Yohannes Lowe (now); Tom Ambrose and Maya Yang (earlier)
2026-02-02 14:32:00
US envoy to visit Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and Israel’s military chief
The Reuters news agency is reporting that the US envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to visit Israel for meetings with the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its military chief, Eyal Zamir, citing two senior Israeli officials.
Witkoff’s visit will reportedly begin tomorrow. We don’t know exactly what will be discussed but the trip comes as the Gaza ceasefire agreement edges forward despite Israel’s frequent killing of Palestinian people in violation of its terms.
The next phases of Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza require governance to be handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas to lay down its weapons and Israeli troops to withdraw from the territory while Gaza is rebuilt.
Hamas has so far rejected disarmament and Israel has repeatedly indicated that if the militant group is not disarmed peacefully, it will use force to make it do so. Witkoff’s visit also comes amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.
Trump has said Iran is talking to the US, hinting at a deal that would avoid the use of military strikes. The US president, emboldened by the recent capture of the former Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, in an operation which is widely seen as having broken international law, has threatened to intervene in Iran over its nuclear programme and following its brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.
Key events
Reopening of Rafah crossing ‘lifeline’ for ‘Gaza’s sick and wounded’, EU’s foreign policy chief says
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has welcomed the reopening of the Rafah crossing, describing it as a “lifeline” for injured and sick Palestinian people in Gaza.
In a post on X, Kallas, who coordinates the bloc’s foreign policy on behalf of the 27 national governments and the European Commission, wrote:
The opening of the Rafah crossing marks a concrete and positive step in the peace plan. The EU’s civilian mission is on the ground to monitor crossing operations and support Palestinian border guards.
For Gaza’s sick and wounded, the reopening is a lifeline. It will allow families to reunite after far too long apart.
Practical steps like this help move the truce plan forward and must continue. At the same time, Gaza remains in urgent need of aid. Its reconstruction will depend on Hamas’ demilitarization.
Israeli forces took control of the Rafah crossing – Gaza’s only crossing not shared with Israel – in May 2024. Its reopening followed the return of the last Israeli hostage, Ran Gvili, whose body was found at a cemetery in northern Gaza and returned to Israel last week.
Israel says it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon after warnings
Israel’s military struck several locations in south Lebanon on Monday, including in two villages where it issued evacuation warnings, saying it was hitting Hezbollah targets, AFP reported.
The Israeli military said it struck “several Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in southern Lebanon, in order to prevent reestablishment attempts”.
It added that one of the targets was “in the heart of a civilian area”, accusing the group of “continued operations from within civilian infrastructure”.
The Israeli army had previously sent evacuation warnings for the towns of Kfar Tibnit and Ain Qana in southern Lebanon (see post 13.22 GMT).
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported strikes on the targeted buildings in both towns.
The head of a Palestinian technocratic committee established to oversee the day-to-day governance of Gaza said Monday that Israel’s reopening of the Rafah border crossing offered a “window of hope” for Palestinians in the territory.
“This step is not merely an administrative measure; rather, it marks the beginning of a long process to reconnect what was severed and to open a genuine window of hope for our people in the Gaza Strip,” Ali Shaath said in a statement.
The crossing – the main gateway between Gaza and Egypt – was reopened in a limited capacity earlier on Monday.
Israel’s military warned on Monday it would soon strike what it called Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, issuing evacuation warnings for buildings in two villages, AFP reported.
Despite a November 2024 truce that sought to end more than a year of hostilities including two months of all-out war between Israel and the Iran-backed group, Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon and has maintained troops in five areas it deems strategic.
The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, said Monday that the army would soon “strike military infrastructure belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation, in response to its prohibited attempts to rebuild its activities in the area”.
In an X post, he told residents of certain buildings in Kfar Tibnit and Ain Qana “to evacuate them immediately”.
Lorenzo Tondo
Lorenzo Tondo is an international correspondent for the Guardian
According to health officials in Gaza, there are about 4,000 people with official referrals for treatment to third countries who are unable to cross the border.
“I have appealed to humanitarian groups, to the WHO, to the Palestinian Authority – to anyone – so that I can leave, save my life, and reunite with my family,” Tamer al-Burai, 50, who has obstructive sleep apnoea and relies on a CPAP machine to breathe during sleep, told Reuters.
