Israeli strikes pound Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday

JERUSALEM: An Israeli official says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday ordered the army to add more troops in and around the Gaza Strip after Hamas threatened to call off the next scheduled release of hostages.
Netanyahu also ordered officials “to prepare for every scenario if Hamas doesn’t release our hostages this Saturday,” according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The official was not clear if Netanyahu’s order referred to the release of all remaining hostages in Gaza, or just the three scheduled for release on Saturday.
Israel had signaled Monday it planned to reinforce defenses along the Gaza border. The all-scenario plan was announced during a four-hour meeting between Netanyahu and his Security Cabinet that focused on Hamas’ threat, which risks jeopardizing the three-week-old ceasefire.
So far, Hamas has released 21 hostages in a series of exchanges for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. But it said Monday — and reiterated Tuesday — that it planned to delay the next release of three more hostages after accusing Israel of failing to meet the terms of the ceasefire, including by not allowing enough tents and other aid into Gaza.
President Donald Trump has said Israel should cancel the entire ceasefire if all of the roughly 70 hostages aren’t freed by Saturday. Hamas brushed off his threat on Tuesday, doubling down on its claim that Israel has violated the ceasefire and warned that it would only continue releasing hostages if all parties adhered to the ceasefire.
Trump is hosting Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday as he escalates pressure on the Arab nation to take in refugees from Gaza — perhaps permanently — as part of his audacious plan to remake the Middle East.
Palestinians and the international community have seethed over Trump’s recent comments that any Palestinians potentially expelled from Gaza would not have a right to return.
During the first six-week phase of the ceasefire, Hamas committed to freeing 33 hostages captured in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, while Israel said it would release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The sides have carried out five swaps since Jan. 19.
The war could resume in early March if no agreement is reached on the more complicated second phase of the ceasefire, which calls for the return of all remaining hostages and an indefinite extension of the truce.
But if Israel resumes the war, it will face a drastically different battlefield. After forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to evacuate to southern Gaza in the early stages of the war, Israel allowed many of those displaced people to return to what is left of their homes, posing a new challenge to its ability to move ground troops through the territory.

LONDON: Israeli authorities released the owners of a well-established Palestinian bookshop in occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday after detaining them and confiscating their books on Sunday.

Saqi Books, the publisher of writer and bookseller Mahmoud Muna, confirmed that Mahmoud and his cousin Ahmed Muna were released after being detained for selling books related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which Israeli authorities considered “inciting violence.”

The Munas owns The Educational Bookshop, which is 38 years old and has two branches, one of which features a cafe and a small conference room located on the busy Salah Al-Din Street.

Mahmoud, who edited the “Daybreak in Gaza” collection with British filmmaker Matthew Teller last year, also runs the Bookshop at the American Colony Hotel. His family’s two bookshops have become essential stops for foreign journalists, diplomats, intellectuals and peace activists visiting East Jerusalem.

In 2011, they won the Best Library award in Palestine and were recognized as the third-best library in the Middle East by the Lonely Planet Foundation, the Wafa news agency reported.

After his release, Ahmed Muna described his arrest as "brutal and unjust." He said that Israeli authorities had placed both him and Mahmoud under house arrest for five days and prohibited them from entering the bookshop for 20 days.

Mahmoud and Ahmed appeared before an Israeli court on Monday afternoon, attended by EU representatives, including those from France and the UK.

The French Consulate in Jerusalem, which operates the French Cultural Center directly adjacent to the raided bookshop on Salah Al-Din Street, said on Monday afternoon that the Israeli “raid is an attack against freedom of expression. Those pressures should stop now.”

The Jerusalem-based writer Dima Al-Samman told Wafa that Israeli authorities “aim to erase anything related to Palestinian national culture and any manifestation of patriotism” in Jerusalem.

Jameel As-Salhut, another writer based in Jerusalem, wondered: “Why is ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ afraid of books and culture?” He added that despite the Israeli escalation in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, “it is impossible for the Israeli military to succeed in suppressing Palestinian culture in Jerusalem.”

The Educational Bookshop is the third Palestinian bookstore to be raided and closed by Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem. Another recent raid occurred at a bookshop inside the Old City of Jerusalem’s Khan Al-Zeit bazaar, and the owner, Hisham Al-Ekramawi, was arrested during the incident.