PARIS — Western and Arab nations, international agencies and nongovernmental groups stressed the urgent need for aid for Gaza civilians at a Paris conference Thursday, held as the humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory worsens amid Israel’s massive air and ground campaign against Hamas.

The gathering ended a few hours before the White House said Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in Gaza, starting on Thursday.

The French presidency said the participants’ overall pledges topped 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion) in funding, though that included some funds already announced earlier, and stressed that the global amount still remains to be finalized.

French President Emmanuel Macron opened the conference with an appeal for Israel to protect civilians, saying that “all lives have equal worth” and urging for pauses in the fighting to allow deliveries of desperately needed aid.

“In the immediate term, we need to work on protecting civilians,” he said. “To do that, we need a humanitarian pause very quickly and we must work towards a cease-fire.”

The conference brought together officials from over 50 countries, the United Nations and humanitarian organizations as the Gaza Strip is being pounded by Israel in its war against Hamas, sparked by the militants deadly Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel.

Israeli authorities were not invited but have been informed of the talks, Macron’s office said. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the conference.

More than 1.5 million people — or about 70% of Gaza’s population — have fled their homes, and an estimated $1.2 billion is needed to respond to the crisis in Palestinian areas.

Macron said that since the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas “shouldered the responsibility for exposing Palestinians to terrible consequences,” and again defended Israel’s right to defend itself.

“Fighting terrorism can never be carried out without rules. Israel knows that. The trap of terrorism is for all of us the same: giving in to violence and renouncing our values,” he added.

Longer term, Macron said diplomatic work must resume on bringing peace to the Middle East, with a two-state solution. “We must learn from our errors and no longer accept that peace … always be pushed back to later.”

Several European countries, the United States and regional powers such as Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf Arab countries attended the conference, as did Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, who urged the international community to “put an end to the war.”

“How many Palestinians have to be killed for the war to end?” Shtayyeh asked. “What Israel is doing is not a war against Hamas, it’s a war against the whole Palestinian people.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry stressed that Israel had only allowed limited quantities of humanitarian aid through the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza and urged “the entire international community, and donor countries in particular, to continue supporting the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

“The aid that has already entered Gaza is not enough to meet the needs of the entire population, and the voluntary and deliberate complications imposed by Israel on the delivery of aid only lead to a further deterioration of the situation,” Shoukry said.

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides outlined his plan for a humanitarian sea corridor to Gaza “to provide continued rapid, safe and unhindered flow of humanitarian aid” and said the plan is being discussed “with all parties concerned, including Israel.” The plan provides options for the short, medium and longer term, with aid shipments possibly from the Cyprus port of Larnaca, 370 km (230 miles) from Gaza, he said.

The initiative includes the collection, inspection and storage of humanitarian aid in Cyprus, it’s later transfer by ship possibly from Larnaca port and finally it’s offloading and distribution in Gaza.

French officials said they are also considering evacuating the wounded to hospital ships in the Mediterranean Sea off the Gaza coast. Paris sent a helicopter carrier, now off Cyprus, and is preparing another with medical capacities on board.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said his country sent a hospital ship that is en route to Cyprus before deploying as close as possible to the conflict zone.

Thursday’s discussions also included financial support for Gaza’s civilians.

Macron announced France will provide an additional 80 million euros ($85 million) in humanitarian aid for Gaza civilians, bringing France’s funding to a total of 100 million euros ($107 million) this year.

On Tuesday, the German government said it will provide 20 million euros ($21 million) in new funding, in addition to releasing 71 million euros ($76 million) already earmarked for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Denmark has decided to increase its humanitarian aid to the civilian population in Gaza by 75 million kroner ($10.7 million), to be channeled via U.N. agencies and the International Red Cross.

European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also attended the conference. The 27-nation bloc is the world’s top aid supplier to the Palestinians. “We have quadrupled the humanitarian support for Gaza and the West Bank, but it’s mostly for Gaza, to 100 million euros ($107 million),” von der Leyen said.

At a news conference following the conference, rights and aid groups urged for an immediate cease-fire, which they said is crucial for them to be able to work in Gaza.

“We’re determined to do everything we can, but if the only thing we get is a day or two without fighting … that won’t be enough,” said Isabelle Defourny, president of Doctors Without Borders France.

Jean-François Corty, vice president of Doctors of the World, said the main challenge “is not so much to mobilize aid as to get it” into Gaza.

“What’s happening in Gaza is a litany of violations of international law … not seen since World War II,” said Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, and denounced “indiscriminate, disproportionate, deliberate attacks.”

Associated Press writers John Leicester in Le Pecq, France; Geir Moulson in Berlin; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Colleen Barry in Milan and Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israeli troops have pushed into Gaza City along a key coastal road on the Mediterranean Sea as part of their war on Hamas, according to satellite images from earlier this week analyzed on Thursday by The Associated Press.

Monday’s images from Planet Labs PBC show a moonscape of impact craters from missile strikes and smoke rising over the northern reaches of Gaza City, the besieged territory’s largest urban zone. The images also show previous positions of Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers on one of three axes of attack used to cut the city off from the rest of the Gaza Strip.

