, while motioning towards the concrete patio.

The humiliation is especially pronounced for Ahmed and Mayar’s father, Riyad Imriash, who spent 25 years saving and working in Saudi Arabia to afford the construction of their home, which the family had moved into three years earlier.

The army had targeted the home long before the shooting attack, with Riyad first receiving an order to cease construction in 2021.

After a lengthy and expensive legal battle, the family secured a court ruling overturning the order and legalising their property, Riyad said. But it was ignored.

“We showed the court order prohibiting the demolition, and a soldier told us to shove the paper up our ass,” said Ahmed. “We can’t even defend ourselves.”

“We applied for all the legalisations, procedures, and protocols, and applied for everything that would protect this house. But on Friday, this shooting happened in Hebron, and I was the first to be targeted. I don’t know why,” Riyad told The New Arab.

A future precedent?

Residents of Hebron fear the Israeli army’s operations could mark a new phase, where the military increasingly occupies the West Bank’s cities.

Others believe it was an isolated political stunt to shore up support for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud ahead of the Israeli elections. 

“We will apply in the cities the successful offensive model we implemented in the refugee camps,” announced Netanyahu, referring to the Israeli army’s forced eviction of 33,000 Palestinians, who have been barred from returning to their homes in the refugee camps since early 2025. 

“What’s happening here is just for propaganda, to make some Israelis happy, specifically the right-wing extremists. These people are very happy to see what is happening to us, and the goal [of this operation] is to secure their vote,” Reem Ahmad Alsharif, a city councillor in Hebron, told The New Arab.

For now, some of the city’s displaced have moved in with relatives, while others are staying at shelters established by the Hebron municipality.

Palestinian volunteers gather at the municipality each day to collect food, clothing, and hygiene products for the displaced, with plastic mattresses ready for distribution lining the halls.

“We don’t have nearly enough resources to meet the need,” said Alsharif, rummaging through a box of children’s toys stocked with stuffed animals and a hula hoop.

She hopes the families will be allowed to return soon, but there is no clear timeline for when the Israeli army will withdraw, or what the future holds for the city.

“We have never been displaced like this,” she says. “It’s the first time they’re doing this in Hebron, and inshallah it’s the last time.”

Kate McMahon is a freelance journalist and foreign correspondent focused on the Middle East and South Asia. She reports on environmental change, human rights, and geopolitical conflicts

Follow her on Instagram: @katemontanaa

Fin de Pencier is a Canadian journalist and filmmaker based between Lebanon and Palestine

Follow him on X: @finlookedintoit

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

Driving through Damascus, billboards for new residential developments offer a vision of the future: modern apartments, landscaped surroundings, and the promise of a fresh start.

But for Syrians navigating damaged homes, rising rents, and the cost of returning after years of displacement, the question is how much of that future they can actually afford.

In Qudsaya, west of the capital, Abyat Hills illustrates both the ambitions and the limits of Syria’s investment-led housing drive.

The development brings together Saudi company Abyat Investment and Real Estate Development and Syria’s General Housing Establishment, which operates under the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. Under the partnership, the state provides the land while Abyat develops the buildings and facilities.

Its published subscription contract sets first-phase prices at $950–$1,150 per square metre. On a simple 100-square-metre illustration, that amounts to somewhere between $95,000–$115,000.

These prices are not unprecedented within Damascus’s property market. Listings published by local agency Elmas include a 150-square-metre apartment in Mashrou Dummar, just south of Qudsaya, advertised at $300,000 and a 180-square-metre property in the southwestern neighbourhood of Kafr Souseh at $450,000.

But the relevant comparison for many Syrians is not with another expensive neighbourhood. It is with what they earn.

The European Union Agency for Asylum’s July country report cited February figures putting average monthly wages at roughly $102 for entry-level public-sector employees and $120 in the private sector, indicating the scale of the gulf between locally earned income and the capital required to enter such developments.

"A housing development may attract substantial investment while its residential units remain beyond the financial reach of families who lost their homes, jobs, and savings during the conflict," Fadel Abdulghany, founder and director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, told The New Arab.

"If public reconstruction policies fail to take these families’ needs into account, urban development may expand without contributing sufficiently to the conditions necessary for displaced people to return sustainably."

Investment promises, everyday pressures

The affordability question has become more politically visible as households confront rising living costs.

