Hamas is discussing the possible release of a group of hostages in exchange for a brief pause in fighting, officials say.

The downing of a Reaper drone, the mainstay of the American military’s aerial surveillance fleet, was the latest escalation of violence between the United States and Iran-backed groups in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. The episodes have underscored the risks that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas could spiral into a wider war.

On Oct. 19, a U.S. Navy warship in the northern Red Sea shot down four cruise missiles and more than two dozen drones launched from Yemen that the Pentagon said might have been headed toward Israel.

Yemen’s Houthi militia claimed it had attempted an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 31, saying it had launched a “large batch” of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones, toward Israeli targets. The Israeli military said its aerial defense system had intercepted a surface-to-surface missile fired toward Israel “from the area of the Red Sea.” It said it had also intercepted other “aerial threats” in the area, none of which entered Israeli territory.

The Defense Department said on Wednesday that there had been at least 41 attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq by Iran-backed militias since Oct. 17. At least 46 U.S. service members have been injured, 25 of whom suffered traumatic brain injuries, the Pentagon said.

Other officials confirmed the outlines of a deal but declined to discuss the specific numbers of hostages being discussed. Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip and staged the surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and other Palestinian groups are believed to be holding more than 240 hostages.

William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, has been helping facilitate the talks, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Burns is currently visiting countries in the Persian Gulf and is expected to continue his work on the hostage issue, according to the people briefed on the hostage negotiations.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to discuss the negotiations but said there had been a couple of humanitarian pauses that allowed people, including hostages, to leave Gaza.

“This is not a new idea, but it is something that we believe should continue to be pursued,” Mr. Kirby said.

The new proposal would free Israeli female civilians and children, and people from other countries, including Americans, taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 when the group attacked Israel. It is not clear how many Americans might be released.

Qatar is playing a role in the mediation, as it did in two earlier hostage releases.

In recent days, American officials, including Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, who was in the Middle East last week, have intensified their push for a deal that would involve trading hostages for a pause in the fighting.

On Wednesday, Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said that about 10 Americans remained unaccounted for in the Hamas massacre last month.

“We have been working around the clock to determine the whereabouts of these hostages,” he said.

But Mr. Patel declined to discuss either Qatar-mediated talks or any U.S. involvement in the negotiations.

U.S. officials and others briefed on the discussions said Hamas had previously made an offer to release a group of hostages. Those conversations took place right before the Israeli military entered Gaza. But Israeli officials doubted Hamas sincerity and went ahead with their ground operation.

Still, U.S. officials said discussions continued even after Israeli forces surrounded Gaza City.

Qatar has been deeply involved in the hostage negotiations. The political leaders of Hamas are based in Doha. And the Qatari government has regular discussions with Israel, Hamas and the United States.

The Biden administration has not pressed Qatar to close down the Hamas office because Mr. Blinken and other American officials believe it is useful for hostage negotiations, a U.S. official said.

At a news conference with Mr. Blinken on Oct. 13, the prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, said the office was “a way of communicating and bringing peace and calm into the region.”

Lisa Friedman in Washington contributed reporting.

Ms. Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has said the slogan is “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.” Pro-Palestinian protesters used the slogan in a video Ms. Tlaib recently posted online that accused President Biden of supporting genocide in the Gaza Strip.

“When it comes to the phrase that was used, ‘from the river to the sea,’ it is divisive, it is hurtful, many find it hurtful and many find it antisemitic,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House spokeswoman, on Wednesday. “We categorically reject applying that term to the conflict.”

The House passed a resolution Tuesday evening to censure Ms. Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, for embracing that phrase and “promoting false narratives” surrounding Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed about 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

A video that Ms. Tlaib released Friday said that Mr. Biden “supported the genocide of the Palestinian people,” and she warned the president, who is from her own party, that “we will remember in 2024.”

A genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic killing of members of a particular ethnic, national, racial or religious group in order to annihilate that group. The Israeli military has said it is targeting Hamas, which carried out terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, not the Palestinian people.

The White House did not comment on the video last week and on Wednesday Ms. Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the House’s censure.

“We respect that there are strong feelings about the war,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “We have expressed our views ourselves in public and in private conversations with Israeli officials.”

But, she added, “Remember, Israel is defending itself from terrorists.”

The censure resolution, which passed 234 to 188, with 22 Democrats voting in favor, cited Ms. Tlaib’s use of the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which the Anti-Defamation League deems antisemitic. The resolution called the phrase “a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

Kayla Guo contributed reporting.

