Health officials in the Gaza Strip say that more than 64,000 have been killed in the nearly two-year war. Hamas and Israel meanwhile reiterated their incompatible demands for ending the fighting sparked by the militant group's attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Local hospitals said Thursday that Israeli strikes killed 28 people overnight. Israel is pressing ahead with its planned offensive in famine-stricken Gaza City. In the occupied West Bank, Israelis established a new settlement in a Palestinian city, according to an anti-settlement monitoring group.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip 20 years ago, dismantling 21 Jewish settlements and pulling out its forces. The Friday anniversary of the start of the landmark disengagement comes as Israel is mired in a nearly two-year war with Hamas. The conflict has devastated the Palestinian territory and is likely to keep troops there long into the future. Israel's disengagement included removing four settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and was then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's controversial attempt to jump-start negotiations with the Palestinians. But it bitterly divided Israeli society and led to the empowerment of Hamas, with implications that continue to reverberate today.

Israel's far-right finance minister says a contentious new settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is going ahead, a project that Palestinians and rights groups worry will scuttle plans for a future Palestinian state by effectively cutting the West Bank into two separate parts. The announcement on Thursday comes as many countries said they would recognize a Palestinian state in September at the United Nations General Assembly. Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says the "reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize."

Israel is in talks with South Sudan about the possibility of resettling Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to the war-torn East African country. It appears to be part of a wider effort by Israel to facilitate mass emigration from the territory left in ruins by Israel's 22-month offensive against Hamas. Six people familiar with the matter confirmed the talks to The Associated Press. It's unclear how far the talks have advanced, but the plans, if implemented, would amount to transferring people from one war-ravaged land at risk of famine to another, and raise human rights concerns. Israel has floated similar resettlement proposals with other African nations, including Sudan and Somalia.