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Nowhere to Go, Say Gazans in South under Israeli Bombardment

Palestinians inspect the damage in the rubble of a building destroyed during Israeli bombardment in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip, on December 2, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
Palestinians inspect the damage in the rubble of a building destroyed during Israeli bombardment in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip, on December 2, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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Nowhere to Go, Say Gazans in South under Israeli Bombardment

Palestinians inspect the damage in the rubble of a building destroyed during Israeli bombardment in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip, on December 2, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
Palestinians inspect the damage in the rubble of a building destroyed during Israeli bombardment in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip, on December 2, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)

Under aerial bombardment from Israel, people sheltering in the south of the Gaza Strip after fleeing their homes earlier in the war said on Saturday they had nowhere safe to go now.

The city of Khan Younis is the focus of Israeli air strikes and artillery fire after fighting resumed on Friday following the collapse of a week-long truce. Its population has swelled in recent weeks as several hundred thousand people from the northern Gaza Strip have fled south.

Some are camping in tents, others in schools. Some are sleeping in stairwells or outside the few hospitals operating in the city. A World Health Organization official said on Friday that one of the hospitals was "like a horror movie" as hundreds of wounded children and adults waited for treatment.

Abu Wael Nasrallah, 80, scoffed at the Israeli army's latest order to move further south to Rafah, bordering Egypt. Children were injured in Israeli strikes in the town on Friday.

The message was delivered via leaflets dropped from the sky over several districts in Khan Younis.

"This is nonsense," Nasrallah told Reuters. He had heeded Israeli evacuation orders and moved from the northern Gaza Strip earlier in the war that broke out on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants crossed into Israel and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Some 193 Palestinians had been killed since the truce expired, the Gaza health ministry said on Saturday, adding to the death toll of more than 15,000 Gazans announced by Palestinian health authorities.

Israel says it is making efforts to prevent civilian casualties as the fighting moves south. Addressing reporters in Tel Aviv on Saturday, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said humanitarian groups were informed of what he described the "safer areas".

"We've not asked the whole population of the south to relocate, we've not even asked the whole population of Khan Younis to relocate. But those neighborhoods, those specific areas where we know there is going to be heavy combat, we've asked people there to relocate," Mark Regev said.

'Night of horror'

Nasrallah said he and his family would stay put because they had already lost everything.

"There is nothing left to fear. Our homes are gone, our property is gone, our money is gone, our sons have been killed, some are handicapped. What is left to cry for?"

A mother of four, who gave her name as Samira, said she had fled south from Gaza City with her children after Israel began bombing there last month. They now shelter with friends in a home west of Khan Younis.

She said Friday night had been one of the most terrifying since she arrived: "A night of horror."

She and other residents said they feared the intensity of the bombing in Khan Younis and the nearby city of Deir al-Balah meant Israel's ground invasion of the south was imminent.

Another man, who gave his name as Yamen, said he and his wife and six children had fled the north weeks ago and were sleeping in a school.

"Where to after Deir al Abalah, after Khan Younis?" he said. "I don't know where to take my family."

The UN estimates that up to 1.8 million people in the Gaza Strip - or nearly 80% of the population - have been forced to flee during Israel's devastating bombing campaign.

Israel has sworn to annihilate Gaza-based Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 attack.

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Features

Netanyahu’s Coalition Alliances with Religious Parties Put His Reelection at Risk

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony at the Military Cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, April 21, 2026. (AFP)
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony at the Military Cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, April 21, 2026. (AFP)
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Netanyahu’s Coalition Alliances with Religious Parties Put His Reelection at Risk

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony at the Military Cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, April 21, 2026. (AFP)
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony at the Military Cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, April 21, 2026. (AFP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained in power for most of the past 17 years due in part to a tight alliance with ultra-Orthodox religious parties.

But that alliance is tearing apart his governing coalition and proving to be another major liability for the long-serving Israeli leader as the country heads to elections later this year. The Oct. 7, 2023, attack — and the inconclusive wars that have followed — are also weighing on him.

