Police in Gaza

Nora Barrows-Friedman Rights and Accountability 21 August 2026

The following is from the news roundup during the 20 August livestream. Watch the entire episode here.

In Gaza, Israel has continued to massacre children, women and men, against a looming water shortage due to Israel’s ongoing blockade of fuel, infrastructure materials and spare parts, pushing municipal services toward collapse.

On 19 August, Israel carried out the latest serial murder of Palestinian civil police and security personnel.

At least nine were killed and many more were wounded in a missile strike on the police headquarters in a park in Gaza City, amid the tents of thousands of forcibly displaced people as Israel’s military expands the extermination zone inside Gaza.

Journalist Ayman al-Hesi reported from the scene.

Gaza’s interior ministry condemned the massacre, stating, “International silence regarding the continuous targeting of the police force in Gaza, combined with the lack of effective action by mediators, has emboldened the occupation to commit further massacres against the police force.”

The ministry added that all claims made by the Israeli perpetrators to justify their crimes, including assertions that the army was targeting resistance leaders, “are baseless, and the occupation is working to dismantle the police force in order to spread chaos within Palestinian society.”

The interior ministry listed the names of the murdered police personnel: Brigadier General and Acting Director of the Gaza Governorate Police, Ayman Mahmoud Jundiya; Colonel Osama Hashem Al-Hajeen; the director of the Gaza governorate’s women’s police department, Colonel Fatina Abdul-Jabbar Al-Sahhar; Colonel Ibrahim Abdul-Rahman Tamraz; Colonel Alaa Ali Alayan; Lieutenant Colonel Hazem Jabr Khalaf; Major Othman Shehata Abu Saman; and Lieutenant Samahar Misbah Hamada.

Reporter Fayez Qreqa filmed people, including children, who were injured in the attack being carried by passersby, some of them with serious wounds.

Bodies of those killed were also being attended to, including one person who was decapitated in the attack. Those images have been blurred.

A child, 13-year-old Dania Haitham al-Jamasi, was also murdered in the Israeli missile strike.

Writer Mosab Abu Toha found a 2021 video of Dania from her school’s website, singing an alphabet song in her third-grade class.

Hamas pointed out that the timing of the massacre – coming on the heels of recent meetings with mediators and the so-called guarantors of the fraudulent ceasefire, as well as meetings with Board of Peace member and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner – confirms that the Israeli regime is deliberately undermining any next steps in the agreement.

Hamas added that Israel is dangerously pushing to reignite the war of extermination against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, rather than adhering to what was agreed upon, according to the Arabic-language Palestinian outlet Al-Ray.

The Gaza park massacre came a day after Israel killed at least six Palestinians, including a child, and injured 14 in a missile strike on the Gaza port, targeting people trying to find relief from the summer heat at a cafe inside a crowded shelter area full of forcibly displaced families.

Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud said that a seventh body was “at Al-Shifa Hospital, and according to Palestinian Civil Defence sources, it’s unrecognizable. They haven’t been able to identify the body because it looked like the missile hit him directly and left the body shredded.”

Journalist Mohammad Abusalama filmed people expressing anger and grief in the aftermath of the attack.

Al Araby journalist and contributor to The Electronic Intifada Asem Alnabih reported from Al-Shifa Hospital as mourners grieved over the bodies of their loved ones, just an hour after the attack.

“During a time when there have been many statements and announcements about inching towards an agreement for Gaza, the Israeli response is not only rejection, but on the ground it is responding with more airstrikes, targeting and killing Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip.”

Project Muhmmed, a mutual aid organization in Gaza, was distributing bread to displaced families in the port area when Israel attacked.

The project posted a video of its aid workers driving several severely wounded people in the car.

“What began as a bread distribution turned into an emergency rescue,” the group said. “Project Muhmmed’s team is now evacuating the injured and helping them receive medical care. We went out to feed the hungry – and found ourselves carrying the wounded.”

Reporter Mahmoud Shalha filmed a child mourning over the body of his father, wrapped in a white shroud, in the aftermath of the massacre.

Average of one child killed every day since “ceasefire”

It has been more than 300 days since the so-called ceasefire was declared, during which at least 1,273 Palestinians have been killed.

The United Nations children’s fund UNICEF reported earlier this month that an average of one child per day has been killed in Israeli attacks, “despite an agreement for the suspension of military operations and the full entry of humanitarian aid and relief 10 months ago.”

The agency’s regional director, Edouard Beigbeder said, “A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children. With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised.”

