By Home Affairs Correspondent
LONDON, (The Muslim News): A 13-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and two others injured on Tuesday when unexploded Israeli ordnance detonated in the central Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank, according to Palestinian and Israeli sources.
The blast occurred in the Faroush Beit Dajan area near the town of Jiftlik, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. The agency cited Mayor Ahmad Ghawanmeh as saying the explosion was caused by leftover Israeli ammunition. Israeli forces subsequently sealed off the site and prevented residents from approaching, he added.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams received the body of a 13-year-old from Israeli soldiers after what it described as a landmine explosion at a former military camp in Jiftlik. The body was transferred to a hospital in Jericho.
Earlier, the Israeli army said three Palestinians had been injured while “handling unexploded ordnance belonging to the Israeli military” near the Tertza military base in the Jordan Valley. It characterised the location as an active firing zone where civilian entry is prohibited and “extremely dangerous”, adding that an investigation had been launched.
Much of the Jordan Valley lies within Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli civil and security control and comprising roughly 61% of the territory. Israel designates extensive swathes of the valley as military training zones, restricting Palestinian access. Palestinian officials say unexploded munitions left behind from exercises pose a continuing danger to residents.
The incident unfolded against a backdrop of intensified Israeli operations across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since the launch of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. In a landmark advisory opinion in July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Tensions were further inflamed by a video circulating on Tuesday showing an illegal Jewish settler burning a copy of the Qur’an at an unspecified location in Jerusalem, days before the start of Ramadan.
“A religious Zionist activist from the neo-Nazis is burning the Holy Qur’an with his face uncovered,” Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi wrote on the social media platform X. He added that the extremist Israeli “will not be punished because he is Jewish.”
In the footage shared by Tibi, the settler is heard saying: “What’s happening? We are here now celebrating and burning a very sacred book to Muslims, surah by surah, all the surahs. Congratulations to us.”
“The people of Israel are eliminating evil. Congratulations to us. I truly appreciate the Qur’an, but only when it is like this,” he adds, as he sets the holy book alight.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli government or Jewish groups. The incident came as religious authorities in Muslim-majority countries prepared to sight the moon marking the start of Ramadan.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, said on Tuesday that Israel would not move “one millimeter” from the so-called “Yellow Line” in Gaza until Hamas is disarmed, despite the commencement of the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.
The “Yellow Line” refers to the position to which Israeli forces withdrew in eastern Gaza during the plan’s first phase. Under the second phase, which began last month, Israel is expected to withdraw gradually from that line.
“We will never allow Hamas to remain, not with weapons and not with tunnels. The slogan is simple: until the last tunnel,” Katz said at a conference organised by the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.
“We will not move from the Yellow Line by one millimeter until Hamas is disarmed, from weapons, from tunnels and from other things,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs said the government would give Hamas 60 days to disarm, threatening to resume the war if it failed to comply.
Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza on 8 October 2023 with US backing. The conflict lasted two years, killing more than 72,000 Palestinians and injuring over 171,000, most of them women and children, and devastating much of the enclave’s civilian infrastructure. A US-brokered ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025, though Palestinian officials say Israeli forces have continued air strikes and demolitions in breach of the agreement.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, since the ceasefire began Israeli forces have carried out hundreds of violations through shelling and gunfire, killing 603 Palestinians and injuring 1,618 others.
Katz also said Israel must expand domestic weapons production to guarantee strategic independence, citing global competition for ammunition and occasional wartime disagreements with allies. He described the US as a “great ally” during what he termed a “multi-front conflict”, while acknowledging differences that “had their impact”.
The defence ministry, he said, has approved a long-term initiative — temporarily titled “Shield of Israel” — which would add 350bn shekels (about $95bn) to the defence budget over the next decade, based on “strong confidence in the economic strength” of the country.
“There is no security without an economy, and no economy without security,” he added.
Elsewhere in the northern Jordan Valley, Israeli settlers have forced 15 Palestinian families to dismantle their homes and leave, according to local officials. Mahdi Daraghmeh, head of the al-Malih Village Council, told Wafa that the departures followed escalating settler assaults. Seven more families from the nearby Maita community had left days earlier after similar attacks and threats.
In a separate incident, settlers assaulted men from Nabi Samwil village, north-west of East Jerusalem, injuring one man who was taken to hospital with bruising, Wafa reported. Raids and demolitions were also reported on Tuesday in Nablus, Al Khader and Salfit, amid what Palestinians describe as a broadening campaign to consolidate Israeli control, including measures to facilitate settler land purchases and register Palestinian land as Israeli state property.
The humanitarian toll in Gaza remains stark. The United Nations Development Programme said on Tuesday that clearing the territory’s vast quantities of rubble could take seven years at the current pace.
In a virtual briefing from Jerusalem after a recent visit to Gaza, the UNDP chief described conditions as the worst he had encountered in his years of development work. “This is the worst living conditions that I have ever seen, extremely painful conditions to live in,” he said, noting that “90% of the people of Gaza today live in the middle of that rubble, which is extremely dangerous.”
“Rubble removal, we have done approximately 0.5% of the total,” he added. “At the current pace, it will take us seven years to remove all the rubble.”
He said temporary housing was an urgent priority, with “90% of the population” living in makeshift shelters that “you could not even call tents”. While 500 recovery housing units had been built and 4,000 were ready, between 200,000 and 300,000 units were needed to provide even modestly improved conditions.
To expand its operations, the UNDP had “one big ask to the Israeli authorities, and that is to have more access” for materials, housing units and support for private businesses, he said, stressing that security concerns should not be used to obstruct humanitarian access.
[Photo: Palestinian families watch Israeli army demolishing their homes claiming it is “unlicensed” in Hebron, West Bank on February 18, 2026. Photojournalist: Wisam Hashlamoun/AA]
