Hello and welcome to NewsHour.
It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London.
I'm Tim Franks.
We're beginning in Gaza
because Israel may have yet to deliver its formal response to the latest ceasefire plan drawn up by Egyptian and Qatari mediators and accepted by Hamas.
We're told that that formal response should come tomorrow.
But the signs at the moment suggest it won't accept the proposal.
That despite the fact it appears to be very close to one that Israel did sign up to back in May,
one that came from the US envoy Steve Witkoff.
As for those signs I mentioned, well,
there was an interview I did a couple of days ago with the Israeli government spokesman David Mensah backing up what other unnamed Israeli officials were saying,
saying that we're not interested in partial deals anymore.
We want all the hostages back in one go and Hamas completely erased from the Gaza Strip.
The second sign might be in what's happening today with Israel expanding its offensive around the enclave's largest city,
Gaza City, in the north, home to a million people.
The Zeytun and Sabra neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city have come under intense bombardment.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres,
expressed his alarm about the Israeli Prime Minister's declared intention for the Israeli military to seize control over the whole of Gaza City.
I must reiterate that it is vital to reach immediately a ceasefire in Gaza and the unconditional release of all hostages and to avoid the massive deaths and destruction that a military operation against Gaza City would inevitably cause.
Tens of thousands of reservists whom the IDF have called up for this latest offensive.