Less than three weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat beside President Joe Biden and marveled that a "historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia" seemed within reach — a diplomatic advance that he predicted could lead to lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Biden was equally optimistic, telling Netanyahu during their meeting in New York, "If you and I — 10 years ago — were talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia, I think we'd look at each other like, 'Who's been drinking what?'"

For Palestinians in Gaza, Israel's eyes are never very far away. Surveillance drones buzz constantly from the skies. The highly-secured border is awash with security cameras and soldiers on guard. Intelligence agencies work sources and cyber capabilities to draw out a bevy of information.

But Israel's eyes appeared to have been closed in the lead-up to an unprecedented onslaught by the militant Hamas group, which broke down Israeli border barriers and sent hundreds of militants into Israel to carry out a brazen attack that has killed hundreds and pushed the region toward conflict.

There will be only one winner in the war that has broken out between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. And it is neither Israel nor Hamas.

In an operation coined "the Al-Aqsa Storm," Hamas, whose formal name is the Islamic Resistance Movement, fired thousands of rockets into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters infiltrated Israel by land, sea and air. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed, more than 2,000 injured, and many taken hostage.

With its surprise attack against Israel, Hamas has violently shifted the world's eyes back to the Palestinians and dealt a severe blow to momentum to secure a landmark U.S.-brokered deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Iranian-backed Islamist militants who run the impoverished, blockaded Gaza Strip on Saturday fired thousands of rockets and infiltrated forces into Israel, 50 years after Arab states' assault on Israel during the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

For Republicans, it's a question with no clear answer: Who becomes House speaker after Kevin McCarthy?

It's not at all certain that any of the GOP candidates will be able to round up enough votes — 218, if all lawmakers are present and voting — to ascend to one of the most powerful positions in government, second in line to the presidency.

The Lebanese opposition has prepared a plan for resolving the Syrian refugee crisis that is based on two steps: distributing the refugees on Arab countries and halting the work of UNHCR (U.N. refugee agency) in Lebanon, media reports said.

UNHCR is “not only spending money to consolidate the presence of 850,000 refugees registered on its lists, but also on 900,000 unregistered (Syrian) migrants,” the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported on Thursday, quoting opposition sources.

The House of Representatives is entering uncharted territory after a far-right effort to remove fellow Republican Kevin McCarthy from the speakership succeeded thanks to support from Democrats.

A resolution — titled a motion to vacate — from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., passed Tuesday with the support of eight Republicans and all the Democrats present and voting. The vote made McCarthy the first speaker in history to be removed from office, a bitter humiliation that came after less than nine months on the job.

Flying above enemy lines, a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone sends a clear image back to soldiers hiding in a basement a few kilometers away: A Russian armored vehicle is idling along a key logistics route, looking like easy prey in the artillery-scarred green landscape.

Then, in a flash, the image disappears, and the drone operator's screen is replaced by a jumble of black and white pixels.

Tensions between Canada and India have escalated over the assassination of a Sikh independence advocate in June.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country was investigating credible allegations that Indian government agents were connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, but India has rejected the allegations as absurd.

Azerbaijan's launch of reportedly intense artillery firing in the Nagorno-Karabakh region on Tuesday raised fears that another full-scale conflict with Armenia could be underway, less than three years after a war that killed more than 6,000 people.

Nagorno-Karabakh, with a population of about 120,000, is an ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan that has been a flashpoint since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The region and sizable surrounding territories came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian military at the 1994 end of a separatist war. Azerbaijan regained the territories and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh itself in fighting in 2020.