Israel-Palestinian Conflict

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah met with a delegation led by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Beirut on Sunday to discuss cooperation, amid spiking violence in Israel from rocket barrages and terror attacks.

Six rockets were launched from southern Syria at the Golan Heights on Saturday night and early Sunday in two separate barrages hours apart, with three landing in Israeli territory, the military said.

The IDF struck sites belonging to the Hamas terrorist movement in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon early Friday morning after dozens of rockets were fired towards Israel in recent days and as dozens more were fired overnight from Gaza.

Southern Israel woke up with air raid sirens after Palestinian militants fired a barrage of rockets early Thursday as the nation prepared for Pesach, the Biblical Passover holiday.

A statement Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made during a House hearing last week on Iran’s nuclear program alarmed Israeli defense and intelligence officials to the point they protested and asked the Biden administration for clarifications, four Israeli officials told Axios.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said Wednesday that while security cooperation with the US is beneficial, it is not “essential” and Israel knows how to act on its own.

Israel carried out air strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning after 16 rockets were fired at Israeli towns from the enclave hours earlier, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports. The escalation comes on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday, which this year coincides with the Islamic religious month of Ramadan.

On April 2, 2023, Israel reportedly attacked several targets in Syria’s Homs province associated with the Syrian army and Iran-backed militias. Syrian state media reported that five military personnel were injured in the attack.

Syria’s foreign ministry on Tuesday warned that Israel risked dragging the region toward “total escalation” after another overnight airstrike near Damascus attributed to the Jewish state.

Israel has launched a fresh round of airstrikes on the Damascus area as loud blasts rattled the Syrian capital, the country’s state media reported overnight Tuesday, in the fourth such attack attributed to Israel in less than a week.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II expressed on Sunday a commitment to “safeguard” Jerusalem’s holy sites, in a meeting in Amman with Muslim and Christian religious leaders from the city.

The IDF confirmed that the drone that invaded Israeli airspace from Syria and that it brought down on Sunday was Iranian.

Tens of thousands Israelis gathered Saturday for mass demonstrations in the streets of Tel Aviv against the judicial overhaul despite compromise talks. The protesters who have taken the streets for the 13th straight week also blocked both routes of the Ayalon Highway in the city, as Israel Police had to deploy water cannons to clear it.

Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority has petitioned the Environmental Protection Ministry to allocate NIS 20 million ($5.6 million) a year to help protect endangered griffon vultures, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports. Vultures play a vital role in keeping the environment safe and clean.

The Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes in the Syrian capital Damascus shortly after midnight on Friday, for the second night in a row, according to Syria’s state-run media outlet.

Loud explosions were heard in the Damascus area overnight Thursday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

Mass protests against the Israeli government’s controversial judicial overhaul plans will likely continue unabated because Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has lost the trust of the people, analysts predict.