After 2 1/2 years of active fighting in multiple countries, much of it involving reservists, many Israelis are tired of a longstanding system that has allowed ultra-Orthodox men to skip military service. That anger has spread to Netanyahu’s own base.

The ultra-Orthodox are meanwhile furious at his failure to legalize their exemptions. They withdrew their support for the coalition two weeks ago, leading to an initial vote to dissolve parliament, known as the Knesset, on Wednesday.

That set in motion a process that could move elections up from October to September.

Here’s a closer look.

The clock is ticking

Netanyahu is still trying to pass a bill that would legalize the exemptions and fulfill a promise to his religious partners, but that appears to be a long shot given the strident opposition of many within his own coalition.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel, who served for three years in a combat unit and is a vocal supporter of Netanyahu, said she was among at least seven members of the coalition who will not support the draft bill, rendering it impassable.

“The ultra-Orthodox are trying to extort us. It’s immoral. It’s not fair,” said Haskel, who wore her military uniform at the dissolution vote on Wednesday to highlight her opposition and highlight her own service.

Two major ultra-Orthodox parties deserted Netanyahu earlier this month after he told them he did not expect to be able to pass the exemptions bill. That left his coalition without a parliamentary majority, and is one of the main reasons for the bill to dissolve the Knesset.

“He made a promise to his most loyal allies in the coalition, and he could not deliver, he kept postponing,” said Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.

Yitzhak Pindrus, a lawmaker from one of the factions, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that it has no plans to return to the coalition.

“We need the draft bill,” he said.

The ultra-Orthodox can make or break Netanyahu's coalition

Israel's political landscape is highly fragmented, and no one party has ever won a majority in the 120-member Knesset.

Instead, parties must build alliances to cobble together a majority, which often involves bargaining that gives smaller parties outsized influence.

The ultra-Orthodox currently have 18 seats in the Knesset, a similar number to previous years, but have long been indispensable to Netanyahu. In exchange for his support for government subsidies and the draft exemptions, they have stood by him through regional crises and longstanding corruption allegations.

Netanyahu has long relied on “automatic support” from the ultra-Orthodox, said Gilad Malach, an expert on the ultra-Orthodox at the Israel Democracy Institute, a research group in Jerusalem.

That support helped Netanyahu remain in power through the worst attack in Israel’s history.

The coalition, which also includes ultra-nationalist parties, “was much more stable than I ever imagined,” said Rosner. “Maybe it's because they realized in a new election, they're going to get defeated, and that's why they stuck together.”

Imploding the coalition from within If

Netanyahu somehow passes some form of the draft exemption bill, it could dramatically alter the electoral map. It would push large sectors of the population, who have previously supported Netanyahu but are buckling under hundreds of days of reserve duty, to vote for rival parties that promise equal service, Malach said.

Netanyahu appears to stand little chance of remaining prime minister after October's elections without ultra-Orthodox support. And he is probably their only hope of a bill that would avoid mandatory enlistment coming up for discussion in the next government.

But sticking with the ultra-Orthodox risks harming Netanyahu's standing with the broader public, leaving him in a bind as the country heads toward elections.

Why the ultra-Orthodox reject military service

Most Jewish men are required to serve nearly three years of military service, followed by years of reserve duty. Jewish women serve two mandatory years.

Each year, roughly 13,000 ultra-Orthodox men reach the conscription age of 18, but less than 10% enlist, according to a parliamentary committee.

Faced with a severe shortages of soldiers, the military is looking to extend the period of mandatory service.

The ultra-Orthodox, who make up roughly 13% of Israeli society and are the fastest growing sector, have traditionally received exemptions if they are studying full-time in religious seminaries. The exemptions date back to the birth of the state in 1948, when a small number of students sought to revive the Jewish scholarship system after it was decimated by the Holocaust.

Those exemptions — and the government stipends many seminary students receive up to the age of 26 — have infuriated many Israelis.

Israel is currently maintaining a simultaneous military presence in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, in addition to fighting a war with Iran, which has stretched its robust military to the breaking point.

The Supreme Court said the exemptions were illegal in 2017, but repeated extensions and government delay tactics have left them in place.