“These must include the Palestinian people’s voices and aspirations at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza,” he said. “It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”

But in renewing a call for what is, in essence, a far-off, two-state solution, born from the rubble of the war in Gaza, American officials have not explained how they would address much more pressing obstacles.

The most immediate is in Gaza itself, which has been devastated by Israeli airstrikes begun after Hamas launched a cross-border attack that killed some 1,400 people in Israel. Should Israel achieve its goal of destroying the group, it is unclear who would govern an enclave where more than 10,000 people have been reported killed over the past month.

The United States has warned Israel against occupying Gaza, as it once did, but has acknowledged that Israeli forces are likely to remain even after the war ends.

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Beyond that, the organization Mr. Blinken seemed to be pinning his hopes on to stabilize Gaza, the Palestinian Authority, has only the most tenuous of holds on power in the area it nominally helps administer, the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

And the organization’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is especially unpopular there. Many Palestinians view him as corrupt and say his attempts to win independence through peace talks have failed.

Complicating matters, Mr. Abbas’s organization was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007, and appears all too well aware that its return might not be celebrated in the coastal enclave.

Ahmed Majdalani, a senior Palestinian official, said Mr. Abbas’s government would not discuss a potential return to Gaza before a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and without a political process that would lead to an independent Palestinian state.

“We will not return to Gaza atop an Israeli tank,” said Mr. Majdalani in a phone interview. He said: “We need a political solution, international guarantees. We won’t repeat the same story as before.”

Mr. Blinken’s remarks on Wednesday, made in Tokyo where he attended a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 7 nations, sent the strongest signal yet from the Biden administration about what it would like to see when the conflict in Gaza is over.

The secretary of state went beyond remarks made a day earlier by a White House spokesman, who cautioned Israel against reoccupying Gaza after the end of the war. Those came after Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, suggested that his country would maintain a control of security in Gaza “for an indefinite period.”

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Mr. Blinken also addressed longer-term goals for the region, although without going into detail.

“It must include a sustained mechanism for reconstruction in Gaza, and a pathway to Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in states of their own, with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity,” he said.

Mr. Blinken also said there should be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, either now or after the war, and no reduction in the size of its territory. Eli Cohen, Israel’s foreign minister, had suggested at one point that Gaza’s area could be reduced following the war.

Mr. Blinken’s vision also is likely to face resistance from the current government in Israel. Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition is stacked with right-wing hard-liners — including some in his own party — who oppose establishing a Palestinian state and revile the Palestinian Authority as little better than Hamas. The Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment on Mr. Blinken’s statements.

“Usually when you get into a cease-fire, it’s when you think you’re at the end and it’s time to negotiate,” he said. “At this time, a cease-fire right now benefits Hamas. It certainly also legitimizes what Hamas started on Oct. 7.”

Between 500 and 600 Americans remain trapped in the Palestinian territory, including U.S. permanent residents and their families, he said. More than 400 have left so far, he added, all through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Mr. Kirby would not confirm reports of future “pauses” in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza. President Biden and top aides, he said, are continuing to press for more temporary halts in military action, in order to allow aid in and help people evacuate from Gaza.

“In almost every conversation we’re having with the Israelis right now we’re talking about the benefits of humanitarian pauses,” he said.

The people taken into custody were described as having links to Hezbollah, the militia that controls southern Lebanon.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement that Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, had helped with the investigation and that the foiled attacks had been backed by Hezbollah.

As part of the investigation, 11 search warrants carried out across the states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo, and in the Federal District, the police said in a statement released on Wednesday.

The people targeted were described as recruiters for Hezbollah, and some were said to be receiving funding directly from the organization. In one of the searched homes, the police found large amounts of cash, according to the official with knowledge of the investigation.

Hezbollah activities in Latin America have long been a source of concern to U.S. and Israeli officials. More than a decade ago, a House intelligence subcommittee warned that the group had “vast networks” in the region. American officials said Hezbollah was engaged in money laundering and smuggling weapons and drugs to help it raise money.

An investigation by Mossad found that as far back as 1988 Hezbollah began sending operatives to several South American countries to acquire “experience to enable them to open legitimate businesses and have strong commercial cover for moving around between different countries,” according to the internal inquiry.

In September, the United States imposed sanctions on a network in Lebanon and South America that had been accused of playing a role in financing Hezbollah. Some were described as being part of a Hezbollah unit responsible for the militant group’s operations abroad.

Among those named by U.S. officials was a senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative whom they accused of involvement in two attacks in Argentina in the 1990s, one of which targeted the headquarters of a Jewish community center, killing 85 people. It is one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Argentina’s history.

