As the war in Gaza continues, France's former ambassador to Israel has told FRANCE 24 how Israel has "shifted to the right, even to the far right" since he was in post.

Israel has been accused of unfairly targeting its Arab population after parliament moved a step closer to passing sweeping budget cuts. While the measures aim to plug the financial hole caused by Israel's war in Gaza, they also mean a string of government programmes created to invest in Arab communities could see their funding slashed by up to 15 percent.

Five months, 30,000 Palestinians killed and an Israeli prime minister whose only plan seems to be to reoccupy Gaza indefinitely. This time, has the US had enough?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine have ended up in the hands of Hamas and other terror groups in the Middle East. Russian television has been quick to exploit the Israel-Hamas conflict for propaganda purposes.

As tensions escalate in the Gaza Strip, many displaced Palestinians are now gripped with fear about Israeli forces launching a relentless assault on the city of Rafah.

Israel's GDP fell by 19.4 percent in the last quarter of 2023, according to preliminary figures published by the country's Central Bureau of Statistics on Monday. It's the biggest contraction the economy has seen since the early days of the Covid pandemic, and can be attributed to the impact of the war on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Four months into its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel is about to send troops into Rafah. The enclave's southern city is thought to be home to 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them internally displaced refugees.

Israel denies threatening South Africa’s international relations minister. Naledi Pandor says she's worried about the safety of her family since South Africa filed a case before the ICJ accusing Israeli forces of committing genocidal acts against Palestinians.

Israel has announced that it plans to establish a buffer zone between Israel and Gaza, despite objections from its key ally Washington. Satellite imagery obtained by the FRANCE 24 Observers confirms that 40 percent of the buildings within this planned buffer zone have already been demolished. We tell you what we know in this edition of Truth or Fake.

For this final edition of Middle East Matters, we bring you a series of reports from our correspondents in the region. We begin in Israel, where as the war in Gaza drags on, divisions in Israeli society are growing more stark.

After nearly four months of war in Gaza, the humanitarian crisis and the mounting civilian death toll have triggered growing international calls for a ceasefire. Amid intense diplomacy, a deal is taking shape. The first truce, in November of last year, lasted just seven days; this one could endure for one or two months and free many or all of the remaining 100 or more Israeli hostages in stages.

Hamas has been holding two mentally ill Israeli hostages in Gaza for nearly a decade, with Israeli society paying very little attention to their plight. The October 7 terrorist attacks changed that.