The city has seen hundreds of thousands of people flee it after a month of war since Hamas’ unprecedented Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel that killed some 1,400 people.

That assault sparked a punishing campaign of airstrikes and the Israeli military offensive into the Gaza Strip that has so far killed over 10,500 people — two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run enclave.

Planet Labs has begun delaying the release of imagery from Israel and the Palestinian territories amid the war, as it acknowledged concerns about “the potential for misuse and abuse” of its pictures, said Will Marshall, a co-founder and the CEO of the San Francisco-based firm.

“Planet is continuing to make Earth observation data of Gaza available to clients, including media and humanitarian organizations, consistent with our commitment to transparency and accountability,” Marshall said in responses to questions from the AP ahead of the release of Monday’s images. “Planet does not modify imagery, and we have not received requests to censor imagery.”

The AP has a subscription to access Planet Labs imagery to aid its reporting worldwide and distributes those photos to its subscribers and members.

Monday’s images show Israeli forces just about a kilometer (over half a mile) north of the Shati refugee camp, a dense neighborhood adjacent to Gaza City’s center. Shati houses Palestinian families who fled from or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its establishment.

Their position corresponds with what witnesses in Gaza City have told the AP, whose reporters continue to work in the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday, one witness told the AP he saw Israeli soldiers fighting Hamas close to Shifa Hospital, which is some 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from the position Israeli forces held on Monday.

Footage released this week by Hamas of its militants engaged in street-to-street fighting with Israeli forces corresponded to features of the northern reaches of the Gaza Strip. Footage released by the Israeli military did the same.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP regarding the satellite images.

After ordering civilians out of Gaza City, Israeli soldiers have moved on Gaza City from three positions.

They cut across the southern edge of the city all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Meanwhile, two other forces have pushed in from the north, with forces around Beit Hanoun to the east and forces seen in the satellite images along the Mediterranean, to the west, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

Such “clearing operations frequently take weeks and sometimes months to complete,” the Institute said.

The satellite photos show over half a dozen Israeli tanks and armored vehicles moving on Monday down Ahmed Orabi Street, a coastal road on the Mediterranean also home to a strip of hotels and restaurants. A streetside mosque is seen in ruins.

Some 20 other vehicles just to the north at a site likely serve as a forward-operating base for the Israeli forces, the photos show. A few hundred meters (yards) away, over three dozen impact craters can be seen, likely the result of an earlier intense barrage of fire by Israel to clear the area for its troops.

Burning fires and destroyed buildings can be seen throughout Gaza City.

With journalists outside the city unable to enter, gathering independent information about what’s going on remains difficult. Apart from videos and images on social media, the growing supply of satellite imagery from commercial companies has become increasingly valuable for reporting on closed-off areas and countries.

Those companies can shoot highly detailed images that rival those that were once only the domain of a few countries. Airbus and Colorado-based Maxar Technologies have provided images to reporters during the Israel-Hamas war as well. Both firms did not respond to a request for comment.

Previously, a 1996 U.S. law known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment barred American firms releasing high-resolution satellite imagery of Israel beyond what was commercially available abroad. But as commercial firms put higher-resolution satellites into space, those images became more widely available.

These newly available images have been used in reporting on Israel before. The AP, relying on such imagery, reported in 2021 that a secretive Israeli nuclear facility at the center of the nation’s undeclared atomic weapons program was undergoing what appears to be its biggest construction project in decades. That work appears to be continuing to this day.

JERUSALEM — Fistfights break out in bread lines. Residents wait hours for a gallon of brackish water that makes them sick. Scabies, diarrhea and respiratory infections rip through overcrowded shelters. And some families have to choose who eats.

“My kids are crying because they are hungry and tired and can’t use the bathroom,” said Suzan Wahidi, an aid worker and mother of five at a U.N. shelter in the central town of Deir al-Balah, where hundreds of people share a single toilet. “I have nothing for them.”

With the Israel-Hamas war in its second month and more than 10,000 people killed in Gaza, trapped civilians are struggling to survive without electricity or running water. Palestinians who managed to flee Israel’s ground invasion in northern Gaza now encounter scarcity of food and medicine in the south, and there is no end in sight to the war sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack.

Over half a million displaced people have crammed into hospitals and U.N. schools-turned-shelters in the south. The schools — overcrowded, strewn with trash, swarmed by flies — have become a breeding ground for infectious diseases.

UPDATE: Israel agrees to 4-hour daily pauses in Gaza fighting to allow civilians to flee

Since the start of the war, several hundred trucks of aid have entered Gaza through the southern Rafah crossing, but aid organizations say that’s a drop in the ocean of need. For most people, each day has become a drudging cycle of searching for bread and water and waiting in lines.

The sense of desperation has strained Gaza’s close-knit society, which has endured decades of conflict, four wars with Israel and a 16-year blockade since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces.

Some Palestinians have even vented their anger against Hamas, shouting insults at officials or beating up policemen in scenes unimaginable just a month ago, witnesses say.

“Everywhere you go, you see tension in the eyes of people,” said Yousef Hammash, an aid worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council in the southern town of Khan Younis. “You can tell they are at a breaking point.”

