Live: Israel delays release of 602 Palestinian prisoners

Palestine TV has reported that Israeli settlers from illegal outposts launched violent assaults on Palestinians in Jaba in the occupied West Bank.

Verified footage shared by local media showed fires spreading, thick smoke rising, and Palestinian residents rushing to defend themselves.

Since Israel began its brutal bombing of Gaza on 7 October, attacks by settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have more than doubled, rising from three to eight incidents daily, according to the United Nations.

US President Donald Trump said he is going to “sit back” and watch Arab countries craft a counter-proposal to his plan for the US to "take over" the Gaza Strip and forcibly displace two million Palestinians.

Trump’s rhetoric suggests he relishes watching the US’s Arab allies rush to counter his plan.

He said for the first time on Friday that he would not force anyone to accept Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, but still thought it was a good idea. 

“I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it, and then the US would own the site,” he told Fox News Radio, adding, "Another way to do it is with people there, but I don't think it would work. I like my plan." 

Trump’s plan for a US takeover of the Gaza Strip was widely rejected by Arab states, human rights experts, and even Trump's closest political allies.

Read more: Trump likes his Gaza plan, but will 'sit back' as Arab states draft proposal

Israel has delayed the release of Palestinian prisoners under the Gaza ceasefire deal, AFP reported, quoting Israeli sources.

An official Israeli source told the agency that a decision will be made regarding the prisoners following the outcome of Israel's security consultations on Saturday night.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold consultations on Saturday night "based on the goal of returning all of our hostages - the living and the dead", The Times of Israel reports, quoting a government source.

The Times of Israel added that four captives are still supposed to be released under the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.

Israeli authorities have not provided relatives with any details regarding the killing of three captives who were taken to Gaza during the October 7 attack by Hamas fighters, the Bibas family said in a statement.

"Any publication of details (including references to the treatment of the bodies) is against the family's wishes, and we ask that this be avoided," the statement read. 

"The family has not received any such details from official sources," it said, following an Israeli military announcement that the two young sons of captive Shiri Bibas were killed by "terrorists with their bare hands".

"Any such publication adds deep pain to the family at this time."

Shiri Bibas and her two sons, Kfir and Ariel, were taken by fighters on the day of the attack, and their bodies were handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross this week.

Nearly 600,000 children under the age of 10 are expected to receive polio vaccinations in the latest campaign in Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), announced on X.

"Over 1,700 Unrwa team members will take part in this campaign across our health centres [and] mobile points," he said.

"This campaign follows a recent detection of polio in wastewater, putting the lives of children at risk."

#Gaza : another large scale vaccination campaign against #polio started today.

Like in previous rounds + together with our partners, we aim to reach nearly 600,000 children under the age of 10 across the Gaza Strip.
Over 1,700 UNRWA team members will take part in this campaign… pic.twitter.com/LuMuWr2JLI

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) February 22, 2025

The Israeli army said that Israeli Bedouin captive Hisham al-Sayed was handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza City.

The Red Cross is currently bringing him back to Israel. His handover was carried out without a ceremony.

Israeli forces have raided the homes of Palestinians prisoners set to be released within hours in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian prisoners’ media office has said.

Israeli soldiers reportedly threatened the families of the detainees and told them not to hold any celebrations.

According to the monitor, the homes were located in Ramallah, Hebron and Bethlehem.

Eliya Cohen, Omer Wenkert and Omer Shem Tov have been handed over to the Red Cross after appearing on stage in central Gaza's Nuseirat.

Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will travel to Lebanon to attend the funeral of long-time Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday, Iranian media reported.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out in Beirut to bid farewell to the Iran-aligned group's leader. 

An Israeli air strike killed Nasrallah on September 27 last year at the start of an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel after roughly a year of lower-level conflict.

The massive air strike on Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold also killed Abbas Nilforoushan, a senior commander in Iran's Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Reporting by AFP

Vehicles believed to be transporting three of the remaining four Israeli captives set to be released today have arrived in central Gaza's Nuseirat.

Eliya Cohen, Omer Wenkert and Omer Shem Tov are expected to be released, while Hisham al-Sayed, a Bedouin Israeli who entered the Gaza Strip in April 2015 and was taken captive by Hamas, is expected to be handed over to Israeli authorities without a ceremony, according to Al Jazeera.

In 2011, the full force of Nato airpower was mobilised with a UN resolution to protect civilians in Libya after former leader Muammar Gaddafi’s army fired on peaceful protesters, killing dozens of people. 

That military action was authorised with reference to the norm of “responsibility to protect”, which states that the international community should step in when civilians’ lives are threatened. 

In Gaza, where more than two million people have been deliberately starved amid relentless Israeli bombardment since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, we have seen a campaign of genocide replete with sexual violence, mass graves, detainees paraded in their underwear, the bombing of schools and hospitals, and mass displacement.

We have also seen the last nail in the coffin of the idea of humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect.

Given the unbelievable atrocities in Gaza, we can ask: was the notion of responsibility to protect always a flimsy liberal veil over the US-led military imperial project? 

READ MORE: How Palestinian lives are reduced to a series of grotesque calculations, opinion by Susannah O'sullivan

Good morning, Middle East Eye readers,

Here are the latest updates:

• The Israeli army said it received two captives released from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, with others expected to be released soon.
• Israel has also released the names of the 602 Palestinian detainees expected to be freed later in the day, according to Israeli media reports.
• The Red Cross is currently en route to the next handover site in Gaza, where four other Israeli captives are expected to be released.

Good evening Middle East Eye readers, 

Our blog will soon be closing for the day. Here are some of today's main developments:

• A Palestinian girl, 13, has been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

• Israeli forces shot and killed 13-year-old Ayman Nassar al-Haimoni in the Hebron area of the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

• US President Donald Trump on Friday insisted his proposal to seize the Gaza Strip “really works,” though he said he would not enforce it.

• Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for resuming the fighting in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

• Gaza needs at least 60,000 mobile homes and 200,000 tents to shelter displaced Palestinians, the Strip's government media office said, adding that the aid received so far only suffices half the number of tents required.

• The Red Cross is concerned about the operations through which Hamas hands over the Israeli captives, stating that it had not been conducted in a private and dignified manner, Reuters news agency said.

• Lebanon's Hezbollah will bury its former leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday, nearly five months after he was killed in an Israeli air strike, in a mass funeral aimed at showing political strength after the group emerged badly weakened from last year's war.

• Israel will release 602 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for six Israeli captives, who are set to return to Israel, according to the Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.

• Gamal Bayoumi, Egypt’s former deputy foreign affairs minister to the EU, described the Saudi-hosted meeting as a preliminary step ahead of a formal summit in Cairo next month.

The Red Cross has confirmed it transferred a coffin to Israeli authorities, which Hamas says contains the body of hostage Shiri Bibas.

On Thursday, Hamas returned four captive bodies to Israel, stating they were those of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, their mother Shiri, and Oded Lifshitz. However, the Israeli military later announced that while the bodies of the Bibas children had been identified, the third set of remains did not belong to Shiri Bibas.