conflict

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has finally partially opened this week after two years of Israeli-mandated closure. The news offers relief for many – particularly those Palestinians in urgent need of treatment abroad.

But for many elderly Palestinians in Gaza, staying in the enclave is an act of survival, resistance, and historical memory. Rafah may be open, but they are not planning to go anywhere.

In Kefaya al-Assar’s mind, that decision to stay is an effort to correct what she perceives to have been a historical mistake made by her parents – fleeing their village of Julis, which was depopulated in the 1948 Nakba, and is now within Israel.

“We blamed [our parents] a lot for leaving our home there,” said the 73-year-old Kefaya.

Kefaya has faced displacement during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza five times. Originally from Jabalia in northern Gaza, she now shelters in a classroom at a school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat.

Widowed in early 2023 and without children, she said displacement revives the trauma she inherited from her parents.

“History repeats itself now,” she said. “My parents lost all their money when they were forced to flee. We also used to have money, but now we are displaced and have lost everything.”

When Kefaya was a child, her family lived in tents in Gaza’s refugee camps, before they became more permanent structures in later decades. Now, she says that she is reliving that same fate.

“I don’t want to repeat history, I want to die in my own country,” she said. “Even here, being in Nuseirat, I feel like a stranger. I wish I could go back to Jabalia.”

Her home in Jabalia was destroyed during the war, meaning that, for now, she is staying in Nuseirat. But she is still adamant that it will not mean her departure from Gaza.

“I will not leave for medical treatment outside … I choose to die on my own land rather than be treated outside,” she said.

That’s despite her own medical issues – Kefaya suffers from high blood pressure, and has not been able to receive adequate medical care because of the war.

Hidden crisis

The Rafah crossing partially opened on Monday after being largely closed by Israel since May 2024.

The opening of the crossing is part of the second phase of the Gaza “ceasefire”, even as Israel continues to violate the agreement by regularly attacking the Palestinian enclave, killing hundreds.

Only a few dozen Palestinians have been allowed to leave so far, all patients needing treatments accompanied by family members.

Other Palestinians have also put their names on the list, some hoping to go abroad for education or simply to escape life in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 70,000 since the war began, and destroyed the majority of buildings, meaning reconstruction will likely be a years-long process, even if Israel cooperates.

“Israel is creating unlivable conditions in Gaza, denying Palestinians all essentials of life,” said Talal Abu Rukba, a political science professor at al-Azhar University in Gaza. “When people resist and stay in their homeland, they ruin the Israeli project of creating an Israeli state on a land ‘without a people’”.

Members of the Israeli right-wing, including members of the government, have repeatedly called for illegal settlements to be established in Gaza, and for Palestinians to be forced out.

The desire to stay in Gaza on the part of elderly Palestinians is despite a largely overlooked humanitarian crisis facing the demographic.

Research by Amnesty International and HelpAge International found that Israel’s blockade of aid and medicines to Gaza had contributed to a “physical and mental health crisis”.

“During armed conflict, older people’s needs are often overlooked. In Gaza, older people are enduring an unprecedented physical and mental health collapse as a direct result of Israel’s deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said after the publication of the report.

The two organisations found that 76 percent of the elderly people interviewed live in tents, with 84 percent saying that their living conditions harmed their health and privacy. In addition, 68 percent of respondents had been forced to stop or reduce medication because of a lack of availability. Nearly half reported skipping meals so that others could eat.

Many are also suffering from mental health problems, with 77 percent reporting that sadness, anxiety, loneliness, or insomnia had reduced their appetite and impacted their wellbeing.

Tired and lonely

Nazmeya Radwan, 85, is one of those struggling.

Ill, underweight and unable to access medication, she still refuses to leave Gaza.

Nazmeya has her own previous experience of displacement at the hands of Israel – like Kefaya’s parents, she was forced to flee her home in the 1948 Nakba, along with about 750,000 other Palestinians.

Originally from Jerusalem, her family was displaced to Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, after 1948.

“All my life was displacement and wars since the Nakba,” Nazmeya said. “I am 85, and tired, lonely, ill and displaced, but I would never leave Gaza. I would live as a beggar and homeless and never leave Gaza.”

US and Iranian officials are holding talks in Muscat amid escalating tensions and a US military buildup in the Gulf.

Friedrich Merz said concerns about a further escalation with Iran have dominated his trip to the Gulf region.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned of the threat of a military escalation in the Middle East before talks between Iran and the United States in Oman on Friday.

Speaking in Doha on Thursday, Merz said that fears of a new conflict had characterised his talks during his trip to the Gulf region.

“In all my conversations yesterday and today, great concern has been expressed about a further escalation in the conflict with Iran,” he said during a news conference.

Merz also urged Iran to end what he called aggression and enter into talks, saying Germany would do everything it could to de-escalate the situation and work towards regional stability.

The warning came in the run-up to a crucial scheduled meeting between officials from Tehran and Washington in Muscat.

Mediators from Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt have presented Iran and the US with a framework of key principles to be discussed in the talks, including a commitment by Iran to significantly limit its uranium enrichment, two sources familiar with the negotiations have told Al Jazeera.

Before the talks, both sides appear to be struggling to find common ground on a number of issues, including what topics will be up for discussion.

Iran says the talks must be confined to its long-running nuclear dispute with Western powers, rejecting a US demand to also discuss Tehran’s ballistic missiles, and warning that pushing issues beyond the nuclear programme could jeopardise the talks.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said the US is eager for the talks to follow what they see as an agreed-upon format.

“That agreed-upon format includes issues broader than what the US understands Iran is willing to discuss in this initial set of talks,” she explained.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that talks would have to include the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, its support for armed groups around the Middle East and its treatment of its own people, in addition to its nuclear programme.

A White House official has told Al Jazeera that Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a key figure in his Middle East policy negotiations, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, have arrived in the Qatari capital, Doha, in advance of the talks.

Halkett said that Qatar is playing an instrumental role in trying to facilitate these talks, along with other regional US partners, including Egypt.

“We understand, according to a White House official, that this is perhaps part of the reason for the visit – to try and work with Qatar in an effort to try and get Iran to expand and build upon the format of these talks.”

Pressure on Iran

The talks come as the region braces for a potential US attack on Iran after US President Donald Trump ordered forces to amass in the Arabian Sea following a violent crackdown by Iran on protesters last month.

Washington has sent thousands of troops to the Middle East, as well as an aircraft carrier, other warships, fighter jets, spy planes and air refuelling tankers.

Trump has warned that “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached, ratcheting up pressure on Iran.

This is not the first time Iranian and US officials have met in a bid to revive diplomacy between the two nations, which have not had official diplomatic relations since 1980.

In June, US and Iranian officials gathered in the Omani capital to discuss a nuclear agreement, but the process stalled as Israel launched attacks on Iran, killing several military leaders and top nuclear scientists, and targeting nuclear facilities. The US later briefly joined the war, bombing several Iranian nuclear sites.

