On an improvised pitch in war-ravaged Gaza, a young player and goalkeeper block out the boisterous crowd and focus solely on the football as they square off.

The referee blows the whistle and the penalty-taker fires the ball into the makeshift goal, sparking wild celebrations as spectators swarm him.

For fans and players, Tuesday's match in the Jabalia refugee camp was a welcome distraction from the pangs of hunger and exhaustion endured over nearly 300 days of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

A far-right Israeli minister said Wednesday he had prayed at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, yet again defying longstanding rules that permit Jewish visits but forbid prayer.

The mosque compound is Islam's third holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian national identity but it is also revered by Jews as the site of their ancient temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

"I'm the political leadership and the political leadership authorises prayers on the Temple Mount," National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told a symposium in the Israeli parliament.

The Israeli strike on Yemen's port of Hodeida has released hazardous emissions and caused fuel spills, experts said, compounding environmental pollution already worsened by oil spills from Huthi ship attacks.

The strikes on Saturday, the first claimed by Israel on Yemen, hit fuel storage tanks in the main port under the control of the Iran-backed rebels, triggering an inferno.

Palestinian officials said Israeli troops killed two men, including a customs officer, in separate raids in the West Bank on Wednesday, as the military confirmed a death and "hits" during its overnight operations.

The raids were carried out before dawn in the Qalandia refugee camp and the town of Tubas, residents and officials said.

Palestinian sources identified the men killed as Ahmad Nidal Aslan, 19, from Qalandia, and Abdul Nasser Muhannad Sarhan, 23, from Tubas.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement has agreed with Hamas to form a "national unity government" in post-war Gaza, but analysts are sceptical about the significance of the Beijing-brokered deal.

The agreement, signed by more than a dozen Palestinian factions on Tuesday, aims to find common ground for future Palestinian political institutions, which are currently divided between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Germany on Wednesday banned the Hamburg Islamic Centre, an association that has been under investigation for several months over its alleged support for Lebanon's Hezbollah group and its links to Iran.

Tehran reacted in fury, summoning Germany's ambassador to Iran to condemn a "hostile action" it branded as a "clear example of Islamophobia". Germany in turn held talks with Iran's ambassador but fell short of formally summoning the envoy.

For Hamed al-Rafidain, a Saudi human resources worker, an electric vehicle offers welcome savings, especially since his other car is a fuel-guzzling four-wheel drive favoured by motorists in the desert kingdom.

The 39-year-old is part of a small but growing EV consumer base in Saudi Arabia, which hopes to become a hub for the technology as it seeks to diversify its economy away from oil.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Gaza ceasefire demonstrators Wednesday and called for a global alliance against the Iranian regime he accuses of funding them, as he addressed a US Congress divided by the war.

Washington has become increasingly alarmed by the humanitarian toll of Israel's nine-month campaign in the narrow coastal territory, and protests in Israel and the United States have been ratcheting up pressure on Netanyahu.

Kamala Harris's outspoken stance on the Gaza war hints at a possible shift from Joe Biden's Israel policy as she eyes the Democratic presidential nomination -- as Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to find out this week.

The US vice president will be conspicuously absent from the Israeli leader's address to the US Congress on Wednesday, in what analysts said was a clear signal about her concerns over civilian casualties in Gaza.

The arrest on Tuesday of former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, by police acting on an International Criminal Court warrant tied to his deadly war on drugs, marks a success for the ICC, which has been struggling for almost 23 years against a lack of recognition and enforcement power.

Backed by 125 member states, the jurisdiction seeks to prosecute individuals responsible for the world's gravest crimes when countries are unwilling or unable to do so themselves.

The wheels of international justice grind slowly, as evidenced by the court's low conviction rate.