Supermarket shelves are nearly empty. Bakeries have shut down because of lack of flour and fuel for the ovens. Gaza’s farmland is mostly inaccessible, and there’s little in produce markets beyond onions and oranges. Families cook lentils over small fires in the streets.

“You hear children crying in the night for sweets and hot food,” said Ahmad Kanj, 28, a photographer at a shelter in the southern town of Rafah. “I can’t sleep.”

Many people say they’ve gone weeks without meat, eggs or milk and now live on one meal a day.

“There is a real threat of malnutrition and people starving,” said Alia Zaki, spokesperson for the U.N.’s World Food Program. What aid workers call “food insecurity” is the new baseline for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, she said.

Famed Gazan dishes like jazar ahmar — juicy red carrots stuffed with ground lamb and rice — are a distant memory, replaced by dates and packaged biscuits. Even those are hard to find.

Each day families send their most assertive relative off before dawn to one of the few bakeries still functioning. Some take knives and sticks — they say they must prepare to defend themselves if attacked, with riots sporadically breaking out in bread and water lines.

“I send my sons to the bakeries and eight hours later, they’ve come back with bruises and sometimes not even bread,” said 59-year-old Etaf Jamala, who fled Gaza City for the southern town of Deir al-Balah, where she sleeps in the packed halls of a hospital with 15 family members.

One woman told The Associated Press that her nephew, a 27-year-old father of five in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya in northern Gaza, was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife after being accused of cutting the line for water. He needed dozens of stitches, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The violence has jarred the tiny territory, where family names are linked to community status and even small discretions can be magnified in the public eye.

“The social fabric for which Gaza was known is fraying due to the anxiety and uncertainty and loss,” said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Israel cut off water to Gaza shortly after the Hamas attack, saying its complete siege would be lifted only after the militants released the roughly 240 hostages they captured. Israel has since turned on pipelines to the center and south, but there’s no fuel to pump or process the water. The taps run dry.

Those who can’t find or afford bottled water rely on salty, unfiltered well water, which doctors say causes diarrhea and serious gastrointestinal infections.

“I cannot recognize my own son,” said Fadi Ihjazi. The 3-year-old has lost 5 kilograms (11 pounds) in just two weeks, she said, and has been diagnosed with a chronic intestinal infection.

“Before the war he had the sweetest baby face,” Ihjazi said, but now his lips are chapped, his face yellowish, his eyes sunken.

At shelters, the lack of water makes it hard to maintain even basic hygiene, said Dr. Ali al-Uhisi, who treats patients at one in Deir al-Balah. Lice and chicken pox have spread, he said, and on Wednesday morning alone he treated four cases of meningitis. This week, he’s also seen 20 cases of the liver infection hepatitis A.

“What worries me is that I know I’m seeing a fraction of the total number of cases at the shelter,” he said.

For most ailments, there is no treatment — zinc tablets and oral rehydration salts vanished the first week of the war. Frustrated patients have assaulted doctors, said Al-Uhisi, who described being beaten this week by a patient who needed a syringe.

Sadeia Abu Harbeid, 44, said she missed a chemotherapy treatment for her breast cancer during the second week of the war and can’t find painkillers. Without regular treatments, she says, her chances of survival dim.

She hardly eats, choosing to give most of the little food she has to her 2-year-old. “This existence is a humiliation,” she said.

Across Gaza, rare scenes of dissent are playing out. Some Palestinians are openly challenging the authority of Hamas, which long has ruled the enclave with an iron fist. Four Palestinians across Gaza spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals about what they’ve seen.

A man who was told off by a Hamas officer for cutting the bread line took a chair and smashed it over his head, according to an aid worker in line. In another area, angry crowds hurled stones at Hamas police who cut in front of a water line and beat them with their fists until they scattered, according to a journalist there.

Over the past few night in Gaza City, Hamas rockets streaming overhead toward Israel have prompted outbursts of rage from a U.N. shelter. In the middle of the night, hundreds of people have shouted insults against Hamas and cried out that they wanted the war to end, according to a 28-year-old sleeping in a tent there with his family.

And during a televised press conference Tuesday, a young man with a dazed expression and bandaged wrist pushed his way through the crowd, disrupting a speech by Iyad Bozum, spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

“May God hold you to account, Hamas!” the man yelled, shaking his wounded hand.

Gaza’s future remains uncertain as Israeli tanks rumble down the ghostly streets of Gaza City with the goal of toppling Hamas. Palestinians say it will never be the same.

“The Gaza I know is just a memory now,” said 16-year-old Jehad Ghandour, who fled to Rafah. “There are no places or anything I know left.”

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Crowds of Palestinian families stretching as far as the eye could see walked out of Gaza City and surrounding areas toward the south Thursday to escape Israeli strikes and ground troops battling Hamas militants in dense urban neighborhoods. Others joined tens of thousands taking shelter at the city’s biggest hospital, not far from the fighting.

Gaza’s largest city is the focus of Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 incursion — and the Israeli military says Hamas’ main command center is located in and under the Shifa Hospital complex. The militant group and hospital staff deny that claim.

Growing numbers of people have been living in and around the hospital complex, hoping it will be safer than their homes or U.N. shelters in the north, several of which have been hit repeatedly. Israeli troops were around 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the hospital, according to its director.

