Updates: Hamas-Israel ceasefire holds

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged renewed international action on the refugee crisis, warning the situation has deteriorated since the last Global Refugee Forum as conflicts grow, displacement rises, borders tighten and humanitarian funding is cut, Anadolu reported.

The second Global Refugee Forum Progress Review, organised by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Swiss government, has begun in Geneva, with Guterres addressing participants via a video message.

He called for stronger backing for countries hosting refugees, noting that low- and middle-income nations shelter nearly three-quarters of the world’s displaced people.

Guterres also urged governments to do more to include refugees in local economies and support self-reliance. “We must boost refugee inclusion and self-reliance a dignified way to unlock human potential,” he said, adding that it could strengthen local economies and reduce dependence on aid.

Despite the catastrophic state of the Palestinian economy, Faraj al Atrash, operator of a quarry in the occupied West Bank, proudly points to an armada of machines busy eating away at sheer walls of dusty white rock that stretch into the distance.

"This here is considered the main source of revenue for the entire region", Atrash said at the site near the town of Beit Fajjar, close to the city of Hebron.

The quarry is a source of Jerusalem stone, the famed pale rock used throughout the Holy Land and beyond for millennia and which gives much of the region its distinctive architectural look.

But Atrash, in his fifties, said "our livelihood is constantly under threat".

"Lately, I feel like the occupation (Israel) has begun to fight us on the economic front," he said. Atrash fears the confiscation of the quarry's industrial equipment, the expansion of Israeli settlements and the Palestinian financial crisis.

The Palestinian territories are "currently going through the most severe economic crisis ever recorded," according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development presented in late November.

Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, has recently set up hundreds of new checkpoints across the territory, paralysing commercial transport. Beyond restrictions on freedom of movement, a halt in permits for West Bank Palestinians seeking work inside Israel has also had a severe impact.

US President Donald Trump on Monday said the International Stabilisation Force for Gaza is already running and that more countries would be added.

"I think that, in a form, it's already running," Trump said in the Oval Office. "More and more countries are coming into it. They're already in but they'll send any number of troops that I ask them to send."

Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) rejected one in a series of legal challenges brought by Israel against the court's probe into its conduct of the Gaza war.

On appeal, judges refused to overturn a lower court decision that the prosecution's investigation into alleged crimes under its jurisdiction, including event of the deadly attack of October 7, 2023.

The ruling means the investigation continues and the arrest warrants issued, which opened a new tab last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief Yoav Gallant, remain in place.

Israel rejects the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza, where it has waged a military campaign it says is aimed at eliminating Hamas following the October 7 attacks.

The ICC initially also issued a warrant for Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Masri for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, but withdrew that later following credible reports of his death.

Paying tribute to the martyred commander, Raed Saad, Hamas leader Osama Hamdan said that resistance against Israel remains a legitimate right for all Palestinians.

He said that Palestinian people have been resisting Israel for 50 years and Hamas reserves the right to respond to Israel's continuous violations.

Rejecting reports regarding factions in Hamas, he said these are Israeli-made, fabricated stories, in the near future, the world will witness a robust administrative structure within the group.

Highlighting Israeli violations of the ceasefire, Hamad pointed out that more than 400 Palestinians have been martyred by Israeli forces since the Gaza ceasefire, and it is continuously obstructing the restoration of aid and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner briefed EU foreign ministers on Trump's Gaza peace plan via video conference, an EU official said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said earlier on Monday that he had suggested to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas that Kushner and Witkoff provide an update on the implementation of the plan to the foreign ministers during their meeting in Brussels.

Israel's assassination of a senior Hamas commander threatens the viability of the Gaza ceasefire, the chief negotiator of the Palestinian group said on Sunday, calling on US President Donald Trump to demand Israel comply with the terms of the truce.

Hamas chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, who lives in exile, confirmed the killing of Saed, the highest-profile assassination of a senior Hamas figure since the truce.

"The continued Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement [...] and latest assassinations that targeted Saed and others threaten the viability of the agreement," Hayya said.

"We call on mediators, and especially the main guarantor, the US administration and President Donald Trump, to work on obliging Israel to respect the ceasefire and commit to it."

The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces killed a 23-year-old man in the occupied West Bank on Sunday after what the army described as an attempted stabbing.

The ministry reported the death of Muhammad Wael al-Sharouf, "who was shot by (Israeli) forces north" of the city of Hebron.