The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a law Monday that would have allowed U.S. passport holders born in the disputed city of Jerusalem to record their country of birth as "Israel." 

After lengthy deliberation, the court decided that the 2002 law breaches the president's sole right to determine U.S. policy in questions of international sovereignty.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dominated Turkey for over a decade first as premier and now as president, has suffered the worst election setback of his career in legislative polls amid increasing controversy over his polarising rule.

A far-right Israeli minister on Sunday called for the international community to endorse his country's 1981 annexation of Syria's Golan Heights, where he called for increased Jewish settlement.

"I call on the international community... to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan," Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, said in a speech at a time of increasing world pressure on Israel over the occupied West Bank and Arab east Jerusalem.

Israel has invited the head of France's Orange group to visit and explain his plan to review ties with a local telecoms firm that has stirred a boycott row, a government official said Sunday.

The telecoms giant reacted swiftly, saying it welcomed the invitation and that its CEO, Stephane Richard, would travel to Israel "soon", as both sides seek to defuse the row.

A second Lebanese man was detained in Cyprus for five days in connection with the seizure of five tons of possible bomb-making material, authorities said Sunday.

The 62-year-old appeared before a district court in the resort city of Larnaca where his hearing was held behind closed doors for "security reasons".

Israeli warplanes struck Gaza early Sunday for the second time in three days after cross-border rocket fire by an Islamic extremist group which is locked in a power struggle with Hamas.

It was the third time Israel had staged retaliatory air strikes on the war torn Gaza Strip in the past fortnight after three instances of rocket fire, all of which were claimed by Salafist extremists loosely allied with the Islamic State group.

Hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians marched Friday in support of a West Bank village slated for demolition, a plan they said epitomizes the Israeli occupation.

The march in Susya, southeast of Hebron, took place on the anniversary of what the Palestinians call the Naksa (Setback), when Israel's occupation of the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day war displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Human Rights Watch on Thursday urged U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to add Israel to an annual "List of Shame" of children's rights violators, after more than 500 children were killed in the war in Gaza last year.

The U.S.-based rights group called on Ban to resist pressure from Israel and the United States to keep the Israeli Defense Forces off the list due to be released next week.

The Israeli army would seek to evacuate more than a million civilians in southern Lebanon before striking Hizbullah targets in the area, a senior military official has said.

The source, who was not identified, told the Jerusalem Post daily published on Thursday that large-scale Hizbullah rocket and missile fire would be met with civilian evacuations, massive Israeli aerial strikes, followed by a ground offensive.

Israeli warplanes struck militant targets in the Gaza Strip early Thursday after Palestinian rockets hit the Israeli south for the second time in 10 days, sources on both sides said.

Palestinian security sources said the strikes targeted three training bases in Gaza City that were used by Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, as well as a fourth in the southern city of Khan Yunis.