An idea floated by US President Donald Trump to move Gazans to Egypt or Jordan faced a renewed backlash Tuesday as hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced by the Israel-Hamas war returned to their devastated neighbourhoods.
A fragile ceasefire and hostage release deal took effect earlier this month, intended to end more than 15 months of war that began with Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel, backed by Washington, will cease contact with the UN's Palestinian humanitarian relief agency UNRWA and any body acting on its behalf, its UN envoy said Tuesday, drawing condemnation from aid groups.
Signaling a shift in the US position on the agency by the administration of President Donald Trump, a US envoy voiced support for the decision and called for a probe into Israeli claims UNRWA sites were used by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
They have lived for years in Zaatari, the world's biggest refugee camp for Syrians, but many are unsure they want to return home from Jordan even after the ouster of former president Bashar al-Assad.
They fear the security situation might once again deteriorate after 13 years of civil war, and some say their homes have been destroyed while others lost their jobs and feel they have nothing to go back to.
In 2012, a year into the war in Syria, neighbouring Jordan opened Zaatari camp to host people fleeing the conflict.
Books recounting torture in Syrian prisons or texts on radical Islamic theology now sit openly in Damascus bookstores, no longer traded in secret after iron-fisted ruler Bashar al-Assad's ouster.
"If I had asked about a (certain) book just two months ago, I could have disappeared or ended up in prison," said student Amr al-Laham, 25, who was perusing stores near Damascus University.
Israel's president attacked the UN General Assembly in a speech on Monday marking the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust, accusing the body of exhibiting "moral bankruptcy" and failing to confront anti-Semitism.
Isaac Herzog addressed the forum during worldwide commemorations of the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered.
"Today, we find ourselves yet again at a dangerous crossroads in the history of this institution," Herzog said at the New York headquarters of the United Nations which Israel has repeatedly condemned since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
Israel gave a grim account Monday of seven freed hostages' health, saying that despite a "show" by Hamas to present them as healthy and smiling, they faced a long recovery from their ordeal.
The seven women freed so far under Israel's ceasefire deal with the Palestinian militant group were all malnourished, exposed to psychological suffering and wounded in various ways, said the deputy chief of the Israeli army's medical corps, Colonel Avi Benov.
The Israeli military on Monday said it had "eliminated over 15 terrorists" and arrested 40 wanted people during a major raid that began last week in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
The raid began two days after a truce took hold in the Gaza Strip, seeking to put an end to more than 15 months of the Israel-Hamas war that ravaged the Palestinian coastal territory.
The military said in a statement that during the Jenin operation troops seized dozens of weapons and "located an explosive device hidden inside a washing machine in one of the buildings in Jenin".
Saudi Arabia on Monday said foreigners are from now on allowed to invest in Saudi-listed companies that own property in Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest cities.
The decision "aims to stimulate investment, enhance the attractiveness and efficiency of the capital market, and strengthen its regional and international competitiveness while supporting the local economy," the kingdom's Capital Market Authority said in a statement.
US President Donald Trump's decision to re-designate Yemen's Huthi rebels as a foreign terrorist organisation could have deep implications for aid and the peace process in the war-shattered country.
The Iran-backed Huthis, who control much of Yemen, have fired on Israel and Red Sea shipping throughout the Gaza war, prompting reprisal strikes from US, Israeli and British forces.
Two Iranian men convicted of membership of the People's Mujahedin opposition group, outlawed by the Islamic republic, are at imminent risk of execution after being transferred to a different prison, the organisation and activists said on Monday.
The men, Behrouz Ehsani, 69, and Mehdi Hassani, 48, a father of three, were moved without prior notice on Sunday from Evin prison in Tehran to Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj outside the capital, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political wing of the People's Mujahedin, said in a statement.
