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Israeli forces and settler attacks continued across Gaza and the occupied West Bank this week, even as the United Nations General Assembly entered its fifth day of high-level debate and world leaders stepped forward to denounce Israeli violence against Palestinians. Al Jazeera's Marah Rayan reported the latest developments from Jerusalem in the network's "Jerusalem Daily" broadcast, published on 26 September 2026.
The contrast between the diplomatic theatre in New York and the situation on the ground defined the week. Inside the General Assembly hall, presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers from around the world used their podiums to condemn the killing of civilians and to call for a halt to the violence. Outside the hall — and thousands of kilometres away in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — the strikes, shootings and raids that have defined the past year showed no sign of pausing.
Rayan described Israeli forces and settlers as continuing their attacks in both territories. The presence of settlers in the occupied West Bank adds a distinct dimension to the violence, because the communities involved operate with the backing, in various ways, of the occupying power. Under international humanitarian law, Israel is considered an occupying power in the West Bank, and the Fourth Geneva Convention sets out specific obligations, including responsibilities for the safety of the population, that human rights groups say are not being met.
In Gaza, the eight-year-old territory remains under a long-running war and a siege, with restrictions on the movement of people, food and medicine. The report did not provide specific casualty figures, but the pattern described — continuing attacks alongside international condemnation — matches the broader trajectory Al Jazeera has documented. The network's own coverage has included a running tally of alleged ceasefire violations, published under the heading "Israel's ceasefire violations: here are the numbers", which tracks the gap between publicly stated intentions and what monitors describe as happening on the ground.
The human cost of that gap was illustrated elsewhere in Al Jazeera's news coverage on the same day, which carried a report on a girl left disabled by an Israeli strike urging that wheelchairs and mobility aids be allowed into Gaza. The segment, running a little over two minutes, highlighted how basic medical equipment blocked by border restrictions can determine whether injured children live or die — and how the humanitarian language used in international fora rarely translates into deliveries at crossing points.
For diplomats and rights groups, the fifth day of the Assembly carries particular weight because the annual high-level week is one of the few moments when the full UN membership is gathered in one place. It is used for public denunciation, for bilateral pressure, and for attempts to build coalitions on votes and resolutions. Analysts of the annual diplomatic cycle have long noted, however, that the gap between words and enforcement is where the frustration of many member states lies: condemnation is easy to deliver, while accountability mechanisms move slowly and face sustained political resistance.
Campaigners have spent years pressing the International Criminal Court and other bodies to act on complaints concerning the region, arguing that the repeated failure to follow words with legal consequence emboldens the parties to the conflict. Critics of that approach counter that legal action, once initiated, takes years and delivers results far from the battlefield, leaving survivors with neither justice nor relief in the short term. Both arguments were implicitly on display during this Assembly week, where leaders publicly tied the speeches they delivered to expectations of action.
The Assembly's attention is also being pulled in other directions. Al Jazeera's coverage on 26 September tracked a live blog on the US-Israel war on Iran, including Tehran's reported offer of a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, and a separate report in which a US official claimed President Donald Trump holds all the cards in the negotiations. Regional escalation on several fronts has made it harder to focus international attention on Gaza, and advocates have warned of that competition for airtime and diplomatic bandwidth.
The same news cycle carried reminders that the violence is not confined to the Middle East. Among the other stories in the Al Jazeera feed on 26 September were reports on women taking up arms in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo amid sexual violence, the spread of Ebola in the DR Congo toward neighbouring countries, Bangkok on red alert as massive floods hit the city, thousands of students protesting German military conscription, and defence alliance chiefs meeting in Riyadh amid Houthi attacks. Each of those stories is a reminder that the world's attention is finite, and that crises which do not command a UN platform can slip from view quickly.
That is precisely the dynamic captured by the phrase used to describe this week's broadcast: violence continues as the world watches. The sequencing matters. Condemnations were delivered in New York while attacks persisted in Gaza and the West Bank; Assembly speeches were made while medical equipment was held up at borders; and calls for restraint were voiced as ceasefire violations continued to be counted. The tension between those two timelines — the pace of diplomacy and the pace of violence — is what Rayan's report from Jerusalem laid bare.
What observers will be watching in the days that follow the Assembly's conclusion is whether the denunciations produce any change in the situation on the ground. Leaders who framed their remarks as historic or urgent will face a simple test: whether the strikes, raids and settler attacks described in the report slow, stop or continue. Absent a visible shift, the fifth day of the session is likely to be remembered less for what was said from the podium than for what was happening in the two territories where the Assembly's rhetoric was aimed.
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