Israeli warplanes conducted more than 50 raids on Lebanon last month amid major surge in attacks, says refugee rights NGO.

Israel is carrying out a “clear and dangerous” surge in air attacks on Lebanon, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has said, with its warplanes conducting more attacks on its neighbour in January than in any previous month since the ceasefire.

The humanitarian organisation said on Thursday that Israeli warplanes had carried out at least 50 air raids on Lebanon last month – about double the number of the previous month.

The group said the repeated attacks made a mockery of the ceasefire agreed between Israel and Lebanon in November 2024, after more than a year of cross-border attacks and a two-month-long Israeli intensification that killed thousands in Lebanon and devastated civilian infrastructure.

“These attacks – as well as the many ground incursions that continue to happen away from the cameras – have deemed the ceasefire agreement little more than ink on paper,” said Maureen Philippon, NRC’s country director in Lebanon.

The data, provided to the NRC by security company Atlas Assistance, captures only attacks carried out by manned Israeli warplanes and does not include Israeli drone attacks, which regularly result in deaths in Lebanon, or attacks carried out during Israeli ground incursions.

The Israeli attacks have continued in recent days. On Monday, Israeli warplanes targeted buildings in two villages in southern Lebanon, Kfar Tebnit and Ain Qana, after issuing evacuation orders to residents.

Israel’s military claimed the buildings were Hezbollah “military infrastructure” and said it was targeting them in response to what it said were the group’s prohibited attempts to rebuild its activities in the area.

On Wednesday, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of committing an environmental crime after Israeli aircraft sprayed an unknown substance over southern Lebanese towns.

Death and displacement

The NRC said the ongoing attacks have created a climate of fear and instability for residents and were hampering much-needed reconstruction efforts, in a country still reeling from the effects of the conflict with Israel before the ceasefire.

The attacks have struck targets in dozens of cities and villages in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, destroying homes and displacing families in an environment where approximately 64,000 people have already been displaced by the conflict.

“Aid agencies, including NRC, are still dealing with the aftermath and consequences of months of destructive conflict which left much of Lebanon in ruins,” said Philippon.

She said the effect of the attacks was being felt by families and children, citing a school in west Bekaa that had recently been repaired by her organisation, only to be damaged again in a recent attack in the area.

“This means yet another spell of interrupted education for children,” she said.

Philippon called on Israel’s allies to do “everything they can to stop these attacks on civilian areas and villages”.

“This vicious cycle has to end,” she added.

‘Thousands’ of breaches

Under the terms of the November 2024 ceasefire, cross-border attacks were supposed to stop; Hezbollah was to withdraw north of the Litani River, which runs across south Lebanon; and Israel was to withdraw troops that had invaded south Lebanon in October.

Israel, however, has continued its attacks across the south and the Bekaa Valley in the east on a near-daily basis, while its army continues to occupy five points in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese government says Israel has committed thousands of breaches of the ceasefire agreement.

Hezbollah has launched only one attack in the 14 months since the ceasefire, while Israel has killed more than 330 people in Lebanon, including at least 127 civilians, and a top Hezbollah commander, Haytham Ali Tabatabai.

Kremlin spokesperson says Russian forces would continue fighting until Kyiv makes necessary ‘decisions’ to end the war.

The number of Ukrainian soldiers killed on the battlefield as a result of the country’s war with Russia is estimated to be 55,000, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that a “large number” were also missing.

President Zelenskyy’s remarks on Wednesday came in the run-up to the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amid crucial ceasefire talks in Abu Dhabi, where negotiators are trying to end Europe’s largest conflict since World War II.

“In Ukraine, officially the number of soldiers killed on the battlefield – either professionals or those conscripted – is 55,000,” said Zelenskyy, in a prerecorded interview with France 2 TV.

Zelenskyy, whose comments were translated into French, added that on top of that casualty figure was a “large number of people” considered officially missing.

The Ukrainian leader did not give an exact figure for those who are still missing.

Zelenskyy had previously cited a figure for Ukrainian war dead in an interview with the United States television network NBC in February 2025, saying that more than 46,000 Ukrainian service members had been killed on the battlefield.

In the middle of 2025, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, estimated that close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded since the war began.

Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that Russian attacks had killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in Ukraine in 2025, almost a third higher than the number of casualties in 2024.

Russia has also incurred heavy losses in the ongoing war.

In January, Ukraine’s military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, was quoted as saying that in 2025 alone, almost 420,000 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded while fighting against Ukrainian forces.

An October 2025 estimate by British defence intelligence put the overall number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded in the war at 1.1 million.

Both Ukraine and Russia rarely disclose their own casualty figures in the war, though they actively report enemy losses on the battlefield.

Analysts say both Kyiv and Moscow are likely underreporting their own deaths while inflating those of the other side.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia would keep fighting until Kyiv made the “decisions” that could bring the war to an end, while in Abu Dhabi, Ukrainian and Russian officials wrapped up a “productive” first day of new US-brokered talks, Kyiv’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov said.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has been pushing both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise to end the fighting, although the two sides remain far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks.

The most sensitive issues are Moscow’s demands that Kyiv give up land it still controls and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which now sits in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine.

Moscow has demanded that Kyiv pull its troops out of all the Donbas region, including heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest defences against Russian aggression, as a condition for any deal to end the fighting.

Ukraine said the conflict should be frozen along current front lines and rejects any unilateral pullback of its forces from territory it still controls.

Russian forces occupy about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price was taken to a hospital by paramedics on Wednesday after fainting during a Black History Month event at City Hall.

Price, 75, was taken by ambulance at Los Angeles General Medical Center, where he was in stable condition, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said.

Price is “in stable condition, is in recovery and doing well,” Harris-Dawson told the audience at Wednesday’s council meeting. “But out of abundance of caution, he obviously won’t be with us in council today.”

The incident took place on the third floor bridge linking City Hall and City Hall East, which is currently displaying an exhibit of prominent Black women community leaders, according to Price spokesperson Angelina Valencia-Dumarot. Price spoke at a ceremony celebrating the exhibit, which had scores of attendees, before feeling faint and needing to lean on one of his aides for help, she said.

It was not the first such medical incident to involve Price at a public event. Last year, Price fainted while appearing at a groundbreaking for the upgrade of the Los Angeles Convention Center, which is located in his district.

At the time, a Price staffer said he was suffering from dehydration. He missed a month of council meetings after that event.

On Wednesday, Valencia-Dumarot said her boss was getting “the care that he needs” at the hospital.

“His wife is with him, his family is with him, and we’re all just wishing him well and sending our prayers,” she said.

The medical incident comes a roughly week after a judge ruled that a corruption case against Price can proceed to trial. Price has been charged with embezzlement, perjury and having a conflict of interest, by casting votes on real estate projects whose developers had hired his wife.

