Israel News

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi on Sunday said Iran is now the most dangerous country in the Middle East, not just because of its nuclear program, but also through its conventional weapons and support for terror activities against Israel.

U.S. officials will gather this week to discuss whether to give Israel a green light for its plan to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s target date of July 1 approaches.

The Israeli government’s ad hoc “Corona Cabinet” approved on Monday several new measures to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has begun to realize that Iran is lying about its nuclear ambitions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the opening of Sunday’s cabinet meeting.

Even the most contentious disagreements in previous governments – including coalitions that comprised Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked – didn’t prepare Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the miseries of this current government. The combination of an equal share unity government with deadbeats such as Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, his dominant deputy with an independent agenda in the form of Gabi Ashkenazi, and a cohort of inexperienced Knesset members who haven’t graduated political boot camp yet, spurred Netanyahu to utter the word “election” more than once this week in closed-door conversations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told various officials over the past few days that he is considering a two-stage plan to implement Israel’s declaration of sovereignty in the Jordan Valley parts of Judea and Samaria.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday that Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank would “amount to a breach of international law.”

The Israel Antiquities Authority briefly halted an underground excavation in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem due to fears of a structural collapse in the area, according to a Monday report in Haaretz. According to the report the authority made the decision after finding out the land around the dig was sinking.

Israeli firm Pangea, a maker of smart digital ID cards and border control software, is hoping to use its know-how to help airports reopen during the coronavirus pandemic to jumpstart travel and tourism.

The Knesset approved in second and third reading on Tuesday night the novel coronavirus-era emergency powers bill, the emergency powers will come into effect on Wednesday at 6 a.m. There were ten MKs present during the readings, Army radio reported on Tuesday night.

House Democrats have put together a letter that they hope will unite their entire caucus in warning Israel against annexation of part of the West Bank.

Israel has started construction of a major ring road that will connect Jewish settlements in the West Bank to Jerusalem, Reuters reported exclusively Monday. Israeli officials say the road will ease traffic congestion and will benefit Palestinian West Bank residents as well as Israelis. Palestinians have criticized the road as a hindrance to making East Jerusalem the capital of a future state and for cutting Palestinian neighborhoods off from each other.

European Union foreign ministers on Monday urged the United States to join a new effort to breathe life into long-stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, but they rejected US President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan as the basis for any international process.

Just over two weeks before a possible Israeli annexation of some as-yet unspecified portion of the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces is preparing for a wide range of scenarios for potential regional fallout — up to and including a large-scale wave of terror attacks — while still not being told exactly what the government has in mind.

Given Palestinian rejection of the Trump peace plan, the US may support Israel in the unilateral annexation of a few settlement blocs in the West Bank, World Israel News (WIN) reported Thursday. Under the Israeli coalition government agreement, Prime Minister Netanyahu can ask the Knesset to vote on annexation proposals starting July 1. However, the agreement stipulates that any such proposal must have US backing.

On Wednesday, Israel’s High Court of Justice struck down a law passed in 2017 to retroactively legalize settler houses built illegally on Palestinian-owned land in the West Bank, CBN News reports. The law was frozen from the time it passed in order for petitions against it to be heard.

Israeli foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi said Wednesday that Israel will act “responsibly” in pursuing plans for annexing parts of the West Bank, Israel Hayom reported. Responding to German and EU concerns that unilateral annexation would jeopardize a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Ashkenazi said annexation plans would be carried out “in dialogue with our neighbors.” The statements were made at a press conference in Jerusalem with German foreign minister Heiko Maas.

Israel’s government must stop using its domestic security agency to tackle the novel coronavirus by tracking mobile phone data, the head of a parliamentary committee said Wednesday.

Having rejected outright the Trump Peace Plan presented in January, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has now sent a counter-proposal for statehood to the diplomatic Quartet (UN, US, Russia and EU) that is mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Times of Israel reports.

The Palestinian prime minister says his government will declare a new Palestinian state, perhaps as early as next month, if Israel goes ahead with plans to annex parts of the West Bank.