AS SAWIYAH (Palestinian Territories), June 7 — With pitchforks and a makeshift combine the size of a golf cart, Hamad Jazi and his nephews race under the blazing sun to collect wheat from their West Bank field.

Israeli settlers have recently set fire to crops in the area, and Jazi fears his wheat could suffer a similar fate.

Their village of As-Sawiyah, in the centre of the occupied West Bank, sits in a valley dominated by hills on top of which three settlements stand.

“The settlers have set fires twice already — yesterday and the day before,” Jazi told AFP.

“If you think back 10, 15 or 20 years ago, this season used to be a season of abundance. Today, you are racing against time just to harvest quickly and leave,” he added.

Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank in settlements that are illegal under international law, among some three million Palestinians.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

Shielded by what rights groups describe as impunity from the law, some settlers have harassed rural Palestinian communities, vandalising property and crops, committing arson and sometimes killing.

By all metrics, 2026 has been one of the most violent years to date, with an average of six attacks per day, according to data from UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

The surge in violence goes hand in hand with the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank, which part of the Israeli political class is threatening to annex.

Settlers in rural areas vandalise property and start fires, at times sowing terror in villages, as shown in videos posted on social media, sometimes by the perpetrators themselves.

The attacks have sparked criticism inside Israel, where the opposition accuses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and his far-right allies of turning a blind eye to acts of settler violence.

According to Mahmud Fatafta of the Palestinian Authority’s agriculture ministry, settlers killed or stole 8,000 goats or sheep in the West Bank in 2026.

According to his ministry’s data, 41,000 olive trees, a crop as emblematic to Palestinians as it is ubiquitous in the West Bank’s rocky hills, were damaged by settlers or Israel’s military in 2026.

‘Steal our own crops’

“In the past, when we went out into the fields, the olive harvest was a celebration, the grain harvest was a celebration,” Jazi, his face worn by the sun, told AFP.

Now, “we live those moments like thieves. We go and ‘steal’ our own olives or our own crops”, he said, complaining that the Israeli military requires him to coordinate with it before entering his fields.

Hikmat Abu Ras, head of As-Sawiya’s village council, told AFP that his and neighbouring communities have faced near daily attacks from settlers since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

“They constantly carry out these practices in order to drive us off our land and prevent us from entering it,” he said.

Abu Ras lamented increasing movement restrictions that further isolate communities like his.

“Gates block the entrances to villages, camps, and cities. Movement is restricted. You race against time just to make sure the settler does not come and seize what is on your land.” — AFP

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir remained defiant on May 20, undaunted by international protests triggered by images of him mocking Gaza Flotilla activists, who appeared in videos kneeling and handcuffed with their faces to the floor in the port of Ashdod. “Whoever comes to our territory to support terrorism and identify with Hamas, will receive harsh punishment,” he warned on social networks, after several Western countries, including Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany, condemned Israel’s treatment of the activists, criticism that has even come from a handful of Israeli leaders. “We will not turn the other cheek,” Ben-Gvir railed.

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It was the downing of a U.S. helicopter by an Iranian drone over the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. It could have been any other skirmish: U.S. and Iranian forces had spent days engaged in increasingly serious encounters in the area while talks for a peace agreement dragged on. But that clash last Monday particularly upset President Donald Trump, who had just agreed a ceasefire in Lebanon. The Republican announced on Tuesday that the United States had to return the blow. A sequence of events began that seemed to push the two countries to the brink of resuming large-scale hostilities.

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Writer Etgar Keret (Ramat Gan, Israel, 58) had planned to deliver his ninth book of short stories to his publisher on October 8, 2023. He had picked the date at random: he produces one every seven years or so and sets himself a firm deadline. Two days earlier, he told his wife, Shira Geffen — the screenwriter and filmmaker who wrote the film Jellyfish (2007), directed by Keret and awarded at Cannes — that he felt the book had become too dark because of the personal and political events that had marked him in preceding years: his mother’s death, the coronavirus pandemic, a herniated disc, the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu with the most right-wing government in the country’s history… His wife advised him to reread it calmly the next day and, if he still felt that way, to ask the publisher for an extension.

