Palestinian media report that settlers set fire yesterday evening to several vehicles at a car lot between the villages of Silwad and Ein Yabrud, in the Ramallah area.
No injuries were reported.
قطعان المستوطنين الصهاينة تشعل النيران في أشجار الزيتون ومشطب للسيارات في قرية عين يبرود شرق رام الله في #الضفة_الغربية_المحتلة. pic.twitter.com/pqQX96PWD1
— Talal Ibrahim (@TalalIM81) October 5, 2026
#عاجل | مسـ.'ـ..توطنون يضرمون النار في مركبات فلسطينية بين بلدتي سلواد وعين يبرود، شرق رام الله. pic.twitter.com/BDvh5ON5Ws
— فلسطين بوست (@PalpostN) October 4, 2026
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez calls an early election for November 29, in a bid to strengthen his mandate after a fragmented parliament rejected the government’s key housing decrees last week amid widespread protests.
“We need to renew people’s support,” Sanchez says in a televised address. “We need to mobilize and win a much larger progressive majority in parliament, one that will allow us to overcome vested interests, deliver new social advances and continue transforming Spain.”
The premier also acknowledges having made mistakes and falling short of campaign promises.
“I also know that part of that social majority is dissatisfied today,” he says.
Sanchez has been one of Israel’s greatest critics on the global stage, accusing it of carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
Facing the electorate now is a risky move as Sanchez’s Socialist Party is trailing in opinion polls. However, he has been boosted by proposals to tackle a mounting housing crisis that were well received but were struck down by right-wing MPs on Friday, leading to planned new public protests about housing.
An election defeat would spell the end of one of Europe’s last few left-leaning governments at a time when the far-right is making unprecedented gains across the region as a growing swath of European voters desert the center ground.
Opinion polls suggest a coalition led by the conservative People’s Party (PP) with the support of Vox is the most likely outcome in Spain, ushering a far-right party into central government for the first time since the return of democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco.
Still, Sanchez, a wily political operator, has proven time and again his ability to surprise those who had long written him off.
Despite never winning enough votes to form a majority government, he has cobbled together a series of fragile and seemingly impossible coalitions, including voices from the far-left to the separatist right, to remain in power for three successive terms lasting eight years.
But growing fragmentation among his partners has meant the government has passed little in the way of legislation in its third term and failed to pass a budget since 2023, even as Spain’s economy has continued to be one of the best-performing in the developed world.
Yemeni government forces attack Houthi positions in the Dhubab district overlooking the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait, two military sources say, a day after the internationally recognized government launched a campaign to retake Houthi-held territory.
The pro-government’s Giants Brigades says its first contingents have arrived in the Bab el-Mandeb area.
Two alleged Palestinian arms dealers were nabbed by Israeli commandos in the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday, the military says.
The IDF says soldiers of the Duvdevan Commando Unit, following intelligence provided by the Shin Bet, raided Nablus’s old city and captured “two terrorists who trafficked weapons intended to harm Israeli civilians and security forces.”
The commandos entered the old city of Nablus and apprehended both suspects “within minutes,” the military adds.
After days of opposition leaders assailing the government over both its failure to prevent last week’s flydubai attack and its refusal to take responsibility, People of Israel party chairman Ofer Winter — who has firmly aligned his party with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — levels strikingly similar criticism.
Speaking near Ben Gurion Airport on the national day of remembrance for the October 7 massacre, Winter declares that “three years after the horrific massacre, it seems that the State of Israel refuses to learn the lesson.”
Like opposition leaders in recent days, the leader of the right-wing party draws a direct line between the Hamas-led 2023 attacks and the flydubai incident, arguing that in both cases civilians were forced to avert disaster in the wake of state incompetence while political leadership deflects blame.
“This is what the ‘conception’ looks like, and unfortunately it is still very much alive and well, no matter what they tell you. Anyone who doesn’t want to investigate won’t want to fix things either,” he says. “Anyone who doesn’t take responsibility won’t provide a solution.”
Winter casts himself as the answer, reiterating his ambition to serve as defense minister — seemingly under Netanyahu — and pledging a new security doctrine that includes “knocking our enemies’ heads down before they raise them” and ensuring that combat soldiers “always come before enemy civilians and before any other extraneous consideration.”
The remarks highlight a central tension in Winter’s campaign: despite portraying the country’s current leadership as failed, incompetent and negligent, he has repeatedly insisted that he will recommend only Netanyahu for prime minister and has ruled out joining a government led by Netanyahu’s chief rival, Gadi Eisenkot, and his centrist Yashar party, or any of the other parties opposed to Netanyahu’s leadership.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offers his “congratulations” on X to Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro for his performance in yesterday’s first round of the presidential election and wishes him “good luck” in the second round.
“I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil,” he says.
Relations have soured under the left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has accused Israel of carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza, a charge Jerusalem firmly denies.
“Best wishes for your great victory, my friend,” Netanyahu tells Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who had warm relations with Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
Congratulations @FlavioBolsonaro on yesterday’s vote and good luck in the final.I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil.
Best wishes for your great victory, my friend.
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 5, 2026
Flavio Bolsonaro received 47 percent of votes compared with Lula’s 45%.
Top Hamas official Ghazi Hamad tells Al Arabiya that Ali al-Amoudi, the terror group’s de facto leader in Gaza, “survived the Israeli assassination attempt” on him a few days ago.
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City overnight Friday-Saturday targeted Amoudi, with Palestinian media reporting five people killed, including a number of women.
The Israel Defense Forces said that the strike targeted Amoudi while he was residing in an apartment “used for terror activity, inside a residential building,” and that it took steps to “minimize harm to civilians as much as possible.”
Amoudi has emerged as a central figure following the killing of senior Hamas leaders, and now effectively manages the terror group’s affairs in the Strip, particularly the work of its political bureau.
Three years after the October 7, 2023, attack, former hostage Gadi Moses tells Kan news that residents in Kibbutz Nir Oz, from which he was abducted, “live in constant fear.”
“The problem today is that we have an army that is doing what it is doing in the Gaza Strip, but it ignores us as civilians living two meters from the border. It does not give us an account [of its actions], nor does it share with us what is happening. The state provides us with no assurance whatsoever that something like this cannot happen again.”
Moses also says he is disappointed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I think I am an invisible citizen, someone the prime minister does not address, does not understand what happened to me, and does not want to understand what happened to me. He just repeats all kinds of slogans. I am asking him to treat me as a citizen with equal rights in our country.”
He says “it’s not for nothing that [Netanyahu] opposes a state commission of inquiry.” He accuses him of “creating such a deep divide between the different tribes of the Jewish people and causing the loss of trust in our sense of togetherness.”
Marking three years since the October 7 onslaught, the IDF’s General Staff Forum holds a short ceremony and a moment of silence at Zikim Base, which was attacked by terrorists.
Earlier, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said in a missive that it is Israel’s “duty” to fully investigate the Hamas-led massacre to ensure its lessons are learned.
Flags have been lowered to half-mast at the Knesset and the President’s Residence as they begin marking three years since the October 7 disaster.
Today is the national day of remembrance for the disaster, which was set for two days after the Simhat Torah holiday, when the attack occurred in 2023.
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