Israel News

The president of Israel’s Supreme Court confirmed Monday that all 15 justices will assemble on September 12th to hear a challenge to the recently-passed judicial reform law eliminating the “reasonableness” clause. It’s the first time the entire court will hear a case.

IDF Chief of staff Herzi Halevi and President Isaac Herzog made separate trips Wednesday to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon amid heightened tensions with the Hezbollah terror organization.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said in an interview on Monday evening that Israel “is the closest it has ever been to a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia.”

US President Joe Biden announced last week that a normalization agreement between Israel and long-term official enemy Saudi Arabia may be forthcoming, the Jerusalem Post reports. Such a deal would follow the Abraham Accord normalization deals brokered by the Trump administration between Israel and Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Doubling down on past virulently anti-semitic statements, the leader of the Lebanese Iran-backed Hezbollah terror organization said at the weekend that the Middle East will work tirelessly until the “cancerous gland” that is Israel has been removed from the region, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations emphasized Thursday that there is no “right of return” to Israel for millions of Palestinian descendants of Arabs who were displaced during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, the Jewish National Syndicate (JNS) reports.

Reconciliation talks between the Palestinian Authority which governs the West Bank and the Hamas terror group which rules the Gaza Strip have ended inconclusively after the groups’ respective leaders agreed to meet in Egypt and discuss national unity for the first time in three years, Haaretz reports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would enter “uncharted territory” if the Supreme Court struck down a recently passed “reasonableness” amendment, that’s part of a contentious judicial reform, during an interview with CNN on Thursday evening.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security assessment Sunday with Israel’s top defense brass to discuss courses of action proposed by the military, his office said, as tensions with Hezbollah rise on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

A fox was seen along a wall of the Temple Mount during a fast marking the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem this week, fulfilling an ancient prophecy regarding the ruins of the holy site.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday announced a NIS 100 billion ($27 billion) plan to link the northern city of Kiryat Shmona to the southern city of Eilat by a high-speed rail that would eventually link to Saudi Arabia.

US President Joe Biden is mulling a mutual security pact with Riyadh that would include an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal, New York Times’s Thomas Friedman wrote in a column published Thursday.

Israeli archaeologists digging in the Judean Desert have unearthed a rare, 2,000-year-old half-shekel silver coin inscribed with the words “Holy Jerusalem” in ancient Hebrew, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again called for broad agreement on his government’s plans in an address to the nation following the unilateral passing of key judicial reform legislation.

Hamas agreed to join talks on forming a new unity government with the leaders of other main Palestinian factions after the Palestinian Authority on Sunday released a senior Hamas official who had been arrested on charges of slandering the PA and stirring up sectarian strife, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Israeli researchers from Tel Aviv University have announced success in using green electricity and a biocatalyst to produce high-efficiency “green” hydrogen without creating air pollution, Techxplore reports. Hydrogen is essential for agriculture and industry, but most of this raw material is wrought from coal or natural gas and emits 9-12 tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of it produced.

Israel’s parliament adopted legislation limiting the powers of the top court despite protests and President Isaac Herzog saying that his nation is in “a state of national emergency.”

After 29 weeks of protests and mass public opposition that have roiled the country and divided its citizens, the Knesset gave its final approval Monday to a law that prevents the courts from reviewing the “reasonableness” of government and ministerial decisions, the first major bill of the government’s judicial overhaul to pass into law.

Speculation grew Sunday evening that the Histadrut, Israel’s largest labor federation, could announce a general strike after a compromise it had floated in an attempt to end a bitter, divisive national standoff over the government’s planned drastic overhaul of the judiciary was quickly dismissed by the ruling Likud party, anti-government protesters and parts of the opposition.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underwent successful surgery to implant a pacemaker Saturday night. He was sedated for the operation, and turned over duties to Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin, chief architect of the judicial reform legislation making its way through the Knesset.