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New Delhi, India – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Washington late on Wednesday night and is scheduled to meet United States President Donald Trump on Thursday at the White House.

While the two leaders have often described each other as friends in the past, and have even held joint political rallies together, Modi’s visit comes at a time when the relationship is being tested by Trump’s tariff threats and deportation realities.

“I look forward to meeting my friend, President Trump,” Modi said in a departing message, adding that he has a “very warm recollection of working together in [Trump’s] first term”.

Trump had announced Modi’s visit to the US after their telephone conversation on January 27, a week after he was sworn into office for his second term. After their call, Trump also said that he believed Modi would do “what is right” on undocumented Indian migrants in the US.

But pleasing both Trump and the Indian public won’t be easy for Modi.

Here’s what’s at stake for India, and what Modi might bring with him to the meeting with Trump to try to placate the US president.

What’s at stake for India?

The US is India’s largest export destination and ranks among its top two trade partners in several sectors, including technology, trade, defence and energy. The two-way trade between the US and India touched an all-time high of $118bn in 2023-24.

Bilateral ties have also strengthened in the last three decades as the US has increasingly focused on countering the rise of a shared rival – China.

But despite that convergence, Trump has made clear – as he had with several US allies – that he has deep differences too with India.

During his campaign for the 2024 election, Trump labelled India a “very big abuser” of trade and threatened tariffs. Since being elected, he pushed New Delhi to buy more US-made security equipment as a way to reduce the imbalance in their trade. In 2024, the trade surplus stood at $45.6bn, in favour of India, according to US government data.

Trump’s re-election campaign also highlighted undocumented immigration and illegal settlement in the US. As of 2022, India ranked third, after Mexico and El Salvador, among countries with the largest number of undocumented immigrants – 725,000 – living in the country.

And on Wednesday last week, a US military plane touched down in Amritsar, a city in northern India, carrying 104 Indian deportees, their hands and legs cuffed. In the farthest such journey undertaken by a US military aircraft, the “mistreatment” of deportees prompted a major outrage, including protests by the opposition, in India.

“India has always celebrated the success of Indians in the US, which means Indian Americans have been a very visible community in India’s consciousness,” said Swaran Singh, professor at the centre of international politics at Delhi’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University. Indian foreign policy too, under Modi, has especially celebrated nonresident Indians, he said. “These dynamics make the mistreatment of Indian deportees a volatile and inflammable issue in bilateral ties,” Singh said.

Jon Danilowicz, a retired diplomat who served at the US Department of State, said that Modi’s meeting with Trump “is mainly an opportunity for the Indian PM to present his side of the story to make New Delhi’s case”.

But what could Modi offer to manage the Trump threat on tariffs and deportation?

What’s Modi’s likely game plan on deportation?

Singh noted the Indian government’s muted official reaction to the outrage over images of citizens returning from the US in cuffs.

That, he suggested, was a deliberate decision.

“Trump has some method in his madness. He uses whimsical statements to create maximum pressure,” said Singh. “It is not a good sense to then publicly confront him [on contentious issues].”

Instead, after an uproar in the parliament, India’s foreign minister, S Jaishankar, said that the use of restraints was part of the US’s deportation policy, adding that “it is the obligation of all countries to take back their nationals if they are found to be living illegally abroad”.

“Our focus should be on a strong crackdown on the illegal migration industry while taking steps to ease visas for legitimate travellers,” said Jaishankar.

How might Modi counter Trump on tariffs?

Trump has promised to announce further tariffs later this week, and though he hasn’t specified which countries or sectors might be targeted, India is expected to be affected.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said that she expected these reciprocal tariffs – against countries that Trump believes impose unfair restrictions on US imports – to be announced before the US president meets Modi.

Trump has already imposed a 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports on top of existing tariffs and has introduced a 25 percent tariff on all steel and aluminium imports.

But when Modi meets Trump, the Indian PM could point to recent unilateral steps that India has taken to lower the barriers to entry for US goods, say analysts.

Traditionally, India, an emerging economy, has had high tariffs in place for several imported products that it feared could hurt its domestic industry and farm sector. However, in its latest budget, announced on February 1, the Modi government slashed tariffs and avoided any protectionist announcements.

Such steps might “preempt some action of the US administration”, said Danilowicz.

India, after all, is familiar with the risks of a tariff war with the US. In 2018, Trump had imposed tariffs of 25 percent on $761m of steel and 10 percent on $382m of aluminium imported from India, which retaliated by adding customs duties to at least 28 US products. After years of trade tensions, in 2023, a resolution was announced during a Modi visit to Washington.