In September, a government decision to raise diesel prices by 40 percent and petrol prices by approximately 26–28 percent triggered protests and roadblocks across Syria. Demonstrators burned tyres, blocked major routes, and demanded the increases be reversed.

The government subsequently announced cheaper diesel categories for heating, agriculture, and some productive sectors, while leaving the standard diesel price and the higher petrol and gas prices in place.

The fuel protests essentially exposed the economic pressures against which promises of recovery and foreign investment are being judged: whether households can afford transport, heating, and daily necessities, rather than simply whether new projects attract buyers.

For many displaced Syrians, the immediate challenge is even more dire - not about purchasing a new apartment but making their existing home habitable.

Liban Abdullahi Jimale, housing, land and property advisor for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Syria, said families frequently tell the organisation that they want to return but cannot afford repairs.

"The choice is often stark," he told The New Arab.

Some live in damaged properties, pitch tents nearby or repair a single room. Others go back to displacement camps or sites because they offer better shelter than what remains at home.

Renting can also be precarious. According to a sector assessment cited by NRC, rents rose in 84 percent of assessed communities in rural Damascus, with the increases attributed mainly to returns.

NRC’s legal-needs assessment found that only 48 percent of surveyed returnee households reported owning or renting a dwelling, compared with 70 percent across the surveyed population. Around one in five renting returnee households faced eviction risk, mostly because of unpaid rent.

These figures therefore illustrate why increasing the number of apartments does not automatically give displaced families somewhere secure to live.

Whose land, whose recovery?

At Abyat Hills, questions about access to housing have been accompanied by another dispute: the rights of people claiming an interest in the land beneath it.

On 26 September, residents from Qudsaya and other rural Damascus communities protested over expropriation, compensation, and ownership claims concerning land allocated to developments. Some told state news agency SANA that they had received no compensation; others said historical payments were inadequate.

The governorate subsequently opened an office to receive claims concerning land within Abyat Hills and Sham View. The ministry said most contested expropriation decisions dated back decades and that each property’s status had to be established through land records and compensation documents.

It also argued that public housing projects could include commercial components and private partners. Abyat maintained that its work was lawful and that government bodies and courts should settle ownership disputes.

Similar tensions surfaced in Homs, where residents protested over expropriated land they associated with the Boulevard project. The city council said the properties had entered public ownership through legal procedures and were designated as a park under an older approved plan; residents sought a review of the records and compensation arrangements.

For Abdulghany, the danger is that redevelopment can make unresolved claims harder to remedy.

"The greatest risk is that reconstruction projects may consolidate the consequences of past property seizures, making them increasingly difficult to remedy or reverse," he told The New Arab.

Once disputed land is transferred, built on, used as collateral or sold to new purchasers, additional interests and financial obligations can emerge. Recovering an original property may become more complicated even where an earlier claim has a sound legal basis.

More than a new apartment

Abyat Hills’ contract includes measures presented as supporting residential use rather than speculation: one subscription per family, restrictions on transferring subscriptions and controls on resale. It states that the homes are intended for Syrian families. But these provisions do not themselves bridge the gap between a household’s income and the money required to buy.

Nor does building an apartment resolve the documentation problems that can prevent a family from reclaiming a different home.

Abdulghany said lost records, incomplete registration, inheritance disputes, and properties registered in the names of detained or disappeared people continue to obstruct recovery.

"The fundamental distinction is between the legal recognition of rights and enabling rights holders to recover and exercise them in practice," he said.

Families of missing people face a particularly difficult bind when a property remains registered in their relative’s name. Abdulghany said Syrian law allows them to seek a judicial representative without first obtaining a declaration of death, but the representative’s limited powers mean significant property transactions or some legal proceedings may require further court approval.

Women face additional barriers. Abdulghany said SNHR’s July report documented how property confiscations intersected with discriminatory registration practices, inheritance obstacles and economic dependency. For these families, rebuilding a house does not necessarily mean being able to reclaim, manage or securely inhabit it.

Jimale described civil documentation as a foundational need. Missing identity and family-status records can obstruct inheritance claims, access to services and legal proceedings, leaving families navigating expensive and complicated procedures after they return.

The contrast with a fully serviced new development is therefore about more than finishes or sale prices. It is about the conditions that allow people to live somewhere securely.

What should count as recovery?

