Gaza: Continued Strikes Despite the Ceasefire
Saturday, July 18, 2026, brought a heavy toll in Gaza despite the standing ceasefire framework. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that hospitals across the strip received 19 people killed and 60 wounded within a 24-hour period, underscoring how strikes have continued largely unabated since the truce was announced. Among the deadliest single incidents, an Israeli strike hit a residential apartment in Gaza City’s Al-Nasr neighborhood, killing five people, including three children, and wounding others. Separately, Gaza’s Civil Defense reported that a strike hit a tent sheltering displaced people east of Gaza City, killing one woman and leaving three others missing. Elsewhere, three more people were killed in a strike described locally as part of a “bloody day” that Palestinian officials say demonstrates the continued violation of the ceasefire agreement’s terms.
Hamas condemned the strike on the Al-Nasr apartment as a deliberate crime and an extension of what it described as an ongoing campaign against Gaza’s civilian population, while the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine held the United States responsible for the continuation of what it called massacres in Gaza, arguing that Washington’s role as a ceasefire guarantor obligates it to prevent such incidents rather than allow them to continue.
In a separate development tied to the security situation inside Gaza, an internal resistance security unit known as “Radea” announced it had identified individuals accused of collaborating with Israeli intelligence in connection with the abduction of a resistance fighter in central Gaza, signaling continued concern within Gaza about infiltration and internal security threats even amid the truce.
West Bank: Mass Raids, Arrests, and Land Seizures
The West Bank saw a wide-ranging wave of Israeli military activity on July 18. Israeli forces raided the city of Tubas, as well as the villages of Kafr Ni’ma and Al-Mughayyir, part of a broader campaign of incursions that Safa described as spanning multiple towns and resulting in a number of arrests. In the Jenin area, Israeli forces raided homes and subjected several residents to field interrogation during the operation. Separately, a young man was shot and wounded by Israeli forces west of Ramallah amid a related incursion.
Land seizure and settlement-related activity was also prominent. Israeli authorities were reported to have seized approximately 16,577 dunams of land northeast of Ramallah, while separately, occupation authorities continued cutting new bypass roads intended to reinforce settlement infrastructure across the West Bank. In the Ramallah area, Israeli forces set fire to dozens of olive trees west of the city, an incident that fits a broader pattern of attacks on Palestinian agricultural land documented throughout the year.
Settler violence was reported in several locations. In Nablus, settlers attacked a young man from the town of Burqa. Near Ramallah, the village of Al-Mughayyir was again a flashpoint: a young man, Fadi Naasan, succumbed to injuries sustained in an earlier settler attack on the village, and his funeral took place on July 18 after Israeli forces closed the village’s main entrance ahead of the procession — a step Palestinian sources said was intended to restrict mourners’ access. Elsewhere in the West Bank, two children were injured in a separate settler attack amid a string of scattered incidents recorded across several towns that day.
In Bethlehem, Israeli forces reportedly prevented the dawn call to prayer from being raised at a mosque west of the city and expelled worshippers, while a separate incident left a young man wounded by Israeli gunfire east of Bethlehem.
On the prisoners’ front, the Palestinian Authority’s security services in Jenin continued holding released prisoner Shaima Abu Ghali for a third consecutive day, a move condemned by a group representing families of political detainees, which called for her immediate release and criticized what it described as the PA’s re-arrest of a woman previously freed from Israeli custody.
International Reaction
Adding an international dimension to the day’s coverage, the European Union renewed its call on Israel to halt the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, reiterating a long-standing EU position that settlement growth undermines prospects for a two-state solution and violates international law.
