Compilation of news reports – IAK staff
At least six newborn babies have frozen to death in the Gaza Strip amid cold weather in the war-torn enclave, a Palestinian health official said on Tuesday. At least 5 of them were between one day and two weeks old.
A Palestinian succumbed Tuesday evening to an injury he sustained from Israeli army gunfire in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, according to medical sources.
An Israeli drone strike Tuesday killed two people and in eastern Lebanon, according to media reports.
Detained healthcare workers in Gaza
As of February 25, 2025, Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW) documented 384 cases of unlawful detention of healthcare workers in Palestine by Israeli Occupation Forces since October 7, 2023.
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97 physicians, 6 dentists, 111 nurses, 62 paramedics, 8 pharmacists, 1 optometrist, 27 technicians, 41 healthcare administrative staff, 14 healthcare students, 3 volunteers, 1 nutritionist, 1 community healthcare worker, 1 prosthetist, 1 physiotherapist, 3 psychologists, and 7 others.
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At least 185 are currently in detention, including the bodies of 4 healthcare workers killed in detention.
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24 remain missing after hospital invasions.
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175 have been released, including 5 detained twice before release, 19 freed in a prisoner exchange deal, and at least 2 released after being used as human shields.
Of those detained, 339 were from Gaza Strip and 45 from the West Bank.
At least 96 healthcare workers have provided testimonies of torture and inhumane treatment to HWW or other platforms.
On average, a Palestinian healthcare worker detained by Israeli forces spent 246 days in prison (median: 343 days), with detention periods ranging from 1 day to 480 days. (Read the full report here.)
Muath Alser, director of HWW, said the detention of large numbers of doctors, nurses, paramedics and other healthcare workers from Gaza was illegal under international law and was furthering the suffering of civilians by denying them medical expertise and care.
RELATED: ‘Israel massacred 90 civilians from one family in Gaza without military necessity,’ says NGO
WHO: 92% of targeted children under polio campaign vaccinated in Gaza
B’Tselem statement: The Israeli government is trying to destroy human rights organizations
Two bills that recently passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset are part of a calculated assault by the government on Israeli civil society. The aim is clear: eliminate human rights groups, including B’Tselem, silence government critics and stop us from fulfilling our mission to defend human rights (this attack will also damage important organizations fighting for environmental protection, LGBTQ+ rights and more).
Simply put, the “ICC law” criminalizes our work by making human rights defense a punishable offense, while the “NGO taxation law” is designed to drain our financial resources.
These measures are currently targeting human rights organizations, but they are part of a broader pattern of Israeli government initiatives to harm the people living here, abandon them and wipe them out – this time, by silencing those who wish to protect them.
The approved law slaps an 80% tax on donations from foreign countries, the UN and many international foundations that support human rights. This will effectively cut off funding for the defense of human rights. The goal of the law is to destroy human rights organizations by crippling our financial sources. It is explicitly aimed at silencing criticism of the government’s destructive policies, and eliminating any Israeli opposition to the harm inflicted on Palestinians by the hard-right government…
Israel continues to perpetrate crimes, flouting every law, norm and moral principle. Now, it is seeking to hide its crimes and silence those who document and report them. We will continue our work to resist the occupation and apartheid and champion a future of freedom, equality and full human rights for everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (read the statement in its entirety here).
Israel wants full Hamas disarmament, ‘buffer zones’ in Gaza during phase two of ceasefire talks: Report
Israel is looking to solidify its presence inside the Gaza Strip in violation of the ceasefire and “dismantle” Hamas militarily, according to an informed source cited by Bloomberg on 25 February.
“Netanyahu’s government wants to create buffer zones in the north and east of Gaza and completely dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities during a phase two,” the source said.
The Israeli army is “supposed to leave the border area with Egypt [as part of the deal], but isn’t planning to do so at the moment,” the source added.
