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Israel has “seized” territory in Syrian-controlled areas of the Golan Heights, as its military warned Syrians living in five villages close to the Israeli-occupied portion of the strategic area to “stay home”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he ordered Israeli forces to grab a buffer zone in the Golan Heights established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria, after a lightning advance by Syrian opposition forces ended Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

Israel captured a portion of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war and annexed it. The international community, except for the United States, views it as illegally occupied Syrian territory.

In interview with ToI, a Free Syrian Army officer expresses hope for friendly relations with Jewish state, warns of Iranian militias propping up Assad: ‘They will come for Israel, too’

The commander interviewed by The Times of Israel participated in the recent seizure of Aleppo and his troops are now fighting government forces, Hezbollah and Iran-backed militias in the area, and pushing south.

The rebel leader, in his early 60s, agreed to be interviewed by phone on condition of anonymity and spoke of the objectives of the ongoing campaign, his vision for the future of Syria and relations with Israel, and the role the Jewish state can play, in his view, in support of the rebels.

A quiet residential street in the town of El Bireh was transformed overnight into a car cemetery. One after another, one encounters the remains of the vehicles, torched, destroyed, in ashes; some are covered by large plastic sheets, their owner's phone number attached.

It looks like a bombed-out scene. Nineteen cars were completely burned that night in November, a total loss; one was somehow salvaged by its owner, who had it repaired for 11,000 shekels (about $3,000). The most expensive car destroyed was a new Skoda SUV, which had cost 170,000 shekels.

Israeli forces have stormed into Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya in north Gaza, expelled some staff and displaced people before withdrawing, and bodies of people killed by airstrikes littered the streets outside, its director has said.

The attack had begun with a series of airstrikes on the western and northern sides of Kamal Adwan accompanied by intensive shooting, the hospital director, Hussam Abu Safiyeh, said, speaking via an online chatroom, Reuters reported.

He said troops who swept into the hospital ordered all staff, patients and displaced people into its courtyard before allowing them hours later to return inside, though some staff, including its Indonesian emergency surgery team, and some displaced were ordered to leave the premises for good.

A 77-year-old activist is facing recall to prison because her wrists are too small for an electronic tag.

Gaie Delap, from Bristol, was sent to prison in August, along with four co-defendants, for her part in a campaign of disruptive protests on the M25 in November 2022.

Several months after she was jailed for the Just Stop Oil protests, she was let out after being told she qualified to serve the rest of her sentence under a home detention curfew.

But the company contracted to fit the tag to Delap was unable to attach one to her ankle because of a health condition, and there are no devices available small enough to fit wrists her size.

Now there is a warrant for her arrest after the company contacted the prison authorities to tell them she “could not be monitored”.

India will be guided by its "national interest" before reconsidering the transfer of weapons or arms sales to Israel, the country's external affairs minister has said, in yet another sign that Delhi is committed to providing diplomatic and military cover for Israel's genocide in Gaza.

On Thursday, several opposition politicians took the opportunity to use the Q&A session in parliament to probe India's external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, on India's policies, including its decision to abstain from several UN resolutions on Gaza, as well as to clarify its position on the International Criminal Court's (ICC) decision to issue warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

India is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, accounting for around $1bn of trade per year. Since 2017, both countries have considered their partnership a "strategic relationship", with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office often making a public spectacle of their friendship.

Israel has sought to enlist Elon Musk’s help in reviving hostage negotiations with Hamas, according to reports in US media.

A source close to the Israeli hostage families, who spoke with Herzog and is familiar with the conversation, told CNN: “There was a chat between [Herzog] and a few hostage families, where one of the subjects discussed was influence on Trump, and Elon Musk’s name came up as someone of influence on Trump. Therefore, keeping an open channel with him is important.”

Musk attended Netanyahu’s controversial speech before a joint session of Congress earlier this year. He previously met with Netanyahu during a visit to Israel last year, as the tech leader sought to quell accusations of antisemitism after personally endorsing a post on his social network X, formerly Twitter, that claimed Jews hate white people.

Protests are planned in the Netherlands in response to a motion accepted by the Dutch parliament to “keep records on cultural and religious norms and values of Dutch people with a migration background”.

A public petition is calling for the motion to be withdrawn and anti-racism campaigners are planning to demonstrate next Saturday against the move by the government, in which the largest party is run by the anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders.

The Netherlands is in the midst of a heated discussion on integration and segregation after violence, some of it antisemitic, around a football match between Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax of Amsterdam.

Rightwing politicians accused Dutch Muslim ethnic minorities of failure to integrate, and the fragile four-party coalition narrowly avoided falling in November, with one junior minister and two MPs resigning over discrimination and the “tone” of debate

A U.S. State Department spokesperson told reporters on Thursday that the United States disagrees with Amnesty International’s new report accusing Israel of carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip.

“We disagree with the conclusions of such a report,” spokesperson Vedant Patel said a day after the human rights group released the document. “We have said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.”

In the 296-page report released Wednesday—titled, “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza—Amnesty International found through its research and legal analysis “sufficient basis to conclude that Israel committed, during the nine-month period under review, prohibited acts under Articles II (a), (b), and © of the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.”

One of the commanders of rebel forces in Aleppo, known as Abu Abdo, gave a special interview with i24NEWS' Matthias Inbar on Wednesday, revealing that, despite differences, "we are fighting against a common enemy."

"We look at Israel and the US, with the arrival of President Donald Trump, and we have a lot of respect and sympathy for them, for their actions against Iran – the country that leads terrorism in the region and all over the world."

He said that his faction "looks forward to cooperate and eliminate this enemy and restoring stability."