New Zealand on Thursday listed Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist entity and imposed travel bans on "extremist" Israeli settlers whom it said had committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

A military vehicle maneuvres near the Israel-Gaza border.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said in a statement that the attacks by the Hamas on Israel in October "were brutal and we have unequivocally condemned them."

But he added that "New Zealand wants to be clear that the designation of Hamas is about the actions of an offshore terrorist entity and is not a reflection on the Palestinian people in Gaza and around the world."

New Zealand has designated the military wing of Hamas as a terrorist entity since 2010.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the whole of Hamas bears responsibility for the October attacks, making it difficult for the New Zealand government to distinguish between the group's military and political wings.

The Oct. 7 attacks killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's air and ground campaign in Hamas-governed Gaza has killed about 30,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.

New Zealand's decision makes it a criminal offence to carry out property or financial transactions with Hamas or provide material support. It also freezes any Hamas assets in New Zealand.

It does not prevent New Zealand from providing humanitarian and future development assistance for civilians in Gaza or from giving consular support to New Zealand citizens or permanent residents in the conflict zone.

Luxon also said he was "seriously concerned by the significant increase in extremist violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers" against Palestinians in recent months.

"This is particularly destabilising in what is already a major crisis," Luxon said.

New Zealand's consistent position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law.

The government said it would continue to support a future Palestinian state as part of a negotiated two-state solution, urging an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East peace process.

Israel troops kill 3 Palestinians in West Bank raid

Armed Palestinian militants wait for the funerals of three Palestinians killed in an Israeli raid on the Faraa refugee camp near the West Bank town of Tubas.

Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in an overnight raid in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said Tuesday.

The Israeli army confirmed the deaths, saying all three were Palestinian militants, including a senior commander from the Islamic Jihad group.

The raid was the latest in a surge of violence in the Palestinian territory since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip on October 7.

The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said the three men were killed "by Israeli occupation bullets" during clashes in the Faraa refugee camp near the town of Tubas in the northern West Bank.

Video footage posted on social media showed Israeli military vehicles entering Faraa under the cover of darkness.

"Dozens of young men and armed men from the camp confronted the forces before they called for more reinforcements, including bulldozers that dug the camp's streets and struck the water and sewage networks," said Assem Mansour, head of the camp's popular committee.

Only one of the three men killed was a militant, he said, adding that the other two were civilians who died "in their homes and were killed by snipers deployed in the camp".

The army said its forces had carried out counter-terrorism operations in the region of Tubas and Faraa.

During the activity, troops "eliminated Ahmed Daraghmeh, a senior commander of Islamic Jihad terrorist organisation" in the area of Tubas, the army said, adding two other militants were also killed in the operation.

Daraghmeh had carried out gun and explosives attacks against Israeli soldiers in the past, it said.

One Israeli soldier was lightly wounded in the operation, the army said.

The Israeli military has conducted frequent arrest raids in the West Bank.

Since the war in Gaza began, at least 403 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Palestinian militants have also carried out numerous attacks against Israeli troops and civilians in Israel and the West Bank, killing at least 15 people, according to Israeli figures.

Israel captured the West Bank -- including east Jerusalem, which it later unilaterally annexed -- in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

The Palestinians claim the territory along with the war-torn Gaza Strip for their future independent state.

Palestinian minister: no 'miracles' expected at talks on unified government

International Court of Justice holds public hearings on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, in The Hague.

 Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said on Wednesday he did not expect "miracles" at talks in Moscow to discuss the formation of a unified Palestinian government and the rebuilding of Gaza.

The talks between representatives of Hamas and the Fatah political faction, scheduled to take place in the Russian capital on Thursday, come days after Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh resigned.

The shake-up, Maliki said, was designed to build support for an expanded role for the Palestinian Authority following Israel's war against the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.

"We hope that there we might be good results in terms of mutual understanding between all factions about the need to support such a technocratic government that will emerge," Maliki said of the talks.

"Of course, we don't expect miracles to happen in just a simple meeting in Moscow, but I believe that the meeting in Moscow should be followed by other meetings in the region soon."

The Palestinian Authority, created about 30 years ago as part of the interim Oslo peace accords, has been undermined by accusations of ineffectiveness and the prime minister holding little effective power.

Shtayyeh's resignation marks a symbolic shift that underlines President Mahmoud Abbas' desire to ensure the Authority maintains its claim to leadership as international pressure grows for a revival of efforts to create a Palestinian state.

Maliki, who was speaking on the sidelines of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, said the government's resignation had been designed to prevent international partners from saying the Authority was not collaborating.