Price’s lawyer said there is no evidence that the council member was aware of the conflicts. All of the projects were approved with overwhelming support, and Price’s vote made no difference in the final result, the attorney said.

The Gaitanist Army of Colombia (EGC), the country’s largest criminal organisation, has announced it will temporarily suspend peace talks in Qatar after Colombian President Gustavo Petro reportedly pledged to target its leader.

In a social media post on Wednesday, the EGC, sometimes referred to as the Gulf Clan, indicated the suspension would continue until it received updates from the Petro administration.

“By order of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the EGC delegation at the negotiating table will temporarily suspend talks with the government to consult and clarify the veracity of the information,” the group wrote in a statement on X.

“If the media reports are true, this would be a violation of good faith and the Doha commitments.”

Colombia’s Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed the reports later on Wednesday, sharing a list of three drug “kingpins” that Petro’s administration would prioritise as “high-level targets”.

Among the three targets was the EGC’s leader, Jesus Avila Villadiego, alias Chiquito Malo. A reward for his capture was set at 5 billion Colombian pesos, equivalent to $1.37m.

The other two “kingpins” included top rebel commanders identified only by their aliases: Ivan Mordisco and Pablito.

The public announcement echoes a private one cemented during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday at the White House, when Petro met United States President Donald Trump in person for the first time.

For months, Trump has pressured the Petro administration to take more “aggressive action” to combat narcotics trafficking out of Colombia.

In response, Petro and his team presented the Trump administration on Tuesday with a dossier on their counter-narcotics operations titled, “Colombia: America’s #1 Ally Against Narcoterrorists”.

The presentation featured statistics on cocaine seizures, programmes to eradicate coca crops, and the high-level arrests and killings of drug lords.

But the commitment to collaborate with the US in the pursuit of Chiquito Malo’s arrest has thrown negotiations with the EGC into peril.

It has also raised questions about the future of Petro’s signature policy, “Total Peace”, which was designed to open talks with rebel groups and criminal networks in an effort to halt Colombia’s six-decade-long internal conflict.

The EGC is a major criminal group with almost 10,000 members, according to a recent report by the Ideas for Peace Foundation.

In December, the US also designated the group as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, as part of its ongoing efforts to crack down on drug trafficking.

The EGC has been engaged in high-level discussions with the Colombian government in Doha since September 2025. The two parties signed a “commitment to peace” on December 5, which outlined a roadmap to the EGC putting down arms.

The first step towards demobilisation was for the group to gather its forces in temporary zones, beginning in March. The government had suspended arrest warrants in December for EGC commanders, including Chiquito Malo, who were due to move to these areas.

But the government’s plans to detain the drug lord, declared yesterday at the White House, destabilised this process, according to analysts.

“[The EGC] interpret this as a direct threat where, if any commander who has arrest warrants … goes to the temporary zones, he runs a high risk,” said Gerson Arias, a conflict and security investigator at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Bogota-based think tank.

The Colombian Supreme Court in January approved Chiquito Malo’s extradition to the US in the eventuality of his capture, but the final decision to extradite him resides with the president.

By declaring the drug lord a “target” at the White House, Petro signalled support for capturing and extraditing the EGC commander.

Potential US involvement in the operation also appears to have unsettled the criminal organisation, according to experts.

“It is very different for Chiquito Malo to be pursued solely by the Colombian government than for him to become a target of joint strategic value involving US intelligence,” said Laura Bonilla, a deputy director at the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, a Colombian think tank.

Although the EGC suspended its peace talks on Wednesday, it stressed that it remained open to resuming negotiations.

“It should be clarified that the suspension is temporary, not permanent, which indicates that they [the talks] will resume shortly,” a lawyer for the group told Al Jazeera, on condition of anonymity.

The representative added that, for talks to continue, the EGC requires that “legal and personal security guarantees” and “the commitments agreed upon in Doha, Qatar, are fulfilled”.

As the prospect of a conflict between the United States and Iran looms, analysts within Israel have questioned the country’s capacity to determine the outcome of a confrontation in a region that, just months ago, it had regarded itself as on the brink of dominating.

“The [Israeli] opposition are accusing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu of giving in to [US President Donald] Trump and ending the war on Gaza too soon,” said Israeli political analyst Ori Goldberg. “[Israel is] being hounded out of Lebanon, [its] freedom to operate within Syria has been halted. All that’s left to [Israel] is the freedom to kill Palestinians, and with Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt now being involved in Gaza, over Israel’s objection, it won’t be allowed to do that for much longer.”

While senior Israeli figures including Netanyahu are liaising directly with the Trump administration over a possible attack on Iran, analysts say it is increasingly clear that Israel’s ability to shape regional developments is diminished.

After two years of genocide in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 71,800 Palestinians, the US now appears to have taken the lead and has overruled Israel when it objected to the admission of Turkiye and Qatar to the board that will oversee the administration of Gaza.

In Syria, Israeli ambitions to hobble the new government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa also appear to have fallen foul of Trump’s White House, which is actively pushing the Netanyahu government to reach an accommodation with Damascus. In Lebanon, too, the US continues to play a defining role in determining Israeli actions, with any possible confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel said to be dependent upon Washington’s green light.

What influence Israel could wield over US action in Iran, according to many, is uncertain, even to the point that Washington could enter negotiations with no regard for Israeli concerns.

“There’s a worry that Donald Trump will not strike in Iran, which will continue to endanger Israel, and instead negotiate a conclusion that’s good for him as a peacemaker and leave the regime in place,” Netanyahu’s former aide from the early 90s and political pollster, Mitchell Barak, told Al Jazeera from West Jerusalem. “He’s transactional. That’s what he does. It’ll be like Gaza. Israel will secure their ultimate victory, then lose control to the US, whose interests – under Trump – don’t always align with ours.”

‘Big Bad Wolf’

While analysts’ expectations that Netanyahu could influence Trump’s actions in Iran may be limited, their sense that a fresh war would buy the Israeli prime minister relief from his current difficulties seems universal.

“Iran is Israel’s ‘Big Bad Wolf’,” Chatham House’s Yossi Mekelberg said of the geopolitical opponent that many in Israel believe exists only to ensure Israel’s destruction.

Mekelberg added that a war with Iran would serve as a useful distraction from Netanyahu’s domestic troubles, such as an inquiry into government failures related to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, his attempt to weaken the oversight powers of the judiciary, and his ongoing corruption trials.

“There’s a saying in Hebrew: ‘the righteous have their work done by others.’ I’m not for a moment saying that Netanyahu is righteous, but I’m sure he’s keen on having his work done by others,” Mekelberg said.

War fears

How much public appetite there may be for a confrontation with Iran is unclear.

Israel was able to heavily damage Iran during the conflict it started in June last year. But Iran was also able to repeatedly pierce Israel’s defences, making it clear that the Israeli public is not safe from the wars its state pursues in the region.

