Jerusalem, Undefined - Israel's top court ruled unanimously on Tuesday that the state must draft ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into military service, potentially destabilizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition. The High Court of Justice's decision on the politically charged issue comes as calls grow for ultra-Orthodox men, historically exempt from mandatory...

Netanyahu said Israel would be able to "redeploy some forces to the north" on the border with Lebanon, where exchanges of fire with the Hezbollah movement have escalated, but said this would be "primarily for defensive purposes".

Gaza civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP that at least 20 were killed in a strike on a house in Al-Tuffah neighborhood, while a strike in Al-Shati refugee camp claimed the lives of four others. Against a grey backdrop of destruction, men used a donkey cart to remove...

Palestinian Territories -- Israel bombed Gaza on Friday as exchanges of fire and threats over the Lebanon border raised fears of a wider war. Five municipal workers died "during an Israeli bombing" of a garage in Gaza City, said Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the civil defense agency in the territory. In...

Hassan Nasrallah - whose powerful Iran-backed group has exchanged near-daily fire with Israel since its ally Hamas's October 7 attack - also threatened the nearby island nation of Cyprus if it opened its airports or bases to Israel "to target Lebanon".

Palestinian Territories - The Israeli army on Tuesday said plans for an offensive in Lebanon were "approved and validated" amid escalating cross-border clashes with Hizbollah and a relative lull in Gaza fighting. The war in Gaza has heightened tensions across the region, with Israeli forces and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah, a...

Witnesses reported gunfire and artillery shelling near Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, where the civil defence agency said at least 13 people died in two separate strikes on a family home and on a commercial building. Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza said it received the bodies of "six martyrs...

The military said the soldiers were killed when the Namer armored vehicle they were travelling in exploded near Gaza's far-southern city of Rafah, where troops are engaged in fierce street battles. There was no immediate word on what triggered the blast.

On Monday, the UN Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution supporting the plan, and on Thursday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said G7 leaders "call on Hamas in particular to give the necessary consent". Some Gazans have also called on Hamas to do more to secure an agreement

Doha, Qatar - Top US diplomat Antony Blinken said Wednesday that a truce and hostage release deal to end the Gaza war was still possible, wrapping up a Middle East tour as deadly fighting rocked the Palestinian territory. Lebanon's Iran-backed group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, rained rockets on northern Israel, a...

New York, United States - Intel is halting the expansion of a major factory project in Israel, which was going to pump an extra $15 billion towards a chip plant. The chip giant in December said it was going to expand an ongoing $10 billion plan at the Kiryat Gat site,...

The text of the resolution "welcomes" the truce and hostage release proposal announced on May 31 by President Joe Biden, and "urges both parties to fully implement its terms without delay and without condition." Unlike earlier drafts, the resolution states that Israel has "accepted" the US ceasefire proposal.

Israel's army said Sunday that a senior commander had resigned over what he called his failure to prevent the October 7 attack by Palestinian fighters. "The commander of the 143rd Division, Brigadier General Avi Rosenfeld, informed his commanders today of his intention to end his service in the (Israeli army),"...

"The government of Israel has said that they are going to release more information about this strike, including the names of those who died in it. We expect them to be fully transparent in making that information public," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

The hospital reported an electrical generator failure earlier in the night, which risked complicating the treatment of patients. Prior to the strike, the hospital had received at least 70 dead and more than 300 wounded since Tuesday, mostly women and children.

Qatar, with the United States and Egypt, has been engaged in months of negotiations over details for a ceasefire in Gaza. But except for a seven-day break in hostilities beginning in November that led to the release of more than 100 hostages, the mediation efforts have not stopped the fighting.

Jerusalem, Undefined -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel was "prepared for a very intense operation" along the border with Lebanon, where Israeli troops have exchanged near-daily fire with Hezbollah fighters. Almost eight months of exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah have intensified over the past week, with Israel...

Hamas had told mediators it "cannot agree to a deal that doesn't that does not secure... a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and the achievement of a serious, real captive exchange deal", he said.

Rafah, Palestinian Territories - Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators called on Israel and Hamas Saturday to "finalise" the truce deal outlined by US President Joe Biden, as Israeli forces pounded Rafah in southern Gaza. Fighting has raged in the besieged Gaza Strip since Biden said Israel was offering a new roadmap...

The US president urged Hamas to accept the Israeli offer. "It's time for this war to end, for the day after to begin," he said, in comments echoed by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron. Hamas in a statement on Friday evening said it "considers positively" Biden's speech regarding "a permanent...

"In the absence of a plan for the day after, there won't be a day after. And this is where we need to go, and (what) we need to get, as quickly as possible," Blinken told reporters on a visit to Moldova. Such a plan would ensure that Israel is...

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group identified him as Alexander (Sasha) Trupanov, and called on the Israeli authorities to secure the release of all captives held in Gaza. It was unclear when the footage, in which he is seen wearing a T-shirt, was taken.

Rafah, Palestinian Territories -- Hundreds braved roads in Rafah in south Gaza Tuesday as they fled Israel's expanding ground assault, with increased shelling, tanks in the city center, and forces positioned on higher ground. "We are panicking and afraid," 40-year-old Ihab Zorob of west Rafah told AFP. "Our children and wives...

The plans were unveiled last week in a coordinated announcement by their prime ministers, with formal recognition to take place in all three countries on Tuesday. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will give an address at 0630 GMT before his cabinet meets to adopt a decree recognizing Palestinian statehood.

