The contempt case against al-Jadeed TV network and journalist Karma al-Khayat, accused of obstructing justice, kicked off on Thursday at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague.

Al-Khayat and al-Jadeed S.A.L. are charged with two counts of contempt and obstruction of justice under rule 60 of the Tribunal’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence.

Israeli Jews stood in silence as sirens wailed across the country on Thursday marking Holocaust memorial day and 70 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

Traffic came to a halt and pedestrians stood at attention for two minutes as the sirens rang out.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized on Israel's annual remembrance of the Holocaust Wednesday to compare arch-foe Iran to Hitler's Germany.

"As the Nazis sought to stamp out civilization and to set the master race to rule across the earth... while wiping out the Jewish people, so does Iran seek to control the region, spread outwards and destroy the Jewish state," he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tasked two weeks ago with forming Israel's next government, fell short Wednesday of striking a coalition with rightwing partners after reports emerged of talks with a center-left party.

Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party won Israel's March 17 election but without a majority, and President Reuven Rivlin gave him until April 22 to form a coalition, as stipulated by the law.

Israel welcomed on Wednesday a compromise deal struck in Washington giving U.S. lawmakers a say on any final agreement on Iran's nuclear program.

Israel is bitterly opposed to the emerging agreement between Iran and world powers that would rein in but not halt Tehran's nuclear activities and has rallied its allies in the U.S. Congress in a bid to block it.

Vandals have smashed gravestones at a Maronite Christian cemetery in a village near Israel's northern border with Lebanon, Israeli police said on Wednesday.

Police opened an investigation after receiving a report about damage to a number of graves at a Christian cemetery in the village of Kufr Bir'im, spokeswoman Luba Samri said, indicating that the tombstones were "broken and displaced".

Possible skeletons in Iran's closet -- the subject of talks in Tehran on Wednesday -- could yet spook the historic Iran nuclear deal, experts say.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog conducts regular inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities and these will be increased if world powers and Iran can finalize their outline agreement by a June 30 deadline.

Israeli security forces arrested 29 Hamas activists overnight during a major sweep in the northern West Bank, the army said on Wednesday.

A Palestinian security source confirmed that "around 30 people" had been detained in and around the northern city of Nablus, most of whom were Hamas members.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed Israel's "grave concerns" Tuesday over Moscow's decision to lift a ban on supplying Iran with sophisticated S-300 air defense missile systems.

In a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he warned that such a step "would only increase Iran's aggressiveness in the region and would undermine the security of the Middle East," his office said.

Israel began Tuesday to allow Palestinian medical staff working in the country to enter from the West Bank with their own vehicles, a first in 15 years, defense ministry body said.

COGAT, the coordinating body for Israeli government policy in the Palestinian territories, said it had "approved for Palestinian doctors who work shifts and other jobs that require heightened responsiveness in hospitals in Israel to enter Israel with their vehicles."