Police carried out pre-dawn swoops Friday on students protesting the war in Gaza at two prestigious US universities, in the latest unrest on campuses across the country. And late Thursday, police broke up a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Calgary in western Canada using tear gas. The police action at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) near Boston in the northeast resulted in around 10 arrests, according to university president Sally Kornbluth, who said she had "no choice" but to dismantle the "high-risk flashpoint ..read more

Jerusalem native Bashar Murad was determined to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest, but with no option to represent Palestinians, he opted to try his luck singing for Iceland. "I'm an artist, I make pop music, and Eurovision is like the Olympics of pop music", the up-and-coming pop singer told AFP in a recent telephone interview. Unlike Israel, a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) that oversees Eurovision and therefore can participate in the competition, Palestinians are not granted a spot ..read more

By a significant majority, the UN General Assembly recommended the Security Council reconsider the Palestinian bid for full membership ..read more

Israeli leaders, including from the political center, were surprised and disappointed by President Joe Biden's threat to withhold the delivery of offensive arms to Israel in the event of a large-scale Rafah operation ..read more

Israel launched fresh strikes in the Gaza Strip Friday after negotiators pursuing a long-stalled truce agreement left talks in Cairo without having secured a deal. AFP journalists in the Gaza Strip early Friday witnessed artillery strikes on Rafah on the territory's southern border with Egypt, while witnesses reported air strikes and fighting in Gaza City further north ..read more

Israel qualified for this weekend's Eurovision song contest grand finale, defying thousands of demonstrators marching on Thursday in host country Sweden over the Gaza war. Singer Eden Golan performed her song "Hurricane" in Thursday's second semi-final in front of 9,000 spectators at the host city's Malmo Arena and booked her place in the final thanks to viewers' votes. Israel now joins the group of 26 nations that will compete on Saturday in a contest watched around the world by millions of lovers of the pop sounds -- and kitschy shows -- that Eurovision promises each year ..read more

After a US veto foiled the Palestinians' drive for full UN membership, the General Assembly is expected on Friday to grant them some additional rights in the global body -- a symbolic win that has already irked Israel. With the war in Gaza raging, the Palestinians in April relaunched a request dating back to 2011 to become full members of the United Nations, where their current status is a "non-member observer state." To succeed, the initiative needed a Security Council green light and then a two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly ..read more

Days after the October 7 attack, Joe Biden walked onto the tarmac in Tel Aviv and offered a warm bear hug to Benjamin Netanyahu, a sign both of solid support for Israel and the US president's long, if not uncomplicated, relationship with the prime minister. Seven months into the devastating conflict, the gentle approach is over. Biden, who memorably once wrote to Netanyahu "I love you," has for the first time raised the ultimate leverage the United States has on Israel -- military aid, which totals $3 billion a year ..read more

The fresh tensions between the two regional powers seem to be stemming from a Turkish directive sent to companies that were doing business with Israel to introduce a three-month adjustment period for implementation of the trade ban ..read more

After months spent warning Israel against launching an assault in Rafah, Biden said such an operation would result in the US blocking arms shipments to the Jewish state ..read more