An Israeli strike hit a Syrian town near the border with Lebanon on Tuesday, Syrian state media said, less than a week after deadly strikes on the same area.

Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday reiterated that his country does not seek an escalation in the Middle East but reserved the right to defend itself against Israel’s attack with a “measured and calculated” response.

Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has approved sending an additional 7,000 draft notices to members of the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Under long-standing political arrangements, ultra-Orthodox Jews had been exempt from military service, which is compulsory for most Jewish men and women. However, Israel’s Supreme Court in June ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the army.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has pinned blame on Hamas for rejecting a temporary Gaza truce as he also pressed Israel again to allow more aid into the Palestinian territory.

The Biden administration is stepping up criticism of Israel for not doing enough to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza as a 30-day deadline looms for Israeli officials to meet certain requirements or risk potential restrictions on military assistance.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday gave Israel a "fail" grade in terms of meeting the conditions for an improvement in aid deliveries to Gaza laid out in a letter last month to senior Israeli officials from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

A senior Hamas official said members of the militant group held a meeting with a delegation from the rival Fatah party in Cairo to discuss the war in Gaza and the enclave’s future governance, though the meeting did not lead to any major breakthroughs.

Osama Hamdan described the talks between the two heavyweights of Palestinian politics as “positive” but “frank.” He said the two sides discussed the formation of a future government for the Palestinian territories but provided few details as to how and when that would occur.

Palestinian officials say Israeli forces have killed three people in the occupied West Bank.

Two were killed in an airstrike early Tuesday near the northern city of Jenin, a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent years. A third person was shot in the village of Tamoun, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip has killed at least 20 people, mostly women and children.

Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of a nearby hospital that received the casualties, said the strike late Monday hit a home in the town of Beit Lahiya where multiple families were sheltering.

Syria’s state news agency reported an Israeli airstrike on a southern suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus, saying it caused material damage but not casualties.

SANA says the Monday airstrike hit near the suburb of Sayida Zeinab. Iran-backed groups are active in the area south of the capital, which is home to a holy Shiite Muslim shrine.

Palestinian officials said Israeli settlers were behind an attack in which several cars were torched overnight just a few kilometers (miles) away from the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

No one was wounded in the attack overnight into Monday in Al-Bireh, a city adjacent to Ramallah, where the Western-backed Palestinian Authority is headquartered. An Associated Press reporter counted 18 burned-out cars.