Summary of the day
Donald Trump has said he is not sure whether the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold. Trump is expected to issue an executive order withdrawing the US from the UN human rights council and prohibiting future funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), according to a report. US funding to Unrwa was suspended in 2024 under Joe Biden’s administration.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to begin talks today on brokering a second phase of the ceasefire with Hamas, his office said, as he visits the new Trump administration in Washington. Ahead of his departure, Netanyahu told reporters he would discuss “victory over Hamas”, without defining what this would mean in practical terms, contending with Iran and freeing all hostages when he meets with the US President on Tuesday.
Hamas is ready to begin talks on the details of a second phase of the ongoing truce in Gaza, two officials from the Palestinian militant group told Agence France-Presse on Monday. “Hamas has informed the mediators, during ongoing communications and meetings held with Egyptian mediators last week in Cairo, that we are ready to start the negotiations for the second phase,” one official said on condition of anonymity. “We are waiting for the mediators to initiate the next round of negotiation,” said another.
The head of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, says Israel must be held accountable for the “genocide” that has been “committed,” adding that the current ceasefire must not mean that we forget what happened over the last 15 months. “In fact, if you have any sense of the future, you need a reckoning for the past. Amnesty’s primary message is that genocide has been committed, and accountability must be delivered for it,” the secretary-general told Al Jazeera.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the Israeli military is continuing its raid on the West Bank city of Jenin for the 14th consecutive day, which the outlet says has killed at least 25 Palestinian people, injured dozens of others and has involved the demolition of dozens of homes.
The office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said the ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank amounts to “ethnic cleansing” and urged the US to intervene. In a statement, spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the presidency “condemned the occupation authorities’ expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank to implement their plans aimed at displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing”.
The Palestinian ministry of health says the Israeli military have killed at least 70 people, including 10 children in the West Bank since the beginning of 2025. Thirty eight were killed in Jenin; 15 in Tubas; six in Nablus; five in Tulkarem; three in Hebron; two in Bethlehem; and one in Jerusalem.
A car bomb killed at least 15 people in the northern Syrian city of Manbij on Monday The attack is the second there in three days; Syria’s deadliest since Bashar al-Assad was unseated from power in December 2024. No one has claimed responsibility for the car bombing in the relatively small city, located 30km (19 miles) from the Turkish border.
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The Trump administration has asked congressional leaders to approve new transfers of roughly $1bn worth of bombs and other military hardware to Israel, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The planned weapons sales include 4,700 1,000-pound bombs, worth more than $700m, as well as armored bulldozers built by Caterpillar, worth more than $300m, the outlet reports, citing US officials.
The new arms requests come as Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington and set to meet the US president, Donald Trump, on Tuesday to discuss the ceasefire in Gaza, a separate truce in Lebanon and tensions in the wider Middle East region.
More than 545,000 Palestinians have crossed in northern Gaza – UN
More than 545,000 Palestinians are estimated to have crossed from southern Gaza to northern Gaza in the past week since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect, according to figures by the UN.
During the same period, more than 36,000 people have been observed moving from northern Gaza to the south, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary general, said on Monday.
As more humanitarian aid enters Gaza and the ceasefire continues to hold, he said UN partners report that prices have started to fall, though they remain about pre-conflict levels.
“One-third of households reportedly have better access to food, but consumption remains significantly below levels prior to the escalation of hostilities,” he said. “For most households, the primary obstacle is just lack of cash.”
The Israeli military said it had located and destroyed several weapons storage facilities in southern Lebanon on Monday.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had found mortar shells, missiles, rockets, explosives, firearms and a large amount of military equipment belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, without providing evidence.
The military said it also killed a number of Hezbollah militants located close to Israeli troops.
Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, has reiterated his offer to provide prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a “political safety net” to complete the second and third phases of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas in Gaza.
Lapid, in a statement from kibbutz Nir Oz which was devastated in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, said “there is no political reason preventing Netanyahu from going to the next phase.”
“Tomorrow, president [Donald] Trump will meet prime minister Netanyahu in Washington,” Lapid’s statement noted, Jewish News Syndicate reports.
It’s important to make crystal clear before that meeting: Netanyahu has a political safety net from the opposition for the deal — for every stage.
He said the ceasefire deal has the “overwhelming” support of the people of Israel and of the Knesset, adding:
The hostage deal will not bring down Netanyahu’s government. We are all committed to it.
Trump says 'no guarantees' Gaza ceasefire will hold
The US president, Donald Trump, has said he is not sure whether the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will hold.
