Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a historic visit to the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, citing a disagreement with Jordan over crossing its airspace.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of a recent attack on an Israeli-owned ship, noting his country was regularly "striking" its arch-foe in comments that followed an overnight raid on Syria.

Israel's Shin Bet security agency said Friday it has arrested an Israeli Arab with family ties to Gaza for allegedly passing missile defence information to the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers.

A secretive Israeli nuclear facility at the center of the nation's undeclared atomic weapons program is undergoing what appears to be its biggest construction project in decades, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show.

A dig about the size of a soccer field and likely several stories deep now sits just meters (yards) from the aging reactor at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona. The facility is already home to decades-old underground laboratories that reprocess the reactor's spent rods to obtain weapons-grade plutonium for Israel's nuclear bomb program.

Two Syrian shepherds were exchanged for an Israeli woman under a prisoner exchange deal on Thursday between the Jewish state and Syria mediated by Russia.

Israel fired several missiles early on Monday targeting areas near the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syria's state news agency reported. An opposition war-monitoring group said the strikes killed nine Iran-backed fighters.

The SANA news agency claimed that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles, which it said were fired from Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

A Syrian military official said Israel fired surface and air missiles at targets in southern Syria late Wednesday, causing only material damage.

The official said the attacks prompted Syrian air defenses. The unnamed official said the Israeli attacks came in from over the Golan Heights but didn't identify what the target was.

Serbia's foreign minister said Tuesday the government was "not happy" with Israel's decision to recognise Kosovo, a former Serbian province whose statehood Belgrade denies and has waged a diplomatic battle to de-legitimise.

Hizbullah said on Monday it downed an Israeli drone that breached Lebanese airspace after it flew over the U.N.-demarcated Blue Line border, while Israel acknowledged an unmanned aircraft had crashed.

The Military Media of the Islamic Resistance issued a statement on Monday saying it “downed an Israeli drone that breached the Lebanese airspace over the outskirts of the town of Blida in south Lebanon.”

Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen has led a delegation to Khartoum, a spokesman said Tuesday, months after Sudan and the Jewish state struck a deal to normalise ties.