Among Israel’s Jewish majority, mandatory military service is largely seen as a melting pot and rite of passage. Many in the insular ultra-Orthodox community fear that military service would expose young people to secular influences.

Features

Shot for Throwing Stones: Israeli Forces Killing West Bank Teens Weekly

Palestinian Sameh Shtayyeh, the father of 15-year-old Youssef Sameh Shtayyeh who was killed on April 23, by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, hugs his son as they visit his grave at the cemetery in the village of Till, west of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank on May 12, 2026. (AFP)
Palestinian Sameh Shtayyeh, the father of 15-year-old Youssef Sameh Shtayyeh who was killed on April 23, by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, hugs his son as they visit his grave at the cemetery in the village of Till, west of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank on May 12, 2026. (AFP)
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Shot for Throwing Stones: Israeli Forces Killing West Bank Teens Weekly

Palestinian Sameh Shtayyeh, the father of 15-year-old Youssef Sameh Shtayyeh who was killed on April 23, by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, hugs his son as they visit his grave at the cemetery in the village of Till, west of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank on May 12, 2026. (AFP)
Palestinian Sameh Shtayyeh, the father of 15-year-old Youssef Sameh Shtayyeh who was killed on April 23, by Israeli soldiers in the city of Nablus, hugs his son as they visit his grave at the cemetery in the village of Till, west of Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank on May 12, 2026. (AFP)

Youssef Shtayyeh came home from school on an April afternoon, dropped his bag in the hallway and headed straight back out to join his friends.

Minutes later, he was dead -- shot by an Israeli soldier, just 100 meters (yards) from his home.

He was 15. His is not an isolated case.

Since Israel launched a major military operation against armed Palestinian groups in the northern West Bank in January 2025, one Palestinian minor has been killed every week on average across the territory, up from one every three weeks in 2021, according to UNICEF.

Seventy teenagers, mostly aged 15 to 16, have been killed to date, 65 of them by Israeli forces, according to a UNICEF report dated May 12.

Then came Youssef Kaabnah, 16, killed on May 13.

Then Fahd Oweis, 15, two days later.

The Israeli military said both had "hurled stones" at soldiers.

It is almost certainly what Shtayyeh had been doing too, on April 23, in Nablus -- the largest city in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.

Youssef and his friends were on a side street above a main road when a couple passing in a car spotted them throwing stones -- and the military convoy below.

One jeep stopped. Then the others.

"A soldier got out, then two more. They started shooting at the kids," the passing driver told AFP, declining to be named for safety reasons.

- 'Designed to kill' -

A neighbor filmed what followed.

Two shots. Then screams. Youssef grabbed the car door.

"He said, 'Please don't leave me, I'm scared. Take me to my father, take me home,'" the driver recalled.

Youssef's father Sameh Shtayyeh, a 48-year-old building contractor, told AFP he had no idea what had caused the soldiers to open fire on his son as he "wasn't there".

In a panic, the driver told the boy to get in the car and sped to the hospital.

By the time they reached the facility, the boy was silent. Youssef's heart had stopped.

"A gunshot wound -- entry in the back, exit through the chest," surgeon Bahaa Fattouh, who treated him, told AFP.

Doctors resuscitated him and rushed him to the operating theater. His heart stopped again.

This time, it did not revive.

"Earlier, we used to treat minor injuries -- legs, arms, rubber bullets," said Fattouh.

But since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, "we only see lethal wounds -- chest, head."

Wounds, Fattouh said, that were "designed to kill".

"Most patients die on the operating table."

- 'Standard procedure' -

AFP contacted the Israeli military on the day of the incident, and again after returning from Nablus last week.

The response was identical, word for word: "A terrorist threw stones at soldiers. The soldiers applied the standard arrest procedure, which ended with fire being directed at the suspect."

Israeli daily Haaretz recently quoted the military's commander for the West Bank, Major General Avi Bluth, saying troops had killed 42 Palestinians for throwing stones in 2025.

He described stone-throwing as "terrorism".

Standing at the spot where his son fell, Sameh Shtayyeh stares down at the road below.

"Whether he threw stones or not -- what does it matter? Where is the danger to an army patrol?" he asks bitterly.

