JERUSALEM — Spoiled by sunshine for about 520 days a year, Jerusalemites are strangely phobic about cloudy weather, as if a grey day could infect them with Nordic melancholy. Sunday was one such day: the streets empty, the air quiet and chill. So…
Browsing: Israeli News
JERUSALEM — Dissonance. That is the word chosen by David Landau, the Israeli author and journalist, when asked to describe the essence of Ariel Sharon. “The dissonance between what people expected and what they got from him,” Landau said. The final…
Former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon died in hospital near Tel Aviv Saturday after eight years in a coma, prompting a flood of tributes in Israel but contempt from Palestinians. He was 85. “He’s gone,” his son Gilad told reporters at the Sheba Medical…
Thousands of African asylum seekers demonstrated outside Western embassies in Tel Aviv on Monday in a second day of mass protests against Israel’s immigration policies. The migrants, primarily from Eritrea and Sudan, marched from downtown Tel Aviv to…
Israeli former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s health was in “slow, gradual” decline on Friday, according to the hospital where he has been in a comatose state for eight years. “Tests show a slow, gradual deterioration in the functioning of his vital…
Israel released early Tuesday 26 Palestinian prisoners, a Palestinian official told AFP, in accordance with commitments made to revive US-brokered peace talks. “Two vans carrying (18) prisoners left Ofer prison and were headed to Ramallah” in the West…
The families of Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks appealed Monday against the imminent release of long-serving Palestinian prisoners as part of US-brokered peace talks, media reported. The Supreme Court has always rejected such appeals. Israeli…
The Israeli military fired a barrage of shells into southern Lebanon in retaliation after two Katyusha-style rockets crashed into an open field on Sunday, officials and reports said. The attacks struck uninhabited areas of both Israel and Lebanon without…
Several thousand African asylum seekers who entered Israel illegally via Egypt staged a peaceful protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday, police said. The demonstrators denounced the refusal of the authorities to grant them refugee status, as well as holding…
Israel will announce plans for new settlement construction next week, coinciding with the release of a third batch of Palestinian prisoners as part of peace talks, an official said on Thursday. Palestinians have warned repeatedly that settlement building…
The Palestinians on Thursday accused Israel of a “dangerous escalation” after the army killed two people in the West Bank, calling the violence a deliberate attempt to scupper peace talks. “This dangerous Israeli escalation aims to thwart American and…
Mideast peace efforts are being “hampered” by Israeli settlement construction, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem said Wednesday in his traditional Christmas message. “The Israeli-Palestinian talks resumed in late July, after three years of interruption…
An Israeli soldier was killed by cross-border fire from Lebanon on Sunday evening, Israeli media reported. There was no confirmation from the Israeli military, which earlier said that a Lebanese soldier opened fire at an Israeli civilian vehicle at…
A week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly chose to miss Nelson Mandela’s memorial service because of travel costs, Israeli ministers voted Sunday to consider buying an Israeli equivalent of “Air Force One.” They approved creating a committee…
The heaviest snowfall in decades blocked roads across Israel and the West Bank Saturday, while torrential rains flooded areas of the Gaza Strip. The heavy snow, which stopped falling Saturday afternoon, prompted Israeli authorities to interrupt the…
A visit to Israel by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte Sunday was marred by a dispute over a new security scanner on the Gaza border, an Israeli official said. Rutte was to have inaugurated the scanner on the frontier with the Palestinian Islamist-ruled…
Anti-Muslim insults were found on the walls of a mosque in northern Israel on Sunday, a police spokeswoman said. “Insults against Islam… were found on Sunday morning on the walls of a mosque in Baqa al-Gharbiyeh,” she said. The spokeswoman also said…
Economy Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday proposed that Israel annex parts of the West Bank under its full military control where most Jewish settlers live. “I favour implementation of Israeli sovereignty over the zone where 400,000 (settlers) live…
Israeli Foreign Minister Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are unlikely to bear fruit within the envisioned nine-month timeframe but that dialogue should continue. His remarks Friday evening contrasted with…