Daily Briefing On Palestine: No 7.

By Editors at Sentient Musings.

We aren’t certain about the scope of our readership. Google Analytics and SquareSpace both provide different and differing metrics — and the most indicate a regular readership of about 50 people and each post seems to bring in about 50 or so new people. What we do know is our readership is international. Each reader once they arrive on the site, reads about 3.5 essays. We have now over 425 essays or so posted going back several months and the themes we’ve developed are often interconnected. Here’s something I have started to realize as someone who regularly scans media and sees very clearly what it does cover and what it refuses to cover. If you are a regular reader, you will have noticed the same thing by now. Any site, that dares to cover the suffering and genocide happening everyday in Palestine and also talks about worker’s rights and Karl Marx’s theories and writings, while staying away from ideologies of capitalism, communism, republic theory, traditional left, extreme right and so on… is probably a site worth revisiting. We don’t trust anyone as a standard rule we apply to every site. Yet some sites become more worthy of revisiting simply because they cover these two topics that are anathema to The System. We may in the future decide to offer highly “coded” merch that we hope you won’t buy. Simply because we don’t trust you. We will try to price it so that it is out of your affordability and reach. And we will not promise to donate all of the funds to Sudan and Palestine.

INTEL DESK • DAILY BRIEFING • PALESTINE VII • OCT 26–31 2026 • Open Source • For Ordinary Reader

Daily Briefing On Palestine VII – Oct 31, 2026 – Everything Since Briefing VI Oct 26

LANGUAGE: FULL ENGLISH SENTENCES • FULL LEXICON • EXPLANATIONS FOR FIRST-TIME READER • NO SHORTHAND • FOR THE ORDINARY READER, NOT THE MEDIA INSIDER

Previous edition: Briefing VI

■ BACKGROUND    ■ GAZA    ■ WEST BANK    ■ LEBANON

HOW TO READ THE BOXES: within each section the events run in chronological order, and any event that involves United Nations personnel or people from outside Palestine, whether detained, attacked, barred or killed, is set apart in a red box such as this one.

00 — BACKGROUND

The war began on October 7, 2023, and a ceasefire was announced to take effect on October 10, 2025. That ceasefire has nevertheless not stopped the strikes, the killings, the demolitions, or the blockade. The figures set out below are offered not in order to trivialize any single death, but in order to place the events of this week within their proper scale.

The ticker, offered occasionally and only to convey scale:

• Humanitarian organizations, October 9: More than one hundred humanitarian organizations declared that the ceasefire exists in name only.
• UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, October 28: The Commission concluded that Israel continued to commit genocide in Gaza after last October’s US-brokered ceasefire, having examined violations against civilians. It reports that, from the ceasefire through September 30, 1,431 Palestinians were killed, including 300 children and 130 women.
• October 30–31: The Gaza Health Ministry recorded 8 new deaths and 26 wounded over the preceding 24 hours, which, by its count, puts the toll since the ceasefire at 1,439 killed and 5,052 wounded.
• Morning of October 31: Since October 7, 2023, 74,570 people have been killed and 175,808 wounded. Of these, 1,574 were killed and 5,687 wounded since the ceasefire of October 10, 2025, and 845 bodies have been recovered from the rubble, according to r24.mv and abna24. Other counts published the same day differ slightly: Anadolu reports 1,575 killed since the ceasefire, while the Gaza government media office reports 1,568.
• UNICEF, October 31: 351 children have been killed since the ceasefire of October 2025, among them 8 children killed and 20 injured within a single six-day period despite the active truce. The United Nations describes the pattern as systemic killing and demands accountability.

Where it is pertinent, the word genocide is used here as it is used at the United Nations and at The Hague, namely for ongoing legal qualifications. Benjamin Netanyahu is, moreover, a wanted man under international law: in November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued active arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity against him and against the former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The Hague has no police force of its own and relies upon its member states to carry out arrests. The context of the Hannibal Directive on October 7 and of the “NAZA” collateral was provided in full in the First Edition of October 14, and it is not repeated here unless something new has emerged.

01 — GAZA — OCT 26 THROUGH OCT 31

For the ordinary reader: in 2026 Israeli maps divide Gaza by what is called the Yellow Line. The territory west of that line is designated the Green Zone, a humanitarian area in which displaced families are told to shelter in tents, and which is supposed to be the safer side. Yet children and families in this marked humanitarian tent area remain under fire, despite the marking ordered by Defense Minister Israel Katz.

