Five more killed as Israel plans defence office on UNRWA site

• Netanyahu tells cabinet Israel ‘very close to completing’ the war
• Palestinian president’s son wins seat on Fatah’s decision-making body

CAIRO: Amid continued violations of the ceasefire by Israeli forces in Gaza since October, at least five more Palestinians were killed in fresh strikes on Sunday when the Israeli authorities approved a plan to build a ‘defence compound’ on the site of the recently demolished UN office premises in occupied East Jerusalem.

Defence Minister Israel Katz called the decision to build a recruitment office, a military museum, and his own office on the site, where Israel had demolished the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), one of “sovereignty, Zionism, and security”, according to a TRT World report.

A UNRWA spokesperson decl­ined to comment on the Israeli plan.

Israel began demolishing the former UNRWA headquarters in January after years of measures against the agency.

UNRWA operates in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, as well as in Gaza, the West Bank, and elsewhere in the Middle East, providing schooling, healthcare, social services, and shelter to millions of Palestinians.

Israel has stepped up attacks in Gaza in the weeks since halting its joint bombing with the US against Iran, redirecting its fire back on the devastated Palestinian territory.

Over 870 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since the October ceasefire, with the latest wave of strikes claiming five lives in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have ‘almost completed’ a key goal of the war in Gaza, eliminating all those responsible for orchestrating the 2023 attacks. Since then, the official death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 72,700, with over 172,600 Palestinians injured and millions displaced though the actual number of violent deaths could be significantly higher due to uncounted victims.

On Sunday, health authorities said, an Israeli strike killed at least three people at a community kitchen near Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza area, while another Palestinian was killed near a police post in Khan Yunis. Also, the Israeli military claimed to have killed a Hamas operations commander, Bahaa Baroud, in an airstrike on his car in Gaza City.

Netanyahu told the weekly cabinet meeting that Israel was ‘very close to completing’ the war. He said every single architect of the 2023 attack would be eliminated.

Fatah leadership election

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s son won a seat on Fatah’s top decision-making body, as initial results emerged on Sunday from the Palestinian movement’s first congress in a decade.

The congress came as Fatah faces existential challenges in the wake of the Gaza war.

Yasser Abbas, 64, a businessman who spends most of his time in Canada, secured a place on the central committee after being appointed around five years ago as his father’s “special representative”, a role that marked his emergence on the political scene.

With several existing members retaining their seats, the congress outcome was already drawing criticism. “There is a failure to present a political, economic and cultural vision for the problems we are suffering” in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, said Ali Jarbawi, political science professor at Birzeit University.

“It looks as if it was all about merely replacing some individuals with others.”

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2026

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