Extract from ABC News
Analysis
Even the United States is now criticising Israel's ongoing settler violence in the West Bank as Benjamin Netanyahu, once the "Trump whisperer" becomes the Trump ignorer. (Reuters: Ronen Zvulun)
Records of the village of Qusra, just south of Nablus in the Occupied West Bank, go back to Ottoman tax registers of 1596. There has been documentation of its existence and that of its inhabitants ever since.
Documenting a place, and a community, and the events that occur there, is always important.
But documenting Qusra has made it one of the stand-outs in the wider story of Israeli actions against Palestinian people which, amid the noise of Donald Trump's chaotic war against Iran, have only escalated in 2026.
Earlier this month, Israeli settlers besieged three houses in Qusra telling the families that lived there they had to leave because the settlers were going to take their land.
The settlers cut off the water and electricity to the houses. They blocked the roads.
Such actions are not unusual in the West Bank. Nor are they by any means the worst that happen there.
The West Bank community of Qusra has been the site of repeated settler attacks on Palestinian residents. (ABC News: Hamish Harty)
Coverage of Qusra easier than of Gaza
Last month, settlers set fire to the village's newly constructed mosque after an earlier clash in another village in which four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers died, after a group of settlers entered an area of the West Bank for an "unauthorised hike", according to the Israeli military.
But the besieging of the three houses and their 15 inhabitants — which has continued with the UN allowed to deliver supplies — struck a chord in the international community, and particularly in the United States.
That was possibly because one of the houses that has now come under siege belongs to a Palestinian-American, Loai Ridi.
But it is mostly because the international media have been able to document what has been going on in real time, in real pictures.
The contrast with Gaza could not be more stark.
In Gaza, where the international media has not been allowed to independently enter since October 7, 2023, the killing of more than 70,000 people according to the Gaza Health Ministry, the wounding of many more, and the continuing appalling living conditions of around two million people on a small strip of land where the majority of buildings have been flattened, occupies a strange space in history where what we see and what are told bear little resemblance to each other.
The lack of international media access leaves it in a situation in which almost every event is contested, but the Israeli ban prevents the media from testing and filtering out false claims and information.
Israeli statements in response to questions about individual incidents reduce horrific events to the language of bureaucratic failure. Whether incidents are investigated at all, or go on to be a criminal investigation, they rarely result in any real accountability even if fault is admitted.
Israel clears soldiers over Australian aid worker
This week Australia expressed outrage at the findings of an internal IDF report which found "serious failures" in the process that led to the killings of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six colleagues in April 2024.
The IDF said: "The decisions of the commanders did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct."
The humanitarian aid group for which Frankcom worked, World Central Kitchen, said that "at the time of the lethal attacks, the IDF knew that our team in Gaza was unarmed and posing a threat to nobody".
"It had full visual clarity on our clearly marked humanitarian vehicles during the extended, multiple air strikes. It knew our team's movements, identities and activities in advance," it said.
"The military investigation conflates different timelines and events, muddies the story and shifts the blame for the IDF's illegal conduct."
Israeli Ambassador to Australia Hillel Newman said there was no intention to kill innocent civilians and that while he could "express deep sorrow and grief" for the families, he would not apologise over the deaths as that would have "legal ramifications".
"There are a lot of haters of Israel in Australia," he added. "We have seen this time and time again."
Overnight on Friday, Canada, the UK and Australia released a further statement on the matter, saying:
"The announcement by the IDF on August 19, 2026, that it would not pursue criminal investigations into this strike, without further explanation, is shameful. Announcing this decision on World Humanitarian Day, while the world honoured the courage and sacrifice of humanitarians, was particularly egregious. This decision is both too little and too late. The victims of this incident and their families deserve justice and accountability, and we will continue to seek answers on their behalf."
But notably, the three countries went further and said: "The World Central Kitchen attack is one of countless incidents in Gaza where there has been no accountability."
They said Israel "must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law and must do more to ensure that humanitarian staff can carry out their work safely. Lessons must be learned from this tragedy."
The Israeli foreign ministry responded by saying the decision not to pursue a criminal investigation "was made by Israel's independent military prosecution authorities on the basis of strict professional and legal considerations".
"It is based on the legal threshold required for initiating a criminal investigation, which is when there is reasonable suspicion for criminal misconduct."
Hillel Newman said he would not apologise over the deaths as that would have "legal ramifications". (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
The credibility of the IDF account was not helped by a reminder of two other notorious incidents at the time the findings were released.