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A window for peace between the United States and Iran has opened. Nearly three months after the attack that killed the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, and set off a campaign that has produced uncertain results, Washington is confident it will be able to announce soon an agreement with Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Since the start of the war, this has been one of the thorniest issues. The waterway has become a choke point threatening to suffocate the global economy. Iran, fully aware of the leverage it holds, has used it to its advantage.

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JERUSALEM, June 2 — Israel’s defence minister said today there would be “no calm in Beirut” if Hezbollah attacks continued and vowed to establish a military-controlled zone in the area of south Lebanon’s Litani River.

“The Dahiyeh in Beirut is no different from the communities in northern Israel—if there is no calm in the north, there will be no calm in Beirut,” Israel Katz said in a statement released by his office, referring to the Beirut southern suburb and Hezbollah stronghold where he had earlier Monday ordered strikes.

“At the same time, the IDF continues to operate with fire and manoeuvre against Hezbollah terrorists and infrastructure in Lebanon... in order to push threats away from IDF forces and from the residents of the State of Israel, and to turn the Litani area into a zone under IDF security control, free of weapons and terrorists,” Katz added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to push deeper into Lebanon after announcing on Friday that a large part of south Lebanon was now considered a “combat zone”, despite a ceasefire.

After the ceasefire came into effect on April 17, Israel established a “Yellow Line” about a dozen kilometres from its northern border, inside Lebanese territory.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Monday his country was facing “a vicious and reprehensible Israeli aggression”.

Israel and Hezbollah frequently accuse each other of violating the terms of the ceasefire. — AFP

The ceasefire that has never truly stopped the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah followed the same dynamic on Thursday after being extended in a new round of talks in Washington.

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THE HAGUE, June 9 — A key governing body of the International Criminal Court yesterday suspended chief prosecutor Karim Khan as he faces sexual abuse allegations against a member of his office.

The 21-member bureau of the Assembly of State Parties (ASP) decided to refer Khan’s case to the wider ASP that represents every member country of the ICC.

The bureau decided “by qualified majority... to suspend the Prosecutor from duty with immediate effect pending the final decision of the Assembly of States Parties as the competent decision-maker,” the body said in a statement.

“The bureau emphasises that this suspension is not an indication of the final outcome,” added the statement.

The decision will have little practical impact on the functioning of the court, as the 55-year-old Khan stepped aside in May 2025, taking a leave of absence to fight the allegations that he denies.

He has already been removed from pleading in the ICC’s most high-profile case against former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte.

A special session of the ASP will be convened as soon as possible to discuss the Khan case, according to the statement.

The 55-year-old Briton hit the headlines when he sucessfully applied for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over the Gaza war.

He was among the first to be sanctioned by Israel’s ally, the United States, which expressed outrage over the arrest warrants. — AFP

KUALA LUMPUR, June 7 — The Pentagon has reportedly raised its counterintelligence threat level for Israel to its highest tier amid concerns over alleged spying on senior US officials.

AFP, citing NBC News, reported that the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency assessed Israel’s “ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection” as being at a “critical level”.

NBC News, citing US officials, said the move followed concerns that Israel had tried to obtain information on the Trump administration’s internal discussions and decision-making on conflicts in the Middle East.

The New York Times also reported alleged Israeli efforts to eavesdrop on senior officials, including President Donald Trump’s top negotiator Steve Witkoff and the Pentagon’s top policy official Elbridge Colby.

AFP said the reports came after the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on February 28, triggering the war.

The reports also come amid apparent strain between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Reuters reported earlier this week that Trump confirmed he had called Netanyahu “crazy” during a heated phone call over Israel’s military actions in Lebanon, which Trump said had complicated US diplomatic efforts.

According to AFP, Axios and ABC News had earlier reported that Trump unleashed a profanity-laced tirade at Netanyahu over Israel’s threats to bomb Beirut, amid fears such a move would undermine talks with Tehran. — Reuters

This live blog is now closed. For the latest, read more of our coverage on the Middle East conflict here.

Iranian media is reporting that there were no immediate casualties following apparent Israeli strikes on the Karun petrochemical plant in Mahshahr, a city in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province.

According to the Fars news agency, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they responded to what they described as an American-Israeli strike on the Iranian petrochemical site by launching a missile attack on a similar plant in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.