“I have no guarantees that the peace is going to hold,” Trump told reporters on Monday, a day before he is due to meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the White House.
Trump’s special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, added:
It’s holding so far, so we’re certainly hopeful.
Syria’s transitional president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said organising elections could take up to five years, a week after he was appointed the country’s interim leader after ousting Bashar al-Assad in December.
“My estimate is that the period of time will be approximately between four and five years until the elections,” Sharaa said in a pre-recorded interview broadcast on a private Syrian television channel, Agence-France-Presse reports.
In late December, he told Al Arabiya TV the election process could take four years.
The infrastructure for the vote “needs to be re-established, and this takes time”, Sharaa added on Monday.
He also promised “a law regulating political parties”, adding that Syria would be “a republic with a parliament and an executive government”.
Donald Trump’s first administration withdrew the US from the UN’s human rights council in 2018 and the Biden administration rejoined the body three years later.
According to Politico, Trump is expected to sign an executive order today once again withdrawing the US from the human rights body.
A fact sheet by the White House, obtained by the outlet, says the UN’s human rights council “has not fulfilled its purpose and continues to be used as a protective body for countries committing horrific human rights violations” and condemned its stance on Israel.
“The UNHRC has demonstrated consistent bias against Israel, focusing on it unfairly and disproportionately in council proceedings,” the document reportedly says, adding:
In 2018, the year President Trump withdrew from the UNHRC in his first administration, the organization passed more resolutions condemning Israel than Syria, Iran, and North Korea combined.
Trump to stop future Unrwa funding, withdraw from UN human rights council – report
Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order withdrawing the US from the UN human rights council and prohibiting future funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), Politico reports.
US funding to Unrwa was suspended in 2024 under Joe Biden’s administration, after Israel accused a handful of Unrwa employees of participating in the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.
A series of investigations, including one led by the French former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality related issues” at Unrwa – but emphasised Israel had not provided evidence for its headline allegation.
Trump’s first administration cut funding to the agency in 2018 before the Biden administration restarted it again in 2021.
The office of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his schedule during his visit to Washington.
Today, the prime minister will meet evangelical leaders at 5:00 p.m. EST at the Blair House in Washington DC.
At 6:30 p.m., the schedule has him meeting US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff.
The main event will take place tomorrow when Netanyahu meets President Donald Trump, at 4:00 pm on Tuesday, followed by a joint press conference and an off-the-record briefing for Israeli journalists. On the agenda will be the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza and Israel’s relationship with Iran.
Updated
Good evening. Here’s a summary of today's events so far...
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to begin talks today on brokering a second phase of the ceasefire with Hamas, his office said, as he visits the new Trump administration in Washington. Ahead of his departure, Netanyahu told reporters he would discuss “victory over Hamas”, without defining what this would mean in practical terms, contending with Iran and freeing all hostages when he meets with the US President on Tuesday.
Hamas is ready to begin talks on the details of a second phase of the ongoing truce in Gaza, two officials from the Palestinian militant group told Agence France-Presse on Monday. “Hamas has informed the mediators, during ongoing communications and meetings held with Egyptian mediators last week in Cairo, that we are ready to start the negotiations for the second phase,” one official said on condition of anonymity. “We are waiting for the mediators to initiate the next round of negotiation,” said another.
The head of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, says Israel must be held accountable for the “genocide” that has been “committed,” adding that the current ceasefire must not mean that we forget what happened over the last 15 months. “In fact, if you have any sense of the future, you need a reckoning for the past. Amnesty’s primary message is that genocide has been committed, and accountability must be delivered for it,” the secretary-general told Al Jazeera.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the Israeli military is continuing its raid on the West Bank city of Jenin for the 14th consecutive day, which the outlet says has killed at least 25 Palestinian people, injured dozens of others and has involved the demolition of dozens of homes.
The office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said the ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank amounts to “ethnic cleansing” and urged the US to intervene. In a statement, spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the presidency “condemned the occupation authorities’ expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank to implement their plans aimed at displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing”.
The Palestinian ministry of health says the Israeli military have killed at least 70 people, including 10 children in the West Bank since the beginning of 2025. Thirty eight were killed in Jenin; 15 in Tubas; six in Nablus; five in Tulkarem; three in Hebron; two in Bethlehem; and one in Jerusalem.
