An Israeli airstrike on Nabatieh, a major town in southern Lebanon, injured 14 people on Tuesday, said the Lebanese health ministry.
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he planned to speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that Netanyahu would be travelling to Washington to meet with him.
Displaced Palestinians returning to their homes in Gaza City this week found a city in ruins after 15 months of fighting, with many seeking shelter amongst the rubble and searching for relatives lost in the chaotic return march.
Israeli airstrike on south Lebanon’s Nabatieh injures 14
An Israeli airstrike on Nabatieh, a major town in southern Lebanon, injured 14 people on Tuesday, said the Lebanese health ministry.
Security sources reported a second strike in a nearby area. They said the first targeted a vehicle loaded with weapons, while the target of the second was still unclear.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israeli forces killed at least 24 people and wounded at least 141 in southern Lebanon on Sunday and Monday, said the Lebanese health ministry, as thousands of people tried to return to their homes in the area in defiance of Israeli military orders.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israel agreed on a ceasefire in late November, ending a conflict across the Israeli-Lebanese border that has killed thousands of people since it was ignited by the Gaza war in 2023.
The US said on Sunday the agreement between Lebanon and Israel, which included an initial 60-day period for the withdrawal of Israeli troops, would remain in effect until 18 February, an extension to the 26 January deadline previously agreed.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Monday that the group would not accept any justifications to extend the period for Israeli troops’ withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu to visit Washington amid Gaza ceasefire, says Trump
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he planned to speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that Netanyahu would be travelling to Washington to meet with him.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump did not give a date for the face-to-face meeting, but said it would take place “very soon”.
The meeting comes amid a fragile six-week ceasefire that has brought a temporary pause to 15 months of fighting between Israel and the militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Trump also said on Monday he wanted Egypt to take in Palestinians from Gaza, where much of the population has been displaced by Israel’s military response to Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack.
“I wish he would take some. We help them a lot, and I’m sure he can help us,” Trump said of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whom he called a “friend”.
“I’d like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence,” Trump said of Palestinians in Gaza.
Trump’s comments come after he floated at the weekend the idea that Egypt and Jordan, which border Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to the south and east, respectively, should take in Palestinians from Gaza because “almost everything is demolished and people are dying there”.
The new US president said he made the request in a phone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Saturday.
Jordan is already home to several million Palestinians, while tens of thousands live in Egypt. Both countries pushed back over the weekend after Trump said they should take in Palestinians from Gaza, where Israel’s military assault has caused a humanitarian crisis and killed tens of thousands.
The suggestion was also rejected by Hamas and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who exercises limited self-rule in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries oppose removing Palestinians from Gaza, in part because it is land that Palestinians want as part of a future Palestinian state.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on 7 October 2023, when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, and led to accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies. The fighting has currently paused amid a fragile ceasefire.
Palestinians return to Gaza City as mediators look to next stage
Displaced Palestinians returning to their homes in Gaza City this week found a city in ruins after 15 months of fighting, with many seeking shelter amongst the rubble and searching for relatives lost in the chaotic return march.
Gaza City, in the north of the enclave, is a shell of the bustling urban centre it was before the war, with swathes of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardments and piles of rubble and torn-up concrete on every side.
“Look at this scene, there is nothing to say,” said a man who gave his name as Abu Mohammad as he searched for a place to settle. “People will sleep on the ground. There is nothing left.”
Many of those returning, often laden with what personal possessions they still have after months of being moved around as the battlegrounds shifted, had trekked 20km or more along the coastal highway north.
“I am waiting for my father, mother and brother. We lost them on the way,” said Jameel Abed, who walked up from the central area of the Gaza Strip. “We found some lights here and we are waiting for them,” he said.
By late on Monday, Gaza’s Hamas authorities said more than 300,000 people, or almost half of those displaced from the north during the war, had crossed into Gaza City and the north edge of the enclave from areas in the south.
Even as those who arrived in Gaza looked around for somewhere to settle down, tens of thousands were still moving north as mediators began preliminary work on the second stage of ceasefire negotiations due to begin next week.
Three more Israeli hostages are due to be handed over on Thursday by Hamas, with another three expected on Saturday, in exchange for scores of Palestinian prisoners set for release from Israeli jails, some of whom will go into exile.
In Cairo, a high-level Hamas team led by Mohammad Darwish, head of the group’s leading council, held talks with Egyptian mediators and welcomed 70 Palestinian prisoners who arrived in Cairo before being moved to third countries who would be willing to host them, said a Hamas statement.
These include Qatar, Turkey, and Algeria, according to Hamas and other sources.
Later on Tuesday, Hamas said the delegation has also discussed with Cairo officials alleged Israeli violations of the truce and ideas to achieve national unity with the rival Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, including an Egyptian proposal to form a committee to run post-war Gaza.
Hamas, which has run Gaza since 2007, and Abbas’ authority, which has a sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, have so far failed to end political splits that weakened Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, agreed this month with Egyptian and Qatari mediation and US support, 33 hostages are due to be released during a six-week ceasefire, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them serving life sentences in Israeli jails. Seven hostages and 290 prisoners have so far been exchanged.
