Just last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted a new era of peace and prosperity in the Middle East, based on growing acceptance of Israel within the region.

Today, with the Israel-Hamas war in its fourth week, that vision is in tatters.

The World Bank reported Monday that oil prices could be pushed into "uncharted waters" if the violence between Israel and Hamas intensifies, which could result in increased food prices worldwide.

The World Bank's Commodity Markets Outlook found that while the effects on oil prices should be limited if the conflict doesn't widen, the outlook "would darken quickly if the conflict were to escalate."

A Lebanese judge has decided to evict former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn from his luxury home, a judicial official said Saturday, four years after an investment firm accused him of "trespassing."

Premarket trading is mixed on Wall Street, but oil prices are moving higher after U.S. fighter jets launched airstrikes early Friday on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Israeli military said its troops and tanks had briefly entered Gaza for a second time.

Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2% before the bell.

Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies said its revenue edged higher in the first three quarters of the year, even as it grappled with U.S. sanctions that have hindered both its sales and its purchases of advanced technology.

The Shenzhen-headquartered firm said Friday that it generated 456.6 billion yuan ($62.4 billion) in revenue for the first nine months of the year, an increase of 2.4% compared to the same period last year.

The European Central Bank is ready to leave interest rates unchanged Thursday for the first time in over a year as the Israel-Hamas war spreads even more gloom over already downbeat prospects for Europe's economy.

It would be the bank's first meeting with no change after a torrid pace of 10 straight increases dating to July 2022 that pushed its key rate to a record-high 4%. The ECB would join the U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of England and others in holding borrowing costs steady — albeit at the highest levels in years — as inflation has eased.

Economic crises are rippling through the countries bordering Israel, raising the possibility of a chain reaction from the war with Hamas that further worsens the financial health and political stability of Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan and creates problems well beyond.

Each of the three countries is up against differing economic pressures that led the International Monetary Fund to warn in a September report that they could lose their "sociopolitical stability." That warning came shortly before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering a war that could easily cause economic chaos that President Joe Biden and the European Union would likely need to address.

The raging war between Israel and Hamas is already battering the economies of nearby countries, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund told a Saudi investor forum on Wednesday.

Israel's neighbors are feeling the effects, especially those that rely on tourism, Kristalina Georgieva said at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Tensions from the war in Gaza could help accelerate the move away from planet-warming fossil fuels like oil and gas and toward renewable energy, electric cars and heat pumps — similar to how sharp increases in the price of oil during the 1970s unleashed efforts to conserve fuel, the head of the International Energy Agency said.

"Today we are again facing a crisis in the Middle East that could once again shock oil markets," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. That comes on top of the stress on energy markets from Russia's cutoff of natural gas to Europe over its invasion of Ukraine, he said.

For months after Ukraine's Western allies limited sales of Russian oil to $60 per barrel, the price cap was still largely symbolic. Most of Moscow's crude — its main moneymaker — cost less than that.

But the cap was there in case oil prices rose — and would keep the Kremlin from pocketing extra profits to fund its war in Ukraine. That time has now come, putting the price cap to its most serious test so far and underlining its weaknesses.