The accelerating exodus to the south came as Israel agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses and to open a second route for people to flee the north, the White House said. The scope of the pauses was not immediately clear. The agreement came as Western and Arab officials gathered in Paris on Thursday to discuss ways of providing more aid to civilians in Gaza.

Separately, mediators worked on a possible deal for a three-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of around a dozen hostages held by Hamas, according to two Egyptian officials, a United Nations official and a Western diplomat.

Israeli ground forces battled near Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa. Conditions are worsening for tens of thousands of people sheltering there, said three people who had left the hospital to go south in the past two days.

Families are sleeping in hospital rooms, even surgical theaters and the maternity ward, or on the streets outside. Daily food distributions helped a tiny number for a time, but there has been no bread for the past four days, they said. Water is scarce and usually polluted, and few people can bathe. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The Israeli military says the complex is a Hamas command center and senior militant leaders are hiding there. Hamas and hospital staff say the military is creating a pretext to strike it.

The hospital has also been overwhelmed with daily waves of wounded from airstrikes, while medical supplies have been running low and electricity has been shut off in large sections of the facility. The U.N. was able to deliver two truckloads of supplies Wednesday night, only the second delivery since the war began — enough to last a few hours, the director said.

Dozens of wounded were rushed to Shifa overnight, and a shell hit close to the hospital around dawn, thought it caused only a few minor injuries, the director Mohammed Abu Selmia told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“The conditions here are disastrous in every sense of the word,” he said. “We’re short on medicine and equipment, and the doctors and nurses are exhausted. … We’re unable to do much for the patients.”

International journalists who entered the north on a tour led by the Israeli military on Wednesday saw heavily damaged buildings, fields of rubble and toppled trees along the Mediterranean shoreline.

The trickle of aid entering Gaza from the south is largely barred from going north, which has been without running water for weeks. The U.N. aid office said all the bakeries there have shut down for lack of fuel, water and flour. Hospitals running low on supplies are performing surgeries without anesthesia.

More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began, with many heeding Israeli orders to flee to the southern part of the besieged enclave.

But the conditions there are also dire. Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets all across the territory. New arrivals from the north are squeezing into homes with extended family, or into U.N. schools-turned-shelters.

The World Health Organization said a lack of clean water and bathing facilities in shelters across Gaza has fueled the spread of infectious diseases, including scabies, lice, chickenpox, skin rash and respiratory illness. It has logged over 33,000 cases of diarrhea since mid-October — more than half among children under 5.

Still, the exodus from Gaza City and surrounding areas in the north has accelerated in recent days. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 50,000 people fled south on Gaza’s main highway on Wednesday during a daily, hourslong window announced by the Israeli military. There are clashes and shelling near the road, and evacuees reported seeing corpses alongside it, the U.N. office said.

Similar-sized crowds streamed out on Thursday, according to an Associated Pres reporter on the scene as they arrived out of the northern zone. Most are traveling on foot with only what they can carry, many holding children or pushing older relatives in carts.

“We’ve been expelled, we’ve been put through a catastrophe. And who knows what more is coming,” said Kamal Nusseir, a 28-year-old with his possessions tied to his back.

His use of the Arabic word “nakba,” — which literally means “catastophe” — is a reference to the expulsion or flight of some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war around Israel’s creation. More than half of Gaza‘s residents are refugees from that war, or their descendants.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry, which has urged Palestinians to stay in their homes, has told media outlets not to circulate footage of people fleeing.

A month of relentless bombardment in Gaza since the Hamas attack has killed more than 10,800 Palestinians — nearly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. More than 2,300 others are believed to have been buried by strikes that in some cases have demolished entire city blocks.

Israeli officials say thousands of Palestinian militants have been killed, and blame civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing it of operating in residential areas and using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Gaza’s Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its casualty reports.

The occupied West Bank has also seen a surge in violence, with Israel carrying out frequent arrest raids that often spark gunbattles. At least seven Palestinians were killed Thursday during a raid in Jenin, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The military says it has stepped up operations to prevent attacks.

More than 1,400 people have died in Israel since the start of the war, most of them civilians killed by Hamas militants during their initial incursion. Israel says 32 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.

Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel, and some 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have traded fire repeatedly.

Magdy reported from Cairo and Chehayeb from Beirut. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel and Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its assault on Hamas in northern Gaza starting on Thursday, the White House said, as President Joe Biden pressed Israelis for a multi-day stoppage in the fighting in a bid to release hostages held by the militant group.

Biden said Thursday that there was “no possibility” of a formal cease-fire at the moment, and said it had “taken a little longer” than he hoped for Israel to agree to the humanitarian pauses. Biden had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to institute the daily pauses during a Monday call and said he had also asked the Israelis for a pause of at least three days to allow for negotiations over the release of some hostages held by Hamas.

“Yes,” Biden said, when asked whether he had asked Israel for a three-day pause. “I’ve asked for even a longer pause for some of them.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the first daily humanitarian pause would be announced Thursday and that the Israelis had committed to announcing each four-hour window at least three hours in advance. Israel, he said, also was opening a second corridor for civilians to flee the areas that are the current focus of its military campaign against Hamas, with a coastal road joining the territory’s main north-south highway.

