US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met Tuesday to discuss shifting "to a different phase" of the Israel-Hamas war with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, a White House official said.
The meeting provided an opportunity to talk about steps to improve the humanitarian situation in war-torn Gaza and minimize harm to civilians, according to the official, who did not wish to be named.
The United Nations named an outgoing Dutch minister its humanitarian coordinator for Gaza on Tuesday following last week's watered-down Security Council resolution which called for aid to be delivered to the strip "at scale."
Sigrid Kaag's appointment comes as the people of Gaza face a dire humanitarian emergency, with aid slowed to a trickle by Israel's continued bombardment of the densely populated coastal strip.
She will start work on January 8, the UN said in a statement.
Since the war in Gaza began, plenty of posters, stickers and leaflets in the occupied West Bank have urged Palestinians to boycott Israeli products and buy local.
"By us, for us," reads the slogan of the new campaign that has spread across towns in recent weeks, as calls to ban Israeli goods also grow in other countries.
The slogan is everywhere at one well-known supermarket chain in the West Bank, where "Made in Palestine" fare like water, milk and toilet paper take pride of place.
The Israeli army on Tuesday said it arrested senior Palestinian politician Khalida Jarrar in the occupied West Bank, along with other activists of her leftist party.
Jarrar, 60, is a prominent figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a faction in the Palestine Liberation Organisation considered a "terrorist" group by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
"Khaleda Jarrar, a wanted terrorist, was arrested... along with other PFLP activists," the army said in a statement.
Israel on Tuesday kept up its strikes against Gaza targets despite grave concern expressed by the United Nations, which named a coordinator for desperately needed humanitarian aid.
The Israeli army said it struck military sites and tunnel shafts in Jabalia, northern Gaza, and Khan Yunis in the south, as heavy ground combat continued.
Incidents linked to Iran-backed groups in the Red Sea, on the Lebanese border and in Iraq added to regional tensions surrounding the war.
US air strikes targeting pro-Iranian forces in Iraq claimed at least one life and drew an angry response from Baghdad Tuesday amid high regional tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Iraq condemned as "a clear hostile act" the overnight US strikes, saying they had killed one member of the security forces and wounded 18 other people, including civilians.
Washington has repeatedly targeted sites used by Iran and its proxy forces in Iraq and Syria in response to more than 100 attacks on American and allied forces since the October 7 outbreak of the Gaza war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted peace can only be achieved in Gaza if Hamas is destroyed, the territory demilitarised and Palestinian society "deradicalised", after warning the war is set to intensify.
The declarations came as the World Health Organization on Monday reported "harrowing" accounts of entire families killed from Christmas Eve strikes on a refugee camp in Gaza.
Relentless Israeli strikes have devastated the Palestinian territory and the conflict has heightened tensions across the Middle East, with global pressure for a ceasefire mounting.
World Health Organization staff visited Monday a Gaza hospital receiving casualties from deadly strikes on a refugee camp, hearing distressing stories of entire families killed and seeing dying children.
"WHO's team heard harrowing accounts shared by health workers and victims of the suffering caused by the explosions," the UN health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, formerly Twitter.
"One child had lost their whole family in the strike on the camp. A nurse at the hospital suffered the same loss," he said.
Residents of Gaza's Al-Maghazi refugee camp returned to their neighbourhood on Monday only to find blocks of concrete strewn where their homes had stood just a day ago.
"These houses are destroyed. Our house was bombed," said camp resident Abu Rami Abu al-Ais amid the debris.
"There's no safe place in the Gaza Strip."
Late on Sunday three houses in the camp were hit by Israeli air strikes that killed at least 70 people, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. AFP was unable to independently verify the information.
An Israeli strike in Syria has killed a senior general with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the military force said, with Tehran vowing retribution.
The incident further raises tension in the Middle East where Iran-aligned groups have escalated attacks since Iran-backed Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering a war with Israel.
Iranian state media also reported the death of Razi Moussavi, describing him as "one of the most experienced advisers" of Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
