Palestine Refugees

Rafah crossing to reopen Monday for returnees to Gaza: Palestinian embassy

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will reopen Monday for people returning to Gaza, the Palestinian embassy in Egypt said Saturday, but the territory's sole gateway to the outside world will remain closed to people trying to leave. The number of people registering to return to Gaza is very big, Naji al-Naji, cultural counselor at the embassy, told The Associated Press without saying how many. There was no immediate comment from Israel. The Rafah crossing is the only one not controlled by Israel before the war. It has been closed since May 2024, when Israel took control of the Gaza side. A fully reopened crossing would make it easier for Gazans to seek medical treatment, travel internationally or visit family in Egypt, home to tens of thousands of Palestinians. Meanwhile, Gaza's ruins were being scoured for the dead, over a week into a ceasefire. Newly recovered bodies brought the Palestinian toll above 68,000, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The ministry, part o

Arab League condemns Benjamin Netanyahu's 'Greater Israel' remarks

The League considered these statements to be a violation of the sovereignty of Arab states and an attempt to undermine security and stability in the region

Israeli airstrikes kill 38 Palestinians as negotiation team heads to Qatar

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 38 Palestinians in Gaza, hospital officials said on Sunday, as Israel's military said it has struck over 100 targets in the embattled enclave in the past day. The strikes came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to fly to Washington for talks at the White House aimed at pushing forward ceasefire efforts. Separately, an Israeli official said the Israeli security Cabinet on Saturday night approved sending aid into the northern part of Gaza, where civilians are suffering from acute food shortages. The official declined to offer more details. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the decision with the media. In Yemen, a spokesperson for the Houthi rebel group announced in a prerecorded message that the group had launched ballistic missiles targeting Ben Gurion airport overnight. The Israeli military said these had been intercepted. President Donald Trump has floated a plan for

US reverses longtime stance, says UN Palestinian refugee agency can be sued

The Trump administration has decided that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees is not immune from being sued, reversing the US government's longstanding position that the organisation was protected from civil liability. The Justice Department revealed its new stance in a letter it filed in federal court in New York on Thursday as part of a lawsuit that aims to hold the agency, known as UNRWA, accountable for the Oct 7, 2023, deadly attack on Israel by Hamas. The change in position underscores the hardened perspective toward the agency under the Trump administration following allegations by Israel that some of the agency staff was involved in the Hamas rampage. The lawsuit, filed by families of some of the victims of the massacre, alleges that UNRWA had aided Hamas by, among other things, permitting weapons storage and deployment centres in its schools and medical clinics and by employing Hamas members. Lawyers for UNRWA have called the lawsuit absurd and have said in court filing

Israel controls half of Gaza as Palestinians pushed into smaller zones

Israel has dramatically expanded its footprint in the Gaza Strip since relaunching its war against Hamas last month. It now controls more than 50 per cent of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians into shrinking wedges of land. The largest contiguous area the army controls is around the Gaza border, where the military has razed Palestinian homes, farmland and infrastructure to the point of uninhabitability, according to Israeli soldiers and rights groups. This military buffer zone has doubled in size in recent weeks. Israel has depicted its tightening grip as a temporary necessity to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages taken during the October 7, 2023, attack that started the war. But the land Israel holds, which includes a corridor that divides the territory's north from south, could be used for wielding long-term control, human rights groups and Gaza experts say. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that even after Hamas is defeated, Israel will

US and Israel look to Africa for resettling Palestinians uprooted from Gaza

The US and Israel have reached out to officials of three East African governments to discuss using their territories as potential destinations for resettling Palestinians uprooted from the Gaza Strip under President Donald Trump's proposed postwar plan, American and Israeli officials say. The contacts with Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland reflect the determination by the US and Israel to press ahead with a plan that has been widely condemned and raised serious legal and moral issues. Because all three places are poor, and in some cases wracked by violence, the proposal also casts doubt on Trump's stated goal of resettling Gaza's Palestinians in a beautiful area. Officials from Sudan said they have rejected overtures from the US, while officials from Somalia and Somaliland told The Associated Press that they were not aware of any contacts. Under Trump's plan, Gaza's more than 2 million people would be permanently sent elsewhere. He has proposed t

Israel's delegation to visit Qatar for 'advancing' ceasefire negotiations

Israel said that it would send a delegation to Qatar on Monday in an effort to advance the negotiations around the ceasefire in Gaza, while Hamas reported positive signals in talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators on starting negotiations on the truce's delayed second phase. The statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office gave no details except to say it had accepted the invitation of US-backed mediators. Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua also gave no details. Talks on the second phase should have started a month ago. There was no immediate comment from the White House, which on Wednesday made the surprise confirmation of direct US talks with Hamas. Over the past week, Israel has pressed Hamas to release half of the remaining hostages in return for an extension of the first phase, which ended last weekend, and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce. Hamas is believed to have 24 living hostages and the bodies of 35 others. Israel last weekend cut off all

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu orders immediate enforcement of UNRWA law

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a relief and human development agency

Donald Trump says Palestinians won't have right of return in Gaza plan

Trump's Gaza plans are expected to be among the topics when Jordan's King Abdullah II holds a scheduled meeting with him in Washington on Tuesday

Palestinians fear repeat of 1948 expulsion in wake of Trump's Gaza remarks

Palestinians will mark this year the 77th anniversary of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now faced in the Gaza Strip particularly as President Donald Trump has suggested that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and that the United States take ownership of the enclave. Palestinians refer to their 1948 expulsion as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Some 700,000 Palestinians a majority of the prewar population fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's establishment. After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee ..

