The Observer

OCTOBER WAS THE WORST MONTH OF ATTACKS IN THE WEST BANK SINCE THE UN STARTED COUNTING IN 2006 The UN humanitarian office, OCHA, logged 457 attacks in October that caused casualties or damage. No month in its records comes close. The olive harvest is where it shows most. 377 harvest-related attacks since September 1. More than any season before it. This is what one week looked like. November 4: about 30 settlers, backed by the settler group Nachala, moved into Ein al-Duyuk al-Tahta near Jericho and took over eight Palestinian homes. The settlers say they bought them. Jericho Governor Hussein Hamayel calls the sale a forgery. The same day, 21 structures belonging to three families were demolished in the northern Jordan Valley. Five homes in Biddu followed the next day. November 5: olive groves set on fire in Burqa, northwest of Ramallah, while residents were stopped from putting them out. November 8: three young men beaten with clubs near Salfit. And now a different Burqa, the one near Nablus. Moataz Iyad Daghlas was 14. Israeli soldiers shot him dead in a raid on the village. A 17-year-old was hit in the abdomen and pelvis, a 19-year-old in the hand. The army says soldiers fired to stop stone-throwing at Israeli vehicles. The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israel is holding his body. The UN count since October 7, 2023: at least 1,143 Palestinians killed in the West Bank. 250 of them children.

BRENT IS NOW ABOUT 22% BELOW ITS OCTOBER 30 HIGH, AND ASIAN STOCKS ARE RIPPING HIGHER ON IT Ten days ago Brent touched $118. A six-month high. It settled at $92.57 on Monday. In Asian trade on Tuesday it slipped again, to around $91.56. The lowest since early September. The trigger was one sentence from Trump: US military action against Iran is not necessary "at this point." Then the money moved. South Korea's Kospi: up 4%. Taiwan's Taiex: up 3.4%. Japan's Nikkei: up 2.6%, back above 60,000. Australia's ASX 200: up 1.1%. SoftBank alone jumped 15% ahead of its earnings. Cheaper oil eased inflation worries, and that was enough. But read the fine print. Trump is keeping the naval blockade in place for now. Eurasia Group's Gregory Brew says Brent is unlikely to fall below $90 "without more durable signs of de-escalation and a US-Iran deal." ATFX Global's Nick Twidale warned markets may have "moved too far, too quickly." His warning: if negotiations falter, prices could see "a substantial rebound."

🇵🇸🇮🇱⚡️ A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli army fire while collecting stones near the village of Burqa in Nablus Governorate.

🇺🇸🇮🇶⚡️ President Trump told Iraqi Prime Minister al-Zaidi over the phone that he would target Iran-aligned armed factions in Iraq and their leaders if they joined the war in support of Iran. He also pressed al-Zaidi to bring the groups under state control. According to An-Nahar.

A drone attack on the Khor Mor gasfield in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region late on Sunday sparked a fire and suspended gas supplies to several power stations, according to regional officials, Al Jazeera reports. The attack initially reduced electricity generation in Kurdistan Regional Government-administered areas by between 2,500 and 2,800 megawatts. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has ordered a joint investigative committee with KRG authorities, and no group has claimed responsibility.

LEBANON'S DIRECT TALKS WITH ISRAEL ARE FROZEN AT ROUND EIGHT, AND BEIRUT IS WAITING ON TWO ELECTIONS Seven rounds happened. The eighth was suspended. Three things broke it: the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, how to carry out the US-brokered framework agreed in June, and who checks that anyone is complying. Now Beirut is watching two ballot results. The US midterms. And an Israeli election that still hasn't produced a government. One Lebanese official called this "a transitional phase." A source close to Hezbollah told Arab News the midterm results will likely "reduce the chances of a new round of direct negotiations in the near future," and that Hezbollah expects no decision on the talks until next year. The group opposes direct talks in the first place. Hezbollah MP Ali Fayyad went further: "The outcome of the confrontation has not yet been decided." On the other side, five embassies stepped in. The US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan issued a joint statement backing President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and the state's sole control over weapons and decisions of war and peace. It landed while a judge is investigating a shipment of explosives linked to Hezbollah. Meanwhile, in the south, an Israeli drone dropped a stun grenade near farmers picking olives outside Deir Mimas. Nobody was hurt. Farmers in the affected areas need permission through the ceasefire monitoring mechanism just to reach their own land.

