Four Palestinians killed in occupied West Bank by settlers, Israeli troops
At least four Palestinians, including a teenager, have been killed in the occupied West Bank, where soldiers have been carrying out deadly raids for months and settlers have been violently rampaging against civilians unchecked, backed by the military.
The teenager was shot by Israeli forces, while the other three Palestinians were killed in an Israeli settler attack on the town of Kafr Malek, northeast of Ramallah. Seven others were injured in the settler attack.
Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked the town, burning vehicles and homes as residents of neighbouring villages attempted to confront them, local sources said. Israeli troops provided protection for the settlers and fired live rounds.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it treated at least five wounded Palestinians who suffered gunshot wounds, with some in serious condition.
Palestinian Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh said the settlers were acting 'under the protection of the Israeli army'.
'We call on the international community to urgently intervene to protect our Palestinian people,' he added, in a message on X.
In the other deadly incident, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that Israeli troops shot dead a 15-year-old Palestinian boy during a raid on al-Yamoun, a town west of Jenin.
The ministry identified the teenager as Rayan Tamer Houshieh and said he succumbed to his wounds after being shot in the neck.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that its teams had handled 'a very critical case' in al-Yamoun, involving a teenager, before pronouncing him dead.
The al-Yamoun incident marked the second time a teenager has been reported killed in the occupied territory in two days.
On Monday, the Health Ministry said that Israeli fire killed a 13-year-old, identified as Ammar Hamayel, in Kafr Malek.
The occupied West Bank is home to more than 3 million Palestinians who live under harsh Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority governing in limited areas cut off from each other by a myriad of Israeli checkpoints.
Israel has so far built more than 100 settlements across the West Bank, which are home to about 500,000 settlers – Israeli citizens living illegally on private Palestinian land in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
Although Israel's genocidal war in Gaza has garnered more attention, Palestinian suffering in the occupied West Bank has been acute, with hundreds of deaths, thousands of people displaced, house demolitions and significant destruction since October 7, 2023.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Palestine has expressed alarm at the 'wave of renewed violence' by Israeli settlers and armed forces in the West Bank earlier this year.
'Israel must immediately and completely cease all settlement activities and evacuate all settlers, stop the forcible transfer of the Palestinian population, and prevent and punish attacks by its security forces and settlers,' UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.
Separately, earlier on Wednesday, a 66-year-old woman was shot in the head and killed by Israeli forces during a raid on the Shu'fat refugee camp, north of occupied East Jerusalem, according to several local media reports.The Jerusalem governorate identified the woman as Zahriya Joudeh al-Obaid.
Her husband, Joudah Al-Obeidi, a 67-year-old resident of the camp, said his wife was standing on the roof of their home when Israeli forces stormed the area. He confirmed that police shot her in the head, and that she had posed no threat.
Like other refugee camps in Israeli-occupied areas, Shu'fat has seen repeated Israeli raids that often result in deaths, injuries and arrests.
In the northern West Bank, large-scale military incursions into Jenin and its refugee camp, as well as Tulkarem and the Nur Shams refugee camp, have resulted in widespread destruction and displacement of at least 40,000 people, according to UN figures.
Since Israeli forces launched its latest operation in Jenin 156 days ago, at least 40 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Wafa news agency.
