Rafah border crossing with Egypt will reopen on Saturday to 'allow evacuation of wounded' | LIVE

Washington

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to meet twice in Washington on Tuesday, once for a work meeting and then for an informal dinner, Axios reports. The work meeting is expected around noon Eastern Time (1700 GMT) and then the two leaders will dine with their spouses, an anonymous source told the American news outlet. The meeting has been confirmed by their respective governments.

Family members of hostages in Gaza requested that the government-appointed official for prisoners and missing persons, Gal Hirsch, join Netanyahu's diplomatic team in Washington, but their request was denied or they received no response, a source familiar with the details told Haaretz.

Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was just in the region, where he visited Gaza, the first time an American official has done so in 15 years. In an interview with Axios at the tail end of his trip, he told the outlet he believes rebuilding the devastated Strip could take between 10-15 years.  A U.N. assessment released mid January estimates that clearing the 50 million tonnes of rubble alone could take 21 years.

Occupied West Bank

According to testimony gathered by Middle East Eye, Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons with life sentences were completely cut off from the outside world, forbidden from any contact.

Sameh al-Shoubaki, a 45-year-old former prisoner from the West Bank city of Qalqilya, told the U.K.-based outlet, "To be a prisoner under a life sentence is to be living in purgatory but without dying." Shoubaki was released in yesterday's hostage exchange after spending 22 years behind bars.

Israeli forces demolished his family home a year after his arrest, and his brothers were also detained. He was kept in solitary confinement during his imprisonment.

Gaza

Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt is to reopen Saturday following a fourth exchange of hostages and prisoners under a truce agreement, a Hamas official and a source with knowledge of the discussions told AFP.

"The mediators informed Hamas of Israel's approval to open Rafah crossing tomorrow, Saturday, after the completion of the fourth batch of prisoner exchange," the Hamas official said, adding that injured Palestinians would be evacuated from the territory at the crossing, "as per the Gaza cease-fire and hostage release agreement."

The Rafah border crossing with Egypt was one of the main entry points into the Palestinian territory and a vital conduit for aid, but the border has been closed since Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side in May last year, constricting even further the chances of Palestinians in dire need receiving basic supplies.

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Gaza

Thousands of people demonstrated at the Rafah border crossing on Friday, an eyewitness told Reuters, in a rare state-sanctioned protest against a proposal earlier this week by U.S. President Donald Trump for Egypt and Jordan to accept Gazan refugees.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday rejected the idea that Egypt would facilitate the displacement of Gazans and said Egyptians would take to the streets to express their disapproval. "We say no to any displacement of Palestine or Gaza at the expense of Egypt, on the land of Sinai," said Sinai resident Gazy Saeed.

Egyptian security sources told Reuters that parties close to Sisi had sent buses to ferry protesters to the border crossing, where civilian movement is typically restricted, but said the outpouring expressed public and not just leadership disapproval of Trump's proposal.

A cousin of deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, seen as having orchestrated the repression in the southern Syrian city of Deraa, the starting point of the 2011 uprising, has been arrested, according to an announcement from the official Syrian agency Sana. Atef Najib, former head of political security in Deraa, was arrested in Latakia, on the coast in western Syria, the agency said, citing a senior security official.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed the situation in Syria during a phone call, a Turkish foreign ministry source has said, cited by Reuters. According to this source, the two foreign ministers underlined the support Ankara and Moscow wish to provide to Syria's political unity and the importance of an inclusive political transition process.

⚡The crossing between Rafah, in the far south of the Gaza Strip, and Egypt is due to open on Saturday following the exchange of prisoners between Israel and Hamas, a Hamas source and another close to the negotiations told AFP.

“The mediators have informed Hamas of Israel's decision to open the Rafah crossing,” said the Hamas official. The second source, close to the talks, said the decision would allow the evacuation of the wounded, “in accordance with the cease-fire agreement.”

The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad in Palestine, have announced the death of Rabih Ali Said, aged 25, a fighter with the “Mahmoud al-Majzoub Martyr Battalion in Lebanon, killed on the borders of occupied Palestine while taking part in the fight against the aggression against Lebanon.”

