Mena Today

For decades, voting in Israeli elections was off-limits for the Druze of the Golan Heights, who remained loyal to Syria. That taboo is now crumbling: 45% of the community holds Israeli citizenship today, compared with just 2% forty years ago, according to Ici Beyrouth.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main opponent Gadi Eisenkot both oppose an independent Palestinian state, meaning next week's election is unlikely to produce a sweeping shift in policies that have hampered a decades-old peace process.

Saudi state oil company Aramco has ordered the evacuation of its headquarters in Dhahran, six people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Thursday, as fighting between the world's largest crude exporter and Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis intensifies.

Critical vulnerabilities in PHP, one of the web’s most widely used programming languages, sent website operators scrambling on Wednesday. 

Two people were killed and eight injured in an attack on King Fahd International Airport in Saudi Arabia's eastern oil hub of Dammam on Wednesday evening, Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said on Thursday.

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney met with President Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey on Thursday, in the first bilateral visit by a Canadian leader, and the two NATO allies upgraded their relations to a "strategic partnership" as Ottawa seeks to expand trade partners and reduce reliance on the United States. 

Senior UAE diplomat Lana Nusseibeh entered the race to become the next United Nations secretary-general on Wednesday, injecting a prominent Middle Eastern candidate into a contest that has struggled to produce a consensus choice among the Security Council’s most powerful members.

Israel's election next week may change its leader, but not its strategy: Iran will remain its chief adversary, military force will continue to be its preferred tool and Palestinian statehood a distant prospect, regional policymakers and analysts say.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected the maritime boundaries deal that Libya's eastern parliament ratified with Turkey, saying in a statement that the ratification will have no legal impact on Cairo.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egypt's military effort to defend Saudi Arabia would not include an attack on Yemen and would be limited to defending the kingdom's territory and borders, according to a statement by the Egyptian presidency spokesperson on Wednesday.

Turkey will submit to parliament a mandate allowing for military personnel to be deployed to Saudi Arabia under its joint defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, a lawmaker from the ruling AK Party told Reuters on Wednesday.

Israel has become a Pacific Islands Forum partner, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar said on X, describing the move as part of the country's broader effort to strengthen ties with the region.