Israel News

Israel established full diplomatic relations with Bhutan for the first time on Saturday night.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that the Palestinians are prepared to resume talks with Israel and that fresh negotiations should be based on resolutions passed by the United Nations on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Jerusalem Post reports. Abbas made the announcement during a visit to Ramallah by Spain’s Foreign Minister Arancha González.

Israel and Morocco agreed Thursday to normalize relations in a U.S. brokered accord that Israel’s prime minister described as “another great light of peace.”

A day after he announced his departure from Likud and the formation of a new political party to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the country’s leadership, Gideon Sa’ar was off to an extraordinarily strong start Wednesday. Polls on Israel’s three major news networks forecast his nascent New Hope party getting between 15 and 18 seats if the country goes to elections — shaking up the political landscape and introducing several potential paths to coalitions that do not include Netanyahu, while seriously narrowing the premier’s path to leading the next government.

Israeli authorities are set to unveil previously off-limits structures within King Herod’s palace-fortress Herodium, which the tyrannical Roman-era leader interred as his enormous burial plot.

Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn and Welfare Minister Itzik Shmuli on Wednesday approved the draft of a bill that will change a decades-old law permitting adoption only for heterosexual couples and allow same-sex couples to be equally eligible.

The Knesset House Committee decided on Wednesday by a ten-to-seven vote to advance the Knesset dispersal bill.

Likud MK Gideon Sa’ar, long seen as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief rival within Likud, on Tuesday announced he was quitting Likud and will form his own right-wing party, to be called “New Hope,” and run for the premiership in the next election.

Leading Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal has described Israel as a Western colonizing power that is holding Palestinians in concentration camps, Ynet News reports. Formerly the Saudi ambassador to the US and the UK and head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki made his remarks Sunday at the Bahrain Security Conference.

Over 64% of Arab-Israelis support forming an Arab-Jewish party for the next Knesset elections, although the voter participation rate among Arab-Israelis is not expected to be high at just 55.6%, according to a new study by the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.

The first delivery of Pfizer vaccines will arrive in Israel on Thursday, according to multiple Hebrew media reports on Monday evening.

Some 61% of the Israeli public would be interested in being vaccinated for the coronavirus, a new survey has found. Some 18% would refuse to be vaccinated.

Hardline Iranian daily Kayhan on Sunday called on Tehran not to delay in exacting vengeance for the assassination of the country’s nuclear mastermind last month.

Israel intelligence managed to recruit an Iranian official close to the recently assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and recorded the nuclear scientist speaking about his efforts to produce “five warheads” on behalf of the Islamic Republic, according to a Friday report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

Prof. Yossi Karko, director of the clinical research unit at Hadassah-University Medical Center, has warned that the data published by Moderna and Pfizer about their coronavirus vaccine candidates is limited.

Israel may receive up to four million doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine by the end of this month — enough for two million people — and the Health Ministry is preparing health maintenance organizations for the possibility of inoculating some 80,000 Israelis every day, Israeli TV networks reported Thursday.

The Knesset on Wednesday passed a bill to dissolve, setting the stage for the fourth round of national elections in two years as Defense Minister Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party broke from the coalition and voted in favor of the measure.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid on Tuesday cheered Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s decision to throw his Blue and White party’s support behind a preliminary reading of a bill to dissolve the Knesset and call early elections.

Watergen, an Israel-based company that has developed technology that generates drinking water from the air, has signed a strategic agreement with the Emirati Al-Dahra company to bring its water solutions to the United Arab Emirates and other countries in the region.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party is expected to give initial backing to a bill to dissolve the Knesset and call early elections when it comes up for a vote Wednesday, TV reports said Monday evening, amid widespread speculation that Israelis will soon find themselves at the ballot box for the fourth time in under two years.