Nora Barrows-Friedman
The Electronic Intifada / May 15, 2026
Israel’s attacks on Gaza continue to target children, homes and civil infrastructure seven months into a supposed ceasefire and more than two and a half years into the genocide.
On Wednesday, Israel wounded eight Palestinians, most of them children, in attacks in the northern town of Beit Lahiya and in Gaza City.
On Tuesday, a Palestinian was killed in an Israeli drone attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Israel killed two people in another serial attack on a police vehicle in Khan Younis on 10 May.
The strike killed Wissam Fayez Abdel-Hadi, head of investigations in the Khan Younis police department, and his aide, Fadi Abdel-Moati Heikal.
An Israeli missile strike on 9 May on the Beach refugee camp in western Gaza City wounded six Palestinians, including two children, and set homes ablaze. Reporter Saed Hasballah filmed the scene.
Also on 9 May, reporter Nahed Hajjaj captured family members grieving over the body of Iyad al-Matouq, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike while riding his bicycle north of Gaza City.
Antibiotic resistance growing
This past week, a group of volunteers cleared rubble by hand and planted trees in the courtyard of the destroyed Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to commemorate the hundreds of bodies that were buried in a mass grave by invading Israeli forces and later recovered.
Muhammad Abu Salmiya – the director of Al-Shifa Hospital who was abducted by the Israelis during the first siege on the hospital in November 2023, and imprisoned and tortured for seven months before he was released in July 2024 – told reporters that “today, in this very spot, we plant olive trees.”
“Just months ago, this place was a mass grave where over 500 bodies were recovered,” he added. “But today, we plant olive trees to declare that we will remain here as long as the olive trees endure. These olive trees will bear witness to the rebuilding of Al-Shifa Hospital.”
Meanwhile, physicians and health experts are warning that because of Israel’s ongoing blockade on necessary medical equipment, medications, sanitizers, sterilization supplies and construction materials, along with the systematic assassination and abductions of doctors, nurses, and specialists, infectious diseases are rampant across Gaza.
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Salman Khan, who recently worked in Gaza, wrote this week in Mondoweiss that patients are developing antibiotic resistance.
He reports, “Due in part to ongoing restrictions on the entry of lifesaving medicines by the Israeli occupation, the antibiotic supply is severely limited in Gaza, often changing week to week based on availability of donations from the World Health Organization. Patients unnecessarily die from often treatable infections because of delays in receiving effective antibiotic therapy.”
Khan writes that the “collapse of the healthcare system, overwhelming overcrowding in and around hospitals, and breakdown of hygiene and sanitation infrastructure all conspired to facilitate the spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria and exacerbate Gaza’s antimicrobial resistance burden. “
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya enduring torture in Israeli detention
One of the doctors who remains inside Israeli torture prisons is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the paediatrician and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, which was besieged, raided and destroyed by Israeli forces.
Abu Safiya was abducted in December 2024, and according to recent eyewitness testimonies from former prisoners who were detained with him, his health is deteriorating and he continues to endure brutal torture and denial of medical treatment.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor gathered witness statements this past week, including testimony that his treatment by the Israeli prison guards is “much crueller” than that of other detainees.
Witnesses say that Abu Safiya is kept shackled for several days in a row, with his hands tied behind his back; that Israeli guards raid his cell at night and throw stun grenades and tear gas near him; that he is being subjected to routine interrogations where he is beaten, verbally abused and humiliated; that they strip him naked and set dogs on him; that he suffers from constant vomiting and is denied medical attention; and that he has lost a significant amount of weight.
As we reported, in late April, an Israeli military court extended Abu Safiya’s administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial – with Israeli authorities indicating that his detention is now “indefinite.”
Global Sumud Flotilla activists freed from detention
This week, the two international activists who are part of the Global Sumud Flotilla and were abducted by Israeli forces and imprisoned for more than a week, were released.
Saif Abukeshek, a Palestinian citizen of Spain, and Thiago Avila, a Brazilian citizen, had engaged in hunger strikes during their detention until their release last weekend.
The flotilla intended to break the Israeli siege on Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid and was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters.
Saif Abukeshek spoke from Athens on his way back to Spain.
Israeli soldiers kill child
Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 16-year-old child near the town of Jaljulia, north of Ramallah, on Wednesday.