A car bomb killed at least 15 people in the northern Syrian city of Manbij on Monday The attack is the second there in three days; Syria’s deadliest since Bashar al-Assad was unseated from power in December 2024. No one has claimed responsibility for the car bombing in the relatively small city, located 30km (19 miles) from the Turkish border.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will remain in Washington until Saturday night, his office says, citing “the many requests for meetings from US officials”.
He was originally due to return to Israel on Thursday. Netanyahu will be in the United States when the next planned release of Israeli hostages takes place.
Updated
A Sweden-based Libyan activist who has been a vocal critic of Italy and its dealings in Libya was alerted by WhatsApp last week that he had been targeted with military-grade spyware, raising new concerns about the possible use of powerful cyberweapons by European governments.
The alleged breach of Husam El Gomati’s mobile phone – as well as the mobile phones of 89 other activists, journalists and members of civil society – was discovered by WhatsApp in late December.
The California-based messaging app, which is owned by Meta, said it was not clear how long El Gomati’s and other mobile phones were “possibly compromised”. It said it believed the spyware was made by Paragon Solutions, an Israel-based company that was recently taken over by a US private equity company.
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Ofer Cassif, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the Hadash party, says Netanyahu and the “thugs around him” are not interested in saving Israeli hostages or a ceasefire, amid delay to the second phase of Gaza ceasefire talks.
Cassif added that the delay to the talks is “a terrifying sign”, and that the Israeli president is only interested in staying out of prison.
That’s the only thing he cares about and he doesn’t matter for him if it comes at the expense of the lives of thousands and thousands of people, Palestinians and Israelis alike,” he argued.
And the thugs around him in the coalition, mainly those who are part of the fanatic, fascist parties, they are interested in using the human blood as a carpet for the Messiah – they truly that the continuation of the genocide in Gaza and more violence in the West Bank – as we saw just in the last few days – is part of their dream, which is in fact a nightmare, they believe that will bring the Messiah and the Third Temple etc, and all this hogwash. They don’t care about human lives.”.
Updated
Palestinians queue to buy bread amid ceasefire in Gaza.
A car bomb killed at least 15 people in the northern Syrian city of Manbij on Monday
The attack is the second there in three days; Syria’s deadliest since Bashar al-Assad was unseated from power in December 2024.
No one has claimed responsibility for the car bombing in the relatively small city, located 30km (19 miles) from the Turkish border.
The civil defence rescue service say among the dead are 14 women and one man, adding that another 15 women were wounded.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) condemned the car bombing, accusing Turkey-backed factions of using such bombings and violence to intimidate local residents.
The victims were agricultural workers and the death toll was likely to rise, a civil defence official told Reuters.
Updated
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu saved Hamas by declining to advance an alternate government for the Gaza Strip, leader of the Democrats party Yair Golan says via The Times of Israel.
Speaking with reporters ahead of The Democrats’ weekly meeting in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Golan argues that Hamas’ “recovery in Gaza is a direct result of Netanyahu’s continued policy of neglecting security.”
His refusal to introduce a governing alternative to Hamas in Gaza stemmed from his preference for Smotrich and Ben Gvir in the coalition over the safety of the hostages and soldiers, thereby allowing Hamas to continue to control the Strip and restore its status. I want to be clear: The IDF severely damaged Hamas, but Netanyahu, who did not care about an alternative government, saved it. Hamas needs to be eliminated – not saved.
Victory over Hamas will not be achieved solely through military force – it requires a complementary, determined and strategic move in the regional arena. As long as Hamas remains the sole governmental address in Gaza, any achievement on the battlefield will be temporary, and a future military campaign is only a matter of time.
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Hamas officials 'ready' for negotiations on phase two of Gaza truce
Hamas is ready to begin talks on the details of a second phase of the ongoing truce in Gaza, two officials from the Palestinian militant group told Agence France-Presse on Monday.
“Hamas has informed the mediators, during ongoing communications and meetings held with Egyptian mediators last week in Cairo, that we are ready to start the negotiations for the second phase,” one official said on condition of anonymity. “We are waiting for the mediators to initiate the next round of negotiation,” said another.
Hamas, has quickly reasserted its control over Gaza since the ceasefire took hold last month, has said it will not release the hostages slated to go free in the second phase without an end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Trump’s repeated demand that Egypt and Jordan absorb 1.5 million Gaza residents – a demand forcefully denounced as ethnic cleansing by the two countries and other Arab nations including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE - have already complicated negotiations for the second phase of the ceasefire.
