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Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on Thursday denounced Israeli airstrikes on the Syrian capital, Damascus, as “reckless behavior,” Anadolu reports.

“Attacking the Presidential Palace in Damascus undermines the (Syrian) regime and doesn’t serve our strategic goals,” Yair Lapid told Israel’s public broadcaster KAN.

“It is a reckless behavior. The Middle East follows it and realizes that we believe laws do not apply to us,” he said.

Lapid…

Dozens of Druze crowded the Israeli-controlled side of the armistice line in the occupied Golan Heights on Thursday, hoping to catch a glimpse of relatives on the Syrian-held side who might try to cross the barbed-wire frontier.

Young men drove around the area near the de facto border, waving the Druze flag with its five colourful stripes representing the pillars of their Druze faith, an esoteric offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The area has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War,…

Slovenia announced on Thursday that it would ban two far-right Israeli ministers from entering in what authorities said was a first in the European Union.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will be declared “persona non grata,” the Slovenian government said in a statement, accusing them of inciting “extreme violence and serious violations of the human rights of Palestinians” with “their genocidal statements”.

In June, Australia, Canada, Britain,…

The Turkish and Syrian presidents on Thursday spoke over the phone and discussed the latest developments in Syria following Israel’s attacks, Turkiye’s Communications Directorate said, Anadolu reports.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his Syrian counterpart Ahmad al-Sharaa that Israel’s attacks on Syria are “unacceptable,” adding: “Israel’s aggression poses a threat to the entire region,” according to a directorate statement.

Noting…

Pope Leo XIV on Thursday renewed his call for “an immediate ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip and expressed his “profound hope” for “dialogue, reconciliation and lasting peace in the region,” following an Israeli attack on a Catholic church sheltering civilians, Anadolu reports.

The appeal came in a telegram signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin after the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza was hit during an Israeli military raid.

The…