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Atlantic
19 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Iran Is No Friend of Palestine
Israel's attack on Iran has elicited a predictable response from groups that identify as 'pro-Palestine.' At protests in several Western cities—some merely anti-war or anti-interventionist, others explicitly anti-Zionist or pro-Iranian—people rushed to criticize the Israeli military action to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In so doing, they offer succor to a ruthless theocratic regime that has ground its heel upon its own people and brought misery to the entire region for nearly half a century. By backing various regimes and militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the death of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Muslim people in the conflicts it has fomented. Iranian meddling in the region has provided Arab dictators such as Syria's Bashar al-Assad with both the moral and material means to suppress dissent, crush reform, and extend their autocratic rule. The pro-Palestine messaging ignores the fact that a nuclear-armed Iran would be far more belligerent and dangerous than the regime already has been for the past three decades. For the pro-Palestine lobby to take at face value Tehran's claim to lead an 'Axis of Resistance' against Israel is at best naive, and at worst malignant in a way that can only be described as anti-Semitic. It means accepting that the Islamic Republic's eliminationist rhetoric about Israel has made it a legitimate advocate for the Palestinian cause. These pro-Palestine voices seem oblivious of the fact that the Palestinian national project for independence and statehood is in ruins, thanks in large part to Iranian influence. Uri Friedman: How Israel could be changing Iran's nuclear calculus Back in the 1990s, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and political leadership worked to undermine the Oslo peace process by inciting Hamas's opposition to any settlement that would have led to a two-state solution. Later, they encouraged Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas to carry out suicide bombings inside Israel. Beginning in 2005, Iran increased its arms shipments to Hamas, enabling the group to seize control of Gaza in 2007 and turn it into a one-party Islamist statelet. Iran also financed Hamas's construction of tunnels in Gaza and provided the group with missile technology, funneled via the smuggling networks that Iran effectively sponsored in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Iranian support for terrorism also benefited from Hamas's Qatari financing, which propped up the group's tenure as the government of Gaza. This arrangement also had the tacit assent of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, because the Islamist-controlled enclave helped keep the Palestinian national movement divided and block any progress toward a two-state solution. In this respect, the backing that Hamas received from the mullahs of Tehran aligned with Netanyahu's security policy—a fact that the pro-Palestine voices expressing solidarity with Iran might do well to reflect on. Iran's pro-Palestine posture was entirely instrumental. It never cared about any of the Middle East's Muslim or Arab peoples as such. Instead, it used their causes solely as a means to exert influence and build a network of proxy forces in the region. Tehran's realpolitik surfaced memorably in 2011 when Hamas sided with Syrian protesters against Assad; Iran was furious at this affront to its Syrian asset, and cut off Hamas's funding until after it reestablished relations with the Damascus dictatorship. I realize that many people in the West are furious about what Israel has been doing in Gaza since Hamas's abhorrent attack on October 7, 2023. Israel had a right to self-defense against that incursion and the atrocities perpetrated against its citizens. Yet, in the nearly two years since then, the brutality and intensity of Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip have mobilized opposition around the world. I, too, feel sadness and anger about the remorseless violence: Israel's war in Gaza has killed members of both my immediate and my extended family. Too often, however, I see that harsh criticism of Israel fails to pin blame on the current Netanyahu-led government, which is loathed by a large number of Israelis, and devolves into delegitimization of the Jewish state itself. This inability to distinguish between Netanyahu's far-right coalition and other trends in Israeli politics does a profound disservice to the pro-Palestine cause because it gives credence to Tehran's cynical posture as a Palestinian champion. The Islamic Republic of Iran will never cease its meddling in the Palestinian issue, because Tehran needs the conflict to feed its propaganda machine. The reality is that a secure, stable, independent Palestine will remain a remote possibility as long as the Islamic Republic exists in its current form and is allowed to maintain its pro-Palestine pose. Only by calling out this evil regime and distancing from it can the pro-Palestine movement hope to be effective. The pro-Palestine lobby would do better to take its cues from the regime's internal opponents, the brave Iranian people who have, in successive waves of a popular movement for reform and freedom, protested their violent, repressive government. The partisans of the Palestinian cause should stop to ask themselves how else Israel's intelligence agencies would have been able to gather the kind of information that has led to its stunning military success in the opening hours of the war. Many Iranians inside Iran today view Israel as their only hope of overthrowing the mullahs. Unfortunately, but understandably, many Iranians have come to resent the Palestinian cause—precisely because the regime has used it as a pretext to squander the country's precious resources on its militia proxies in the name of fighting Israel. Ultimately, the Iranian people should be the ones to decide their nation's future. This war, which may not be truly over despite the current cease-fire, must avoid the error of mission creep by keeping its focus solely on eliminating Tehran's nuclear program and military capacity to destabilize the region. Confronting the Iranian regime need not repeat Iraq in 2003; at present, the United States seems mindful of that risk. What onlookers in the West should know is that the Islamic Republic is no true friend of Palestine. The misguided slogans of anti-Israel leftists and overzealous social-justice activists that echo the Iranian regime's anti-Zionist talking points do nothing but harm the Palestinian cause. They are a form of sabotage, not solidarity. Cheering Iranian missiles as they cause death and harm in Israel is no way to advance the Palestinian people's just aspirations for freedom, dignity, and self-determination.