The threat – rather than the reality – of a confrontation with Iran also serves the prime minister’s ends, Goldberg noted. “Netanyahu has no need for a war. He doesn’t really need to do anything other than survive, which he’s proven adept at,” the analyst said, referring to the absence of any credible political rival, as well as the risk that an actual war may highlight Israel’s diplomatic weakness in its dealings with the US.

“There’s this joke phrase that became popular with those resisting Netanyahu’s judicial reform: ‘This time he’s done’,” Goldberg said. “Netanyahu’s never done. He committed a genocide, and all people in Israel can object to is the management of it. He’s currently losing military and diplomatic influence across the region, and few are noticing. I can’t imagine that this will be ‘it’ either.”

US President Donald Trump has said that talks with Iran are continuing to try to de-escalate tensions in the Gulf, even as the US military announced shooting down an Iranian drone that approached its aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea.

On Monday, BBC News reported figures from the Home Office stating a total of 933 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats in January.

Guardiola said: “The people who have to do that, run away from their countries, go in the sea and then go on a boat to get rescued – don’t ask if he is right or wrong, rescue him. It is about a human being.

“After we can agree, criticise but everyone is right, everyone has an idea and you have to express it. People are dying, you have to help him. Protecting the human being and human life is the only thing we have.”

Last month, two US citizens were shot dead by federal agents carrying out US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis over the past month.

Fan group Football Supporters Europe (FSE) says it is “extremely concerned by the ongoing militarisation of police forces in the US” before this summer’s World Cup in North America.

Guardiola added: “When I see the images, I am sorry it hurts. That is why in every position I can help speak up to be a better society, I will try and will be there. All the time. It is for my kids, my families, for you.

“From my point of view, the justice? You have to talk. Otherwise it will just move on. Look what happened in the United States of America, Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been killed. Tell me how you can defend that?

“There is not a perfect society, nowhere is perfect, I am not perfect, we have to work to be better.”

For months, United States President Donald Trump has called him a “sick man” and an “illegal drug leader”.

But on Tuesday, Trump welcomed his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, to the White House for their first face-to-face meeting in Washington, DC.

Both leaders hailed the meeting as productive, while acknowledging the lingering tensions that divide them.

At a news conference after their meeting, Petro waved away questions about his rocky history with Trump, whom he has publicly accused of human rights violations.

Instead, he called the interaction “ a meeting between two equals who have different ways of thinking”.

“He didn’t change his way of his thinking. Neither did I. But how do you do an agreement, a pact? It’s not as between twin brothers. It’s between opponents,” Petro said.

Separately, Trump told reporters from the Oval Office that he felt good about the meeting. “I thought it was terrific,” he said.

On the agenda for the two leaders were issues including the fight against transnational drug trafficking and security in Latin America.

Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s meeting.

A White House charm offensive

Over the past year, Trump has invited the media to participate in his meetings with foreign leaders, often holding news conferences with the visiting dignitaries in the Oval Office.

Not this time, however. The meeting between Trump and Petro lasted nearly two hours, all of it behind closed doors.

But the two leaders emerged with largely positive things to say about one another.

In a post on social media, Petro revealed that Trump had gifted him several items, including a commemorative photograph of their meeting accompanied by a signed note.

“Gustavo – a great honor. I love Colombia,” it read, followed by Trump’s signature.

In another post, Petro showed off a signed copy of Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal. On its title page, Trump had scrawled another note to Petro: “You are great.”

“Can someone tell me what Trump said in this dedication?” Petro wrote jokingly in Spanish on social media. “I don’t understand much English.”

A turning point in a tense relationship?

Petro’s joke appeared to be a cheeky nod to his notoriously rocky relationship with Trump.

It was only six days into Trump’s second term, on January 26, 2025, that he and Petro began their feud, trading threats on social media over the fate of two US deportation flights.

Petro objected to the reported human rights violations facing the deportees. Trump, meanwhile, took Petro’s initial refusal to accept the flights as a threat to US “national security”. Petro ultimately backed down after Trump threatened steep sanctions on imported Colombian goods.

They continued to trade barbs in the months since. Petro, for instance, has condemned the deadly US attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, comparing the strikes with murder.

He has also criticised Trump for carrying out a US military offensive in Venezuela to abduct then-President Nicolas Maduro. That attack, Petro said, was tantamount to “kidnapping”.

Trump, meanwhile, stripped Petro of his US visa following the Colombian leader’s appearance at the United Nations General Assembly, where he criticised the US and briefly joined a pro-Palestinian protest.

The Trump administration also sanctioned Petro in October, blaming the left-wing leader for allowing “drug cartels to flourish”.

After removing Maduro from power on January 3, Trump offered a warning to Petro: he had better “watch his a**”. The statement was widely interpreted to be a threat of military action against Colombia.

But Trump and Petro appeared to have reached a turning point last month. On January 7, the two leaders held their first call together. Tuesday’s in-person meeting marked another first in their relationship.

Agreeing to disagree

Despite the easing tensions, the two leaders used their public statements after the meeting to reaffirm their differences.

Trump was the first to speak, holding a news conference in the Oval Office as he signed legislation to end a government shutdown.

The US president, a member of the right-wing Republican Party, used the appearance to reflect on the political tensions the two leaders had in the lead-up to the meeting.

“He and I weren’t exactly the best of friends, but I wasn’t insulted, because I’d never met him,” Trump told reporters.

He added that Tuesday’s meeting was nevertheless pleasant. “I didn’t know him at all, and we got along very well.”

Petro, meanwhile, held a longer news conference at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, DC, where he raised some points of divergence he had with Trump.

Among the topics he mentioned was Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which the US has supported, and sustainable energy initiatives designed to be carbon neutral. Trump, in the past, has called the so-called green energy programmes a “scam”.

Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing leader, also reflected on his region’s history with colonialism and foreign intervention. He told reporters it was important that Latin America make decisions for itself, free from any outside “coercion”.

“ We don’t operate under blackmail,” he said at one point, in an apparent reference to Trump’s pressure campaigns.

Differing approach to combating drug trafficking

One of the primary points of contention, however, was Petro’s approach to combating drug trafficking.

Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, responsible for 68 percent of the global supply.

The Trump administration has used the fight against global drug trafficking as a justification for carrying out lethal military strikes in international waters and in Venezuela, despite experts condemning the attacks as illegal under international law.

It has also stripped Colombia of its certification as an ally in its global counter-narcotics operations.

Trump’s White House has said it will consider reversing that decision if Petro takes “more aggressive action to eradicate coca and reduce cocaine production and trafficking”.

But Petro has rejected any attempt to label him as soft on drug trafficking, instead touting the historic drug busts his government has overseen.

He made this argument yet again after Tuesday’s meeting, claiming that no other Colombian administration had done as much as his to fight cocaine trafficking.