Yousuf Kaabneh was shot in the chest, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
Four other Palestinians were injured by rubber-coated bullets and during attacks carried out by Israeli settlers who were protected by the Israeli army in the villages of Sinjil, Jaljulia and Abwein.
Residents confronted the settlers, who stole hundreds of sheep and agricultural equipment during the attack, witnesses said.
According to the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF, on average, one Palestinian child has been killed every week in the occupied West Bank since January 2025.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder stated this week that that figure includes “70 Palestinian children killed in this timeframe,” and that 93 percent of these “were killed by Israeli forces.”
Furthermore, 850 children were injured, he added, noting that March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by Israeli settler attacks in the past 20 years.
Most of the children killed or wounded were hit by live ammunition, while others were stabbed, beaten and pepper-sprayed, Elder said.
Israeli settlers carried out more than 20 separate pogroms on Palestinian villages across the West Bank last weekend, including an assault on a pregnant woman and an elder in an attack on the village of Jurish, near Nablus. Local reports said settlers threw stones at homes in the village, entered several houses and assaulted residents.
In a pogrom on the village of Duyuk, near Jericho, settlers entered Palestinians’ homes early in the morning on Saturday and beat people with clubs while they were in their beds.
Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, Zakaria Ali Mohammed Qadees, on Tuesday in the village of al-Ram, north of Jerusalem.
The day before, in nearby Qalandiya refugee camp, Israeli forces killed 30-year-old Ayman Rafiq Muhammad al-Hashlamoun during an invasion in which soldiers reportedly stormed a vocational training center in the camp and fired tear gas, stun grenades and live ammunition.
Local reports say that Al-Hashlamoun was shot in the head and later pronounced dead after Palestinian ambulance crews were reportedly prevented from reaching him.
The Palestine Red Crescent said a 15-year-old boy was also wounded by a rubber-coated bullet Israeli soldiers fired inside the camp.
Settlers desecrate Palestinian elder’s gravesite
In the village of Asasa, near Jenin, family members and loved ones grieved the death of 80-year-old Hussein Asasa last weekend. They buried him in the village cemetery.
Immediately after, Israeli settlers from the nearby colony of Sanur started digging around the grave, and threatened to dig up the body with a bulldozer if the family did not take it somewhere else.
Muhammad Asasa, Hussein Asasa’s son, told Reuters, “We found that they already dug the grave and reached the body. We continued digging and got the body and buried him in another cemetery.”
The United Nations human rights office stated that “Israeli settlers today forced the family of Hussein Asasa, buried hours earlier in the Asasa cemetery south of Jenin, to dig up their father as Israeli security forces stood by. According to the family, they moved his body to another cemetery under a hail of stones from settlers.”
“This is appalling and emblematic of the dehumanization of Palestinians that we see unfolding across the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories]. It spares no one, dead or alive,” said Ajith Sunghay from the UN human rights office.
The cemetery sits 300 meters from Sanur settlement, re-established by the Israeli government in 2025. Palestinians must now obtain Israeli permits to bury their dead there, as Hussein Asasa’s family had done that same morning, the UN added.
Last week, as we reported, Israel had notified dozens of Palestinians that their shops and businesses would be demolished in the town of al-Eizariya near Jerusalem as part of a plan to expand a nearby massive settlement colony.
This week, Israeli bulldozers destroyed at least 50 shops and businesses in the town, ostensibly to make way for a new road to divert Palestinian traffic away from the Jewish-only settlement colony, according to the group Peace Now.
Al Jazeera said that lawyers appealed to Israel’s high court, but the demolitions went ahead anyway.
Israel targets paramedics in Lebanon
Meanwhile in Lebanon, at least 12 people, including children, were killed in a series of Israeli airstrikes on vehicles across several villages in the south on Wednesday.
Our contributor Roqayah Chamseddine reported on Thursday that Israel “targeted the Resala medical center in Qsaybeh (in the district of Nabatieh), south Lebanon. Another deliberate attack on Lebanese first responders. This center serves as a hub for paramedics, firefighters, and ambulance services.”
Israel has damaged or completely destroyed more than 10,000 homes in Lebanon since the so-called ceasefire last month, according to the country’s National Council for Scientific Research.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, nearly 3,000 people, including 200 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since 2 March.
Highlighting reclamation
And now, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and reclamation across Palestine and around the world.
The Sameer Project, a mutual aid organization in Gaza, captured footage of a volleyball championship game in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014)