Bloomberg reports that Israel is planning to “extend the Gaza ceasefire when it expires this weekend so as many hostages as possible can be freed – while starting to amass troops for a return to war if required.”
The first 42-day stage of the ceasefire is set to expire on Sunday, 2 March. However, Israel has delayed talks for phase two of the agreement.
Israel replicates Gaza land corridor in occupied West Bank: Report
Israel is looking to construct roads in the occupied West Bank replicating the infamous Netzarim corridor in Gaza, Hebrew media reported on 24 February.
According to Israel’s Channel 14, “the army and security agencies are working to create roads similar to the Netzarim Corridor, though narrower, in Jenin and Tulkarem.”
“The roads aim to prevent militants from planting explosives and provide a quick route for forces,” Channel 14 added. The Netzarim corridor – which Israeli forces withdrew from during the fragile Gaza ceasefire – was constructed to split the strip into two and prevent the return of the displaced to its north.
Brutal war crimes were carried out by Israeli forces at Netzarim, including executions of unarmed civilians.
The Channel 14 report comes as Israel intensifies a massive military operation against several West Bank cities, which began last month.
The cities of Jenin and Tulkarem have been under total siege since last month as part of an indiscriminate and deadly campaign against the Palestinian resistance, which has expanded to include other towns and cities, including Nablus. The assaults have taken a devastating toll on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The Israeli attacks across the occupied West Bank have increasingly begun to resemble Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Israeli forces are employing many of the same tactics to make neighborhoods unlivable and instill fear in Palestinian civilians.
RELATED: Israel inflicts ‘unprecedented’ destruction in Tulkarem Camp
Battling with double pneumonia, Pope Francis calls Gaza priest
Pope Francis, hospitalized in critical condition with pneumonia in both lungs, was showing a “slight improvement”, the Vatican said Monday, while cautioning that doctors would not offer a prognosis.
Amid global concern over the 88-year-old’s health, the Vatican said in its evening bulletin that “the critical clinical conditions of the Holy Father demonstrate a slight improvement.”
“In the evening he called the priest in the Gaza parish to express his fatherly closeness,” the Vatican said in a statement.
Francis has been video-calling Gabriele Romanelli, the priest leading the Catholic community at the church in Gaza, and his assistant, Yusuf Asad, via WhatsApp almost every night since Israel’s war on Gaza began.
Nasrallah’s funeral: A million voices for Resistance
The sight of Lebanese resistance flags fluttering near the border with the occupation state has long unsettled Israelis. But the massive funeral that unfolded in Beirut on Sunday afternoon for the martyred former Hezbollah secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah would have commanded their undivided attention – and they were not the only ones watching.
Sunday’s rare mass gathering sent an unmistakable message: the spirit of those who resist oppression will never be broken. As the New York Times observed, the event was “a show of strength.”
The funeral reportedly drew an estimated 1.4 million attendees – nearly 25 percent of Lebanon’s population – positioning it as one of history’s most proportionally significant state funerals.
In stark contrast, Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral, while attracting around 2 million people, represented only about 0.5 percent of India’s population at the time. Similarly, Pope John Paul II’s state funeral saw roughly 4 million participants, or 7 percent of Italy’s population.
When low-flying Israeli fighter jets roared overhead just half an hour into the ceremony, no one flinched. Even when they repeated the provocation 30 minutes later, the crowd erupted into defiant chants of “Hayhat minna al-dhilla” (We will never accept humiliation) – a phrase famously attributed to Imam Hussain on the Day of Ashura, often echoed by Nasrallah throughout his decades of activism and leadership (continue reading here).
Canadian pro-Palestinian activist released from jail says free speech under threat
A Canadian activist and author was released after five days in prison following accusations by an anti-Palestinian media personality that he had harassed her, and his refusal to stay quiet about his case.
Yves Engler was taken into custody on the morning of 20 February in Montreal and spent five days in Bordeaux prison in Montreal before being released Monday after a court appearance.
