Hamas says it will delay release of more hostages
Hamas’ armed wing will delay the release of more Israeli hostages planned for Saturday until further notice, according to a statement by the group’s spokesperson on Telegram.
Hamas freed three hostages from Gaza and Israel released 183 prisoners and detainees two days ago, the fifth exchange under a fragile, three-week-old ceasefire deal.
However, the gaunt appearance of the three Israeli men shocked the country, sparking anger and dismay.
Many Palestinian prisoners released to Ramallah hours after the Israelis were freed also looked extremely thin, and seven out of 43 needed hospitalisation, the Palestinian Prisoners Club said.
There has been little apparent progress in the latest stages of negotiations. It was announced earlier today that an Israeli delegation that flew to Doha for talks on the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire at the weekend has returned, amid growing doubts over the Egyptian and Qatari-brokered process to end the war in Gaza.
Key events
Haroon Siddique
A former UK supreme court judge has described Israel’s assault on Gaza as “grossly disproportionate” and said there was “at least an arguable case” that it was genocidal.
Lord Sumption, who served on the UK’s highest court from 2012 to 2018, was one of the highest profile signatories of a letter last year warning that the UK government was breaching international law by arming Israel.
In September, the Labour government suspended some arms export licences to Israel but made an exception for parts for F35 jets – a contentious decision that is being challenged in the courts.
Explaining his decision to sign the letter, Sumption told the Guardian:
I thought – and I still think – that the conduct of Israel in Gaza is grossly disproportionate and there’s at least an arguable case that it’s genocidal. One can’t put it higher than that because genocide depends on intent. That’s quite a difficult thing to establish but I read the provisional decision of the international court (of justice) (ICJ) and it seemed to me that they were saying that that was an arguable proposition.
Mediators fear a breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire agreement after Hamas accused Israel of not being serious about executing the deal and announced it would stop releasing hostages until further notice, Reuters reports, citing Egyptian security sources.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s foreign minister Badr Abdelatty discussed regional developments with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, during a meeting in Washington on Monday, according to the Egyptian foreign ministry.
Hamas official says Trump’s latest Gaza remarks ‘absurd’
A senior Hamas official has described Donald Trump’s latest remarks about Gaza as “absurd”, after the US president said his plan to “take over” the Palestinian territory would not include a right of return for the more than 2 million Palestinians who live there.
Trump’s comments “reflect a deep ignorance of Palestine and the region”, Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, said.
In comments released by Hamas, he said Trump’s approach toward the Palestinian cause will fail.
Responding to Donald Trump’s executive order on Friday, the international criminal court (ICC) called on its 125 state parties to stand against the sanctions, describing Washington’s move as an attempt to “harm its independent and impartial judicial work”.
Emergency meetings were held on Friday among senior court officials to rapidly assess the implications of Trump’s order, which one official said had been written in such a way that it was “broad enough to be very disruptive for the court if [the US] wants it to be”.
Governments around the world have since rushed to defend the court, which is seen as a vital last resort to prosecute powerful individuals accused of atrocities including war crimes and genocide.
Seventy-nine countries – including Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Mexico and Nigeria – released a joint letter last week warning that US sanctions would “increase the risk of impunity for the most serious crimes and threaten to erode the international rule of law”.
White House confirms ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to be first to be targeted with sanctions
Karim Khan, the international criminal court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, is the person to be hit with economic and travel sanctions authorised by Donald Trump that target the court over investigations of US citizens or US allies, the White House has confirmed.
Khan, who is British, was named on Monday in an annex to an executive order signed by Trump last week, Reuters reports.
The US president signed an executive order last week authorising aggressive economic sanctions against the ICC, accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel.
The order grants Trump broad powers to impose asset freezes and travel bans against ICC staff and their family members if the US determines that they are involved in efforts to investigate or prosecute citizens of the US and certain allies.
