In the oc­cu­pied West Bank, Is­raeli au­thor­i­ties re­leased a Pales­tin­ian di­rec­tor of the Os­car-win­ning doc­u­men­tary “ No Oth­er Land,” a day af­ter he was beat­en by Jew­ish set­tlers and de­tained by sol­diers. Ham­dan Bal­lal and two oth­er Pales­tini­ans were ac­cused of throw­ing stones at a set­tler, al­le­ga­tions they de­ny.

Pales­tini­ans and rights groups say Is­raeli forces in the West Bank usu­al­ly turn a blind eye to set­tler at­tacks or in­ter­vene on the set­tlers’ be­half.

Is­rael’s par­lia­ment passed a cru­cial state bud­get on Tues­day, a move that shores up Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu ’s gov­ern­ing coali­tion and grants the em­bat­tled leader the chance at months of po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty even as pub­lic pres­sure mounts over the war in Gaza.

Is­raeli strikes killed at least 23 peo­ple in the Gaza Strip overnight in­to Tues­day, Pales­tin­ian medics said, in­clud­ing three chil­dren and their par­ents who were killed in their tent.

Hos­pi­tals have been flood­ed with at least 792 dead and 1,663 wound­ed in the week since Is­rael broke the cease­fire with Hamas and re­sumed heavy bom­bard­ments of Gaza. The Health Min­istry’s count does not dis­tin­guish be­tween civil­ians and mil­i­tants.

Trump’s nom­i­nee for am­bas­sador to Is­rael avoids di­rect an­swers on West Bank an­nex­a­tion

Mike Huck­abee, fac­ing a U.S. Sen­ate hear­ing for his con­fir­ma­tion as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s am­bas­sador to Is­rael, is fac­ing close ques­tion­ing from De­moc­rats on his views on the po­ten­tial for Is­raeli an­nex­a­tion of the West Bank, but he avoid­ed giv­ing di­rect an­swers.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Mary­land De­mo­c­rat, asked Huck­abee whether he thought it would be wrong for a Jew­ish set­tler to push a Pales­tin­ian fam­i­ly off land they own in the West Bank.

Huck­abee, a well-known evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, stood by past state­ments that Is­rael has a “Bib­li­cal man­date” to the land. He al­so re­spond­ed by say­ing he be­lieved in the “law be­ing fol­lowed” and “clar­i­ty,” but al­so that “pur­chas­ing the land” would be a “le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tion.”

Huck­abee al­so said that any Pales­tini­ans liv­ing in an an­nexed West Bank would have “se­cu­ri­ty” and “op­por­tu­ni­ty,” but wouldn’t an­swer Van Hollen’s ques­tions about whether they would have the same le­gal and po­lit­i­cal rights as Jew­ish peo­ple.

By THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS