After years of behind-the-scenes activity in the Gaza Strip, Egypt is going public.

Since mediating a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza's ruling Hamas militant group, Egypt has sent crews to clear rubble and is promising to build vast new apartment complexes. Egyptian flags and billboards praising President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi have sprung up across the Palestinian territory.

Israeli police clashed with Palestinians in the flashpoint east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on Sunday, as a visit by a controversial far-right Jewish lawmaker inflamed tensions.

Hundreds took to the streets of a southern Syrian city on Friday to demand democracy and better living conditions in a rare protest inside regime-held areas, a war monitor said.

The head of an Arab party in Israel who made history last year by joining the governing coalition said he would not use the word "apartheid" to describe relations between Jews and Arabs within the country.

Amnesty International last week joined two other well-known human rights groups in saying that Israel's policies toward the Palestinians within its borders and in the occupied territories amounts to apartheid. Israel rejects those allegations as antisemitic, saying that, among other things, they ignore the rights and freedoms enjoyed by its Arab citizens.

The Islamic State is a growing threat to northeast Syria, and the group will again flourish unless immediate action is taken, the Kurdish-led region's security chief said in the wake of last month's deadly prison attack.

Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, said immediate security measures were taken to contain active IS sleeper cells, but the group is proving to be a resilient insurgency. The threat remains high, he said, despite the death of the group's leader in a U.S. commando operation last week.

Turkish spies thwarted a plot orchestrated by Iran to kill an Israeli-Turkish businessman based in Istanbul, a pro-government daily reported Friday.

Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) discovered a network of nine operatives dubbed an "Iran assassination team" plotting to kill Yair Geller, the Sabah daily reported.

Libyans found themselves with two prime ministers on Friday, raising the specter of renewed violence in a country where elites have ignored the wishes of citizens to choose their leaders, analysts say.

After weeks of maneuvering since December 24 elections were indefinitely postponed, the House of Representatives in the country's east on Thursday picked former interior minister and ex-fighter pilot Fathi Bashagha to replace interim prime minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah.

U.S. military officials say there could have been more civilian casualties than initially thought in the raid that killed the top Islamic State leader in Syria last week, but they believe any such deaths were caused by the militant's suicide bomb and were not at the hands of American forces.

Laying out a chronology of the raid by special operations forces, officials also said they cannot be certain that Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi detonated the bomb that killed him and his family at his home in the sleepy village of Atmeh near the Turkish border.

Libya found itself with two prime ministers Thursday, after its parliament named a rival to replace the existing unity government's chief Abdulhamid Dbeibah, threatening a new power struggle in the war-torn nation.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said Thursday that 12 people were injured by falling debris from an attempted drone attack on an airport in the southern Saudi region of Abha near the kingdom's border with Yemen.

The coalition statement said the people who were hurt included travelers and workers at the airport. Two of the injured were Saudi citizens, four were Bangladeshi residents and three were Nepali residents. There was also one person each from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and India hurt.