Palestinian journalist Mohammed Al-Helou, who was injured while working in the field in the Gaza Strip, along with the Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation, filed a criminal complaint against a dual Belgian-Israeli citizen, accusing him of serving as a sniper in the Israeli army.
The Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported that Al-Helou, 24, currently residing as a refugee in the Netherlands, and the Hind Rajab Foundation submitted a request last week to a Brussels court to open an investigation into a person identified only by his initials (A.B.), believed to be residing in the Belgian capital, as well as others whose identities have not yet been revealed.
According to the complaint, A.B. served in the Refaim sniper unit of an Israeli army battalion and is suspected of involvement in serious violations of international humanitarian law.
While working as a journalist in Gaza, Al-Helou was shot by a sniper while covering events near Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis between November 2023 and February 2024, despite wearing protective gear clearly marked “PRESS” to indicate his press credentials.
Al-Helou survived the attack after the bullet struck his protective vest, while his 14-year-old brother was killed during Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Al-Helou and his lawyer, Ian Vermon, from the Hind Rajab Foundation, submitted the complaint along with photos and videos, as well as medical reports and witness testimonies confirming the facts.
The Hind Rajab Foundation works to document and prosecute Israeli military personnel suspected of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The foundation is named after Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl who was killed along with six members of her family in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their car southwest of Gaza City on January 29, 2024.
Established in Brussels in February 2024, the foundation focuses on pursuing legal action against Israeli officials and military personnel in national and international courts. Quds Press
This article was written on 28 February, 2024 at the apex of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on countercurrents.org. Not content with their atrocities, Israeli soldiers posted their havoc online for all to see. The videos are revealing for their depravity.
Israeli army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, now fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was so embarrassed with the videos shown on the social media posted by his soldiers in Gaza, he issued a communique instructing his men and women euphemistically not to “film revenge videos”.
These videos have shown soldiers in various situations as dehumanizing Palestinians, raiding their homes, rummaging their drawers, sitting on their tables and going through their underwear in front of the camera while laughing about the fact. They have displayed torture and humiliation not befitting a “professional army”, as they like to call themselves.
Halevi’s comments have been across the media, locally in Israel and internationally. Yet they don’t seem to be making much impact, for the videoclips that have already been posted are retweeted while new ones continue to be splashed across the social media.
The Gaza war has come to be a fascination for Israeli soldiers, a tough series of battleground in the 265-kilometer stretch they’ve never experienced first-hand as they do today. Most of their wars on Gaza have been from the air, this time it is on-ground.
Indeed, the videos show a disturbed Israeli mind. Are the soldiers fighting in Gaza or looking at negligees and bras of women who run aways from their homes and/or were killed by Israeli bombers?
The ground battle has been so hard on them as nearly 3000 soldiers needed to be examined by mental health officers since 7 October the Israeli army reveals and this figure is likely to go up as the conflict intensifies. This is while 2000 soldiers in the “combat zone” need psychiatric treatment says Yekhiel Levechhitz of the clinical department of mental illnesses in the Israeli army.
The heel thief
Imagine dangling a pair of heels in front of the camera? This is what an Israeli soldier did as he posted a video of himself with the shoes after he looted a house raided by the Israeli army.
In a state of excitement, he says these pair of heels, shining white, are for his fiancé for their upcoming engagement party.
Israeli soldiers are raiding houses as if they are their own and nobody can stop them.
An Israeli soldier gifts his wife a pair of heels he looted from a displaced Palestinian family in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/ea3VxmLDSC
Six Israeli soldiers play cards on a prayer mat in a building they took in Al Shati Camp east of Gaza.
It seems they are taking time off from their arrests and vandalism. With plastic cups around, they seem to be playing whilst gambling at the same time.
The prayer mat underneath maybe a strong signal of their distaste to the Palestinian owners and their religion.
🔴🔴عاجل و هاااام 🔴🔴
آخر ظهور للعقيد " نفيري " ومجموعته في احد منازل #غزة وهم يلتقطونسيلفي في غرفة نوم مع علاقي داخلي لسيدة فلسطينية.. بعدها تم نسف المنزل بهم ودفنوا تحت الانقاض🥴
الي حاب اعرف.. من منهم حيبعث يوم القيامة لابس العلاقي الاحمر.. العقيد والا الحراسة🥴🥴… pic.twitter.com/gahSuyCicn
Israel soldiers pose for a selfie in a bedroom of a Palestinian family that was forced to leave their home under Israeli gunfire.
