Closing summary
It is approaching 5.45pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. This live blog will be closing shortly but you can keep up with Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Here is a summary of today’s updates on the blog:
New US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, stressed “the need to continue implementation” of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza during calls to regional leaders. Read-outs from the US government indicated that during a call with UAE foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, Donald Trump’s top diplomat discussed the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, the release of the hostages and humanitarian aid for Gaza and Rubio “reinforced the significance of this agreement for regional security and stability and the need to continue implementation.”
Iraq’s foreign ministry issued a statement condemning Israel’s ongoing raid on Jenin in the occupied West Bank, calling it a “flagrant violation of international and humanitarian law”. Iraq called on the international community and UN security council to “assume its responsibilities to stop these violations and provide protection to the Palestinian people, in order to preserve the lives of civilians and ensure security and stability in the region”.
Since it began on Tuesday, the Israel’s operation in Jenin has killed at least 12 Palestinians and injured 40 more, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Israeli forces have also detained several Palestinians from the Jenin area, with an Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer seeing a row of blindfolded men in white jumpsuits being transported out of the West Bank. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli security forces had made at least 22 further arrests in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since last night.
Jordan could not afford another war in the neighbouring occupied West Bank, the country’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. Yesterday, Safadi warned that the West Bank could explode, describing the current situation there as “dangerous”.
A Palestinian official said hundreds of people began leaving their homes in the occupied West Bank on Thursday as Israeli forces pressed a deadly operation. “Hundreds of camp residents have begun leaving after the Israeli army, using loudspeakers on drones and military vehicles, ordered them to evacuate the camp,” Jenin governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told AFP. The Israeli army said it was “unaware of any evacuation orders for residents in Jenin as of now”.
The Israeli military said on Thursday it killed two Palestinian militants near Jenin during the night, accusing them of having killed three Israelis. In a statement, the military said that Israeli troops found the two militants barricaded in a house in the village of Burqin. The two men were wanted for the killing of three Israelis and the wounding of six others in a 6 January attack on a bus in the West Bank.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said it had seen “disturbing patterns of unlawful use of force in the West Bank that is unnecessary, indiscriminate and disproportionate”. In a statement, the NRC said this “echoes the tactics Israeli forces have employed in Gaza”.
Gaza’s civil defence authority reports that the bodies of at least 162 Palestinians have been recovered from under rubble and debris left by Israeli strikes on Gaza since the ceasefire came into operation.
The Israeli government said on Thursday a ceasefire deal with the Hezbollah was not being implemented fast enough, days before Israel is meant to complete a withdrawal of its forces from southern Lebanon under the terms of the deal. Under the deal, Israeli forces were to withdraw from Lebanon and Hezbollah forces were to withdraw from southern Lebanon over a 60-day period ending next Monday morning.
Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appointed tourist minister, Haim Katz, interim minister for three months for all three departments where ministers quit at the weekend in protest at Israel striking a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas. Katz will assume responsibility as national security minister, heritage minister and minister for Negev, Galilee and national resilience. The three roles were vacated when ultra-nationalist far-right Otzma Yehudit ministers Itamar Ben Gvir, Amichai Eliyahu and Yitzhak Wasserlauf all quit the prime minister’s coalition.
Benny Gantz, chair of the National Unity party in Israel, said on Thursday that he will continue to provide “a safety net” by backing Netanyahu’s government in its efforts to return hostages from Gaza, despite some of Netanyahu’s former coalition partners opposing the deal.
More than 3,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza during the first four days of the ceasefire, reported Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. While the arrival of aid had brought “partial relief to the population”, he said suffering had been “exacerbated” by rainfall and families seeking shelter.
The governing body of the international criminal court (ICC) on Thursday said it had deep concerns about sanctions against the court, after moves by the new Donald Trump administration in the US to sanction the institution in protest at its arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Israeli-Russian Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, who is being held hostage by an Iraqi militia, is alive and the Iraqi prime minister is working on her release, Iraqi foreign minister, Fouad Hussein, told Axios reporter, Barak Ravid, on Thursday.
The Al Jazeera news network accused the Palestinian Authority of arresting one of its journalists in a bid to prevent coverage of Israel’s military operation inside the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The network said that its reporter, Mohammed al-Atrash, was arrested from his home and that security forces had earlier prevented him from reporting on a large Israeli military operation in Jenin.
The frontrunner in Germany’s campaign for snap elections next month, conservative opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, said he would end what he called a “de facto (German) weapons export ban” for Israel if he becomes chancellor. He also pledged to work within the European Union to ensure the ICC’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu, while “probably correct under international law”, is not carried out on German or EU soil.
Updated
The frontrunner in Germany’s campaign for snap elections next month, conservative opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, said he would end what he called a “de facto (German) weapons export ban” for Israel if he becomes chancellor. “What Israel needs for its right to self-defence it will get.”
Merz said that compared to the current centre-left-led government, his own administration, if elected, would strengthen the notion of Israel’s security being core to Germany “Staatsräson” or reason of state.
He also pledged to work within the European Union to ensure the international criminal court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, while “probably correct under international law”, is not carried out on German or EU soil.
He said that particularly in the year marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel, it was “unimaginable” that an “elected, democratically legitimate” Israeli head of government would be unable to visit Germany.
“That is why I will do everything in my power to ensure the ICC warrant would not be carried out here,” he said.
The current German government has been non-committal about its willingness to comply with the warrant should Netanyau travel to Germany, citing Berlin’s enduring historical responsibility for the Holocaust.
