As Israel keeps up its campaign against Hamas, Arab leaders are mapping out ways to support post-war Gaza, placing one major condition on their involvement: a pathway to Palestinian statehood.
Major obstacles lie ahead in gaining the support of both US President Joe Biden and the Israeli government, which is currently led by hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a staunch opponent of the two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday insisted there was no "humanitarian catastrophe" in Rafah, even as hundreds of thousands fled the south Gaza city amid intense fighting.
Hamas meanwhile insisted it would take part in any decision on the post-war government of Gaza as Palestinians marked the 76th anniversary of the "Nakba", when around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 creation of Israel.
Thousands of people took part Tuesday in an annual march through the ruins of villages that Palestinians were expelled from during the 1948 war that led to Israel's creation.
Wrapped in keffiyeh scarves and waving Palestinian flags, men and women rallied through the abandoned villages of Al-Kassayer and Al-Husha -- many holding signs with the names of dozens of other demolished villages their families were displaced from.
The European Union's top diplomat has said that the United States is showing "fatigue" in its Middle East diplomacy and called for greater EU efforts toward a Palestinian state.
On a visit to California, the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell again strongly criticized Israel's war campaign, saying Gazans were "dying and starving and suffering in unimaginable proportions" and that it was a "man-made disaster."
On Israel's 76th Independence Day, victory feels far away for many agonising over the fate of dozens of hostages still held in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
"On one side we're still here, my daughters are still here, my family's still here, and Israel is still here," said Lishay Lavi Miran, from the Nir Oz kibbutz community, less than a kilometre (0.62 miles) from the Gaza border.
Israeli police said they have opened an investigation after right-wing activists stopped and ransacked at least seven Gaza-bound humanitarian aid trucks, in a statement received Tuesday.
In an attack that was condemned by Washington, a crowd including young men and teenagers attacked the convoy from Jordan on Monday near the Tarqumya crossing with the occupied West Bank.
The attackers hurled the food cargo bound for besieged Gaza -- including bags of cereal, rice, flour, packets of biscuits and freeze-dried soup -- to the ground and trampled it.
Israeli troops fought Hamas militants in multiple battles across the Gaza Strip Tuesday that forced new waves of Palestinian mass displacement, on a sombre Independence Day for Israel.
Clashes have rocked the densely crowded far southern city of Rafah but also flared again in northern and central Gaza months after troops and tanks first entered those areas.
US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel on Tuesday said that while Washington backed military pressure on Hamas, it was not the only way to "fully defeat" the militants.
Beirut repatriated several hundred Syrians on Tuesday in coordination with Damascus as pressure mounts in cash-strapped Lebanon for the hundreds of thousands of refugees to go home.
Vans and small trucks were waiting in the Arsal area near the border early in the morning to ferry home the returnees, an AFP photographer reported.
The vehicles were piled high with mattresses and other belongings and some were even accompanied by livestock.
Israel's military operation in Rafah has set truce negotiations with Hamas "backward", mediator Qatar said on Tuesday, adding that talks have reached "almost a stalemate".
"Especially in the past few weeks, we have seen some momentum building but unfortunately things didn't move in the right direction and right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate," Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told the Qatar Economic Forum.
"Of course, what happened with Rafah has set us backward."
Inside his Abu Dhabi gastro pub, Chad McGehee inspects shiny steel tanks fermenting a special brew: the first beer made in the conservative Arab Gulf, where alcohol has long been taboo.
The 42-year-old American is one of the founders of Craft pub in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the only licensed microbrewery in a region that is generally as dry as its desert climate.