⚡Jordanian national carrier Royal Jordanian has announced that it has resumed flights between Amman and Damascus, interrupted for 13 years, reports AFP. After an initial flight on Friday, the company said it would initially operate four flights a week to the Syrian capital.

“The company plans to increase to one flight a day next April,” Royal Jordanian CEO Samer Al-Majali said in a statement.

International flights resumed on Jan. 7 at Damascus International Airport, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8. Qatar Airways was the first international airline to resume flights to Damascus on Jan. 7, followed by Emirates and Turkish Airlines.

⚡ Israel is to release 90 detainees on Saturday, according to a Palestinian NGO, as part of a prisoner exchange with Hamas, AFP reports.

Dozens of leading Syrian intellectuals have launched an online petition calling for the restoration of all freedoms in the new Syria and the election of a constituent assembly, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, reports AFP.

“The era of tyranny is over,” say the 65 signatories, writers, jurists, filmmakers and human rights activists from the diaspora and living in Syria.

They call for the “restoration of fundamental public freedoms, in particular freedom of assembly, demonstration, expression and belief,” as well as the right to form independent parties and trade unions.

The first medical evacuations since the Gaza cease-fire are expected to take place on Saturday via Rafah for 50 patients, announced the WHO quoted by Reuters.

According to our correspondent, one of the strikes carried out by the Israeli air force in the Bekaa region cut the main road linking Lebanon and Syria, at the level of Tfayl on the Lebanese side and Assal al-Ward in the western Qalamoun.

The missile launched there created a crater seven meters deep and 10 meters in diameter, and damaged electricity poles and cables between the two countries.

MP Ibrahim Moussawi, of the Hezbollah bloc, condemned the Israeli strikes as a “serious violation and blatant aggression that contravenes the provisions of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701”, on which the ceasefire agreement is based.

He denounced the fact that “no serious and responsible action” is being taken by the international “guarantors” of the agreement, namely France and the United States, which demonstrates “their indifference or impotence”.

Moussawi also called on the Lebanese state, i.e. President Joseph Aoun, the government and the army, to “intervene immediately by all available means to put a swift end to Israel's criminal anarchy.”

The Israeli air force carried out a total of six raids this morning, according to our correspondent in the Bekaa.

Five raids were carried out in two stages at dawn on the Lebanese-Syrian border, and a sixth raid was carried out on the Lebanese-Syrian border north of Hermel.

The two people killed in the Israeli strike on the Janta crossing on the Lebanese-Syrian border are Abbas al Moussawi, from Nabi Sheet (Baalbeck) in the Northern Bekaa, and Wissam al Bourji, from Ali al-Nahri (Zahle) in the Bekaa, according to our correspondent, Sarah Abdallah.

The 10 wounded were taken to the Rayak government hospital.

Israel confirmed it had received a list of hostages to be released on Saturday, shortly after it was published by Hamas' military spokesperson, according to AFP.

An unexploded rocket was found in a field of olive trees on the outskirts of the town of al-Haysheh in the Lebanese-Syrian border area of Wadi Khaled. The rocket could have come from Israeli planes which bombed the border crossing points at dawn today, reports our correspondent in North Lebanon, Michel Hallak.

The Lebanese Army has set up a security cordon at the scene, pending the arrival of a military expert to identify and neutralize the missile.

⚡Hamas publishes on Telegram the names of three Israeli hostages due to be released on Saturday. They are Ofer Calderon, Yarden Bibas and Keith Segal.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun discussed the situation in southern Lebanon this morning with acting army commander-in-chief Hassane Audi and army intelligence director Tony Kahwaji, according to the presidency's X account.

“Hezbollah's launch of a reconnaissance drone into Israeli airspace yesterday [Thursday], which was intercepted by the air force, constitutes a violation of the agreements reached between Israel and Lebanon,” Israeli army Arabic-speaking spokesperson Avichay Adraee stressed on X. He added that the Israeli army "is still deployed and will continue to act to eliminate any threat to the State of Israel."