Private investment can expand housing supply and help finance reconstruction. Abdulghany’s argument is not that commercial development should stop, but that it cannot replace a public response to housing need.

He called for priority to be given to repairing existing neighbourhoods, restoring essential services, strengthening tenure security and developing affordable housing and rental programmes.

Jimale also stressed the need for international financial and technical support, alongside continuing assistance for people who cannot yet return.

"When people return to their areas but lack housing, basic services, livelihood opportunities, or legal documentation, pressure to leave temporary shelters may simply transfer displacement from camps into informal settlements and urban areas rather than resolve it," he said.

Abyat Hills may demonstrate that there are buyers for new housing around Damascus. What it cannot establish on its own is whether families living in damaged homes, struggling with rent or contesting old expropriations are gaining a viable route to recovery.

Agnese is a journalist at The New Arab, with previous experience in breaking news and OSINT investigations across the Middle East

Follow her on X: @AgneseBoffano

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

Christianity has survived in Gaza through the rise and fall of empires, religious transformations, and centuries of political upheaval, but Israel's devastating war has raised the possibility that one of the faith's oldest communities could disappear from its ancestral homeland.

Before October 2023, approximately 1,000 Christians lived in Gaza. Today, estimates suggest that only 500 to 600 remain, with hundreds having fled the territory during Israel's war and genocide.

Bishop William Shomali, the Latin Patriarchal Vicar of Jerusalem, has warned that Gaza's remaining Christians are exhausted and increasingly wish to leave, raising questions about whether the community can survive another generation.

For Palestinian Christian activist Ihab Hassan, the danger is not simply the loss of individual families, but the possibility that an ageing population will become incapable of sustaining itself.

"Many of those who remain are elderly, and the young are the most likely to leave. A community of grandparents cannot survive on its own," he told The New Arab.

Christianity's ancient roots in Palestine

The history of Christianity in Gaza traces back to the earliest centuries of the faith, when Palestine was part of the Roman Empire, and Christianity was emerging from the land where Jesus Christ had lived, preached, and been crucified.

For Gaza's Christians, this history is not merely an archaeological inheritance. Their religious traditions connect them to the earliest Christian communities of the Holy Land, whose presence predates the emergence of Christianity as Europe's dominant religion.

Pastor Hanna Massad, a Gaza-born Palestinian Christian and founder of Christian Mission to Gaza, believes the possible disappearance of this community would represent a profound historical and spiritual loss.

"Two thousand years ago, the gospel was proclaimed in Jerusalem, where Peter preached his first sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:9-11). People from many different nations and ethnic groups were present, including Arabs," he told The New Arab.

"Our Christian roots in this region go back to the earliest days of the church. It's heartbreaking to imagine that one day there may be no Christians left in Gaza and only small Christian communities remaining in the West Bank, in the very land where Christianity began."

By the fourth century, Gaza had become an important centre of Christian monasticism. Among its most influential figures was St Hilarion, born near Gaza around AD 291, who is traditionally credited with pioneering monastic life in Palestine.

The monastery associated with him at Tell Umm Amer became an important religious centre during the Byzantine period. In 2024, UNESCO designated the site a World Heritage Site and simultaneously placed it on its List of World Heritage in Danger because of the conflict.

Gaza City also contains the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, named after the fourth- and fifth-century bishop who helped consolidate Christianity in the city.

Although Gaza's population became overwhelmingly Muslim over subsequent centuries, its Christian community endured, maintaining churches, schools and religious traditions through successive political transformations.

Most of Gaza's remaining Christians are Greek Orthodox, alongside a significant Catholic population and a handful of Protestants.

For Hassan, the significance of their continued presence extends beyond religion.

"If it disappears, we lose more than a minority. We lose a chain of memory that runs back almost to the Apostles."

The destruction of a living heritage

The war has brought unprecedented devastation to the physical foundations of Gaza's Christian community.

In October 2023, an Israeli airstrike struck a building within the Saint Porphyrius church compound, where displaced Palestinians had sought shelter, killing civilians and damaging part of the historic complex.

UNESCO has verified damage to the church compound, while the conflict has also endangered archaeological sites, including the monastery of St Hilarion.

Yet the destruction of historic buildings represents only one dimension of the threat. Churches depend on congregations, schools on pupils, and community institutions on the families who sustain them.