Similar short-term pauses have occurred over the last several days as tens of thousands of civilians have fled southward, but Thursday’s announcement appeared to be an effort to formalize and expand the process, as the U.S. has pressed Israelis to take greater steps to protect civilians in Gaza.

Biden’s push for an even longer pause comes as part of a renewed diplomatic push to free hostages taken by Hamas and other militant groups to the Gaza Strip during their Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel.

Israeli officials estimate that militants still hold 239 hostages, including children and the elderly, from the attack that also saw 1,400 Israelis killed. U.S. officials say it believes fewer than 10 Americans are among those held captive.

Kirby told reporters Thursday that pauses could be useful to “getting all 239 hostages back with their families to include the less than 10 Americans that we know are being held. So if we can get all the hostages out, that’s a nice finite goal.”

“Humanitarian pauses can be useful in the transfer process,” he added.

Indirect talks were taking place in Qatar — which also played a role in the freeing of four hostages by Hamas last month — about a larger release of hostages. CIA Director William Burns was in Doha on Thursday to discuss efforts to win the release of hostages in Gaza with the Qatari prime minister and the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, according to a U.S. official.

Burns met with Mossad chief David Barnea and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said the official, who talked to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Qatar is a frequent go-between in international dealings with Hamas, and some top Hamas political leaders make their home in the Gulf country. The U.S. official stressed Burns was not playing a lead role in the negotiations.

Kirby confirmed that the U.S. continues to have “active discussions with partners about trying to secure the release of hostages,” noting in particular Qatar’s help.

“We know they have lines of communication with Hamas that we don’t,” Kirby said of Qatar. “And we’re going to continue to work with them and regional partners to try to secure the release of all the hostages.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken had warned Israel last week that it risked destroying an eventual possibility for peace unless it acted swiftly to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza for Palestinian civilians as it intensifies its war against Hamas.

In a blunt call for Israel to pause military operations in the territory to allow for the immediate and increased delivery of assistance, Blinken said the situation would drive Palestinians toward further radicalism and effectively end prospects for any eventual resumption of peace talks to end the conflict.

French President Emmanuel Macron had opened a Gaza aid conference on Thursday with an appeal for Israel to protect civilians, saying that “all lives have equal worth” and that fighting terrorism “can never be carried out without rules.”

Kirby said Uzra Zeya, the State Department’s under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights; special envoy David Satterfield; and Sarah Charles, who leads the USAID’s bureau for humanitarian assistance, were representing the U.S. at the Paris conference. Israel has not been invited by France to the conference. Kirby demurred when asked about the decision to leave Israel out of the international talks.

“We’re focused on trying to have the most constructive conversation there that we can,” Kirby said.

AP writers Ellen Knickmeyer, Colleen Long and Michelle Price in Washington contributed.

A Wednesday night, Nov., 8, event featured a screening of the 43-minute film “Bearing Witness,” which documents acts committed by Hamas against Israeli citizens. The screening was reportedly arranged in part by “Wonder Woman” actress Gal Gadot, who is Israeli.

During the event, protesters carrying Israeli and Palestinian flags gathered along Pico Boulevard. Los Angeles Police Department officials said there were no clashes between the sides during the screening. But clashes erupted later, with video showing fistfights spilling onto Pico.

“One hour after the event was over, a small group of demonstrators returned to the same location,” according to an LAPD statement. “Those demonstrators became involved in a physical fight that has been widely broadcast. Officers returned to the area and peace was restored. Two reports for battery were taken and will be thoroughly investigated. At this time, we do not have suspects in custody relating to the battery, or for any other reason relating to this event.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass denounced the violence.

“We cannot allow current worldwide tension to devolve into this unacceptable violence in our city,” she wrote on social media Wednesday night. “This is a time of immense pain and distress for thousands of Angelenos. We must stand together.”

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Wednesday for a united and Palestinian-led government for Gaza and the West Bank after the war ends, as a step toward Palestinian statehood. That vision sharpens U.S. differences with ally Israel on what the future should look like for the Palestinian territories once Israel’s military campaign against Hamas winds down.

Blinken’s outline of what Americans think should come next for Gaza also serves as a check on the postwar scenarios floated by officials of Israel’s hard-right government and its supporters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement Monday that Israel’s military would likely maintain security control of Gaza for an “indefinite period” appears to have heightened U.S. concerns.

Any postwar governing plan for Gaza “must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority,” Blinken told reporters in Japan.

APPEALING TO PRESIDENT: Democrats want Biden to protect Palestinians in US from being forced home

He and other top diplomats of the Group of Seven leading industrial democracies were gathered in Tokyo for a meeting focused on Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and on easing the suffering of the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza under Israel’s now month-old military offensive and blockade.

Blinken reinforced the Biden administration’s rejections of any return of lasting direct Israeli control in Gaza, as well as of a proposal — promoted in a policy report by Israel’s intelligence ministry — to push Gaza’s Palestinian residents into neighboring Egypt.

“We’re very clear on no reoccupation, just as we’re very clear on no displacement of the Palestinian population,” Blinken said. “And, as we’ve said before, we need to see and get to, in effect, unity of governance when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank, and ultimately to a Palestinian state.”

