Live: Trump threatens Gaza residents with death as his team holds direct talks with Hamas about captives

Lebanon’s new Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has delivered his government policy statement, in which he said that only the country’s armed forces should defend the nation in case of war, the Associated Press reported.

Salam said on Tuesday that the government asserts that Lebanon has the right to defend itself in case of “aggression” and only the state has the right to have weapons. He also said that the government takes measures to liberate land occupied by Israel “through its forces only.”

Salam’s statement came as his government has taken steps to sideline Hezbollah and Iran, in a tilt towards the US and Gulf states.

The World Health Organization is very concerned about Israeli attacks on healthcare in the occupied West Bank, an official told journalists on Tuesday.

"We see the current flashpoints of violence, attacks on healthcare ... starkly rising in the West Bank," Dr Rik Peeperkorn, WHO's representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, told a press briefing via video link from Gaza.

US President Donald Trump, never one for historical nuance, says the best plan for Gaza is to “level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings”, paving the way for an American takeover and redevelopment project.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has made equally ignorant remarks, imagining a Gaza with “casinos and nightlife”, speaking with the casual entitlement of a coloniser who believes history begins with his own indulgence.

This is the logic of conquest. First, invade and destroy; then, stand upon the ruins and declare the land empty. 

The long, blood-soaked tradition of colonialism speaks through these politicians - settlers arriving on ravaged shores, massacring the natives, then announcing their discovery of a terra nova, a land with no past.

But Gaza is not empty. Gaza has never been empty.

Read more: Gaza has survived for thousands of years. It cannot be erased by Trump and Israel Opinion by Soumaya Ghannoushi

Released Israeli soldier Agam Berger, who was taken to Gaza from the Nahal Oz military outpost, said that she and her fellow women captives were distressed when hearing Israelis' opposition to a hostage deal, according to Haaretz.

"It was hard for us to hear; it was as if they were saying that our lives were not valuable enough," she said in an interview with Kan Bet public radio.

Berger added that those still being held in Gaza need to hear "that they are still being fought for."

Egypt rejects proposals to displace Palestinians, saying such moves would undermine the Palestinian cause and threaten regional security, according to a statement from the Egyptian Presidency on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump infuriated the Arab world with a plan to permanently displace the population of more than two million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, claim US control of it and transforming the territory into a luxury development project dubbed the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

Hamas said the statements attributed to Abu Marzouk, the head of Hamas's foreign relations office, including that he would have opposed the 7 October attack if he had known the devastating Israeli response that would have followed, were taken out of context.

“If it was expected that what happened would happen, there wouldn’t have been October 7,” The New York Times on Monday reported Marzouk saying.

"The statements do not fully reflect the content of the answers, they were taken out of context in a way that does not serve the true meaning of the statements," Hamas said.

According to the statement, Abu Marzouk had said: "The welcome October 7 attack is an expression of our people's right to resist and refuse the siege, occupation, and settlements."

It said he had also "repeatedly emphasised the movement's position regarding our people's right to resistance in all its forms until liberation and return, headed by armed resistance."

Pope Francis, hospitalised in critical condition with pneumonia in both lungs, was showing a "slight improvement", the Vatican said Monday, while cautioning that doctors would not offer a prognosis.

Amid global concern over the 88-year-old's health, the Vatican said in its evening bulletin that "the critical clinical conditions of the Holy Father demonstrate a slight improvement." 

"In the evening he called the priest in the Gaza parish to express his fatherly closeness,” the Vatican said in a statement.

Francis has been video-calling Gabriele Romanelli, the priest leading the Catholic community at the church in Gaza, and his assistant, Yusuf Asad, via WhatsApp almost every night since Israel's war on Gaza began.

Israeli bulldozers have demolished large areas of the now virtually empty Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank and appear to be destroying wide roadways, echoing tactics already employed in Gaza as troops prepare for a long-term stay.

Israel's assault that began just a day after reaching a ceasefire agreement in Gaza forcefully displaced at least 40,000 Palestinians in Jenin and the nearby city of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.

"Jenin is a repeat of what happened in Jabalia," said Basheer Matahen, spokesperson for the Jenin municipality, referring to the refugee camp in northern Gaza that was cleared out by the Israeli army. "The camp has become uninhabitable."

He said at least 12 bulldozers were at work demolishing houses and infrastructure in the camp. 

Once a crowded township, the camp housed descendants of some of the 750,000Palestinians who were expelled from their homes in 1948 during "Nakba" (or catastrophe) by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the confiscation of Palestinian Authority funds designated for released prisoners.