Rather than take a militarised approach to destroying crops of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, Petro argued that he has had more success with voluntary eradication programmes.

This push, he said, succeeded in “getting thousands of peasant farmers to uproot the plant themselves”.

“These are two different methods, two different ways of understanding how to fight drug trafficking,” Petro said. “One that is brutal and self-interested, and what it ends up doing is promoting mafia powers and drug traffickers, and another approach, which is intelligent, which is effective.”

Petro maintained it was more strategic to go after top drug-ring leaders than to punish impoverished rural farmers by forcibly ripping up their crops.

“I told President Trump, if you want an ally in fighting drug trafficking, it’s going after the top kingpins,” he said.

A Trumpian note

Tuesday’s meeting ultimately marked yet another high-profile reversal for Trump, who has a history of shifting his relationships with world leaders.

Last year, for instance, he lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a public Oval Office clash, only to warm to the wartime leader several months later.

But Colombia is quickly approaching a pivotal presidential election in May, which will see Petro’s left-wing coalition, the Historic Pact, seek to defend the presidency against an ascendant far right.

Petro himself cannot run for consecutive terms under Colombian law. But there is speculation that Tuesday’s detente with Trump may help Petro’s coalition avoid US condemnation ahead of the vote.

Colombia, after all, was until recently the largest recipient of US aid in South America, and it has long harboured close ties with the North American superpower. Straining those ties could therefore be seen as an election liability.

While Petro acknowledged his differences with Trump during his remarks, at times he expressed certain views that overlapped with the US president’s.

Like Trump has in the past, Petro used part of his speech on Tuesday to question the role of the UN in maintaining global security.

“ Did it not show incapacity? Isn’t a reform needed?” Petro asked, wondering aloud if there was “something superior to the United Nations that would bring humanity together better in a better way”.

But when it came to donning Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, Petro drew a line – or rather, a squiggle.

On social media, he shared an adjustment he made to the cap’s slogan. A jagged, Sharpie-inked “S” amended the phrase to include the entire Western Hemisphere: “Make Americas Great Again.”

“Israel, as the occupying power, has the obligation to ensure the needs of people are met in Gaza.” As he prepared to leave Gaza, the Red Cross’s Patrick Griffiths is hopeful the Rafah crossing’s “opening” will give Palestinians a chance to heal, but says more must be done.

Moscow ‘strongly condemns’ attack on airport in the capital, Niamey, where 20 rebels were killed, and four soldiers were wounded.

Russian soldiers helped repel an attack claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group on Niger’s main airport in the capital, Niamey, last week, according to Moscow’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The attack was repelled through the joint efforts of the Russian Ministry of Defence’s African Corps and the Nigerien armed forces,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

Niger’s governing military earlier said that “Russian partners” had helped to fend off the rare assault on the capital, which saw 20 attackers, including a French national, killed and four army soldiers wounded.

At least 11 fighters were also captured, Niger’s state television reported.

“Moscow strongly condemns this latest extremist attack,” the Foreign Ministry added in the statement, according to Russia’s state TASS news agency.

“A similar attack took place in September 2024 on the international airport in the capital of Mali. According to available information, external forces providing instructor and technical support are involved,” the ministry said, according to TASS.

Niger’s military chief, Abdourahamane Tchiani, visited the Russian military base in Niamey to express “personal gratitude for a high-level of professionalism” by Russian forces in defending the airport, the ministry added.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the “surprise and coordinated attack” on the airbase at the Diori Hamani international airport near Niamey on the night of January 28.

A video published online through the ISIL-affiliated media Amaq showed several dozen attackers with assault rifles firing near an aircraft hangar and setting ablaze one plane before leaving on motorbikes.

Ulf Laessing, the head of the Sahel programme at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told The Associated Press news agency that the sophistication and boldness of the attack, including the possible use of drones by the attackers, suggest that the assailants may have had inside help.

Previous successful attacks in the region appear to have increased the group’s confidence, leading them to target more sensitive and strategically important sites, Laessing said.

Niger’s military had initially accused Benin, France and the Ivory Coast of sponsoring the attack on the airport, which also houses a military base. The military, however, did not provide evidence to substantiate its claim.

Ivory Coast’s Foreign Ministry denied the allegation and summoned Niger’s ambassador to relay its protest. Benin also denied the claim, describing it as “not very credible”.

France has yet to comment.

Niger is a former colony of France, which maintained a military presence in the country until 2023.

Russia rarely comments on its military activity in the Sahel region, where Moscow has been increasing its influence in recent years.

Facing isolation since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has tried to build new military and political partnerships across Africa.

Apart from Niger, Russian troops or military instructors have been reported to be deployed in Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and Libya.

Russia’s African Corps has taken over from the Wagner mercenary force across the continent. According to Moscow, the corps helps ” fighting terrorists” and is “strengthening regional stability” in the Sahel.

Niger’s authorities have been fighting the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the ISIL affiliate in the Sahel (EIS) for the past decade.

These are the key developments from day 1,440 of Russia’s war on Ukraine

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, February 2:

Fighting

• The ‍Ukrainian ‍capital, Kyiv, came under attack early on ⁠Tuesday morning from ​Russian missiles, ‍Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s ‍military administration, ⁠said on the Telegram messaging app.
• Tkachenko said several apartment ​buildings ‌and an educational establishment had been damaged. Reuters news agency ‌witnesses reported ‌loud explosions ⁠in the city.

• A father and a son have been killed, and two children and their mother were wounded after Russia struck an area in the front line of the Donetsk region, according to regional authorities.

• A coal mining site in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region was attacked for the second time in 24 hours, according to the private energy producer DTEK. There were no immediate reports on casualties or damage to infrastructure.

Diplomacy and politics

• Russia has largely observed a ceasefire on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Monday, as Kyiv prepared for the next round of trilateral talks with the US and Russia, expected to begin on Wednesday.

• In a separate post on social media, Zelenskyy added that a recent “de-escalation” with Russia – an apparent reference to a brief ceasefire in attacks on energy facilities – was helping to build trust in the negotiations.

• Zelenskyy said in separate remarks that it was realistic to achieve a dignified and lasting peace, in advance of the next round of peace talks with Russian and US officials in the United Arab Emirates. He added that a deal on US security guarantees for Ukraine post-war is now “complete”.

• US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will travel to Abu Dhabi for the talks with Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday and Thursday, a White House official said.

• Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow said, citing Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

• Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that a proposal by European powers to deploy NATO-member troops in Ukraine as part of a proposed security guarantee and peace deal was unacceptable for Russia.
• German authorities detained at least five people suspected of operating a network that exported goods to Russian defence companies, contravening EU sanctions imposed after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, federal prosecutors announced.