In protests "in Israel, in France, people throw stones and bins" and face nothing worse than arrest, he said.

He buried Youssef in the family village of Tell, five kilometers (three miles) from Nablus.

Weeks later, women were still holding a vigil at the flower-covered grave, topped with a portrait of the teenager showing him on a football pitch with a ball at his feet.

His father had promised to take him to Saudi Arabia to watch Cristiano Ronaldo play.

Now, each time Sameh comes home, Youssef is not there to greet him.

His eldest son returns from school -- but Youssef is not there. He glances at the back seat of his car. Youssef is not there.

Features

Russia's Growing Energy Ties with China since the Ukraine War

Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights
Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights
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Russia's Growing Energy Ties with China since the Ukraine War

Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights
Flags of China and Russia are displayed in this illustration picture taken March 24, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights

China has increased purchases of Russian oil and gas since ‌the start of the conflict with Ukraine in 2022, with Moscow and Beijing declaring a "no limits" partnership just days before the war began. The energy relationship between the two countries is expected to be an important topic when presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing on Wednesday.

Here are some facts about the energy ties between the two countries:

GAS

Russia's energy giant Gazprom supplies natural gas to China through a 3,000-km (1,865 mile) pipeline called Power of Siberia under a 30-year, $400 billion deal launched at the end of 2019.

In 2025, exports jumped by around a quarter to 38.8 billion cubic meters (bcm), exceeding the pipeline's planned annual capacity of 38 bcm.

During Putin's visit to China in September, the countries agreed to increase annual volumes on the route by an additional 6 bcm, to 44 bcm, a year. In February 2022, China also agreed to buy up to 10 bcm of gas annually ‌by 2027 via ‌a pipeline from Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East. The countries later ‌agreed ⁠to raise the ⁠volumes to 12 bcm.

Russia's gas exports to China are still a small fraction of the record 177 bcm it delivered to Europe in 2018-19 annually.

Russia's share in European Union gas imports has shrunk during the Ukraine war, particularly in pipeline flows. Russia remained the EU's second-largest liquefied natural gas supplier last year with a 16% share but the gap with the EU's main LNG partner, the United States, widened considerably. Russia and China are still in talks about a new Power of Siberia 2 pipeline capable of delivering 50 bcm of gas per year ⁠from Russia to China via Mongolia.

Gazprom began a feasibility study for the ‌pipeline in 2020, but the project has gained urgency as Russia ‌turns to China to replace Europe as its major gas customer. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said in September that the ‌countries signed a "legally binding memorandum" on the pipeline, but a firm contract is still elusive.

Russia's liquefied natural ‌gas exports to China rose last year by 18.2% to 9.79 million metric tons, according to China's customs data, cited by TASS news agency.

Russia was, after Australia and Qatar, the third-largest supplier of LNG to China, which is the world's largest buyer of seaborne gas.

OIL China is Moscow's top client for oil shipments via the sea and pipelines. Exports have been ‌high amid Western sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine. China's imports from Russia were at 2.01 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2025 (or 100.72 ⁠million metric tons in ⁠total), a decline of 7.1%, according to China's General Administration of Customs. That represented 20% of China's total imported oil by volume.

Yury Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy aide, said Russian oil exports to China grew by 35% in the first quarter of 2026 to 31 million tons.

China, which is the world's top oil importer, primarily buys Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) crude exported via the Skovorodino-Mohe spur of the 4,070-km (2,540-mile) ESPO pipeline, which connects Russian oil fields to refineries in China and from the Russian Far East port of Kozmino. Russia's oil pipeline operator Transneft has said it was expanding the ESPO pipeline to increase exports via Kozmino, seeking to complete the expansion work in 2029. China also imports oil from the Pacific island of Sakhalin, taking Sakhalin Blend and Sokol oil grades. The availability of ESPO Blend oil has remained high since July 2025, when exports had been expanded to 1 million barrels per day. Transneft has kept exports via Kozmino at around this level.

Russia has also agreed to raise its oil exports to China via Kazakhstan through the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline by 2.5 million tons per year to 12.5 million tons.