Rather than being new, it is the same story Palestinians have been living since 1948, updated with a fresh budget line and a new map. This week, Israel moved to build illegal military outposts inside Gaza for the first time since its 2005 withdrawal.

Moreover, it simultaneously bankrolled the largest single wave of West Bank settlement expansion in years. Ultimately, it is a harbinger of the same project in a different decade: taking the land, piece by piece, and daring the world to stop it.

A Land Grab With a 78-Year Head Start.

To adequately understand what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank this month, we have to go back to 1948. That year, the illegal establishment of the state of Israel drove more than 750,000 innocent Palestinians from their homes, termed “Nakba”, the catastrophe.

Hundreds of villages were emptied, most never allowed to be rebuilt by their original inhabitants, and roughly 78 percent of historic Palestine was absorbed into the new state. Even inside Israel’s own recognized borders, close to 173,000 acres of land belonging to Palestinian citizens were expropriated between 1948 and 1967 alone.

Then came the defining year of 1967. Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza in the Six-Day War displaced several hundred thousand more innocent Palestinians. It was the moment Israel started building on the newly occupied territory almost immediately.

Palestinian rights groups call what followed the Ongoing Nakba. It is not a single historical event, but a process that has simply never stopped. What Israel’s government announced this week is the newest instalment.

Settlements Return to Gaza

For the first time since Israel dismantled its Gaza settlements in 2005, the Israeli government is moving to put permanent structures back on Gaza soil. Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, has advanced plans for multiple “Nahal” outposts in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Nahal is a notorious military-agricultural settlement model Israel has used for decades, specifically because it offers a legal and political stepping stone toward full civilian settlement later. These outposts are how a lot of West Bank settlements started, too.

Building any kind of permanent Israeli presence inside Gaza directly contradicts the terms of the so-called “ceasefire framework”. Secondly, the UN Security Council resolution that underpins it also assumes an eventual Israeli withdrawal. Instead, Israel currently occupies roughly 60 percent of the Strip, with Prime Minister and genocidal figure Benjamin Netanyahu having ordered the military to push that figure toward 70 percent. Katz has said Israeli forces will remain in what he calls “security zones” indefinitely, with no timetable for leaving.

The West Bank Numbers Are Staggering

While that plays out in Gaza, the pace of illegal settlement approval in the West Bank has become almost impossible to track in real time. This week alone, Israel’s security cabinet approved 1.3 billion shekels, around $434 million, to establish 34 new illegal settlements.

As a result, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called this a “day of celebration for Israel and settlements.” Moreover, another 1.075 billion shekels was approved just to pave the roads connecting them. That single announcement brings the total number of illegal settlements built during Smotrich’s four-year tenure to more than 103.

It doesn’t stop there. A separate $2.3 billion framework deal is funding roughly 12,000 additional housing units across the West Bank, and 13 more settlements have been approved in the Binyamin bloc north of Jerusalem. It is a configuration widely understood to be designed to cut East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank.

Additionally, the pace of outpost construction alone has jumped from an average of about 8 a year between 2012 and 2022 to 86 in 2025. Roughly 700,000 illegal Israeli settlers now live among 2.7 million Palestinians across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, on land the Palestinians were promised for a future state.

Illegal Under International Law — Not Just a Palestinian Claim

Genocidal Israel routinely describes the West Bank as “disputed” rather than illegally occupied territory. Even the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and the overwhelming majority of the world’s governments do not see it that way.

The ICJ’s 2024 advisory opinion went further than illegal settlements alone, finding that Israel’s entire occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful and should end as rapidly as possible. Moreover, UN Security Council Resolution 2334, passed in 2016, explicitly states that settlements have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation of international law.

Land Without a People to Put It On

Strip away the press releases, and what remains is fairly simple arithmetic. Every acre allocated to a new settlement, every outpost planted inside Gaza, and every housing unit is an acre Palestinians will never get back.

Rights groups and genocide scholars have increasingly described this slow, bureaucratic, budget-line-by-budget-line erasure of Palestinian land as a territorial dimension of the same genocide being carried out militarily in Gaza. This illegal displacement and dispossession is a policy, not an unfortunate byproduct of genocide.

In fact, seventy-eight years after the Nakba, the method has simply gotten more heinous. The outcome, for the innocent Palestinians watching bulldozers arrive on land their grandparents once farmed, looks exactly the same.

A ceasefire can ultimately stop new bombs from falling, but it cannot make the weapons already buried beneath Gaza safe. Although it is a “broken ceasefire” that has been violated more than a hundred times by Israel, Palestinians still have hope. Whenever families return to their damaged homes, they will find more than broken concrete and twisted steel.

