A close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Donald Trump and Jared Kushner this week that Israel is rushing to advance a cease-fire deal in Lebanon, according to three current and former Israeli officials briefed on the meeting, with the aim of delivering an early foreign policy win to the president-elect.

Turkey has been seeking a reconciliation with Syria to address security threats from groups affiliated with Kurdish militants along its southern border and to help ensure the safe return of Syrian refugees. Reconciliation efforts that were brokered by Russia have fizzled out.

As Israel is embroiled in a multifront war, settlement advocates believe Trump’s history of fervent support could translate into their supreme goal: Israeli annexation of the West Bank — a move that critics say would smother any remaining hopes for Palestinian statehood.

For the second time this week, U.S. forces in the Middle East retaliated against Iran-backed militants for attacks on American military personnel and facilities in Syria.

U.S. forces attacked nine Iran-backed targets in Syria over the weekend in response to two strikes on U.S. troops, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The USS Stockdale and USS Spruance were attacked by at least eight drones and eight missiles while transiting the Bab el Mandeb Strait, a narrow waterway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The Biden administration says Israel has made some good but limited progress in increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and therefore it will not limit arms transfers to Israel as it had threatened to a month ago if the situation had not improved.

The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said Tuesday he’s hopeful that meetings this week with Iranian officials, including the country’s new president, can lead to a breakthrough in monitoring the country’s nuclear program.

United Nations peacekeepers warned Tuesday that the Israeli military has committed “severe violations” of a cease-fire deal with Syria as its military continues a major construction project along the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria.

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 46 people in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, including 11 at a makeshift cafeteria in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone. In Lebanon, warplanes struck Beirut’s southern suburbs and killed 33 people elsewhere in the country on Tuesday.