WASHINGTON 

The State Department declined Friday to address comments from an Israeli minister who called for the annexation of at least some parts of the besieged Gaza Strip.

Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the US is "in a dynamic where there is diplomatic conversations happening," adding that Washington is "still working to implement ceasefires and dealing with issues and questions regarding what can happen on the ground when there's still hostilities and still conflict."

During a press briefing, she said talk of annexation "is a distraction to move past the nature of what's going on now."

"It's interesting that we can continue to keep in our minds the nature of what's in front of us, which is still to stop the wholesale slaughter of people, the use of other individuals as human shields, the general chaos that that causes, and the fact that there are ways to stop it," she said.

"Others, perhaps they want us to always talk about something else, to get people distracted about that thing so you stop looking at what is the thing that we need to deal with immediately," she added.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday ordered the Israeli forces to occupy more of Gaza after expelling Palestinian residents, as Israel resumes its war on the Palestinian enclave. The Israeli public broadcaster KAN reported Katz ordered the further occupation of Palestinian areas in Gaza under the pretext of protecting Israeli soldiers and communities near Gaza.

"The more Hamas insists on refusing to release the hostages, the more land it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel," KAN quoted Katz as saying.

He added that the Israeli military operation in Gaza "will escalate until all hostages held by Hamas are freed."

More than 700 Palestinians have been killed and over 900 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since Tuesday, shattering a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement that had held since January. Hamas had sought to advance negotiations into a second phase of a negotiated ceasefire that was agreed to in January.

But Israel insisted that the Palestinian group release all hostages immediately in a sharp departure from the agreement's terms.

Nearly 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and over 112,000 injured in Israel’s offensive on Gaza since a Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 killed some 1,200 people.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.