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The Israeli military will hold drills in the occupied West Bank on Sunday.

The exercise will take place in the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.

Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich is expected to refuse to back further ceasefire negotiations during Monday's cabinet meeting, according to Israeli public broadcaster Kan.

Israel's negotiating team travelled to Qatar on Saturday ahead of negotiations over the second phase of the ceasefire with Hamas.

Israeli ministers are expected to meet early next week to agree a negotiating position ahead of the talks.

Smotrich has previously demanded the government restart the war on Gaza at the end of the current six-week truce.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has called for a permanent end to the war between Hamas and Israel and for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

"A viable, sovereign Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel is the only sustainable solution," he wrote in a post on X.

We must keep pushing for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza & the release of all hostages without delay.

We cannot go back to more death & destruction.

A viable, sovereign Palestinian State living side-by-side in peace & security with Israel is the only sustainable solution.

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres)

The Arab League is planning to hold a summit to discuss the latest developments in Palestine, according to the League's assistant secretary-general.

"The Arab stance is cohesive and everyone stands behind the Palestinians, with Egypt and Jordan in rejecting their displacement," Hossam Zaki told Egyptian state broadcaster Al-Qahera News.

No date has been set for the summit, he said.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has called on the international community to prevent Israel displacing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

الخارجية تطالب بموقف دولي حازم لاجبار الاحتلال وقف جريمة التطهير العرقي وتفريغ المخيمات من أبناء شعبنا

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls for a firm international stance to compel the occupation to stop the crime of and the displacement of our people from…

— State of Palestine - MFA 🇵🇸🇵🇸 (@pmofa)

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) requires "urgent support" as it continues to deliver services in the occupied West Bank despite Israel banning the organisation, its West Bank director wrote in a post on X.

Despite immense challenges, continues delivering essential aid, health services & protection for displaced from Jenin & Tulkarm camps. Urgent support is needed.

— Roland Friedrich (@GRFriedrich)

Israel will completely withdraw from the Netzarim corridor tonight, Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahronoth is reporting. 

Located in central Gaza, the corridor bifurcates the strip from east to west and has been held for over a year by Israeli forces, which established a number of outposts in the area.

The Israeli military pulled back from the western edge of the corridor two weeks ago under the ceasefire agreement, allowing hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.

An Israeli airstrike in eastern Lebanon on Saturday killed six people and injured two others, according to Lebanon's state news agency.

The attack reportedly occurred in a town close to the Lebanon-Syria border.

The Israeli military said earlier it had targeted what it said was a Hezbollah weapons site in the Bekaa.

The UAE condemned on Saturday the "unacceptable and provocative" statements by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who suggested establishing a Palestinian state on Saudi Arabia's territory.

Emirati minister of state Khalifa Shaheen Al Marar expressed "full solidarity" with Riyadh and said that the country's sovereignty is a "red line" for the UAE.

Israel's negotiating team will not start "serious" discussions about the second phase of the ceasefire until after the Israeli cabinet meets on Monday, according to Israeli media.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the negotiating team to travel to Doha today in what Israeli officials describe as a "symbolic warm-up drive" before ministers agree on a negotiating position, Walla reports.

"There will be no serious negotiations on the second stage of the deal until after the cabinet meeting," the outlet quotes two officials as saying.

Negotiations were supposed to start in the Qatari capital on Monday but Netanyahu refused to send the team until after his meeting with Donald Trump.

Iran is ready to negotiate with the United States but not under the "maximum pressure" strategy of President Donald Trump, Tehran's chief diplomat said today.

"The lifting of sanctions requires negotiations, but not within the framework of a 'maximum pressure' policy, because it would not be a negotiation but a form of surrender," said Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in a statement published on Telegram.

The majority of Palestinian prisoners released by Israel are suffering from health complications due to the abuse endured in Israeli prisons, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club said today.

Some of the detainees were sent to hospital for treatment following their release earlier today, it said.

Those released from prison under the ceasefire deal have said they were subjected to physical abuse, torture and starvation, it added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a negotiating team to be dispatched to Doha for talks on the ongoing Gaza truce, his office said Saturday, following the completion of a fifth hostage-prisoner swap.

"With the completion of the release phase, Prime Minister Netanyahu has instructed the dispatch of a negotiation delegation to Doha to discuss technical details of the agreement," his office said in statement, adding that on his return to Israel from Washington, Netanyahu will "hold a security cabinet meeting regarding negotiations for the second phase of the hostage release deal".

