The storming of a north Kosovo monastery has thrown attention on persistent trouble in the ethnic Serbian-majority region 15 years after Pristina declared independence.

Here are facts about the unrest.

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What is behind the friction?

Independence for ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo came on Feb. 17, 2008, almost a decade after a guerrilla uprising against repressive Serbian rule.

It is recognised by more than 100 countries.

Serbia, however, still formally deems Kosovo to be part of its territory. It accuses Kosovo’s central government of trampling on the rights of ethnic Serbs but denies accusations of whipping up strife within its neighbour’s borders.

Serbs account for 5 percent of Kosovo’s 1.8 million people, and ethnic Albanians about 90 percent. Some 50,000 Serbs in north Kosovo, on the border with Serbia, vent their rejectionism by refusing to pay the state utility for energy they use and often attacking police who try to make arrests.

All of them receive benefits from Serbia’s budget and pay no taxes either to Pristina or Belgrade.

What’s made matters worse?

Unrest in the region intensified when ethnic Albanian mayors took office in northern Kosovo’s Serb-majority area after April elections the Serbs boycotted, a move that led the US and its allies to rebuke Pristina.

Last December, North Kosovo Serbs erected multiple roadblocks and exchanged fire with police after a former Serb policeman was arrested for allegedly assaulting serving police officers during a previous protest.

But tensions had been ticking upward for months in a dispute over car license plates. Kosovo has for years wanted Serbs in the north to switch their Serbian license plates, dating to the pre-independence era, to ones issued by Pristina, as part of its policy to assert authority over all of Kosovo territory.

Last July, Pristina announced a two-month window for the plates to be switched over, triggering unrest, but later agreed to push the implementation date back to the end of 2023.

Ethnic Serb mayors in northern municipalities, along with local judges and 600 police officers, resigned in November last year in protest at the looming switch, deepening dysfunction and lawlessness in the region.

What do the Serbs ultimately want?

Serbs in Kosovo seek to create an association of majority-Serb municipalities operating with considerable autonomy.

Pristina rejects this as a recipe for a mini-state within Kosovo, effectively partitioning the country along ethnic lines.

Serbia and Kosovo have made little progress on this and other issues since committing in 2013 to a European Union-sponsored dialogue aimed at normalising ties – for both a requirement for EU membership.

What is the role of NATO and the EU?

The transatlantic NATO military alliance retains 3,700 peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, the remainder of an original 50,000-strong force deployed in 1999.

The alliance says it would intervene in line with its mandate if Kosovo were at risk of renewed conflict. The EU’s EULEX mission, begun in 2008 to train domestic police and crack down on graft and gangsterism, retains 200 special police officers in Kosovo.

What is the latest EU peace plan?

US and EU envoys are pressing Serbia and Kosovo to approve a plan presented in mid-2022 under which Belgrade would stop lobbying against a Kosovo seat in international organisations including the United Nations.

Kosovo would commit to form an association of Serb-majority municipalities. And both sides would open representative offices in each other’s capital to help resolve outstanding disputes.

But talks on normalising relations between the two former wartime foes stalled last week, with the EU blaming Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti for failing to set up the association of municipalities.

Kurti, who had agreed such an association should have only limited powers whose decisions could be overruled by central government, accused the EU mediator of siding with Serbia to pressure him to implement only one part of the deal.

Serbia’s president appears ready to approve the plan, warning recalcitrant nationalists in parliament that Belgrade will otherwise face damaging isolation in Europe.

But with nationalist hardliners powerful on both sides, not least among north Kosovo Serbs, no breakthrough is on the horizon.

What’s at stake for local Serb population?

The area of north Kosovo where Serbs form a majority is in important ways a virtual extension of Serbia. Local administration and public servants, teachers, doctors and big infrastructure projects are paid for by Belgrade.

Local Serbs fear that once fully integrated within Kosovo they could lose benefits such as Serbia’s free public healthcare and be forced onto Kosovo’s private healthcare system.

They also fear pensions would be smaller, given that the average monthly pension in Kosovo is worth 100 euros ($107) compared with 270 euros in Serbia.

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A Saudi delegation is due to visit Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah this week, a Palestinian official said, amid diplomatic efforts to secure an accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia that could involve concessions for the Palestinians.