Lex Pouliot, Manager of Middle East and Special Projects at the Vulnerable People Project, said the devastation had extended across Gaza's Christian neighbourhoods and institutions.

"By current estimates, nearly 80% of Christian homes have been destroyed, along with almost every Christian institution in the Strip, including schools, cultural centres, libraries, and the YMCA," she told The New Arab.

Families who initially sheltered inside church compounds have since moved into damaged homes or rented apartments, according to Pouliot. Some church schools have reopened, but conditions remain precarious.

She said two Christian women killed this month had recently moved into rented accommodation.

Hassan also described the community's losses in human terms.

"Christians were not spared in this war. Around 60 have died, about half of them killed directly by the Israeli army. Most of their homes have been destroyed," he said.

The destruction has therefore created a dilemma that cannot be resolved simply by restoring religious monuments.

Even if Gaza's historic churches survive, their significance as places of worship depends on whether Christians remain to use them.

As Hassan put it: "A restored church without a congregation becomes just a site."

An exodus without return?

Gaza's Christian population had been declining long before the present war, reflecting decades of economic hardship, restrictions on movement and emigration.

Wadie Abunassar, coordinator of the Forum of Holy Land Christians, told The New Arab that the community numbered approximately 5,000 in the late 1980s, falling to around 1,000 before October 2023 and roughly 500 today.

The latest displacement has intensified a longstanding concern among church leaders: that families who establish themselves overseas may never return, even if Gaza is eventually rebuilt.

Massad said hundreds of Christians had left since October 2023, with many resettling in Australia and other Western countries.

"I believe most of those who have left are unlikely to return unless there is significant change and lasting peace and stability in Gaza," he said.

Emigration can become permanent as children enter schools, parents find employment and families establish new relationships abroad. For a community already numbering only a few hundred, the departure of even a relatively small number of young families can have lasting consequences.

Abunassar believes that experience elsewhere in the Middle East offers little encouragement.

"I believe that more than 90 percent of those who left, the chances to see them coming back are very close to zero," he said.

His estimate reflects his assessment of wider regional migration patterns rather than a measured return rate for Gaza's displaced Christians.

A wider Palestinian struggle

Although Gaza's destruction is exceptional, the pressures confronting its Christians are part of a wider struggle over the future of Palestinian Christian communities.

In the occupied West Bank, movement restrictions, economic difficulties and Israeli settler violence have raised concerns about the security of Christian towns and villages, including Taybeh, near Ramallah.

Hana Bendcowsky, an expert on Holy Land Christians at the Rossing Center, cautioned against treating the circumstances in Gaza and the West Bank as equivalent.

"While Palestinians in the West Bank face enormous hardships, the situation in Gaza is catastrophic," she told The New Arab.

She also emphasised the difference between choosing to emigrate and being driven from one's home by war.

"We must also distinguish between emigration and displacement or becoming a refugee, which is more relevant to Gaza."

For Bendcowsky, the departure of Gaza's remaining families could mean the end of its longstanding Christian lay community, even if churches, hospitals and charitable institutions continue operating.

Nevertheless, she stressed that the preservation of religious heritage could never justify exposing people to danger simply to maintain a historical presence.

The possible disappearance of Gaza's Christians would also diminish the religious diversity that has long characterised Palestinian society.

"Gaza's Christians are Palestinians, and their story is part of Palestinian history," Hassan said.

"Palestinian identity has always included both Muslims and Christians. They shared everything, including hardship, wars, and displacement."

Can Gaza's Christians return?

The future of Gaza's Christian community ultimately depends on conditions affecting the entire Palestinian population: security, housing, employment, education and the possibility of rebuilding lives without renewed displacement.

Church leaders have sought to encourage Christians to remain in their homeland while recognising the circumstances that compel families to leave.

Abunassar said the churches were working to preserve their communities, but argued that resolving the underlying political crisis was beyond their capacity. He called for a genuine ceasefire and a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Massad similarly argued that a lasting solution must address the Israeli occupation and guarantee Palestinians the right to live in dignity in an independent state.

For Pouliot, the fate of Gaza's Christians cannot be separated from the survival and recovery of their Muslim neighbours.

"Whether Christians can rebuild their lives depends on whether Gaza itself is rebuilt, and on an end to the occupation and the siege."

But reconstruction alone may not reverse the exodus. Families who have lost relatives, homes and livelihoods must also believe that returning would offer their children a future.