Sport

• FIFA President Gianni Infantino said he supports the reinstatement of Russia in the football federation and called for an end to the country’s four-year exclusion from international tournaments, including the World Cup in Qatar and the qualifying matches for the 2026 World Cup.
• Sport federations that claim sport is separate from politics should not include armed conflicts in that definition, because “war is a crime, not politics”, Ukrainian Minister of Sports Matvii Bidnyi said in an interview with the AFP news agency in advance of the Winter Olympics.

Energy

• Indian oil refiners will need a wind-down period to complete Russian oil deals before imports from that country can be halted, Reuters reported after Trump announced a trade agreement with India that included a halt to oil purchases from Russia.

• Ukraine’s electricity imports jumped by 40 percent in January 2026 compared with December 2025, hitting a record 894 gigawatt hours amid constant Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy system, which have left millions of people without power and heating, Reuters reported, citing analysts.

• The EU’s decision last week to ban Russian gas imports was “100 percent legally sound”, the bloc’s energy commissioner, Dan Jorgensen, told reporters in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, adding it would prevent Russia from weaponising energy amid its war on Ukraine.

Khan Younis, Gaza – The headlines read that Israel has finally reopened the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, allowing injured Palestinians desperate for medical aid to leave.

However, the reality is that on the first day of the opening, on Monday, Israel only allowed five patients to exit Gaza via the crossing, forcing hundreds, if not thousands, of others to wait.

Mohammed Abu Mostafa is one of the lucky five. The 17-year-old travelled on Monday with his mother, Randa, to southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, and then on to Rafah, which has been closed by Israel for two years as it waged its genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than 70,000 Palestinians.

Randa told Al Jazeera that she had received a phone call on Monday morning informing her that Mohammed had been included in the first list of wounded patients scheduled to travel, and that they were instructed to head immediately to the Red Crescent Hospital in Khan Younis.

The reopening of Rafah, Gaza’s only land crossing that does not go through Israel, has been much touted as evidence of the progress of the second phase of the United States-backed Gaza “ceasefire” deal.

But events on Monday revealed a different reality, marked by strict security restrictions, complex procedures, and limited numbers being allowed to cross, falling far short of expectations and the scale of Gaza’s accumulated humanitarian needs.

Each of the five patients being allowed to leave was accompanied by two people as per Israeli orders, bringing the total number of travellers to 15, according to information provided to Gaza’s health authorities.

Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza’s al-Shifa Medical Complex, told Al Jazeera that this was the only group that departed, despite prior plans with the World Health Organization (WHO) – the body overseeing coordination between Egypt and Israel – for the departure of 50 patients daily.

Egyptian official sources have told Al Jazeera that 50 Palestinians were also permitted to return to Gaza via the Rafah crossing, though no information is yet available on whether they have actually reached the Palestinian side.

Ismail al-Thawabta, the director of Gaza’s Government Media Office, highlighted just how low these numbers are compared with the approximately 22,000 people needing to leave Gaza for treatment abroad. Meanwhile, about 80,000 Palestinians who left Gaza during the war want to return, he said.

Eye injury

Mohammed was injured in an Israeli air attack a year and a half ago, near where his family had been displaced in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, Randa said. He sustained a direct injury to his eye, severely affecting his optic nerve and ability to see.

“My son has been suffering immensely since his injury. Day after day, his condition kept worsening, and there is no treatment available for him in Gaza,” Randa said, while waiting in the hospital courtyard alongside other patients and their relatives.

Despite her joy at finally being able to accompany her son on his journey, Randa feels a sense of anguish at having to leave four of her six children behind, as she was only permitted to take one child as a second companion.

“What matters to me now is that my son regains his sight and can see again with his own eyes. That is my only concern at the moment,” Randa said.

“I also hope to return to Gaza soon after my son recovers, that the blockade will be lifted, and that all patients will be able to travel, just like my son.”

Israeli restrictions

In the Red Crescent Hospital courtyard, dozens of patients on travel waiting lists expressed frustration over the first-day restrictions at Rafah.

Several patients, including those with amputations, gathered at the hospital, hoping to be permitted to travel to Egypt for treatment.

Despite patients and their families arriving early in the morning with high hopes, Israeli authorities refused to permit more than five patients to leave, leading to widespread dissatisfaction with the complex mechanisms accompanying the crossing’s partial reopening.

The multi-stage security procedure of Palestinians moving through the Rafah crossing begins with the preparation of daily lists of candidates for travel, which are then referred to the Israeli side for pre-travel security screening.

No one is allowed to pass through the crossing or enter it without explicit Israeli approval. The European Union Border Assistance Mission deployed to Rafah is limited to monitoring the process and verifying identities.

Arrivals in Gaza, after initial identity verification at the crossing under European supervision, are subject to additional inspection procedures at checkpoints located in areas under Israeli military control.

Raed al-Nims, the Gaza Red Crescent’s head of media, told Al Jazeera that the organisation was still waiting for updates regarding the transfer of more patients for treatment through the crossing.

He added that a group of patients was successfully transferred to Israel on Monday through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing, in coordination with the WHO.

Desperate need

Ibrahim Abu Thuraya was also one of the five patients allowed to leave Gaza on Monday.

Ibrahim was injured in the early months of the war, sustaining wounds that led to the amputation of his left hand and an injury to his left eye, where shrapnel is still embedded.

“Day after day, my eye condition is deteriorating, and I feel severe pain, especially since the shrapnel is lodged behind it and there are no medical capabilities in Gaza to deal with it,” he said from Khan Younis, before he travelled to Rafah. “Doctors told me that I need to travel abroad.”

Ibrahim was informed on Monday morning by the WHO and Gaza’s Ministry of Health that he had been approved for travel. He will be accompanied by his wife, Samar, and their son.

“I have suffered greatly for two full years just to be able to leave for treatment, and there are thousands of wounded like me,” he said. “I hope the crossing will be opened permanently.”

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has finally reopened after months of closure as a result of Israel’s devastating war on the Gaza Strip.

Hopes were running high that the freedom of movement would ease the dire humanitarian crisis created by this war.

But Israel has set strict conditions on who can leave the Strip and who can enter.

Now, only a small number of people are allowed to move in both directions – mainly for medical evacuations.

But much-needed humanitarian aid and construction materials are still barred from entering the Strip, which is in ruins.

Will this reopening ease the suffering of Palestinians after two years of war?

Presenter: Maleen Saeed

Guests:

Hussein Haridy – Former Egyptian assistant foreign minister

Mosab Nasser – CEO of FAJR Global, an organisation that provides medical care, surgical missions and emergency evacuations

Akiva Eldar – Political analyst and contributor to Haaretz newspaper

Name of Israeli military facility at Gaza crossing with Egypt linked to Zionist anthem and pro-settler NGO, signalling a shift, analysts say. from security control to West Bank-style land grab and dehumanisation of Palestinians.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has reopened partially for a few Palestinians after an 18-month closure in tandem with an added restriction to control the movement of returnees. The Israeli army has set up a checkpoint called Regavim in an area under its control outside the crossing for those entering Gaza from Egypt.