• Overnight, October 25–26: Two Palestinians, one of them a woman, were killed in new violations of the ceasefire, according to houndsco.ru. On the Sunday, according to see.mv, two more were killed and four wounded by gunfire and airstrikes in several parts of Gaza.
• Monday, October 26 (early morning): Three Palestinians, including a child, were killed in shelling and gunfire directed at the tents of displaced persons in southern Gaza.
• Gaza City, October 27: Three Palestinians were killed and three wounded on Tuesday, the latest violation of the October 10 ceasefire deal. A 17-year-old boy was killed when a strike hit near the al-Sanafour intersection in eastern Gaza City, and two more people were killed in a missile strike in the Tuffah neighborhood in the north. Three others, including a child, were injured by shrapnel. Israeli artillery also shelled the area around the al-Sanafour junction, east of Tuffah, amid heavy gunfire from military vehicles.
• Demolitions in al-Tuffah (October 27): On the same day, a large-scale demolition operation targeted buildings east of Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighbourhood.
• Jabalia (October 27): Another Palestinian, according to the Nasser Medical Complex, succumbed to wounds sustained in an earlier drone strike on Tuesday that had targeted a gathering in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
• Al-Nafaq, central Gaza City (October 27): A Palestinian woman was killed and several others wounded in a drone strike on the rooftop of a home, according to Muslim Network TV.
• Sabra and the two deadliest days, October 28–29: At least nine people were killed in airstrikes in the evening, among them four people killed in a strike on a home in the Sabra neighborhood of western Gaza City, inside the Yellow Line, while several remained missing under the rubble. According to Final Call, more than 100 Palestinians were killed between October 28 and 29, with 125 violations of the ceasefire agreement recorded. October 19 and October 29 were the two deadliest days since the latest ceasefire, on which Israel killed 154 people in total; on October 19, after two Israeli soldiers were killed in Rafah, 45 people were killed in a massive wave of air raids.
• Further reports, October 29: The Rest of World Report states that Israeli strikes killed at least five people on Wednesday and two more on Thursday despite the ceasefire, and Byteseu reports that Israel killed six Palestinians in Gaza strikes. Euro-Med Monitor adds that at least 19 Palestinian children were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza in October, an average of one child every 35 hours; the youngest was a four-year-old boy, and the children were killed in their homes, in tents, or while returning from lessons.
• Friday, October 30: According to Anadolu, two Palestinians were wounded early on Friday in an airstrike on a residential apartment in Gaza City. Four government employees were killed and 30 wounded, six of them critically, in a strike on a government post.
• Saturday morning, October 31: Two Palestinians were killed. Diaa Abu al-Rous, a teacher, was killed early on Saturday when a drone struck north of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, and Arafat al-Ar'ir died of wounds sustained in an earlier attack in Tel al-Hawa, in southwestern Gaza City, according to abna24.

Other media: Al Jazeera, Reuters, AP and Getty Images; medical sources on the al-Sanafour 17-year-old and on Tuffah; Muslim Network TV on the Al-Nafaq woman; the Rest of World Report (1,574 killed); Anadolu (1,575 killed); Euro-Med and Quds on the 19 children killed in October; the UN Commission on genocide continuing after the truce; Final Call on more than 100 killed on October 28–29; and Newsflare on the nine killed in Sabra, inside the Yellow Line.

Israeli media: The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Ynet, Haaretz, Walla, Maariv, JFeed, Channel 12 (Hadashot 12, the 8 p.m. news that is a family tradition), Kan 11 (the public broadcaster), Channels 13 and 14, Galei Tzahal (the army radio, also called IDF radio), i24NEWS and Israel Hayom. These outlets framed the strikes as the elimination of three Nukhba commanders (members of Hamas’s elite force) who took part in the invasion of Israel during the October 7 massacre, described the activities as repeated violations of the ceasefire, and spoke of Hamas reorganizing its military forces. They carried no front-page treatment of the 17-year-old, of the Sabra strike inside the Yellow Line, or of the 19 children.

02 — WEST BANK — OBLIGATORY — SETTLER VIOLENCE LEADING TO IMPRISONMENT OR DEATH — RECORD LEVELS — WORST YEAR ON RECORD

The olive harvest is not a symbol. It is annual income, winter savings and family tradition, upon which families depend to pay their debts and to buy heating oil and school supplies. When trees are burned or olives stolen, a year of work is lost.