Six soldiers with their guns pose whilst one holds a negligee as another points his finger to it. Is this supposed to mean something?
Their secret stays with them. Shortly after, it was reported the wrecked house was bombed by the Palestinian resistance and all of the soldiers were killed and presently lie under the wreckage like the thousands of Gazans that lie underneath the rubble of their bombed houses.
Although the last point might be doubted since according to Defense Ministry statistics, 17 percent of Israelis soldiers who are killed do so through friendly-fire.
‘Depravity’
Israeli soldiers whilst not fighting Izz Al Din Al Qassam and Saraya Al Quds fighters appear to like raiding Palestinian homes.
One blogger described these #Israeli soldiers as “depraved and degenerate”. He said these soldiers “expose their depravity” and make “fun of the injured” whilst dehumanizing the dead and displaced #Palestinians which they killed.
How does a “depraved” soldier hold balloons with a big smile whilst someone in the background lies tied, gagged and blindfolded on the floor?
In another post, the blogger asks: “How rotten must your entire (Israeli) society be for you to pose with such pride near underwear of women you murdered,” and adds “they don’t fear criticism because this sort of sexual intimidation is encouraged in Israel. Makes me feel sick.”
Expose, name & shame these #Israeli soldiers dehumanising #Palestinians : keep a record for when there’s a big legal case against all the crimes of @idf .. every single one of them pic.twitter.com/b91VehTtXG
The Israeli army may say they are playing with the souls of Palestinians in Gaza, but they are wrong.
In this image, five Israeli soldiers talk to a doll in a kufiyah they obviously stole from a house they just raided.
Its graphic: The contour of the soldiers, their facial expression, the surroundings; the image says it all, the soldiers appear to be happily playing with the plastic doll that was placed at the back of their military Jeep amidst an environ of destruction and mayhem.
These depraved degenerate #Israeli soldiers too. Expose their depravity. Making fun of injured, dehumanised & dead #Palestinians & holding lingerie of Palestinian women, either displaced or likely killed by them. @idf are devoid of any humanity pic.twitter.com/yw3um2YWVm
Not satisfied with the raids on people’s houses, Israeli soldiers, and this is coming from the so-called most moral army in the world, as if this not a great joke, a red negligee is displayed full-frontal on an armored vehicle.
One blogger expresses her disdain and western hypocrisy of what they see in front of them.
Why is this Israeli soldier sleeping in a baby’s crib for? This is a selfie; the soldier took of himself while pretending to sleep in the baby’s crib. It makes you ask: Where is the baby now, where is his family, are they still alive, displaced may, have they been killed?
The final image is taken in one of the houses in Khan Younis, the second largest city in the Gaza Strip. This is where the Israeli army have been held up for the last 2-3 months, unable to overcome the resistance despite their mighty airpower.
Khan Younis is below the center of Gaza, and the rest of the outskirts of the city to the east, is putting up stiff resistance to Israeli soldiers who are getting either killed or maimed and injured by the day and as testified to by the Israeli hospitals.
In the context of Israel’s unlawful occupation and its imposition of a system of apartheid against all Palestinians, and against the backdrop of its ongoing genocide in Gaza, Israeli authorities have been recently accelerating its violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in pursuing its policy of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank.
This policy has been implemented through the forcible displacement of Palestinians in refugee camps, Bedouin and herding communities in the West Bank, as well as the creation and expansion of settlements , acts that amount to the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer.
Palestine’s Permanent Mission to the UN on June 12 sounded the alarm over the newest largest wave of forced displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
During a briefing held by the Palestine’s Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva, Palestine’s Permanent Representative, ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi, warned of the unprecedented deterioration of conditions in the occupied West Bank amid the upsurge of colonist attacks, colonial settlement expansion, and the ongoing military offensive on the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams, which has triggered the largest wave of forced displacement in the West Bank since 1967, alongside widespread destruction of infrastructure, homes and civilian facilities.
He stressed that the West Bank was witnessing a dangerous escalation at the political, economic and humanitarian levels due to Israel’s unbridled annexation and settler-colonialism policies, arrests, extrajudicial killings, colonist violence, and the continued withholding of Palestinian clearance revenues.