Rocket sirens blared in Tel Aviv for the first time in months, with an AFP correspondent reported hearing at least three blasts. Israel's offensive has killed at least 35,984 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

A "strong" Palestinian Authority is needed to bring peace in the Middle East, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said just before going into the meeting with Mustafa. The talks were being held as efforts were narrowing to try to find a Gaza truce and a hostage-release deal.

The armed wing of Hamas said it had taken "prisoner" at least one Israeli soldier in an ambush on Saturday. The Palestinian group targeted Israeli forces in a tunnel in the Jabalia camp and "all their members were killed, wounded or taken prisoner," said Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Ezzedine...

Djerba, Tunisia - Only a dozen pilgrims turned up Friday at this year's Jewish pilgrimage on Tunisia's island of Djerba amid heightened security concerns after a deadly attack last year and as the Israel-Hamas war rages in Gaza. The pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue, Africa's oldest, usually draws thousands of...

The International Court of Justice also demanded the immediate release of all hostages still held by Palestinian militants, hours after the Israeli military announced troops had recovered the bodies of three more of the captives from north Gaza. The Hague-based court, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement...

North Gaza's last two functioning hospitals, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan, are barely operational, doctors and the World Health Organization said Tuesday with the Israel-Hamas war now in its eighth month. Hospital officials said Israeli forces had fired on the facilities and that snipers had been deployed near one of them....

Israel and Hamas, engaged in heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip, both angrily rejected on Monday moves to arrest their leaders for war crimes made before an international court. The International Criminal Court's prosecutor Karim Khan said he had applied for arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders over...

Washington, United States - Amal Clooney helped the International Criminal Court weigh evidence that led to the decision to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders, the human rights lawyer said Monday. The high-profile British-Lebanese barrister posted a statement on the website of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she founded...

Paris, France -- Iran's powerful allies on Monday mourned the death of its President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, while regional groups hailed him as a supporter of the Palestinian cause. Russia and China called the deceased leader a "friend", while Iran's arch-foes the United States and Israel had yet...

Karim Khan said he was seeking warrants against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes including "starvation", "willful killing", and "extermination and/or murder". The ICC is the world's only independent court set up to probe the gravest offences including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Israel has also fought and bombed resurgent Hamas forces in northern and central areas of the coastal territory previously considered to be under army control, sparking US warnings that it could become mired in a lengthy counterinsurgency campaign.

The Israeli army said Thursday that two Thai hostages earlier believed to be alive in Gaza were killed in the October 7 attack and their bodies are being held in the Palestinian territory. "We informed the families of two kidnapped Thai citizens, who worked in agriculture in the plantations near...

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said "additional forces will enter" the Rafah area and "this activity will intensify". "Hundreds of targets have already been struck and our forces are maneuvering in the area," Gallant said following a troop visit on Wednesday.

Israeli forces took control earlier in May of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, in a push launched in defiance of US warnings that around 1.4 million civilians sheltering there could be caught in the crossfire.

Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday said the movement will be involved in deciding post-war rule in Gaza along with other Palestinian factions. "We say that the Hamas movement is here to stay ... and it will be the movement and all national (Palestinian) factions who will decide the post-war rule in...

Fighting has flared in north Gaza four months after the army said Hamas's command structure there had been dismantled, and six months after Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas had "lost control" of the Palestinian territory.

"There is no clarity how to stop the war from the Israeli side. I don't think that they are considering this as an option... even when we are talking about the deal and leading to a potential ceasefire," Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told the Qatar Economic Forum.

Pretoria brought its case to the ICJ in December, calling on the UN court to order Israel to suspend its military operations in Gaza. In its most recent appeal to the ICJ on Friday, South Africa again accused Israel of "continuing violations of the Genocide Convention" and of being "contemptuous"...

Popplewell was kidnapped from his home during Hamas's October 7 attack along with his mother, Hanna Peri, who was released during a one-week truce in November -- the only pause so far in more than seven months of war. Popplewell's older brother was killed in the attack.

"The negotiating delegation left Cairo heading to Doha. In practice, the occupation (Israel) rejected the proposal submitted by the mediators and raised objections to it on several central issues," Hamas said in a message to other Palestinian factions, adding it stood by the proposal.

The Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media, said that "four Hezbollah fighters were killed in an Israeli drone strike on their vehicle" in south Lebanon's Bafliyeh village, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the frontier. Lebanon's civil defense reported "four martyrs"...

Biden, a self-described Zionist, had long resisted stopping any of the $3 billion in weapons the United States sends each year to Israel -- and pushed Congress for an increase in the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas that triggered the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the proposal "is far from Israel's essential demands", but the government will send negotiators for talks.

The evacuation call followed disagreement between Israel and Hamas over the Palestinian group's demands to end the seven-month war, during weekend negotiations in Cairo. Egyptian state-linked media said the talks stalled after a rocket attack claimed by Hamas killed four Israeli soldiers on Sunday.

Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been waiting for Hamas to respond to a proposal that, according to details released by Britain, would halt fighting for 40 days and exchange hostages for Palestinians held by Israel. Hamas has been calling for a permanent ceasefire.

The hawkish prime minister has insisted he will send ground troops into Rafah, despite strong concerns voiced by UN agencies and ally Washington for the safety of the 1.2 million civilians inside the city. A top Hamas official accused Netanyahu on Friday of trying to derail a proposed Gaza truce...