Updates: Israel steps up West Bank raids; Netanyahu accused of sabotage

To learn more about how people in Jenin face an uncertain future as Israel attacks the occupied West Bank, read this feature from the besieged Palestinian refugee camp.

For a glimpse of how Gaza families are dealing with a severe water crisis in the destroyed north, see here.

And to understand whether Arab nations can stop US President Trump’s displacement proposal for 2.3 million civilians in Gaza, watch this episode.

We’ll be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s main developments:

• A senior Hamas official accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “intentionally sabotaging” the Gaza ceasefire deal after Israel called off the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
• Israeli forces have arrested at least 365 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during Israel’s large-scale incursion, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said.
• Palestinians say the real intention of Israel’s ongoing military attack on the territory appears to be a large-scale, permanent displacement of the population by destroying homes and making it impossible for them to stay.
• There can be no other solution than a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said.
• Friedrich Merz, who is expected to be Germany’s next chancellor, says he would make sure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could visit Germany despite an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court.

The European Union raised with Israel its ongoing raids and forced evacuations in the occupied West Bank as well as the fragile ceasefire in Gaza at a meeting with the country’s foreign minister in Brussels.

“We are closely watching developments and cannot hide our concern when it comes to the West Bank,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

Israel said on Sunday that its troops would remain for many months in refugee camps in the northern West Bank after 40,000 Palestinians living there were displaced by an intensifying, weeks-long military incursion.

The expansion of Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank comes as tensions surge over a fragile truce deal in Gaza, which has largely halted more than 16 months of devastating war.

Hamas freed six Israelis on Saturday in the last scheduled release of living captives. In total, 33 living Israelis and bodies were to be handed over during the first phase of the ceasefire deal.

The final four sets of remains are expected to be returned in the coming days. However, Israel reneged on freeing 620 Palestinian prisoners as scheduled on Saturday – and the agreement is now in serious jeopardy.

Below are some fast facts on the gruelling war:

• Hamas-led fighters abducted 251 people in the October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that triggered the war.
• At least 48,346 Palestinians in Gaza – mostly women and children – have been killed in the ensuing conflict. About 10,000 are buried in the rubble and presumed dead.
• There are still 62 captives in Gaza, who were taken from Israel, 35 of whom Israel has declared to be dead.
• Israel is supposed to free nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners during the truce’s first phase.
• Eight captives have been rescued alive by Israeli forces.
• Thirteen captives held in Gaza are soldiers, seven of whom Israel has declared to be dead.

With a new president and prime minister, a new chapter is being written for Lebanon; a new story many hope will signal real change.

There are few places on Earth where politics and geography collide more catastrophically than they have in Lebanon. As various countries have vied for influence, the Lebanese people have repeatedly faced the consequences.

Watch the video below:

Israeli forces have blown up an agricultural facility in Qabatiya town, south of Jenin, the Wafa news agency reports.

Citing local sources, Wafa said a loud explosion was heard, followed by columns of smoke rising from the Jabal al-Zakat area. No injuries were reported.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced across the West Bank since the Israeli military launched its heightened offensive last month. The operation began shortly after a Gaza ceasefire deal came into effect on January 19.

Jenin, occupied West Bank – Israel has conducted near-daily raids here since 2022 – its stated aim being the weakening of armed Palestinian resistance groups.

Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, Israel has increased the deadly force it employs in the West Bank using attack helicopters, drones and now tanks.

This latest intensification of violence in the Jenin refugee camp began on January 21, but Israeli forces have also attacked elsewhere, including Qabatiya and Tulkarem.

On Sunday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said he instructed the military “to prepare for a long stay” in the cleared Palestinian camps.

Read the full story here.

Israel has now banned another European Union parliamentarian from entering the country. The government gave no reasons why Lynn Boylan, who chairs the European Parliament EU-Palestine delegation, was denied entry.

“This utter contempt from Israel is the result of the international community failing to hold them to account,” Boylan 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.”

Boylan said she planned to meet with Palestinian Authority officials, representatives of civil society organisations, and people living under Israeli occupation.

She is a member of the Sinn Fein party in Ireland, which has been among the most vocal countries in criticising the Israeli government over its treatment of Palestinians. Earlier, EU lawmaker Rima Hassan was also refused entry at Ben-Gurion airport and ordered to return to Europe.

Palestinians say the real intention of Israel’s ongoing military attack on the Palestinian territory appears to be a large-scale, permanent displacement of the population by destroying homes and making it impossible for them to stay.

“Israel wants to erase the camps and the memory of the camps, morally and financially. They want to erase the name of refugees from the memory of the people,” said Jenin refugee camp resident Hassan al-Katib, 85.

Al-Katib lived in the camp with 20 children and grandchildren before abandoning his home and all his possessions during the monthlong Israeli incursion. An estimated 40,000 people have been forced from their homes in the occupied West Bank.

