In order to put more pressure on Hamas, Israel will intensify its punitive attacks in Gaza, a military spokesman said at a press briefing on Saturday amid an already worsening humanitarian crisis in the strip.
Israel has also massed tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks along the Gaza border for a widely anticipated ground invasion.
"We have to enter the next phase of the war in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us. From today, we are increasing the strikes and minimising the danger," military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari told a press conference.
At least 4,500 Palestinians and more than 1,400 Israelis have lost their lives in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
His comments came hours after the first international aid to reach Gaza since October 7 crossed the border from Egypt into the besieged Palestinian territory.
In Israel, military commanders visited frontline units on Saturday.
"Gaza is densely populated, the enemy is preparing a lot of things there — but we are also preparing for them," Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi told one infantry brigade on a visit.
The first aid trucks carrying humanitarian aid arrived in southern Gaza on Saturday as Israel's nightmare siege reached its 12th day while its saturation bombardment killed several Palestinians during the course of the previous night amid calls from war-torn residents for a ceasefire rather than food.
This week, US President Joe Biden announced that a deal had been made for 20 relief trucks to pass through Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt. On Friday, Biden said he thought the first trucks would do so in the next 48 hours.
Witnesses reported that after going through checks, relief trucks left the bridge and continued into southern Gaza, including the key towns of Rafah and Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of residents who had been displaced by Israel's relentless airstrikes are taking refuge.
However, Palestinian authorities expressed disappointment that fuel supplies were left out and noted that the relief represented only 3% of the medical and humanitarian aid that used to reach Gaza before the crisis.
On Saturday, the Palestinian militant group Hamas declared that it would not talk about the fate of prisoners held by the Israeli army unless Israel stopped its "aggression" on the Gaza Strip.
"Our stance with regards to Israeli army captives is clear: it's related to a (possible) exchange of prisoners, and we will not discuss it until Israel ends its aggression on Gaza and Palestinians," Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking from Lebanon, told a televised presser.
Israeli troops on Saturday raided the West Bank home of a senior Hamas leader and detained members of his family, witnesses said.
Saleh al-Aruri is the deputy to Hamas's overall leader Ismail Haniyeh and one of the founders of the group's military wing.
Based in Lebanon, he is a key target for Israel following the October 7 attacks when Hamas militants from Gaza stormed into southern Israel and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seized more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
Troops entered Aruri's home in Arura village, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Ramallah, at dawn on Saturday, arresting more than 20 people, including one of his brothers and nine of his nephews, mayor Ali al-Khasib and witnesses told AFP.
Dozens more were pulled in for questioning.
Outside the house, troops put up a banner of the Hamas deputy against the background of an Israeli flag that read, "This was the house of Saleh Aruri and has become the headquarters of Abu al-Nimer — Israeli intelligence", witnesses said, with images of it widely shared online.
Village residents said Abu al-Nimer was an alias for the Israeli intelligence officer responsible for the area.
In a statement, the army said the raid was jointly staged with the Shin Beth internal security service and resulted in the arrests of "dozens of Hamas members" among them relatives of Aruri. It confirmed using the house "for the detention and questioning of activists".
Israel has accused Aruri, who was named Haniyeh's deputy in 2017, of organising several attacks.
He spent almost 20 years in Israeli prisons and was freed in 2010 on condition that he go into exile.
Since the Gaza conflict erupted, dozens of people have been killed in incidents with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
UN chief Antonio Guterres pleaded Saturday for a "humanitarian ceasefire" in the war between Israel and Hamas militants that has devastated much of Gaza, demanding "action to end this godawful nightmare".
Addressing a Cairo summit as the conflict raged into its third week, Guterres said the Palestinian enclave of 2.4 million people was living through "a humanitarian catastrophe" with thousands dead and more than a million displaced.
"We meet in the heart of a region that is reeling in pain and one step from the precipice," he told the meeting that included the leaders of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as well as of Italy, Spain, and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
Guterres said "the grievances of the Palestinian people are legitimate and long" after "56 years of occupation with no end in sight" but stressed that "nothing can justify the reprehensible assault by Hamas that terrorised Israeli civilians".
He then stressed that "those abhorrent attacks can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people".
Jordan's King Abdullah II called for "an immediate end to the war on Gaza" and condemned what he labelled "global silence" on Palestinian death and suffering.
"The message the Arab world is hearing is loud and clear: Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones. Our lives matter less than other lives," he charged.
"The application of international law is optional. And human rights have boundaries — they stop at borders, they stop at races, and they stop at religions."
The summit came on the day a first contingent of aid trucks rumbled into southern Gaza, which Guterres said needed to be rapidly scaled up, with "much more" help sent through.
The UN has said that about 100 trucks per day are needed to meet worsening needs in Gaza.
The Palestinians need "a continuous delivery of aid to Gaza at the scale that is needed", the UN chief told the Cairo "Summit for Peace".
Egypt´s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the "only solution" to 75 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict is "justice".
"Palestinians must realise their legitimate rights to self-determination" and "an independent state on their land," Sisi said.
Abbas also called for a two-state solution and an "end to Israel's occupation" and rejected what he has warned could be a "second Nakba" — a reference to the more than 760,000 Palestinians driven from their lands during the creation of the state of Israel.
"We will not leave," he repeated three times at the end of his speech.
Cairo and Amman have repeatedly rejected calls for large numbers of refugees to enter Egypt from Gaza, warning the fresh "forced displacement" of Palestinians would lead to the "eradication the Palestinian cause".
Egypt and Jordan were the first Arab states to normalise relations with Israel, in 1979 and 1994 respectively, and have since been key mediators between Israeli and Palestinian officials.
But diplomatic efforts have so far made little headway and focused on getting humanitarian aid into the war-torn enclave where Israel has imposed a total siege, cutting off supplies of water, electricity, fuel and food.