The U.S. diplomat’s remarks highlight the areas of widening daylight between Netanyahu’s government and its most important ally on how Israel conducts the war and its postwar relations with the Palestinians.

The U.S. and Israel agree that the Hamas militant group cannot return to its rule of the Gaza Strip. But none of the ideas that Israeli officials have raised for Gaza’s governance after the war have included independent Palestinian rule as a credible possibility.

The Palestinian Authority administers semiautonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. While internationally recognized, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is widely unpopular among Palestinians even in the West Bank. Netanyahu long has depicted both Abbas and the Palestinian Authority as too incapable to be a credible partner in peace efforts with Israel.

A member of Israel’s decision-making War Cabinet on Wednesday acknowledged that Israel does not yet have a vision for the Gaza Strip after its war against Hamas ends, saying the battle plan is open-ended and will include a long-term Israeli security presence in the besieged territory.

The comments by Benny Gantz added new uncertainty to the Israeli campaign in Gaza, which has come under growing international scrutiny because of the heavy civilian death toll and widespread destruction. The Group of Seven, which includes many of Israel’s closest allies, called for Israel to do more to improve the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Speaking in Israel to international journalists, Gantz, a former defense minister and military chief of staff, said the only certainty in Israeli thinking is that Hamas can have no role in the future of Gaza. But he described a lengthy campaign in Gaza and linked the territory’s future to quiet along Israel’s northern front with Lebanon and eastern front with the West Bank.

“Once the Gaza area is safe, and the northern area will be safe, and the Judea and Samaria region will calm down, we will settle down and review an alternative mechanism for Gaza,” he said, using the biblical term for the West Bank. “I do not know what it will be.”

“We can come up with any mechanism we think is appropriate, but Hamas will not be part of it,” he added. “We need to replace the Hamas regime and ensure security superiority for us.”

Asked how long the war would last, Gantz said, “there are no limitations.”

Since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, successive Israeli governments have pursued a policy of severing links between the West Bank and Gaza, the two territories that, along with east Jerusalem, were to make up a future Palestinian state. The isolation of Gaza deepened after Hamas drove out the forces of Abbas in 2007 and Israel, along with Egypt, imposed a blockade.

Hamas’ breakout from Gaza on Oct. 7 and Israel’s deepening military response have marked the bloodiest fighting by far in repeated wars. President Joe Biden, whose administration had made a policy of not publicly pushing Netanyahu’s coalition to return to long-abandoned talks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the first hours after the Hamas attack declared the U.S. would stand by Israel in its military response.

Biden rushed U.S. weapons to Israel and sent warships to the region. The American president flew on Oct. 18 to Israel, where he clasped Netanyahu and Israeli survivors of the Hamas raids, which killed more than 1,400 people, in tight hugs.

The past week, however, has seen increasing private and public U.S. pressure on Israel to alter how it conducts its air, ground and sea campaign against Hamas.

Deaths in Gaza under Israeli bombardment have soared past 10,000, alienating international governments that had endorsed Israel’s right of self- defense. Israel blames Hamas for the heavy death toll, accusing the group of using civilians as human shields.

Emerging U..S.-Israeli differences already included Americans pressing for what they call humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow for greater delivery of aid to Gaza’s blockaded residents. Israeli officials have linked any cease-fires to Hamas releasing the more than 240 people it is believed to be holding hostage.

Blinken said Wednesday the time “is now to start the conversation about the future” for Gaza.

“Identifying the longer-term objectives and a pathway to get there will help shape our approach to addressing immediate needs,” he said.

Federman reported from Tel Aviv.

WASHINGTON — Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden to take steps to protect Palestinians in the United States as Israeli forces continue to fight Hamas militants inside Gaza City and thousands flee the area amid increasingly dire humanitarian circumstances.

In a letter Wednesday to Biden, the Democrats call for enacting temporary protections for Palestinians through government programs that shield immigrants from returning to countries that are ravaged by natural disasters or war. The lawmakers cite the rising death toll in Gaza, especially among children, from the month-long Israel-Hamas war and the lack of food and water.

“In light of ongoing armed conflict, Palestinians already in the United States should not be forced to return to the Palestinian territories, consistent with President Biden’s stated commitment to protecting Palestinian civilians,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, provided to The Associated Press in advance of its release.

The letter is a notable effort from Democrats to defend and protect Palestinians at a time when leading Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and others vying for the GOP presidential nomination, have called for the U.S. to bar Palestinians attempting to escape the war in Gaza.

Last month, while campaigning in Iowa, Trump threatened to expand a travel ban on Muslims that he issued through an executive order during his presidency. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the U.S. should not take in any Palestinian refugees trying to leave Gaza because, he insisted, they “are all antisemitic.”

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, has emphasized that America has “always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists,” which prompted DeSantis’s super PAC to attack Haley on the issue.

U.S. law gives authorities broad leeway to deny people entry if they present security risks. Cases of extremists crossing into the U.S. illegally are also virtually nonexistent.

The request from Democrats to Biden would apply only to Palestinians who are already in the United States.

