Argentina's President Javier Milei delighted his Israeli hosts but upset Hamas on Tuesday by announcing moves to shift his country's embassy to Jerusalem, almost as soon as he touched down.
Milei had barely set foot on the tarmac at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv when he told Israel's awaiting Foreign Minister Israel Katz: "My plan is to move the embassy to west Jerusalem."
US lawmakers voted Tuesday to reject a standalone Israel aid bill denounced by critics as a "cynical" bid to thwart a cross-party border security and foreign assistance package that would include cash for war-torn Ukraine.
Republicans in the House of Representatives scheduled the vote after the Democratic-led Senate released a bipartisan bill Sunday pairing billions of dollars for Israel and Ukraine with some of the strictest immigration curbs in decades.
Hamas has projected a united front since its October 7 attack sparked war with Israel, but experts say divisions within the Palestinian movement have weighed on efforts towards a ceasefire.
In self-exile in Doha, the head of Hamas's political bureau Ismail Haniyeh is talking openly with Qatari authorities and mediators.
Meanwhile the group's leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, is in hiding after Israel vowed to pursue the presumed brains behind the October attack to the death.
Rotating cameras planted on a rooftop terrace "follow our every move", said Hebron resident Umm Nasser, protesting intensified Israeli surveillance of her occupied West Bank city since the start of the Gaza war.
"Psychologically, I'm exhausted," admitted the 55-year-old Palestinian woman.
She lives above the Abu al-Rish checkpoint, the site of frequent violence at the heart of historical Hebron.
Saudi Arabia drew 27 million foreign tourists in 2023 and has more than doubled its goal for the end of the decade, an official said on Tuesday.
The announcement came less than five years after the Gulf kingdom fully opened up to tourism and as fears persist that the ongoing Israel-Hamas war could engulf the wider region.
"We have reached 100 million tourists this year, 77 million from home, 27 million from abroad, over 100 million," Tourism Minister Ahmed Al Khateeb said at a conference organised by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, describing the 2023 figures.
Turkish police on Tuesday shot dead two assailants from a leftist organisation, branded "terrorists" by authorities, who attacked a security checkpoint outside Istanbul's main court, killing one person and injuring five, officials said.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said the assailants were members of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) -- a fringe leftist group that has staged periodic attacks in Turkey since the 1980s.
The DHKP-C issued no initial claim of responsibility.
Israel on Tuesday said it was examining Hamas's response to a plan to halt nearly four months of fighting in Gaza, after key mediator Qatar said the Palestinian militants had given a "positive" reply to the proposed agreement.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his fifth tour of the region since the war broke out in October, arrived in Israel to discuss what he called an "essential" agreement.
The last time six-year-old Hind Rajab was heard from, she was surrounded by dead relatives and trapped in the family's car after it came under fire in war-ravaged Gaza City.
"She was scared, freaking out, and was wounded in her back, her hand and her foot," said her grandfather, Baha Hamada, one of the last people to speak to the girl on the phone.
"She kept asking me to come and get her," Hamada added, weeping uncontrollably as he recalled the heart-wrenching call.
Argentina's libertarian President Javier Milei left Monday on a trip to Israel, which he sees as a key ally, and the Vatican where he will meet with Pope Francis.
The 53-year-old Milei, an outsider who rode a wave of fury against Argentina's traditional parties to win power, left on a commercial flight accompanied by his sister Karina, who is his closest aide, and Foreign Minister Diana Mondino.
Yemen's internationally-recognised government Monday named foreign minister Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak as the new prime minister in a surprise appointment that analysts say will likely anger the country's Iran-backed Huthi rebels.
Bin Mubarak replaces Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed at a time of rising tensions in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country following a spate of Red Sea attacks by Huthi rebels which have prompted retaliatory strikes by the Unites States and Britain.
