Updates: Turkiye, Egypt say Erdogan, el-Sisi invited by Trump to Gaza board

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To read more on Trump naming Blair and Kushner to the Gaza “board of peace”, go here.

Watch our report here on the millions of tonnes of rubble in Gaza amid Israel’s genocidal war on the enclave.

We will be closing this live page shortly but before we do, here’s a recap of the day’s major developments:

• A baby has died due to the severe cold gripping Gaza, as a shortage of aid due to Israel’s restrictions and a lack of heating continue to worsen living conditions.
• Israeli gunfire has wounded a Palestinian girl at Halawa School in Jabalia in northern Gaza. The attack coincided with air strikes east of Gaza City and the bombing of Deir el-Balah and Bureij camp.
• Israeli forces carried out overnight raids on several towns and a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank’s Hebron governorate, injuring at least one Palestinian.
• The death toll in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has gone up to at least 71,548 with another 171,353 wounded by Israeli attacks across Gaza since October 2023.
• President Trump has appointed former British PM Blair to his so-called “board of peace”, tasked with overseeing a 20-point plan aimed at ending Israel’s war on Gaza.
• Egypt and Turkiye have said that President Trump has sent a letter inviting President Erdogan and President el-Sisi to become ⁠a member of the board. Argentina’s President Javier Milei wrote on X that he received “the invitation for Argentina to join, as a Founding Member, the Board of Peace”.
• A petition urging France to end what it describes as Israel’s “impunity” in Gaza has surpassed 125,000 signatures.

Sitting in his Gaza City tent, Mahmoud Abdel Aal expresses his frustration and worries, as conditions in the Palestinian enclave remain unchanged since the implementation of a United States-brokered ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.

“There is no difference between the war and the ceasefire, nor between the first and second phase of the deal: Strikes continue every day,” Abdel Aal told the AFP news agency. “Everyone is worried and frustrated because nothing’s changed.”

Daily living conditions remain extremely precarious for most Palestinians, with more than 80 percent of infrastructure destroyed, according to the United Nations.

View our photo gallery here.

The United Kingdom’s former PM Blair has said he is honoured to be named as part of a Gaza board that Trump has unveiled.

In a statement, he thanked Trump “for his leadership in establishing the Board of Peace”, adding that he was looking “forward to working with them [Witkoff and Kushner] and other colleagues in line with the president’s vision to promote peace and prosperity”.

Blair, who was the British prime minister during the 2003 United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq based on false claims over weapons of mass destruction, is regarded by many in the Arab world and in the UK as a “war criminal”.

Since leaving office, Blair has faced sustained criticism for his work through the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), which has been accused of helping to launder the reputations of hardline regimes.

Israeli settlers, under the protection of Israeli forces, attacked Palestinians in the Huwara area of Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.

Wafa news agency quoted Osama Makhameh, an anti-settlement activist in southern Hebron, as saying that dozens of armed settlers “from the Karmiel colony and the outposts of Moshe and Shimon, built on Palestinian land south of Hebron, physically assaulted and attacked residents in Huwara under the protection of Israeli soldiers”.

He added that the settlers “also released their livestock into the vicinity of the residents’ homes”.

An Israeli settler has sealed a road leading to agricultural lands south of the village of al-Mughayyir, east of Ramallah, blocking off residents’ access to their lands.

The Wafa news agency reported that on Friday, the Israeli army “detained four international solidarity activists from the same hamlet, while they were attempting to document colonist attacks and provide support to residents”.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has announced the resumption of a “catch‑up” vaccination campaign aimed at strengthening the national immunisation programme for children under the age of three.

“The campaign will begin next Sunday, January 18, and will last for 10 days,” the ministry said.

“The campaign will be conducted through 130 health centres affiliated with the Ministry of Health, UNRWA, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, and local and international organizations operating in the Gaza Strip.”

Satellite images show that the Israeli military is controlling more than 50 percent of Gaza. It has already changed the location of the yellow demarcation line multiple times, allowing Israeli forces to control more land.

As part of phase two of the ceasefire agreement, we may witness the Israeli withdrawal from these areas back to positions behind them as required under the agreement.

