By Alexander Cornwell

JERUSALEM, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates has drafted plans to build a compound to house thousands of displaced Palestinians in a part of south Gaza under Israeli military control, according to a map seen by Reuters and people briefed on the plans.

The planning map shows where the "UAE Temporary Emirates Housing Complex" would be constructed near Rafah, once a city of a quarter million people but now almost completely destroyed and depopulated by Israeli forces.

By Tim Cocks

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Activists behind a flotilla intercepted at sea last year by Israel while trying to bring aid to Gaza will try again this year, expecting more than twice as many boats carrying up to 1,000 medics, they said on Thursday.

The Israeli military halted the roughly 40 boats in the Global Sumud Flotilla last October as they attempted to reach blockaded Gaza, arresting Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and more than 450 other participants.

SAO PAULO, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday he is likely to travel to Washington in the first week of March for a meeting with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump.

Speaking in an interview with news outlet UOL, Lula said Brazil would be interested in being part of Trump's Board of Peace, provided discussions were limited to Gaza.

(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo; Writing by Isabel Teles)

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said that Washington and Moscow on Thursday agreed to reestablish high level military-to-military dialogue, following talks in Abu Dhabi, a move which could signal a move towards normalizing some ties between the United States and Russia.

The United States halted military-to-military communication with Moscow just before Russia invaded Ukraine. The conflict, which began in 2022, is the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

Iran and the United States are holding talks on Friday in Oman, with Tehran pushing to focus squarely on its nuclear programme, while Washington's demands go beyond that.

The two foes had held several rounds of Oman-mediated nuclear talks in 2025, but the Iran-Israel war, which saw the United States conduct strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, derailed diplomacy days before a meeting was due.

DUBLIN, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Ireland's top government lawyer has raised several "significant" legal and practical issues in long-awaited advice on whether planned curbs on trade with Israeli settlements should be extended to services, a junior minister said on Thursday.

Ireland has been preparing a law to curb trade with settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, facing pressure at home to widen the scope of the ban from goods to services, while Israel and the United States want the bill scrapped.

Famine is spreading in Sudan's western Darfur region, UN-backed experts warned on Thursday, as a grinding war between the army and paramilitary forces has left millions hungry, displaced and cut off from aid.

Since April 2023, the conflict between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands, displaced 11 million and triggered what the United Nations calls one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

By Tuvan Gumrukcu and Parisa Hafezi

ISTANBUL/ DUBAI, Feb 5 (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey is working hard to prevent U.S.-Iran tensions from tipping the Middle East into a new conflict, as the two adversaries signal that disagreement over Tehran’s missile arsenal threatens to torpedo a deal.

DOHA, Feb 5 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday that concerns about a further escalation in the conflict with Iran have characterised his talks during a trip to the Gulf region.

"In all my conversations yesterday and today, great concern has been expressed about a further escalation in the conflict with Iran," he said during a press conference in Doha.

He called on Iran to end what he called an aggression and enter into talks, saying Germany would do everything it can to de-escalate the situation and work towards stability in the region.

MOSCOW, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Thursday it did not want to waste time answering questions about unproven suggestions in Western media and by Poland's premier that late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein may have been some sort of Russian intelligence asset.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday that Warsaw would launch an investigation into what it said were possible links between Epstein and Russia's intelligence services, and into any potential impact on Poland.