The sanctions come in response to the court’s decision in November to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
A group representing hostage families called on mediators of the ceasefire to stop the deal from breaking down, while another group representing Israel military veterans accused the government of intentional sabotaging the ceasefire agreement.
The U.N. human rights office on Monday described images of both emaciated Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees released as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal as distressing, saying they reflected the dire conditions in which they were held.
“The images we have seen of Israeli hostages released over the weekend show signs of ill-treatment and severe malnourishment, reflecting very dire conditions they were subjected to in Gaza,” Thameen Al-Kheetan, U.N. human rights office spokesperson, said in a statement.
“We are also deeply concerned by the public parading of hostages released by Hamas in Gaza, including statements apparently made under duress during release.”
He referred to Hamas-directed handover ceremonies attended by large crowds in the Gaza Strip in which hostages were flanked by militants armed with automatic rifles.
So far, 16 of the 33 hostages to be released in the first 42-day phase of the deal have come home, as well as five Thai hostages who were returned in an unscheduled release.
In exchange, Israel has released hundreds of prisoners and detainees, ranging from prisoners serving life sentences for deadly attacks to Palestinians detained during the war and held without charge.
But Hamas has accused Israel of dragging its feet on allowing aid into Gaza, one of the conditions of the first phase of the agreement, a charge Israel has rejected as untrue.
In turn, Israel has accused Hamas of not respecting the order in which the hostages were to be released and of orchestrating abusive public displays before large crowds when they have been handed over to the Red Cross.
Earlier, the office of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said an Israeli delegation had returned from ceasefire talks in Qatar, amid already growing doubts over the Egyptian and Qatari-brokered process to end the war.
There were no immediate details on the reason for the return from the talks, which are intended to agree the basis for a second stage of the multi-phase ceasefire agreement and hostage-for-prisoner exchange reached last month.
A Palestinian official close to the discussions told Reuters progress was being held up by mistrust between the two sides.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has issued a decree revoking the payment system of “financial allowances for the families of Palestinian prisoners, martyrs and injured”, the text of the decree published by the official gazette showed.
Israeli police have raided a leading Palestinian-owned bookshop in Jerusalem and detained two of its owners, Mahmoud Muna, 41, and his nephew Ahmed Muna, 33, accusing them of selling books that supported terrorism, including a children’s colouring book entitled From the Jordan to the Sea.
Hamas hostage delay a violation of ceasefire deal, says Israeli defence minister
Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said Hamas’s announcement that it will stop freeing hostages was a violation of the Gaza ceasefire deal and he had ordered the military to be at the highest level of readiness in Gaza.
Andrew Roth
Donald Trump has said his plan to “take over Gaza” would not include a right of return for the more than 2 million Palestinians that he has said have “no alternative” but to leave because of the destruction left by Israel’s military campaign.
The remarks are the latest effective endorsement of ethnic cleansing by the US president, who announced his plan last week during a summit with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to the outrage of the Arab world and the surprise of even his closest aides.
In the interview with Fox’s Bret Baier, Trump said that he would “own” the Gaza Strip and declared it would be a “real estate development for the future”.
At the same time, he continued to endorse a plan for the Palestinians to be resettled in Egypt and Jordan, a plan that both countries have rejected and the region’s largest Arab states have declared is a non-starter.
Trump said he would build up to six new sites for Palestinians to live outside Gaza, in effect permanent refugee camps underwritten by the US president.
Here is the statement from Hamas.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, said: “During the past three weeks, the resistance leadership has monitored the enemy’s violations and failure to abide by the terms of the agreement, including delaying the return of the displaced to the northern Gaza Strip, and targeting them with shelling and gunfire.”
Obeida added: “The handover of the Zionist prisoners who were scheduled to be released next Saturday, February 15, 2025, will be postponed until further notice, and until the occupation commits to and compensates for the past weeks retroactively.
“We affirm our commitment to the terms of the agreement as long as the occupation commits to them.”