As the first trickle of humanity passed through the gates on Monday, official Israeli military documents gave it a name that indicates the facility is no longer being treated as a border crossing but as an operation for population control.

In an official statement published on its website on Sunday, the Israeli army announced the completion of what it called the “Regavim Inspection Nekez”.

While the Israeli military frames this technical language as routine, analysts told Al Jazeera that the choice of the words “Regavim” and “Nekez” indicates Israel’s long-term intentions.

Al Jazeera spoke to Israeli affairs experts who argued that these terms reveal a dual strategy: invoking Zionist nostalgia to claim the land while using engineering terms to dehumanise the Palestinian people.

Historical code: ‘Clod after clod’

For analyst Mohannad Mustafa, the name Regavim is not random; it is a deliberate ideological trigger intended to resonate with the Israeli government’s far-right base.

“In Hebrew, Regavim means ‘clods of earth’ or patches of arable land,” Mustafa explained. “But it is not just a word. It is a trigger for the Zionist collective memory of land redemption.”

The term is inextricably linked to the Zionist children’s song and poem Dunam Po Ve Dunam Sham (A Dunam Here, a Dunam There) by Joshua Friedman, which was an anthem for the early settlement movement. The lyrics celebrate the acquisition of land: “Dunam here and dunam there/Clod after clod (Regev ahar regev)/Thus we shall redeem the land of the people.”

“By officially naming the Rafah corridor Regavim, the army is sending a subliminal message,” Mustafa said. “They are framing their presence in Gaza not as a temporary security mission but as a form of ‘redeeming the land’ identical to the ideology of the early pioneers.”

Political code: The ‘West Bank model’

Beyond the historical nostalgia, the name has a direct line to the present-day architects of Israel’s annexation policies: the Regavim Movement.

This far-right NGO, cofounded in 2006 by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has been the primary force behind the expansion of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank. A 2023 investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz detailed how the organisation essentially became the “intelligence officer” for the state, using drones and field data to map and demolish Palestinian structures in Area C, the 61 percent of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control.

Mustafa argued that applying this name to the Rafah crossing signals the transfer of the “civil administration” model from the West Bank to Gaza.

“It suggests that Gaza is no longer a separate entity but a territory to be managed with the same tools used to prevent Palestinian statehood in Judea and Samaria,” Mustafa said, using the Israeli terms for the West Bank.

Operational code: A ‘political brand’ and a ‘drain’

Analyst Ihab Jabareen takes the name Regavim a step further. He argued it has evolved beyond its linguistic meaning into a modern “political brand” for the settlement right and is being used to normalise a long-term Israeli presence.

However, Jabareen said the use of the term Nekez in the Israeli military statement portends even more danger.

“While Regavim operates as a political brand, Nekez reveals the cold, engineering mindset of the military,” Jabareen told Al Jazeera. “A Nekez is a drainage point. It is a hydraulic term used for managing sewage, floodwaters or irrigation – not for processing human beings.”

Jabareen argued that describing a human border crossing as a “drain” reflects three chilling assumptions now formalised in military doctrine:

1. Dehumanisation: “The Palestinian is no longer a citizen. They are a ‘fluid mass’ or a ‘flow’ that must be regulated to prevent overflow,” Jabareen said.
2. The end of negotiations: “You do not negotiate with a drain. Rafah is no longer a political border subject to sovereignty. It is an engineering problem to be managed.
3. Infrastructure, not a border: “Security is now being managed like a sewage system – purely technical, devoid of rights.”

“This is colder and more dangerous than standard settlement rhetoric,” Jabareen warned. “It converts the political issue of Gaza into a permanent technical function.”

A formula for ‘quiet control’

Both analysts agreed that the official adoption of these two terms points to a reality that is neither a full withdrawal nor declared annexation.

“It is a formula for ‘quiet control’,” Jabareen explained. “Israel doesn’t need to declare immediate settlement to control the territory. By treating the land as ‘Regavim’ (soil to be held) and the people as a ‘Nekez’ (a flow to be filtered), they are establishing a long-term reality where Gaza is an administered space, never an independent entity.”

Mustafa concurred: “The name ‘Regavim’ tells the settlers: ‘We have returned to the land.’ And the official designation ‘Nekez’ tells the security establishment: ‘We have the valve to turn the human flow on or off at will.’”

The long-awaited re-opening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing has been deemed too late for many seeking treatments, in life-or-death conditions. Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary spoke to a mother who had lost her sick child while waiting for the crossing to open.

Medical charity has been barred for not providing Israeli authorities with personal details of its staff in the enclave.

Israel says it will terminate the humanitarian operations in Gaza of Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, after it failed to provide a list of its Palestinian staff, further depriving Palestinians in the besieged enclave of life-saving assistance.

In December, Israel announced it would prevent 37 aid organisations, including MSF, from working in Gaza from March 1 for failing to submit detailed information about their Palestinian employees, drawing widespread condemnation from NGOs and the United Nations.

“The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism is moving to terminate the activities of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said on Sunday.

The decision followed “MSF’s failure to submit lists of local employees, a requirement applicable to all humanitarian organisations operating in the region”, it added.

The ministry had earlier alleged that two MSF employees had links with Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which the charity has denied.

On Sunday, the ministry said MSF had committed in early January to sharing the staff list as required by the Israeli authorities but ultimately refrained, citing concerns for staff safety and a lack of assurances over how the information would be used.

“Subsequently, MSF announced it does not intend to proceed with the registration process at all, contradicting its previous statements and the binding protocol,” the ministry added, saying, “MSF will cease its operations and depart the Gaza Strip by February 28.”

Israel’s decision to terminate MSF’s operations in Gaza “is an extension of Israel’s systematic weaponisation and instrumentalisation of aid”, James Smith, an emergency physician based in London, told Al Jazeera.

“Israel has systematically targeted the Palestinian healthcare system, killing more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers,” thereby “creating a profound dependency on international organisations”, Smith said.

MSF said 15 of its employees have been killed over the course of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023.

MSF has long been a key provider of medical and humanitarian aid in the enclave, particularly since the war began.

The charity said it currently provides at least 20 percent of hospital beds in the territory and operates about 20 health centres.

In 2025 alone, it carried out more than 800,000 medical consultations and more than 10,000 infant deliveries. It also provides drinking water.

Aid groups warned that without international support provided by organisations such as MSF, critical services such as emergency care, maternal healthcare and paediatric treatment could collapse entirely in Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without basic medical care.

Gaza City – With what remains of her wounded forearms, Nebal al-Hessi scrolls on her phone to follow news updates on the reopening of the Rafah land crossing from her family’s tent in an-Nazla, Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.

Nebal’s hands were amputated in an Israeli artillery attack on the home where she had taken shelter with her husband and her daughter in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, on October 7, 2024.