Time Magazine
20 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
Where Iran Goes From Here
As Israeli missiles struck Iranian territory and Tehran fired back, the Middle East veered closer to a full-blown regional war. For the first time since the 1980s, the Islamic Republic faced a direct military assault from another regional power that targeted not only its military assets, but the symbolic and political heart of the regime itself. Today, that war is paused under a tenuous ceasefire, and despite the hopes and near hysterical levels of speculation, the regime remains in power. Iran's rulers may have survived this round, but their legitimacy is more fragile than ever. A tightening of its grip at home and the launching of internal purges to root out alleged Israeli collaborators is certainly on the horizon, if not already underway. The leadership will try to showcase its military resilience but underneath lies a deepening crisis and serious governance challenges remain. While Iranians demonstrated unity against the unprecedented Israeli and U.S. strikes, the war raised urgent questions about the regime's survival and Iran's evolution. The immediate trigger was military. On June 12, Israel launched strikes deep into Iranian territory, followed by U.S. attacks on June 22 targeting nuclear sites. The Trump Administration framed the operation as a necessary step to 'permanently eliminate' Iran's weapons capabilities. In typical fashion, Trump followed up the strike with a promise to 'Make Iran Great Again,' implying that regime change was the goal. But on June 24, Trump reversed course and announced a cease-fire. The terms are vague and the enforcement mechanism unclear. What is clear, however, is that Iran's political and military infrastructure remains largely intact. The idea that a decades-old regime could be brought down from an Israeli aerial campaign without boots on the ground or domestic support has once again proven to be fantasy. The Islamic Republic is not a fragile dictatorship held together by a single man. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's health has long been the subject of conjecture, but the regime has built-in mechanisms for succession. The Revolutionary Guards remain powerful, deeply embedded, and invested in the system—if not their own survival. Yet survival is not strength. The war exposed a regime unable to protect its own cities or citizens from foreign attack. The Islamic Republic is more isolated and heavily sanctioned. It has spent decades portraying itself as a guardian of sovereignty, but its projection of power and defense strategy has proved hollow. That failure has opened new space not just for criticism, but for imagination. For years, Iranians have mobilized to protest what they don't want: clerical rule, corruption, and repression. But in this moment of crisis, a more difficult and essential question of what Iranians want and who gets to decide is resurfacing. That answer cannot come from exiled monarchs or foreign leaders. It must come from within. The Woman, Life, Freedom protests of 2022 offered a glimpse, as the most diverse and widespread protests in Iran's modern history. The Iranian diaspora responded with unprecedented energy, organizing rallies and proposing blueprints for a post-Islamic Republic transition. But much of that momentum faltered, in part due to the re-entry of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the former Shah, who is again echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nentayahu in his call for Iranians to 'rise up.' The path forward doesn't lie in restoring monarchy, nor in a foreign-brokered government-in-exile. It lies in the hard, deliberate work of building a representative system that reflects and includes the full spectrum of Iranian society across ethnic, religious, regional, and gender lines. It means prioritizing transitional justice over revenge, and institutions over personalities. Iranians know the perils of externally driven regime change. In 1953, a U.S.- and U.K.-backed coup toppled the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, restoring the Shah and burying Iran's early experiment in parliamentary democracy. In 1979, a revolution for freedom was hijacked by a theocratic elite. In both cases, Iranians lost control of their future to opportunists who promised salvation and delivered repression. Iranians have also long feared the prospect of a Syrian-style civil war, Libyan-style state collapse, or foreign intervention masked as liberation. These anxieties are not merely historical abstractions or distant lessons drawn from the broader Middle East. They are actively reinforced by the country's ongoing experience of international sanctions and economic isolation. Decades of sweeping sanctions have eroded the economic foundations of everyday life, hollowed out state capacity, and left a broken social contract. The war may be on hold. 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CBS News
21 minutes ago
- CBS News
Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei issues dubious claims of victory over Israel, "a big slap in the face" to the U.S.