Updated
Hamas officials say ’ready’ for negotiations on phase two of Gaza truce
More to follow…
Gaza must be demilitarised before it is rebuilt, says Former IDF chief
The Gaza Strip must be demilitarised before it is rebuilt, says former deputy prime minister and IDF chief Benny Gantz.
“The transition to phase two of the hostage deal must include the replacement of the Hamas regime and the demilitarization of Gaza,” the former war cabinet minister tells reporters ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset.
“The reconstruction efforts in Gaza must be conditioned on the replacement of the Hamas regime. Either Gaza will be demilitarized – or it will remain demolished. That must be the condition for reconstruction, in coordination with the United States and the world.”
Gantz insists that Israel must ensure that Hamas is not able to access humanitarian aid meant for Gazan civilians and argues that “even after the Hamas regime is replaced, it will remain the strongest military force in Gaza – we must not allow for that to happen.”
“Once it is replaced and is cut off from its financial sources, we must hunt every Hamas terrorist in every last tunnel and hideout,” he argues.
He adds that it is now also time “to dismantle the Iranian nuclear project.”
Qatar, a key mediator in the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel which came into effect late last month, has launched an air bridge from Jordan to al-Qarara in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis to bring vital medical supplies into the territory.
In a statement, Qatar’s foreign ministry said the bridge will help to ease the acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza and help with the “medical needs” of the population.
The ministry added in the post on X that since the beginning of the truce (on 19 January – the day before Trump’s inauguration) Qatar has sent 65 relief trucks through the Jordanian border.
Qatar Launches Air Bridge from Jordan to Deliver Medical Supplies to Gaza#MOFAQatar pic.twitter.com/lBVeLiahXz
— Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Qatar (@MofaQatar_EN) February 3, 2025
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Here are some fuller quotes from the presidency of the Palestinian Authority condemning the Israeli military’s deadly raids across the occupied West Bank (see post at 11.39 where we mentioned that the office of Palestinian president Mahmud denounced the raids as “ethnic cleansing”).
In a statement, spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said:
These aggressive policies carried out by the occupation forces in the West Bank have led to the death of 29 citizens, hundreds of wounded and detainees, in addition to the destruction of entire residential blocks in the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps, the displacement of thousands of citizens, and massive destruction of infrastructure.
He called on the Trump administration to intervene “before it is too late to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression, which will lead to an uncontrollable escalation, with consequences that everyone will bear”.
Updated
'Amnesty’s primary message is that genocide has been committed,' says charity’s secretary-general
The head of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, says Israel must be held accountable for the “genocide” that has been “committed,” adding that the current ceasefire must not mean that we forget what happened over the last 15 months.
“In fact, if you have any sense of the future, you need a reckoning for the past. Amnesty’s primary message is that genocide has been committed, and accountability must be delivered for it,” the secretary-general told Al Jazeera.
“Regarding the few states that refuse to acknowledge the evidence, it is clearly a position that is political, it is not a legal or empirical position.”
Callamard said Amnesty is paying close attention to the events unfolding in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been carrying out raids every day for the last fortnight.
What we do know and what we have investigated in the past, demonstrate a multiplication of violations, including of the responsibility of Israel as the occupier. Let’s recall that Israel is unlawfully occupying the West Bank, and it has a responsibility under international law as a military occupier and clearly, every one of those responsibilities are being violated right now,” she said.
Are we looking at war crimes? It will demand a number of analyses that we have not conducted yet. But there is absolutely no doubt that human rights violations are being committed, including the unlawful destruction of Palestinian property, and unlawful detention, and forced displacement. Will that amount to committing genocide? It will take more time to reach that conclusion.
Updated
Despite the ceasefire agreement, the future of Palestinian refugees in Egypt remains uncertain.
Some are determined to return to what’s left of their homes as soon as they have the chance: “There is nothing better than one’s country and land,” Hussien Farahat, a father of two, told Reuters.
Meanwhile, others are inert, not knowing what to do or what will become of them, as they fear they may not have a home to go back to after Israel’s campaign of destruction, but they know they can’t stay where they are.
“Even if the war were over, we still do not know our fate and nobody mentioned those stranded in Cairo. Are we going back, or what will happen to us? And if we go back, what will happen to us? Our houses are gone,” said Abeer Kamal, who has lived in Cairo since November 2023 and sells handmade bags with her sisters.
“There is nothing, not my house, or my family, or siblings, nothing,” she said.
Thousands of Palestinians reject the prospect of a mass displacement proposed by President Donald Trump, Reuters reports.
