I refuse to commit war crimes,” Yuval Ben Ari told NBC News earlier this month. “The patriotic thing to do is to say no.”

The masked and armed security contractor atop a dirt mound watches thousands of Palestinians who have been kettled into narrow lanes separated by fences below.He makes a heart shape with his hands and the crowd responds - the fence begins to bend as they push against it.

Germany will decide whether or not to approve new weapons shipments to Israel based on an assessment of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said in an interview published on Friday.

Facing rising pressure over the acute suffering of civilians in Gaza, the British government is considering sanctions on two far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Israel has said it will “not cooperate” with plans from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to host a Saudi-led delegation of foreign ministers in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli official told CNN on Friday.

Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesperson described as "the hungriest place on earth".

Some E.U. states are calling for a full suspension of trade relations. Others are trying to distance themselves from the grisly images emerging from the enclave.