Arab leaders are privately siding with Israel against Hamas, even if some are publicly condemning the operation in Gaza as endangering innocent civilians who refuse to leave or are being forced to stay, Haaretz reported this week.

Arab leaders are ultimately viewing Hamas as a "dangerous domestic enemy" on their lands, so they are urging Israel to keep fighting in Gaza after the operation to return hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, according to the report.

"Publicly, some of them [like Egypt and Jordan] are falling in line with public opinion in their countries and condemning the civilian deaths caused by Israel's military response," Haaretz's Amos Harrel wrote in his analysis of the expiring cease-fire Thursday.

"But behind the scenes, almost every leader in the region, including in most of the Gulf states, is urging Israel to end the war only after Hamas is defeated, since they view the organization as a dangerous domestic enemy."

The problem that looms, as Israeli Defense Forces spokespeople have told Newsmax, is Hamas is hiding among civilians, including moving south from northern Gaza. Israel will have to go into southern Gaza, which is more densely populated and already has displaced civilians that were forced to move out of the north amid the operations there.

Hamas uses civilians as human shields, in particular, in hospitals and places where children are, the IDF has long warned.

Israel pounded targets in the crowded southern half of the Gaza Strip on Saturday and ordered more neighborhoods designated for attack to evacuate, driving up the death toll even as the United States and others urged it to do more to protect Gaza civilians a day after a truce collapsed.

The military said Saturday that it hit more than 400 Hamas targets across Gaza over the past day, using airstrikes and shelling from tanks and navy gunships. It included more than 50 strikes in the city of Khan Younis and surrounding areas in the southern half of Gaza.

In the clearest sign yet that a return to negotiations for further truces was unlikely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed negotiators to return to Israel.

With the resumption of fighting, the Israeli military published an online map carving up the Gaza Strip into hundreds of numbered parcels and asked residents to familiarize themselves with the number of their location ahead of evacuation warnings.

The military used the map for the first time Saturday, listing more than two dozen parcel numbers in areas around Gaza City in the north and east of Khan Younis. Separately, the military dropped leaflets with evacuation orders over towns east of Khan Younis.

For families of remaining hostages, the truce's collapse was a blow to hopes their loved ones could be the next out. A 70-year-old woman held by Hamas was declared dead on Saturday, according to her kibbutz, bringing the total number of known dead hostages to eight.