"We want to show our readiness... to engage and to be ready, just to not to be seen as an obstacle between the implementation of any process that should take further," he said.

Maliki also accused the United Nations Security Council of "failing" the Palestinian people in its inability to agree on a ceasefire, echoing comments by U.N. chief Antonio Guterres who said the body's authority had "perhaps fatally" been undermined by its lack of unity on the issue.

"Now in Gaza, it seems that the ceasefire is a farfetched objective to be attained," Maliki said. "As a result, we see people dying."

UNRWA funding must continue to avoid 'collective punishment,' warns Commissioner Lenarčič

His warning comes as uncertainty mounts over the future of the EU's development aid to UNRWA.

The agency is at a breaking point after Western countries suspended donations following allegations twelve of its staff members were involved in Hamas' October 7 attacks on Israel, which left more than 1,200 Israelis dead and sparked a war in Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 29,000 Palestinians.

The serious allegations, levelled by Israel on the same day the UN's top court ordered it to prevent genocide in Gaza, sparked fears of possible infiltration by Hamas, designated a terrorist organisation by the EU, into the Western-funded UN agency.

The European Commission, one of UNRWA's largest donors, said in January it would **review**its funding in light of the steps taken by the agency to audit its recruitment procedures, bolster its internal oversight mechanisms and vet its 30,000-strong workforce.

It is not yet clear whether the next scheduled EU payment in development aid of €82 million, due this week, will be suspended or not.

But Lenarčič suggested that failing to prop up UNRWA while a humanitarian disaster grips the Gaza Strip would have "catastrophic consequences" and put regional stability at risk.

"In line with EU values - and while we are working constructively with UNRWA on the reinforcement of their internal controls, an audit carried by EU-appointed experts and the vetting system for their staff - it remains of crucial importance to provide UNRWA with adequate funding," Lenarčič told the European Parliament on Tuesday afternoon.

"We have to be clear, there is simply no substitute for UNRWA," Lenarčič explained. "Individual accountability must be ensured. But collective punishment cannot be the answer."

Several nations suspended payments to UNRWA in the wake of the scandal, including Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Others, like Spain, Ireland and Belgium, continued their support.

While the EU has not suspended deliveries of humanitarian aid, the sudden exodus of Western donors has dealt a devastating blow to the donor-reliant agency, which says its deliveries of humanitarian cargo have halved since January.

Fewer trucks carrying aid have been able to enter Gaza in February compared to January and December, and the UN has warned that pockets of famine are appearing in Gaza. Many humanitarian organisations, including the UN's World Food Programme, have paused food deliveries to the north of the enclave given that the chaos wrought by the humanitarian crisis has made conditions unsafe for relief workers.

UNRWA's commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said earlier this month he hoped the EU would continue to back the agency, and that his conversations with the Commission to safeguard future funding had been "very constructive."

Josep Borrell, the bloc's foreign policy chief, also strongly suggested that European assistance would flow as originally anticipated given that UNRWA had launched the investigation that Brussels had called for.

MEPs split on UNRWA

But the EU and its 27 member states have consistently failed to consolidate a common position on the war between Israel and Hamas since it broke out in October, with leaders taking divergent stance on the conflict.

Those rifts were evident during a tense debate between Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the plenary chamber in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

Several MEPs, predominantly from left-leaning groups, claimed Israel had failed to provide concrete evidence to back their claims that UNRWA staff had taken part in the October 7th attacks.

Lenarčič also confirmed the Commission had not yet received evidence to back the claims, and that to his knowledge neither had any other donors.

Last Wednesday, the Washington Post published a video that Israel alleges shows a UN relief worker participating in the October 7 attack. But UN leaders have continued to underline that the allegations are yet to be corroborated.

Another camp of right-leaning MEPs fiercely condemned the Commission for injecting cash into an organisation they say is infiltrated by Hamas militants, and denied that its work in Gaza was irreplaceable.

Directly addressing Josep Borrell, Swedish MEP David Lega of the centre-right European People's Party said: "You've said you fully trust you and leadership to get to the bottom of alleged complicity in Hamas terrorism."

"What will it take for you to understand that your trust is frankly irrelevant if UNRWA loses the trust of parties involved?" he went on, adding that EU aid to Gaza must go to more "responsible, more neutral, more trusted partners."

"Without UNRWA, Palestinian children will starve," Malin Björk, from The Left, responded.

"How do we distinguish between different human lives? Why is a Palestinian life not worth anything?" she asked.

Barry Andrews, an Irish lawmaker from the Renew Europe group, called on member states to make decisions "not based on punitive political decisions but on evidence" and on the Commission to restore its payments to support the "irreplaceable and heroic work of UNRWA."