Israel-Palestine live: Israel bombs Unrwa building in Gaza

President of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Younis al-Khatib, met with Pope Francis and briefed him on "the catastrophic humanitarian conditions experienced by civilians in the Gaza Strip", the group said in a post to X, formerly Twitter. 

United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese posted a reaction to comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu about Israel's imminent ground assault against Rafah, warning against "another Nakba".

"#Rafah stands as the last line of Palestinian existence in Gaza, amidst the relentless anguish faced by the people trapped therein. How can we possibly allow another Nakba? Have we really lost our minds??," Albanese said in a post to X, formerly Twitter. 

The head of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), Bulent Yildirim, during a huge public rally in Istanbul announced that the organisation would head a naval fleet towards Gaza to break Israel's seige. 

"The time for talking is over. We will go down to the sea, we will reach Gaza, and we will break the siege," he said. 

Yildirim participated in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010. The boat he was on was boarded by Israeli troops and nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed at the time. 

Translation: The head of the Turkish Relief Foundation İHH Bulent Yildirim announced, a short while ago, during a huge public rally in Istanbul, the completion of preparations for the launch of a naval fleet towards Gaza to break the siege on its people: The time for talking is over. We will go down to the sea, we will reach Gaza, and we will break the siege.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his stance against a two-state solution and an independent Palestinian state during televised remarks.

"We shall not bow down to international dictates in regards to a future deal with the Palestinians. Such a compromise should be through direct negotiations with no preconditions," he said.

"How can we give recognition to such a state after the massacre of October 7. This would be a reward for terrorism," he continued.

The prime minister also said that Israel’s military "pressure is working" against Hamas, claiming the army has "reached areas in Gaza that the enemy never imagined".

"Whoever is telling us not to operate in Rafah is telling us to lose an ear," he said.

Netanyahu also calls Hamas’s demands in negotiations to reach a truce in Gaza "delusional".

The stated policy of the United States, Israel’s closest ally and backer, is that a two-state solution should follow the end to the war in Gaza.

Millions of demonstrators have gathered in over 120 cities around the world in response to a call out of London for a second International Day of Solidarity with Gaza.

The protests are aimed at halting Israel's attempts at  "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing", Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) said in a statement.

Protests were held on Saturday in Istanbul, Washington, Sydney, Dublin, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Brasilia, Cape Town, Rabat and Baghdad, among others.

Adnan Hmidan, Vice President of the PFB and a representative of the coalition behind the initiative, said the vast turnout was a testament to sustained global support for Gaza that countered "official Western expectations of waning interest overtime". 

Read More: Millions show solidarity with Palestinians in demonstrations across globe

Hamas threatened to suspend ceasefire talks unless urgent aid was brought into the north of the Gaza Strip, where aid agencies have warned of a looming famine.

"The movement intends to suspend negotiations until aid is brought into northern Gaza," a senior government source told AFP on Saturday.

"Negotiations cannot be held while hunger is ravaging the Palestinian people," he said. 

Talks have been held in the Egyptian capital Cairo this week to bring about a pause in fighting in Israel's four-month-long offensive in Gaza.

Read More: 'Negotiations cannot be held while hunger is ravaging' people, Hamas official warns

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, while at the Munich Security Conference, met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, addressing the US official's earlier comments about “normalising” realations with Arab countries.

“I heard your remarks today, and I think that I find them very interesting. I think there are opportunities; they need to be studied in depth. However, first and foremost, Israel’s security must be preserved, and for this, we have to complete the work of undermining and eradicating the basic infrastructure of Hamas,” Herzog said.

There is an “extraordinary opportunity” in the near future for Israel to be integrated into the Middle East as Arab countries are willing to normalise ties with it, Blinked said earlier in the day.

Thousands of people are fleeing further south to Rafah, where already 1.4 million are sheltering, as "intense fighting" hits Khan Younis, Unrwa said in a post to X, formerly Twitter.

"Intensified airstrikes on Rafah are also causing people to flee Rafah to middle Gaza. People are on verge of famine in the north. There is no sanctuary," Unrwa posted.

An agreement to unfreeze tax funds earmarked for the Palestinian Authority that are held by Israel is "imminent", Norway's prime minister, whose country is working as an intermediary, said. 