A lot of people are torn, and I am one of them,” said Shorouk, who earns a living selling Palestinian food in Cairo, going by the name Gaza Girl.
Do you choose to go back and sit in the destruction and a place that still needs to be reconstructed or stay and go back when it is reconstructed?
We, the people of Gaza, can only live in Gaza. If they give us residencies, the cause will be lost.”
Trump’s proposal to “clean out” Gaza and relocate millions of Palestinians to neighbouring Egypt and Jordan has been comprehensively denounced across the Middle East as ethnic cleansing.
“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said. Asked if it would a temporary or long-term solution, he said: “Could be either”.
One hundred thousand Palestinians are sheltering in Egypt, and many say they do not know how or when they can go home. However, the majority of the 2.3 million Palestinians made homeless remain in temporary shelters within Gaza’s borders.
70 people killed in West Bank in 2025, says health ministry
The Palestinian ministry of health says the Israeli military have killed at least 70 people, including 10 children in the West Bank since the beginning of 2025.
Thirty eight were killed in Jenin; 15 in Tubas; six in Nablus; five in Tulkarem; three in Hebron; two in Bethlehem; and one in Jerusalem.
As well as killing ten children, the Israeli military killed one woman and two elderly Palestinians.
Updated
The occupied West Bank has seen a surge in violence since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, with Israel launching near-daily military arrest raids. There has also been a rise in settler violence against Palestinian people and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Since October 2023, over 880 Palestinians have been killed across the occupied West Bank in attacks by Israeli forces and settlers, according to reports, while another 6,700 or so have been injured and at least 14,400 have been detained.
Palestinian presidency accuses Israel of 'ethnic cleansing' in West Bank
The office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said the ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank amounts to “ethnic cleansing” and urged the US to intervene.
In a statement, spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the presidency “condemned the occupation authorities’ expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank to implement their plans aimed at displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing”.
Israeli forces say they are targeting Palestinian militants across the West Bank. The UN has raised concerns, however, about “the use of unlawful lethal force in (the city of) Jenin”. The United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees has said that almost all of the Jenin camp’s 20,000 residents have been displaced over the past two months.
The Jenin operation has been accompanied by increased restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement across the West Bank, with hundreds of checkpoints introduced in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Palestinian Authority, which is led by Abbas and is a Hamas rival, exercises limited governance over the West Bank where around 3 million Palestinians live and over which Israel maintains overall military control.
At least 25 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli military operation began in Jenin, including nine members of armed groups, a 73-year-old man and a two-year-old girl, according to Palestinian officials (see post at 08.33 for more details).
Here are some of the latest images from the newswires out of northern Gaza, where Palestinian people continue to return to their homes which have largely been turned to rubble by relentless Israeli bombardment over the war:
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Talks between Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, at the presidential palace in the Turkish capital of Ankara will focus on “joint steps to be taken for economic recovery, sustainable stability and security” in Syria, Fahrettin Altun, head of communications at the presidency, said.
“We believe that the Turkey-Syria relations, which were re-established after Syria regained its freedom, will be strengthened and gain dimension,” he added.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group which led the military operation to topple the former president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, will visit Turkey on Tuesday on his second international visit since the rebel offensive.
Sharaa “will pay a visit to Ankara on Tuesday at the invitation of our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” Fahrettin Altun, head of communications at the presidency, wrote in a post on X.
Sharaa, who last week was appointed president of Syria for a “transitional period”, has been trying to gain support from Arab and western leaders since Assad was toppled in December.
Since the fall of Assad, al-Sharaa, who was officially designated a terrorist by the US in 2013 because of his former leadership of al-Nusra Front, a splinter group of al-Qaida, has struck a conciliatory tone, calling for Syrian unity, the protection of minorities and the disbanding of rebel factions. But some officials believe it is too early to assess his sincerity.
Since Syrian rebels launched an offensive to take the country in November, Turkish-backed fighters have targeted Kurdish forces, taking a number of towns. Meanwhile, the Turkish military has maintained pressure on Kurdish fighters in both Syria and northern Iraq.
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Iran warns against 'ethnic cleansing' of Palestinians after Trump's Gaza proposal
Iran has condemned Donald Trump’s widely criticised proposal to relocate Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip to neighbouring countries, warning it would amount to “ethnic cleansing”.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei has been quoted by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency saying that the international community should help Palestinians “secure their right to self-determination... rather than pushing for other ideas that would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.
