Israel-Palestinian Conflict

Israeli air strikes targeted areas in and near Damascus early Monday, killing four Syrian soldiers, the country’s official media said early Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the only outstanding issue on the agenda of the judicial overhaul is changing the Judicial Selection Committee.

The High Court of Justice issued an interim injunction on Sunday relating to the recusal law passed by the coalition, and expanded the panel hearing petitions against the legislation to 11 justices, indicating that it is formally considering intervention against the law.

The High Court of Justice was on Thursday holding a pivotal hearing on petitions against a law passed earlier this year that prevents the court from ordering the removal of a sitting prime minister, in what could herald a new phase in the hard-right government’s showdown against what it claims is an overly powerful judicial system.

Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip recently held a rare display of protest against the brutal Hamas Islamic terror organization which rules them, i24NEWS reports.

Israel Defense Forces and members of Shin Bet arrested a senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in the West Bank village of Burkin near Jenin on Wednesday night, Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reports.

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.