“I think the key issue is I had to go to jail for five days to win the right to (publicly) criticize charges brought against me. The police, and then the crown, wanted to restrict my right to write about my case. When I wrote about it, they claimed I was harassing the police. I was in jail for five days over a technical condition. When I went on Thursday morning, they could have processed and let me go.”
Engler’s detainment is part of a larger crackdown on free speech in Canada, he says.
“Less than two weeks ago, I spoke on a webinar with a lawyer from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and it was titled, The New McCarthyism in Canada,” he said.
“It was all about the targeting of those opposing Canadian complicity in Israel’s apartheid and genocide. We went through a whole bunch of examples of people who’ve been targeted. Canada has, for more than a century, provided all kinds of support for Zionism and for Palestinian dispossession. The targeting of those opposing Israel’s crimes is just one of the innumerable ways that Canada has assisted in Palestinian dispossession” (continue reading here).
MORE NEWS:
Anadolu Agency: Israel’s West Bank offensive: Prelude to annexation?
Anadolu Agency: US senator Bernie Sanders files new set of resolutions to block arms sales to Israel
IMEMC Daily Reports
WATCH | The moment Israeli warplanes flew over the funeral of late Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. The crowd can be heard screaming “at your service, O Nasrallah” and “death to Israel.” pic.twitter.com/ZcuwS1etc5
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) February 23, 2025
STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – FEBRUARY 25, 2025 (ongoing count):
- At least 49,262 Palestinians killed, 119,455 injured – including:
- at least 48,339 killed in Gaza (~14,5500 children)
- at least 923 killed in the West Bank (~186 children)
- at least 111,753 injured in Gaza
- at least 7,702 injured in the West Bank
WAR STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 (Hamas attack) – JANUARY 22, 2025 (Ceasefire):
Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – January 19, 2025: at least 48,143 – including at least 47,283 in Gaza (~20,600 children), and 916 in the West Bank (~183 children). Palestinian injuries: at least 118,472 – including at least 111,629 in Gaza, and 7,000 in the West Bank.
Thousands of those killed in Gaza have yet to be identified, and an estimated 11,000 more are still buried under rubble.
Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – January 19, 2025: ~1,616 (or 1,590) – including ~1,139 on October 7, 2023 (~36 children), 436 (or 405) military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza, 46 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel.
NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.
- Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
- Israeli Doctors Must Condemn the Inhumane Treatment of Hospitalized Palestinian Detainees
- Did Israel round up women and children after 7 October as bargaining chips?
- Gaza’s lost embryos: Dreams of parenthood shattered for thousands in the wake of genocide after Israel destroys IVF centers
- BBC slammed for pulling film that ‘humanized Palestinian children’
- How a Well-Connected Israeli Legal Expert Influenced the UN Investigation Into Sexual Violence on October 7
- Poised To Take Over TikTok, Oracle Is Accused Of Clamping Down On Pro-Palestine Dissent
- As Israel uses US-made AI models in war, concerns arise about tech’s role in who lives and who dies
- US TikTok ban linked to pro-Palestine content rather than China threat, insiders reveal
- Interview: ‘Not A Far-Off Goal’ – Salman Abu-Sitta on the Right of Return
- Israeli soldiers used an 80-year-old Gazan as a human shield. Then they killed him.
- Gideon Levy: If Anyone Should ‘Not Forget nor Forgive,’ It’s the Palestinians
- Columbia network pushing to deport and arrest student protesters
- Explosive Remnants in Gaza Cause Dozens of Casualties
- Ex-AIPAC Staffer: ‘I Woke Up to What Israel Was’
- Chas Freeman: Israel Lobby tactics plumb the depths of dishonor & indecency
- The long walk home to northern Gaza
- Released From Detention, Owners of East Jerusalem Bookstore Still Don’t Know Why They Were Arrested
- Counting the Victims of Israel’s War on Gaza Is Low on Media’s Priority List
- Israel sees terrorism in books – even coloring books, arrests Palestinian bookshop owners