Trucks carrying relief supplies began crossing into the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday, AFP reported citing TV footage aired on Egyptian media.
A humanitarian worker and a security source earlier said that border guards were stationed on the Egyptian side of the crossing and that vehicles loaded with medication were being prepared to roll into Gaza.
Previously, a statement from Hamas stated that a convoy including 20 relief trucks, carrying food and medical supplies, was scheduled to arrive in the Gaza Strip on Saturday from Egypt.
"The relief aid convoy that is supposed to enter today includes 20 trucks that carry medicine, medical supplies, and a limited amount of food supplies (canned goods)," a statement from Hamas's media office said on Saturday.
Egyptian TV also showed trucks that have been waiting for days entering the border crossing area from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
Hamas has released two American hostages in Gaza, offering hope to desperate families, as Israel pounded blockaded Gaza after the group took over 200 people hostage and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians when it stormed into Israeli towns on October 7.
However, despite the release of hostages from Gaza, Israel has continued to pound the territory.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross president, Mirjana Spoljaric, the release of Judith and Natalie Raanan, mother and daughter, offers hope to Israelis amid uncertainty over the fate of hostages. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden rejoiced at the recent development while millions are left homeless in Gaza.
The release of the hostages follows Biden's visit to Israel to express solidarity and demand humanitarian aid for Gaza.
Soon after the release of hostages, Israel pledged to destroy Hamas, after the group killed around 1,500 Israeli fighters in recent violent clashes.
Additionally, Biden said Friday he believes the attack was motivated partly by Saudi Arabia's plan to recognise Israel, AFP reported.
Israel's military campaign has levelled entire city blocks in Gaza, resulting in over 4,000 Palestinian martyrs, which include mostly civilians and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Israeli troops are preparing for a planned ground invasion of Gaza, despite the potential risks, including hostages from Israel and around the world held by Hamas in the region that is being relentlessly bombed by Israeli forces.
Biden promised US support to the released hostages and thanked Qatar for mediation in securing their release. He pledged his tireless efforts to win the return of other American hostages, despite there being no immediate details about their health.
Natalie Raanan's half-brother Ben told BBC he felt an "overwhelming sense of joy" at the release after "the most horrible of ordeals."
Hamas said Egypt and Qatar had negotiated the release and it was "working with all mediators to implement the movement's decision to close the civilian (hostage) file if appropriate security conditions allow".
There is little information about the hostages, though Israel's military said Friday that "the majority" are still alive, and agonised families have demanded more action.
In Gaza, Israeli jets continued a relentless bombing campaign, with the military saying it hit more than 100 Hamas targets overnight.
Witnesses heard loud explosions and saw plumes of smoke billowing from the northern Gaza Strip, which Israel has demanded Palestinian civilians leave for their own safety.
Soon after Hamas freed two US hostages, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared he would "fight until victory" in Gaza, indicating there would be no break in his military's bombardment and anticipated invasion of the territory.
Since Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel and killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped almost 200 others, they were the first hostages verified by both sides of the conflict to be released.
"Two of our abductees are at home. We are not giving up on the effort to return all abducted and missing people," Netanyahu said in a statement released late Friday night.
"At the same time, we'll continue to fight until victory," he added.
Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, speaking in front of a parliamentary committee, said achieving Israel's objectives would not be quick or easy.
"We will topple the Hamas organisation. We will destroy its military and governing infrastructure. It's a phase that will not be easy. It will have a price," Gallant said.
He added that the subsequent phase would be more drawn out, but was aimed at achieving "a completely different security situation" with no threat to Israel from Gaza. "It's not a day, it's not a week, and unfortunately it's not a month," he said.
President Biden hinted on Friday that Hamas's unexpected attack was intended to sabotage Riyadh's possible normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Biden stated at a campaign fundraiser that Saudi Arabia wished to recognise Israel.
Riyadh has refused to follow suit, arguing that the objectives of Palestinian statehood should come first.
"One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel ... they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis," Biden said. "Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognise Israel."
The potential normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states was a top priority for Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his June trip to Riyadh, although he acknowledged no progress should be expected imminently.
Blinken told CNN on October 8 that "it wouldn’t be a surprise that part of the motivation (for the attack) may have been to disrupt efforts to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together."
Biden told CBS' 60 Minutes in an interview that aired last Sunday that the prospect of normalisation was "still alive, it's going to take time."
Some 2.4 million Palestinians live in the densely populated enclave, and almost half have been displaced, according to the UN. Israel has cut off supplies of water, electricity, fuel and food to the long-blockaded territory.
UN chief Antonio Guterres warned Friday that humanitarian relief stuck in Egypt was "the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza."
Meanwhile, World Health Organisation emergencies director Michael Ryan said Biden's deal for an initial 20 truck-delivery was "a drop in the ocean of need" and that 2,000 trucks were required.
At least 30% of all housing in Gaza has been destroyed or damaged, the UN says, citing local authorities, and thousands have taken refuge in a tent city set up in southern Gaza's Khan Yunis.
Fadwa al-Najjar said she and her seven children walked for 10 hours to reach the camp, at some points breaking into a run as air strikes descended around them.
"We saw bodies and limbs torn off and we just started praying, thinking we were going to die," she recalled. "I would have preferred not to leave, to have stayed at home and died there," her daughter Malak added.
Israel's operation will take not "a day, nor a week, nor a month," the country's defence minister Yoav Gallant warned Friday, and will result in "the end of Israel's responsibilities in the Gaza Strip".
An Israeli foreign ministry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel envisaged "handing over the keys" to neighbouring Egypt, which has strongly rejected attempts to place Gaza's residents under its responsibility, AFP reported.
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