Live updates on Israel's war against Hamas

The United Nations rights chief on Wednesday called on Israel to repeal a newly established special military tribunal to try Palestinians accused of taking part in Hamas's October 7 attacks.

The Board of Peace's high representative for Gaza on Wednesday said Hamas may remain as a political force on the condition that it lays down its weapons.

"We are asking the political leadership of those who govern Gaza now to step aside. This is required by the Security Council resolution in the 20-point plan," said Nickolay Mladenov during a press conference in Jerusalem, referring to the peace plan for the territory.

"We are not asking Hamas to disappear as a political movement. A political party that disavows armed activity can compete in national Palestinian elections. What is not negotiable, however, is that armed factions... can exist alongside a transitional Palestinian authority."

Israeli forces have arrested five citizens from the town of Aqaba, north of Tubas, in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday.

Kamal Bani Odeh, director of the Prisoner Club in Tubas, told the Wafa news agency that Israeli forces arrested Bakr Abdul Razzaq days after his release from prison, in addition to arresting Nizar Walid Abu Arra, Muhammad Walid Salameh, Mustafa Sayel Abu Arra, and Bakr Al-Masri.

Israeli forces also stormed the town of Aqaba with several patrols, fired stun grenades, and began raiding a number of homes.

Palestinian health officials said a teenager was killed by Israeli fire in a village of occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the latest in a series of violent incidents shaking the Israeli-occupied territory.

The health ministry in Ramallah identified the victim as 16-year-old Yusef Ali Kaabnah, saying he was "killed by occupation bullets" near the town of Jiljilya, north of Ramallah.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said he had been shot in the chest during a raid by Israeli settlers who were accompanied by Israeli troops. Four others were injured in the incident, it added.

A New York Times report has said that sexual violence by Israeli prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators against Palestinian detainees is "widespread".

Israel’s foreign ministry strongly rejected the Times report, describing it as being part of "a false and well-orchestrated anti-Israel campaign".

According to the report, "there is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes."

"Conservative social norms also inhibit discussion," it said, citing two victims who said that admitting to having been raped would hinder his sisters’ and daughters’ chances of finding a husband.

Israel’s foreign ministry called the report "one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press".

The United Nations condemned on Tuesday the toll from "escalating" Israeli military operations and settler attacks in the occupied West Bank on children, with 70 Palestinian children killed since the start of 2025.

"Children are paying an intolerable price for escalating military operations and settler attacks across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem," UN children's agency spokesman James Elder told reporters.

Since the start of 2025, when Israel began a large-scale military operation in the West Bank, "at least one Palestinian child has been killed on average every single week" there, adding that another 850 children had been injured during that period.

"Most of those killed or wounded were done by live ammunition," he said.

Israeli forces were responsible for a full 93 of the deaths, Elder said, highlighting that the scaled-up military operations had come amid "historic levels of settler attacks".

Israel's parliament passed a law, establishing a military tribunal to try hundreds of Hamas members who allegedly took part in the October 7, a step lawmakers said would help heal national trauma.

Israel has been holding an estimated 200-300 fighters — the precise number is classified — captured in Israel during the attack, who have not yet been charged.

The special military court established by the law, to be presided over by a three-judge panel in Jerusalem, could also try others captured later in Gaza and suspected of participating in the attack, or of having held or abused Israeli hostages.

The new law was backed by a wide majority 93 of the Knesset's 120 lawmakers, in a rare show of Israeli political unity.

European Union foreign ministers on Monday agreed new sanctions on Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians, as a change of government in Hungary ended months of blockage.

"It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery," EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas said in announcing the green light. "Extremisms and violence carry consequences."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the EU was "sanctioning the main Israeli organisations guilty of supporting the extremist and violent colonisation of the West Bank, as well as their leaders".

"These most serious and intolerable acts must cease without delay," he wrote on social media.

Israeli strikes killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, including two members of the Hamas‑run police force, health officials said, in violence that underscored the fragility of a US‑brokered ceasefire.

Medics said an air strike killed one person in the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, while another killed the head of the criminal police force in Khan Younis, Wessam Abdel‑Hadi, and his aide, according to Gaza’s Hamas‑run interior ministry.

Reuters has previously reported that Israel has heightened its attacks on Gaza's Hamas-run ‌police ⁠force, which the group has used to re-establish governance in areas under its control.

The Israeli military didn't immediately comment on either incident.

More than 30 ships in the Global Sumud Flotilla had gathered off the Turkish coast near Marmaris to prepare for the next stage of their maritime journey to Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.

Videos posted online showed the vessels in open waters on Saturday evening as Turkish officials and activists arrived to welcome the flotilla.

According to Al Jazeera, activist Alex Colston said on X that the Turkish coast guard and the local Global Sumud Flotilla fleet had sailed out to greet the convoy near its anchoring point off the coast.

Activists said the flotilla reached Turkiye after a 24-day journey that included stops in Sicily and on the Greek island of Crete, where Israeli forces intercepted 22 boats and detained two leading activists.

Al Jazeera said the two activists had since been deported from Israel.

In a statement on X, the Global Sumud Flotilla said the boats would undergo technical maintenance, security checks and logistics replenishment while in Marmaris, adding that details of the next phases of the humanitarian aid mission to Gaza would be announced publicly in the coming days.