Israel News

Israel‘s state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense system is facing its toughest test to date amid rapid-fire rocket attacks from Hamas, with military analysts in Israel openly wondering whether the Palestinian militant group has found a strategy to partially pierce the shield.

Hamas has launched 1,200 rockets in 48 hours from the Gaza Strip and shows little sign of letting up as we enter the third night of Israel under fire.

Israel declared a state of emergency in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod on Wednesday after Mayor Yair Revivo said a “civil war between Arabs and Jews,” was taking place there.  The rioting, including the torching of three synagogues and the death of an Arab man, began on Monday after Arab residents took to the streets in support of Palestinians clashing with police on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The United Nations says it fears a “full-scale war” amid ongoing deadly exchanges between Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli military.

Intense Arab rioting broke out in the central Israeli city of Lod late Tuesday, with three synagogues and numerous shops reportedly set on fire, and dozens of cars set alight. The Israeli government declared a state of emergency in the mixed Jewish-Arab city, and urgently despatched several Border Police companies to work to restore order.

Church leaders have expressed concern about the future of Jerusalem and its neighborhood as several people were killed Tuesday in nearly non-stop Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

Three Islamic Jihad commanders and a Hamas commander were killed in targeted strikes by Israeli forces on Tuesday afternoon, as the Israel Defense Forces expanded its airstrikes in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the firing of hundred of rockets at Israeli cities.

Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired massive barrages of rockets at southern Israel throughout Tuesday, wounding at least 24 people and drawing deadly retaliatory airstrikes from the Israel Defense Forces.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the Gaza terrorist had “crossed a red line” by firing dozens of rockets into Israel’s south.

Palestinian officials in the Gaza Strip claimed Monday that some 20 people were killed in fighting with Israel in one of the bloodiest clashes in years.

Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered a very rare bronze oil lamp that was buried at the foundation of a Roman-era building constructed in Jerusalem’s City of David almost 2,000 years ago, the Times of Israel (ToI) reported last week. The first of its kind discovered in Israel, the lamp is shaped like one half of an ugly, distorted face and may have been buried as an offering of good luck for the residents of the new building.

The UN Security Council will convene an emergency session on Monday morning to discuss the escalating violence in Jerusalem, including major clashes on the Temple Mount.

The Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas military site in the southern Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire earlier on Saturday night, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.

Israeli police burst into the Temple Mount compound on Friday evening after Palestinians threw rocks and bottles at officers, as widespread clashes in Jerusalem spread to the holy site following prayers held there on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The factions looking to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister are close to reaching a coalition agreement paving the way for a new government, senior opposition officials said Sunday night.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a month-long war exercise on Sunday—the largest in its history—simulating a multi-front conflict.

In a speech to mark the annual al-Quds Day, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called Israel “not a country, but a terrorist base” and said its downfall was imminent.

Palestinians and Israelis hurled rocks and chairs at each other in the tense East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on Thursday before Israeli police moved in to separate them, arresting at least 15 people, all of them Palestinians. In one incident, a Jewish Israeli man fired into the air after a vehicle was set on fire.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ran out of time to form a new government and, on Wednesday evening, President Reuven Rivlin asked Yair Lapid, who leads the centrist Yesh Atid party, to try and form a coalition. Yesh Atid gained the second-highest number of seats in the March 23 election, after Netanyahu’s Likud party.

The IDF reportedly bombed targets in Syria after midnight on Thursday in what would be the second such strike in less than 24 hours.