Turkiye will host 15 Palestinian prisoners released as part of ceasefire

Turkiye's state-run news agency says the country will host 15 Palestinian prisoners who were released and deported as part of the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. The Turkish intelligence organisation, MIT, is taking steps to facilitate the arrival of the 15 Palestinians from Egypt, the Anadolu Agency said Tuesday. Arrangements were made to ensure the Palestinians can live peacefully and securely in Turkiye, Anadolu said. The news agency did not name the Palestinians that Ankara was preparing to take in. Those who were deported have been convicted of serious crimes. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Sunday that Turkiye was prepared to support the Palestinian people, including providing medical treatment for those wounded in the conflict and taking in released prisoners who would be deported from the region. Unlike its Western allies, Turkiye does not consider Hamas to be a terror organisation. A strong critic of Israel's military actions in Gaza, Turkish Presi

Aid surging into Gaza after ceasefire, but is it reaching everyone?

Two weeks after the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel took effect, aid is flooding into the Gaza Strip, bringing relief to a territory suffering from hunger, mass displacement and devastation following 15 months of war. But Palestinians and aid workers say it's still an uphill battle to ensure the assistance reaches everyone. And looming large is the possibility that fighting will resume if the ceasefire breaks down after the six-week first phase. As part of the ceasefire agreement, Israel said it would allow 600 aid trucks into Gaza each day, a major increase. Israel estimates that at least 4,200 trucks have entered each week since the ceasefire took hold. Humanitarian groups say aid distribution is complicated by destroyed or damaged roads, Israeli inspections and the threat of unexploded bombs. On Saturday, Samir Abu Holi, 68, watched over a food-distribution point in Jabaliya, an area in northern Gaza razed to the ground during multiple Israeli offensives, the most recent of .

Arab nations reject Trump's proposal to shift Palestinians to Egypt, Jordan

The Israeli government hasn't officially addressed Trump's recent comments. Netanyahu is expected to meet with Trump at the White House on Tuesday

Israel lets Palestinians return to north Gaza for first time in over a year

Israel on Monday began allowing Palestinians to return to the heavily destroyed north of the Gaza Strip for the first time since the early weeks of the 15-month war with Hamas, in accordance with a fragile ceasefire. Thousands of Palestinians headed north after waiting for days to cross. Associated Press reporters saw people crossing the so-called Netzarim corridor shortly after 7 a.m. when the checkpoints were scheduled to open. The opening was delayed for two days over a dispute between Hamas and Israel, which said the militant group had changed the order of the hostages it released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Mediators resolved the dispute overnight. The ceasefire is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas and securing the release of dozens of hostages captured in the militants' Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which triggered the fighting. Israel ordered the wholescale evacuation of the north in the opening d

Trump's Gaza refugee idea falls flat with Jordan and confounds Senate ally

President Donald Trump's push to have Egypt and Jordan take in large numbers of Palestinian refugees from besieged Gaza fell flat with the Amman government and perplexed a congressional ally. Trump nonetheless planned to discuss the idea more on Sunday with Egypt's leader. Fighting that broke out in the territory after ruling Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 is paused due to a fragile ceasefire, but much of Gaza's population has been left largely homeless by an Israeli military campaign. Trump told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One that moving about a 1.5 million people away from Gaza might mean that "we just clean out that whole thing. Trump relayed what he told Jordan's King Abdullah when the two held a call earlier Saturday: I said to him, I'd love for you to take on more because I'm looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it's a mess.' The president said he would make a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during their conversation while .

Released Palestinian prisoners arrive to celebrations in West Bank

Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah celebrated the arrival of buses carrying dozens of prisoners released as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Israel said it released a total of 200 prisoners after Hamas freed four young, female Israeli soldiers. The prisoners include 120 who were serving life sentences after being convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis. Around 70 were released into Egypt. Hamas militants handed over four captive female Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross in Gaza City on Saturday after parading them in front of a crowd. Israel followed with the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners or detainees as part of the fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. The four Israeli soldiers smiled broadly as they waved and gave the thumbs-up from a stage in Gaza City's Palestine Square, militants on either side of them and a crowd of thousands watching before they were led off to waiting Red Cross vehicles. They were likely acting under duress, with previously

Shooting attack on bus carrying Israelis in occupied West Bank kills 3

A shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank has killed at least three people. Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service said at least six others were wounded in the attack on Monday. Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the ongoing war there.

MIT suspends Indian-origin student over pro-Palestinian article in magazine

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology alleges that the essay, titled 'On Pacifism', could be interpreted as encouraging violent protests on campus

Israeli strikes on Gaza's Muwasi kill at least 6, including 2 children

Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least six people overnight, including two young children who died in the tent where their family was sheltering, medical officials said Sunday. The strike in the Muwasi area, a sprawling tent camp housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people, also wounded the children's mother and their sibling, according to the nearby Nasser Hospital. An Associated Press reporter at the hospital saw the bodies. A separate strike in the southern city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, killed four men, according to hospital records. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its daily strikes across Gaza often kill women and children. The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around people 250 hostage. Some 100 captives are still being held inside Gaza, around

India releases second tranche of $2.5 mn to UNRWA for Palestinian refugees

India has provided financial support to the tune of $40 million for the UN Agency's core programmes and services