Modi will want to avoid a repeat.

“India has so far escaped the direct tariff heat by the new Trump administration and that is a positive sign,” said Biswajit Dhar, a distinguished professor at the Council for Social Development in New Delhi.

Dhar, an international trade expert, told Al Jazeera that Modi needs to use this meeting “to convince Trump that India plays a fair game vis-a-vis trade and, therefore, India should be treated differently.”

“If China is slapped with these kinds of tariffs, then the same thing should not happen to India,” Dhar said, adding that the “personalised background” to the duo’s relationship should allow space to accommodate these discussions. “At the least, India would not like itself to be clubbed along with China.”

After all, China – or rather the shared suspicion of Beijing’s plans for the Asia Pacific region – is the biggest glue that holds the India-US relationship together.

‘Commitment to QUAD’

Modi is only the fourth world leader to meet Trump since his re-election, after conflict-engaged Israel, Jordan and Japan, its ally in the Asia Pacific. Foreign policy experts told Al Jazeera that being invited this early in Trump’s term shows how important the US president considers ties with India.

China is a big part of that.

A day after Trump was sworn in as the 47th US president, his newly appointed secretary of state, Marco Rubio, held a meeting with fellow foreign ministers of India, Australia and Japan. The four nations – with a collective population of nearly two billion people and representing more than a third of global gross domestic produce (GDP) – form the Quad, a strategic forum focused on the Asia Pacific region.

The Modi-Trump phone call on January 27 also “emphasized their commitment to advance the US-India strategic partnership and the Indo-Pacific Quad partnership”, a US government statement after their conversation said.

“The Trump administration has clearly signalled that the Indo-Pacific region is a priority. And that’s clearly driven by the competition with China,” said Danilowicz, the former US diplomat.

But there’s another country that Trump and the US want to target – and there, New Delhi and Washington differ.

The Iran equation

A major storm is brewing between India and the US over Iran, said Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, a Washington, DC-based think tank.

At the centre of tensions is the port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman, where India has made a multimillion-dollar investment in the hopes of developing a strategically located maritime facility. The port allows India to send food, aid and other commodities to landlocked Afghanistan and Central Asia via Iran, bypassing Pakistan, New Delhi’s archrival.

India had secured a sanctions waiver from the US during the first Trump administration for work related to Chabahar.

But in a national security presidential memorandum that Trump signed on February 4, he asked US Secretary of State Rubio to “modify or rescind sanctions waivers, particularly those that provide Iran any degree of economic or financial relief, including those related to Iran’s Chabahar port project”.

“Trump’s Iran policy could well become a flashpoint in the US-India relationship and can have a deleterious impact,” Kugelman told Al Jazeera, adding that Trump’s “maximalist position towards Iran” presents a delicate diplomatic situation for India.

‘Bonhomie’ and friction

Other niggles in ties – like allegations by US prosecutors that India’s spy agency attempted to assassinate an American citizen, Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun; or the US indictment of billionaire Gautam Adani over bribery charges – will continue to shadow bilateral ties, noted Kugelman.

“These issues will not necessarily come up in the immediate future, or at this meeting, but they are not going away anytime soon,” said Kugelman. “Given Trump’s maximalist position on tariffs, he’s going to try to do everything to incentivise countries to bring down and reduce tariffs.”

Indian diplomats and international foreign policy experts have said Modi’s celebrated ‘bromance’ equation with Trump provides India an edge on the table with other countries.

However, it does not necessarily translate into “a better deal”, said Danilowicz, the former US diplomat.

United States President Donald Trump has signalled a major shift in three years of US policy towards Kyiv, saying that he and Russian leader Vladimir Putin had spoken by phone and agreed to begin negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.

Trump said he spent more than an hour on the phone with Putin on Wednesday, and “I think we’re on the way to getting peace”.

He noted that he later spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but he was noncommittal about whether Ukraine would be an equal participant in US negotiations with Russia on ending the war.

“I think President Putin wants peace and President Zelenskyy wants peace and I want peace,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Recounting his call with Putin, Trump said: “People didn’t really know what President Putin’s thoughts were. But I think I can say with great confidence, he wants to see it ended also, so that’s good – and we’re going to work toward getting it ended and as fast as possible.”

Trump said that he would “probably” meet in person with Putin in the near term, suggesting that a meeting could take place in Saudi Arabia.