Families are “now crowded into roughly a third of the Gaza Strip, sheltering in unsafe conditions among destroyed buildings, rubble and accumulated solid waste,” he added.

Local authorities in Gaza warned this week that Palestinians are facing a severe water shortage as Israel’s ongoing blockade of fuel, infrastructure materials and spare parts is pushing municipal services toward collapse.

For the fifth consecutive month, Israel has prohibited the entry of fuel, according to Alaa al-Din al-Batta, a leading figure in Gaza’s Union of Municipalities. The prohibition makes it extremely difficult for vital services to be delivered.

Fuel scarcity has also stopped the ability to clear streets, remove debris and take away solid waste. Approximately 10 million tons of rubble have accumulated along roads, blocking access and complicating any emergency response.

Israel destroys evidence of its war crimes

In related news, Civil Defense crews have spent more than 40 continuous days pulling bodies from the rubble across Gaza.

Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal reported this week that so far, rescue workers have pulled the remains of 170 Palestinians from 17 different buildings in the current phase of the prolonged operation, carried out in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Basal adds that because of the limited resources, his crews are unable to reach most of the homes that still have bodies buried within or beneath them.

Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the so-called yellow line, where Israel continues to expand its extermination zone across 70 percent of Gaza, Israeli forces and Israeli civilian contractors are “conducting a wide and organized operation to process and clear the rubble from neighborhoods and facilities they have destroyed in the Gaza Strip and relocate it from areas under their military control to outside the Strip,” according to a new investigation by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

The group says this operation is happening “without any official record of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine and document the sites. This risks destroying crucial evidence of genocide and the remains of victims still unaccounted for under the rubble.”

Euro-Med Monitor says that according to its initial field reports, approximately 400 heavy pieces of excavation, demolition, crushing and transport machinery, operated by Israeli civilian companies under military protection, are active across eastern and southern Gaza.

“They demolish remaining structures, crush rubble from destroyed neighborhoods, and load the debris onto trucks for transportation away from the original sites. In recent weeks, Euro-Med Monitor tracked nearly 100 Israeli trucks daily leaving the Gaza Strip with debris. These trucks carry rubble to undisclosed sites within Israel and further south of the occupied West Bank.”

The systematic removal of rubble at this pace, Euro-Med Monitor adds, “conceals the evidence of appalling crimes Israel committed in Gaza, especially those related to genocide, such as summary executions and killing unarmed civilians. These sites need careful examination and thorough criminal investigation before any intervention that might change or erase their features.”

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya subjected to more beatings

It has been 600 days since Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician and the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, was abducted by Israeli forces in December 2024.

In July, as we reported, Abu Safiya was beaten by Israeli prison guards who used hammers and batons, and his lawyer said that he was being subjected to daily beatings, resulting in several instances of loss of consciousness, but without receiving appropriate medical treatment.

According to a report in Drop Site earlier this month, Abu Safiya suffered multiple injuries, including fractured ribs, after enduring severe beatings by Israeli prison authorities on 27 July.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office described it as the “most difficult day” of his imprisonment since being detained without charge.

Drop Site noted, “The apparent repercussions against Abu Safiya in prison following the legal challenge to his detention and similar cases involving detained medical workers have sent a chilling message to the families of Palestinian detainees – particularly doctors – that seeking justice, either through legal means or public campaigns, can have severe consequences.”

“Board of Peace” contract awarded to US-based firm

Donald Trump’s envoy to the so-called Board of Peace, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, arrived in Israel to meet with war crimes fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu.

Speaking to Fox News, Kushner said that he told Netanyahu the US would not restrict any attacks on Gaza by Israel as long as there are “imminent threats,” a vague and deliberate phrasing allowing Israel to continue the genocide.

Both Kushner and Netanyahu agreed that the Board of Peace would establish working groups focused on the “disarmament and demilitarization” of Gaza before any reconstruction happens; which was not a part of the initial agreement Hamas and the armed resistance factions entered into in October 2025.

However, earlier this month, the Board of Peace did issue its first construction contract – not for housing for Palestinians, nor hospitals, nor schools, but for an outpost for a small battalion of Moroccan armed forces which would rotate from a base in Israel, according to The Guardian newspaper.

It would be part of a planned so-called international stabilization force, which would be mandated to surveil, control and attack Palestinians but not protect them against the Israeli military which continues to carry out the genocide.

The contract, which The Guardian said had not yet been finalized, was awarded to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm that has previously carried out work with the US government in countries such as Iraq.

Arkel International previously worked as a subcontractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and registered as a foreign corporation in Israel a week before the GHF began operations in May 2025.

