U.S. President Joe Biden has again cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against moving forward with a military operation into Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah without a "credible and executable plan" to protect around 1.4 million Palestinians sheltering there.

However, Israel's defense minister said the country is "thoroughly planning" its promised ground invasion of Rafah, and Netanyahu vowed early Friday to reject "international dictates" on a long-term resolution of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians.

President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognizing a Palestinian state was "not a taboo for France" in his first such comments since the start of the war in Gaza.

"The recognition of a Palestinian state is not a taboo for France," he said at a joint press conference in Paris with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Egypt is building a wall and is leveling land near its border with the Gaza Strip ahead of a planned Israeli offensive targeting the border city of Rafah, satellite images analyzed Friday by The Associated Press show.

Egypt, which has not publicly acknowledged the construction, repeatedly has warned Israel not to forcibly expel the over 1 million Palestinians now displaced in Rafah across the border into its territory while it battles the militant group Hamas for a fifth month.

Two people were killed in Israel when a gunman opened fire on a crowded bus stop near the southern town of Kiryat Malakhi on Friday, a hospital and police said.

Two people who were brought to Kaplan Medical Center had been declared dead, a spokeswoman for the facility told AFP. Four others were wounded in the shooting, police said.

Russia has invited Hamas and other Palestinian factions including Fatah to Moscow for talks on the Israel-Hamas war and other issues in the Middle East, an official said Friday.

Moscow, which for years tried to court good relations with all major players in the region, has grown increasingly critical of Israel and its Western backers amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Five patients in intensive care died after their oxygen cut off in southern Gaza's main hospital that was stormed by Israeli troops, causing chaos for hundreds of staff and wounded inside, health officials said Friday. Troops were searching the complex where the military said it believes the remains of hostages abducted by Hamas might be located.

The raid came after troops had besieged Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis for nearly a week, with staff, patients and others inside struggling under heavy fire and dwindling supplies, including food and water. The Israeli military said Friday it had detained dozens from the facility, including some it alleged were involved in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Israel will not accept what he portrayed as “international dictates” regarding a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians.

Writing early Friday on X, Netanyahu said such a resolution can only be the result of negotiations. He also said Israel opposes a unilateral recognition of statehood, claiming it would amount to a “huge reward” for the militant group Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and reiterated their support for an independent Palestinian state.

“We agreed on the importance of a cease-fire in the Gaza strip and the release of (Israeli) hostages and (Palestinian) prisoners and the passage of as much humanitarian aid as possible in order to preserve the lives of civilians,” al-Sisi said in a news conference attended by Lula in Cairo. The Brazilian leader was visiting Egypt as part of a trip strengthening relations with Africa.

Israel has formally complained after a senior Vatican official spoke of "carnage" in Gaza and what he termed a disproportionate Israeli military operation following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

The Israeli Embassy to the Holy See called the comments by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, "regrettable." In a statement Wednesday, the embassy said Parolin hadn't considered what it called the relevant facts in judging the legitimacy of Israel's actions.

Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its accompanying warships have spent four months straight at sea defending against ballistic missiles and flying attack drones fired by Iranian-backed Houthis, and are now more regularly also defending against a new threat — fast unmanned vessels that are fired at them through the water.

While the Houthis have launched unmanned surface vessels, or USVs, in the past against Saudi coalition forces that have intervened in Yemen's civil war, they were used for the first time against U.S. military and commercial in the Red Sea on Jan. 4. In the weeks since, the Navy has had to intercept and destroy multiple USVs.