Asked specifically about Ukraine being an equal member in a potential peace process, Trump responded, “Interesting question. I think they have to make peace.”

Trump’s conversation with Putin may also signal that Washington and Moscow could work to hammer out a deal to end fighting in Ukraine by going around Kyiv, a development that would break with the previous Biden administration, which had steadfastly insisted that Ukraine’s leadership would be a full participant in any decisions made.

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy appeared to put on a brave face saying that Trump had informed him of his conversation with Putin and that he appreciated the US president’s “genuine interest in our shared opportunities and how we can bring about a real peace together”.

“We believe that America’s strength, together with Ukraine and all of our partners, is enough to push Russia to peace,” he later wrote on social media.

I had a long and detailed conversation with President Trump. I appreciate his genuine interest in our shared opportunities and how we can bring about real peace together.

We discussed many aspects—diplomatic, military, and economic—and President Trump informed me about what… pic.twitter.com/flmigxqtbl

Ukraine NATO membership unrealistic

Earlier, in another blow to Kyiv, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at NATO headquarters in Brussels that Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO was unrealistic.

“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” Hegseth said at the NATO meeting.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he said.

Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 and it is still considered occupied territory by Ukraine and many Western countries.

Hegseth said any durable peace must include “robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again”. But he said US troops would not be deployed to Ukraine as part of such guarantees.

Trump said later about NATO membership for Ukraine: “I don’t think it’s practical to have it, personally”.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration joined other NATO members in declaring that Kyiv’s membership in the Western military alliance was “inevitable”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the conversation between Trump and Putin covered a good deal of ground, including the Middle East and Iran, but that Ukraine was the main focus.

Peskov said Trump had called for a quick cessation of hostilities and a peaceful settlement, and that “President Putin, in his turn, emphasised the need to remove the root causes of the conflict and agreed with Trump that a long-term settlement could be achieved through peace talks.”

“The Russian president supported one of the main theses of the US president that the time has come for our two countries to work together,” Peskov told reporters.

“The Russian president invited the US president to visit Moscow and expressed readiness to host US officials in Russia for issues of mutual interest, naturally including Ukraine, the Ukrainian settlement.”

Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was also in Kyiv on Wednesday on the first visit by a member of Trump’s cabinet amid reports that Ukraine has offered to strike a deal with Trump for continued US military aid in exchange for developing Ukraine’s mineral industry.

As the United States winds back humanitarian assistance in Southeast Asia, its rival China may see an opportunity to expand its influence in a region where it has directed billions of dollars in investment and aid, analysts say.

In a little over three weeks since US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Washington has frozen nearly all foreign aid and moved to effectively abolish the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a longstanding source of soft power in the region.

USAID, the biggest disburser of US foreign aid, spent $860m in Southeast Asia alone last year, funding projects on everything from treating HIV to preserving biodiversity and strengthening local governance.

Many projects, which run primarily through grants to local NGOs, face an uncertain future as the Trump administration pulls the US back from the world stage as part of his “America first” agenda.

For Beijing, the circumstances provide an ideal opportunity for it to step in, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The suspension of health, education, and humanitarian programmes – key pillars of US soft power – may create vacuums that China can fill,” Huang told Al Jazeera.

“This strategic retreat could strengthen Beijing’s influence across the region, particularly in current US aid recipients like Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Cambodia.”

As the Trump administration generated headlines with its moves to gut USAID last week, Beijing made news by stepping in with $4.4m to fund a de-mining project in Cambodia that had been left in the lurch by Washington.

Heng Ratana, head of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, told the Khmer Times newspaper the Chinese aid would help his organisation clear more than 3,400 hectares (8,400 acres) of land filled with landmines and unexploded ordnance.

China’s embassies in the US, Cambodia and Thailand did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, said USAID’s demise comes as US influence in the region is waning more generally and as China scales up its public diplomacy.

Southeast Asian leaders are concerned about “chaotic policymaking” in the US, Kurlantzick told Al Jazeera, particularly in countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, where the US devotes significant aid and security assistance.

“Beijing is indeed already portraying the US as uncaring and unable to lead regionally or globally and I expect Beijing to increase its aid and investment now in many parts of the developing world,” Kurlantzick told Al Jazeera.

While the future of many USAID programmes in the region is unclear, some analysts believe that China is likely to leave projects with a more political or ideological focus to other partners to the region, such as the European Union, Australia, Japan or the Asian Development Project, a Manila-based regional development bank.