Israeli soldiers mark Palestinian detainees’ faces, arms with numbers

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces and armed settlers have continued to besiege Palestinian villages and carry out pogroms and forced expulsion operations.

Israelis have continued to attack the northern village of Qusra for at least 11 days, where settlers and soldiers have laid siege to three homes, obstructing the delivery of food, water, and basic supplies.

Al-Wadi stressed that “the three families are facing difficult conditions due to the continued siege and restrictions on their movement.”

The area has seen repeated attacks by Israeli occupiers in recent months to establish an illegal settlement outpost and seize Palestinian land and homes, Anadolu added.

A Palestinian American owner of one of the besieged homes, Loay Abu Rida, arrived from the United States to protect his family’s property from an Israeli settler takeover.

Some were marked by the Israeli soldiers with numbers on their faces or arms. According to local reports, the soldiers threatened Palestinians from resisting settler violence, saying that they would bulldoze the entire village if settlers were confronted.

In Burin, a village south of Nablus, on 18 August, Israeli settlers installed dirt barriers on a road leading to a home while groups of settlers gathered along the road.

Al-Haq adds that “this is part of an alarming pattern documented in several communities in the West Bank where repeated attacks are becoming a gradual siege, isolating families in their homes from their community and essential services, to ultimately push families to leave.”

In the Jordan Valley, 47 Palestinian families are facing imminent expulsion after Israeli soldiers and settlers cut their water supply there as well.

The human rights group B’Tselem says that more than 300 people, nearly half of them children, are facing expulsion in Ras al-Ahmar, Thala and Sharq Atouf after the water pipes were severed.

Israeli forces are reportedly preventing the transfer of water to the area where Palestinians rely on agriculture and livestock for their livelihoods.

Israel is working on creating a separation barrier in the northern Jordan Valley called the “Crimson Thread,” which extends about 22 kilometers.

Attacks on Palestinians with Israeli citizenship

Indigenous Palestinians in occupied historic Palestine, known as present-day Israel, are also facing accelerating land theft by the Israeli government and its militarized state apparatus.

In the city of Lydd, southeast of Tel Aviv, more than 70 families in the al-Mahatta neighborhood are facing the threat of eviction and home demolition after receiving orders from Israeli authorities, according to the Arab48 news site.

A neighborhood resident, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, told Arab48 that the al-Mahatta neighborhood is witnessing ethnic cleansing by Israeli authorities.

He added that the neighborhood has suffered from a “systematic policy of neglect since the establishment of the state,” despite being located in the central region and within one of the country’s largest cities.

On Monday, in the village of Rahat in the Naqab desert, Israel demolished two homes belonging to the Abu Qershin family. Arab48 reported that the demolition in Rahat comes at a time when the Naqab region is witnessing an escalation in house demolitions, “including in recognized Palestinian towns and [so-called] unrecognized villages, amid a severe housing crisis and a shortage of building permits that would allow Palestinian residents to expand their towns and build new homes.”

And on 15 August, in the city of Umm al-Fahm in the north, Israeli police stormed a pre-wedding celebration for a young groom, Mahmoud Mustafa Afan Mahamid, throwing stun grenades among the celebrants and ordering them to lie face down on the ground, according to Arab48.

A video of the raid circulated on social media, showing dozens of guests being forced by Israeli police to lay face down on the ground amid overturned chairs.

Israel expands attacks on Lebanon

In Lebanon, the health ministry says that since the escalation of attacks in early March, nearly 4,400 people have been killed, including at least 257 children, and at least 12,300 people have been injured as of this week.

For more on the situation on the ground in Lebanon, our contributor Roqayah Chamseddine filed this report for The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday evening:

Highlighting reclamation

And finally, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and reclamation across Palestine and around the world.

In Gaza this week, the writing project We Are Not Numbers, through which we have met and worked with many young writers, posted this video saying, “Good morning from Gaza, where children still find ways to learn, sing and dream, even when their schools have been reduced to rubble.”

• Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
• Hussam Abu Safiya
• attacks on Palestinian police
• Board of Peace
• Jared Kushner
• UNICEF
• Gaza water scarcity
• Gaza war crimes
• yellow line
• Arkel International
• Israeli settlers
• settler attacks
• Qusra
• Qabatiya
• Burin
• jordan valley
• Northern Jordan Valley
• Lydd
• Rahat
• Umm al-Fahm
• Palestinian citizens of Israel
• Roqayah Chamseddine
• Lebanon
• Nora Barrows-Friedman’s blog