Mediators for a ceasefire in Gaza are to propose a truce of "less than a month" to Hamas, a source with knowledge of the talks told AFP on Wednesday.

Meetings between Mossad head David Barnea, CIA Director Bill Burns and Qatar's prime minister in Doha, which concluded on Monday, discussed proposing a "short-term" truce of "less than a month", the source said on condition of anonymity because of the talks' sensitivity.

With the U.S. presidential election just a week away, the Biden administration is not giving up hope for short-term deals for cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon.

But U.S. officials are mindful that political uncertainty in the United States has made the sides reluctant to commit to any significant agreements before it is clear who has won the White House.

Yemen's Houthi rebels targeted a ship traveling through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the Red Sea on Monday, though it escaped undamaged, authorities said.

The attack ended an 18-day lull in reported assaults attributed to the Houthis, who have been attacking ships traveling through the Red Sea corridor for nearly a year now over the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip. The violence has disrupted international shipping through the region, once valued at $1 trillion in goods annually.

An Israeli strike on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 60 people early Tuesday, according to health officials.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the field hospitals’ department at the Gaza Health Ministry, announced the toll from Tuesday’s strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya at a news conference. He says another 17 people are missing.

The United States warned Iran on Monday that there will be “severe consequences” if it attacks Israel or U.S. personnel in the region again, while Russia accused Israel and its U.S. ally of stoking “the flames of war” in the Mideast.

The latest escalation in Iran-Israeli military actions was front and center at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council called by Iran after Israel’s airstrikes on the country early Saturday.

Israeli lawmakers have passed two laws that could threaten the work of the main U.N. agency providing aid to people in Gaza by barring it from operating on Israeli soil, severing ties with it.

The laws, which do not immediately take effect, signal a new low for a long-troubled relationship between Israel and the U.N. Israel's international allies said they were deeply worried about their potential impact on Palestinians as the Gaza war's humanitarian toll worsens.

Israel is discussing an Egyptian cease-fire proposal that would see four hostages released in exchange for a two-day halt to the fighting in Gaza, an Israel official said Monday.

Israel’s parliament is scheduled to vote Monday on a pair of bills that would effectively sever ties with the U.N. agency responsible for distributing aid in Gaza, strip it of legal immunities and restrict its ability to support Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israel accuses the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, of turning a blind eye to Hamas militants it says have infiltrated its staff, including a small number of its 13,000 employees in Gaza who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants from its ranks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Iran seeks to develop a "stockpile" of nuclear bombs aimed at destroying Israel, two days after Israel bombed military targets in the Islamic republic.

"Iran is striving to develop a stockpile of nuclear bombs to destroy us, equipped with long-range missiles, intercontinental missiles that Iran is trying to develop," Netanyahu said in a speech to lawmakers as Israel's parliament began its winter session. "Iran could threaten the entire world at any point."

Palestinian prisoner rights organizations accused Israeli prison authorities on Monday of "brutally assaulting" Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian detainee in Israeli custody.

Prison system staff assaulted Barghouti in his solitary confinement cell at Megiddo Prison in northern Israel on September 9, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees' Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club and a support group for Barghouti said in statements.