Israel said it carried out more than 40,000 airstrikes on Gaza by October 2024. Alarmingly, the UN Mine Action Service estimates that 5% to 10% of explosive munitions have failed to explode.

Gaza Has Become an Unmapped Minefield

Unexploded ordnance is extremely dangerous because it is hard to identify and may become less stable after impact. In Gaza, rather than lying in open air, numerous lethal weapons are buried inside collapsed apartment blocks, under roads, beside water systems, or beneath homes where displaced people are trying to live again.

A credible news agency, Reuters, documented a bomb more than a meter long on a rubbish heap in Gaza City. Moreover, a family in Nuseirat is unable to return because a device remained inside their home, and residents of Khan Younis are living above a suspected bomb buried beneath their building. UN teams have also found aircraft bombs, mortars, rockets, and improvised explosive devices on the surface, while warning that many more are likely to be deep under the rubble.

By October 2025, a UN-led database had recorded more than 53 deaths and hundreds of injuries from explosive remnants in Gaza. Aid organizations, such as UNRWA, believe the real total is higher because many incidents are never formally reported. Additionally, Humanity & Inclusion estimated that clearing surface contamination alone could take 20 to 30 years, while deeply buried weapons may remain a threat for generations.

Rubble Clearance Cannot Begin Blindly

As per the UN estimates, Gaza now contains an estimated 61 million tonnes of rubble. By April 2026, UNDP teams had removed about 287,000 tonnes, less than half of 1% of the total. The agency said the wider effort could take seven years or even more, and only if heavy machinery, fuel, and access are consistently available. Reconstruction needs have been placed at $71.4 billion over the coming decade.

These figures aptly show why unexploded weapons are inseparable from reconstruction. Before workers reopen a road, reach a water well, repair a hospital, or clear land for housing, specialists may need to survey the site. A bulldozer cannot safely enter simply because the fighting has stopped.

Near Khan Younis, a bulldozer struck a concealed explosive while clearing a road. The driver and a 15-year-old boy suffered severe burns and shrapnel wounds, and both lost sight in one eye.

The debris may also contain asbestos, contaminated dust, sewage, fuel, industrial chemicals, and human remains. Clearance is therefore a demining, environmental, and public-health operation, not merely a construction job.

Children and Returning Families Face the Greatest Risk

Children search damaged buildings for toys, clothing, wood, plastic, or scrap metal. A fuse, shell fragment, or small munition may look useful or harmless. So, as a precaution, warning posters can reduce some risk, but they cannot replace trained clearance teams.

Returning families face the same danger on a larger scale. Many enter homes without structural inspections, move debris by hand, and salvage whatever can be reused. Some extract steel bars from destroyed buildings to support tents or sell for income because construction materials remain scarce. That work brings innocent civilians into direct contact with debris that has not been systematically checked.

The threat will grow whenever more displaced people return to heavily damaged neighborhoods. Without large-scale clearance, Gaza risks inheriting the same decades-long danger seen in other countries where unexploded weapons continued killing civilians long after wars ended.

The Equipment Needed Has Been Restricted

As a professional practice, bomb disposal teams require detectors, armoured vehicles, protective clothing, firing cables, controlled explosives and specialised excavation equipment. But Israeli authorities rejected requests for more than 2,000 demining items between March and July 2024, including equipment needed for safe detonations and protected access. Aid groups said these restrictions and blockages prevented clearance work from beginning.

Gaza’s own capacity has also been reduced to almost nothing. Thirty-one members of the local police engineering division were killed, and another 22 were injured during the genocide. International teams need visas, security guarantees, and permission to bring equipment into the territory. Without strike records and technical information about the weapons used, specialists must work with incomplete maps.

Responsibility Cannot End With the Bombing

A UN-coordinated estimate placed the cost of clearing Gaza’s unexploded ordnance at about $500 million over ten years, assuming cooperation and unrestricted access. Later assessments suggested surface clearance may take even more than two or three decades.

That burden cannot be placed on innocent Palestinians alone. Israel holds information about its strikes and munitions. Governments that supplied weapons have technical expertise, records, and financial resources. On the other hand, donors discussing reconstruction must treat explosive clearance as a first requirement, not an optional project after roads and buildings are planned.

In a nutshell, Gaza cannot be rebuilt safely while bombs remain beneath homes, schools, hospitals and streets. The slow pace of genocide does not end the danger. Before families can return with confidence, the weapons still buried beneath the rubble must be mapped, removed, and destroyed.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established to provide humanitarian support to the people of Palestine, especially in Gaza. However, this life-saving agency does not need to announce its collapse for Palestinian refugees to feel it. A clinic can shorten its critical hours, a school can lose teachers, and a family can suffer unimaginably due to the shortage of food, shelter, and life-saving medication.