The United Nations estimated that, through Tuesday, at least 40,000 people had walked out of northern Gaza toward the south, with 15,000 people making the trek on Tuesday alone.

News photographs as well as a video released by the Israeli military on Wednesday afternoon, the fifth day the evacuation corridor was open, showed part of their passage: men, women and children moving on foot past half-destroyed buildings, in some cases waving white flags, down a road named for one of history’s most famous Muslim conquerors. They carry small bags, but no suitcases. Some ride on donkey carts, but most are on foot.

The United Nations said that most of those who made the hourslong trip on Tuesday, including children, older people and those with disabilities, traveled on foot with few belongings. It said some arriving in the south reported having to cross Israeli checkpoints, where they said Israeli forces had been making arrests.

The Israeli military denied it had put up checkpoints along the road and maintained Hamas, not Israel, was making the passage south difficult.

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But some Gazans who have made or attempted the journey in recent days have described being fired at from the direction of Israeli tanks, despite the promise of safe passage, while others said they had seen bodies, or parts of bodies, scattered around the road. The United Nations is aware of such reports but has not identified who was responsible, said one U.N. official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Asked about reports of Israeli tanks firing at refugees, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had been targeting Hamas throughout Gaza. It said its attacks on military targets were conducted under international law, including taking “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian casualties.”

On Sunday, Anas Al Kourd, a paramedic at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, drove south with his cousin, whose legs had been amputated after she was wounded in the war, and others, including four children. Theirs was the only car in sight. Around them, everyone held their hands up in a gesture of surrender as they walked, carrying little but white flags, he said.

As they approached Kuwait Square, a major intersection in Gaza City, they came under fire, forcing them to retreat, he said. Two or three times they tried to move forward, only to have to turn around again because of incoming fire.

When they finally made it to the square, he said, he could see more than 50 Israeli tanks nearby, sitting where an olive grove used to be. He said he waved the blanket covering his cousin in place of a white flag, while some of his companions, who are dual citizens, waved their red German passports.

Mr. Al Kourd had covered about a third of the remaining distance to the middle zone of Gaza, bumping over splintered trees and concrete blocks, when he said they were fired on again. He was driving at “mad speed” to escape, he said, when a missile or bomb from a warplane hit nearby. No one was struck, but their car hit a crater in the road and went flying, he said.

“I don’t know how we survived,” he said a day later, having made it to the middle zone of the Gaza Strip. His account could not be independently confirmed.

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The evacuations from north Gaza may have accelerated in part because of the sharply deteriorating humanitarian situation there, with food and clean water now nearly nonexistent.

Yet some people have decided not to leave, seeing the south as no safer or tied to the north by other concerns. Among those who have stayed are relatives of Hiba Tibi, the West Bank and Gaza director for CARE International, an aid group.

For days now, she said, they have not had bread. When they ventured outside for food on Tuesday, they told her, they could find only a few cucumbers and lemons for sale to feed 13 people. The cucumbers cost eight times what they used to.

Her uncle told her that he had already rationed his own meals, and that the older members of the family “will need to start to skip meals,” she added.

Her relatives stayed, she said, because her uncle needs dialysis at Al Shifa Hospital. Unable to walk, his eyesight damaged, he makes the 30-minute trip to the hospital on his son’s back.

Only five of the nearly 30 apartments in her uncle’s building remain occupied, Ms. Tibi said. The rest of his neighbors have moved south.

Ameera Harouda, Nada Rashwan and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

The statement by the Group of 7 nations, released after a two-day meeting of foreign ministers in Tokyo, stopped short of calling for a cease-fire, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters would risk leaving Hamas in place with the “capacity to repeat Oct. 7 again and again and again.”

“We support humanitarian pauses and corridors to facilitate urgently needed assistance, civilian movement and the release of hostages,” the statement by the G7 foreign ministers said. It added: “We underscore the importance of protecting civilians and compliance with international law, in particular international humanitarian law.”

The ministers said they condemned the Hamas attack on Israel, which Israeli authorities say killed about 1,400 people, mostly civilians. But they also said there was an urgent need for more humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza, where the invasion and thousands of Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 10,000 people and injured more than 26,000 others, according to the Gazan health ministry.

Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, responding to popular pressure, have also appealed to American officials, including Mr. Blinken, to get Israel to halt its offensive.

The White House has supported Israel’s right to defend itself and its objective of eliminating Hamas, but it has steadily increased its calls for humanitarian pauses to get more aid into Gaza.