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned Hamas on Saturday for "forcing" the three latest Israeli hostages freed by the Palestinian militant group to speak before large crowds of its supporters.

Though welcoming their release, Baerbock said it was "intolerable that Hamas has again shown the three men in public... and forced them to give 'interviews'," in a post on social network Bluesky.

One of the hostages freed, 56-year-old Ohad Ben Ami, has dual Israeli-German citizenship.

His wife Raz was also taken hostage in Hamas's 7 October attack. She was freed after 54 days.

Baerbock said Raz Ben Ami, also an Israeli-German national, was relieved that "14 months after her own release, she can hold her husband in her arms again".

The US embassy to Lebanon said on Saturday it welcomed the new Lebanese government and hoped it would implement reforms and rebuild state institutions.

Lebanon formed a new cabinet on Saturday, following unusually direct US intervention in the process and in a step intended to bring the country closer to accessing reconstruction funds following a devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah.

(Reuters)

The Lebanese army said it had responded to incoming fire from across the Syrian border on Saturday, two days after the new authorities in Damascus said they had launched operations against smugglers in the area.

Following directives from President Joseph Aoun, "the army command issued orders to military units deployed on the northern and eastern borders to respond to the sources of fire launched from Syrian territory," it said. "These units have begun responding with appropriate weapons, in light of recent clashes".

Unexploded bombs and shells buried in the ruins of Gaza could kill or injure thousands of people in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory in the future, an aid organisation has warned.

The volume of ordnance dropped on Gaza during 15 months of conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas was "mind-boggling", said Simon Elmont, a demining expert with Handicap International - Humanity & Inclusion.

"The amount of ordnance that has been fired is an enormous quantity," Elmont told AFP, adding that between nine and 13 percent of munitions fail to explode on initial impact.

"It is going to be tens of thousands of unexploded ordnance, that's for sure," he added.

He said that the contamination level in Gaza was massive, and much of the ordnance "lies mainly within the rubble and underneath the surface of Gaza".

"The potential is for hundreds, if not thousands, of incidents where people potentially are injured. And unfortunately, some of those injuries will be fatal," Elmont said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dispatched a delegation to Doha, Qatar, for the next phase of ceasefire talks, Israeli media reported on Saturday. 

(Reuters)

A senior Hamas official on Saturday urged Arab countries not to recognise Israel, as Saudi Arabia is courted by the United States to join a small group of its neighbours in normalising ties.

"We call on them not to normalise," Hamas political bureau member Basem Naim told AFP. "We call on all Arab countries, both those currently normalising and those considering normalisation, to step back from this."

The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Saturday that at least 48,181 people had been killed in the enclave since the beginning of Israel's war on the enclave.

Since the start of the ceasefire the confirmed number of dead published by the Gaza health ministry has continued to rise daily as bodies are discovered under the rubble, victims are identified or people die from wounds sustained earlier in the war.

Over the last 48 hours, 26 deaths have been recorded and more than 570 earlier deaths had been confirmed, according to the ministry.

It said a total of 111,638 people have been wounded during the war, which began on 7 October 2023.

A senior Hamas official told AFP on Saturday that Israel's "lack of commitment" to the Gaza ceasefire has put it in danger of collapse.

Israel's "procrastination and lack of commitment in implementing the first phase... certainly exposes this agreement to danger and thus it may stop or collapse," said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas's political bureau.

The Israeli military said it carried out an air strike on Saturday targeting a weapons depot used by Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Syria.

Israeli "fighter jets conducted an intelligence-based strike on a weapons storage facility belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation in the area of Deir Ali in southern Syria", the military said in a statement.

Lebanon formed a new government on Saturday, Lebanon's presidency announced, following unusually direct US intervention in the process and bringing the country closer to accessing reconstruction funds following last year's devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The presidency said it would be a 24-member cabinet. It was formed after more than three weeks of talks with rival political parties in Lebanon - where government posts are parceled out according to sect - and days of deadlock over the Shia Muslim ministers, usually named by Iran-backed Hezbollah and its ally Amal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may agree to withdraw Israeli forces from Gaza if Hamas and all those connected to the organisation leave the enclave, according to a report from Haaretz.

According to an Israeli source speaking to the publication that unless Hamas dissolves itself in the enclave Israel will either resume the war or prolong the first stage of the ceasefire deal without a long-term solution.

Additionally, the source said that Trump said the US would back a resumption of fighting if no agreement is reached. Such guarantees came also came from the previous Biden administration, the source added.

