KUWAIT/GAZA/RAMALLAH: The ministry of foreign affairs reflected Kuwait’s strong condemnation and denunciation over the Zionist occupation’s establishment of an agency attempting to displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The ministry, in a statement, also uttered strong condemnation over the Zionist occupation’s plans to annex land from the West Bank by including 13 illegal settlements into its so-called “territories”, saying it was in violation of international laws and an attempt to legalize the colonization of Palestine.

The Zionist occupation is forcibly displacing Palestinians and committing severe violations to international laws and norms namely UNSC resolution 2334, which is against illegal Zionist settlement activities attempting to change the demographic nature of occupied lands including that of east Jerusalem, it added. The ministry called on the international community to take its humanitarian and legal responsibilities to thwart the occupation’s violations against Palestinians and ensure their right for an independent state within the June 4, 1967 borders and East Jerusalem as the capital.

Zionist strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 23 Palestinians on Tuesday, local health officials said, as the Zionist military expanded evacuation orders to tens of thousands of residents across the enclave. The Zionist military resumed its campaign against Hamas in Gaza a week ago, shattering a two-month ceasefire. Since then, nearly 700 people, mostly women and children, have been killed.

Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has already been displaced by the fighting multiple times during nearly 18 months of war and is facing worsening shortages of food and water after the Zionist entity suspended aid deliveries earlier this month. On Tuesday, the Zionist army told residents in all northern border towns to evacuate. The affected towns include Jabalia, Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Shujaiya in Gaza City. Orders were also issued for areas in Khan Younis and Rafah in the south. Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in the Gaza Strip.

Zionist Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday threatened the Zionist entity will take more territory in Gaza and fight until Hamas is wiped out if the group keeps refusing to free remaining captives. “If Hamas continues with its intransigence, it will pay heavy prices that get higher and higher in the taking of territory (by the Zionist entity) and in taking out militants and terror infrastructure until its complete surrender,” Katz said in a video reported by Zionist media.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” was attacked by settlers and arrested by the Zionist army on Monday in the occupied West Bank, according to his co-director Yuval Abraham. In a post on X, Abraham said a “group of settlers” had set upon Hamdan Ballal. “They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since,” Abraham wrote.

The incident took place in the southern West Bank village of Susiya, according to the anti-occupation NGO Center for Jewish Nonviolence, whose members said they filmed the events first-hand. Ballal was attending a gathering for iftar, the end of the daily Ramadan fast, in Susiya near Hebron, when a group of settlers attacked the gathering, said Jihad Nawajaa, head of the Susiya local council. “Dozens of settlers attacked the gathering at Iftar,” Nawajaa told Reuters by phone. “The young men came out to prevent them, and there were about eight injuries on our side.”

Zionist police arrested three men, including Ballal, who was injured during the standoff, he said. “This is not the first time that the settlers attacked our gathering, but in the recent period the attacks have increased,” he said, adding that the settlers had stolen around 10 sheep from the village during the attack.

Monday’s incident was the latest in which Zionist settlers have been accused of raiding Palestinian or Bedouin villages and encampments in the West Bank, sometimes to steal livestock. Palestinians and activists who monitor such attacks say the police and army typically stand by without intervening.

Lamia Ballal, the filmmaker’s wife, said settlers had gathered around the family house and her husband had gone outside to prevent them from breaking in. “The settlers attacked him and started beating him, and then they arrested him, we do not know anything about him,” she told Reuters. Anna Lippman, an American-Canadian from a group called the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, said her group had been attacked by settlers after arriving in the village around 15 minutes after the attack began. “Shortly after we were attacked, Hamdan was blindfolded and handcuffed,” she said, adding that other activists had seen him being led to a military vehicle and driven off. She said the family had shown patches of blood on the ground where it said Ballal had been hit.

“No Other Land”, which was directed by Zionist-Palestinian activists, won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards. Shot in nearby Masafer Yatta, the documentary follows a young Palestinian struggling with forced displacement as the Zionist army tears down his community’s homes to make space for a firing zone. The Zionist army declared Masafer Yatta a restricted military zone in the 1980s. The West Bank, excluding Zionist-annexed east Jerusalem, is home to around three million Palestinians as well as nearly half a million Zionist who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.

Basel Adra, one of the film’s other co-directors, said he believed the settlers had taken the army to the family house as revenge for the film’s depiction of Masafer Yatta. “Because he carries his camera and documents what is going on, I think he is targeted and he was avenged this way at night,” he said. European countries and the previous US administration of President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on violent Zionist settlers but under President Donald Trump, the White House has removed them. – Agencies