COP31 OPENS IN ANTALYA, AND THE HOST'S FIRST MESSAGE IS ABOUT MONEY, NOT TARGETS Turkey is hosting the UN climate summit for the first time. It runs to November 20. Australia chairs the negotiations. Turkey's environment minister, Murat Kurum, holds the presidency, and he set the tone in one line: "Now our promises must be backed by capital." Look at what has already been promised. At Baku, COP29: at least $300 billion a year for developing countries by 2035, with rich nations taking the lead. And a wider goal of $1.3 trillion a year from public and private money combined. At Belem, COP30: triple adaptation finance, to somewhere between $85 billion and $120 billion a year. Few here expect bigger targets. Singapore's environment minister, Grace Fu, said so plainly: "We are not expecting a major upgrade in mitigation targets." UN climate chief Simon Stiell called progress "nowhere near fast or fair enough," and pointed to the "immense frustration" poorer countries face just getting access to money already committed. Kurum's answer is a "Climate Implementation Bridge": not a fund, a matchmaker between projects and investors. His other headline goal is "35-by-35": electricity at 35% of global final energy use by 2035. Voluntary. It creates no new obligation for any country. More than 160 agenda items. 60 negotiating mandates. Twelve days.

SUDAN'S FAMINE RISK IS GROWING AS DROUGHT HITS MORE THAN HALF THE COUNTRY, THE UN-BACKED HUNGER MONITOR WARNS The world's attention is on Hormuz. Sudan is getting worse with far less noise. The IPC's latest alert on Greater Darfur and Kordofan reads like a checklist of everything going wrong at once. War. An El Nino drought. Aid that isn't funded. In North Darfur, 64% of cropland is showing poor plant growth. In South Darfur, West Kordofan and South Kordofan, about half. The rains came in late September, too late to save most cereal crops. West Kordofan's rainfall points to one of the worst droughts there since 2004. Then the malnutrition numbers. 13 of the 17 nutrition surveys done in Greater Darfur since January hit a Critical level. In two displacement camps in Eastern Jebel Marra, acute malnutrition reached 38% and 30.8%. Both above famine thresholds. Greater Kordofan has seen more than 300,000 people forced from their homes since October 2025. Its markets have been hit by more than 170 airstrikes, lootings or armed clashes this year. Back in May, 19.5 million people in Sudan already faced acute food insecurity. 135,000 of them in Phase 5, the most severe level. And the IPC says the aid response is increasingly limited, held back by critical underfunding, insecurity and blocked access in Kordofan.

SAUDI-LED COALITION: TWO MISSILES FIRED AT RIYADH AND A THIRD AT THE SOUTH, ALL INTERCEPTED Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki laid it out in a run of posts. Over Riyadh: one ballistic missile, one cruise missile. Over southern Saudi Arabia: a second ballistic missile. All three destroyed. He blamed Ansar Allah (Houthis). AFP reported multiple explosions heard across the capital. Residents got phone alerts telling them to take shelter from an "aerial threat." The alert was later lifted. On the other side of the border, the Houthi-run Saba agency reported coalition air strikes on Sanaa: the al-Mufazir gas station in Jadar district, and a building of the state oil company in the south of the city. Saba said civil defence crews were fighting a fire in gas trailers at the station. The coalition has not confirmed those strikes. This came one day after the East-West pipeline in the Medina region was hit again. A Saudi Energy Ministry official told SPA it caused a "limited fire," and that "pipeline operations were unaffected." Pipeline Monday. Riyadh Tuesday. Sanaa the same day. The ceasefire in Yemen collapsed in July. Since then, attacks on the kingdom have become close to a daily event.

16 WORKERS KILLED AFTER A CRANE FELL INTO A FURNACE AT TURKEY'S HABAS STEEL PLANT This was not a missile. Not a drone. A steel mill in Aliaga, Izmir province. At 08:46 GMT on Monday, during furnace replacement work, a ceiling crane collapsed. Material fell into an electric arc furnace. The blast tore a natural gas line, and a fire followed. Governor Suleyman Elban's first count was 10 dead. By the time President Erdogan came out of his cabinet meeting, it was 16. 13 injured. 2 of them in serious condition. The governor said the line was mid shift change, so about 200 workers were inside instead of the usual 300. Erdogan said judicial and administrative investigations are open, and that "any negligence and those responsible will be established." Izmir's mayor, Cemil Tugay, warned the final toll will only be clear once the debris is cleared. The question investigators now own: why did that ceiling crane give way?