The IDF announced it would be launching criminal investigations into the now globally famous incident in which a five year old girl, Hind Rajab, was left talking to emergency services in January 2024 from a car where she was surrounded by the bodies of her six dead relatives, after an IDF strike, only to eventually die, along with two paramedics killed by Israeli forces in an ambulance that was supposed to be on a negotiated path to rescue her.
The IDF said it would also launch a criminal investigation into the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics in March 2025 in Rafah.
Post-mortems of the dead paramedics, whose bodies had been retrieved from a mass grave that had also buried their vehicles, revealed they had been killed at close-range with "specific and intentional" bullet wounds in heads and hearts.
But given the IDF's record of failure to bring people to account, and the time that has already passed since these events took place, there is already deep scepticism about the likely outcome.
For example, The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) — set up in the little girl's name to pursue legal action against those responsible for violence against Palestinians — said in a statement that has "no confidence in the Israeli military's reported decision to open criminal investigations into the murder of Hind Rajab, six members of her family, and the two Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics" or into the targeted killing of the 15 Palestinian paramedics.
"These reported investigations, even if they do occur, should not be mistaken for a genuine step toward justice," the foundation said.
"As numerous Palestinian and international legal and human rights organisations have documented for years, Israel's internal investigations into the criminal conduct of its own soldiers are fundamentally flawed and cannot be regarded as credible mechanisms of accountability."
Wreckage of one of three World Central Kitchen vehicles destroyed in the strikes. (Reuters: Ahmed Zakot)
US criticises Israel over West Bank
Back in the West Bank this week, the IDF has played what would be politely called an ineffective role in ending the siege in Qusra.
The events seem to have been one of those lightning rod moments to galvanise public criticism of Israel and its actions in the West Bank.
That most notably came from the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
The evangelist is a longstanding supporter of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and follows the Israeli practice of calling the area by the biblical names of "Judea and Samaria" — to assert the traditional Hebrew ownership of the lands.
Yet Huckabee this week condemned the besieging settlers at Qusra as "Israeli terrorists" and said the siege was inexcusable.
But as the siege was occurring in front of the world's media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet ministers attended ceremonies in the West Bank to promote massive new settlements across the illegally occupied territory.
Australia was one of 21 countries, along with Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Germany, to sign a joint statement calling Israel's particular approval of a major settlement project which will effectively cut the West Bank in half — and further separate it from east Jerusalem "unacceptable and a violation of international law".
A group that monitors and maps conflicts and protests, ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data), says it has recorded more than 80 incidents involving settlers in Qusra since the beginning of 2026, "making it one of the three locations most affected by settler violence in the West Bank".
"These incidents included property theft and destruction, razing lands, physical clashes with Palestinians, and shootings at Palestinians — one of these shootings killed a Palestinian on 14 March," the group said in a statement.
Across the West Bank, it says it has recorded "300 incidents of land seizures between 1 January and 14 August, which is already higher than the 267 incidents recorded throughout 2025".
"In such incidents, settlers established outposts, built roads, placed tents and mobile rooms on Palestinian land, or seized homes, leading to more daily friction and violence between settlers and Palestinians."
The United Nations recorded more than 2,200 Palestinians displaced by settler violence and access restrictions in the first half of 2026 alone.
All these actions by Israel, a country whose ambassador to Australia told the National Press Club in March this year "will always be a beacon of hope".
Israel's enemies, Newman said, "seek its destruction for what it represents; a modern democracy, Western civilisation, and a national home for the Jewish people. There is no other country in the Middle East that upholds the same democratic ideals of Australia as Israel does."
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee warned Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank not to steal property owned by Palestinian Americans. (Reuters: Ronen Zvulun)
Netanyahu goes from Trump whisperer to Trump ignorer
Are any of Israel's actions likely to change?
The answer to this has usually been that it is really only the United States that can apply any external pressure to Israel to change its actions.
But there is an election coming in Israel.
Donald Trump also now shows little interest in the fate of the Palestinians, particularly with his Board of Peace plan blown up by the Israelis.
Netanyahu long boasted to his country that he was the Trump Whisperer. Now he is just the Trump Ignorer.
There are still actions taken by the US which are clearly read as sops to Israel.
The US, for example, this week sanctioned the president of the International Criminal Court and a prosecutor tasked with investigating crimes committed by Israel during its war on Gaza.
But it was the language used by the US secretary of state Marco Rubio in unveiling the new sanctions that was the most troubling.
In another time, it would have sounded positively unhinged for a senior American official to describe an international court as a "corrupt and fatally politicised supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate".
But not in these times.
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