The delegation will be led by the non-resident Saudi envoy to the Palestinians, who was appointed last month, the official said.

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The visit comes after both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that efforts were underway to reach an agreement normalizing relations between their two countries.

US officials have cautioned that any agreement, expected to include a defense agreement with Washington and a civilian nuclear program for Saudi Arabia, would be some way off.

Among the issues to be resolved would also be the Palestinian question, and calls for a revival of a peace process leading to a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in 2014 and relations between the two sides have plummeted amid a tide of violence.

Last week Abbas said no Middle East peace agreement would be achievable until Palestinians were granted full rights, and the Saudi foreign minister also called for a revival of the objective of a two-state solution.

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The Biden administration is poised to admit Israel this week into an exclusive club that will allow its citizens to travel to the United States without a US visa despite Washington’s ongoing concerns about the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinian Americans.

US officials say an announcement of Israel’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program is planned for late in the week, just before the end of the federal budget year on Saturday, which is the deadline for Israel’s admission without having to requalify for eligibility next year.

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The Department of Homeland Security administers the program, which currently allows citizens of 40 mostly European and Asian countries to travel to the US for three months without visas.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is set to make the announcement Thursday, shortly after receiving a recommendation from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel be admitted, according to five officials familiar with the matter who spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity because the decision has not yet been publicly announced.

Blinken’s recommendation is expected to be delivered no later than Tuesday, the officials said, and the final announcement will come just eight days after President Joe Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The leaders did not raise the issue in their brief remarks to reporters at that meeting but it has been a subject of intense negotiation and debate for months as has been the Biden administration’s effort to secure a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The State Department had no immediate comment about the visa waiver program. The White House referred questions to the Homeland Security Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Israel’s admission has been a priority for successive Israeli leaders and will be a major accomplishment for Netanyahu, who has sparred frequently with the Biden administration over Iran, the Palestinian conflict and most recently a proposed remake of Israel’s judicial system that critics say will make the country less democratic.

Netanyahu’s far-right government has drawn repeated US criticism over its treatment of Palestinians, including its aggressive construction of West Bank settlements, its opposition to Palestinian statehood and incendiary anti-Palestinian comments by senior Cabinet ministers.

The US move will give a welcome boost at home to Netanyahu. He has faced months of mass protests against his judicial plan and is likely to come under criticism from the Palestinians, who say the US should not be rewarding the Israeli government at a time when peace efforts are at a standstill.

Israel met two of the three most critical criteria over the past two years — a low percentage of visa application rejections and a low visa overstay rate — to join the US program. It had struggled to meet the third, which is a requirement for reciprocity that means all US citizens, including Palestinian Americans, must be treated equally when traveling to or through Israel.

Claiming national security reasons, Israel has long had separate entry requirements and screening processes for Palestinian Americans. Many complained that the procedures were onerous and discriminatory. Americans with Palestinian residency documents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were largely barred from using Israel’s international airport. Instead, like other Palestinians, they were forced to travel through either Jordan or Egypt to reach their destinations.

In recent months, Israel has moved to adjust its entry requirements for Palestinian Americans, including allowing them to fly in and out of Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv and going directly to the West Bank and Israel proper, according to the officials. Israel also has pledged to ease movement for Palestinian Americans traveling in and out of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

New regulations took effect earlier this month to codify the changes, although concerns remain and the Homeland Security Department intends to stress in its announcement that it will continue to monitor the situation to ensure that Israel complies, according to the officials. Failure to comply could result in Israel’s suspension from the program, the officials said.

Palestinian American activists have been critical of the impending decision, which has been expected for some time due to the priority placed on it by both the Israeli and US governments.

“There are so many problems with this decision,” said Yousef Munayyer, the head of the Palestine-Israel Program and senior fellow at Arab Center Washington. “The reciprocity requirement is clearly still not being met since Israeli policy continues to treat some Americans, specifically Palestinian Americans, differently. The administration however seems committed at the highest levels to overlooking this continued discrimination against American citizens to rush Israel into the program before the deadline.”

Munayyer said it was “unclear why the Biden administration seems dead set on offering political victories for Benjamin Netanyahu at a time when his far-right government is outraging Palestinians and many Israelis with their extremist agenda.”

Under the waiver program, Israelis will be able to travel to the US for business or leisure purposes for up to 90 days without a visa simply by registering with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization.

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