President-elect Donald Trump is dispatching his incoming special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, to Qatar this week for talks aimed at a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of some 100 Israeli hostages.

Trump speaking at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday reiterated his threat that there will be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if the hostages are not released prior to his Jan. 20 inauguration.

Israel’s foreign minister was in the United Arab Emirates for talks with his Emirati counterpart.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that Gideon Saar discussed “regional developments and the bilateral relations between the two countries” in his talks with Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza killed at least 17 people late Tuesday, nearly all of them women or children, the territory’s Health Ministry said.

Five kids were killed in the same tent as they sheltered together in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Muwasi, said Ahmed al-Farra, director of the child ward at Nasser Hospital in nearby Khan Younis. Their bodies were among the eight children and five women brought to the hospital.

Talks aimed at cementing a truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas are ongoing, with "technical meetings" taking place between the parties, mediator Qatar's foreign ministry said Tuesday.

The Israeli military launched a wave of raids across the occupied West Bank overnight and into Tuesday, killing at least three Palestinians it said were militants a day after a deadly shooting attack.

Two rebel groups from Syria's Druze minority said on Monday they were ready to join a national army after Islamist-led opposition fighters toppled president Bashar al-Assad last month.

The new Syrian authorities face the mammoth challenge of rebuilding state institutions shaped by the Assad family's repressive five-decade rule, including the army and security apparatuses that have all but collapsed.

The U.S. has eased some restrictions on Syria's transitional government to allow the entry of humanitarian aid after Islamist insurgents ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad last month.

The U.S. Treasury issued a general license, lasting six months, that authorizes certain transactions with the Syrian government, including some energy sales and incidental transactions.

International flights resumed at Syria's main airport in Damascus on Tuesday for the first time since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad last month, AFP journalists said.

A main road in the provincial capital of Quneitra in southern Syria was blocked with mounds of dirt, fallen palm trees and a metal pole that appeared to have once been a traffic light. On the other side of the barriers, an Israeli tank could be seen maneuvering in the middle of the street.

Israeli forces entered the area — which lies in a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights that was established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement between Syria and Israel — soon after the fall of President Bashar Assad last month in the country's 13-year civil war.

Israel said Monday that Hamas had not yet provided the status of 34 hostages the group declared it was ready to release in the first phase of a potential exchange deal.

Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been working for months to strike a deal to end the war in Gaza, but both warring sides have accused each other of derailing the negotiations.