Israeli forces were engaged in "fierce battles" with Hamas militants inside the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the army said, as it continued to pummel the Palestinian territory with air and artillery strikes.

Israeli forces are "engaged in fierce battles with Hamas terrorists deep inside the Gaza Strip," the army said in a statement, adding that dozens of militants had been killed in the past few hours.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels Tuesday pledged more attacks against Israel if its war on Hamas in Gaza continues, saying it had already fired drones and ballistic missiles in three separate operations.

"The Yemeni Armed Forces... confirm that they will continue to carry out qualitative strikes with missiles and drones until the Israeli aggression stops," said a Houthi military statement aired on the rebels' Al-Masirah TV.

David Barnea, the director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, visited Qatar over the weekend to discuss a possible deal for the release of some Israeli hostages held in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying.

An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million people to Egypt's Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a "concept paper." But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt's problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel's creation in 1948.

Israeli ground forces attacked Hamas militants and infrastructure on Tuesday in northern Gaza, which the military said some 800,000 people have fled since the war began more than three weeks ago, even as warplanes continued to strike from end to end of the sealed-off territory.

Buoyed by the first successful rescue of a captive held by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for a cease-fire and again vowed to crush the militant group's ability to govern Gaza or threaten Israel following its bloody Oct. 7 rampage, which ignited the war.

Paris has launched contacts with all those concerned with “what is happening on the ground” in the Israel-Hamas war, opening direct channels with Doha and Ankara to “explore the stances over the possibility of reaching a sustainable solution,” Lebanon’s al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday.

Hamas on Monday released a video showing three women from among at least 239 people that Israel says were abducted to Gaza during the October 7 attacks by the Palestinian militant group.

It was not immediately possible to verify the identity of the women in the 76-second video in which one calls for Israel to make a deal for the release of all captives. Hamas said the women were "Zionist detainees".

As the 3-week-old Israel-Hamas war enters what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says could be a "long and difficult" new stage, President Joe Biden is calling on Israeli and Arab leaders to think hard about their eventual postwar reality.

It's one, he argues, where finally finding agreement on a long-sought two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict should be a priority.

Israel’s army said Monday it carried out air strikes on military infrastructure inside Syria as fears grow that its war against Hamas could spur a broader regional conflict.

“A short time ago, an IDF fighter jet attacked the launchers” from where overnight attacks originated toward Israeli territory, the military said, indicating it hit “military infrastructure in Syrian territory.”

Four Palestinians were killed early Monday in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, as Israeli forces clashed with Palestinians.

The ministry said five other Palestinians were wounded, including two with critical injuries.