But we see repeatedly that the Israeli military and political officials are making a link between the Israeli withdrawal from these areas, with the full disarmament of armed factions and the return of the last Israeli body from Gaza.

To what extent the Trump administration will convince Israel to withdraw from these areas remains to be seen. There are a lot of sticking points remaining that mediators and the US will continue to work on to resolve between the conflicting parties.

But for now, people are still living under the threat of Israeli attacks. People are sceptical about the prospects of success for phase two of the agreement while violations are ongoing and inflammatory statements are being made by the Israeli side regarding the withdrawal and reconstruction of Gaza.

Technical teams from the United Nations Development Programme estimate it will take seven years to clear most of the rubble in Gaza, and only under the right conditions.

These include receiving unimpeded access, uninterrupted fuel supplies, heavy machinery, and sustained international support.

Margunn Indreboe, deputy special representative of the administrator for UNDP, said the operation is currently collecting about 5,000 tonnes of debris every day in Gaza, with two crushing machines processing about 2,000 tonnes daily.

“What we do with the crushed materials is we reuse it for humanitarian access,” she told Al Jazeera.

“So we rehabilitate roads, we rehabilitate sites for displaced people. We work with organisations like World Central Kitchen, with UNICEF, with WFP, so that they are able to then establish their operations in a safe place.”

As Trump announced the list of names on the Gaza board, the reaction from Palestinians in the besieged enclave is one that mixes cautious hope and deep scepticism and is shaped by their lived experience since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.

“A lot of political decisions are distant from the reality faced in Gaza… our daily life that is filled with blockades, fear, loss, tents, and a terrible humanitarian situation,” said Arwa Ashour, a freelance journalist and writer based in Gaza City.

“Even when decisions are made to ease the suffering, they are obstructed by the Israeli occupation authorities.”

“People want everything back like it was before the war: schools, hospitals, travel. If the Board of Peace is going to resolve all these crises, then we welcome it. But if it’s unable to do so, then what is its benefit?”

“We have officially entered the second phase of Gaza’s 20-point peace plan,” said Trump when announcing the move to the second part of the agreement.

He added that the US will reach a deal with Hamas on handing over its weapons, as he threatened the group with consequences if it does not comply.

Al Jazeera’s Inside Story speaks to experts on whether the transition to the next phase is even possible.

Watch the discussion below:

• An infant has died due to the severe cold gripping Gaza, as a shortage of aid due to Israel’s restrictions and a lack of heating continue to worsen living conditions.
• Israeli gunfire has wounded a Palestinian girl at Halawa School in Jabalia in northern Gaza. The attack coincided with air strikes east of Gaza City and the bombing of Deir el-Balah and Bureij camp.
• Israeli forces carried out overnight raids on several towns and a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank’s Hebron governorate, injuring at least one Palestinian.
• President Trump has appointed former British PM Blair to his so-called “board of peace”, tasked with overseeing a 20-point plan aimed at ending Israel’s war on Gaza.
• A petition urging France to end what it describes as Israel’s “impunity” in Gaza has surpassed 125,000 signatures.

In the final days of their months-long hunger strike, three young pro-Palestine activists on remand – convicted of no crime – were confronted with their mortality in the confines of their prison cells.

Heba Muraisi, 31, who refused food for 73 days, was suffering with a level of pain so severe that sitting felt unbearable. At 49kg (108lb), her body wasting away, there were fears her organs were shutting down. Her memory declined and she had muscle spasms, a sign of possible neurological damage.

But until they announced the end of their hunger strikes on Wednesday amid their rapidly collapsing health, Muraisi and prisoners Kamran Ahmed, 28, and Lewie Chiaramello, 23, were determined to continue.

A Londoner who worked as a florist and lifeguard, Muraisi told Al Jazeera this week that she had resigned herself to the idea of death but wanted to keep refusing food in protest because she was “finally being heard”.

Ahmed, in a statement sent to Al Jazeera, has said ending the hunger strike after 65 days felt “bittersweet”.

Read the full story here.