Watching Sunday's World Cup final, Ahmed al-Salem was more emotional than most football fans when Qatar's emir placed a black and gold cloak over the shoulders of Argentina's victorious captain Lionel Messi.

The garment Messi wore as he lifted the football trophy was a $2,200 'bisht', a traditional gown worn by men for weddings, graduations and official events -- and it was made by Salem's family company.

The gesture has sparked international debate on social media over whether it was appropriate.

The United States plans a meeting early in 2023 between Israel and Arab nations that recognize it as it pushes the incoming right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu to show restraint, a US official said Tuesday.

Netanyahu is set to take office with the most right-wing government in Israel's history including figures from the extreme fringes who staunchly back expanding settlements in Palestinian areas.

A senior US official said the United States plans a meeting "probably in the first quarter" of 2023 of foreign ministers from the so-called Negev summit in March.

The United Nations on Tuesday named three women to lead a rights investigation into Iran's violent crackdown on women-led protests that have rocked the Islamic republic for more than three months.

Bangladesh Supreme Court lawyer Sara Hossain, Pakistani law professor Shaheen Sardar Ali and rights activist Viviana Krsticevic from Argentina will be the independent members of the fact-finding mission, UN Human Rights Council head Federico Villegas announced.

Hossain, a long-time human rights activist, will chair the investigation, the council presidency added.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday congratulated Qatar and his "friend" Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for hosting the World Cup and COP27, at the risk of drawing criticism at home.

"As we conclude a World Cup that is the first in the Arab world and that was held in Qatar, I congratulate them," he said at a Middle East summit at Sweimeh, a resort on the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan.

Palestinians on Tuesday held a general strike and demonstrations across the occupied West Bank following the death of a militant jailed by Israel and later diagnosed with cancer.

Israel's prison service announced early Tuesday the death of Nasser Abu Hamid in a Tel Aviv-area hospital, 20 years into his life sentence for murder and attempted murder.

Israel on Tuesday unveiled pilgrims' lamps and other finds from the so-called Tomb of Salome, a burial site named for a woman said to have assisted at the birth of Christ.

The tomb was discovered by grave robbers in what is now Lachish national park, west of Jerusalem, in the 1980s.

Subsequent excavations by archaeologists have uncovered a Jewish burial chamber dating back to the Roman period, that was taken over by a Christian chapel in the Byzantine era and was still drawing worshippers into the early Islamic period.

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi on Tuesday urged the release of Taraneh Alidoosti, who has starred in four of his films, after the actor's arrest for supporting the three-month protest movement.

Alidoosti, 38, was arrested on Saturday, official media said, after making a string of social media posts supporting the protests sparked by Mahsa Amini's death -- including removing her headscarf and condemning the execution of activists.

Tunisian police have arrested former prime minister Ali Larayedh, his Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party said Tuesday, accusing authorities of trying to divert attention from calls for President Kais Saied to quit.

The arrest of the Ennahdha number two comes just days after nearly 90 percent of voters boycotted an election to a toothless new parliament established by Saied following his seizure of sweeping powers in 2021.

Through weekly protests outside Israel's parliament, Nehama Teena has demanded an investigation into a prominent rabbi she accuses of rape and sought to break the code of silence surrounding sexual assault in the Orthodox world.

"I'm not asking that they take my word for it, only that they listen to me and stop preventing victims from speaking," the 38-year-old mother of five told AFP.

In August, Teena rattled Israel's Orthodox Jewish community with a Facebook post that accused 84-year-old rabbi Zvi Thau of raping her over several years, including when she was a minor.

A stretch of dirt next to a desert highway in Israel's south may not immediately seem an ideal spot, but for years it has attracted Bedouins weekly to enjoy horse racing.

There is no grandstand or fence separating the spectators' area from the track -- just some plastic tubing tied to posts.

But the Bedouins who gather there at sunrise most Fridays told AFP it suits them just fine.

They have been meeting at the venue in the Negev desert region to share a hobby they describe as a central part of their nomadic heritage.