The funds are payments made to Palestinian prisoners serving prison sentences, as well as those released and their families.

The defence ministry also said that 470 million shekels ($130m) of the funds intended for transfer to the Palestinian Authority were blocked and it will instead be transferred to Israelis directly affected by the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023.

The announcement came as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on 10 February issued a decree overturning a system of payments to the families of Palestinians imprisoned or killed by Israeli forces - a longstanding source of friction with the United States.

The body of the Israeli captive Oded Lifshitz will be buried today in Nir Oz kibbutz, where he was taken during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October, 2023.

The couple’s grandson, Daniel, told Israel's Army Radio that his grandmother said “we have today, the moment we bury him [to mourn], but tomorrow, we keep fighting to bring everyone back.”

Hamas returned the body of the 83-year-old to Israel on February 20, along with the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her young sons, Ariel and Kfir.

While Israel claims they were murdered during their captivity, Hamas denies the accusation, saying they were killed in an Israeli air attack on Gaza.

The Trump administration has rescinded a Biden-era order that required it to report potential violations of international law involving US-supplied weapons by allies including Israel, two US officials and a source familiar with the decision told Reuters.

The Washington Post first reported the decision, citing current and former officials, to scrap National Security Memorandum-20, which was signed by former President Joe Biden in February 2024 amid criticism over Israel's use of American bombs in its war in Gaza.

The memorandum required the US government to produce reports for Congress on the use of US arms by other countries. In May 2024, in a report required by the memorandum, Biden's administration said Israel may have breached international humanitarian law but that US officials were unable to identify specific instances of breaches that harmed civilians due to the chaos of war.

The Trump administration would have been required in the coming months to report to Congress its own assessment of Israel's conduct.

Good morning, Middle East Eye readers,

Here are some of the latest updates on Israel's war on Gaza: 

• The Palestinian Water Authority and Unicef have begun operating 13 mobile desalination stations in Gaza, where displaced families are enduring a dire water crisis due to Israel's war on Gaza.

• Israeli forces made arrests in several locations across the occupied West Bank amid a continuing Israeli assault on the Palestinian territory.

• Three more children have died from the “severe cold” in Gaza as Israel continues to bar the entry of temporary homes into the enclave, Saeed Salah, the director of the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society in Gaza City said.

• Israel said it will release 620 Palestinian prisoners, who were set to be released last Saturday if Hamas hands over the bodies of four Israeli captives later this week without a ceremony, Ynet News reported.

• Columbia University-affiliated Barnard College has expelled two students for participating in a pro-Palestine protest in January.

• Israeli police have arrested Nidal Badarna, a Palestinian comedian of Israel, from his home in the city of Haifa, accusing him “mocking” the captives held in Gaza, according to a legislator and Ynet News.

Good evening Middle East Eye readers, 

Israel launched attacks across the occupied West Bank on Monday, raiding villages and arresting Palestinians. 

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israel in the occupied West Bank are struggling to access basic needs such as clean water, food, medical care and shelter. 

Meanwhile, a member of the European Union parliament who was travelling to Israel and the occupied West Bank to meet Palestinian officials and human rights activists and was denied entry at Tel Aviv airport on Monday has slammed Israel as a "rogue state".

Here is what else you missed: 

• Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate former US President Joe Biden for possible complicity in war crimes in Gaza
• Mousa Abu Marzouk, the head of Hamas's foreign relations office, said he would not have supported the group's 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel had he known the devastating Israeli response that would have followed
• Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem slammed Marzouk's comments
• The EU supports the Palestinian Authority's return to the Gaza Strip, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said

A member of the European Union parliament who was travelling to Israel and the occupied West Bank to meet Palestinian officials and human rights activists and was denied entry at Tel Aviv airport on Monday has slammed Israel as a "rogue state".

“This utter contempt from Israel is the result of the international community failing to hold them to account,” Lynn Boylan, who chairs the EU parliament's EU-Palestine delegation, said in a statement.

“Israel is a rogue state, and this disgraceful move shows the level of utter disregard that they have for international law. Europe must now hold Israel to account," she said. 

Another lawmaker, Rima Hassan, was also denied entry. 

After raiding a village south of Nablus on Monday, Israeli forces stormed another village south of Tubas in the occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reported.

Israeli troops raided Wadi al-Far’a in the northeastern West Bank, Wafa said. 

Earlier on Monday, Wafa reported that Israeli settlers were installing surveillance cameras near Palestinian communities in the Tubas area.