A senior Turkish official on Monday accused the Israeli government of trying to "hide your war crimes" by targeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after he seemingly threatened to invade Israel.

Fahrettin Altun, Erdogan's head of communications, said on social media platform X that those who threaten the president "do so at their own peril." The post criticized Israel's actions against Palestinians in Gaza.

Some residents of the Golan Heights village where a rocket killed 12 youths over the weekend protested Monday the visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials expressing condolences.

Netanyahu is weighing Israel's response to the attack it blames on Hezbollah, which in a rare move has denied having a role. The prime minister laid a wreath, expressed his shock and said the local Druze community has paid a heavy price. He met with representatives of victims' families.

Officials from Egypt and Hamas said Monday that mediators negotiating a Gaza cease-fire deal were still working to iron out sticking points.

The officials, who have direct knowledge of the negotiations, said the contentious points include Israeli demands to maintain a presence in a strip of land on the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi corridor, as well as along a highway separating Gaza’s south and north.

Osama Siblani's phone won't stop ringing.

Just days after President Joe Biden withdrew his bid for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination, top officials from both major political parties have been asking the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News if Harris can regain the support of the nation's largest Muslim population located in metro Detroit.

Hundreds gathered Monday in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams for the funeral of the last of 12 youths killed by rocket fire.

Eleven-year-old Guevara Ibrahim was initially reported missing after Saturday's strike that hit a football pitch in the Druze Arab town, but has later been confirmed dead.

The Golan Heights, a rocky plateau where 12 youths were killed Saturday amid clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, is a strategic territory partially captured by Israel from Syria.

Following the conquest of about two-thirds of the plateau during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel in 1981 annexed the area in a move not recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United States since 2019.

An Egyptian official said the deadly strike in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights could give urgency to the negotiations to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, which would be reflected on the Israeli-Hezbollah front.

He said mediators will use such an attack to press for a cease-fire in Gaza to avoid an all-out war in the region.

Weeping men carried small coffins at a funeral ceremony attended by thousands from the Druze community on Sunday for many of the 12 youths killed in a rocket strike on the Israeli annexed Golan Heights.

The Israeli military said they were struck on Saturday by an Iranian-made rocket carrying a 50-kilogram warhead that Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group fired at a football field in the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams.

Israeli airstrikes hit a school used by displaced Palestinians in central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people including several children, as Israeli negotiators prepared to meet international mediators about a proposed cease-fire.

Seven children and seven women were among the dead taken from the girls' school in Deir al-Balah to Al Aqsa Hospital. Israel's military said it targeted a Hamas command center used to direct attacks against Israeli troops and store "large quantities of weapons." Hamas called the military's claim false.

Egyptian, Qatari and U.S. mediators are to meet with Israeli negotiators in the Italian capital Sunday in the latest push for a Gaza truce, Egyptian state-linked media said.

"A four-way meeting between Egyptian officials and their American and Qatari counterparts, in the presence of Israel's intelligence chief, will be held in Rome on Sunday to reach an agreement on a truce in Gaza," Al-Qahera news, which has links to Egyptian intelligence, reported, citing a "senior official" who was not identified.