Days after the October 7 attack, Joe Biden walked onto the tarmac in Tel Aviv and offered a warm bear hug to Benjamin Netanyahu, a sign both of solid support for Israel and the US president's long, if not uncomplicated, relationship with the prime minister.

Seven months into the devastating conflict, the gentle approach is over. Biden, who memorably once wrote to Netanyahu "I love you," has for the first time raised the ultimate leverage the United States has on Israel -- military aid, which totals $3 billion a year.

Israel's closure of key crossings into Gaza has cut off the main entry point for aid, and particularly fuel, rendering humanitarian operations all but impossible, a senior UN official warned Thursday.

"We lost the main entry point for all humanitarian aid," said Andrea De Domenico, who heads the United Nations humanitarian office, OCHA, in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Hamas on Thursday called for an end to airdrops of aid after two Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza when a aid pallet crashed into a warehouse after its parachute failed to open.

Several countries, including the United States, Britain and France, have resorted to regular aid airdrops in northern Gaza, where humanitarian agencies have warned of a looming famine.

On Tuesday, two people died when an aid parachute fell on the roof of a warehouse where residents had gathered to collect relief supplies.

A US container ship loaded with aid for Gaza left Cyprus Thursday in a new test of a maritime corridor to get relief into the besieged Palestinian territory, authorities said.

The US-flagged MV Sagamore left the port of Larnaca after being loaded with aid from Britain, Cyprus and the United States, Cyprus government spokesperson Yiannis Antoniou told the official CNA news agency.

US military engineers have been assembling a temporary pier for installation on the Gaza coast to unload maritime aid deliveries.

Donald Trump accused election rival Joe Biden Thursday of siding with Hamas when he threatened to stop sending US weapons to Israel as it wages war against the Palestinian militant group in Gaza, calling the president's stance "disgraceful."

Biden warned Wednesday of halting weapons supplies if Israel pushes ahead with its long-threatened Rafah ground offensive, his most direct warning yet over the civilian impact of the war.

In North Africa, where political speech is often harshly policed, football stadiums have long been an exception. Now, fans are using that small freedom to express solidarity for the Palestinians amid the Gaza war.

As early as October 8 -- the day after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel that sparked the war -- supporters of Raja Club Athletic in Casablanca revived an old chant.

Freed Gaza hostages Gabriela Leimberg and her brother Fernando Marman visited Auschwitz for the first time this week and said they want just one thing: freedom for all the others.

On Monday, a delegation from Israel -- relatives of those still held, survivors of the October 7 militant attacks and bereaved parents -- joined the annual March of the Living at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex of former Nazi death camps in Poland.

Israeli warplanes struck Gaza's crowded southern city of Rafah Thursday after US President Joe Biden vowed to stop supplying artillery shells and other weapons to Israel if a full-scale assault goes ahead.

It was the starkest warning yet from the United States, Israel's main military provider, over the civilian impact of its war against Hamas.

An AFP correspondent and witnesses on Thursday reported Israeli strikes on several parts of Rafah, where the United Nations said 1.4 million people were sheltering.

Israeli authorities destroyed around 50 homes belonging to Bedouins in the Negev desert on Wednesday, an AFP journalist reported, with Israel's far-right national security minister saying they were "illegal constructions".

Bulldozers flattened the houses in the Wadi al-Khalil village, sparking anger among members of its 500-strong community.

"There are more than 500 people here. (Now) the children and the women have nowhere else to go," said resident Sleiman Abu Asa.

Displaced Gazan Marwan al-Masri, sheltering in Rafah, said on Wednesday "life has completely ceased" since Israeli tanks and troops entered the city's east, sending desperate Palestinians fleeing north in the besieged territory.

More than 1.4 million people had crammed into Rafah, a city on the Gaza Strip's southern border with Egypt, as Israeli forces pushed their way southward from the coastal territory's north during months of war against Hamas militants.