NETANYAHU'S COALITION LOST ITS MAJORITY ON OCTOBER 27. SINCE THEN IT HAS PUT 823 MORE SETTLEMENT HOMES OUT TO TENDER The new numbers come from Israel's own housing ministry and Civil Administration. 732 units in Gva'ot, west of Bethlehem. 91 units in Oranit, south of Qalqilya. All of it while Gadi Eisenkot tries to form the next government. Herzog handed him that task on Sunday. The Gva'ot tender is phase one. A second tender on the same site offers land for shops, offices and public buildings. Contractors can bid from December 1 to December 28. Zoom out and it gets bigger. Peace Now counts 3,767 settlement units tendered since the Knesset dissolved on July 18, including 1,234 in E1, the strip east of Jerusalem. The Palestinian settlement commission counts 7,815 units across 18 residential tenders this year, East Jerusalem included. Peace Now's verdict on the outgoing government: "A transition government has no mandate to advance irreversible moves in the settlements." A tender is not a bulldozer. It lets contractors bid for the right to build, and work usually starts one to two years later. Will Eisenkot cancel them, or inherit them?

The U.S. evacuated American refueling tankers from RAF Mildenhall in the UK to Germany following threat intelligence from Iran. 🔴 Security posture at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath has been raised to FPCON Charlie as the "Gang of Eight" receives briefings on Iranian threats to the homeland. 🔴 FPCON Charlie applies when an incident occurs or intelligence is received indicating some form of terrorist action or targeting against personnel or facilities is likely.

TRUMP'S OWN BOARD OF PEACE JUST TOLD NETANYAHU'S GOVERNMENT ITS GAZA WINTER RESPONSE "REMAINS INSUFFICIENT" This is not a UN agency or an aid group talking. The Board of Peace was set up under Trump's Gaza plan to oversee the strip after the ceasefire. Over the weekend, rain flooded more than 70,000 tents. At least five people died when a sand embankment gave way at a camp in Deir al-Balah. The Board's words: "no longer simply a threat posed by the approaching winter, but an immediate humanitarian emergency." It says it asked Israel, repeatedly, to let in shelter materials, drainage, sewage removal and sanitation gear, as promised in the Sharm el-Sheikh humanitarian protocol. Then the line that stings. The Board says those delays also "significantly delayed" the start of Hamas giving up its weapons and handing power to Gaza's new administrative committee. It pressed Hamas too: disarm and give up governing. Israel's army answered with numbers. More than 91,000 tents in. Over 8,200 trucks of tarpaulins, blankets and winter clothing. 850-plus requests approved. About half of those, it says, have not happened yet, because the UN and aid organisations have not brought the equipment in. Two sides of the same plan, pointing at each other, while tens of thousands of displaced people wait in flooded shelters. Who does Washington lean on first?

THE UN SAYS ISRAEL IS BUILDING ROADS IN SOUTH LEBANON. PEACEKEEPERS READ IT AS PREPARATION TO STAY This came from the UN podium in New York, not from Beirut. Deputy spokesman Farhan Haq walked reporters through four days of UNIFIL logs, Thursday to Sunday. Six Israeli airstrikes. Three on Thursday, three on Sunday. 360 artillery trajectories, hitting several communities. Drones overhead. Engineering work. New roads. In both the eastern and western sectors, peacekeepers saw what looked like preparations for a sustained Israeli presence. The UN did not say what is being built, or how long the troops plan to remain. Meanwhile the peacekeepers themselves are being boxed in. Gates and physical barriers block their routes, mostly in the east. Near Al-Bayyada on Friday, Israeli soldiers and tanks stopped traffic in both directions. Asked about Israeli claims of weapons depots near a UN position, Haq said any unauthorised weapons south of the Litani breach Resolution 1701. UNIFIL has found hundreds of such caches, but it cannot search private homes or disarm anyone by force. Its last day of operations is set for December 31. A buffer zone, new roads, and a UN force with weeks left. What does the map of south Lebanon look like in January?

325 SHIPS CROSSED HORMUZ IN A WEEK. BEFORE THE WAR, THE STRAIT HANDLED ROUGHLY THREE TIMES THAT UKMTO's latest weekly count: 170 ships out. 155 in. About 65% below pre-conflict levels. Not stalled. Just a fraction of what it was. And look at where they sail. Most ships with transponders switched on now use the northern route, the one hugging Iran's side of the strait. The danger has not gone away. At least 11 ships were attacked in and around Hormuz in the week to November 6. Three of them sank. UKMTO has logged 88 projectile strikes since fighting resumed in early July, and says most attacks never get reported. JMIC, the joint military-civilian maritime centre, added five incidents in its November 8 update. That makes 177 since March 1. Its threat level stays at "severe." Then there is the American side of the water. CENTCOM says its blockade has redirected 147 vessels since July and disabled five that refused to comply. Two navies, two sets of rules, and one narrow strait that still carried nearly a fifth of the world's crude before all this. Would you insure a tanker for that run?

