Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has approved a $35 billion natural gas export deal to Egypt, the biggest gas deal in Israeli history. The agreement could also help repair relations between the two countries strained during the two-year war in the Gaza Strip.

The gas will be delivered to Egypt over the next 15 years by U.S. energy giant Chevron, a key owner of the gas field off Israel's coast in the Mediterranean Sea. Half of the proceeds are expected to go to Israel's state coffers.

Police in London arrested two people who called for "intifada" during a pro-Palestinian protest, which followed a decision by authorities to toughen enforcement of hate speech laws after a deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Australia.

The arrests Wednesday came hours after police in London and Manchester, England, announced a crackdown on protesters using slogans such as "globalize the intifada." The Arabic word intifada is generally translated as "uprising."

Israeli troops fired a mortar shell over the ceasefire line into a Palestinian residential area in the Gaza Strip, in the latest incident to rock the tenuous ceasefire with Hamas. Health officials said at least 10 people were wounded, and the army said it was investigating.

The military said the mortar was fired during an operation in the area of the "Yellow Line," which was drawn in the ceasefire agreement and divides the Israeli-held majority of Gaza from the rest of the territory.

Arab female film directors have helped change the landscape of Arab cinema in recent years, presenting stories that haven't been told before and claiming space in an industry in a region that rarely makes room for women to grow.

Four influential female directors took part in this year's Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, paving the way for more diverse narratives in Arab cinema.

The head of Israel's Mossad intelligence service said on Tuesday that the country must "ensure" Iran doesn't restart its nuclear program, six months after it bombed Tehran's atomic facilities during a 12-day war.

Dozens of residents from the West Bank's emptied Nour Shams refugee camp returned on Wednesday to retrieve belongings ahead of the Israeli military's demolition of 25 residential buildings there.

Israel on Tuesday blocked a private Canadian delegation that included six members of Parliament from entering the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli Embassy in Canada said the group was denied entry because of its links to Islamic Relief Worldwide, a nongovernmental organization that Israel lists as a terror group.

Like many Australians strolling at Bondi Beach on long, warm summer evenings, Ahmed al Ahmed just wanted a cup of coffee with a friend. Around him, a bloody massacre erupted as two gunmen targeted Jews during Hanukkah festivities at a park close to the shore.

Soon al Ahmed was creeping, bent over, between two parked cars, before barreling directly toward one of the unsuspecting shooters. In footage that has been viewed millions of times around the world, the 44-year-old father can be seen tackling one of the gunmen, wrestling the man's shotgun from his grip and turning it on the attacker.

Iraq's transport ministry said Tuesday that a flight operated by Greece's Aegean Airlines had been the first European aircraft in 35 years to land at Baghdad's international airport.

An Emirati-backed secessionist group in Yemen said its forces were marching to another province as part of the group's push to expand areas under its control in the country's south, at the expense of its allies in the internationally recognized government.

The Southern Transitional Council this month seized most of the provinces of Hadramout and Mahra, including crucial oil facilities and the border with Oman. The move raised fears that the relative calm in the country's stalemated civil war might be shattered.