Under interim peace accords reached in the 1990s, Israel's finance ministry collects tax on behalf of the Palestinians and makes monthly transfers to the PA. But no payments have taken place since November, following the start of Israel's war.

On 21 January, Israeli officials said the cabinet had approved a plan for frozen tax funds earmarked for the Gaza Strip to be held by Norway instead of transferred to the PA.

"I think we are trusted by the parties to manage financial support to the PA in a responsible way," he said. "It has taken a lot of diplomatic work between Norway, the PA, Israel, the US, but I will say that we are very close, imminent."

G7 foreign ministers have expressed concern about the risk of the forcible displacement of Palestinians out of Gaza, and the possible consequences of an Israeli military operation in Rafah.

"They called for urgent action to address the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza, particularly the plight of 1.5 million civilians sheltering in Rafah and they expressed deep concern for the potentially devastating consequences on the civilian population of Israel's further full scale military operation in that area," according to a statement released by Italy, which is currently chairing the Group of Seven wealthy nations.

The foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States met in Munich on Saturday.

Yemen's Houthis have claimed responsibility for an attack on the oil tanker M/T Pollux.

"The naval forces of the Yemeni armed forces carried out a targeting operation against a British oil ship [Pollux] in the Red Sea with a large number of appropriate naval missiles," Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in a statement on Saturday, adding the strikes "were accurate and direct".

US Central Command (Centcom) said earlier in the day that four anti-ship ballistic missiles were launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen into the Red Sea on Friday.

Centcom said that at least three of the missiles were launched towards the M/T Pollux, which it said was a Panamanian-flagged, Denmark-owned, Panamanian-registered vessel.

There were no reported injuries, the statement added.

The Houthis have launched several drone and missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait since November, as an act of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Finding shelter in the Gaza Strip, whether in a basic tent on the street or in an overcrowded classroom, has become a luxury for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.

Around 1.5 million people have sought refuge in Rafah, an area spanning just 64 sqkm, and are now struggling to find enough space to even put up a tent due to extreme overcrowding.

Middle East Eye spoke to one of five families who sought refuge in a farm in Rafah, where they have turned open chicken cages into beds for their children.  

"We decided to come to this farm because we could not find any other place to go to," said Rafat Lukman, whose family of 32 includes newborns and small children.

"We came here thinking that we can put up with it for a few days, but this war has taken much longer. I cannot believe that my own children are sleeping in cages where chickens slept. I look at them and my heart breaks for the childhood I am giving them. But what else could I do?"

You can read the full report by journalist Hala Alsafadi below. 

Read more: Children sleep in chicken cages in Rafah as families grow desperate for shelter

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said there is "an extraordinary opportunity" in the coming months for Israel to normalise ties with its Arab neighbours.

"Virtually every Arab country now genuinely wants to integrate Israel into the region to normalise relations... to provide security commitments and assurances so that Israel can feel more safe," Blinken said on Saturday during a panel discussion at the annual Munich Security Conference.

"And there's also, I think, the imperative, that's more urgent than ever, to proceed to a Palestinian state that also ensures the security of Israel," he added.

For several months, the Biden administration has been working to secure a deal to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Riyadh has affirmed that it will not normalise ties without the creation of a Palestinian state. 

In a column for Middle East Eye, Omar Sabbour explains why he resigned from a role advising European government's on crisis response in conflict zones. 

He wrote: "Over the past few years, I have worked in the humanitarian and developmental sector as a lead analyst in a team of external consultants advising European donor governments on their crisis response in conflict zones. I recently handed in my resignation due to the EU’s continued refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

I can no longer work on a donor’s crisis response in one country, while they enable a crisis in another. With an imminent disastrous offensive on Rafah in the offing, there is an urgency for members of NGOs with donor partnerships to take immediate action.

Rarely in modern history have explicit war crimes been given backing by supposed democracies. But in attempting to provide a pretence of deniability to a disinterested ally, whose intention to commit war crimes and collective punishment has been explicitly and repeatedly declared, leading western governments - including the EU, which cited Israel’s right to self-defence without condemning its policy of indiscriminate bombardment of Palestinians - have proven almost more defensive of Israel than Tel Aviv has itself.

In any other context, such statements would be assessed as the type of rhetoric that typically accompanies genocide."

You can read the full column below. 

Opinion: Why I resigned from my European crisis-response role