Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh has accused Israel of procrastinating in stalled talks to secure a ceasefire in the Gaza war and a hostage release deal.

Recent negotiations have made little progress and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the Palestinian militant group has hardened its position.

President Joe Biden has voiced strong criticism of Israel following a strike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza, saying it has not done enough to protect such workers.

"Incidents like yesterday's simply should not happen. Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians," Biden said in a statement Tuesday.

The U.N. Human Rights Council will consider a draft resolution on Friday calling for an arms embargo on Israel, citing the "plausible risk of genocide in Gaza".

If the draft resolution is adopted, it would mark the first time that the United Nations' top rights body has taken a position on the war raging in Gaza.

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday that a deadly Israeli strike on aid workers in Gaza that killed a Polish citizen, and the government's reaction to the incident, were straining ties between the two countries.

Directly addressing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's envoy to Warsaw, Tusk posted on X: "Today, you are putting this solidarity to the test."

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Houdini of Israeli politics and its longest serving prime minister, has been written off many times before.

But with thousands of protesters on the streets every night this week demanding he resign, and growing anger at his handling of the war in Gaza, many wonder how long the veteran political escapologist can survive.

Four Israeli police were injured in a car-ramming attack at a checkpoint in the center of the country, police said Wednesday, adding that the assailant was killed after trying to stab other security forces.

The 26-year-old attacker crashed into four police officers at a checkpoint in the town of Kochav Yair, which borders the occupied West Bank and sits northeast of Tel Aviv.

The United States and Britain led international criticism Tuesday of a deadly strike in the Gaza Strip that killed seven charity staff as they unloaded desperately needed aid brought by sea to the war-torn territory.

World Central Kitchen -- one of two NGOs spearheading efforts to deliver aid by boat -- said a "targeted Israeli strike" on Monday killed Australian, British, Palestinian, Polish and U.S.-Canadian staff.

A deadly strike blamed on Israel against Iran's diplomatic mission in Damascus could trigger a spillover of the Gaza war across the region, an escalation Tehran had sought to avoid, analysts said.

Monday's strike levelled the consular annex of the Iranian embassy and killed 13 people, including seven members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iranian state media reported.

Top American and Israeli officials have held virtual talks as the U.S. pushed alternatives to the ground assault against Hamas under consideration by Israelis in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a move the U.S. opposes on humanitarian grounds and that has frayed relations between the two allies.

President Joe Biden and his administration have publicly and privately urged Israel for months to refrain from a large-scale incursion into Rafah without a credible plan to relocate and safeguard noncombatants. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that Israeli forces, which are trying to eradicate Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, must be able to enter the city to root out the group's remaining battalions.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was sworn in Tuesday in front of parliament for his third term in office.

In power for the past decade, Sisi is set to remain president until 2030, after winning December's election with 89.6 percent of the vote against three relative unknowns.