Israel / Palestine

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office announced the country’s coalition government would be disbanded, triggering a new election. … The new election could give longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a chance to return to power.

Ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, and discrimination against Palestinians, is essential to stopping the decades-long conflict between the two sides, a new UN independent human rights body said on Tuesday.  The finding comes in the first report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, established last May by the UN Human Rights Council. 

Israelis and Palestinians must push beyond the paradigm of managing the conflict and move towards resolving it, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process told the Security Council on Thursday, as he expressed particular concern that dynamics in the occupied West Bank could spiral out of control “at any time”.

The veteran Palestinian-American journalist, 51, was fatally shot while reporting on an Israeli military operation in the West Bank town of Jenin. 

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres discussed the ongoing flare-up of tensions around Jerusalem's holy sites in separate calls Saturday with the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian president.

Palestinian militants fired volleys of rockets from Gaza into Israel, which responded with air strikes in the early hours of Thursday in the biggest escalation since an 11-day war last year. 

Five Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours amid operations by Israel to crack down on militants after a spate of deadly attacks on Israelis.

Little has changed in the calculations of the main actors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite the dramatic upsurge in violence almost a year ago. To prevent a reprise, outside powers should push for interim steps as they revisit the core assumptions of their diplomacy.

The destabilizing deterioration of the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory continues in the absence of political solutions that would “reset the trajectory”, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said on Wednesday. 

Israel announced it would not cooperate with the UN Human Rights Council's investigation into alleged abuses against Palestinians, saying it was unfairly biased against Israel.