Spotlight
Israel said Monday it is "interested" in striking peace agreements with neighboring Lebanon and Syria, a potentially historic shift in the region after decades of war and animosity.
With Syria under new leadership after the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement weakened, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told journalists his government wanted more normalization agreements with Arab countries.

With the Iran-Israel war opening up a new road for the Mideast, Syria and Lebanon need to reach peace agreements with Israel, the U.S. special envoy to Syria said Sunday.
"President (Ahmad) al-Sharaa has indicated that he doesn’t hate Israel... and that he wants peace on that border. I think that will also happen with Lebanon. It’s a necessity to have an agreement with Israel," Tom Barrack said in an interview with Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu.

The Lebanese response to U.S. envoy Tom Barrack’s paper is based on the “step-for-step” principle, “contrary to the U.S. envoy’s paper which calls on the Lebanese side to be handed over Hezbollah’s arms as a gateway for U.S. pressure on Israel to withdraw from the South,” Lebanese officials told Al-Jadeed TV.

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said in a Ashoura commemorations televised speech overnight that the "ongoing aggression" by Israel "must not be allowed to continue."

Israeli drones fired two missiles at dawn Sunday at two homes in the southern border towns of Aita al-Shaab and Ramyeh, causing material damage, the state-run National News Agency reported.

U.S. President Donald Trump has reiterated his support for Lebanon.

Syria said Friday that authorities had seized some three million pills of the illicit stimulant captagon after clashes with a drug trafficking network near the Lebanese border.

Four people were wounded in an overnight Israeli drone strike on a house in the southern town of Shaqra.
The strike came after a woman was killed and 25 other people wounded in Israeli strikes earlier in the day in the country's south, as the Israeli army blamed Hezbollah munitions for the death.

Israel said Friday it didn't bomb any residential building in Nabatieh after a woman was killed and 20 other people were wounded as Israel’s air force carried out intense airstrikes on mountains overlooking the city of Nabatieh.
Shortly afterward, the apartment building was hit in the nearby city of Nabatieh, resulting in the death of a woman. Twenty other people were wounded.

Cabinet will convene Friday at the Grand Serail to discuss an agenda of 17 articles, while the judicial and financial appointments are still hinging on the conditions of Speaker Nabih Berri, media reports said.