He added that the Israeli army “is still deployed in South Lebanon and will continue to act to eliminate any threat to the State of Israel.”

⚡ The Health Ministry announced two killed and 10 wounded in the Israeli raid on Janta, east of Baalbeck, at dawn.

⚡ Air France announces plans to resume services between Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Beirut from Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025, initially with 5 flights a week. The airline adds in a press release that it will gradually resume its usual flight schedule with 7 flights a week to this destination, operated by Airbus A350 and A330 aircraft.

Transavia France, the Air France-KLM Group's low-cost subsidiary, plans to resume services between Paris-Orly and Beirut from Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, initially with 3 flights a week. The airline will gradually increase the number of frequencies to up to 6 flights a week from March 3, 2025, to this destination, operated by Boeing 737-800s, the press release points out.

“This resumption, as well as the continuation of operations, will remain subject to regular assessment of the situation on the ground,” the company continues, adding that "the Air France group is monitoring developments in the Middle East in real time."

The United States killed a leader of al-Qaeda's Syrian branch, Hurras al-Din, overnight in Syria, which has just announced its dissolution, announced the U.S. Middle East Military Command (Centcom).

“On Jan. 30, Centcom forces conducted a precision strike in northwestern Syria, targeting and killing Muhammad Salah al-Za'bir, a senior leader of the Hurras al-Din terrorist organization under el-Qaeda,” Centcom said on X.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which is based in the U.K. but has an extensive network of sources in Syria, the man was killed when the car he was in was targeted by a drone on the road leading from Sarmad to Idlib, in the northwest of the country.

“They'll do it,” Donald Trump assured on Thursday about Jordan and Egypt taking in displaced Palestinians, even though these two countries reject the transfer evoked by the American president, reports AFP.

“We're doing a lot for them, and they're going to do it,” the Republican president told a reporter at the White House when asked how he could get Amman and Cairo to change their position, without elaborating.

Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and Jordan's King Abdullah II categorically rejected Donald Trump's idea of transferring Palestinians from Gaza to their countries on Wednesday.

“The deportation and displacement of Palestinians from their land is an injustice in which we will not take part,” said the former. The latter stressed in a statement “Jordan's firm position on the need to keep Palestinians on their land and allow them to obtain their legitimate rights, in line with the two-state solution.”

The Israeli army also bombed Wadi al-Wawiyat, an illegal crossing point used for smuggling from the Syrian side of the border, opposite the Wadi Khaled border area, reports our correspondent in North Lebanon, Michel Hallak.

One of the sites targeted by the Israeli army contained an “underground infrastructure, used for the development and manufacture of weapons,” said the army, which also struck facilities “on the Syrian-Lebanese border used by Hezbollah to traffic weapons to Lebanon.”

Syria's interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa promised last night to hold a “national dialogue conference” and said he wanted to preserve “civil peace” in a country ravaged by 13 years of war, in his first address to the nation.

The Israeli army announced this morning that it had struck several Hezbollah targets in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley overnight, despite a cease-fire in force since late November.

“During the night [Thursday] ... the Israeli Air Force struck multiple Hezbollah terrorist targets in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley that presented a threat,” the army said in a message on social networks, claiming to remain "committed" to the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli air force carried out four strikes in Janta in the Baalbeck district at dawn, reports our correspondent in the Bekaa Sarah Abdallah. These attacks took place despite the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah that has been in force since the end of November.

According to our correspondent's information, the four strikes targeted crossing points between Lebanon and Syria at Janta. Israeli aircraft also crossed the sound barrier on several occasions.

The last Israeli strike in the Bekaa, apart from the regular bombardment of southern Lebanon, dates back to Jan. 12. On that day, strikes targeted the Janta and Kasr border crossings. Other strikes were also carried out in the south.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of events in the Middle East, including the 13th day of the truce in Gaza, which has brought to an end, at least temporarily, a 471-day war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

We will also be following the latest developments in Lebanon, where the period of application of the terms of the cease-fire agreed on Nov. 27 between Israel and Hezbollah has been extended by 22 days. We will also be covering the situation in Syria, almost two months after the fall of the Assad regime.