On his part, UNRWA representatives outlined the latest developments in the northern West Bank, pointing to escalating destruction and the forced displacement of more than 45,000 Palestinians, attacks on infrastructure and medical facilities, and Israeli measures aimed at demolishing the Agency’s premises in occupied Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities have been accelerating annexation through a state-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities in Area C of the occupied West Bank, while committing the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.
The Israeli government has made formal annexation an explicit policy objective .
It has accelerated settlement expansion and land grabs, increased financial and logistical support to settlements, and has armed settlers, thereby enabling a brutal state-sanctioned campaign of settler violence and of forced displacement of Palestinians from Area C.
This area constitutes over 60 per cent of the occupied West Bank and has long been central to Israel’s efforts to control land and demographics, given its natural resources, vital grazing and agricultural land.
Communities in Area C have been facing growing risks of displacement and settlement expansion.
The Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills have been areas under particular pressure where residents have faced repeated raids, demolitions and damage to infrastructure. Restrictions on access to land and essential services have also increased pressure on these communities and State -backed settler violence and home demolitions have forcibly displaced thousands of Palestinians in, emptying out over 100 villages entirely.
In the Gaza Strip , Israel’s ongoing military operations and evacuation orders despite the ceasefire have displaced roughly 90 per cent of the population (approximately 1.9 million people), with much of the civilian infrastructure destroyed to create long-term buffer zones.
Families have been displaced from their neighborhoods many times – and the last time they were uprooted, they were homeless for more than six months.
Israel’s ‘voluntary emigration’ plan from Gaza is its latest attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Strip .
Israel’s defense minister has advanced plans to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip through “voluntary emigration”.
Israel Katz said late last May that the plans would take place “at the proper time and in the proper manner”.
Israel’s security cabinet approved a proposal by Katz in March to establish a directorate within his ministry to facilitate “migration” from the enclave.
Despite the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and wrought utter destruction on the coastal enclave, the vast majority of Palestinians there say they will never abandon their home.
Proposals for the removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have been repeatedly raised during the course of the Israeli genocide.
Though some ministers have framed the move to remove Palestinians as a voluntary option, other Israeli officials have been explicitly calling for forced expulsion, which is a war crime.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from forcibly transferring , deporting or displacing occupied people from an occupied territory while the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court names deportation by “expulsion or other coercive acts” a crime against humanity.
Ninety-two per cent of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed or damaged. None of its 37 hospitals is fully functional. Aid trucks cut from 4,200 a week to 590 when Israel sealed the crossings in February, families burning trash to cook whatever arrives, children frozen to death last winter for lack of shelter materials Israel would not allow in.
The Yellow Line, the boundary of Israeli control drawn by the ceasefire, keeps moving west, swallowing water points and clinics, with Palestinians killed for approaching a line that approaches them. More than 986 Palestinians have been killed since the “ceasefire” was signed in October 2025.
Amid the expanding Israeli military incursions record levels of settler violence, and impending annexations , the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are fiercely resisting displacement , viewing it as a permanent severing from their homeland .
The writer is a Palestinian author, researcher and freelance journalist and contributed this article to the Jordan Times
GAZA CITY—Mustafa Al-Shawa awoke at 2:30 a.m. on Monday to the sound of gunfire and the rumble of tanks in Al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. When he was finally able to go outside a few hours later, he found two yellow concrete blocks placed in the middle of the street—the Israeli military had moved them at least one hundred meters further west into Gaza where they now lay close to his home.
“They moved the yellow line forward to the Sanafour Junction. It used to be up by Al-Shaaaf Street,” Al-Shawa told Drop Site News. “This is the yellow line,” he said, pointing to the blocks. “There is another yellow line along Salah Al-Din Street that they have moved closer. Enough of what is happening to us. Enough of this suffering.”
Israel has been steadily encroaching further into Gaza, moving the “yellow line” that demarcates its area of control from 53% of the enclave since the start of the so-called ceasefire in October to well over 60%, in violation of the agreement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently ordered the army to take 70%.
“We can’t leave the neighborhood because there is nowhere to go,” Al-Shawa said. “If we leave the area we’re in now, we’ll end up sleeping in the streets, in filth. There is no place left. Where are we supposed to go?”
Along certain parts of Gaza, Israeli troops have placed yellow concrete blocks to delineate the new border. Their placement of the blocks further west into the Al-Tuffah neighborhood on Friday accompanied by gunfire, tanks, and quadcopter attacks caused dozens of Palestinians in the area to pack up their belongings and flee later that day.