The overall picture, before the day-by-day events:

• Worst Year On Record (2026 to date): According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 2,000 settler attacks causing casualties or property damage have been recorded since the beginning of 2026. That figure exceeds the total recorded in any previous year, making 2026 the worst year on record for such attacks, and UN News repeats the same figure.
• Economic Collapse (year on year): Olive oil production has plunged from 158 tons in 2023 to just 27 tons this year, a sharp decline amid escalating attacks.
• The Running Count (since September 27): UN OCHA records at least 160 settler attacks related to the olive harvest in the first two weeks of October, often carried out under the protection, or with the participation, of Israeli forces. Yesh Din records at least 170 settler attacks since September 27, around the start of the harvest, and at least 135 physical attacks as of October 23. The UN Human Rights Office likewise records at least 160 attacks within the initial two weeks, involving live ammunition, arson, and the destruction of centuries-old olive trees.
• In The Courts (date not given): A Jerusalem court lifted the West Bank bans imposed on volunteers of Rabbis for Human Rights during the olive harvest, having found the accusations against them unsubstantiated.

The events, in order:

• ⚠ People from outside Palestine
  October 17, Taybeh (earlier, for context): European diplomats were attacked in Taybeh. The French mayor Bernard Baudoux, aged 78, was beaten with iron bars, and a Belgian consular vehicle was smashed.
• ⚠ People from outside Palestine
  Abu Falah (earlier, for context; date not given): Dozens of masked settlers descended on farmland, setting fire to cars and olive trees and wielding clubs, firearms and nail-studded sticks. At least 12 people were injured, including four dual Palestinian-American citizens who were hospitalized, and the Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine was kicked fifteen times and suffered fractures.
• ⚠ People from outside Palestine
  European Legislators Barred (Monday, October 26): Israeli authorities barred European legislators from entering the occupied West Bank via Jordan. They had intended to meet Palestinian students and civil society leaders at Birzeit University and to accompany farmers facing escalating settler violence during the olive harvest. The Progressive International delegation of around 23 people, drawn from the UK, Spain, France, Ireland, Greece and elsewhere, was to attend the Second Ramallah Congress at Birzeit, and included Lara Bird of the SNP and Clive Lewis; the Guardian (October 26, 22:39) reports British politicians being held, and Presstv.co.uk reports that Israeli occupation forces barred the European MPs.
• Artada, al-Lubban (October 29): Israeli settlers from the Avichai Farm outpost forced farmers and activists to abandon the harvest in the Artada area of al-Lubban.
• Kafr Malik (October 30): Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and activists who were harvesting olives. The military said it arrested two Palestinians following reports of stone-throwing by Palestinians, but it did not address the allegations of settler attacks.
• Friday, October 30: The Palestinian Commission Against the Wall and Settlements reported 22 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against olive pickers and their agricultural land on Friday alone.
• ⚠ People from outside Palestine
  Fourteen Activists Facing Deportation (October 30): In a statement for immediate release from al-Lubban al-Gharbi, northwest of Ramallah, it was reported that fourteen international solidarity activists, from Italy, the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, Ireland and Sweden, face possible deportation after being detained while accompanying farmers. Four Italian activists were held during the harvest, amid a clampdown on the volunteers who defend the pickers.
• Saturday, October 31: Israeli settlers intensified their attacks in different parts of the occupied West Bank during the ongoing harvest; several farmers were assaulted and at least one Palestinian was injured in the latest incidents.
• ⚠ People from outside Palestine
  Givon Prison (October 31): An Italian teacher was detained at Givon prison after refusing deportation.

Other media: UN OCHA (160 attacks, and the 2,000-plus worst-year figure); Yesh Din (170 and 135); Global Justice on the legislators barred on October 26; Presstv on the same; the Guardian on the British politicians held; the Palestinian Red Crescent on the six injured at Abu Falah, one killed, and more than 120 injured across the West Bank; the court victory of Rabbis for Human Rights; Datelinewire on the European diplomats, the French mayor and Heidi Levine; and timesheadline.in on the 22 attacks on Friday.

Israeli media: The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Ynet, Haaretz, Walla, Maariv, JFeed, Channel 12 (Hadashot 12), Kan 11, Galei Tzahal and i24NEWS. They carried no reporting on the 2,000-plus attacks, on the 22 attacks on Friday, or on the 14 detained activists, and focused instead on arrests for stone-throwing, on security measures, and on closures for election day.

03 — LEBANON — UNIFIL UNDER FIRE — 30 TIMES IN OCTOBER, 7 CLEARLY DELIBERATE, SECOND FRENCH SOLDIER DIES

For the ordinary reader: UNIFIL is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, established in 1978, and it now numbers about 10,500 peacekeepers drawn from about 50 countries. Its area of operation lies along the Blue Line, the line of separation between Lebanon and Israel in the south, and extends north to the Litani River.