Hassan argued that meaningful recovery would require fundamental political change, including an end to both Israeli occupation and Hamas's rule.

"A community depends on more than houses and church buildings. It needs families, schools, work, safety, and the freedom to worship and stay connected with relatives and other Christian communities," he said.

For a community whose history reaches back to Christianity's earliest centuries, the possibility of return is therefore inseparable from the question of whether Gaza can once again become a place where families can safely build their lives.

Despite his pessimism about the prospects of reversing the exodus, Abunassar said the aspiration of Christian leaders remained unchanged.

"On one hand, we don't want anyone to leave. For sure, not the Christians of Gaza, not the Christians of the West Bank, not the Christians inside Israel," he said.

"On the contrary, we want those who left to come back."

Sam Hamad is a historian, freelance writer, and editor 

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

East Jerusalem - On 9 October 2026, two weeks after the right-wing Israeli newspaper Olam Katan reported that the Israeli military would open a section of Route 463 to settler traffic, hundreds marched from the Israeli settlement of Beit El to the settlement of Dolev along the road in celebration.

In recent months, settlers have been protesting in the highway’s vicinity, demanding they use what’s referred to as the “Wallerstein Road”, which Israeli civilians have been barred from since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000.

Their provocative demonstrations often involved waving Israeli flags and hurling stones at Palestinian vehicles, under the Israeli army’s protection.

And the pressure from settlers worked. “The decision in principle has been made, and the IDF [Israeli military] has already begun preparations for the opening of the highway,” head of the Mateh Binyamin Settlement Council, Israel Ganz, said in an interview with Olam Katan.

Israel’s military spokesperson confirmed the news, saying, "The IDF is working to put in place special security arrangements for future travel on the route."

Named after Pinchas Wallerstein, a founder of the settler movement, the 10-kilometre stretch of road runs from al-Bireh and Jalazone refugee camp in the east to the Palestinian village of Ein Qiniya in the west.

Wallerstein, then-head of the Mateh Binyamin Settlement Council, carved out the road without official permits in 1994. Six years later, the army shuttered it to both Israelis and Palestinians when the Second Intifada began.

Gradually, Palestinians gained access to the road again, which passes through Ramallah’s northern area and connects the city to seven Palestinian towns, a university, a school, a major hospital, and a sewage treatment plant.

Opening the road to settlers means isolating eight villages and two large residential neighbourhoods (totalling tens of thousands of Palestinians) in the north from the rest of Ramallah-Al-Bireh, according to the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.

In turn, these residents will be forced to use a different route near the Jalazone refugee camp, which is already severely congested and cannot accommodate more traffic.

“Ramallah will be cut off from all its surrounding villages. Not just its villages, but also the other cities in the north that are coming to Ramallah, [which] mostly use this road,” Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Popular Campaign to Resist the Wall and Settlements, told The New Arab. “It's blocking Ramallah totally.”

Juma explained that in addition to fragmenting Ramallah, Israel’s military presence will increase in the area with the army erecting checkpoints, watchtowers, and fences along the highway. He also warned that Bedouin communities in proximity to the road could be expelled.

“The settlers are the spearhead of Israeli plans in the West Bank,” Juma said. “It's a very strong message that there will be no Palestinian place without settlements and that [Israeli] sovereignty is over every single inch of the West Bank,” he added.

“And it's a message to the Palestinian Authority, saying you have no future whatsoever, as you think and as you were promised by the Oslo agreements.”

Violating the Oslo Accords

The road in question is located mostly in Area B, with some small sections crossing through Area C and two smaller sections crossing into Area A.

Upon the signing of the second agreement of the Oslo Accords in 1995, the peace deal meant to establish a Palestinian state, the West Bank was divided into Areas A, B, and C.

Area A is governed fully by the Palestinian Authority (PA), the governmental body created under Oslo, and Area B is split - with the PA taking administrative responsibility and the Israeli army handling security affairs. Area C, the majority of the West Bank, is under full Israeli military control.

Most of Area A comprises major Palestinian cities, like Ramallah, where the PA headquarters are located.

“Ramallah is the most important urban centre of the PA. This is the city where the administrations are concentrated, and this is the most important city in the West Bank, in terms of administration,” Dror Etkes, founder of Kerem Navot, an Israeli NGO monitoring land policies in the West Bank, told The New Arab.

