Israel News

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) says supreme Palestinian Shariah judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash appears to have authorized Muslims to kill Israelis, WND reported Sunday. Al-Habbash, who was appointed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a recent televised address that the Quran shows there are 10 transgressions against which Palestinians are commanded to fight: according to PMW, these transgressions seem to have “been carefully selected in order to turn every single Israeli into a target that every Palestinian Muslim is ‘commanded’ to fight and ‘allowed’ kill.”

Israel is setting up a task force aimed at bringing a new level of accuracy to genome editing, in the hope it will pave the way to cures for various medical conditions.

At least nine people were killed in alleged Israeli airstrikes targeted Syrian defense factories near the city of Masyaf in northwest Syria on Thursday night, according to Syrian reports.

The Palestinian Authority announced Monday it will continue paying monthly salaries to terrorists in prison, WND reports. In violation of recent Israeli law, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) said the salaries would continue to be paid through local banks in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

It is highly unlikely the US will approve Israeli advancement of plans to unilaterally annex parts of the West Bank on July 1, a well-placed source told the Times of Israel (TOI) Wednesday. A central condition of US approval is that a joint US-Israel mapping committee must conclude its work on delineating the exact borders of the territory Israel would annex. According to the TOI source, it could take the committee weeks, if not months, to complete this task.

The Israel Aerospace Industries defense contractor performed two tests with one of its short-range ballistic missiles at sea on Tuesday, successfully hitting floating targets at two distances, the firm said.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have been reportedly engaged in secret talks since last December, through American mediation, over including Saudi representatives in the Islamic Waqf Council at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This development has been taking place against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century, and the plan to apply Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and the large settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria.

As he prepares to ask the Knesset to vote on a plan for Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained Thursday that MKs will only have to vote on the issue of sovereignty, not on the issue of a Palestinian state, the Jerusalem Post reports.

An airstrike in eastern Syria on Sunday killed five non-Syrian fighters backed by Iran, a Britain-based war monitor said.

An Israeli research institute has said that two medicines used to treat Gaucher’s disease could also be used to treat COVID-19, CBN News reported on May 27. Scientists at the Ministry of Defense-run Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) have said Cerdelga, which has already been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and Venglustat, which is in the process of approval, appear to inhibit viruses.

In response to Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank, on Wednesday Palestinian leaders reconfirmed their decision to terminate all agreements and security cooperation with the Israeli and US governments, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The head of the Lebanese Shiite terror group Hezbollah on Tuesday rejected a US request to empower a UN peacekeeping force patrolling the border with Israel.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) warned Israel on Wednesday of “serious consequences,” if the Jewish state continues its attempts to annex parts of the West Bank and Jordan Valley. “There would be consequences for this measure on the economic and political Palestinian-Israeli relationship,” said PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday issued an executive order requiring the implementation of a law passed last week that bars any cooperation with Israel, including the use of Israeli software and hardware.

A number of European heads of state recently wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking him not to proceed with plans for unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank, Israel’s Channel 13 reported Tuesday. French President Emmanuel Macron made the request of Netanyahu “in a spirit of friendship.”

A day after his trial began in the Jerusalem District Court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a message to the press at a faction meeting of his Likud party.

Israeli government on Monday voted to limit security services’ involvement in locating coronavirus carriers using cell phones, saying from now on the measure would only be used when epidemiological investigations prove insufficient.

Describing Israel as a “deadly, cancerous growth,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei announced Friday that the “liberation of Palestine” is an Islamic goal, Jerusalem Online reported. The Ayatollah was speaking on the occasion of International Quds Day, a yearly anti-Israel, anti-Zionist event established by the Iranian regime in 1979 to express support for the Palestinian cause.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has attacked the Israeli government’s plan to annex parts of the West Bank and declared that the issue of Jerusalem was a “red line” for Muslims around the world.

Israel’s economy faces its sharpest decline in 20 years as it contracted by 7.1 percent in the first quarter of this year, official figures show.