As a reminder, Trump caused outrage last weekend when he proposed that large numbers of Palestinian people should leave Gaza in order to “just clean out” the whole strip, saying neighbouring countries such as Jordan and Egypt should take in more Palestinians, either temporarily or for the long term. The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the US’s regional allies were among those who condemned Trump’s proposal.
Jordan is already home to several million Palestinians, while tens of thousands live in Egypt. Both countries and other Arab nations reject the idea of Palestinians in Gaza being moved to their countries.
Updated
Israeli forces destroy buildings in Jenin as deadly raid continues
Palestinian news agency Wafa is reporting that the Israeli military is continuing its raid on the West Bank city of Jenin for the 14th consecutive day, which the outlet says has killed at least 25 Palestinian people, injured dozens of others and has involved the demolition of dozens of homes. A spokesperson for the Israeli army said 23 buildings were destroyed on Sunday in Jenin “to prevent terrorist infrastructure from being established there”.
The city’s mayor, Mohammad Jarar, was quoted as saying that about 15,000 people were displaced from the Jenin camp and the al-Hadaf neighbourhood, while Israeli soldiers driving bulldozers are, according to Wafa, “destroying homes” in the al-Damj neighbourhood.
A 73-year-old man was killed by Israeli gunfire in Jenin’s refugee camp, the Palestinian health ministry said yesterday, the latest casualty in Israel’s military operation on the city, which Benjamin Netanyahu says was launched to “eradicate terrorism” in the area.
Jenin’s refugee camp, one of 19 across the West Bank built in the aftermath of Israel’s creation in 1948 to house displaced Palestinians, is a centre of armed Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.
Since the start of the war in October 2023, which has sparked a wave of violence in the West Bank, Israel has raided or carried out airstrikes in Jenin multiple times, killing dozens and leaving a trial of heavy destruction there.
The UN has expressed concern that the ceasefire in Gaza could be endangered by Israel’s military tactics in the West Bank, which have involved what the UN human rights spokesperson labelled “unnecessary or disproportionate use of force”.
Updated
Benjamin Netanyahu, who was one of the first to congratulate Donald Trump when he beat Kamala Harris in the November US presidential election, has called the Republican president the “best friend Israel has ever had in the White House”.
During Trump’s first term, he delivered significant diplomatic wins for the Israeli prime minister, including recognising Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019 and supporting the Abraham accords with Gulf states.
Last month, Trump said he had ordered the resumption of shipments of some of the largest bombs to Israel after Joe Biden had paused delivery of them over concerns about their use in densely populated Gaza.
In this story, my colleague Peter Beaumont writes that, while allies, Netanyahu and Trump have competing agendas coming into their meeting tomorrow. Here is an extract from his piece:
On Trump’s side is the apparent desire to have quiet in the Middle East to pursue his policy of widening the 2020 Abraham accords – in which Israel established relations with Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates during his first term – to include Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has made clear that any progress depends on an end to the conflict in Gaza or the establishment of a path towards Palestinian statehood.
On Netanyahu’s side, the objective – according to Israeli officials who briefed the Axios news website – is to understand where Trump stands on the planned start of negotiations for the second phase of a Gaza ceasefire deal, which Netanyahu was reluctantly pushed into by Trump.
Those talks are supposed to begin on Monday, the 16th day of phase one of the ceasefire. But it now looks unlikely they will start until after the Trump-Netanyahu meeting, which has been characterised as an attempt to find a joint US-Israeli position going into the talks.
Other key issues likely to dominate the meeting are a “day after” plan for Gaza, not least how it will be run and by whom, and what position to take on Iran.
Updated
Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington for Gaza ceasefire talks
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Middle East.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to begin talks today on brokering a second phase of the ceasefire with Hamas, his office said, as he visits the new Trump administration in Washington.
Ahead of his departure, Netanyahu told reporters he would discuss “victory over Hamas”, without defining what this would mean in practical terms, contending with Iran and freeing all hostages when he meets with the US President on Tuesday.
It will be Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader since returning to the White House in January, a prioritisation Netanyahu called “telling”.
“I think it’s a testimony to the strength of the Israeli-American alliance,” he said before boarding his flight.
He was welcomed to the US capital on Sunday night by Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, who stressed the coming Trump-Netanyahu meeting would strengthen “the deep alliance between Israel and the United States and will enhance our cooperation”.
Netanyahu’s office said he would begin discussions with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff on Monday over terms for the second phase of the truce.
The initial, 42-day phase of the deal is due to end next month. The next stage is expected to cover the release of the remaining captives and to include discussions on a more permanent end to Israel’s war on Gaza.
