The visits came a day after Sharaa — also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani — met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the highest-level visit from Lebanon to Syria to date. Arab states had responded cautiously to Assad’s fall and the takeover by HTS-led Islamist rebels.

Qatar and Jordan are the latest in the region to send delegations to meet with Syria’s new leaders, including Ahmed al-Sharaa, head of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli troops will remain in Syrian territory indefinitely, blurring the border with Israel's northern neighbor.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel traded blame on Wednesday over their failure to conclude a ceasefire agreement.

Israel’s current government is opposed to Palestinian statehood and says it will maintain open-ended security control over the territory. Violence has soared in the West Bank following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza, which ignited the war there.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had a succession of monumental wins that include the top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah being eliminated.

Syria is in chaos. The danger to Israel and the West is that the next Syrian regime will be no friendlier than Assad was. After all, the enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend.

The Israeli official threatened to take similar action against the leadership of the Houthi rebel group in Yemen.

The number of US troops in Syria has regularly surged higher than the Pentagon has publicly disclosed since at least 2020, and in recent months increased to more than double the roughly 900 troops the US has long said are in Syria,

The leader of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group that led the assault that ultimately toppled Bashar Assad's government in Syria, has reached an agreement with other rebel leaders in its coalition to dissolve their factions and merge them under the Defense Ministry,

In the past week, the Pentagon has acknowledged that its footprint in Iraq and Syria is bigger than it has claimed for years

Israel is celebrating the fall of Assad because it breaks the noose that Iran had been patiently tightening around Israel’s borders in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Tehran’s pincer is now broken and rendered useless. From the point of view of Israel’s wider conflict with the Islamic Republic, the collapse of Assad’s regime is a strategic victory.