Israel's prison service confirmed it had released 183 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday during the fifth exchange of the Gaza ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

It said in a statement that "183 terrorists were transferred from several prisons across the country", before they "were released" to the occupied West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza.

Hamas accused Israel of adopting a policy it described as the "slow killing" of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails after seven inmates freed on Saturday were admitted to hospital.

"The fact that seven prisoners were transferred to hospitals immediately after their release... reflects the systematic assaults and mistreatment of our prisoners by the Israeli prison authorities," Hamas said in a statement, adding that it was "part of the policy of the extremist Israeli government, which pursues the slow killing of prisoners inside the prisons".

Seven Palestinian prisoners who were among those freed by Israel on Saturday as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal were admitted to hospitals upon arriving in Ramallah, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club told AFP.

"All the prisoners who were released today are in need of medical care, treatment, and examinations as a result of the brutality they were subjected to during the past months. There are seven who were transferred to the hospital," said Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the NGO.

The Palestinian Red Crescent confirmed that seven inmates had been admitted to hospitals.

Israeli forces have withdrawn from the town of Tammun following a seven day assault on the town, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa citing the mayor of the town.

Egypt condemned on Saturday as "irresponsible" statements by Israeli officials suggesting establishing a Palestinian state on Saudi territory, according to a statement by Egypt's foreign ministry.

The foreign ministry said it considered the suggestion a "direct infringement of Saudi sovereignty", adding that the kingdom's security was a "red line for Egypt".

(Reuters)

A bus carrying a group of Palestinian prisoners freed by Israel in exchange for Gaza hostages arrived on Saturday in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, an AFP journalist said.

Part of the fifth exchange under a fragile Gaza truce, the released inmates stepped off the bus one by one to a cheering crowd who had gathered since the morning in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority.

A bus carrying freed Palestinians departed Israel's Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank on Saturday in an exchange for hostages released by Hamas in Gaza, an AFP journalist reported.

The three Israeli captives were handed over earlier in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah in the fifth such swap as part of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that came into effect on 19 January.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that the images of three freed hostages in Gaza were "shocking".

"The shocking images that we have seen today will not go unaddressed," the office said in a statement after Hamas militants brought the three pale-looking hostages onto a stage before handing them over to the Red Cross.

Three Israeli hostages freed by Hamas militants on Saturday reached Israeli soil, the military said, part of the fifth exchange under a Gaza ceasefire deal.

"A short while ago, accompanied by [military] and ISA [security agency] forces, the returning hostages - Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami, and Eli Sharabi - crossed the border into Israeli territory," the military said in a statement, adding they are due to be reunited with family at a reception point in southern Israel.

An Israeli campaign group for the families of hostages held in Gaza condemned the "disturbing images" of three emaciated captives as they were forced to speak on stage Saturday ahead of their release by Hamas militants.

"The disturbing images from the release of Ohad, Eli, and Or serve as yet another stark and painful evidence that leaves no room for doubt - there is no time to waste for the hostages! We must get them all out, down to the very last hostage. Now!" the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with acting Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya and two other leaders of the Palestinian group in Tehran on Saturday, Iranian state media reported.

It gave no details about the meeting and only posted photos of Khamenei meeting al-Hayya, Mohammed Darwish, head of Hamas' leadership council, and top Hamas official Nizar Awadallah.

(Reuters)

Hamas handed over three Israeli captives to the Red Cross in Gaza on Saturday as part of the fifth such exchange swap under an ongoing ceasefire with Israel, an AFP journalist reported.

Hostages Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami were released after they were brought onto a stage in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah by masked Hamas militants.

Israel's prison system is preparing to release 183 Palestinian prisoners in the fifth exchange in Gaza's ceasefire. According to Times of Israel, one group is set to be released from Keziot Prison in southern Israel, while another is set to be released from Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank.

The report notes that seven prisoners are set to be exiled as part of their release. Of the 183, 111 were detained in Gaza during the war and 72 are from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Israeli army has announced that it is ready to receive three Israeli captives set for release from the Gaza Strip by Hamas in the firth exchange of Gaza's ceasefire.

Helicopters are set to take the captives to hospitals in central Israel after a check up near the Gaza border.

Vehicles from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have arrived in Deir el-Balah to facilitate the exchange of three  Israeli captives held by Hamas in Gaza, footage broadcast from ������'s affiliate Alaraby TV shows.