At its premiere, a powerful new Gaza film at the Venice Film Festival sparked 23 minutes of sustained applause. But the next day hate emails flooded in, the director said Friday.

"The Voice of Hind Rajab" from French-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania is a strong contender for the festival's Golden Lion to be awarded Saturday.

The Arab League has said that peaceful coexistence in the Middle East cannot be achieved without a Palestinian state and an end to what it described as Israel's "hostile practices".

In a resolution submitted by Egypt and Saudi Arabia and adopted on Thursday, the League said that "the failure to reach a just solution to the Palestinian cause and the hostile practices of the occupying power" remain major obstacles to "peaceful coexistence" in the region.

Cabinet on Friday welcomed the Lebanese Army's weapons monopolization plan and decided to keep its details confidential while asking the army to submit monthly reports on its implementation, Information Minister Paul Morcos said after a key session that witnessed a walkout by all five Shiite ministers.

“The army will begin implementing the plan according to its available and limited capabilities,” Morcos added.

A spokesman for the Kremlin said Friday that Western countries "cannot" provide security guarantees for Ukraine, according to remarks reported by Russian state media.

"Can foreign, especially European and American military contingents, provide and guarantee security for Ukraine? Definitely not, they cannot," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state news agency RIA Novosti.

The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Hamas released footage on Friday purporting to show two hostages seized on October 7, 2023 alive in Gaza City late last month.

The video shows one hostage in a car being driven through a neighborhood with destroyed buildings, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to carry out a planned military offensive to conquer Gaza City.

The government is set to discuss on Friday an army plan to disarm Hezbollah, which the Iran-backed group opposes, accusing the cabinet of playing into the hands of Israel and the United States.

In August, under heavy U.S. pressure and fearing Israel would intensify its strikes, the government ordered the army to draw up a plan for disarming Hezbollah by the end of the year.

Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon killed at least four people on Wednesday, the health ministry and state media said, after a morning Israeli drone attack on United Nations peacekeepers.

Israel regularly bombs Lebanon despite a November ceasefire that ended over a year of hostilities with Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Israel estimates that its imminent offensive on Gaza City would displace one million Palestinians, a senior military official said Wednesday, as Gaza's civil defense reported dozens killed across the territory.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli protestors took to the streets to call for a truce and hostage release deal after nearly two years of war.

Israel's defense minister vowed Thursday to inflict the biblical 10 plagues of Egypt on Yemen's Houthi rebels after they stepped up their missile attacks against Israel.

NATO chief Mark Rutte said Thursday that Russia did not have a veto on whether Western powers can deploy troops to Ukraine as part of security guarantees if a truce is reached.