IN THE WEST BANK, THE SETTLER WHO OPENS FIRE IN CIVILIAN CLOTHES MAY BE AN ISRAELI ARMY RESERVIST An Al Jazeera investigation broadcast this week puts a number on it. 14 Palestinians killed by settlers who were serving in the Israeli army or who showed up in military uniform. The investigation centres on the Hagmar, the army's regional defence units that recruit settlers as reservists. Their ranks have grown sixfold since 2023. Their job has changed too. Once they guarded settlements. Now, Al Jazeera found, they back raids on Palestinian villages. Haaretz reported earlier that the army called up some 5,500 West Bank settlers and put them in these battalions after the war began. What the reservist gets: a licensed weapon, regular training, and security information on the Palestinians next door. Two cases stand out. A soldier in civilian clothes shot dead a Palestinian on farmland in the Hebron area. He is a settler activist the US sanctioned in 2024, before those sanctions were lifted. Another was filmed in plain clothes beating olive farmers near Nablus. The Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission logged 1,369 settler attacks in October alone. When the attacker can switch from settler to soldier and back, who is a farmer supposed to report him to?

UKRAINE WAR TALKS RESTART IN ABU DHABI, WITH SPY CHIEFS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE TABLE Look at who each side sent. Moscow's team is led by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky. Next to him: Igor Kostyukov, head of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence. Kyiv's lead is Rustem Umerov, who now runs Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service. With him, chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov and deputy military intelligence chief Vadym Skibitskyi. Washington sends Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Two days, November 10 and 11. The first three-way round since February, after the January and February talks produced nothing visible. Kushner says the focus is "postwar security concerns" for both Russia and Ukraine. US officials told the BBC that Moscow and Kyiv are privately showing "a little bit of flexibility" on who controls the eastern regions after a war. The framework they describe: crisis hotlines, "reciprocal de-escalation measures," even reviving the NATO-Russia Council. Zelensky wants more on the list: an energy ceasefire, an open Black Sea, bigger prisoner swaps. Europe is in the building, not at the table. British, French, German and Italian advisers, plus NATO and the EU, are meeting the Ukrainians separately. Trump says both sides are "tired of fighting." If the eastern regions really are on the table, who moves first?

UAE'S GARGASH: GULF SOLIDARITY "COULD'VE BEEN STRONGER." IN THE SAME SPEECH, HE THANKED ISRAEL Anwar Gargash advises UAE President Sheikh Mohamed on diplomacy. At the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate, he did not sound like a man expecting a peace deal. "We should therefore prepare for a long period of uncertainty," he said, one where "neither a decisive resolution nor a stable regional order can be taken for granted." Then the sharper part. "Gulf solidarity in this crisis could've been stronger and more effective." Iran has struck every Gulf state since February 28. Gargash says trust between neighbours now has to be rebuilt. He thanked France, Israel, Greece, Egypt and India for their "support and solidarity." He also said the UAE opposed the US war on Iran from the outset, and that Abu Dhabi made a "decisive choice" to use its deterrent when attacked. On Tehran, the door stays open. "Dialogue isn't a concession but a strategic necessity." Some near-term engagement may have to be transactional, he added, without saying what that means. So a senior Emirati is saying Gulf unity fell short, while listing Israel among the countries that stood with the UAE. Which Gulf capitals do you think he had in mind?

WASHINGTON WANTS IRAQ TO SEAL ITS IRAN BORDER. WATCH WHAT BAGHDAD DOES WITH TWO GATES THIS WEEK Sheeb reopens Tuesday. Iraq shut it last month to review security and install equipment that detects smuggling. Mandali closes from Friday, temporarily, while technical work is finished. That is the official explanation, from the head of Iraq's Border Ports Authority, via state agency INA. The pressure behind it is no secret. Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein says the US Treasury asked Baghdad to close all crossings with Iran except two. His answer, to Al Jazeera: "There are many official and unofficial border crossings with Iran, and closing all of them would be difficult and would affect our economy." The Americans are "still demanding" it, he said. Talks are ongoing. Nobody has said whether this week's moves are a response to that request. Trump's new Task Force Iron Gate is meant to cut Iran's trade by land and across the Caspian. Iraq's crossings are where that gets tested.