Defence Minister Israel Katz yesterday vowed Israel will remain in Gaza and pledged to establish outposts in the north of the Palestinian territory, according to a video of a speech published by Israeli media.

Gaza’s ministry of health has appealed for increased drug, medical consumables and laboratory supplies, warning of severe shortages after more than two years of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza and a crippling blockade.

Israel’s security cabinet approved the establishment of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move the country’s far-right finance minister said yesterday was aimed at preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has urged the disarmament of Hamas but voiced hope for headway on reaching the next stage of a Gaza ceasefire as regional officials met.

Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said yesterday at least 17 residential buildings have completely and 90 partially collapsed since the heavy rains and high winds lashed the enclave.

US President Donald Trump on Monday said the International Stabilization Force for Gaza is already running and that more countries would be added.

The Israeli army is to demolish 25 residential buildings in the north West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp later this week, local authorities told AFP yesterday.

Hamas’ chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya said yesterday that a targeted assassination by Israel on Saturday of one of the group’s senior commanders threatens the “viability of the truce” in the enclave.

International troops could be deployed in the Gaza Strip as early as next month to form a UN-authorised stabilisation force, two US officials told Reuters, but it remains unclear how Palestinian militant group Hamas will be disarmed.

The expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is at its highest level since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking such data, according to a report by the UN chief seen by AFP on Friday.

Plans for nearly 47,390 housing units were advanced, approved, or tendered, the report said

A top Hamas leader told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera that the group is open to a weapons “freeze”, but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza.

Israel launched a series of strikes on southern Lebanon yesterday, Lebanese state media reported, with the Israeli army saying it hit a Hezbollah training centre and other targets.

Israeli forces account for 43 percent of the total

The nearly two-month-old ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will not be complete until Israeli troops withdraw from the Palestinian territory under a peace plan backed by Washington and the UN, mediator Qatar’s prime minister said yesterday.

Israeli warplanes launched a series of raids targeting the eastern areas of Gaza City yesterday, as settlers cut water pipelines in Khirbet ad-Dir in the Jordan Valley of the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces yesterday carried out demolition and destruction on residential buildings behind the so-called yellow line in the eastern areas of Gaza City.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said that 10 Palestinians were injured on Saturday in clashes with Israeli settlers near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza on Saturday said more than 70,000 people have been killed since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted more than two years ago.

At least 13 Syrians were killed and 25 others wounded yesterday in Israeli artillery and missile attacks on the town of Beit Jinn, southwest of Syria’s capital, Damascus.