By Yousef Saba

ABU DHABI (Reuters) -Saudi Arabia's AlUla cultural heritage site plans to offer projects worth 6 billion riyals ($1.6 billion) for private sector participation, a tourism chief said on Wednesday.

AlUla, which attracted 300,000 visitors last year, is mainly funded by the Saudi finance ministry and now hopes to draw in private funds, Phillip Jones, chief tourism officer of the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi.

Turkey and Qatar intensified efforts to preserve the fragile Gaza ceasefire, with their leaders meeting in Doha Wednesday as diplomatic and intelligence chiefs coordinated to prevent renewed fighting, officials and sources said.

Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met Hamas officials in Doha late Tuesday, a day before talks between Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -A bill applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation of land which Palestinians want for a state, won preliminary approval from Israel's parliament on Wednesday.

The vote was the first of four needed to pass the law and it coincided with the visit of U.S. Vice President JD Vance to Israel, a month after President Donald Trump said that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

The International Court of Justice said Wednesday that Israel was obliged to ease the passage of aid into Gaza, stressing it had to provide Palestinians with the "basic needs" to survive.

The wide-ranging ICJ ruling, quickly rejected by Israel, came as aid groups scrambled to scale up much-needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza, seizing upon a fragile ceasefire agreed earlier this month.

While the UN's top court's "Advisory Opinion" is not legally binding, the ICJ believes it carries "great legal weight and moral authority".

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran will not return to negotiations with the United States as long as Washington makes "unreasonable demands," the Iranian foreign minister said on Wednesday according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Tehran and Washington engaged in five rounds of indirect nuclear negotiations that ended with the 12-day air war in June in which Israel and the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites.

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted on Wednesday at his opposition to any role for Turkish security forces in the Gaza Strip as part of a mission to monitor a U.S.-backed ceasefire with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Speaking in Jerusalem alongside visiting U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Netanyahu said they had discussed the "day-after" for Gaza, including who could provide security in the territory shattered by two years of war.

By Maha El Dahan

ABU DHABI (Reuters) -Dubai real estate developer Emaar has not been approached for any post-war Gaza reconstruction work and would not be inclined to do any, said its founder and chairman Mohammed Alabbar.

While U.S. President Donald Trump has envisaged the creation of a new Riviera in Gaza, Alabbar said on Wednesday rebuilding should be done by those responsible for the destruction.

"It's my philosophy ... that everybody should clean up his garbage," he told the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi.

Chief US diplomat Marco Rubio was due in Israel on Thursday, the latest Washington official to visit as President Donald Trump's administration kept up efforts to cement the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance warned during his own visit that the United States and its allies faced a tough task disarming Hamas and building a peaceful future for the Gaza Strip.

By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Most Americans - including 80% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans - think the U.S. should recognize Palestinian statehood, a sign that President Donald Trump's opposition to doing so is out of step with public opinion, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The six-day poll, which closed on Monday, found 59% of respondents backed U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state, while 33% were opposed and the rest were unsure or did not answer the question.

By Emilie Madi and Maya Gebeily

TYRE, Lebanon (Reuters) -Nearly a year after a truce was meant to bring calm to Lebanon's border with Israel, tens of thousands of people have not yet returned to ruined towns in the south, kept away by deadly Israeli strikes and slim prospects of rebuilding.

Among them, 50-year-old farmer Zeinab Mehdi, who fled her home in the border town of Naqoura last year when the war between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah intensified, joining more than a million people fleeing the south's hilly villages.