APRNEWS - A Palestinian wounded last month during clashes on the Israel-Gaza border succumbed to his wounds on Monday, the health ministry in the Palestinian enclave said.

A spokesman for the ministry said in a statement "Bissam Safi, 22, died this morning".

REUTERS - Israel launched more air strikes on Gaza on Tuesday as Palestinians kept up rocket fire on Israeli territory, in the worst surge of violence since a 2014 war.

APRNEWS - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday Israel will defend itself against Iran, after a friendly fire incident in Syria this week linked to Israeli strikes on Iranian targets there.

Syria accidentally downed a Russian plane late Monday, killing all 15 people on board, the same evening Israel launched strikes in the war-torn country.

REUTERS - Israel still hopes the U.S. will recognize its claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday, after a top U.S. official said the issue is not currently under consideration by Washington.

REUTERS - Israel described the Syrian civil war as effectively over on Thursday and predicted that the Golan Heights frontier between the countries would be quieter with central rule by Damascus restored there.

APRNEWS - Israel is to build hundreds of new homes in a settlement in the occupied West Bank where a Palestinian stabbed three Israelis, one fatally, Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Friday.

APRNEWS - Russia has offered to keep Iranian forces in Syria away from the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights but Israel wants Tehran to completely withdraw, an Israeli official said Tuesday.

REUTERS - The Syrian army has captured some areas held by Islamic State fighters in a region of the southwest near the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, state media said on Tuesday.

Engineering units were sweeping the areas taken in the Yarmouk basin region for mines and booby traps, it reported, citing a military source.

APRNEWS - Israel will partially reopen its only goods crossing with the blockaded Gaza Strip later Tuesday, a minister said, after closing it July 9 over border tensions and kites carrying firebombs to burn Israeli farmland.

APRNEWS - Israel on Monday said its air defences fired at rockets that approached its territory from neighbouring Syria, where regime troops are advancing on opposition forces close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

"Syrian rockets were identified as having been launched as part of the internal fighting in Syria," an Israeli army statement said in English.