U.S. President Joe Biden will make history next month with a direct flight between Israel and Saudi Arabia where he will meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, abandoning efforts to ostracize the oil kingdom's de facto leader over the murder of a dissident.

The White House ended weeks of speculation Tuesday, announcing that Biden will travel to Israel, the Palestinian West Bank and Saudi Arabia from July 13-16.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has visited Kuwait and spoken to the small, oil-rich nation's crown prince, state media reported.

"We are on this necessary tour to reactivate ties of work, cooperation, commonality, solidarity, brotherhood," Maduro said from Kuwait in a televised conversation with his collaborators in Caracas.

Kuwait said Tuesday its 81-year-old crown prince was resting after experiencing what it described as "minor discomfort."

The two-sentence story from the state-run KUNA news agency did not elaborate on what ailed Sheikh Meshal Al Ahmed Al Jaber.

Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official increasingly seen as a successor to the 86-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas, says relations with Israel have gotten so bad that Palestinian leaders cannot go on with business as usual.

But even if they are serious this time around, they have few options. And they appear unlikely to do anything that undermines their own limited power in parts of the occupied West Bank, which largely stems from their willingness to cooperate with Israel.

An Israeli legislator came under fire on Tuesday for saying that if he could push a button to make all Palestinians disappear, he would.

Deputy Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana made the remarks to high school students in a West Bank settlement. In his comments, which were caught on video, he was explaining his view that clashing narratives between Israelis and Palestinians were a major obstacle to peace. He appeared to be making the point that Israelis and Palestinians had no choice but to find a way to live together.

The president of the Brookings Institution has resigned amid a federal investigation into whether he illegally lobbied on behalf of the wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.

Retired Gen. John Allen wrote in a letter to the think tank that he was leaving with a "heavy heart" but did not offer a direct explanation.

Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Monday urged citizens in Turkey to leave "as soon as possible" over threats that Iranian operatives are actively planning attacks on Israelis in Istanbul. 

Israel might suffer from a catastrophic blast Like the Beirut port explosion, an expert in hazardous materials has warned.

"Israel has an acute problem of ammonium nitrate factories located next to residential areas," Danny Kronenberg said, in remarks published Sunday in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi were headed to Israel Monday as the EU seeks to wean itself off Russian fossil fuel imports. 

Von der Leyen and Draghi are due to hold energy talks in Israel, which has turned from a natural gas importer into an exporter in recent years because of major offshore finds.

Libyan officials have returned to the Egyptian capital for a third round of talks on constitutional amendments for elections. The North African nation once again finds itself at a political impasse with two rival administrations claiming legitimacy.

The talks in Cairo come on the heels of clashes between rival militias that caused residents of the Libyan capital of Tripoli to panic and revived nightmares of previous bouts of fighting in the chaos-stricken nation.