A legal battle over whether Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza amounts to genocide opens Thursday at the United Nations' top court with preliminary hearings into South Africa's call for judges to order an immediate suspension of Israel's military actions. Israel stringently denies the genocide allegation.

The case, that is likely to take years to resolve, strikes at the heart of Israel's national identity as a Jewish state created in the aftermath of the Nazi genocide in the Holocaust.

An Israeli delegation landed in Cairo on Wednesday for a new round of talks with Egypt on a possible swap of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, an Egyptian official said.

Egypt, the Gulf nation of Qatar and the United States have served as mediators between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for almost 17 years. Israel has vowed to crush Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 attack in which the militants killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 250 hostages.

Security camera video from a West Bank village shows a young man standing in a central square when he is suddenly shot and drops to the ground. Two others rushing to his aid are also hit, leaving a 17-year-old dead, moments before Israeli military jeeps roll in.

An Associated Press review of the video and interviews with the two wounded survivors showed Israeli soldiers opened fire on the three when they did not appear to pose a threat. One of the wounded Palestinians was shot a second time after he got up and tried to hop away.

U.S. top diplomat Antony Blinken will make a surprise visit to Bahrain Wednesday, a State Department official said, the latest leg of a crisis tour of the Middle East.

After meeting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Blinken will fly to Bahrain, home base of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, for talks with King Hamad on preventing a regional escalation of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Yemen's Houthi rebels fired one of their largest barrage of drones and missiles targeting shipping in the Red Sea, forcing the U.S. and British navies to shoot down the projectiles in a major naval engagement, authorities said Wednesday. No damage was immediately reported.

The attack by the Iranian-backed Houthis came despite of a planned United Nations Security Council vote later Wednesday to potentially condemn and demand an immediate halt to the attacks by the rebels, who say their assaults are aimed at stopping Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday about reforming the Palestinian self-rule government, as part of U.S. efforts to rally the region behind postwar plans for Gaza that also include concrete steps toward a Palestinian state.

Blinken says he has secured commitments from multiple countries in the region to assist with rebuilding and governing Gaza after Israel's war against Hamas, and that wider Israeli-Arab normalization is still possible, but only if there is "a pathway to a Palestinian state."

Palestinian officials accused Israel of a "brutal crime" on Tuesday after footage shared on social media appeared to show a military vehicle running over a dead militant in the occupied West Bank.

The foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, said the footage was from a military operation in the city of Tulkarem.

An Islamic State group attack killed at least 14 soldiers aboard a military bus in the Syrian desert on Tuesday, a war monitor said.

"At least 14 members of the regime forces were killed" and several others wounded "in a bloody IS attack on a military bus," in the desert near the ancient city of Palmyra, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh called on Muslim states on Tuesday to provide Palestinian militants with weapons, as the group's war with Israel rages in the Gaza Strip.

"We see countries of the world pouring weapons into the occupation (Israel)... The time has come (for Muslim states) to support the resistance with weapons, because this is... not the battle of the Palestinian people alone," Haniyeh said in a speech in Doha, according to a transcript shared by the group with journalists.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that four key Arab nations and Turkey have agreed to begin planning for the reconstruction and governance of Gaza once Israel's war against Hamas ends.

Blinken, who is on an urgent Mideast mission aimed primarily at preventing the conflict from spreading as fears rise of a regional war, said Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey would consider participating in and contributing to "day after" scenarios for the Palestinian territory, which has been devastated by three months of deadly Israeli bombardment.