Heavy Israeli airstrikes and street battles with Hamas have been continuing in Gaza, where Palestinian health officials say the number of dead has passed 25,000. It comes as Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has again rejected the idea of creating a Palestinian state, despite a phone call with US President Biden, who said he believed that might still be possible. Mr. Netanyahu also rejected Hamas's demands for Israeli forces to withdraw from Gaza in return for the release of the Israeli hostages. With the latest from Jerusalem, here's Mark Loewen.

Lives on a list that grows by the day. An overnight airstrike adding them to a new milestone. More than 25,000 killed in Gaza since Israel's offensive began, says Hamas. Numbers out of date by the hour. Israel's focus is now Southern Gaza, pounded from the air, backed by naval strikes. But there have been clashes in the north, too. Israel's army, vastly superior to Hamas, is still facing significant resistance across the territory. The Israeli Defense Forces released pictures of a new tunnel they say they found, booby trapped and more than 800 meters long. And they say it's likely to have held Israeli hostages..

In the tunnel, we found five cells, each had a toilet and a mattress enclosed by metal bars. According to testimonies we have, about 20 hostages were held in this tunnel at different times in difficult conditions without daylight, with stuffy air, very little oxygen, and terrible humidity that makes it difficult to breathe..

But more than three months in, Israel still hasn't destroyed Hamas or got the remaining hostages home, and splits are growing here. Anti-war protestors, still few, scuffled with police. Most Israelis have rallied around their flag, but not their Prime Minister, and his continued opposition to a Palestinian state is angering allies.

I think it's very disappointing that Benjamin Netanyahu has said that. It's not in some sense a surprise. He spent his entire political career against a two-state solution. But the point is, which other routes is there to seriously resolve this?

Here in Israel, public patience with the war isn't limitless. Us intelligence is reported to have concluded that Israel has only killed that has belonged between 20 and 30% of Hamas fighters, and that the group has enough weapons to continue striking back for months, raising the specter of a prolonged conflict.

And prolonged suffering on both sides, for children racked with fever but unable to get medicine as Gaza's hospitals run desperately short and a lack of clean water makes disease rife. Doctors resort to a weak syrup to treat the young, often orphaned, but it does little to dull the pain of Gaza's war. Mark Lohin, BBC News, Jerusalem.

Well, for more on this, let's go live now to our Middle East correspondent, Yoland Nell. Yoland, we're here Even that Hamas is demanding an end to the war in the return for Israeli hostages, but Israel's Prime Minister, rejecting this. Just tell us a bit more about what we know about this effort to mediate between the two sides.

Definitely, there's been a real renewed push by Qatar and Egypt, the key mediators here, to try to get talks going again on a possible hostage release deal. But Hamas has been coming out publicly stating that But its position is that it wants a complete ceasefire. It wants a complete withdrawal, it says, of Israeli troops from Gaza before it will allow the hostages to go home. The Israeli Prime Minister came out last night responding to that. He said that there were also demands by Hamas to return some of its captured fighters who'd been involved in the seventh of October attacks. He said that accepting such demands would amount to a surrender to monsters. Really, showing that there is a long way to go before some deal can be done. But at the same time in Israel, we have a lot of pressure because while the Israeli Prime Minister maintains, along with his Defense Minister, that only military pressure on Hamas is what's going to bring those hostages back home. Of course, there have been emotional rallies by members of the families. We've had several military commanders briefing journalists anonymously, a member of the war cabinet who's an ex-Israeli army chief talking and saying that they believe it's only a diplomatic deal that will bring most of those hostages back alive.

Thank you very much. Yoland now, our correspondence there in Jerusalem.