The Times of Israel is liveblogging Monday’s events as they happen.

Two suspects who allegedly slipped across the border from Jordan were detained by Israeli forces following a search, the army says.

The two suspects, who were detained near the border, “were turned over to be dealt with [by] security forces,” the Israel Defense Force says in a statement.

The army said shortly after midnight that it had launched a manhunt in the Dead Sea area after footsteps were found on the border with Jordan.

A report by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster shows a group of US Jews visiting Syria for the first time since the fall of the Assad regime.

The delegation toured Jewish sites in Damascus last week on a visit coordinated by a US-based nonprofit, the Syrian Emergency Task Force.

Members of the delegation included Rabbi Yusuf Hamra, a leader in the Syrian community in the US, his son, Henry Hamra, and Rabbi Asher Lopatin, from the Jewish Federation in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

"כולם רוצים להצטלם עם הכיפה שלי": יהודי דמשק חוזרים לסוריה אחרי נפילת אסד ובחסות השלטון החדש. האם היהודים הסורים בארץ יוזמנו גם הם? הכתבה של @kaisos1987 מתוך #חדשותהערב pic.twitter.com/tAjIFwy2V7

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) February 24, 2025

The Kan report shows the delegation embracing Torah scrolls in the al-Franj Synagogue, leafing through shelves of books, greeting crowds of excited schoolchildren on a sidewalk, and praying in a cemetery.

The group also surveyed damaged sites, picking their way through nearby rubble, the footage shows.

“We saw that the people in Syria want Jews to return to Syria,” Lopatin says in an interview with the network.

The Trump administration has reportedly rescinded a policy created during former US president Joe Biden’s administration that could have potentially restricted aid to Israel at the urging of progressive Democrats.

The Washington Post obtained an order signed by US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz on February 21 that rescinds National Security Memorandum-20.

Signed by Biden last year, NSM-20 required all countries that receive weapons from the US to commit in writing that they will not use them to target civilians or restrict humanitarian aid. Such conditions were already in place, but the concept of a written commitment was new as was the memo’s directive for the State Department to report to Congress on the mater.

Biden agreed to sign the memo amid pressure from progressive Democrats who specifically were looking to curb US military assistance to Israel, arguing that it was being used to harm civilians in Gaza.

The State Department report issued several months after the memo avoided reaching a determination that Israel was indeed misusing US security assistance, infuriating the progressive lawmakers behind NSM-20.

Troops are carrying out searches near the Dead Sea over........

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