• ⚠ UN personnel
  The Month As A Whole (October): According to the spokesman Andrea Tenenti, the UN mission was targeted 30 times in October, about 20 of them attributable to Israeli fire or actions, and seven of them clearly deliberate.
• ⚠ UN personnel
  A French Soldier Killed (earlier; date not given): The first French soldier to die, Florian Montorio, was killed while clearing a road.
• ⚠ UN personnel
  Shama (earlier in the window; date not given): A live 155mm artillery shell hit the UNIFIL West Sector headquarters in Shama but did not detonate.
• ⚠ UN personnel
  A Convoy Assaulted (date not given): A convoy transporting UN peacekeepers to the airport was violently assaulted and the outgoing commander injured, an act that could be classified as a war crime.
• ⚠ UN personnel
  “Very Concerned” (October 26): The UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said that the United Nations is very concerned about the incident of October 26, in which an Israeli drone dropped a grenade in the vicinity of a UNIFIL patrol and an Israeli tank subsequently fired a shot at peacekeepers in Kfar Kila. Xinhua reports that UNIFIL said on Sunday that one of its patrols came under Israeli fire, with no personnel injured.
• ⚠ UN personnel
  Withdrawal From A Post, Dhayra (a Tuesday): Peacekeepers were withdrawn from a post near the southern Lebanese village of Dhayra after being fired upon by Israeli soldiers earlier in the week. The incident occurred on Tuesday, when the peacekeepers were at a permanent observation post monitoring Israeli soldiers conducting house-clearing operations.
• ⚠ UN personnel
  European Union Condemnation (October 27): According to the European External Action Service, the European Union condemned the Israeli attack that again targeted a UNIFIL detachment on October 26.
• ⚠ UN personnel
  A Second French Soldier Dies (announced October 28): Corporal Anicet Girardin died of wounds sustained in last week’s Hezbollah attack on the UN force, following the death of the first French soldier, Florian Montorio.
• October 28 (Wednesday): The Qatar News Agency (QNA) reports that Israeli forces continued their attacks across southern Lebanon, shelling several towns, with a drone dropping a stun grenade and warplanes flying over Beirut’s southern suburbs. Artillery targeted the valleys of Mansouri and Majdal Zoun, and shells landed in eastern Hadatha.
• ⚠ UN personnel
  Naqoura Headquarters Struck (October 29): A rocket struck the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura.
• October 30–31, The Security Index: The Lebanon Security Index rated the overall situation HIGH, at 73 out of 100, on October 30. Its revised incident list for October 31 includes Israeli forces setting houses on fire in Qantara, a house blown up on the Kfarshouba–Shebaa road, a detonation in Tiri, shelling from Wadi Zibqin to Kfarshouba, and an interceptor missile exploding over Taybeh.
• Saturday, October 31: According to the National News Agency, the Israeli army carried out fresh airstrikes, explosions and machine-gun fire across southern Lebanon early on Saturday.
• Context: The UN Security Council has voted to end the UNIFIL mandate on December 31, 2026, which raises concerns about a security vacuum; China urges that the decision be reversed.

Other media: UNIFIL’s own statements; the Frontier Post (30 incidents, 20 by Israeli forces, 7 deliberate); France24 and AFP; Xinhua; GlobalSecurity (on misidentification); the National News Agency of Lebanon; QNA; the CIS Security Index (houses set afire in Qantara); the Financial Times, which reported a leaked document counting a dozen incidents, including possible use of white phosphorus; and The Munich Eye on the convoy assault.

Israeli media: The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Ynet, Haaretz, Walla, Maariv, JFeed, Channel 12 (Hadashot 12), Kan 11, Galei Tzahal and i24NEWS. They carried Netanyahu’s position that the charge of a deliberate attack is completely false and that UNIFIL had repeatedly been asked to get out of harm’s way, and they focused on Hezbollah vehicles in Tayri and on security operations in the south.

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Israeli sources monitored for Briefing VII: The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Ynet, Haaretz, Walla, Maariv, JFeed, Channel 12 (Hadashot 12, the 8 p.m. news), Kan 11 (public broadcaster), Channels 13 and 14, Galei Tzahal (army radio, also called IDF radio), i24NEWS and Israel Hayom.

Other sources include Al Jazeera, Reuters, AP, CBS, the Guardian, Antiwar.com, Electronic Intifada, Zeteo, Mondoweiss, OCHA (the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), UNRWA, UNIFIL, UNICEF, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), the National News Agency of Lebanon, QNA and Xinhua.