“So if the settlers have been successful in splitting it, planting facts on the ground, and connecting the settlements north and east of Ramallah with the settlements west of Ramallah, that would be a major achievement in this direction of dissolving the Oslo agreement.”

In recent years, the Israeli state has increasingly adopted new measures seen as eroding the PA’s power in the West Bank.

Following the Israeli army’s mass displacement campaign of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps, the army established a permanent military base next to Jenin refugee camp (in Area A) as well as five other outposts and is planning to set up more.

The military has also confiscated land in Area A to build settler roads, and Israel’s Security Cabinet granted the Civil Administration, the military body implementing Israeli civilian policy in the West Bank, enforcement powers related to the environment, water, and archaeology in Areas A and B.

The Civil Administration also stripped the municipalities of Hebron and Bethlehem of planning and construction responsibilities related to the Israeli settlement inside Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.

Those in government aren’t shy about their motives, either. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has repeatedly called to dismantle the PA, most recently advocating for a war against the West Bank, stating that Israel must “do there what we did in Gaza, to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, which is a terror authority”.

As the Israeli state reneges on its obligations as part of the Oslo Accords, Israeli settlers are encroaching further into PA territory.

Since 2024, settlers have built 32 outposts, settler encampments established without Israeli government permission, inside Area B, and at least three in Area A. The goal seems clear to Etkes: Israeli settlers and the state are working together to unravel the Oslo Accords.

“More and more initiatives starting from the settlers and going up to the military, and of course, by the politicians who are supporting them in order to bring about the collapse of the Oslo agreement and to cancel the geopolitical categories of Oslo - A, B, C,” Etkes said.

“That’s all part of a bigger plan to force Palestinians into very, very small enclaves to eventually force them out of the country.”

The PA was meant to be an interim self-government that would phase out in five years and transition into full Palestinian self-governance over the West Bank. That never materialised, and instead what we are seeing today is the Oslo process in reverse.

Settler takeover, not only of Palestinian land, but also of infrastructure, is integral to that process.

Settlers aren’t just calling for access to 'Wallerstein Road', but also the Beitunia bypass road, or Road 4437, which Israelis have also been barred from using since the Second Intifada.

According to Olam Katan, settler access to that road has also been approved, although no official statement has been released yet. The Israeli army did not respond to The New Arab requests for verification at the time of writing.

These highways aren’t the first Palestinian roads settlers have encroached on, however. Roughly a decade ago, settlers from the Negohot settlement near Hebron gained access to an unnamed road running through Areas A and B in the southern West Bank, Etkes said.

“The road partially became a settlers-only road, especially since October 7th. They completely blocked parts of this road to Palestinians,” Etkes said.

“So this is not the first road which Israel is opening. There is already a precedent that the settlers have been able to establish.”

Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist covering Palestine and Israel. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The National, and Gulf News

Follow her on Twitter: @jess_buxbaum

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

Across the occupied West Bank, the olive harvest, one of Palestine’s most cherished cultural traditions, is underway.

But every year, Israeli settlers have a tradition of their own: attacking farmers and disrupting the harvest in whatever ways they can.

Olive farming supports the livelihoods of roughly 100,000 Palestinian families.

But the economic toll of Israeli settler attacks and military operations has been devastating, with tens of millions in damages caused to the industry last year. 

And this year, settler attacks across the West Bank are occurring at the highest rate ever recorded by the UN.

Without any meaningful means of self-defence, Palestinians are increasingly relying on a small but growing network of international and Israeli activists who help with the harvest and stand between Palestinian farmers and Israeli settlers.

Ultimately, though, their support is not enough.

Watch Fin de Pencier’s In-Depth dispatch from the occupied West Bank to find out more

Sudan’s civil war has created opportunities for businesses to profit from the country’s collapsing economy.

In Egypt, state-linked companies have expanded their role in wartime trade, supplying essential goods while benefiting from the flow of Sudanese gold across the border

The conflict has reshaped regional trade networks, allowing commercial relationships with military-linked businesses to continue despite international sanctions.

Gold exports have surged, highlighting how valuable commodities can move through neighbouring countries and into global markets even as war devastates Sudan.

So how does wartime trade work - and who benefits?

Anas Ambri traces the trade networks generating profits from the conflict in this special In-Depth video report