For some, the reopening came too late. Dalia Abu Kashef, 28, died last week while waiting for permission to cross for a liver transplant. “We found a volunteer – her brother – who was ready to donate part of his liver,” her husband, Muatasem El-Rass, told Reuters. “We were waiting for the crossing to open so we could travel and do the surgery, hoping for a happy ending. But she deteriorated badly and died.”
The WHO says 900 people, including children and cancer patients, have already died while awaiting evacuation.
The limited reopening of the Rafah crossing also offers a rare opportunity for families torn apart by more than two years of war to reunite. Many families who fled to Cairo early in the war never expected to remain for so long. You can read the full story here:
Palestinian people have reportedly started to enter the Rafah border crossing
It is not clear how many people have entered the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt today.
Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, has given an interview with Al Jazeera, in which he said that although Israel agreed to allow 50 patients – accompanied by one or two relatives – out of Gaza for healthcare every day, today authorities have only so far let five people through to Egypt. We have not been able to independently verify this information.
“We’re still losing lives every day. Allowing only 50 patients out of Gaza each day is not proper. This dynamic is very dire and we’re going to lose more lives,” Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera.
“Hospitals are working at the minimum of medical supplies and personnel. Israel continues to deny the entry of supplies, ambulances, and volunteer doctors. We are unable to treat patients here and preventing their exit is a death warrant issued against them.”
About 150 hospitals across Egypt are ready to receive Palestinian patients evacuated from Gaza through Rafah, authorities said earlier. About 20,000 sick and injured Palestinian people are waiting to leave Gaza for treatment after the territory’s healthcare system collapsed due to Israel’s relentless attacks on hospitals throughout the war.
According to an Egyptian official, speaking anonymously to the Associated Press, only 50 Palestinians will be permitted to cross in each direction on the first day of operations. Al Qahera News TV reported this morning that the Rafah crossing had “received the first batch of Palestinians returning from Egypt to the Gaza Strip”.
The UK’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has welcomed the limited reopening of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, but stressed that much more still needed to be done. In a post on X, she wrote:
I welcome Rafah reopening for people to cross both ways on foot, allowing some in desperate need to access medical care in Egypt. But much more still needs to be done. Aid must flow in, restrictions on essential supplies must ease, & aid workers must be allowed to operate.
Cooper became foreign secretary in September 2025 after twelve months as home secretary.
The UK government has been criticised for its failure to publish its legal response to the advisory opinion of the international court of justice (ICJ) in July 2024 that ordered Israel to end its unlawful occupation of Palestine, for allowing the export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel, and for not taking a tougher stance against Israel during the course of the war, which caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and has seen an extremely high civilian death toll caused by Israeli attacks.
As the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, notes in this story, Mark Smith, a diplomat who quit his Foreign Office job over the UK’s refusal to stop selling arms to Israel in August 2024, has said civil servants who challenged the IDF’s methods were routinely pressed to tone down their findings “so it sounded less bad”.
“Thousands of conversations within the walls of the Foreign Office on the most controversial aspects of our arms sales policy will never be seen by the public [and] never be put to a court because they were held in person,” he said.
The UK, which has funded aid and supported airdrops and evacuations, has criticised delays in aid being allowed into Gaza.
US envoy to visit Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and Israel’s military chief
The Reuters news agency is reporting that the US envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to visit Israel for meetings with the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its military chief, Eyal Zamir, citing two senior Israeli officials.
Witkoff’s visit will reportedly begin tomorrow. We don’t know exactly what will be discussed but the trip comes as the Gaza ceasefire agreement edges forward despite Israel’s frequent killing of Palestinian people in violation of its terms.
The next phases of Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza require governance to be handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas to lay down its weapons and Israeli troops to withdraw from the territory while Gaza is rebuilt.
Hamas has so far rejected disarmament and Israel has repeatedly indicated that if the militant group is not disarmed peacefully, it will use force to make it do so. Witkoff’s visit also comes amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.
Trump has said Iran is talking to the US, hinting at a deal that would avoid the use of military strikes. The US president, emboldened by the recent capture of the former Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, in an operation which is widely seen as having broken international law, has threatened to intervene in Iran over its nuclear programme and following its brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.
Hundreds of former European officials urge EU to increase pressure on Israel to end ‘unremitting violations of international law’
Jennifer Rankin
More than 400 European former top diplomats and officials have urged the EU to increase pressure on Israel to end “excesses and unremitting violations of international law” over Gaza and the West Bank.
The statement, due to be sent to EU leaders on Monday, calls on the bloc and its member states to take action in line with its support for a UN resolution for a two-state solution and a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.
