Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent much of his long career casting Israel's Arab minority as a potential fifth column led by terrorist sympathizers, is now openly courting their support as he seeks reelection in the country's fourth vote in less than two years.

Few Arabs are likely to heed his call, underscoring the desperation of Netanyahu's political somersault. But the relative absence of incitement against the community in this campaign and the potential breakup of an Arab party alliance could dampen turnout — to Netanyahu's advantage. He might even pick up just enough votes to swing a tight election.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged Israel to "halt and reverse" its decision last week to build 800 new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

After sprinting ahead in the race to inoculate its population against the coronavirus, Israel has struck a deal with Pfizer, promising to share vast troves of medical data with the international drug giant in exchange for the continued flow of its hard-to-get vaccine.

Proponents say the deal could allow Israel to become the first country to vaccinate most of its population, while providing valuable research that could help the rest of the world. But critics say the deal raises major ethical concerns, including possible privacy violations and a deepening of the global divide that enables wealthy countries to stockpile vaccines as poorer populations, including Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, have to wait longer to be inoculated.

Israel's military said Monday its fighter planes struck Hamas facilities in the Gaza Strip after Palestinians fired rockets at the Jewish state.

Lebanon filed a complaint with the Security Council over Israel’s nabbing of a Lebanese shepherd, Hassan Zahra, two days ago in the border area of Kfarshouba, LBCI reported Thursday.

A leading Israeli human rights group has begun describing both Israel and its control of the Palestinian territories as a single "apartheid" regime, using an explosive term that the country's leaders and their supporters vehemently reject.

In a report released Tuesday, B'Tselem says that while Palestinians live under different forms of Israeli control in the occupied West Bank, blockaded Gaza, annexed east Jerusalem and within Israel itself, they have fewer rights than Jews in the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

A senior general in the Northern Command of the Israeli army reportedly said he expects “Hizbullah party” to initiate an attack against Israel in the “near future”, the Saudi Asharq al-Awsat reported on Saturday.

Israel has targeted a number of sites in Gaza after Palestinian militants fired rockets into the south of the country, the army said Saturday.

Israel's parliament dissolved on Wednesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fractured ruling coalition failed to pass a budget, triggering a fourth election in two years and renewing an unprecedented political crisis. 

The first Israel-Morocco direct commercial flight landed in the North African kingdom Tuesday to mark the latest U.S.-brokered diplomatic normalization deal between the Jewish state and an Arab country.