Updates: Gaza children hurt in Israel attacks allowed medical care abroad

You can read more about the fourth hostage-prisoner exchange under the Gaza ceasefire deal set to take place on Saturday here.

Check out our piece on whether Hamas and US President Donald Trump can sit at the negotiating table after talk of “cleaning out” Gaza here.

And watch protesters gather on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing to protest Trump’s insistence that Palestinians be removed from Gaza and sent to Egypt and Jordan here.

We will be closing the live blog soon. Here’s a brief review of the day’s main events:

• Hamas released the names of three Israeli captives who will be freed tomorrow in Gaza in the fourth prisoners-for-captives swap. They are Ofer Kalderon, Keith Siegel and Yarden Bibas.
• Israel will release 183 Palestinian prisoners, including 18 serving life sentences.
• The World Health Organization said the Rafah border crossing will be reopened on Saturday to allow the medical evacuation of 50 Palestinians in urgent need of medical care.
• UNRWA said if its humanitarian work in Gaza is forced to halt because of Israel’s ban coming into effect, it will put a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas at risk.
• Israeli forces mobilised more troops towards Jenin and its refugee camp in the occupied West Bank as a deadly military raid continues.
• Hezbollah condemned Israeli air strikes that targeted eastern Lebanon saying they were an “explicit aggression” that breached the ceasefire.

As the ceasefire stretched into a second week, trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza. Advocates warn despite improvements in the flow of aid, the need is far greater than what is coming in, and distribution, especially to the north, poses major logistical challenges.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has discussed “the path forward in Gaza” in a call with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.

Rubio also thanked the foreign minister for helping chart a new course for Lebanon, the State Department said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump earlier doubled down on his proposal to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Jordan and Egypt, saying “they will do it” despite both countries having rejected the idea.

Speaking from Gaza, Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s representative in the Palestinian territories, said health needs in the densely populated Strip were “immense” because of the “large-scale devastation of the health system”.

Just 57 of the 142 primary healthcare centres are operational, along with 11 field hospitals. Before the ceasefire, many attempts to deliver critical aid to Gaza were impeded because of strict restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities.

The flow of health aid has now begun to rise, Peeperkorn said. WHO has received 62 delivery trucks and 22 more were expected over the next two days. He said hospitals at least now had fuel to operate. Peeperkorn said the mental health burden in Gaza was “unimaginable”.

Only 480 patients have been medevaced since May 6. “If we continue at this pace we have, we will be busy for the next 15 years,” said Peeperkorn.

Mandy Damari, the mother of released Israeli captive Emily Damari, says her daughter was held by Hamas inside UNRWA facilities in Gaza, prompting the UN agency to demand a probe to investigate the “grave” allegations.

Emily Damari, a British-Israeli dual national, was among the first captives to be released as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal. In a post on X thanking British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Mandy Damari said “Hamas held Emily in UNRWA facilities and denied her access to medical treatment after shooting her twice”.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees told Ynet News the claims were “very grave allegations” that must be investigated.

Despite the rhetoric, US President Donald Trump will not be able to ethnically cleanse Gaza, argues University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer.

Mearsheimer tells The Bottom Line‘s host Steve Clemons that Arab governments fear “the risk of being overthrown by their populations” should they bend to Trump’s desire to “clean out” the Palestinian people in Gaza.

United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric has called for an end to Israel’s military operations around Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

The UN “remains deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in the northern area of the West Bank as Israeli operations in Jenin continue for the 11th day”, he told a news conference.

“Nearly all of Jenin refugee camp’s 20,000 residents have been displaced over the past two months in the context of security operations, both by the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli security forces,” Dujarric added.

The governor of North Sinai in Egypt on the other side of Rafah says the crossing is ready to receive wounded Palestinians from Gaza.

“This is a translation of the success of Egyptian policy,” Governor Khaled Megawer wrote on X. “We will begin receiving the wounded.”

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza announced that Palestinian patients would start evacuating Gaza on Saturday through Rafah for the first time since Israel seized it almost nine months ago. Gaza health authorities said the World Health Organization had equipped buses for the journey.

Before Israel captured Rafah in May last year, shutting the crossing to all civilians, Rafah represented the only escape valve from the besieged territory during Israel’s war on Gaza.

The leaders of several Arab countries will be meeting in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza ceasefire and ways to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) after it was banned by Israel, the Egyptian News Agency reports.

The meeting will be attended by the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, along with the secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the secretary-general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza, as well as severe restrictions it imposed on the flow of humanitarian aid and Israeli forces’ attacks on health facilities and targeting of healthcare workers, have led to “life-threatening danger” for pregnant women and babies, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a new report.

Despite the ongoing ceasefire, the precarious conditions under which women in Gaza are giving birth are unlikely to improve, the group noted in the report published this week.

Belkis Wille, HRW’s associate crisis, conflict and arms director, told Al Jazeera that “despite the fact that the ceasefire could provide an opportunity for the healthcare system in Gaza to begin to be restored, because of the laws coming into effect, banning the operations of UNRWA, the reality is that these coming weeks may lead to pregnant women and newborns suffering even more than they already have”.