The U.S. issued about 7,200 temporary visas to people with Palestinian Authority passports in 2022, according to the State Department. Pointing to that figure, the Democrats argued that “the number of beneficiaries would be small, while the benefit could be lifesaving.

The request, signed by just over 100 lawmakers, is led by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration policy. It is also signed by Sens. Jack Reed, who leads the Armed Services Committee, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. About 70 House Democrats signed, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

Temporary Protected Status is a program through the Department of Homeland Security that provides provisional residency, including the ability to work, to non-U.S. citizens currently here whose home countries are deemed too dangerous for them to return. The lawmakers also ask Biden to use Deferred Enforced Departure, a program similar to TPS that is used at a president’s discretion.

Similar protections have been issued in the past, the lawmakers say. For instance, the U.S. offered temporary protected status for residents of Kosovo amid armed conflict in 1998. At the time, Kosovo was a province of Serbia and did not declare independence until 2008.

“Why am I alive?” one of the boys howls, screaming for his father in Hebrew. Stunned, he looks to his brother, who is covered in blood and appears to have lost an eye. “Itay, I think we are going to die.”

The horrific scene was among dozens compiled by the Israel Defense Forces and shown to journalists on Tuesday morning at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, exactly one month after Hamas’ attacks on citizens across southern Israel. The footage, pulled from the body cameras, social media accounts and mobile phones of the attackers, Israeli responders and victims themselves, was assembled to document the carnage of that day — and to reinvigorate support as outrage mounts over the death and devastation in Gaza from Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes.

“The decision to go into Gaza did not happen on its own,” said Tyler Gregory, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area. “And now that we’re three and a half weeks removed from the (Oct. 7) attacks, that’s not the footage on TV anymore. I think Israel wants to remind the world why we have to do this.”

The disturbing scenes spilled from a television in a small conference room: There were bodies torched to cinders, a set of teeth in a pile of ash. Bloodied corpses in their bedrooms, lying contorted in hallways, highways and yards. A woman’s body, naked from the waist down, charred black by fire. A young hostage clutching his arm, torn to bloody tatters, as he’s loaded into a truck. A man being struck in the neck, over and over again, with the metal edge of a garden hoe. And children — so many children — with their bodies bloated by death.

Every few clips, there was a rallying cry from groups of Hamas terrorists, with boastful, wide-smiled documentation of what they had done.

“Dad, I killed 10 Jews with my bare hands!” said one man over the phone, in a recording obtained by the Israel Defense Forces. “Mom, your son is a hero!”

More than 1,400 Israeli lives were lost in the attack, while about 240 more people were taken hostage. A day later and every day since, Israel has slammed back with airstrikes — killing over 10,000 residents of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, according to the territory’s Ministry of Health.

Across the world, that mounting death toll — displayed in TV images of bodies buried in rubble and anguished parents holding their bloodied children — has shaken public support for Israel, with the country’s ground troops now plunged into a ground invasion in Gaza.

“There is an enormous amount of criticism for the way Israel is responding in Gaza right now, and they’re trying to remind the world that they didn’t start this,” said Janine Zacharia, a lecturer at Stanford University and a former bureau chief for the Washington Post in Jerusalem. “They don’t want to show children being butchered; they don’t want to show a guy who is getting his head beaten in. But that’s how desperate they are to make their case.”

The 43-minute compilation, which consulate staff said was pulled from hundreds of hours of collected material, has been shown three times in the United States, and in cities across the world, including Berlin, New Delhi and Tel Aviv. The ground rules for each screening have been clear: Out of respect for the families, consulate staff said, no recording devices were allowed. After going through airport-style security, journalists were given a pen, paper and a 10-page document, which provided time stamps and translations from Arabic to English.

Still, some of the harrowing scenes have been circulated across the internet, especially those recorded by Hamas and forwarded through their social media channels.

Both sides are using the footage with very different goals in mind, Zacharia explained — with Hamas hoping it will spark dominance, pride and psychological terror, and Israel hoping for a shift in sympathy and an uptick of public support. For Israel, it’s also a chance to keep their 1,400 victims and 240 hostages in the public eye and ward off misinformation that the massacre in Israel didn’t actually happen — conspiracies that consulate staff said have already begun to pick up pace across the globe.

Such a strategy is not new for wartime messaging. So-called atrocity propaganda, which documents horrific images, has been around since World War I, said San Jose State professor of rhetoric and writing Ryan Skinnell. Despite technology changes — which have swapped out plane-dropped leaflets for live-streamed GoPro footage — the intent is much the same: to document a war alongside a narrative that can push it forward.

“(These screenings) will make it more difficult for people to say, surely Hamas is reasonable, surely you can negotiate with them, and surely this is a political organization that has the best interests of Palestinians in mind. I don’t think that this will survive that scrutiny,” said Ron Hassner, a professor of Israel Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

Still, many others are less convinced. Just two journalists attended the screening in San Francisco on Tuesday, despite the consulate inviting news agencies from across the Bay Area. And as the images of broken, burned and tortured Israelis flashed across the screen inside the consulate, on the sidewalk outside, a lone protester flanked its entryway. “Shame on Israel,” the woman shouted. “Stop murdering children.”

