THE Palestinian death toll in Gaza has soared past 25,000, as the Israelis have continued to raise tensions in the region with a deadly attack on the Syrian capital.

This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on his refusal to contemplate a two-state solution once the conflict in Gaza has ended. 

The Gaza Health Ministry says 25,105 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, while another 62,681 have been wounded.

The fighting has displaced some 85 per cent of Gaza’s residents from their homes, with hundreds of thousands packing into United Nations-run shelters and tent camps in the southern part of the tiny coastal enclave. 

UN officials say a quarter of the population of 2.3 million is starving as a trickle of humanitarian aid reaches them because of the fighting and Israeli restrictions.

The level of death, destruction and displacement from the war is without precedent in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Israeli officials saying that they intend to continue their brutal assault for several more months.

The conflict threatens to ignite a wider war involving Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen that support the Palestinians. 

In Lebanon, Hezbollah forces have engaged in near-daily clashes with Israeli troops along the border.

An Israeli air strike yesterday hit a car near a Lebanese army checkpoint in the southern town of Kafra, killing at least one person and injuring several others, Lebanese state media reported. 

This followed an Israeli strike on the Damascus neighbourhood of Mazzeh on Saturday which destroyed a building and killed at least five Iranians.

The five, reportedly members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, were identified as Hojjatollah Omidvar, Ali Aghazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi, Saeed Karimi and Mohammad Amin Samadi.

Over the weekend Mr Netanyahu repeated his rejection of US and international calls for postwar plans that would include a path to Palestinian statehood. 

On Saturday he insisted that he “will not compromise on full Israeli control” over Gaza.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called the refusal to accept a two-state solution “totally unacceptable.”

“The Middle East is a tinderbox. We must do all we can to prevent conflict igniting across the region,” Mr Guterres said yesterday. “And that starts with an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to relieve the suffering in Gaza.”