“China’s existing international aid or international development programme is quite sizeable. But it happens to be quite different from what USAID does in that the latter seems to be devoting a lot of resources to ideology-based initiatives, for democracy, for LGBTQ, for diversity, for inclusiveness, for climate change,” John Gong, a professor of economics at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, told Al Jazeera.

“Whether China is going to step into the void vacated by the United States, I am very sceptical. We are talking about different things here. And besides, I don’t think the Chinese government is keen on competing with Washington on this front,” Gong said.

China’s foreign assistance has been heavily geared towards infrastructure, as laid out in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Beijing’s flagship infrastructure investment project estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion.

Other projects, such as its hospital ship Peace Ark, have provided medical assistance.

Almost all of China’s foreign aid to Southeast Asia – some 85 percent – has taken the form of non-concessional loans with a focus on energy and transport, according to Grace Stanhope, a research associate at the Lowy Institute’s Indo-Pacific Development Centre.

Beijing’s infrastructure-heavy approach has made it a visible presence in the region, albeit not always a popular one, Stanhope told Al Jazeera, due to delays and “blow-out” budgets for projects such as the East Coast Rail Link in Malaysia and Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail line in Indonesia.

Some critics have referred to these and other projects as a form of “debt-trap” diplomacy intended to breed dependency on China, a charge Beijing has denied.

In a survey carried out by the Singapore-based Iseas Yusof-Ishak Institute last year, 59.5 percent of respondents across 10 Southeast Asian countries chose China as the most influential economic power in the region.

Just over half, however, expressed distrust of China, with 45.5 percent fearing that China could threaten their country economically or militarily. Japan was seen as the “most trusted” major power, followed by the US and the EU.

Though heavily focused on infrastructure, China has been slowly trying to shift its model of assistance towards more “soft” aid such as public health, agriculture and digitisation, said Joanne Lin, a senior fellow at the Iseas Yusof-Ishak Institute’s ASEAN studies centre in Singapore.

“The extent of China’s aid will of course depend on China’s economic ability as it is facing constraints such as its slowing growth and trade tensions with Washington which may limit its ability to replace US aid in full,” Lin told Al Jazeera.

Lin said Southeast Asian countries prefer a “diversified approach” to foreign aid and development assistance that is not dependent on a single donor – whether the US or China.

Despite its high-profile presence in Southeast Asia, China has been scaling back its development assistance in the region in recent years.

While China was the region’s top donor from 2015 to 2019, it has since slid to fourth place, according to the Lowy Institute.

Funding has similarly dried up, falling from $10bn in 2017 to $3bn in 2022, according to the think tank.

China faces its own problems at home, including slowing economic growth and high youth unemployment, that could limit its focus on affairs overseas, said Steve Balla, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.

“The domestic issues may serve to limit [Chinese President Xi Jinping’s] attention to international affairs. The issues with Belt and Road may limit the regime’s options for how to step into spaces left by the US,” Balla told Al Jazeera.

Bethany Allen, head of programme for China Investigations and Analysis at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, expressed a similar sentiment.

“China is already capitalising on US disengagement in the first Trump era by deepening its economic, diplomatic and cultural influence in Southeast Asia. Initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative, Confucius, and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Mechanism are tools for expanding soft power,” Allen told Al Jazeera, referring to a global programme to promote the study of Chinese language and culture, and a forum to promote cooperation between China and the Mekong subregion.

“However, China’s lowering economic growth means slowing BRI, resulting in the country’s soft power project might be less aggressive than in the past decade. High-profile debt concerns and pushback against Chinese influence [in Malaysia and Indonesia] also limit its appeal,” she said.

Montreal, Canada – Even before he formally re-entered the White House last month to begin his second term as president of the United States, Donald Trump had repeatedly taken aim at an unlikely target: Canada.

Trump argued his country’s northern neighbour had failed to stem irregular migration and drug trafficking at its border with the US, and he threatened to impose steep tariffs on Canadian imports.

To stave off those measures, which experts say would devastate the Canadian economy, the Republican leader then presented an idea: Canada can — and should — become the 51st US state.

“I think Canada would be much better off being a 51st state,” the US president repeated in a Fox News interview that aired over the weekend, continuing a pressure campaign that initially ramped up in December.

Though the proposal was widely denounced, Trump’s comments — and his continued threat to levy tariffs of 25 percent or higher on Canadian goods, including steel and aluminium imports — have roiled labour unions, politicians and regular people across Canada.