A second stage, which will decide what happens to more than 60 other hostages, including men of military age as well as a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, is due to begin by next Tuesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced pressure from some hardliners in his government, unhappy that the agreement leaves Hamas still in power in Gaza, not to proceed to the second stage but to recommence fighting to secure what they see as total victory.
Jordan launches air corridor for life-saving medicines into Gaza
Jordan’s air force launched on Tuesday the biggest air bridge so far to bring urgent medical supplies to Gaza under a US-sponsored deal to step up deliveries following a ceasefire, said officials.
The operation involves 16 helicopter flights a day that will at first deliver at least 160 tonnes of life-saving medical supplies over a week to hospitals and medical centres, said army officials.
Under an agreement sponsored by the US, Israel had allowed Jordan to deliver aid to a designated location near Israel’s Kissufim border crossing with the devastated Gaza Strip.
A helicopter pad in a spot that lies in a central area connecting the northern and southern parts of the enclave would help facilitate speedier deliveries, according to aid officials.
UN agencies led by the World Food Programme would then deliver them directly to medical centres and hospitals.
“More aid is needed for the Palestinian people in Gaza. There is a terrifying state of destruction. There is a terrifying state of suffering that the Palestinian people are living,” Jordan’s Minister of State for Communications Mohamed Momani told reporters at an air base where Black Hawk helicopters were taking off.
Since an agreement on a ceasefire, Jordan has sent seven overland convoys with at least 540 trucks through a corridor across the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Gaza, said officials.
Unrwa says Israel ban will be disastrous
Implementation of a ban on the UN Palestinian relief agency Unrwa in Israel — due to start on Thursday — would be disastrous, the Unrwa chief told the Security Council on Tuesday, as the US accused it of being “irresponsible and dangerous”.
The law, adopted in October, bans Unrwa’s operation on Israeli land — including East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in a move not recognised internationally — and contact with Israeli authorities from 30 January.
“Unrwa must cease its operations and evacuate all premises it operates in Jerusalem, including the properties located in Maalot Dafna and Kafr Aqab,” Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, told the council.
“Israel will terminate all collaboration, communication and contact with Unrwa or anyone acting on its behalf,” he said.
Unrwa said operations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank would also suffer. It provides aid, health and education services to millions in the Palestinian territories and neighbouring Arab countries of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
“In two days, our operations in the occupied Palestinian territory will be crippled,” Unrwa Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told the 15-member Security Council. “Full implementation of the Knesset legislation will be disastrous.”
The US, under Trump, supported Israel’s “sovereign right” to close Unrwa’s offices in Jerusalem, the acting US ambassador to the UN, Dorothy Shea, told the Security Council. Under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, the US had urged Israel to pause the implementation of the law.
“Unrwa exaggerating the effects of the laws and suggesting that they will force the entire humanitarian response to halt is irresponsible and dangerous,” said Shea.
“What is needed is a nuanced discussion about how we can ensure that there is no interruption in the delivery of humanitarian aid and essential services,” she said.
“Unrwa is not and never has been the only option for providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza,” she said.
Other agencies working in Gaza and the West Bank include the children’s organisation Unicef, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization and the UN Development Programme.
But the UN has repeatedly said there is no alternative to Unrwa and that it would be Israel’s responsibility to replace its services. Israel has rejected UN claims that Israel would be responsible for filling any gap left by Unrwa.
“Since October 2023, we have delivered two-thirds of all food assistance, provided shelter to over a million displaced persons and vaccinated a quarter of a million children against polio,” Lazzarini told the Security Council.
“Since the ceasefire began, Unrwa has brought in 60% of the food entering Gaza, reaching more than half a million people. We conduct some 17,000 medical consultations every day,” he said.
Israel has long been critical of Unrwa. It says Unrwa staff took part in the 7 October 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. The UN has said nine Unrwa staff may have been involved and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was also found to have had an Unrwa job.
Israel says its troops in Syria will remain atop Mt Hermon indefinitely
Israeli troops who seized strategic ground in southern Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad would remain on the summit of Mount Hermon indefinitely, said Defence Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday after visiting troops there.
Katz said Israel would not allow what he described as hostile forces to establish themselves in southern Syria.
Mount Hermon, a huge cluster of snowcapped mountain peaks towering above the Syria-Lebanon border, overlooks the Damascus countryside as well as the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel says its troops have taken up positions inside a UN-monitored demilitarised zone within Syria, and some have ventured beyond it. Israeli officials have previously said that the moves were limited and temporary, to ensure the security of Israeli borders.
Israel’s move into Syrian territory has been criticised as a violation of international agreements by several countries and the United Nations, which has called for the troops to be withdrawn.
Qatar and US discuss joint Gaza mediation efforts
Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, took part in a phone call on Tuesday with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss the continuation of their joint mediation efforts in Gaza, said the Qatari foreign ministry.
The men expressed hope that a ceasefire deal would reach its second phase and turn into a permanent ceasefire. DM
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