U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to meet Gulf Arab officials in Saudi Arabia Wednesday at a time of rapidly shifting alliances following the oil-rich kingdom's rapprochement with Iran.

Blinken will attend a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ministerial meeting in the capital Riyadh, a day after he flew into Jeddah and held talks with Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, in which he raised human rights issues.

Israel's foreign minister chided U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday for speaking out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned overhaul of the country's judiciary.

The exchange underscored tensions between the Biden administration and Netanyahu's new government — the most right-wing and religious in Israel's history — over the planned judicial overhaul.

Opposition lawmakers won a majority in Kuwait's parliament in the Gulf state's seventh general election in just over a decade, with only one woman voted into office, according to results announced on Wednesday.

A real estate deal in Jerusalem's Old City, at the epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has sent the historic Armenian community there into a panic as residents search for answers about the feared loss of their homes to a mysterious investor.

The 99-year lease of some 25% of the Old City's Armenian Quarter has touched sensitive nerves in the Holy Land and sparked a controversy extending far beyond the Old City walls. The fallout has forced the highest authority of the Armenian Orthodox Church to cloister himself in a convent and prompted a disgraced priest who is allegedly behind the deal to flee to a Los Angeles suburb.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman amid strained relations between Riyadh and Washington.

Blinken's trip, his second to Saudi Arabia since becoming America's top diplomat, comes after the kingdom under Prince Mohammed has been more willing to disregard the U.S. in striking its own decisions. Riyadh has clashed repeatedly with President Joe Biden on its supply of crude oil to global markets, its willingness to partner with Russia in OPEC+ and reaching a détente with Iran mediated by China. Biden also pledged to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah" over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Hundreds of Palestinians gathered Tuesday for the funeral of a three-year-old boy who died after being shot by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank last week.

Mohammed al-Tamimi died in an Israeli hospital Monday, after Israeli soldiers shot him and his father on Thursday night in the village of Nabi Saleh, near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to strengthen strained ties with the long-time ally as the oil-rich kingdom forges closer relations with America's rivals.

Blinken's three-day trip will also focus on efforts to end conflicts in Sudan and Yemen, the joint battle against the Islamic State group and the Arab world's relations with Israel.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to boost cooperation Tuesday after an Egyptian policeman shot dead three Israeli soldiers before being killed, officials said.

Sisi received a telephone call from Netanyahu about Saturday's deadly violence on the normally calm border, the spokesman for the Egyptian president said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency will "never politicize" its work in Iran, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said, insisting after Israel's prime minister accused it of capitulating to Iranian pressure that his agency has been "very fair but firm."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comments came after a confidential report from the IAEA last week said that its investigators had closed off their investigation of traces of man-made uranium found at Marivan, near the city of Abadeh, about 525 kilometers (325 miles) southeast of Tehran.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the expansion of Israeli settlements and ongoing demolitions of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank are taking Israel further away from peace with the Palestinians.

Yet, he stressed that the U.S.-Israel relationship remains "iron-clad," lauded American security commitments to the Jewish state and said the Biden administration will continue to promote normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors, particularly with Saudi Arabia.