“This is basically propaganda to deflect attention away from the brutal bombing and, frankly, the genocide that is going on in Gaza right now,” said Ellen Brotsky, a volunteer and leader of Jewish Voices for Peace in the Bay Area, an anti-Zionist organization. “Israel doesn’t want a ceasefire. They want to be able to continue to bomb the people in Gaza.”

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel faced pressure from some of its closest allies Wednesday over the plight of civilians in Gaza, where thousands streamed on foot out of the enclave’s north because of dwindling food and water and increased fighting in urban areas.

Over 70% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have already left their homes, but the number making their way south has quickened recently as Israeli troops battle Hamas inside Gaza City and the humanitarian situation grows increasingly dire.

The Group of Seven wealthy industrial nations announced a unified stance on the Israel-Hamas war after intensive meetings in Tokyo, condemning Hamas and supporting Israel’s right to self-defense. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union. But the group also called Wednesday for the “unimpeded” delivery of food, water, medicine and fuel, and for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left open the possibility of small pauses to deliver humanitarian aid, but has ruled out a broader cease-fire unless all hostages are freed.

There is no end in sight to the war triggered by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 assault inside Israel.

Israel has said the battle to end Hamas’ rule and crush its military capabilities will be long and difficult, and that it will maintain some form of control over the coastal enclave indefinitely — though how it will achieve that remains unclear.

Support for the war remains strong inside Israel, where the focus has been on the fate of the more than 240 hostages taken by Hamas and other militant groups.

THE ROAD OUT OF THE NORTH

About 15,000 people fled northern Gaza on Tuesday — triple the number that left Monday — according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

On Wednesday, thousands more made their way down Salah al-Din Street, Gaza’s main north-south highway, during a daily window set by Israel, now extended to five hours.

Families filled the road, almost all on foot, with men and women carrying young children or pushing the elderly on makeshift carts. Most had only a few belongings in backpacks. A few families rode on donkey carts, holding white flags as they approached Israeli tanks. The U.N. said some reported people arrested as they crossed Israeli checkpoints.

“We didn’t have food or drinking water … They struck the bakeries. There is no life in Gaza,” said Abeer Akila, who left her home in Gaza City with her family and neighbors after heavy bombardment overnight.

Residents reported loud explosions overnight into Wednesday across Gaza City and in the adjacent Shati refugee camp, which houses Palestinian families who fled from or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its establishment.

The Israeli army’s chief spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Tuesday that ground forces had reached “the depths of Gaza City.” The army said Wednesday that it killed one of Hamas’ leading developers of rockets and other weapons, without saying where he was killed.

Hamas has denied that Israeli troops have made any significant gains or entered Gaza City. It was not possible to independently confirm battlefield claims from either side.

Israel is focusing its operations on the city, which was home to some 650,000 people before the war and where the military says Hamas has its central command and a labyrinth of tunnels.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have heeded Israeli orders in recent weeks to flee the north. But tens of thousands remain, many sheltering at hospitals or U.N. schools.

The trickle of aid entering Gaza from the south is largely barred from going north, which has been without running water for weeks. Hospitals running low on supplies are performing surgeries — including amputations — without anesthesia, the U.N. aid office said. It said the last functioning bakeries shut down Tuesday for lack of fuel, water and flour, and some of those on the road south have talked about living on only one piece of pita bread a day.

Majed Haroun, a teacher who remains in Gaza City, said women and children who lost families go door to door begging for food.

“No words can describe what we are experiencing,” he said.

CONDITIONS LITTLE BETTER IN THE SOUTH

The new arrivals from the north are squeezing into homes with extended family or in U.N. schools-turned-shelters where hundreds of thousands are taking refuge. At one, 600 people must share a single toilet, according to the U.N. office.

Israeli strikes have continued in the southern zone. One on Wednesday hit a family house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 18 people and wounding dozens of others, according to Iyad Abu Zaher, director of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the dead and wounded were brought. He said the toll could rise as medics and first responders searched the rubble.

Hundreds of trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21.

But “there is an ocean of needs in Gaza right now, and what’s been getting in is a drop in the ocean. We need fuel, we need water, we need food, and we need medical supplies,” Dominic Allen of the United Nations Population Fund said, speaking from the West Bank.

In the maternity ward at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, doctors say they have seen a sharp rise in premature births that they blame on the trauma of the war.

In one bed, Shouq Hararah was recovering after giving birth to premature twins three days ago; a boy and a girl. “There were no proper birth procedures, no anesthesia, painkillers, or anything” she said.

A month of relentless bombardment in Gaza since the Hamas attack has killed more than 10,500 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. More than 2,300 others are believed to have been buried by strikes that in some cases have demolished entire city blocks.

More than 1,400 people have died in Israel since the start of the war, most of them civilians killed by Hamas terrorists during their incursion. Israel says 32 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began, and Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel on a daily basis.

Israeli officials say thousands of Palestinian militants have been killed, and blame civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing it of operating in residential areas. Gaza’s Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its casualty reports.

The war has stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the war began, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles with Israeli forces during arrest raids. Some 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities along the borders with Gaza and Lebanon.

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Associated Press writers Najib Jobain in Khan Younis, Samy Magdy reported from Cairo and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report. Jeffery and Keath reported from Cairo.

Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war