HAMAS said today it is prepared to release all remaining Israeli hostages in one go in return for a permanent truce, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed close aide Ron Dermer to lead talks on the second stage of the current ceasefire.

Negotiations on phase 2 were supposed to get under way on February 3 but have been repeatedly delayed, with many fearing Israel’s enthusiasm for US President Donald Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza will encourage it to resume its invasion.

Oxfam warned today that 80 per cent of Gaza’s sanitation and water networks, including all six main wastewater treatment plants, are damaged or destroyed, with waterborne diseases spreading rapidly.

And in the West Bank, UN refugee agency UNRWA said 40,100 Palestinians have fled their homes since Israel announced a crackdown on “militants” in the illegally occupied territory on January 21, two days after the Gaza ceasefire took hold. Israeli troops have attacked Jenin, Tulkarem, Far’a and Nur Shams across the West Bank. UNRWA said this represents the biggest forced displacement of Palestinians there since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in which Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

The Israeli Defence Forces say they are not ordering people to leave, but multiple displaced families report exactly that. Displaced mother Ayat Abdullah said she had been given seven minutes to leave her house. 

“I was sobbing, asking them ‘why do you want me to leave my house? My baby is upstairs, just let me get my baby,” she said. “I brought my children, thank God. Nothing else.”

UNRWA West Bank affairs director Roland Friedrich said infrastructure was also being destroyed. “This is unprecedented … we’re reaching a point where the [refugee] camps are becoming uninhabitable,” he said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Palestine’s plight should not be forgotten amid the renewed focus on the Ukraine war, calling for all major powers to affirm commitment to a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, and advising Palestinian factions to implement the Beijing Declaration that they would work in unity to achieve that.

Also today, Israel violated the ceasefire in Lebanon, killing a man in his parked car in the village of Aita al-Shaab.