Israel-Gaza live updates: France, UK, Canada recognize Palestinian statehood

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich -- one of the country's most vocal proponents of Israeli settlements in both the West Bank and Gaza -- said on Wednesday that the Gaza Strip represents a "real estate bonanza."

Speaking at an urban renewal conference in Tel Aviv, Smotrich said there was a "business plan" for Gaza on U.S. President Donald Trump's "table."

The White House has not commented on Smotrich's remarks.

"I have started negotiations with the Americans, I say this not jokingly now," Smotrich said, in quotes carried by The Associated Press.

"We paid a lot of money for this war, so we need to divide how we make a percentage on the land marketing later in Gaza," Smotrich continued. "And now, no kidding, we've done the demolition phase, which is always the first phase of urban renewal. Now we need to build, it's much cheaper."

The White House has not commented on Smotrich's remarks.

Trump has previously suggested that the U.S. will "take over" and "own" the Gaza Strip as part of any future peace deal. The president has suggested that all Palestinians could be relocated from Gaza during its reconstruction, saying the U.S. could "just clean out that whole thing."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters after Trump's February comments that Palestinians would be only "temporarily relocated" while the rebuild took place, although officials say it could take upward of 15 years for it to be completed. 

Meanwhile, settler groups and far-right politicians in Israel have been lobbying for the construction of new Israeli settlements in the strip and the permanent relocation of Palestinians out of the territory.

Regional and other U.S. allies have rejected Trump's proposals for Gaza.

Experts have noted that seizing a territory by force would violate international law, and displacing its people would constitute a war crime. Some critics of the plan say forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza could constitute "ethnic cleansing."

-ABC News' Will Gretsky

The Israel Defense Forces said in a post to X on Thursday morning that its forces are "expanding their activities in Gaza City" and continuing operations elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.

Divisions 162 and 98 are pressing Israel's assault on Gaza City -- the strip's largest urban area -- the IDF said in its post, destroying what it called "terrorist organization infrastructure" and eliminating "numerous" enemy fighters.

Meanwhile, the IDF's 143rd Division -- also known as the Gaza Division -- is operating in Khan Younis and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the force said.

Qatar’s minister of state visited the International Criminal Court in the Hague “as part of the work of the team tasked with exploring legal avenues to respond,” to Israel’s strike on Doha, Qatar, earlier this month, the minister said in a post on X Wednesday.

“During the two meetings, I reaffirmed Qatar’s commitment to supporting the path of international justice and to ensuring accountability for perpetrators of crimes under international law—including wars crimes and acts of aggression —so as to prevent them from escaping punishment within the framework of international criminal law,” the minister said in the post.

-ABC News' Ellie Kaufman

The number of casualties in Gaza has already increased since Israel began its ground offensive on Gaza City, according to New York doctor and trauma specialist Dr. Michael Falk, who is providing care in Gaza for charity MedGlobal.

There have been "two mass casualty incidents" due to the IDF offensive in the last three days alone, Falk said. He has been based at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis for three weeks.

"If this ground offensive lasts months, it's going to be horrible," Falk said. "As soon as winter sets in you'll see more waterborne diseases, more respiratory illnesses, and people are already chronically malnourished. They can't heal. Post-operative wound infections are horrendous, and mortality is far higher than in the U.S."

Falk said there simply isn't enough room for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City to live.

"There's literally no place for 350,000 refugees to go," he said.

"Mid-Gaza is a tent city from the Mediterranean to the eastern border. You can buy a tent for $400, rent the land, and then somehow feed your family -- but that's all while the war is going on around you," he added.

On Wednesday, he said he treated someone who had been "blown up" in an area of Gaza considered as the "green zone," whereas he says the area he works in is considered to be a more dangerous "yellow zone."

"One of my residents went home last night and his wife's entire family, aside from his father, were killed in the so-called safe zone. We had an ambulance driver shot outside the hospital this week. He died," he said.

"There really is no safe space in Gaza," he said.

Nasser Hospital is supposed to hold 300 patients. The hospital currently has more than a thousand, he said.

Falk has worked on multiple occasions in three conflict zones: Iraq in 2017, Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 and in Gaza.

"Gaza is the worst I've ever seen," he said. "This feels indiscriminate. There is no reprieve, no calm place to go. It's constant and everywhere."

-ABC News' Tom Soufi Burridge