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.
Leaders from the Middle East and beyond pledged Tuesday to support Iraq's "stability" and called for Baghdad to distance itself from foreign influence, at a summit aimed at helping resolve regional crises.
Iraq has been caught for years in a delicate balancing act between its two main allies, the United States and Iran, and Baghdad only recently arrived at a fragile compromise government after a year of political stalemate.
A Libyan court on Monday sentenced 17 people to death after finding them guilty of joining the Islamic State group and carrying out atrocities in its name, the prosecution said.
The Tripoli court also sentenced two people to life in prison and 14 others to lesser jail sentences, it said.
They had been found guilty of other IS-linked acts and of having "attacked the state and social peace" as well as "armed violence" in the western city of Sabratha and surroundings, it said in a statement.
Tunisia's electoral board revised the turnout in parliamentary elections slightly upwards to 11.2 percent on Monday, a poll that opposition groups said undermined President Kais Saied.
The ISIE electoral authority had initially announced participation of 8.8 percent after the close of voting for a parliament largely stripped of any power, the final pillar in Saied's overhaul of the political system in the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings.
