The UN Security Council will meet on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis as the fighting continues

International efforts to escalate the largest military confrontation between Israeli and Palestinian militants in seven years intensified at a UN Security Council meeting on Sunday after another night of fighting.

The China-led Security Council is scheduled to meet in New York on Sunday.

The UN, Egypt and Qatar were negotiating a short ceasefire to get fuel to the only Gaza plant in the Mediterranean enclave, which has been blocked by Israelis since 2007, two Western diplomats told the Financial Times. The Gaza Strip, home to 2 million people, will run out of fuel by Monday, an Israeli official has estimated.

The Israeli security cabinet is also due to meet on Sunday to discuss whether to offer a long-term truce to Hamas, an Israeli government aide told the FT. The military wants the Palestinian team to return the bodies of two soldiers. The fate of two Israeli civilians arrested in Gaza is also at stake, the aide said.

Meanwhile, the bombing continued unabated on the seventh day. The Israeli military has said it has struck the homes of Hamas leader Yahyeh Sinwar and his brother. Sinwar was released from an Israeli prisoner in 2011 in exchange for prisoners, and has since been promoted to Hamas chief of staff. An Israeli official said it was “the biggest threat.”

Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv around midnight on Saturday and on Sunday morning in towns near the Gaza Strip.

The death toll in Gaza was 181, including 83 women and children, Gaza health officials said.

Israel has reported 10 dead, including two children, local doctors said.

“We are still in the middle of this operation, it is not over yet and this operation will continue as long as it needs to,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night.

Netanyahu argued that the biggest military campaign against Hamas since Israel’s 2014 war with the Islamist group is a “just and moral war”. He added: “We are doing everything, but everything, to prevent or limit the damage to civilians as much as possible.”

His comments came after Israel destroyed the al-Jalaa headquarters and office block that occupied the U.S. Associated Press agency and the Catholic television network Al Jazeera. The bombing raised “concerns about the safety and security of journalists” and “strengthened the need to ensure their protection,” U.S. President Joe Biden told Netanyahu on Saturday in a phone call, according to the White House.

“In recent years… UN Security Council resolutions have not been strictly enforced and, in particular, the Palestinian right to build an independent state has been constantly violated,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Chinese state media.

In the occupied West Bank, it remained relatively silent until Israeli security forces killed 11 Palestinians on Friday, Arab protesters burned tires and threw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers in night protests. Two Palestinians were killed overnight by Israeli forces being shot in the stomach.

The territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war is home to Fatah, a Palestinian enemy faction in Hamas, and is home to about 650,000 Jewish settlers, including at least 200,000 east of Jerusalem.

Israel also wants to quell the riots involving Jews and Arabs across the country and has arrested nearly 900 people.

Israeli Arabs make up about one-fifth of the population of the Jewish state, hold Israeli passports, and have the right to vote. But they say they suffer discrimination and are the target of right-wing Israeli politicians.

The crisis erupted after tensions in and around Jerusalem, with police using rubber bullets, tear gas and wonderful grenades against Palestinian protesters at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. More than 600 Palestinians were injured.

It is housed in a compound mosque al-Aqsa, which is sacred to both religions (known to Muslims as the Haram ash-Sharif or Noble Shrine and known to the Jews as the Temple Mount).

Hamas entered the clashes on Monday, firing rockets at Israel and demanding that Jewish Jewish settlers in occupied Israeli East Jerusalem await orders from Israeli courts to evict Arab neighbors.

Additional news from Washington’s Katrina Manson and Hong Kong’s Primrose Riordan