Gaza - Tens of thousands of Palestinians fled relentless Israeli attacks in Gaza on Wednesday as they marked 76 years since their mass displacement to make way for Israel's creation, which they call the Nakba or "catastrophe."

Israeli forces have bombed and assaulted the area around Gaza's far-southern city of Rafah, with renewed attacks also flaring again in northern and central areas which Israeli troops first entered months ago.

US President Joe Biden has threatened to withhold some arms deliveries over Netanyahu's insistence on attacking Rafah, the last Gaza city so far spared a ground invasion, which is packed with displaced people.

But Biden's administration has also stressed it will continue to support the Israeli military and informed Congress on Tuesday of a new $1 billion weapons package.

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The European Union urged Israel to end its military operation in Rafah "immediately," warning that failure to do so would "inevitably put a heavy strain" on ties with the bloc, which is Israel's biggest trade partner and the main aid donor for the Palestinian territories.

UN agencies warn that the latest acts of aggression have forcibly displaced nearly one quarter of the Gaza Strip's population this month – including about 450,000 people from Rafah and 100,000 from northern Gaza.

The sight of desperate families carrying their scant belongings through the ruins of war-scarred cities has evoked for many the events of 1948, when around 760,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes.

"Your Independence Day is our catastrophe," protesters chanted in Israel on the eve of Nakba Day at a rally joined by many Arab-Israelis, descendants of Palestinians who stayed on their land and now live as a minority in Israel facing systematic discrimination.

Israel's atrocities have continued since 1948, with prominent international human rights organizations classifying the state today as an apartheid regime.

The International Court of Justice ruled in January that there is a plausible case Israel is committing genocide in its now seven-month siege of Gaza.

Hamas declared in a Nakba Day statement that "the ongoing suffering of millions of refugees inside Palestine and in the diaspora is directly attributed to the Zionist occupation."

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The group said the refugees' "legitimate right to return to their homes from which they were displaced cannot be compromised or relinquished."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and bring home the hostages Hamas militants are still holding, although many critics have pointed out that Israel's indiscriminate bombing campaign may actually endanger those efforts.

Israel has also rejected multiple hostage exchange deals with Hamas, and is said to hold thousands of Palestinians – including children – in detention amid horrifying reports of torture and abuse.

Israel's has killed at least 35,173 people since October, according to the Gaza health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine in the occupied territory.

Israel has repeatedly claimed it is targeting Hamas in an effort to justify its mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Israeli military said Wednesday that its aircraft had "struck and eliminated approximately 80 terror targets" including military compounds, missile launchers, and weapons depots.

It also said its forces fighting in eastern areas of Rafah had succeeded in "eliminating terrorists in close-quarters combat and locating large amounts of weapons."

"Intense battles" also raged amid the ruins of Gaza City in the north, where the army said its troops had killed "a large number of terrorists" in Jabaliya and were also fighting in the Zeitun area.

Hamas' armed wing also reported that its fighters were clashing with troops in the Jabaliya area, much of which has been reduced to a hellscape of bombed-out buildings.

At least five people were killed, including a woman and her child, in two Israeli air strikes on Gaza City overnight, Gaza's civil defense agency said.

At the the city's Al-Ahli hospital, a wounded man, his bare chest smeared with blood, lay on a hard cot while outside several men placed a shrouded corpse in the shade of a tree.

US, Egyptian, and Qatari mediators have pushed for a truce and hostage release deal for months, but the talks are now close to "a stalemate," said Qatar's Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani.

Sporadic aid deliveries into Gaza by truck have slowed to a trickle since Israeli forces took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt last week.

Another convoy carrying humanitarian relief goods was ransacked by Israeli settlers on Monday after it had crossed from Jordan through the occupied West Bank.

Washington condemned the settlers' attack, but that has not stopped the Biden administration from keeping up the flow of American arms to Israeli occupying forces.