Updates: Hamas names captives to be freed, but says Israel violating deal

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To see how Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are facing their second wet winter since Israel’s war on Gaza started in October 2023, visit our photo gallery here.

To find out more about Israeli military operations in the Jenin refugee camp and deadly raids across the occupied West Bank, read this.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s main events:

• The spokesperson of Hamas’s armed wing, Abu Obeida, says Israeli captives Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy will be freed on Saturday.
• In exchange, Hamas’s media office says Israel is expected to release 183 Palestinian prisoners, also on Saturday.
• Gaza’s Government Media Office has said more than 12,000 bodies are estimated to be trapped under the rubble in the enclave, but Israel is preventing heavy equipment necessary to retrieve many of them from entering the Strip.
• Egypt said it has been in contact with Arab partners including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to firm up the region’s rejection of any displacement of Palestinians after US President Donald Trump said they should be relocated from Gaza.
• US Deputy Special Envoy for the Middle East Morgan Ortagus has said Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon’s new government is a red line for Washington.
• The US State Department has signed off on the sale to Israel of $6.75bn in bombs, guidance kits and fuses, in addition to $660m in Hellfire missiles, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

In fact, this particular package of weaponry was first approved by the Biden administration in January, one of the last arms transfers it asked Congress to approve, and it wasn’t approved by the time the Biden administration left.

So this was basically a bit of paperwork for the incoming Trump administration from the defence security corporation of the Pentagon, but the State Department wants to transfer these weapons to Israel. It’s a package of weapons that the Biden administration wanted to put forward, but it was put on hold by members of the Senate and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

But this is continuity with Biden. It isn’t new, but it’s certainly something that Netanyahu wanted to get reassurance from Trump that he would resubmit this request to Congress.

Having said that, Trump has already also asked for $1bn in weapons to go to Israel. That request went out this week. And that includes 4,700 1,000-pound (450kg) bombs, worth more than $700m, and armoured bulldozers by the company Caterpillar, $300m of that.

What we are watching is how determined the opposition may be to try and stand in the way of Trump – because of their general anger at him being in power and some of his other policies – now that it’s he who’s supplying the genocidal government in Israel and not Joe Biden.

The Palestinian Authority’s prisoners’ affairs commission has published the names of 183 Palestinian prisoners who will be released from Israeli prisons on Saturday in exchange for the release of three Israeli men held by Hamas in Gaza.

Of the prisoners, 18 are serving life sentences, 54 have longterm sentences and 111 are Palestinians from Gaza who were detained after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. All are men, ranging between the ages of 20 to 61.

That exchange will be the fifth in a multiphase ceasefire deal to halt the fighting in Gaza that Israel and Hamas agreed to last month.

Israeli forces have stormed the Balata refugee camp, located to the east of Nablus, the Wafa news agency has reported.

According to Wafa, Israeli forces were deployed across several neighbourhoods and surrounding buildings.

Israeli bulldozers began demolishing a street within the camp, it added.

“Death is so quotidian that journalists report it as though they’re reporting the weather,” wrote Palestinian poet and author Mohammed el-Kurd amid Israel’s war on Gaza.

And with a ceasefire in place, the fate of Palestinians remains uncertain.

So what role does the Western gaze play in perpetuating a narrative that dehumanises Palestinians and how does it shape our understanding of their struggle for justice and liberation?

This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill discusses with El-Kurd the resistance and dehumanisation of Palestinians.

A 10-year-old Palestinian boy has died in hospital more than a week after an Israeli soldier shot him in the occupied West Bank.

Saddam Rajab was wounded on January 28 during a military operation in Tulkarem.

Israeli forces detained an ambulance transporting him to a hospital and held his father in custody for an hour. The soldier reportedly boasted about shooting him.

Israel’s military has laid siege to the area for more than two weeks, attacking Palestinians and blowing up homes.

Al Jazeera is reporting from Amman, Jordan, because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank. 

From the beginning of the ceasefire deal, everybody understood that the stakes are very high. But that the potential for a breakdown was also quite high.

There have been delays, as we saw today, in the release of the names of the Israeli captives to be freed.

Hamas, however, accuses Israel of implementing only 10 percent of the humanitarian protocol. This pertains to the number of trucks that are allowed in and the tents that are needed for those 1.9 million displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

The number of injured Palestinians, who have been waiting for months for life-saving treatment outside of Gaza, has also not matched the number agreed upon in the ceasefire agreement.

Let’s also remember this is still phase one of the ceasefire agreement. Negotiations on phase two haven’t started yet and have been delayed.

The US State Department has signed off on the sale to Israel of $6.75bn in bombs, guidance kits and fuses, in addition to $660m in Hellfire missiles, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA).

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence capability,” the DSCA said.

Over the past 15 months, critics of Israel’s war on Gaza have repeatedly called on the US government to cut off weapons transfers to Israel, alleging they make the US complicit in the destruction of the coastal enclave.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have reiterated their opposition to any proposal aimed at displacing Palestinians from Gaza and affirmed their ongoing support for a two-state solution.

According to a statement by the Egyptian Presidency, el-Sisi and Guterres also discussed in a phone call “Egypt’s efforts to maintain the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the prisoners swap and facilitate the access of humanitarian aid into Gaza”.

They also stressed the importance of an early start to the reconstruction process in Gaza to restore normality in the Palestinian enclave, contrary to plans to displace them.

Trump has again restated his plans of turning Gaza into a new “Riviera”. Where did this idea come from and how feasible is it?

Watch the video below:

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza since the ceasefire came into effect last month, pausing Israel’s 15-month assault on the territory. But most people found their homes destroyed or heavily damaged.

Strong winds, rain and low temperatures are now adding to their suffering as thousands of families are living in worn-out tents after their homes were destroyed in Israel’s bombardment and ground offensive in the coastal enclave.

Families have since struggled to find shelter in the mounds of debris and destruction across the besieged enclave.

A spokesperson for the Gaza City municipality told Al Jazeera that the city did not have enough resources to help the displaced during winter storms, adding that sewage and rainwater have entered hundreds of tents and shelters.

This week, Gaza’s Government Media Office accused Israel of restricting the flow of aid and new shelters into the territory.

“Securing shelters has become an urgent humanitarian need that cannot be delayed. It is the most pressing need at this moment,” it said in a statement.

Read more about the conditions of Palestinians in Gaza here.

Dozens of supporters of the Lebanese armed group have protested in the capital, Beirut, against comments by the US deputy special envoy to the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus.

According to Lebanon’s National News Agency, dozens of people gathered near the entrance gate of the Beirut airport, protesting against Ortagus’s remarks.

After her meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Ortagus said Hezbollah will no longer “be able to terrorise the Lebanese people” and went on to thank Israel for “defeating the group”.

Hamas fighters have attended the funeral of Marwan Issa, the deputy leader of the movement’s armed wing, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza.

The Israeli military said it killed Issa in a March air strike, but his death was only confirmed by Hamas on January 30.

The United Nations has stressed the importance of the International Criminal Court (ICC), urging that it be allowed to “work in full independence”.

“International criminal law is an essential element to fighting impunity, which is unfortunately widespread in today’s world,” UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said at a conference.

US President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order imposing sanctions on the ICC, claiming the court was taking “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.

The Israeli army has demolished several Palestinian homes in the Jenin refugee camp as it continues the deadly raids across the occupied West Bank that it launched on January 21.

Explosions echoed throughout the camp overnight as Israeli forces demolished the homes, Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, reported.

Witnesses said Israeli forces reinforced their presence around the camp and conducted intensive drone surveillance.

Read our full story here.