Israel issued a tender for the construction of nearly 1,000 additional settler homes in the occupied West Bank, an anti-settlement watchdog said Monday.

Peace Now says the development of 974 new housing units would allow the population of the Efrat settlement to expand by 40% and further block the development of the nearby Palestinian city of Bethlehem. Hagit Ofran, who leads the group's settlement monitoring, said construction can begin after the contracting process and issuing of permits, which could take another year at least.

Top Russian officials will hold talks with U.S. counterparts on restoring ties, negotiating a peaceful settlement to the war in Ukraine and preparing a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, the Kremlin said Monday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov will fly to the Saudi capital later in the day to take part in the talks set for Tuesday.

Israel's security cabinet was set to discuss on Monday the next phase of the ceasefire with Hamas, as top U.S. diplomat Marco Rubio began a visit to Saudi Arabia where he will push Donald Trump's proposal for a U.S. takeover of Gaza.

Rubio travelled to Riyadh from Israel, where he kicked off his first Middle East trip as Trump's secretary of state.

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said in a televised speech Sunday that Israel "must withdraw from all of the Lebanese territory that it has occupied" on Feb. 18.

A woman was killed and several other people wounded Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on a group of residents attempting to return to the village of Houla in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese state-run news agency reported.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the incident, which comes two days before the deadline for implementation of a ceasefire agreement that ended the latest war between Israel and Hezbollah in late November, including a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.

Interior Minister Ahmad al-Hajjar said 26 people were arrested after protesters attacked a convoy transporting U.N. peacekeepers to Beirut airport on Friday, injuring a top commander.

Ahmad Hajjar, speaking after a security meeting on Saturday, condemned the attacks and said the investigation is ongoing, with detainees being questioned to release the innocent and prosecute those responsible.

Hezbollah and its ally the Amal Movement appeared to be scrambling to distance themselves from Friday's attack on UNIFIL vehicles near Beirut's airport.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV said in a statement posted on its social media accounts that “unruly elements caused chaos with suspicious objectives on the Beirut airport road.”

The U.S. representative on a committee overseeing the ceasefire agreement that ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war said Friday that “significant progress” had been made ahead of a looming deadline to implement all the terms of the deal.

However, Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers' statement appeared to leave some ambiguity on whether Israel would withdraw its forces from all of southern Lebanon by the ceasefire's Feb. 18 deadline, saying only that he was confident “all population centers in the Southern Litani Area” would be back under Lebanese control by then.

Thousands of supporters gathered in downtown Beirut Friday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination, which comes amid seismic regional political shifts.

The ousting of Bashar Assad in December after 54 years of family rule in Syria marked the fall of a government long accused of orchestrating Hariri's assassination and other political killings in Lebanon.

Western allies and Arab countries are gathering in Paris on Thursday for an international conference on Syria to discuss the country's future after the fall of former Syrian president Bashar Assad and amid uncertainty over the United States' commitment to the region.

It's the third conference on Syria since Assad was ousted in December, and the first since President Donald Trump's administration took over in the U.S.