Israeli ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is blocking a U.S.-funded flour shipment to Gaza because its recipient is the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), two Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios.

Israeli soldiers seized 200 million shekels ($54.29 million) from the Bank of Palestine headquarters in Gaza City, according to an Israeli newspaper on Sunday, Anadolu Agency reports.

Plan to open new front in Gaza’s south has drawn warnings of a fresh humanitarian crisis and threatens to rile U.S. election-year politics

Members of the antiwar activist group Code Pink confronted Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces, about the Palestinian babies being killed by Israel in Gaza. Mast told them the babies were not innocent.

A JANUARY U.S. Air Force personnel memo obtained by The Intercept describes military orders to be “on standby to forward deploy to support troops in the case of on ground US involvement in the Israel Hamas war.” According to a separate personnel document, the standby order related to personnel deployed last year to Iraq.

Undeterred by the ICJ, ministers and settler leaders promoted plans to expel Palestinians and ‘return’ Israelis to Gaza at a major conference in Jerusalem.

Cold, almost naked and surrounded by Israeli soldiers with M16 assault rifles, Ayman Lubbad knelt among dozens of Palestinian men and boys who had just been forced from their homes in northern Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he informed the White House that he firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state in any postwar scenario, after also saying that the operation to eliminate Hamas could continue all the way into 2025.

WASHINGTON ― The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly voted down legislation that would have leveraged U.S. military aid to Israel in a bid to compel the Biden administration to assess whether Israel committed human rights violations during its three-month-long Gaza offensive.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday insisted Israel doesn’t plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza or permanently occupy the territory, a shift in rhetoric that comes a day before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) holds its first hearing on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday that Israel’s attack on the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis is intensifying.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) described the Israeli inspection protocols in Gaza as severely restrictive and that Tel Aviv should face consequences for preventing aid from the besieged enclave. Israel has restricted aid deliveries into Gaza to just a fraction of pre-war levels. Nearly all residents of Gaza are internally displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are suffering from starvation and diseases.

Israeli bulldozers have destroyed a Palestinian cemetery in the Al Teffah neighbourhood in Gaza City. Many bodies have been unearthed and left amongst the rubble of tombstones and nearby houses.

Al Jazeera's Ismail al Ghoul reports - and a warning, his report contains some disturbing images.

“We find this submission meritless, counterproductive, completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” said U.S. National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has again called for the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and for the return of Israeli settlements to the enclave.

Events of the last few days have made it clear that Israel is intent on widening its Gaza offensive, even after pressure from the White House and other allies to reign in operations which have killed many thousands of civilians, and PM Netanyahu himself has urged troops "do not stop" and they must fight "to the end" toward the goal of destroying Hamas.

Iran threatened Saturday that the Mediterranean Sea could be “closed” if the U.S. and Israel continued “crimes” in Gaza, state media reported, according to Reuters.

One in four Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip — over 570,000 people — are starving due to the Israeli siege, according to a report using data from the UN and other aid agencies that was released Thursday.

After 10 weeks of Israeli military operations in Gaza, authorities have counted 20,000 dead Palestinians. An overwhelming number of the dead are innocent civilians with no ties to Hamas. An aid group warns the actual death toll is probably greater since thousands of missing Gazans remain buried under rubble. Israeli officials say civilian deaths are viewed as part of eliminating Hamas.

Hamas says it will not enter negotations over releasing captives until Israel ends its war on Gaza.