Middle East live: Donald Trump invites Benjamin Netanyahu to be first foreign leader to visit White House

The Palestinian health ministry says two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank overnight and into Wednesday, reports the Associated Press (AP).

A 23-year-old man was shot dead in Tulkarem and a 25-year-old man was killed in a strike on Jenin, where Israel launched a large operation earlier this month.

The Palestinian health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its reports. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Malak A Tantesh in Gaza and Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem:

For Abdulaziz the return to Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza was bittersweet. His home was still standing, if damaged, but the life he built around it had been utterly destroyed by 15 months of Israeli attacks.

Relatives, friends, acquaintances are dead. His job as manager of a car rental business is gone because the cars, the office and all their equipment have been destroyed. He is traumatised by more than a year of war and life as a refugee.

“My experience in this war is beyond words. It’s been nothing short of devastating in every way,” the 24-year-old said. “I lost everything I worked for.”

The hope that it was finally finished, that a fragile ceasefire could be made permanent, kept him going as he trudged back toward the ruins of his home town. His first plan is to visit the graves of loved ones killed by Israeli airstrikes and attacks.

“Now I can finally return to the north. All of this suffering feels somewhat bearable with the hope that the war is over,” he said. “All I can say is, thank God. The exhaustion from the long walk will fade into nothing the moment I finally set foot in my own home.”

Northern Gaza is the most damaged area in a ravaged strip, and the vast crowds trudging along beside the Mediterranean knew they were returning to a wasteland.

Their desperation to get back was testament to the horrors they had endured during their displacement, moving between overcrowded shelters and makeshift camps.

“I know I’m coming back to a place that looks like hell with destruction all around,” said 25-year-old Raed Said Sobeh, who had been displaced five times during the war. He knew his home was gone, but wanted to kiss the ground where it had been.

“Despite everything, we’ve returned to Gaza, defying the occupation! I feel like I’m in heaven! I’ll pitch a tent right on top of the rubble where my home once stood.”

He waited with thousands of others through the bitter cold of a January night, outside the seaside checkpoint that for more than a year had sealed off access to the north, where people would be allowed through on foot. Vehicles lined up outside a second crossing, farther east.

Archie Bland

For today’s First Edition newsletter, Archie Bland, has spoken to the Guardian’s senior international reporter, Peter Beaumont, about Donald Trump’s comments on finding many of the residents of Gaza somewhere else to live. They talk about why it has alarmed many in the Middle East and what they might tell us about what comes next. Here is a snippet:

Does Trump’s proposal amount to ethnic cleansing?

In a word, yes. The United Nations defines ethnic cleansing as the deliberate policy of clearing out civilians from their lands “by use of force or intimidation”. If the residents of Gaza voluntarily left the territory without any threat of violence, that would not amount to ethnic cleansing. But the context of the assault on Gaza, and the fact that most people want to rebuild their lives there, is a long way from that scenario.

“It would clearly be ethnic cleansing,” Peter Beaumont said. “And it is entirely cynical to present it as a humanitarian solution when so many of the levers that could change the circumstances of civilians in Gaza are in Israel’s hands.”

Crucial to understanding why the idea is so horrifying for many Palestinians is the history of what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, when Israeli forces expelled up to 750,000 people – the exact figures are disputed – from Arab towns and villages in the newly created state of Israel in 1948. The war since the 7 October attacks is viewed by many Palestinians as a new Nakba.

But that is not the only precedent that they will have in mind. “The history for decades has been that when Palestinian populations have been moved since 1948, they don’t get to come back,” Peter said. By the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, for example, hundreds of thousands had been displaced from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, mostly to Jordan.

Egypt and Jordan have rejected Trump’s idea that they could take in Palestinians forced to leave Gaza. “Public opinion tends to be much more pro-Palestinian rights than either King Abdullah’s regime in Jordan or that of Sisi in Egypt,” Peter said. “So it is politically hugely problematic for them.”

Trump invites Netanyahu to be first foreign leader to visit White House

Andrew Roth

Donald Trump has invited Benjamin Netanyahu to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House, in a major concession to a US ally who is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes.

The invitation was made in a letter from the US president, which invited the Israeli prime minister to come to the White House on 4 February to “discuss how we can bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and efforts to counter our shared adversaries”.

“It will be my honor to host you as my first foreign leader during my second term,” the letter read.

Trump and Netanyahu have had a difficult personal relationship, but Israel remains the US’s closest ally in the region. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, is said to have had a tense conversation with Netanyahu in the days before a hostages-for-ceasefire deal was negotiated between Hamas and Israel, on the day before Trump’s inauguration.

Since then, Trump has lifted a ban on supplying Israel with 2,000lb bombs that had been held back by the Biden administration in opposition to Israel’s overwhelming use of force against Gaza.

Donald Trump has invited Benjamin Netanyahu to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House, in a major concession to a US ally who is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes.

The invitation was made in a letter from the US president, which invited the Israeli prime minister to come to the White House on 4 February to “discuss how we can bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and efforts to counter our shared adversaries”.

“It will be my honor to host you as my first foreign leader during my second term,” the letter read.

Trump has said he is “not confident” that the ceasefire in Gaza will hold. Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel and Hamas should soon commence negotiating a longer-term peace that many fear will fail and lead to a return to bloodshed following more than 15 months of fighting.

More on Trump’s invitation to Netanyahu in a moment, but first here are some of the latest developments in the Middle East:

• More than 375,000 Palestinians have crossed into northern Gaza since Israel allowed their return on Monday morning, the United Nations said on Tuesday. That represents over a third of the million people who fled in the war’s opening days.

• An increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza has continued under the ceasefire. “In this past week alone, approximately 4,200 trucks carrying aid have entered the Gaza Strip following inspections,” said Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel. Under the ceasefire deal, 600 trucks of aid are meant to enter a day.

• The Jordanian air force has begun delivering 20 tonnes of food and medical supplies to Gaza, a government spokesperson said on Tuesday.

• The government of Qatar, a mediator in the ceasefire talks, said on Tuesday that while complaints have been raised by both sides, no confirmed ceasefire violations have occurred that could cause the agreement to collapse.

• Israel has vowed to go ahead with its ban on the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, Unrwa, which has been told to vacate its headquarters in East Jerusalem by Thursday.

• The head of the body, Philippe Lazzarini, told the UN security council that the ban was “jeopardizing any prospect for peace and security” and “harming the lives and future of Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territory”.

• Numerous US allies – including Jordan, Qatar, and France – have rejected Donald Trump’s proposal that people in Gaza should be moved into Jordan or Egypt.