Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency is defending its use of a sophisticated surveillance tool that was used to send threatening text messages to Palestinian protesters during unrest at Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site two years ago.

A leading civil rights group has asked Israel's Supreme Court to halt the practice, saying the threatening messages exceeded the authorities of the Shin Bet. It has also noted that the messages were sent erroneously to people uninvolved in the unrest.

The United States and Britain voiced dissatisfaction Tuesday with the weekend decision by the Arab League to re-instate Syria as a member.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said they opposed the move. But they also allowed it was up to the Arab League to determine its membership.

Saudi Arabia and Syria will reopen diplomatic missions between the two countries now that relations have improved 11 years after the facilities were closed, the two nations foreign ministries said.

The announcements came nearly a month after Syria and Saudi Arabia said they were moving toward reopening embassies and resuming airline flights. That had followed a visit by Syria's top diplomat to the kingdom, the first since Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Syria in 2012 and a visit by Syria's foreign minister to Riyadh.

The Israeli military said it killed two Palestinian gunmen who fired on troops in the occupied West Bank early on Wednesday, the latest in near-daily violence roiling the region.

The shooting came as tensions are at a fever pitch following a series of Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip that killed three senior Islamic Jihad militants and 10 others — most of them women and children — on Tuesday. Palestinian militants have pledged to retaliate and Israel says it is prepared for a further escalation of hostilities.

Tunisian authorities were Wednesday investigating a shooting spree by a police officer that claimed five lives and sparked mass panic during a Jewish pilgrimage at Africa's oldest synagogue.

Security forces threw a tight cordon around the site on Djerba island as officials probed whether Tuesday's shootings were a random killing spree or an anti-Semitic terrorist attack.

The U.N. chief has expressed hope that Syria's return to the Arab League and its engagement with regional powers could spur progress in resolving the 13-year Syrian civil war, as Damascus faced pressure to be transparent about chemical weapons.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he believes the region "has a vital role to play in the search for settlement of the conflict," which began with an uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule in 2011 that was met with a violent crackdown. The civil war has killed nearly a half million people, and displaced half the country's pre-war population of 23 million.

The Arab League's decision to re-admit Syria after shunning it for 12 years was a significant symbolic victory for Damascus, part of a larger regional realignment and an indication of the United States' waning role, analysts say.

But it may not immediately bring the reconstruction dollars that Syrian President Bashar Assad is hoping for. Nor is it likely to bring the changes Syria's neighbors want, such as an agreement on refugee returns and moves to reduce drug trafficking.

The Israeli military has systematically evaded accountability in the deaths of 20 journalists over the past two decades, launching slow and opaque investigations that have never resulted in prosecution or punishment, an international press-freedom group said in a report Tuesday.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued its report ahead of the one-year anniversary of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh — a Palestinian-American journalist with the Al Jazeera satellite channel who was killed while covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.

For Nidal Jumaa, a Syrian from Aleppo, life in Turkey is tough. He works part-time at a furniture workshop and collects plastics and cardboard from trash cans that he sells for recycling, but can hardly afford the rent for his run-down house in a low-income neighborhood of Ankara.

Despite the hardship, the 31-year-old would prefer to remain in Turkey than return to Syria where he no longer has a house or a job. Most of all, he worries that his 2-year-old son, Hikmat, who requires regular medical supervision following two surgeries, wouldn't be able to receive the treatment he needs back home.

There was no mourning tent for 23-year-old Palestinian Zuhair al-Ghaleeth. There were no banners with his portrait, no chants celebrating his martyrdom.

Instead, a bulldozer dropped his bullet-riddled body into an unmarked grave, witnesses said.