Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed Hamas's demand for a ceasefire and ordered troops to prepare to move on the city of Rafah in Gaza's far south, where more than one million Palestinians have sought refuge.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Tel Aviv hours after meeting Netanyahu, said he still saw "space for agreement to be reached" and that he had warned the Israeli leader against actions and talk that "inflame tensions".

Black clouds loom over grapevines in northern Israel on hills that stretch to the Lebanese border, where months of violence have raised fears of a wider war.

The tense border area -- where the Israeli army has traded deadly fire with the Hezbollah militant group for months -- can be seen from atop the Dalton Winery's fermentation vats.

Alex Haruni, the vineyard's owner, worries that if a full-scale war were to break out, it could also ruin the coming vintage.

"That's quite a lot of wine," he said.

Seven civilians were among 11 people killed in Israeli air strikes on the central Syrian city of Homs early Wednesday, a war monitor said.

"Eleven people including seven civilians" and two Hezbollah fighters were killed in "Israeli bombardment" of a building in the Hamra neighbourhood of Homs, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, updating an earlier toll of 10 dead.

Argentina's President Javier Milei delighted his Israeli hosts but upset Hamas on Tuesday by announcing moves to shift his country's embassy to Jerusalem, almost as soon as he touched down.

Milei had barely set foot on the tarmac at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv when he told Israel's awaiting Foreign Minister Israel Katz: "My plan is to move the embassy to west Jerusalem."

US lawmakers voted Tuesday to reject a standalone Israel aid bill denounced by critics as a "cynical" bid to thwart a cross-party border security and foreign assistance package that would include cash for war-torn Ukraine.

Republicans in the House of Representatives scheduled the vote after the Democratic-led Senate released a bipartisan bill Sunday pairing billions of dollars for Israel and Ukraine with some of the strictest immigration curbs in decades.

Hamas has projected a united front since its October 7 attack sparked war with Israel, but experts say divisions within the Palestinian movement have weighed on efforts towards a ceasefire.

In self-exile in Doha, the head of Hamas's political bureau Ismail Haniyeh is talking openly with Qatari authorities and mediators.

Meanwhile the group's leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, is in hiding after Israel vowed to pursue the presumed brains behind the October attack to the death.

Rotating cameras planted on a rooftop terrace "follow our every move", said Hebron resident Umm Nasser, protesting intensified Israeli surveillance of her occupied West Bank city since the start of the Gaza war.

"Psychologically, I'm exhausted," admitted the 55-year-old Palestinian woman.

She lives above the Abu al-Rish checkpoint, the site of frequent violence at the heart of historical Hebron.

Saudi Arabia drew 27 million foreign tourists in 2023 and has more than doubled its goal for the end of the decade, an official said on Tuesday.

The announcement came less than five years after the Gulf kingdom fully opened up to tourism and as fears persist that the ongoing Israel-Hamas war could engulf the wider region.

"We have reached 100 million tourists this year, 77 million from home, 27 million from abroad, over 100 million," Tourism Minister Ahmed Al Khateeb said at a conference organised by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, describing the 2023 figures.

Turkish police on Tuesday shot dead two assailants from a leftist organisation, branded "terrorists" by authorities, who attacked a security checkpoint outside Istanbul's main court, killing one person and injuring five, officials said.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said the assailants were members of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) -- a fringe leftist group that has staged periodic attacks in Turkey since the 1980s.

The DHKP-C issued no initial claim of responsibility.

Israel on Tuesday said it was examining Hamas's response to a plan to halt nearly four months of fighting in Gaza, after key mediator Qatar said the Palestinian militants had given a "positive" reply to the proposed agreement.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his fifth tour of the region since the war broke out in October, arrived in Israel to discuss what he called an "essential" agreement.