Calls to boycott American products and halt trips to the US are gaining steam, alongside a nationalistic push to rethink Canada’s longstanding reliance on cross-border trade.

The leaders of major Canadian political parties, as well as provincial and territorial premiers, have used harsher-than-usual rhetoric against their country’s top international ally, promising to defend Canada’s economic interests and sovereignty.

“To say it’s a unique moment would be an understatement,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, an independent Canadian research firm.

The mood in Canada right now is one of anxiety and apprehension on one hand, and defiance and anger on the other, Kurl explained.

For many, the feeling is that, “Canada did not pick this fight, but if they’re going to take a punch, they’ll try to give one right back”, she said.

‘The Trump effect’

Trump’s repeated threats against Canada come at an already politically charged moment.

The country has been in the grips of a years-long affordability crisis, and soaring grocery prices and housing costs have fuelled increasingly angry rhetoric against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

At the start of the year, Trudeau announced plans to step down once his governing Liberal Party chooses his successor. A new leader and prime minister will be picked in early March, ending nearly a decade of Trudeau-led governments in Ottawa.

The country is also gearing up for a federal election, which must be held before late October.

Yet against that backdrop, Trump’s rhetoric and proposals have become the top political issue in Canada, said Daniel Beland, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

“The most important factor in Canadian politics right now doesn’t live in Canada — it’s Donald Trump,” Beland told Al Jazeera.

Dubbing it “the Trump effect”, the professor said the “ballot question” in the next Canadian election may end up being which political party and leader is best suited to handle the US president and Canada-US relations.

That could effectively change the race, Beland said.

“The national crisis triggered by Trump … really changes the agenda and maybe also changes the perception of what people think is needed for the country at this point and what leader they would like to have.”

Politicians tap into wave of patriotism

Indeed, some polling has suggested that the Trump administration could be among the factors changing how Canadians plan to vote in the upcoming election.

The opposition Conservative Party had enjoyed a commanding, double-digit lead over the unpopular Trudeau-led Liberals until fairly recently.

But with the prime minister shepherding Canada through Trump’s tariff threat, and the Liberal leadership race boosting interest in the party, the dial seems to be shifting.

The Tories’s lead over the Liberals has narrowed to nine percentage points, a recent Leger Marketing survey found.

The same poll found that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney, the ex-Bank of Canada governor who is the frontrunner to take over as the next Liberal leader, were neck-and-neck in terms of who Canadians believed could best handle Trump.

Twenty-two percent of respondents said Poilievre was their preferred choice to manage the Canada-US relationship, compared with 20 percent who chose Carney.

Poilievre finds himself in a difficult position, Beland explained, as a segment of the Conservative Party’s base likes Trump and his policies. Others hope the Conservative leader can stand up to Trump’s bluster.

The right-wing premier of Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta, Danielle Smith, is among those who have taken a more conciliatory approach to Trump. She has rejected any discussions around imposing retaliatory tariffs on Canadian energy exports to the US.

“Danielle Smith is a major conservative figure in Canada, and she’s adopting a soft approach on Trump while [Poilievre] tries to be bolder without alienating his base. It’s not easy for him to navigate,” Beland said.

Meanwhile, poll after poll has shown that Canadians are overwhelmingly rejecting Trump’s push to make Canada the 51st US state. Support for greater sovereignty over trade and infrastructure is also rising across the country.

“Initially, Canadians were somewhat bemused” by Trump’s comments about taking over Canada, Kurl told Al Jazeera in an email.

But now, “Trump’s repetition of annexation plans, combined with all the tariffs, have led Canadians to a more grim place.”

A recent Angus Reid analysis found that the proportion of Canadians saying they are “very proud” of their country jumped by 10 percentage points — from 34 to 44 percent — between December and February.

The percentage of people who said they want Canada to join the US also dropped from 6 to 4 percent. “Almost every politician of every political stripe has been trying to tap into” that patriotic sentiment, Kurl said.

‘Thinking about US all the time’

That includes Doug Ford, the right-wing premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, which is holding a provincial election later this month.

Ford has made pushing back against Trump’s tariffs a central pillar of his re-election campaign.

He and the other leaders of all of Canada’s provinces and territories travelled to Washington, DC, on Wednesday to defend their interests and promote Canada-US trade ties. “This is the first time 13 premiers have showed up to Washington,” Ford told reporters.

