Israel’s war on Gaza updates: No end to war without ‘victory’ – Netanyahu

This live page is now closed. Follow along with our ongoing coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.

To learn more about the Israelis blocking trucks carrying humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, watch this video.

To learn more about Antony Blinken’s efforts to seal a Gaza truce deal, read this piece.

And you can always read more about the conflict here.

We will be closing the live blog soon. Here’s a review of the day’s main events.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will not end the war and will push on until “total victory” over Hamas, in remarks that seem to cast doubt on the likelihood of a truce deal with Hamas, one day after the group sent back a proposal with comments outlining the contours of a potential agreement.
• The US carried out a drone strike in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing a Kataib Hezbollah commander as the US continues to carry out strikes against armed groups aligned with Iran.
• UN officials have continued to sound the alarm over an anticipated Israeli assault on Rafah, where over one million displaced Palestinians are hemmed in and living in catastrophic humanitarian conditions with nowhere to flee.
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that there is “space” for a potential truce agreement following Netanyahu’s remarks, stating that he has told Israel that Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza remain too high. However, the US has done little to rein in its Israeli ally amid continuous reports of attacks on civilians.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reports that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government pledged to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that there would be no operation on the Philadelphi Corridor, which runs parallel to the Gaza Strip’s southern border, without coordination with Egypt.

Late last year, Israel said it wanted to take control of the entirety of the border area between Gaza and Egypt, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a news conference that the corridor “must be in our hands” and shut down to ensure the security outcome Tel Aviv desires.

The comments have strained already troubled relations between Israel and Egypt.

The Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition, a social media watchdog group, has sent letters to Meta, X, Telegram and TikTok drawing attention to the proliferation of dehumanising rhetoric against Palestinians on their platforms amid the war on Gaza.

“While platforms always have a significant role and responsibility to ensure the combating of hate speech and incitement online, this responsibility becomes even more paramount when there’s plausibility of genocide,” the statement reads, citing the International Court of Justice’s recent decision, ordering Israel to take actions to prevent genocide during its war on Gaza.

“Online platforms have previously been implicated in fuelling genocidal violence online, such as in the cases of Myanmar and Ethiopia.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has penned a letter to US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, calling on him to reject the definiton of antisemitism promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA), which has been widely accused of defining criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

Palestinian rights advocates warn that adopting the IHRA definition could be used to silence criticism of Israel in the name of combatting anti-Jewish bigotry.

“This definition of antisemitism conflates protected political speech with unprotected discrimination, and enshrining it into regulation will chill the exercise of First Amendment rights and risk undermining the agency’s legitimate and important efforts tocombat discrimination,” the letter reads.

“In other countries that have adopted this definition, universities have routinely censored speech in a manner that would be unconstitutional if conducted by an American public university,” it adds.

The office says in a statement that the losses from these burnings “exceed tens of millions of dollars”, and that most of the allegedly burned houses are located in the central and northern Gaza Strip.

Last week, we reported on a media investigation that found that Israeli army commanders have been ordering their troops to destroy unoccupied Gaza homes.

The report followed an admission from top Israeli officials that the country seeks a “buffer zone” around the perimeter of Gaza, which they say is to prevent future attacks on Israel.

The statement from the Media Office reiterates these claims. “The burning operations took place and are being carried out according to clear and direct instructions and orders from the commanders of the ‘Israeli’ occupation army,” it reads.

US groups Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Jewish Voice for Peace have tried to blockade the US president’s motorcade as he travels to a fundraiser in New York, the latest act of civil disobedience by left-wing Jewish groups in protest of Israel’s US-backed war in Gaza.

Protesters blocked a street, chanting “Not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes”.

The Iraqi group says via a statement on its website that Wissam Muhammad Saber, also known as Abu Bakir al-Saadi, has been killed.

The statement makes no mention of how he died, but a short while ago, the US army said that it “conducted a unilateral strike in Iraq … killing a [Kataib] Hezbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on [US] forces in the region”.

The US blames Kataib Hezbollah, which is aligned with Iran, for an attack on a US base in Jordan that killed three of the country’s service members. The US had pledged revenge for the attack and has carried out several strikes on Iraq, Syria and Yemen in pursuit of that goal.

Attacks on US troops in the Middle East by Iran-aligned militias, as well as the US’s strikes in response, are fueling fears of a regional spillover of the war in Gaza.

Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman has said that the kingdom is still committed to finding a political resolution to the conflict in Yemen, amid concerns that regional tensions stemming from Israel’s war in Gaza could derail fragile progress following years of war, which included a brutal Saudi-led siege and air campaign.

“Met with US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking to discuss Yemen and the Kingdom’s support of UN efforts to establish a roadmap,” bin Salman said in a social media post today.

“I reiterated the kingdom’s commitment to supporting Yemen and promoting dialogue among parties to reach a political solution under UN supervision.”

United Nations humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths has said that he is “extremely concerned” by Israeli plans for an expansion of their operations to Rafah, where displaced Palestinian civilians are living in dire conditions with nowhere to flee.

“More than half of Gaza’s population is now crammed in Rafah, a town of originally 250,000 people right on Egypt’s doorstep. Their living conditions are abysmal – they lack the basic necessities to survive, stalked by hunger, disease and death,” Griffiths said in a statement today.

“Further fighting in Rafah risks claiming the lives of even more people. It also risks further hampering a humanitarian operation already limited by insecurity, damaged infrastructure and access restrictions,” he added. “To put it simply: This war must stop.”

The US army’s Central Command (CENTCOM) says on X that its “forces conducted a unilateral strike in Iraq … killing a Kata’ib Hezbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on U.S. forces in the region”.

CENTCOM said that this action was in direct retaliation for “attacks on US service members” and that there are no indications of “collateral damage” or civilian casualties from the strike.

In late January, an attack on a US base in Jordan killed three army personnel. The US pledged revenge on “Iran-backed” militias across the region, and this strike appears to be the latest attack in pursuit of that goal.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom asked the US secretary of state whether he did indeed, as media reports suggest, ask employees at the State Department to prepare a number of options for the recognition of a Palestinian state.

“Our focus today is on all of the diplomacy,” Blinken said in a vague answer, adding that, first, the war in Gaza needs to end before anything such as Palestinian statehood could be addressed.

Jamjoom also asked Blinken if the US could see a post-war reality in which Hamas played some role in the governance of Gaza.

“The short answer … is no, ” Blinken quickly replied.

Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller has said that one month after Canada provided Israeli and Egyptian authorities with a list of 1,000 people in Gaza granted permission to come to Canada, where they have extended family, none have been allowed to leave.

“I’m pretty pissed off about it,” Miller told reporters today.

“Perhaps there is some trepidation by people on the ground as to whether to let these folks out, but it’s a humanitarian gesture, and it’s immensely frustrating for me,” he said.

While the minister did not state which authorities were blocking those on the list from leaving, Israel has previously prevented or delayed people from countries including Brazil from leaving the Gaza Strip.

Al-Mezan, a Gaza-based human rights organisation, has noted that four months into Israel’s war in Gaza, “it’s now evident that the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the UN Office on Genocide Prevention (UNOSAPG)  have failed to fulfill their mandates”.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the group said that since October, the UN Office on Genocide Prevention addressed various conflicts.” However, noticeably absent are statements addressing the ongoing atrocities faced by 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, half of whom are children.”

The “double standards” in addressing conflicts is evident, Al-Mezan said. On January 26, the International Court of Justice found it plausible Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Twelve days later, there is still no reaction from the UNOSAPG.

“Conversely, in Ukraine v. Russian Federation, UNOSAPG promptly acknowledged ICJ’s order within two days,” it said in the letter.

The US Senate has rejected a package that tied additional support for Israel and Ukraine to a harsh crackdown on the US border with Mexico.

The $118bn bill was shot down by Senate Republicans, which their colleagues in the House of Representatives have already said would be “dead on arrival”.

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer has said he will force a second vote on the foreign aid provisions without the border components. The House rejected a Republican standalone bill on $17.6bn for Israel yesterday, which Democrats described as a cynical ploy to separate support from Israel from a larger package.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has said that two people, including a medical patient, have been injured today by Israeli firing on the facility.

“Urgent: two injuries have been recorded so far at PRCS Al Amal hospital including one patient by the direct firing from Israeli Occupation Forces vehicles that are positioned at the gate of the hospital in Khan Younis,” the group said in a social media post.

“This comes amidst the ongoing siege and continuous targeting of the hospital for the seventeenth consecutive day.”