LIVE UPDATES: Israel to Amend Law to Designate Individuals as Terrorists - Authorities

A number of countries have expressed support for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's proposal to hold an international peace conference on the Gaza Strip in Turkiye, a diplomatic source told Sputnik.

The United States put pressure on the Israeli government to restore communications in the Gaza Strip, media reported citing an official.

A communications blackout has been reported in the Palestinian exclave since Friday night when the Israel Defense Forces announced the expansion of ground operations in Gaza. The breakdown in communications disrupted emergency services and cut off contact with the UN staff delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, the Gaza Strip's civil defense confirmed the partial restoration of communications in the region.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron held a phone call during which the pair expressed concern about a possible escalation of tensions in the Middle East, especially in the West Bank, the UK prime minister's office said on Sunday.

"They expressed their shared concern at the risk of escalation in the wider region, in particular in the West Bank. The Prime Minister and President Macron updated on the conversations they have had with leaders in the region to stress the importance of working to ensure regional stability," the office said in a statement.

Sunak and Macron also stressed the need to provide humanitarian aid to residents of the Gaza Strip, agreeing to work together to deliver food, fuel, water and medicine to those in need, as well as to evacuate foreigners from the region, the statement read.

US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi spoke over the phone on Sunday to discuss Egypt’s role in facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gazans, the White House said.

"The two leaders committed to the significant acceleration and increase of assistance flowing into Gaza beginning today and then continuously," the press statement read.

They also talked about the importance of making sure that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation and that "regional actors" not expand the Palestine-Israel conflict.

The number of confirmed hostages held by Palestinian group Hamas was revised to 239 on Sunday, an Israeli military spokesman said.

"As of now, we have notified the families of 239 abducted people and 311 deceased soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces," Daniel Hagari told a news briefing.

Greek and Greek Cypriot diplomats argued they followed the EU majority in abstaining from voting on a UN General Assembly resolution that called for a humanitarian truce in Gaza.

The 193-nation assembly passed the Arab-drafted resolution in a 120-14 vote on Friday, with 45 abstentions. Of those, 15 EU member states abstained and four voted against.

The Greek Cypriot foreign ministry echoed Athens in that it chose to adopt the EU’s common position, "based solely on unequivocal respect for international law, including international humanitarian law."

The Israeli authorities have pledged to allow 100 trucks of humanitarian aid through the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza Strip every day, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing sources.

The West has established contacts with Hezbollah to persuade it to stay out of the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians after the Lebanese militia traded cross-border fire with Israel, the US media reported Sunday.

The outlet quoted an unnamed Western official as saying that Hezbollah had been asked to "refrain from any kind of escalation from the border, and to generally keep Lebanon away from the conflict ongoing in Gaza."

Fighting has been raging on the Israeli-Lebanese border for weeks, fueling concerns in the West that Lebanon could be dragged into a wider regional conflict. So far, the Lebanese government has been wary of a new war with Israel, a senior Lebanese official told the newspaper.

"What we tell [Hezbollah], as the government, is that, ‘We can’t take a war.’ And the answer is, ‘We understand you. But we can also not take the fall of Hamas," the official said on the condition of anonymity.

Israel will amend a 2016 counterterrorism law to give the state government the right to designate individual individuals as terrorists, according to a joint statement issued Sunday by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Justice Minister Yariv Levin.

The changes were approved by Israel's law committee.

"The law will be amended to allow the defense minister to declare people terrorists — today the law only allows organizations to be designated in this way. The purpose of the amendments is to prevent the funding of people active in a number of organizations, especially the Hamas terrorist organization," the statement read.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Sunday that following the initial report of sirens sounding in northern Israel, it had identified 10 rocket launches from Lebanon into Israeli territory and was returning fire.

Israel struck the vicinity of Al-Quds hospital in the Gaza Strip, which is packed with patients and thousands of Palestinians seeking shelter, the Palestinian Interior Ministry said.

"A while ago, Israel struck the vicinity of Al-Quds hospital in Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in the southern part of Gaza City," the statement read.

The hospital, which is housing around 12,000 civilians, had its southern and eastern wings bombed, Al-Hadath news channel reported.

Israeli hospitals had been told to evacuate ahead of the bombardment after the Israeli military claimed that Palestinian group Hamas had its infrastructure hidden in and underneath medical facilities in Gaza.

Later in the day, Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed concerns over the Israeli warning to evacuate the Al-Quds hospital.

Israel has restored water supplies to the Gaza Strip through the second of three water pipelines to the enclave, The Times of Israel newspaper reported on Sunday, citing Israel's Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).

The second water supply system was reopened on Saturday, the newspaper reported.

Israel bears responsibility under international humanitarian law for protecting the civilian population in the Gaza Strip in both air strikes and ground assaults, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Sunday.

The United States will continue to ask Israel "hard questions" about its moves in the escalating conflict, Sullivan added.

US National Security Advisor also accused Hamas of preventing US and other foreign citizens from leaving Gaza for Egypt to escape the conflict zone, adding that the Israelis and Egyptians have no problem with that.

He refused to elaborate on what exactly Hamas is demanding, saying that discussions and negotiations are ongoing.

The United States does not know exactly how US citizens in the Gaza Strip will manage to leave the territory, despite White House’s efforts to bring them back, Sullivan said.

United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Palestine Representative and Director Samer AbdelJaber said on Sunday that 40 more trucks of humanitarian aid are expected to enter Gaza later in the day, but that is not enough.

"We hope today we will be able to allow more trucks into Gaza, 40 trucks are expected to be crossing. However, we have to also note that that’s not enough compared to the soaring needs … We need more than that," AbdelJaber said in an interview.

Forty trucks of food per day are needed to feed 1 million people, while 2 million would require 100 trucks, AbdelJaber said.

An Israeli strike on an apartment building west of the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip left at least 10 people dead and multiple injured, the Palestinian Interior Ministry said on Sunday.

Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said on Sunday that it had fired rockets at Tel Aviv in response to the "massacre of civilians."

"The Qassam Brigades fired rockets at Tel Aviv in response to the Zionists' [Israeli] massacre of civilians," it said in a statement.

The al-Quds Hospital in the southern part of Gaza City has received evacuation warnings from Israel as the military is going to strike the medical facility, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Sunday.

The humanitarian organization added that there had been raids 50 meters (164 feet) away from the hospital since Sunday morning.