“We’re their largest trading partner,” he said of the US. Imports and exports of goods between the two countries totalled more than $700bn (more than 1 trillion Canadian dollars) last year, according to Canadian government figures.

“We’re their number-one customer. I’m not too sure if they fully understand the impact [of tariffs] on both countries, both sides of the border,” Ford added.

That’s the same message Trudeau and his government have been promoting since Trump first threatened to slap tariffs on Canada shortly after he won re-election in November of last year.

The country earned a reprieve last week when the US president agreed to pause 25-percent tariffs on all Canadian goods and 10-percent tariffs on Canadian oil for 30 days, until early March.

But the threat still looms, and a new US push to impose tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports on March 12 has spurred new concerns.

“It’s important to understand that Canada will respond as appropriate, in a calibrated but extremely strong way, regardless of what the United States moves forward with,” Trudeau told reporters during a visit to Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday.

Whatever happens, Beland at McGill University said it’s clear that Canadian politics will be heavily influenced in the weeks and months ahead by Trump and his administration.

“Most Americans don’t think about Canada very often,” he told Al Jazeera.

A Hamas delegation has arrived in Cairo to discuss the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire agreement with mediators, according to a statement by the Palestinian group.

The fragile agreement reached last month between Hamas and Israel appeared strained on Wednesday, with Hamas saying it would not bow down to threats from Israel and the United States of renewed fighting and the mass displacement of Palestinians.

Egyptian and Qatari mediators were working to salvage the deal, according to Egypt’s state-run Al-Qahera News TV, which is close to the country’s security agencies.

Hamas has warned it will delay the next release of Israeli captives scheduled for Saturday, saying Israel has violated the truce by firing on people in Gaza and not allowing the agreed-upon number of tents, shelters and other vital aid to enter the territory.

“The occupation must implement the terms of the ceasefire agreement until the prisoners are released. The occupation is required to abide by the agreed humanitarian protocol,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said in a statement on Wednesday.

Since the ceasefire went into effect on January 19, Israeli fire has killed at least 92 Palestinians and wounded more than 800 others, said Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Health Ministry on Tuesday.

In the latest violence, a 44-year-old man was killed and another was wounded in an Israeli strike in the southern city of Rafah. The Israeli military has said it only fires on people who approach its forces or enter certain areas in violation of the truce.

Threat of resumed fighting

For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the support of President Donald Trump, has warned that Israel would resume fighting if the captives are not released on Saturday.

Trump has threatened that “all hell” will break out if Hamas does not release the remaining Israeli captives held in Gaza by Saturday.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz echoed the phrase in a post on X on Wednesday, saying that if Hamas does not release the Israeli captives by Saturday, “the gates of hell will open on them, just as the US president promised.”

“The new Gaza war will be different in intensity from the one before the ceasefire – and will not end without the defeat of Hamas and the release of all the hostages,” he wrote.

Reporting from Amman, Jordan, Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said that the Israeli army has been discussing a plan for a renewed offensive.

“However, some sources speaking to Israeli Army Radio said any military action to rescue the captives from Gaza would be ‘nearly impossible’ as Hamas is still very much active,” Salhut said.

The International Committee on the Red Cross also weighed in on Wednesday, warning that “any reversal” in the agreement “risks plunging people back into the misery and despair that defined the last 16 months”.

To date, at least 48,222 Palestinians have been confirmed killed throughout Israel’s war in Gaza. At least 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, with more than 200 taken captive.

The enclave remains on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe, with the vast majority of its residents displaced and its infrastructure destroyed throughout the war.

‘Palestinians cannot be transferred’

In his post on Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Katz also pointed to Trump’s plan for the US to “take over” and permanently displace the people of Gaza.

He said a renewed Israeli offensive “will also allow the realisation of US President Trump’s vision for Gaza”.

Trump has promised to heap pressure on both Jordan and Egypt to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians. Both countries have refused.

On Wednesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II spoke by phone, stressing the importance of the immediate start of Gaza’s reconstruction “without the transfer of Palestinian people from their land”, according to a statement from the Egyptian presidency.

The leaders also “showed their keenness” to work with Trump to achieve “permanent peace” in the region through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the statement said.

That came a day after Abdullah met Trump at the White House.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi again said that the kingdom will not budge in its opposition to Trump’s proposal.

“There are fixed and steadfast Jordanian positions that will not change … the Palestinians cannot be transferred to Egypt, Jordan, or any Arab state,” Safadi said.

The Palestinian Authority and Arab nations have all been united in their opposition to Trump’s plan.