The document itemises the grim reality of life for Palestinians, citing 500 people, including 100 children, who were killed by “targeted” Israeli military activity during the first phase of the ceasefire declared last year; heavy restrictions on humanitarian aid into Gaza; Israeli settler building projects in the West Bank and East Jerusalem widely seen to undermine the two-state solution.
“The EU should act firmly against all those pursuing annexationist agendas aimed at threatening Palestinians’ inalienable rights of self-determination and undermining the two-state solution,” states the text, which by late on Sunday had been signed by 403 people, who had worked as EU ambassadors or senior officials or for EU member states.
The signatories call on the EU to launch a “time-limited dialogue with Israel” on the application of the EU-Israel association agreement, which includes a commitment to human rights. The authors say the EU should suspend that agreement in the absence of “constructive responses and actions” to halt what it calls “Israeli excesses and unremitting violations of international law”.
The authors also call on the EU to desist from membership of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, raising worries about its potential to supplant the UN, as well as “fundamental concerns” about its governance. Hungary and Bulgaria have already signed up to the board, while France and Sweden are among the governments that have declined to join.
The European Commission last year proposed suspending the trade provisions of the EU-Israel association agreement, but the proposal has languished since Donald Trump announced a ceasefire and Board of Peace last October.
The latest statement is the fourth intervention from the group, which remains unusual in offering sustained criticism of EU policy from senior people who used to work for it.
The World Health Organization has warned that winter conditions in Gaza, coupled with inadequate water and sanitation facilities, are contributing to an increase in acute respiratory infections, including severe cases requiring intensive care.
At least 11 children have reportedly died from hypothermia in the territory since winter began.
“WHO reiterates its calls for sustained and unimpeded access across the Gaza Strip, and for the timely entry of essential medical supplies and equipment, as well as winterization and shelter materials – all of which are critical to saving lives,” WHO said in a post on social media a couple of days ago.
Egypt wants there to be a balanced ratio between Palestinian people leaving the Gaza Strip and those entering it, in order to avoid a scenario in which lots of people leave for Egypt but few move in the opposite direction, a Palestinian source told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
It is estimated that about 20,000 sick and injured Palestinians are waiting to leave Gaza for treatment. About 150 hospitals across Egypt are ready to receive Palestinian patients evacuated from Gaza through Rafah, officials said. Also, the Egyptian Red Crescent said it has readied “safe spaces” on the Egyptian side of the crossing to support those evacuated from the territory devastated by Israeli attacks.
William Christou
The crossing opens only a few days after Israel carried out some of it deadliest airstrikes on Gaza in months. At least 30 Palestinians, including children and police officers, were killed – some of whom were sheltering in tent cities for displaced people.
The strikes served as a reminder that the death toll in Gaza is still rising even as the ceasefire agreement inches forward.
Most of Gaza has been levelled and basic infrastructure remains inoperable as a result of Israeli bombing over the past two years, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians.
Key things to know about the Rafah crossing
As we mentioned in a previous post, a small number of Palestinian people are expected to enter the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt after it reopened for the movement of people, not humanitarian aid and commercial goods. Here are some key things to know about the crossing:
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Before the war, the Rafah crossing with Egypt was the only direct exit point for most Palestinian people in Gaza to reach the outside world as well as a key entry point for aid. It has been largely shut since May 2024.
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Cogat, the Israeli agency charged with administration of Gaza, said the crossing would reopen in both directions for Gaza residents on foot only and its operation would be coordinated with Egypt and the EU.
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Israel has said the crossing will open under stringent security checks only for Palestinians people who wish to leave the territory and for those who fled the assault in the first months of the war to return. Many of those expected to leave are sick and injured people in need of medical care abroad.
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Reopening the border crossing was a key requirement of the first phase of the US president Donald Trump’s plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza. Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed more than 500 Palestinians since the ceasefire began, local health officials say.
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On Sunday, Israeli officials said a trial opening of the crossing was carried out and completed.
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The Egyptian authorities will carry on controlling the crossing on their side of the border. The names of people wanting to return to Gaza will first be approved by Egypt, and then by Israel a day in advance.
In a post on X, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied territories, has responded to the news of the Médecins Sans Frontières ban in Gaza by saying Israel lacked the “authority” to make such a decision in the territory. She wrote:
Israel has NO authority to block anyone from entering the Palestinian territory it illegally occupies. Stop normalising the illegal occupation by bending to its diktats. Respect the ICJ deliberation: force Israel to end the occupation. Time for justice is NOW.