More than a year later, the 25-year-old mother is one of thousands of wounded people placing their hopes on the reopening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt as they seek access to adequate medical treatment outside the besieged Palestinian territory.

“It’s been a year and five months since I got injured … Every day, I think about tomorrow, that I might travel, but I don’t know,” Nebal tells Al Jazeera in a quiet voice.

Recalling the attack, Nebal says she was sitting on her bed holding her baby daughter Rita, trying to communicate with her family in northern Gaza, when the shell hit suddenly.

“I was trying to catch an internet signal to call my family … my daughter was in my lap… suddenly the shell hit. Then there was dust; I don’t remember anything else,” Nebal says.

“It was the shell fragments that amputated my hands,” she recounts.

‘Life is completely paralysed’

Nebal was taken to the hospital with severe injuries, including complete amputation of both upper limbs up to the elbows, internal bleeding, and a leg injury. She underwent two abdominal surgeries.

She spent about 40 days in the hospital before beginning a new stage of suffering in displacement tents, without the most basic long-term care.

Today, Nebal, an English translation graduate and mother to two-year-old Rita, relies almost entirely on her family for the simplest daily tasks.

“I can’t eat or drink on my own … even getting dressed, my mother, sister, and sister-in-law mainly help me,” she says sorrowfully.

“Even going to the bathroom requires help. I need things in front of me because I cannot bring them myself.”

Nebal talks about the pain of motherhood left suspended, as her daughter grows up before her eyes without her being able to hold her or care for her.

“My little daughter wants me to change her, feed her, give her milk, hold her in my arms like other mothers… she asks me, and I can’t,” Nebal says with sorrow.

“My life is completely paralysed.”

Doctors tell Nebal that she urgently needs to travel to continue treatment and have prosthetic limbs fitted, emphasising that she needs advanced prosthetics to regain a degree of independence, not just cosmetic appearance.

“Doctors tell me that I need a state or an institution to adopt my case so I can gradually return to living my normal life,” she adds.

With Palestinian authorities announcing arrangements to open the Rafah crossing today for batches of wounded people and medical patients, Nebal, like many others, lives in a state of anticipation mixed with fear.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, thousands of wounded still require specialised treatment unavailable inside the Strip, while the scheduling of names depends on medical lists and complex approvals, amid the absence of a clear timetable or publicly announced priority criteria.

Nebal says she received repeated calls over the past months from medical organisations informing her that she would be among the first on the travel lists.

“They contacted me more than once, told me to prepare… they gave me hope,” she adds. “But this time, no one has contacted me yet.”

Today, Nebal fears her case might be overlooked again, or that the crossing’s opening could be merely a formality, disregarding the urgent needs of patients like her.

“I die a little every day because of my current situation … not figuratively. I’ve been like this for a year and four months, and my daughter is growing up in front of me while I am helpless,” she says.

Uncertain future

Nada Arhouma, a 16-year-old girl whose life has been completely altered by a single injury, is also hoping the crossing opens as soon as possible.

Nada, who was displaced with her family from Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza amid Israel’s two-year genocidal war on Gaza, was hit in the face by shrapnel while inside a displacement tent in Sheikh Radwan, Gaza City.

The incident caused the complete loss of one eye, in addition to fractures in her facial bones, orbital damage, and severe tissue tearing.

Her father, Abdul Rahman Arhouma, 49, says that her health deteriorated over time despite treatment attempts in Gaza.

“She entered the ICU at al-Shifa Hospital, then was transferred to Nasser Hospital. She stayed there for about two and a half months. They tried multiple times to graft her eye, but each operation failed, and the disfigurement worsened,” he says.

According to her father, Nada underwent three surgical attempts using tissue from her hand and other facial areas, but all failed, further complicating her medical and psychological condition.

“My daughter bleeds from her eye every day, and she has pus and discharge,” he says. “I am standing helpless, unable to do anything.”

Today, Nada needs constant assistance to walk and suffers from persistent dizziness and balance weakness. Her vision in the healthy eye is also affected.

“Even going to the bathroom, my sisters help me. I can’t walk alone,” Nada tells Al Jazeera in a soft voice.

Nada has an official medical referral and urgently needs to travel for reconstructive surgery and the implantation of a prosthetic eye. But her ability to get the treatments remains uncertain pending the reopening of Rafah – as is the case for other patients and wounded individuals.

“Since I’ve been in the hospital, I hear every week: next week the crossing will open. Honestly, I feel they are lying. I’m not optimistic,” Nada says.

Her father told Al Jazeera that the continuing wait for the Rafah crossing to reopen was “disappointing”.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t understand anything. All the reports came from Israeli sources, and it seemed Rafah looked like a gate for prisoners, not for travel,” he says.

“Our situation is difficult, and it’s clear we face a long wait to secure my daughter’s right to treatment.”

Pilot reopening

Sunday was the first pilot reopening day at Rafah, amid ambiguity and a lack of clarity about the mechanism, particularly regarding the number of patients and wounded who would be allowed to travel.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, thousands of patients and wounded people require urgent medical transfers outside the Strip, amid the collapse of the healthcare system and lack of resources.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly confirmed that Gaza’s health system is “on the brink of collapse”, and that delays in travelling for critical cases threaten their lives.

Meanwhile, Israel has said it will only allow those whose names it has approved in advance to cross, without any clear announcement on daily numbers or approved criteria, leaving families of patients in constant anticipation and frustration.

For Nada’s family, this “experimental opening” means little so far.

“We can’t plan, neither to stay nor to leave,” her father says. “The decision is not in our hands. One lives in a whirlpool, unable to decide what happens. Even the Ministry of Health has not disclosed anything.”

‘Devastating’ struggle to access treatment

Raed Hamad, 52 and a father of four, is also desperate to leave Gaza in order to seek treatments and medication that are not available in the war-ravaged territory.

Hamad was undergoing kidney cancer treatment a year before the war started. He underwent kidney removal after tumour detection to prevent its spread. But the outbreak of the war in October 2023 halted his treatment protocol, significantly affecting his health.

Hamad lives in the remains of his destroyed home in Khan Younis, amid the devastation left by the war, under deteriorating humanitarian conditions.

He describes his current struggle to access treatment during the war, alongside other cancer patients he meets in the hospital’s oncology department, as “devastating.”

“The war has made it almost impossible to obtain medicines and medical supplies. Cancer treatments and known treatment protocols are unavailable,” he says.

“Food, its nature, and the harsh crises we’ve endured during the war—all of this has greatly affected my health.”

Raed’s weight dropped from 92kg (203lb) to 65kg (143lb) due to complications from the disease, lack of treatment, and malnutrition.

“I continue my treatment whenever I can at my own expense,” he says. “Every time I go to the hospital, I cannot find my treatment and see that capabilities in Gaza are extremely limited. My immunity is low, and every day I face new hardships.

“I need to complete my protocol, undergo nuclear scans, and obtain some essential medications to continue my treatment.”