FIGHTING continued in the central Gaza Strip on Friday, even as the United States, Qatar and Egypt pushed forward to try and win agreement on a ceasefire deal.

This comes a day after Palestinian officials said they were planning to put forward a resolution to the United Nations to end the Israeli occupation with a clear time frame.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, four people were killed in an early Israeli strike on their vehicle, said Palestinian Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.

Mr Bassal reported late on Thursday that 24 people had been killed the day before in multiple strikes across the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military, including in Gaza City in the north and Khan Younis in the south.

He said that the strikes also caused multiple injuries but did not specify how many.

Israel’s military said today that it had killed “dozens” of militants during close-quarters fighting on Thursday in the central and southern Gaza Strip.

The Israelis said that in Khan Younis the fighting included strikes against areas from which projectiles were launched at southern Israel over the past week.

The air force also struck about 30 targets across the Gaza Strip, including military posts, weapons storage facilities and launch sites in the area of Khan Younis, the Israeli military said.

Palestinian UN ambassador Riyad Mansour told the UN security council that there were plans to submit a resolution in September to enshrine the recent sweeping ruling by the UN’s top court that declared Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories unlawful, and setting a time frame for it to end.

Mr Mansour said that it was essential to spur the end of Israel’s occupation.

“We are sick and tired of waiting,” he said. “The time for waiting is over.”

The International Court of Justice on July 19 issued an unprecedented, sweeping condemnation of Israel’s rule over the lands that it captured 57 years ago. 

It called for the occupation to end and for settlement construction to stop immediately.

Israeli ambassador Danny Danon, who spoke to the council after Mr Mansour, made no mention of the Palestinians’ plan or the court ruling. 

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed in a statement that “the Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land” — not in their capital Jerusalem or West Bank lands. 

He said: “No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth and likewise the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested.”