Tag: Displaced

As a reminder, Donald Trump said yesterday that he had instructed the US military to release a hold on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel imposed by former president Joe Biden.

“We released them. We released them today. And they’ll have them. They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time. They’ve been in storage,” Trump told reporters.

Biden put the hold on the delivery of those bombs due to concern over the devastating impact they could have on the civilian population, particularly in Gaza’s Rafah, during Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory, which has now killed over 47,200 people, according to the health ministry. One 2,000-pound bomb can rip through thick concrete and metal, creating a wide blast radius.

Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar has today thanked Trump for authorising the release of the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs.

In a post on X, he wrote:

Thank you, President Trump, for yet another display of leadership by releasing the crucial defence shipment to Israel.

Washington says it is helping Israel defend itself against Iran-backed militant groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. But Israel has been accused of genocide and war crimes in Gaza, charges Israel denies. The US has undoubtedly fuelled Israel’s military assault through providing it with arms and giving Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration diplomatic cover on the international stage.

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which fought alongside Hamas in the war against Israel, has reacted to Donald Trump’s idea of possibly relocating Palestinian people to Egypt and Jordan, both of which border Gaza (see post at 08.54 to read the US president’s comments). It said: “This proposal falls within the framework of encouraging war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land.”

A senior Hamas official, meanwhile, told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency: “As they have foiled every plan for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades, our people will also foil such projects,” Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas political bureau, said.

Israel’s war on Gaza displaced almost the entire 2.3 million people in Gaza, many of them multiple times (through a combination of forced evacuation orders and relentless airstrikes across the territory). Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has previously rejected the idea of a forced displacement of Palestinians into the Sinai peninsula, amid concern that those displaced may never be able to return.

Shortly after the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned against trying to push Palestinian refugees into Egypt or Jordan, saying that the humanitarian situation must to be dealt with inside Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

As we mentioned in a previous post, Jordan is already home to millions of registered Palestinian refugees.

Israeli forces killed three people and injured at least 31 others trying to return to homes in south Lebanon where Israeli troops remained on the ground after a deadline for their withdrawal passed on Sunday, Lebanon’s health ministry has said.

A 60-day truce that went into effect at the end of November between Hezbollah and Israel halted a two-month-old Israeli ground assault and more than a year of cross-border aerial attacks that drove tens of thousands of people in both countries from their homes.

As my colleagues Bethan McKernan and Quique Kierszenbaum note in this story, the US/France-brokered ceasefire was supposed to become permanent when it expired on Sunday – but just a day before the deadline, neither side had fulfilled their obligations.

The deal stipulated that Israeli forces should withdraw from the south as the Iran-backed Hezbollah’s weapons and fighters were removed from the area and the Lebanese army deployed.

Israel has, however, said the terms have not been fully enforced by the Lebanese state, while Lebanon’s US-backed military on Saturday accused Israel of procrastinating in its withdrawal.

The Lebanese health ministry has said one person was killed in the Lebanese village of Houla, another in Aitaroun, and a third person in Blida as a result of Israeli attacks on citizens while they were trying to enter their still-occupied towns.

Dozens of Lebanese people have also reportedly been injured by Israeli forces who remain on the ground despite the terms of the agreement.

Israel has not said how long its forces would remain in the south, where the Israeli military says it has been seizing Hezbollah weapons and dismantling its infrastructure.

US President Donald Trump has indicated that he would like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One yesterday, Trump, an ally of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”

Trump also told reporters that he had call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on Sunday.

The newly inaugurated Republican president said he complimented Jordan for having successfully accepted Palestinian refugees and that he told the king: “I’d love for you to take on more, cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.” For context,Jordan is already home to more than 2.39 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the UN.

Trump added:

I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.

Trump said that the potential housing “could be temporary” or “could be long-term”. During Israel’s 15 month war on Gaza, more than two-thirds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged by one of the most intensive bombardments in modern times. It has sparked a refugee crisis as large parts of the territory are now uninhabitable.

Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the developments in the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel and the crisis in the Middle East more widely.

Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, people displaced from their homes in Gaza should now be allowed to move freely around the Palestinian territory.

But thousands of displaced Palestinian people are reportedly being blocked from returning to their homes in northern Gaza as Israel accuses Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, from not honouring the terms of the ceasefire deal.

On Saturday, armed members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad handed over four Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross as part of the agreement. The freed soldiers are Karina Ariev, 20, Daniella Gilboa, 20, Naama Levy, 20, and Liri Albag, 19, who served with the Israel Defense Forces.

However, a dispute broke out when the German-Israeli citizen Arbel Yehoud, aged 28 at the time of her capture, was not included in the swap, even though Hamas was expected to free more non-military hostages.

Yehoud is one of the last female civilians held in Gaza. She is reportedly held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second largest armed faction, rather than Hamas, which led the 7 October 2023 on southern Israel, complicating her potential handover and release.

Hamas insisted Yehoud is alive and will be freed next week. But Israel has responded by delaying the planned withdrawal of some of its troops from Gaza, which would have allowed Palestinians to return to the devastated northern areas of the strip, which include Beit Hanoon, Beit Lahiya and Jabalia.

Al Jazeera is reporting this morning that thousands of Palestinian people are waiting for a permit by the Israeli military to access northern Gaza, much of which lies in rubble after the renewed Israeli assault on it last autumn.

The Israeli military has warned people that they cannot move north past the Netzarim Corridor – which divides the territory – as planned. We will bring you the latest on this throughout the day.