Updates: Hamas-Israel ceasefire holds

The United Arab Emirates has drafted plans to build a compound to house thousands of displaced Palestinians in a part of south Gaza under Israeli military control, according to a map seen by Reuters and people briefed on the plans.

The planning map shows where the "UAE Temporary Emirates Housing Complex" would be constructed near Rafah, once a city of a quarter of a million people, but now almost completely destroyed and depopulated by Israeli forces.

Rafah, near the Egypt border, is where reconstruction of Gaza is expected to start under US President Donald Trump's plan for a durable peace in the densely populated coastal enclave after two years of devastating war.

Donors have been reluctant to commit funds to the plan, worried that disagreements over disarming Hamas militants could lead the parties back to full-scale conflict.

However, there are doubts about the political viability of the Emirati project, as most Palestinians could baulk at being housed in an Israeli-controlled zone while the vast majority of civilians live in Hamas-run areas of Gaza, diplomats said.

The map shows that the UAE housing would sit near the "yellow line" agreed under an October ceasefire to demarcate Israeli- and Hamas-controlled areas.

In response to questions for this story, an Emirati official said the Gulf country "remains committed to scaling up its humanitarian efforts to support Palestinians in Gaza", without confirming or denying plans to build the temporary housing site.

Israeli settler violence and harassment in the occupied West Bank displaced nearly 700 Palestinians in January, the United Nations said, the highest rate since the Gaza war erupted in October 2023.

January’s displacement numbers were particularly high in part due to the displacement of an entire herding community in the Jordan Valley, Ras Ein al-Auja, whose 130 families left after months of harassment.

"What is happening today is the complete collapse of the community as a result of the settlers’ continuous and repeated attacks, day and night, for the past two years," Farhan Jahaleen, a Bedouin resident, told AFP at the time.

"No one is putting the pressure on Israel or on the Israeli authorities to stop this and so the settlers feel it, they feel the complete impunity that they’re just free to continue to do this," said Allegra Pacheco, director of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of NGOs working to support Palestinian communities against displacement.

An activist from the Global Sumud Flotilla on Thursday announced a plan to sail again for Gaza from Barcelona on March 29, with broader international participation, reported Turkiye's Anadolu.

“The departure will be at the initial historic departure from Barcelona, followed by Tunisia, Italy, and other Mediterranean ports, and we will sail this time on March, the 29th,” Global Sumud activist Sumeyra Akdeniz Ordu told a livestreamed news conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“We will sail with, this time, thousands of participants, including more than a thousand doctors, nurses, health professionals […] We will have medical professionals with us. We will have eco-builders with us. We will have war crimes investigators with us, which is the difference between the previous mission,” she added.

Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes killed 24 Palestinians, including seven children, in Gaza on Wednesday, health officials said, the latest violence to undermine the nearly four-month-old ceasefire in the enclave.

Among the dead was a medic who rushed to help victims of a strike in the southern city of Khan Younis and was then killed by a second attack on the same location, health officials said.

Other strikes hit Gaza City in the north, where health officials said a 5-month-old boy was killed. 

Tents in Mawasi, a coastal area near Khan Younis crowded with Gazans displaced by the conflict, had been ripped apart by the strikes. 

The Israeli military said it launched the strikes in response to Palestinian fighters opening fire on Israeli troops operating near its armistice line with Hamas. It said an Israeli soldier was severely injured by the fire, which it described as a violation of the ceasefire agreement.

A subsequent statement said one of the Israeli strikes had targeted a senior Hamas commander.

Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes martyred 21 Palestinians including six children in Gaza on Wednesday, health officials said, the latest violence to undermine a truce in the enclave.

Among the dead was a medic who rushed to help victims of a strike in the southern city of Khan Younis and was then killed by a second attack on the same location, health officials said.

Other strikes hit Gaza City in the north, where health officials said a 5-month-old boy was killed. The attacks come three days after Israel reopened Gaza's main border crossing with Egypt, a major step in the US-backed truce.

Tents in Mawasi, a coastal area near Khan Younis crowded with Gazans displaced by the conflict, had been ripped apart by the strikes. Nearly all of Gaza's over 2 million population has been forced to flee their homes.

Palestinian patients preparing to cross through the newly opened Rafah border crossing to Egypt were told that Israel had postponed the passage of patients through the border. A few hours later the patients were told to prepare again to cross the border.

CAIRO/JERUSALEM: Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes has killed 18 people, including four children, with Tel Aviv also halting the passage of patients through the Rafah border crossing, said the Palestinian officials.

The Israeli military said tanks had fired on Gaza and airstrikes had been launched after a gunman shot at Israeli soldiers and seriously injured a reservist.

The strikes targeted Gaza City and the southern city of Khan Younis. A Gazan health official told Reuters that Israel had also halted the passage of patients through the Rafah border crossing to Egypt.

A spokesperson for the Red Crescent said patients had arrived at a hospital in Khan Younis in preparation for crossing Rafah for treatment, only to be informed that Israel had postponed the evacuations.

"They called the patients and said today there is no travel at all, the crossing is closed," Raja'a Abu Teir, a Palestinian patient who was set to be evacuated, told Reuters at the hospital, where several patients were waiting in ambulances.

The Israeli agency that controls access to Gaza, COGAT, said in a statement that Rafah crossing remained open, but they had not received the necessary coordination details from the World Health Organisation to facilitate the crossing.

The WHO did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US envoy Steve Witkoff in Jerusalem that the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) would not be part of post-war Gaza's governance "in any way".

"The PM clarified that the Palestinian Authority will not be involved in administering the Strip in any way," Netanyahu's office said in a statement after the meeting ended.

Under US President Donald Trump's Gaza ceasefire plan that ended a two-year war in the Palestinian territory, the PA's post-war role in Gaza was left unclear.

The technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) was formed to handle day-to-day affairs until the PA completes a reform programme.

Witkoff held talks with Netanyahu on Tuesday, during a visit that followed the reopening of Gaza's Rafah crossing with Egypt. This was the second meeting between the two in less than a fortnight.

At the meeting, Netanyahu also "reiterated the uncompromising demand for the disarmament of Hamas, the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip, and the fulfilment of the war objectives prior to the reconstruction of the Strip," according to his office.

US envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli official said, during a visit that followed the reopening of Gaza's Rafah crossing with Egypt.

The official told AFP that the meeting was taking place in Jerusalem, but declined to provide details on the agenda.

An Arab official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the meeting was likely to take place in Turkiye on Friday, following diplomatic interventions by Ankara, as well as Egypt, Oman and Qatar.

Witkoff’s talks with Netanyahu on Tuesday marked his second encounter with the Israeli prime minister in less than a fortnight. His previous visit took place days before the Rafah crossing was reopened.