Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will host Jordan's King Abdullah II for a summit in Cairo on Thursday, the presidency said, as violence in the neighboring Gaza Strip spirals.

The Jordanian royal court said in a statement that the two leaders would "discuss means to stop the Israeli aggression on Gaza".

The conflict between Hamas and Israel is both an opportunity and a risk for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been mired in pressing his invasion of Ukraine for the past 19 months.

Here is an overview of five of Putin's objectives that are expected to shape his foreign policy:

The U.S. and Israel are discussing what to do in case Hezbollah joined the war.

U.S. President Joe Biden said he hasn't promised Israel that U.S. forces would fight alongside Israeli troops in response to any attack by Hezbollah against Israel.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has agreed to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza to allow a first batch of around 20 humanitarian aid trucks through, U.S. President Joe Biden said.

"He agreed to... let up to 20 trucks through to begin with," Biden told reporters after calling Sisi from Air Force One while returning from a visit to Israel, where he was showing solidarity over the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Saudi Arabia has called for all citizens to leave Lebanon "immediately" as tensions mount along Lebanon's southern border with Israel.

The Gulf kingdom's embassy in Beirut said it was "closely following the developments" in southern Lebanon, where at least 18 people have been killed in exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Palestinian militants on one side and Israel on the other.

The Israeli government struck a Syrian military position in the war-torn country's south, a war monitoring NGO said.

"Sounds of explosions rang out in the province of Quneitra after an Israeli strike against a Syrian army position," said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a vast network of sources in the country.

A Gaza hospital strike that killed at least 500 people has unleashed a torrent of condemnation across the Arab world, with even allies blaming Israel for the attack, despite its denials.

The denunciations coincided with angry rallies in Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, Yemen, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, Iran and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with more planned on Wednesday following calls for a "day of rage" across the region.

U.S. President Joe Biden vowed to show the world that the U.S. stands in solidarity with Israelis during his visit there Wednesday, and offered an assessment that the deadly explosion at a Gaza Strip hospital apparently was not carried out by the Israeli military.

"Based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you," Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting. But Biden said there were "a lot of people out there" who weren't sure what caused the blast.

U.S. President Joe Biden landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday as Middle East anger flared after hundreds were killed when a rocket struck a hospital in war-torn Gaza.

Biden has expressed "iron-clad" support for Israel in its war against Hamas over the October 7 attacks and was welcomed on the tarmac by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A strike on a Gaza hospital compound which health officials there said killed at least 500 people has provoked outrage and condemnation from around the world, with protests on the streets of Amman, Tunis, Beirut and Tehran.

Hamas called Tuesday’s hospital blast “a horrific massacre,” saying it was caused by an Israeli strike.