Netanyahu 'to extend' Washington visit; Gazans appeal for billions in emergency aid

With fighting in Gaza paused, Palestinians are appealing for billions of dollars in emergency aid — from heavy machinery to clear rubble to tents and caravans to house people made homeless by Israeli bombardment.

Weeks into the ceasefire in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians who left for neighbouring Egypt are grappling with the question of when they might go home, though they reject the prospect of a mass displacement proposed by US President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu to extend Washington visit 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will extend his visit to Washington, DC, and will return to Israel on Saturday, an Axios reporter said on X on Monday.

During his trip, Netanyahu is expected to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Gaza, hostages held by Hamas, and the confrontation with Iran and its regional allies, according to his office.

Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza

With fighting in Gaza paused, Palestinians are appealing for billions of dollars in emergency aid — from heavy machinery to clear rubble to tents and caravans to house people made homeless by Israeli bombardment.

One official from the Palestinian Authority estimated immediate funding needs of $6.5-billion for temporary housing for Gaza’s more than two million people, even before the huge task of long-term reconstruction begins.

US special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff estimated last week that rebuilding could take 10-15 years. But before that, Gazans will have to live somewhere.

Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that has moved quickly to reassert control of Gaza after a temporary ceasefire began last month, says Gaza has immediate needs for 200,000 tents and 60,000 caravans.

In the Egyptian city of El-Arish, not far from the Rafah crossing with Gaza, about 1,000 trucks carrying aid, including food, medical supplies, caravans and tents, lined up awaiting entry to Gaza.

“We have trucks carrying aid and tents. We came from Jordan and we were supposed to go straight to the Rafah crossing to provide this aid to the Palestinian side and the Gaza Strip,” said truck driver Rami El-Edwan.

Edwan said he and his fellow truck drivers could not figure out the delay’s cause, having had conflicting explanations from the various parties operating the crossing and delivering aid.

In addition, Hamas says there is an urgent need for heavy digging equipment to begin clearing millions of tonnes of rubble left by the war, both to clear the ground for housing and to recover more than 10,000 bodies estimated to be buried there.

Two Egyptian sources said heavy machinery was waiting at the border crossing and was due to be sent into Gaza from Tuesday.

World Food Programme official Antoine Renard said Gaza’s food imports had surged since the ceasefire and were already at two or three times monthly levels before the truce began.

But he said there were still impediments to importing medical and shelter equipment which would be vital to sustain the population but which Israel considers to have potential “dual use” – civilian or military.

“This is a reminder to you that many of the items that are dual use need also to enter into Gaza like medical and also tents,” he told reporters in Geneva.

More than half a million people who fled northern Gaza have returned home, many with nothing more than what they could carry with them on foot. They were confronted by an unrecognisable wasteland of rubble where their houses once stood.

“I came back to Gaza City to find my house in ruins, with no place else to stay, no tents, no caravans, and not even a place we can rent as most of the city was destroyed,” said Gaza businessman, Imad Turk, whose house and wood factory in Gaza City were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the war.

“We don’t know when the reconstruction will begin, we don’t know if the truce will hold, we don’t want to be forgotten by the world,” Turk told Reuters via a chat app.

Countries from Egypt and Qatar to Jordan, Turkey and China have expressed readiness to help, but Palestinian officials blame Israel for delays. Egypt and Qatar both helped broker the ceasefire that has, for now, stopped the fighting.

There was no immediate response from the Israeli military to a request for comment.

Gazans in Egypt grapple with decision of when to go home

Weeks into the ceasefire in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians who left for neighbouring Egypt are grappling with the question of when they might go home, though they reject the prospect of a mass displacement proposed by Trump.

“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?”

Whether or not she can go home soon, she does not want people like her to be accepted as residents outside Palestinian land.

“We, the people of Gaza, can only live in Gaza,” she said. “If they give us residencies, the cause will be lost.”

A proposal by Trump that much of the population of Gaza be cleared out and residents sent en masse to Egypt and Jordan has been universally denounced across the Arab world as a form of ethnic cleansing.

Egypt says it will never participate in the mass displacement of Palestinians, which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi described as an “act of injustice”.

But there are already about 100,000 Palestinians in Egypt, who say they do not know how or when they will be able to return.

During the war in Gaza, the border was mostly sealed and the vast majority of the 2.3 million residents were made homeless and forced into temporary shelters within the territory.

There were, however, months when some people were permitted to leave, including Palestinians with foreign passports, their close relatives or severely ill patients evacuated for humanitarian reasons.

Most have no long-term permission to stay in Egypt and view their stays as temporary, surviving on small trade or savings. The ceasefire agreement that paused the fighting in January has yet to resolve their fate.

Some say they will return as soon as they have a chance.

“There is nothing better than one’s country and land,” said Hussien Farahat, a father of two.

But others say the personal decision is more complicated, without a home to go back to.

“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.

Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s campaign has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities there, driven most Gazans from their homes and laid swathes of the territory to waste.

Car bomb kills 20 in northern Syria 

A car bomb killed at least 20 people in the northern Syrian city of Manbij on Monday, said the Syrian presidency, marking the second attack there in three days and the country’s deadliest since Bashar al-Assad was toppled from power in December.

The presidency’s statement said it would hold the perpetrators of what it described as a “terror attack” accountable.

“This crime will not pass without the most severe punishment against its perpetrators to serve as an example against those who will try to tamper with the security of Syria or harm its people,” said the presidency.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack in Manbij, located some 30km  from the Turkish border. At least 14 of the dead were women, according to a preliminary toll issued earlier by the civil defence rescue service and another 15 women were wounded.

The victims were agricultural workers and the death toll was likely to increase, a civil defence official told Reuters.

Manbij has changed hands numerous times during Syria’s 13-year civil war, most recently in December when Turkish-backed groups captured it from the US-backed SDF, which is led by the Kurdish YPG militia.

The SDF had taken Manbij from Islamic State militants in 2016.

On Saturday, a car bomb in Manbij killed four civilians and wounded nine others, including children, the Syrian state news agency Sana reported.

Assad was ousted from power on 8 December after a lightning offensive by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, whose leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was declared Syria’s transitional president last week. DM

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