Albanese, a human rights lawyer, has been vocal in calling for an end to what she describes as the “genocide” that Israel has waged against Palestinian people in Gaza.
Sanctions on Albanese were imposed by the US state department last year for what it called her “shameful promotion” of action by the international criminal court against the US and Israel.
Israel has faced accusations of genocide at the international court of justice and of war crimes at the international criminal court (ICC) over its assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 71,795 Palestinian people since October 2023, according to the latest update from the territory’s health ministry, whose figures have been deemed reliable by the UN. The death toll is likely to be higher given the number of people thought to buried in the rubble of bombed buildings.
Despite the evidence, Israel denies it is carrying out a genocide, and has said the war is one of self-defence after cross-border attacks led by Hamas on 7 October 2023 killed 1,200 people.
Israel to ban MSF from working in the Gaza Strip over refusal to provide staff list
Israel says it will suspend Médecins Sans Frontières’s operations in Gaza after the humanitarian organization refused to hand over personal details of its staff members to Israeli authorities.
In a statement released over the weekend, MSF said:
Following many months of unsuccessful engagement with Israeli authorities, and in the absence of securing assurances to ensure the safety of our staff or the independent management of our operations, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has concluded that it will not share a list of its Palestinian and international staff with Israeli authorities in the current circumstances.
It went on to add that despite repeated efforts, Israel was not able to provide “concrete assurances” including “any staff information would be used only for its stated administrative purpose and would not put colleagues at risk; that MSF would retain full authority over all human resource matters and management of medical humanitarian supplies, and that all communications defaming MSF and undermining staff safety would cease.”
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism confirmed its decision to halt MSF’s activities, saying that it was due to “MSF’s failure to submit lists of local employees, a requirement applicable to all humanitarian organisations operating in the region.” “In accordance with the regulations, MSF will cease its operations and depart the Gaza Strip by February 28, 2026,” the ministry added.
According to MSF, at least 15 of its employees have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023. Last year, MSF carried out critical life-saving operations amid shortages in medical supplies due to Israeli blockades.
In addition to having provided 800,000 consultations, MSF assisted in one in three births and supported one in five hospital beds, services “that cannot be easily replaced,” the organization said.
50 Palestinians expected to cross the border in each direction, Egyptian state-run media reports
The number of people moving through the crossing is expected to be very limited, with the restriction that only those travelling on foot can move across the border.
In the first days of the reopening, just fifty people are expected to cross the border between Gaza and Egypt in each direction, Egyptian state-linked media reported on Monday.
Earlier, an Israeli defence official said the crossing could hold between 150 and 200 people altogether in both directions. There would be more people leaving than returning because patients left together with escorts, the official added. Lists of people due to pass through the crossing had been submitted by Egypt and approved by Israel, the official said.
Reopening the border crossing was a key requirement of the first phase of the US president Donald Trump’s plan to end the conflict. But the ceasefire, which came into effect in October after two years of fighting, has been repeatedly shaken by rounds of violence.
Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed more than 500 Palestinians since the ceasefire began, local health officials say, and Palestinian militants have killed four Israeli troops, according to Israeli authorities.
For the full story, click here:
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the situation in Gaza, where Israel has reopened the border between Gaza and Egypt in a limited capacity. The crossing has largely been closed since May 2024.
The reopening is being coordinated with Egypt and the European Union, Cogat, the Israeli agency charged with administration of Gaza, said.
It added that the movement of Palestinians between Egypt and Gaza, permitted on foot only, would be allowed “only after prior security clearance by Israel,” with both Israel and Egypt imposing caps on the number of travellers crossing through the border.
Earlier, Cogat said it expects “movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza.”
Many of those hoping to leave are sick and wounded people in need of medical care abroad – but the process may be a slow one.
Following initial identification and screening at the crossing crossing by the EU mission, there will be another screening process at a “designated corridor, operated by the defence establishment in an area under IDF control,” Cogat said.
The Palestinian health ministry has said there are about 20,000 patients waiting to leave Gaza.
The reopening of the Rafah border crossing comes as Israel launched some of its deadliest strikes in Gaza in months over the weekend, killing at least 30 Palestinians, including those who were seeking shelter in tent cities.
Since the start of ceasefire last October, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
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