On the ground in Tehran in the wake of the Israel-Iran ceasefire "I offer my congratulations on the victory over the fallacious Zionist regime," a message posted Thursday on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's X account declared. Another post added the bold claim that Israel's government "was practically knocked out and crushed under the blows of the Islamic Republic." In a recorded video address to his nation — his first public remarks since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire with Israel took effect on Tuesday — Khamenei went further, suggesting a "large number of military and other targets" in Israel had been targeted by Iran's missiles. They may have been targeted, but in reality, Iran's 12 days of missile launches saw relatively few rockets evade Israel's air defenses. A total of 28 people were killed, and none of them have been identified as government officials, but rather civilians killed when missiles struck apartment buildings and cities. Israel's strikes on Iran killed at least 30 military commanders, on the other hand, and, in combination with the U.S. strikes over the weekend, "obliterated" the country's nuclear program, according to President Trump. The U.S.-based group Human Rights Activists in Iran, which relies on a network of sources in the country, said Wednesday that the strikes had killed at least 1,054 people in Iran, including a total of 318 military personnel. Satellite photo taken on June 22, 2025, by Maxar Technologies, shows craters and ash on the ridge at Fordo underground complex in Iran after U.S. strikes. Satellite image ©2025 Maxar Technologies While full assessments of the damage inflicted are still being compiled, the heads of two U.S. intelligence agencies said Wednesday that "new" intelligence indicated the Iranian nuclear enrichment program was likely set back by "years." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said earlier Wednesday that the country's own intelligence assessment showed Iran's nuclear program was put back "many years." Khamenei had a very different take — again, offered without any specifics or evidence. He claimed the U.S. had joined in Israel's strikes "as it felt if it did not do so, the Zionist regime would get totally annihilated, so they entered the war to prevent this." "They did not manage to do anything important to our nuclear facilities," he claimed, adding that Mr. Trump had "overplayed the whole thing" and even that Iran had given "the U.S. a big slap in the face" by attacking the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which is home to thousands of American forces. But none of the roughly dozen missiles Iran fired at the sprawling base hit it. They were intercepted, despite the ayatollah's assertion of "lots of damage" to the site Anxiety in Iran fueling the ayatollah's dubious claims? Khamenei's remarks on Thursday were heavy on rhetorical flourish and virtually devoid of any facts, and they may have been aimed more at Iran's people than the wider world. Iran's theocratic rulers, who swept to power with the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled a pro-Western government lead by the royal family of the shah, have long maintained tight control over all media in the country, and many Iranians have little access to outside information. People hold the flags of Iran and Hezbollah, as well as photos of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as Iranians take to the streets in Tehran, Iran, June 24, 2025, to celebrate the ceasefire after a 12-day war with Israel. NEGAR/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Still, especially among younger, more tech-savvy generations, there is an understanding of the degree to which Iran's people do not enjoy the freedoms that many other countries guarantee — and it has led to several popular protest uprisings over the last decade. All of them have been brutally quashed by the authorities, but Netanyahu called very quickly after Israel started bombing Iran for new anti-government protests in the country, urging Iranians to take advantage of the attacks, which he said had put the ayatollah in his weakest position ever. Khamenei has yet to be seen live or in public since the ceasefire, and his precise whereabouts remained unclear Thursday after the pre-recorded video message was released. While the ceasefire enabled Israelis to revel on Wednesday in a return to normalcy, with the lifting of 12 days of war-time security measures, in Tehran, anxiety still appeared rife. CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab and his team were granted Iranian visas to enter the country earlier in the week, and they were the first American broadcast network to enter Tehran since the war began. But it took them an arduous journey through arid landscapes and across the border from Turkey to reach Iran's capital, as the country's airspace had been closed. Tyab said the Iranian capital felt very different this week compared to his previous visit about five years earlier, when, despite the government's authoritarian control over daily life, it was a vibrant metropolis. On Thursday, despite the truce, most businesses remained shut, and the sense of nervousness was palpable.
