TRANSCRIPT
These football players are in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, training for their match against Iceland that could see them qualify for Euro 2024.
They're part of the Israeli national side, a world away from the unfolding disaster at home.
Coach Alon Hazan says he understands why the decision was made to move their home game qualifier somewhere else.
"We would love to play in front of our supporters in our country in this kind of situation, but we know what happened and we cannot host the game in Israel. So we are focused only here... we focus only on football."
For United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, there is no avoiding the politics.
He's currently in Cairo, on his sixth Middle East tour since the Israel-Hamas war started on October 7. The diplomat is expected to meet with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Qatar [[cutter]], and Jordan, as well as the UAE's international cooperation minister and a top Palestinian official, as the US continues to take a leading role in mediations.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel says he's now adding another stop - in Israel.
"He's going to discuss with the government of Israel, its leadership, the ongoing negotiations to secure the release of hostages. He's going to discuss the need to defeat Hamas, including in Rafah, in a way that we believe will hopefully protect civilian populations, does not hinder the delivery of humanitarian assistance and advances Israel's overall security."
Israel says it's pressing ahead with plans to attack Rafah, a city on the southern edge of Gaza which currently shelters more than half the enclave's 2.3 million people.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to send a team to Washington to talk about the operation - but in the meantime, he's adamant the assault should proceed.
“In the beginning, I told the president (Biden): Hamas cannot be defeated without the IDF entering the Gaza Strip. In our last conversation I told him: It would be impossible to complete the victory without the IDF entering Rafah, and this in order to eliminate the rest of the Hamas battalions. We will do the same this time."
The State Department says if Israel insists on following through with a Rafah assault, they need a better plan.
"There should be no full-scale, military operation in Rafah without a credible and executable plan to protect the civilian population... We not support the forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza to outside of Gaza. That's not something that we would support or condone."
Aid officials, like James Elder from UNICEF, have backed calls for restraint.
They say the people sheltering in Rafah are already experiencing an awful situation - and a military strike would make it much, much worse.
"The streets are full. Rafah is a city of children. It's 600,000 children now. It was only a couple of hundred thousand people. It's 600,000 children, a lot of children you can see. The malnutrition creeping in. It's much worse in the north, where children have starved to death. But it's happening here. There's a desperation. There's an exhaustion among people."
Fighting has not been confined to Gaza.
In the West bank, a Palestinian gunman has shot two Israeli security officers before he was killed himself.
And Israel has stepped up its military raids, killing three in an air strike on a car in Jenin they said was carrying senior Islamic Jihad members who had led attacks on Israelis.
United Nations records show at least 358 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, a quarter of them children.
But Gaza remains a central focus.
A video has been released that purports to show Hamas fighters attacking Israeli forces at a medical compound in Gaza City.
In the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, at least 15 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike.
As the fighting drags on, Mr Netanyahu has spoken to US Senate Republicans via a video call, telling them the war against Hamas would keep going.
The Democratic caucus, led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, declined a similar invitation.
Chuck Schumer has stood by his comments last week that Netanyahu has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing worldwide support for Israel to historic lows.
Meanwhile, back in Israel, frustrations are also apparent.
These protesters have called for early elections, alleging that the P-M is making decisions based on keeping his right-wing coalition intact rather than Israel’s interests.
This woman, Inbar Goldstein, says there's a deal on the table at the current ceasefire negotiations which could be the last chance to bring back hostages alive.
"I feel like it's money time and it's our responsibility to make sure that we don't leave this place until we know that our government if fully committed to fulfil the deal and bring as much people as possible."