Families crammed their scant belongings into open cardboard boxes and plastic bags. Trucks were piled up with thin mattresses, furniture, cookware and plastic bins waiting to be carried away. “The yellow line has destroyed us,” one resident yelled as he walked by.
Like nearly all of Gaza, the Al-Tuffah neighborhood is barely standing. Every building is badly damaged or completely destroyed. Residents traverse dirt roads instead of paved streets, flanked by mounds of rubble and twisted steel.
Palestinians in Al-Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City are forcibly displaced after Israel attacked and moved yellow blocks into the area on June 15, 2026. Video by Mohamed Ahmed.
“Last night was very, very bad,” Nafiz Al-Ghaz, another resident of Al-Tuffah, told Drop Site. “It was a difficult day and an even more difficult night: tanks, quadcopters, gunfire. All night they were telling us, ‘Run, run.’ People are fleeing, taking whatever furniture, cupboards, and beds they can carry. We are on the yellow line. They placed the yellow line right at the traffic junction. …Where are we supposed to go? They might as well throw us into the sea and be done with us.”
Before the genocide began over two and a half years ago, the Gaza Strip was already one of the most densely populated places on earth. Since the “ceasefire” in October, Israel has steadily seized more land, corralling the nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza into an ever shrinking area. Every inhabitable structure is crammed full of people while hundreds of thousands are living in tents and flimsy tarp shacks pitched close together wherever there is room—on the streets and public squares, in stadiums, and on the coastline.
“No one is paying attention to us,” Mohammed Khalil told Drop Site as he gathered up his belongings along the side of a building in Al-Tuffah. “Every day we wish for death,” he said, his voice trembling as he spoke. “Every day we wish to die, to be done with this life.”
Israel has violated the “ceasefire” on a daily basis since it went into effect in October, killing over 1,000 Palestinians in routine attacks and wounding over 3,100, severely restricting the amount of aid agreed upon in the deal, and seizing more land.
“Despite the ceasefire announced eight months ago, Gaza still faces profound uncertainty and immense human suffering,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in remarks to the Security Council last week. “Violence is on the rise, with civilians killed on a daily basis. Humanitarian operations remain heavily constrained. Basic human needs—for clean water, sanitation, food, shelter, health care, and more—are going unmet. And the Israeli Government is declaring its intent to control 70% of the Strip.”
The Security Council voted in November to authorize President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” to monitor the ceasefire. In a statement on Sunday, Hamas said it delivered its response in coordination with other Palestinian factions to a proposal it received in April from Nickolay Mladenov, the High Representative of the Board of Peace. Mladenov has turned a blind eye to Israel’s violations and instead called on Hamas to fully disarm despite that not being a part of the phase one deal that Hamas signed in October.
“To the world, there is a ceasefire agreement, but in practical terms on the ground, Israel has moved toward a pattern of gradual escalation that reshapes the aggression and reshapes the genocide in the Gaza Strip through multiple forms,” Ahmed Al-Tannani, a writer and political analyst in Gaza, told Drop Site. “Part of this is the daily killing around the yellow line, in addition to expanding control. Another part is linked to the continuation of assassinations and the bombing of civilians in their homes. In addition to that, it has returned to the policy of evacuating neighborhoods and then bombing them, including in areas west of the yellow line.”
Earlier this month, Israel bombed Al-Jawazat displacement camp west of Gaza City, killing six Palestinians and wounding 20 others, just one of many attacks on areas far from the “yellow line.”
“Attacks are still taking place around us. Here in the Al-Jawazat camp, there have been multiple strikes on tents,” Raed Hajjaj, who lives in a tent within the crowded displacement camp, told Drop Site. “It’s not like before, when massacres were happening continuously and the world’s attention was focused on Gaza. Now, with one or two attacks every day or two, or several times a week, the world is occupied with other issues. We all know what they are—the U.S.-Iran war, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and other developments. These things have distracted the world from us.”
Attacks From Israeli Military Bases
Mohammad Al-Zaghl pointed to the bullet holes that ripped through the fabric of his makeshift bathroom on Monday morning. He constructed the small shed out of tarp and wood close to his tent in the Halawa displacement camp in Jabaliya, northern Gaza.