In Brussels, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, said at a news conference on Wednesday that Israel has the right to defend itself, but NATO allies “support humanitarian pauses to allow aid to reach Gaza.”

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A little more than 520 aid trucks have entered Gaza in the last month, according to the U.S. State Department, roughly the number that the United Nations sent in daily before the war between Israel and Hamas began.

On Monday, President Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and “discussed the possibility of tactical pauses,” the White House said. Mr. Netanyahu told ABC News in an interview that aired on Monday that while Israel might consider “tactical little pauses,” there would be no cease-fire without the release of hostages.

In the G7 statement, the ministers expressed concern about “the rise in extremist settler violence committed against Palestinians” in the West Bank. The ministers said they would work together “to deny Hamas the ability to raise and use funds to carry out atrocities,” including by imposing new sanctions.

The statement also called for “a two-state solution” as “the only path to a just, lasting and secure peace.”

The statement appeared to align more closely than earlier G7 statements with the approach that Japan has taken since the start of the war. While most of its G7 peers offered full-throated support for Israel, Japan set itself apart by issuing more measured public statements calling for “all the parties” to “exercise maximum restraint” in the conflict, and by expressing concern for “a number of casualties in Gaza as well.”

Another march is planned for this Saturday, but Nov. 11 is also Armistice Day, when Britons remember the end of World War I. Mr. Sunak described the juxtaposition of the protest with some remembrance events as “provocative and disrespectful,” and has called for the pro-Palestinian protest to be banned.

Under British law, the police can apply for a march to be banned if there is a risk of serious public disorder, but the last time this power was used was more than a decade ago for a series of far-right marches.

While the Metropolitan Police Service did ask march organizers earlier in the week to postpone the demonstration, its leadership has so far resisted calls for a ban.

“The laws created by Parliament are clear,” Mark Rowley, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, said in a statement on Tuesday evening. “There is no absolute power to ban protest, therefore there will be a protest this weekend.”

Mr. Rowley added that while he recognized public and political concern about how the protest would affect a “moment of national reflection,” he was committed to ensuring the march would pass without disruption.

“The reason we have an independent police service is so that among debate, opinion, emotion, and conflict, we stand in the center, focused simply on the law and the facts in front of us,” he said.

Mr. Sunak, in a letter to Mr. Rowley late last week, had said “there is a clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated,” although march organizers said they had no plans to march near the Cenotaph or Whitehall, where the remembrance events will take place.

Speaking on Wednesday, Mr. Sunak said Mr. Rowley would answer for his decisions.

“He has said that he can ensure that we safeguard remembrance for the country this weekend as well as keep the public safe,” he told Sky News. “Now, my job is to hold him accountable for that.” The two men were set to meet to discuss the event on Wednesday.

The vast majority of people attending previous Saturday demonstrations have been peaceful. But there have been some fringe elements, the police say, and more than 160 people have been arrested in London for a range of offenses, including racially motivated public offenses, violence and assaulting police officers, since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

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Mr. Rowley said that the use of police powers to halt marches is rare and “must be based on intelligence which suggests there will be a real threat of serious disorder and no other way for police to manage the event.”

Although the police believe the risk of violence by breakaway groups “intent on fueling disorder” has risen, at present the potential for disorder this weekend does not meet the threshold to apply for a ban, he said, though he noted that could change.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary who is responsible for policing, has been widely criticized for her hard-line comments about the protests, which she has described repeatedly as “hate marches.” In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, she said she welcomed calls to stop this weekend’s march.

“The hate marchers need to understand that decent British people have had enough of these displays of thuggish intimidation and extremism,” she wrote.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, one of a number of groups organizing the event on Saturday, vowed to continue. No protests are planned for Sunday, when the national service of remembrance will take place in central London. The prime minister, the king, veterans and active military personnel are expected to attend.

“We are alarmed by members of the government, including the prime minister, issuing statements suggesting that the march is a direct threat to the Cenotaph and designed to disrupt the Remembrance Day commemorations,” the group said in a statement. It added that the comments were “encouraging the calls from far-right activists and commentators who appear to be inciting action on the streets to stop the protests taking place and are deeply irresponsible.”

Fears of confrontation with far-right protests have grown in recent days, inflamed by Tommy Robinson, an Islamophobic far-right activist, who returned to X after being banned, and said he planned to be in London on Saturday. In a video, he urged people to take to the streets, saying an “uncontrollable mass of men who are willing to stand for their country” was needed.