At least seven Palestinians have been killed after Israeli forces destroyed a tunnel in a southern town of the Gaza Strip, in an attack described by the besieged enclave’s rulers as a dangerous escalation.

Palestinian armed groups have vowed to respond to Israel’s attack on a tunnel in a southern town of the Gaza Strip late on Monday that left at least seven people dead and nine others wounded.

The Israeli army says Hamas built a tunnel under a six-story apartment building that houses the Hammad family, threatening to destroy it. Most of the family has already fled.

The Palestinian presidency has refuted a report quoting Israeli politicians as saying that Mahmoud Abbas told them he would not appoint Hamas figures to his cabinet if they did not publicly recognise Israel.

Fatah and Hamas are seeking to overcome the obstacles to reconciliation, namely the problems related to security services and Hamas-appointed employees.

The Greater Jerusalem bill and the Jerusalem proposal by Minister Zeev Elkin risk angering the Trump administration while laboring on its peace initiative.

Israeli forces opened fire on a “suspect” vehicle in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, killing one Palestinian and wounding another, Israel’s army and the Palestinian health ministry said. An army statement said a vehicle approached Israeli soldiers in a suspicious manner near the Jewish settlement of Halamish and the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh.

Saudi Arabia applied diplomatic pressure on Israel via the US to delay a vote on a controversial bill that aims to expand the Jerusalem municipality to include a number of West Bank settlements, the Hebrew news site Ynet reported Tuesday.

Sources in Israel surmise that the U.S. special envoy to the peace process, Jason Greenblatt, is eager to present Trump with results, but given the difficulty in achieving progress on the diplomatic front, the Americans decided to try the economic angle.

MK Miki Zohar (Likud) announced on Monday that he planned to submit a bill that would make it harder for leftist organizations to receive funding from organizations considered hostile to Israel.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman was critical Monday of the nation-state bill, saying he feared it would be used to turn Israel into a state governed by halakha, or Jewish religious law.