On 30 June 2026, UN Secretary General António Guterres warned that this critical UN agency was approaching a “breaking point”. This is due to a funding gap of $100 million and restrictions by Israel. Due to this unfortunate happening, UNRWA had already reduced service hours by twenty percent. Moreover, they had cut local salaries and left 15% of international posts vacant. In 2025 alone, it received just $829 million against stated needs of $3.3 billion.

An Agency Created Because Displacement Was Never Resolved

UNRWA was established in 1949 after about 700,000 Palestinians were driven from or fled their homes during the Nakba. It was meant to provide much-needed humanitarian relief while the refugee question awaited a reliable solution. More than 75 years later, that solution has not arrived.

In fact, around 5.9 million Palestinians are registered with the agency across Gaza, the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. UNRWA employs about 30,000 Palestinians and provides education, primary healthcare, relief, and emergency assistance. It is not a small charity that can be replaced by redirecting a few aid trucks. It is a regional humanitarian public-service system built over generations.

Its long existence is sometimes used against it, as though the agency created the refugee crisis. In fact, UNRWA remains because the Palestinian statehood issue remains unresolved. Closing it would only remove services, while the original injustice would continue.

Gaza Would Feel the Collapse First

Especially in Gaza, UNRWA has operated schools, clinics, warehouses, and distribution systems for decades. Its local staff know the limited communities they serve. During the genocide, its buildings became shelters, and its employees continued working while displaced and grieving.

So, if the agency breaks down, Gaza would lose far more than just food distribution. Primary healthcare would shrink. Vaccination, maternal care, and treatment for chronic illness would be largely interrupted. Sanitation and shelter support would weaken. Other humanitarian organizations would be expected to absorb an enormous caseload without UNRWA’s staff, facilities or local network.

Moreover, education would suffer just as deeply. UN officials warned that more than 660,000 children in Gaza could lose access to schooling if UNRWA collapsed. After years of bombing, displacement, and trauma, removing the main institution capable of rebuilding education would deepen the destruction of an entire innocent generation.

The Crisis Would Spread Across the Region

UNRWA is often discussed as though it exists only in Gaza. Its collapse would also be felt in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the occupied West Bank.

When it comes to Lebanon, many Palestinian refugees face severe poverty and restrictions on employment. In Syria, years of internal and proxy wars have damaged camps and public services. On the other hand, in Jordan and the West Bank, UNRWA schools and clinics support large communities. Host governments would face extreme pressure to absorb hundreds of programs, yet most lack the money or capacity to do so.

Although international charities could take over isolated projects, they could not quickly reproduce a network operating across five territories. The likely result would be fragmented healthcare, overcrowded schools, lost jobs, and deeper instability.

A Financial Crisis Made Political

UNRWA’s funding problems cannot be separated from the campaign against the agency by Israel and its allies.

Israel accused several employees of involvement in the attacks of 7 October 2023. The UN investigated this matter as well. These allegations against individuals were used to attack an agency employing tens of thousands and serving millions. Several donors suspended funding; most later resumed it, but the financial damage remained.

To add fuel to the fire, Israel also passed legislation restricting UNRWA, barred official contact with it, and moved against its East Jerusalem presence. Unfortunately, in January 2026, Israeli bulldozers demolished buildings inside the agency’s East Jerusalem compound after the site had been seized. Resultantly, the UN condemned the demolition as a violation of international law.

Who Would Replace UNRWA?

Israel has notoriously said that other organizations can assume UNRWA’s work. However, what are the guarantees that the other organization wouldn’t be banned or completely obliterated in the name of revenge? No credible plan has shown how this could happen at the required scale.

When it comes to other humanitarian agencies, they have specialized mandates, but none combines UNRWA’s schools, clinics, registration systems, warehouses and Palestinian workforce. NGOs can provide emergency help, but they cannot instantly operate a regional education and healthcare system. Most importantly, the UN Security Council has called UNRWA the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza and warned against attempts to dismantle it.

If UNRWA disappeared, innocent civilians would suffer the most. Food, healthcare, schooling, shelter, and sanitation would still have to be provided. Ultimately, Palestinian families would bear the immediate consequences.

Closing UNRWA Would Not Close the Refugee Question

In a nutshell, UNRWA is not a substitute for Palestinian freedom, return, compensation, or statehood. It cannot negotiate a political settlement. Its schools and clinics manage the consequences of displacement rather than resolving its cause.

UNRWA may have been created as a temporary institution, but Palestinian exile was never temporary. If the agency finally breaks, the refugees will not vanish. Their needs will become more severe, the entire system more strained, and the region less stable.

The world would not have ended the Palestinian refugee crisis. It would simply have abandoned the people still living through it.