A senior Hamas official said Sunday that the Palestinian group had no "major issues" with the most recent truce plan.

The United Nations Security Council will vote Thursday on the Palestinians' application to become a full UN member state, several diplomatic sources have told AFP.

Amid escalating pressure for increased humanitarian aid access to Gaza, Israel's Cabinet has approved the opening of the Erez border crossing in northern Gaza.

Israeli farmer Yarden Zemach, 38, said he felt safe when picking avocados with Palestinians on October 5 -- just two days before the attack.

Biden has led a chorus of international anger over the attack on employees of US-based World Central Kitchen, who were distributing desperately needed food to a population on the verge of famine.

The usually bullish Netanyahu, 74, appears both physically and politically fragile.

Monday's deaths came as the Israeli army wrapped up a two-week military operation in and around the Al-Shifa Hospital which reduced the besieged territory's largest medical complex to charred ruins.

The war erupted after Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel from Gaza on October 7, resulting in about 1,160 deaths -- mostly civilians -- according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Besieged Gaza is in desperate need of aid and the United States said it would continue airdrops, despite pleas from Hamas to stop the practice after the Islamist group said 18 people had died trying to reach food packages.

Israel reacted furiously to the US abstention, as it allowed the resolution to go through with all the other 14 Security Council members voting yes.

"We'll go there. We're not going to leave. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is, that October 7 doesn't happen again. Never happens again," said Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with MSNBC on Saturday.

The trip, Blinken's fifth to the region since the start of the nearly four-month-long war, will later include stops in Israel and Qatar.

Israel bombarded southern Gaza on Friday after it publicly sparred with its main ally the United States over the possibility of a Palestinian state, the creation of which Washington sees as the only pathway to a lasting peace.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due to hold talks Wednesday with the head of the Palestinian Authority, which Washington hopes could govern Gaza after Israel's war with Hamas ends.

Two weeks ahead of Palestine's opening game at the 2023 Asian Cup in Qatar, the team is struggling to focus as war rages on in Gaza, where thousands have been killed.

The continued air strikes and the expansion of operations in the south came as the WHO warned on Wednesday that Gaza's population was in "grave peril", with France's president calling for a long-term ceasefire.

Israel's leaders have repeatedly vowed to keep up their offensive until Hamas is destroyed, and army chief Herzi Halevi signaled there would be no quick end to the war.

The United Nations Security Council was expected to vote Friday on a resolution to boost aid to Gaza, as the world body warned the Israel-Hamas war was pushing the Palestinian territory towards famine.

The relief flights carrying food, medical supplies and winter gear are the first by the US military since the conflict began with the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel.

The Oslo Accords, which aimed to bring "peaceful coexistence" to Israel and the Palestinians, are now dead, one of the deal's architects, Norwegian peace worker Jan Egeland said.

13 Israelis who had been held in the Gaza strip were freed as part of a cease fire

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the militant group poured across the border from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people.

US President Joe Biden said Wednesday that Israel has the right to respond to the October 7 Hamas attack but must do everything it can to protect civilians.

Desperately needed international aid piled up Friday near Gaza, with Palestinians in dire need of food and water after relentless bombing by Israel, still reeling from the bloodiest attack in its history.

Asian markets tumbled Thursday on fears the Israel-Hamas crisis would spill over into a wider conflict in the Middle East, with some warning that a full-blown war was increasingly likely.

Joe Biden heads to the Middle East on potentially the riskiest trip of his presidency Tuesday, aiming to thread the needle between supporting Israel against Hamas, averting catastrophe in Gaza and preventing a regional war.

The stench of death is overwhelming in Israel's National Center of Forensic Medicine, where experts have been trying to identify the remains of hundreds of people slain in the Hamas attacks.

"We strongly condemn President Petro's statements and call on him to condemn Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, for its barbaric murder of Israeli men, women, and children," Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt of the office of the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism (SEAS) said.

Several countries have been airlifting nationals who have requested to leave as the armed conflict escalates

At Israel's Ramla military base, civilian volunteers and reservists gather in a show of unity that comes after nearly a year of unprecedented political division in the nation.