Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz on Wednesday said there are "promising early signs of progress" on a new hostage and ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Israel’s parliament has given overwhelming approval to a declaration expressing opposition to international efforts to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state.

Wednesday’s vote, approved by 99 of 120 lawmakers, is not binding but reflects the widespread sentiment in Israel as it battles Hamas militants in Gaza for a fifth month. Only nine lawmakers voted against the measure.

The United States said Wednesday the United Nations' top court should not issue an advisory opinion that says Israel should "immediately and unconditionally withdraw" from territories sought for a Palestinian state.

Acting State Department legal adviser Richard Visek said the 15-judge panel at the International Court of Justice should not seek to resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict "through an advisory opinion addressed to questions focusing on the acts of only one party."

Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants during an overnight raid in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the military said on Wednesday.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed at least one death in the Israeli operation, the latest in a months-long military crackdown across the occupied West Bank since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.

Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 67 Palestinians overnight and into Wednesday, including in areas where civilians have been told to seek refuge.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah says it received 44 bodies after multiple strikes in central Gaza. Associated Press reporters saw the bodies arriving in ambulances and private vehicles.

Heavy fighting rocked besieged Gaza on Wednesday as aid agencies warned of looming famine, a day after a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire was blocked by a U.S. veto.

Washington, which argued the resolution would have imperiled ongoing efforts to free hostages, sent top White House official Brett McGurk to Cairo for renewed talks involving mediators and Hamas.

The World Food Program said it has paused deliveries of food to isolated northern Gaza because of increasing chaos across the territory, hiking fears of potential starvation. A study by the U.N. children's agency warned that one in six children in the north are acutely malnourished.

Entry of aid trucks into the besieged territory has been more than halved in the past two weeks, according to U.N. figures. Overwhelmed U.N. and relief workers said intake of trucks and distribution have been crippled by Israeli failure to ensure convoys' safety amid its bombardment and ground offensive and by a breakdown in security, with hungry Palestinians frequently overwhelming trucks to take food.

An Israeli strike on a residential area of Damascus killed at least two people Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, the latest deaths from an escalating Israeli air campaign since the Gaza war erupted.

Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes in Syria since civil conflict broke out in 2011, but has increased pressure on its Iran-backed neighbor since Hamas' unprecedented attack from the Gaza Strip on October 7.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday it had transferred 32 patients out of the besieged Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza but feared for the patients and medics still inside.

WHO staff said conditions around the hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis were "indescribable".

Despite a month of U.S.-led airstrikes, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels remain capable of launching significant attacks — just this week, they seriously damaged a ship in a crucial strait and apparently downed an American drone worth tens of millions of dollars.

The continued assaults by the Houthis on shipping through the crucial Red Sea corridor — the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — against the backdrop of Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip underscore the challenges in trying to stop the guerrilla-style attacks that have seen them hold onto Yemen's capital and much of the war-ravaged country's north since 2014.