Palestine weekly: Ahead of elections, Israel doubles down on attacks Gaza mourns as families are buried after Israeli attacks leave dozens dead, including children and displaced families. On July 17, hours after Israel’s parliament formally dissolved itself and set an October 27 election date, an Israeli drone struck a funeral procession outside Ahmad Yassin Mosque in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least eight mourners as they buried a man killed hours earlier. The UN human rights office said Israeli attacks have killed at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women, between July 13 and 20, warning that the pattern “raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza”.

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All of this points towards an unrelenting few months of violence and dispossession before elections take place. A mass-casualty week in Gaza Beyond the Nuseirat funeral strike, the week’s Gaza toll included a string of air attacks on homes and displaced families. On July 15, an Israeli helicopter attack killed Omar Sami Abu Qassem, his wife Asmaa Ghazi and their six-year-old daughter Habiba in Deir el-Balah; their three-year-old son was the only survivor.

On July 18, an Israeli warplane struck a residential building in Gaza City’s Nassr neighbourhood without warning, killing Adham Nasman, his wife Marwa and three of their children; a third child survived only because he was not home. Israel claimed that Nasman was a Hamas commander – the group has not issued a statement confirming that. A day later, Rida Abu Asr was killed by Israeli artillery shelling in Zeitoun, one of several people killed in the neighbourhood that day as tanks advanced towards Dawla Junction, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Israeli strikes also killed seven police officers, including the director of Jabalia’s police station, in an attack on a checkpoint on July 14, and repeatedly hit tents sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi throughout the week, according to Wafa. Then, an overnight Israeli air attack on July 21 killed Firas al-Masri, his wife Salsabeel and their four children as they slept in Gaza City, according to medical officials. Amid this string of mass-casualty attacks, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz told Channel 14, while touring northern Gaza, he felt satisfaction from the scenes of destruction, which he said resulted from a deliberate Israeli policy.

He added that Israel was studying the establishment of three military-style settlement outposts in northern Gaza. Katz’s statements coincided with a march on Sunday by the Nachala settler movement to the Gaza border fence, in which right-wing Israelis – accompanied by more than a dozen ministers and legislators, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party – called for the re-establishment of settlements inside Gaza.