Brazil’s president has claimed Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, after stirring controversy a week earlier by comparing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote that he would not give up his “dignity for falsehood”, an apparent reference to calls for him to retract his comparison to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews died during the Second World War.

“What the Israeli government is doing is not war, it is genocide,” he wrote on Saturday. “Children and women are being murdered.”

In response to his initial comments, Israel had declared him a persona non grata, summoned Brazil’s ambassador and demanded an apology. In retaliation, he recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel for consultations.

Last month, South Africa filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians.

The court issued a preliminary order in the landmark case two weeks later, ordering Israel to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza.

Israel, created in part as a refuge for survivors of the Holocaust, has accused South Africa of hypocrisy.

Tel Aviv has rejected genocide claims, saying its war is targeting the militant group Hamas, not the Palestinian people. It holds Hamas responsible for civilian deaths, arguing that the group operates from civilian areas.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Saturday that the bodies of 92 Palestinians killed in Israeli bombardments had been taken to hospitals over the past 24 hours, raising the overall toll in nearly five months of war to 29,606. The total number of wounded rose to nearly 70,000.

The ministry’s death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said two-thirds of those killed were children and women. Israel says its troops have killed more than 10,000 Hamas fighters.

Israel declared war after the deadly October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza.

The steadily rising civilian death toll and a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza have amplified calls for a ceasefire. Hunger and infectious diseases are spreading and 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced, with about 1.4 million crowded into the southern city of Rafah on the border with Egypt.

Negotiators from the US, Israel, Egypt and Qatar are meeting in Paris this weekend to try to reach a deal on pausing the fighting. Egypt and Qatar serve as mediators between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to fight until “total victory”, but has sent a delegation to Paris to seek the release of hostages in exchange for a temporary truce.

Negotiators face wide gaps and an unofficial deadline — the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan around March 10.

Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu and his right-wing government drew an angry response from the US, its closest ally, over plans to build more than 3,300 new homes in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

His finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the plans came in response to a Palestinian shooting earlier in the week that killed one Israeli and wounded five.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Friday that he was “disappointed” to hear of the Israeli announcement.

“It’s been long-standing US policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counter-productive to reaching an enduring peace,” he said. “They’re also inconsistent with international law.