Amid a new wave of Palestinian terrorism, the Israeli government on Sunday approved NIS 300 million (around $93 million) in funding to strengthen a 40-kilometer section of the West Bank security barrier, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports. The decision followed two recent terrorist attacks in which the Palestinian killers are believed to have entered Israel through a hole in the barrier near the town of Jenin.
After opposition MKs and a member of PM Naftali Bennet’s Yamina party voted against the new coalition government Tuesday, the Knesset failed to renew the temporary family reunification law which blocks the automatic granting of Israeli citizenship or residency to Palestinians who are married to Israeli citizens, the Times of Israel reports. Considered necessary to Israel’s security, the law has been renewed every year since its inception in 2003: that opposition MKs voted against its re-extension this time is understood as a political move to signal no confidence in the government.
The House of Representatives approved on Tuesday a bill that calls to sanction Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israeli organization that exposes incitement in the Palestinian media, says Youtube is censoring the organization by shutting down their account.
Following the deadly terrorist shooting in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night that left four people dead and several others wounded, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, cancelled the easing of some security restrictions that were in place for the Muslim month of Ramadan.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon are set to announce Sunday the start of a multi-billion-shekel effort to construct a sensor-laden fence on the southern border with Jordan, the news site Ynet reported.
The Palestinian war against Israel has heated up again, as eight Israelis have been killed in commando raids and terrorist ambushes from Saturday through Monday, prompting IDF strikes at numerous Palestinian police positions. PLO chief Yasser Arafat and other Arab leaders were already livid at the Israeli responses and American verbal and material support for them, even before an IDF hit on the head of a militant PLO faction in Ramallah today ratcheted regional tensions to new levels.
Ever since the heavy death toll in the Palestinian uprising on Friday, there have been several incidents of foiled bombings and narrowly averted disasters over the weekend, including one involving Israel’s Chief Rabbi.
Early Sunday night, Israeli security forces discovered the bullet-ridden body of rabbi Hillel Lieberman, a dual US/Israeli citizen living in Elon Moreh, who was last seen heading for the scrorched Joseph’s Tomb in nearby Nablus (biblical Shechem) to salvage the synagogue’s Torah scroll.
Israel reversed course and re-imposed a strict closure on the Gaza Strip on Monday, after the bullet-ridden body of a missing Israeli man was found this morning near his hothouse complex outside Kfar Yam, in the Gush Katif bloc.
In the latest instance of Israelis being brutally murdered in Palestinian areas, masked Arab gunmen grabbed two owners of a Tel Aviv restaurant who were shopping in Tulkarm on Tuesday and executed them on the edge of town.
Palestinian gunmen shot dead an Israeli motorist near Ramallah on Monday in what security sources believe may have been the latest attack traceable to Force 17, an elite commando unit that guards PLO chief Yasser Arafat.
Palestinian terrorists were back on the warpath on Friday, as a suicide bomber targeted a crowded Tel Aviv pedestrian mall, wounding 22 Israelis, while rockets slammed into the Erez crossing into northern Gaza.
The following excerpts, broadcasted on PA TV, are from the Friday sermon [August 3, 2001] given by Sheik Ibrahim Madhi at the Sheik ’Ijlin Mosque in Gaza:
“…Oh lovers of Allah. After the leaders of the Jews declared the “Hell” plan(1), we say: Yes, we accept the challenge, if this is the “Hell” plan. Then our dead [will reach] Heaven and their dead [will reach] Hell, Allah willing. This Jihad activity will continue, whether they like it or if it upsets them. Why do we complicate things. This is Jihad: Either victory or Martyrdom…”
“There is no better example of the cynical attitude of the Palestinian Authority,” and of Arafat himself, to acts of terror than their handling of the Dolphinarium suicide slaughter that claimed 21 young lives. So wrote military correspondent Ze’ev Schiff in Ha’aretz (June 22).
In the wake of yet another car bomb attack in the Israeli town of Or Yehuda on April 23, senior police officials declared it was nothing short of a miracle that only 8 people were lightly injured. T
The Palestinian weekly, Al-Manar, published an article signed by “The Palestinian Center for Information Sources-Gaza”, which stated that “serious thinking has began a while ago about obtaining biological weapons.” Following are excerpts from the article, titled “Will We Reach the Option of Biological Deterrence?”:(1)
Following Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s departure for Washington, Palestinian terrorists ambushed a Jewish motorist early Monday morning, just hours after the first mortar attack inside Israel proper.
wo terrorist bombings in Jerusalem on Tuesday, following hard on the heels of the shooting of a 10-month-old Jewish girl in Hebron by Palestinian snipers on Monday evening, have increased calls by the Israeli public for strong action against terror just as the Arab League summit opens in Amman, Jordan.
The Israeli coastal resort town of Netanya was rocked by yet another terrorist bombing on Sunday, leaving four dead and up to ninety wounded, and sending Israeli police scrambling to counter the imminent threat of even more attacks inside Israel.