(Reuters) -The United States imposed sanctions Thursday on 18 entities and individuals to target what the Treasury Department called a network helping Iran evade sanctions and generate revenue.

The U.S. targets include RUNC Exchange System Company and its leadership, Cyrus Offshore Bank, and Iranian software holding company Pasargad Arian Information and Communication Technology, according to a Treasury Department statement.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -The Dutch government on Thursday ruled out recognising a Palestinian state for now despite growing public concern over Gaza but said Israel's actions in the war-ravaged territory were eroding its own security.

The Netherlands' stance is in contrast to that of some NATO allies, most notably France which has said it will recognise Palestinian statehood in September. Britain has said it will also do so unless Israel takes steps to relieve suffering in Gaza, where starvation is spreading, and agrees a ceasefire.

(Reuters) -The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group has not received an invitation to peace talks with the Democratic Republic of Congo scheduled to begin in Doha on Friday, its leader Bertrand Bisimwa told reporters on Thursday.

A delay to the start of the talks risks scuppering an ambitious pledge by the two sides to end the fighting in eastern Congo that has killed thousands of people this year and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

Mourners attended on Thursday the funeral of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in the occupied West Bank whose body was handed over by Israel more than a week after a settler killed him.

"He was killed by a hateful settler, his body was held for 11 days, and more than 20 people from the village were arrested" following the late July incident in the southern West Bank, said the slain activist's brother, Aziz Hathaleen.

A Chicago man arrested for the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in the US capital Washington could potentially face the death penalty if convicted of murder and hate crime charges, officials said Thursday.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi will ultimately decide whether to seek the death penalty for Elias Rodriguez, the suspect in the May 21 attack, federal prosecutor Jeanine Pirro told reporters.

Rodriguez, 31, was arrested immediately after the shooting of Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and his fiancee, Sarah Milgrim, 26, outside the Capital Jewish Museum.

Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community pledged to resist government moves to call up seminary students for military service on Thursday, as demonstrators took to the streets to protest the arrest of two objectors.

"The authorities will face a united global ultra-Orthodox Judaism fighting for its soul," the spiritual leader of ultra-Orthodox Jews of European descent, Rabbi Dov Landau, told the community's leading newspaper Yated Neeman under the front-page headline "War".

By Laila Bassam

BEIRUT (Reuters) -The United States has presented Lebanon with a proposal for disarming Hezbollah by the end of the year, along with ending Israel's military operations in the country and the withdrawal of its troops from five positions in south Lebanon, according to copy of a Lebanese cabinet agenda reviewed by Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza and will eventually hand it over to armed forces that will govern it properly.

"We intend to," Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News when asked if Israel would take control of the entire 26-mile strip. "We don't want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don't want to govern it. We don't want to be there as a governing body."

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Brendan O'Brien)

ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkey's foreign minister will hold talks with Syria's president in Damascus on Thursday to assess bilateral ties, tensions between Syria and Israel, and recent clashes between a Kurdish-led group and the Syrian government, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.

NATO member Turkey has emerged as one of Syria's main foreign allies after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad last year. It has pledged to help rebuild the war-torn country, train and advise its armed forces, and support it in the international arena.

By Charlotte Greenfield and Alexander Cornwell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Eyal Zamir, the Israeli armed forces chief of staff arguing against a full takeover of Gaza, is the latest in a long line of generals to tussle with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Zamir fears endangering the lives of remaining hostages and miring an exhausted military in Gaza, he told Netanyahu during a stormy meeting on Tuesday, though he is expected to seize the last areas of the besieged territory if ordered to do so.