On the third day of the ongoing polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip, about 547,200 children were given the shot, the UN’s children’s agency says.

The drive has now reached 90 percent of its intended target, UNICEF said.

Polio can cause paralysis and death in children. The first vaccination drive in Gaza started in September 2024, after a 10-month-old was paralysed by polio and experts warned the virus could quickly spread across Gaza and even to Israel and other places.

On the third day of the polio vaccination campaign in the #GazaStrip, more than 547,200 #children have been vaccinated—reaching 90% of the target.@UNICEF, together with @palestinemoh, @UNRWA, @WHOoPt & partners are working tirelessly #ForEveryChild, Health. pic.twitter.com/18PRRDPUjX

— UNICEF Palestine (@UNICEFpalestine) February 24, 2025

Israeli forces raided the village of Wadi al-Far’a, 6km (2.8 miles) south of Tubas, in the occupied West Bank’s northeast, the Wafa news agency reports.

Israeli troops entered the village from the Hamra checkpoint in military vehicles.

In a separate report, the Palestinian news agency said Israeli settlers installed surveillance cameras near the Palestinian communities of Ein al-Hilweh and al-Hamma, also in the Tubas governorate.

Correction, 25/02/2025, 09:30 GMT: A previous version of this post stated that the Israeli army is setting up a base in the Jenin refugee camp. It has since been edited to say that Israeli troops were seen preparing for a long-term stay.

The Israeli army has demolished large areas of the now virtually empty Jenin refugee camp and appears to be making preparations for a long-term stay, a local official says.

“Jenin is a repeat of what happened in Jabalia,” Basheer Matahen, a spokesperson for the Jenin municipality, told Reuters referring to the refugee camp in northern Gaza that was levelled 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 that housed descendants of Palestinians who fled their homes or were driven out in the 1948 war in what Palestinians call the Nakba or catastrophe during the establishment of Israel.

Army engineering teams could be seen making preparations for a long-term stay, bringing water tanks and generators to a special area of almost 1 acre (0.4 hectares) in size, Matahen said.

No comment was immediately available from the Israeli military.

Al Jazeera is reporting from Jordan because it is banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank by the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is in a difficult place because, politically, it’s quite unpopular, and when it comes to any sort of leverage, it has it’s next to none.

Several statements have been released from the Foreign Ministry and from the office of the presidency condemning what Israel is doing, saying it wants to instil genocide across the occupied territory, similar to what they did in Gaza.

We are seeing parallel sorts of manoeuvres by the military of destroying residential apartment blocks, completely levelling homes and denying people access to the areas they live in.

But the PA is in a tough place. It doesn’t really have much power or leverage when it comes to Israeli army raids. So if Israeli troops establish a permanent presence, the PA isn’t really going to be able to do much.

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate former US President Joe Biden for possible complicity in war crimes related to Israel’s war on Gaza.

DAWN also asked the ICC to investigate former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The three should be investigated “for their accessorial roles in aiding and abetting, as well as intentionally contributing to, Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza”, DAWN said in a 172-page report to the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan.

Their alleged support includes at least $17.9bn of weapons transfers, intelligence sharing, targeting assistance, diplomatic protection and official endorsement of Israeli crimes, “despite knowledge of how such support had and would substantially enable grave abuses”, the document said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar says he does not want his country’s relationship with Europe to be “held hostage” by views on the conflict with Palestinians.

Saar held talks with senior European officials in Brussels as the bloc considered a role in the reconstruction of Gaza following last month’s fragile ceasefire deal.

“Israeli-EU relations must not be held hostage to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Saar said in a news conference.

Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, outlined a range of worries about the situation in war-battered Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

“We have constantly called on all parties, including Israel, to respect international humanitarian law,” she said, adding that Europe “cannot hide our concern when it comes to the West Bank”.

Israel voted against a UN General Assembly resolution designating Russia as “an aggressor state” while demanding the withdrawal of its troops from Ukraine.

Israel was among 18 countries including the United States, Russia, and North Korea to vote against it.

For the past two years, Israel voted in favour of UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as did the US under the Biden administration.

The United States for decades has repeatedly voted against any resolutions denouncing Israel for its decades-long attacks and occupation of Palestinian territory.

Adoption of today's UNGA resolution on an early & just peace in Ukraine confirms the importance of upholding the UN Charter & respecting all countries' territorial integrity & sovereignty.

Peace in Ukraine. In line with the Charter.

✅ 93 votes in favor
❌ 18 votes against pic.twitter.com/JYp7d5K0Sv

— 🇪🇺EU at UN-NY (@EUatUN) February 24, 2025

Friedrich Merz, who is expected to be Germany’s next chancellor, says he would make sure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can visit Germany despite an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court.

“I have promised myself that we will find a way to ensure that he can visit Germany and leave again without being arrested,” Merz said from Berlin.

Read the full story here.