The most frequent Israeli attacks target Palestinians living close to the yellow line in places where the military has built 25 kilometers of massive earth berms to physically divide Gaza. Newly constructed military bases atop the berms appear as elevated colonial forts overlooking a displaced and devastated Palestinian population.
The Halawa camp lies just a few hundred meters from an Israeli base atop one section of the berm—an imposing wall of earth lined with spotlights facing outward and an Israeli flag hanging from a flagpole inside the base alongside several towers.
“The Israelis are about 500 meters away from us,” Al-Zaghl told Drop Site. “There is not just one tower—there are one, two, three. From all three directions, we cannot escape the gunfire. Every day there is shooting. Everyone stays in their place, in their tents.”
Palestinians in Halawa displacement camp in Jabaliya recount Israeli attacks from military bases that overlook the camp on June 15, 2026. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.
Like thousands of others, Al-Zaghl has been living in Halawa ever since he was forcibly displaced from the Jabaliya refugee camp. In January, as he was sitting at the entrance of his tent, he heard a burst of gunfire before realizing he had been shot in the abdomen. An angry scar runs along his lower back and a smaller entry wound is visible on the left side of his stomach.
“Today it is worse than before. You hear constant gunfire, explosions, and noise,” he said.
Youssef Shaman, 15, was also shot from the Israeli military base overlooking Halawa. He said it happened in March, as he was going to collect water for his family. “While I was on my way, there was a crowd gathered around the water, and they started shooting at us from the tower,” Shaman told Drop Site. “People were hit, and I was shot in my leg. They kept firing at us from the tower. We could see the Israelis shooting at us.”
Shaman shows the bullet wound on the inside of his thigh just above the knee. An older scar runs along the top of his ankle where he was hit by shrapnel in an earlier airstrike that killed his brother. Along with other eyewitnesses, Shaman said the shooting attacks from the nearby base have steadily increased over the past few months.
“We can see them, and they can see us,” he said. “They look for someone to snipe and open fire on them. They deliberately watch and shoot us. They climb up the hill where we can see them, in their military vehicles and tanks, and then they start shooting at us. …The shooting has increased. They fire at us all day long.”
Israel has not faced any consequences for its wholesale abandonment of the ceasefire over the past eight months, with the violations becoming more acute and attacks intensifying to drive Palestinians further inward, seize more land, and continue the genocide.
“The Israeli occupation still considers the war to be ongoing, and the objectives of the war—linked primarily to achieving the strategic goal of displacing the Palestinian people—are still in place,” Al-Tannani said. “The ceasefire agreement has not brought about any change for the Israeli government.” Drop Site
Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Jawa Ahmad contributed to this report. Sami Vanderlip edited the video.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said on Wednesday that “reciprocal security” is the “ceiling” of negotiations with Israel.
“The ceiling of negotiations with the Israeli enemy is reciprocal security, and there is no other ceiling,” he said in a televised speech.
He called for giving priority to halting the Israeli assaults, Israel’s withdrawal from all Lebanese territory, the return of prisoners, the return of the displaced to their areas and reconstruction.
“Israel’s project in Lebanon was to eliminate Hezbollah socially, militarily, and culturally, which means eliminating a large segment of the Lebanese people through killing, displacement, and relocation in order to facilitate the annexation of Lebanon,” Qassem said.
“We thwarted the Greater Israel project, and it has been unable to control and establish itself on our land,” he added.
The Hezbollah chief said his group carried out 3,185 operations against Israel since March 2, with a daily average of 30 attacks.
“Any project to disarm Hezbollah will not succeed, and this scheme has failed,” he said.
Tensions have continued to flare along the Lebanese-Israeli border despite a recent understanding between Washington and Tehran aimed at ending their military conflict that erupted after Israel and the US launched attacks against Iran on Feb. 28.
Iranian officials have repeatedly said that ending Israeli attacks across regional fronts, particularly in Lebanon, is among the main objectives of the memorandum of understanding expected to be signed between Tehran and Washington on Friday.
Israeli officials, however, have indicated that military operations in Lebanon will continue despite the agreement, raising doubts about prospects for a de-escalation on the Lebanese front.
Israel has been waging an offensive on Lebanon since March 2 that has left thousands killed and wounded and more than 1 million displaced, according to the latest official figures.
Israel occupies areas in southern Lebanon, some for decades and others since the previous war between 2023 and 2024. During the current campaign, Israeli forces pushed more than 10 kilometers into Lebanon. Anadolu
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