The Palestinians and Israel clashed over the future intentions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far right-wing government at a U.N. Security Council meeting Wednesday, with the Palestinian U.N. ambassador pointing to an Israeli minister's statement "denying our existence to justify what is to come."

Israel's U.N. ambassador countered that the minister had apologized, and accused the Palestinian leadership of regularly inciting terrorism and erasing Jewish history.

Israel's parliament on Thursday passed the first of several laws that make up its contentious judicial overhaul as protesters opposing the changes staged another day of demonstrations aimed at raising alarm over what they see as the country's descent toward autocracy.

Thousands of people protested throughout the country, blocking traffic on main highways and scuffling with police in unrest that shows no sign of abating, especially as the overhaul moves ahead.

The first daily fast of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began Thursday, as hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide enter a four-week period of worship.

The observance comes at a time when numerous countries and governments across the Middle East are taking tentative steps towards calming enduring conflicts and crises made more acute by the costly war in Ukraine and a devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria that killed over 52,000 people.

Complexes of McMansions, fast food restaurants, real estate offices and half-constructed high-rises line wide highways in Irbil, the seat of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

Many members of the political and business elite live in a suburban gated community dubbed the American Village, where homes sell for as much as $5 million, with lush gardens consuming more than a million liters of water a day in the summer.

A building collapsed Wednesday in Qatar's capital, killing at least one person as searchers clawed through the rubble to check for survivors, authorities said.

Qatar's Interior Ministry described the building as a four-story structure in Doha's Bin Durham neighborhood. It said rescuers found seven survivors, while the one person killed had been inside the building at the time of the collapse.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to back down on Wednesday, saying his government has "no intention" of returning to four abandoned settlements in the occupied West Bank under a law that was repealed by parliament this week.

His statement followed harsh U.S. criticism and an international uproar over Netanyahu's far-right government, the country's most hard-line ever, over the Knesset vote early Tuesday to revoke a 2005 law that dismantled the four settlements.

Muslim authorities in Saudi Arabia and several other Middle Eastern countries say this year's fasting month of Ramadan will begin Thursday based on the expected sighting of the crescent moon.

Clerics across the region said the moon was not visible Tuesday night, meaning it will almost certainly appear the following evening, heralding the start of the monthlong observance.

An Israeli airstrike early Wednesday targeted the international airport of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, causing material damage in the second attack on the facility this month, state media report.

State news agency SANA, quoting an unnamed military official, did not mention if the strike caused any deaths or injuries. It said warplanes fired the missiles toward Aleppo, Syria's largest city and once commercial center, while flying over the Mediterranean.

Israel's settler movement celebrated Tuesday after parliament annulled part of a law banning them from residing in areas of the occupied West Bank the then Israeli government evacuated in 2005.

That year the government of Ariel Sharon, a long-time settler champion turned peacemaker, oversaw a unilateral withdrawal by Israel from the Gaza Strip, and the removal of Jewish settlers from the Palestinian enclave and four settlements in the northern West Bank.

Thousands of angry Kurds rallied in rebel-held northern Syria on Tuesday after pro-Turkish fighters killed four fellow Kurds who were celebrating their Nowruz new year festival, an AFP correspondent reported.

"They killed my children for no reason," Kuli Maho, 70, told AFP as she wept for her three sons and grandson.