Read the full story here.

The parents of two Israeli captives released from Gaza thanked US President Donald Trump for helping make the truce deal happen.

Shlomi Berger, Agam Berger’s father, said the family would always remember Trump’s “generosity and leadership”.

Yechi Yehoud, father of Arbel Yehoud also spoke outside the hospital where his daughter is being treated. He too thanked Trump and his special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who he said “knew how to ‘speak Trump’ in the Middle East”.

Witkoff made the Israeli government understand “there was no choice but to implement the agreement, release the hostages, and end the war”, Yechi Yehoud said.

Senior Hamas leader Ismail Radwan has called on mediators to ensure that Israel takes the truce deal into its second phase.

Radwan told Al Jazeera that Hamas remains committed to the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

He called on the international community to support Palestinians in Gaza who are in need of urgent relief after the Israeli military destroyed the health system.

The delegation of the State of Palestine in The Netherlands says Belize, Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa have formed The Hague Group, named after the Dutch city where the world’s international courts are headquartered.

The delegation said the “historical move of coordinated state action” is aimed at upholding the principles of international law and supporting “the realisation of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”.

The nations agreed to prevent the provisions of arms to Israel, including the transit of weapons through their territory, and support the work of the international courts and their rulings ordering Israel to refrain from acts under the Genocide Convention.

Today in the International City of Peace and Justice, representatives from the governments of Belize, Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal & South Africa inaugurated The Hague Group. 🧵1/8 pic.twitter.com/kyqe8i7yKS

— Palestine in NL (@PalMissionNL) January 31, 2025

An official at Meta’s popular WhatsApp chat service says Israeli spyware company Paragon Solutions targeted 90 of its users including journalists and civil society members.

The official told the Reuters news agency that WhatsApp sent Paragon a cease-and-desist letter following the hack. In a statement, WhatsApp said the company “will continue to protect people’s ability to communicate privately”.

Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton said the discovery of Paragon spyware targeting WhatsApp users “is a reminder that mercenary spyware continues to proliferate and as it does, so we continue to see familiar patterns of problematic use”.

Read the full story here.

The full implementation of the Israeli legislation banning UNRWA from operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank would have “catastrophic consequences on the lives and the future of Palestinian refugees”, the agency says.

“In the absence of any durable solution, Palestine refugees would continue to depend on UNRWA for basic services, including health and education,” agency spokesperson Juliette Touma said in a press briefing.

“In Gaza, UNRWA continues to be the backbone of the international humanitarian response.”

Touma added the UN agency had not received any official communication from Israeli authorities on how the legislation would be implemented. The visas of foreign staff working for the agency expired, and they had “no alternative” but to leave.

Remaining UNRWA Palestinian staff are facing an exceptionally hostile environment as the disinformation campaign against the agency continues. More than 270 UNWRA team members were killed in Gaza during the war, Touma said.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has issued a statement saying Belize submitted a formal bid to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, in a move that adds to international pressure on the Israeli government to end its atrocities in Gaza.

The Central American country joins a list of states accusing Israel of violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention, which was established in the aftermath of the Holocaust and requires all countries to prevent the recurrence of such crimes.

South Africa brought its case against Israel in December 2023 and such cases can take years to conclude.

PRESS RELEASE: On 30 January 2025, #Belize filed an application for permission to intervene and a declaration of intervention in the case #SouthAftrica v. #Israel, referring to Articles 62 and 63 of the #ICJ Statute. https://t.co/cNBFWnen2u pic.twitter.com/raJZLw0lor

— CIJ_ICJ (@CIJ_ICJ) January 31, 2025

While medical evacuations to receive treatment outside of Gaza are “urgent and necessary” for thousands of patients, they should not come “at the expense of efforts to rebuild and reinvigorate the Palestinian healthcare system,” James Smith, an emergency physician and global health expert, told Al Jazeera.

Prior to October 2023, the Palestinian medical system in Gaza was in “a pretty robust state despite the constraints imposed upon it by the long-standing Israeli occupation”.

But a lack of access to necessary medication, specialists, and the fact so many senior healthcare workers were killed or detained by Israel over 15 months of war has ravaged that system.

“The remaining workforce is of course completely exhausted, a very small number of Palestinian healthcare facilities in Gaza remain functional, even partially so. All of these things need to change in order to be able to deliver even a basic level of care,” said Smith.

“The amount of aid that is entering falls far, far below the level of need in Gaza,” he said, adding distribution also remains complex and uneven. “There is no comprehensive humanitarian programme.”

The Israeli military has stormed a wedding hall in Hebron causing panic among the guests, the Wafa news agency reports.

Videos from the scene show Israeli soldiers in fatigues arresting the groom, who was detained for about an hour before being released, according to Palestinian media reports.

قوات الاحتلال تعتقل عريساً من داخل حفل زفافه في الخليل. pic.twitter.com/AyqLiPhyEP

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) January 31, 2025