BBC – Four Israelis have been shot dead in the West Bank, Israeli police say. Their vehicle came under fire on a road between the settlement of Kiryat Arba and the Palestinian village of Bani Naim, near the city of Hebron. The military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, said it had carried out the “heroic operation”. Read Article
Press TV – Less than a week ahead of the US-backed talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Tel Aviv insists on resuming its West Bank settlement expansions. In November, Israel announced a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements which excluded the projects in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and allowed construction of schools, synagogues and ‘community centers.’ “There is a government decision to freeze construction only for 10 months, and when that period ends, the decision is no longer valid,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a meeting of Likud ministers on Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reported. Read Article
Press TV – Israel is reportedly preparing to strike arms depots and weapons manufacturing plants in Syria, claiming they belong to the Islamic resistance movement Hezbollah, a report says. Tel Aviv has escalated its military presence in the occupied Golan Heights and the northern part of the Shebaa Farms, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz said, citing a report in the Saturday edition of the Kuwaiti daily Al Rai. Read Article
Al Jazerra – Two vessels carrying 46 international human rights activists have reached the Gaza Strip, despite Israel’s strict 14-month siege of the Palestinian territory. The end of the mission to symbolically break the siege came after Israel backed down from an earlier warning to the ‘Free Gaza’ protest group not to breach the blockade. Read Article
Jewish Chronicle – Tony Blair has declared himself “a passionate believer in Israel” and has said that there is a “collective duty… to argue vigorously against the de-legitimisation of Israel.” The Quartet representative and former UK prime minister and made the comments at a symposium at IDC University in Herzliya. Mr Blair called on European leaders not to “apply rules to the government of Israel that you would never dream of applying to your own country. Read Article
Al Bawaba – There are growing fears in the Gulf region of an imminent clash with Iran following the launch of Bushehr nuclear facility. Although Western circles downplay the importance of the facility to Iran’s efforts to develop atomic bombs, the Arab states in the Gulf region believe the potential of military action against Iran exists. The ongoing threats towards Iran by Tel Aviv and Washington come with practical preparations for a possible war such as the deployment of Patriot missiles in Kuwait. Read Article
Press TV – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spends the time he was supposed to meet with the visiting head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, on vacation. Netanyahu’s office cancelled the meeting, saying “he would speak on the telephone to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] Yukiya Amano later this week,” Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported on Tuesday. The IAEA director general is on his first visit to Israel, having asked to hold talks with the premier months ago Read Article
BBC – The Palestinian Authority has warned that it will pull out of peace talks if Israel renews the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank. Negotiators are due to hold face-to-face talks in Washington next week, for the first time since late 2008. Read article
BBC – A UN report says the Israeli military has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to farmland in the Gaza Strip and fishing zones along its shore. The Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Gazans were never informed of the exact nature of such restrictions, and the Israeli army used live ammunition to enforce them. The policy has led to tens of thousand of people losing their livelihoods. Israel says the restrictions are necessary to prevent militant attacks. Read article
Irish Times – ISRAEL is to buy 20 F-35 stealth fighter jets from the US, in a move aimed at maintaining the country’s “qualitative edge” for years to come. Israel’s approval of the $2.75 billion (€2.15 billion) deal came after years of tough negotiations and American resistance to Israel installing its own systems in the aircraft. The Lockheed Martin F-35, considered the last word in aviation technology, is capable of penetrating air-defence systems and avoiding detection by radar. Read Article
Press TV – Israeli forces have carried out joint military maneuvers with US marines in the Negev desert in southern Israel as the allies up their military cooperation. The exercise was held on Saturday as part of exercises on the occupied Palestinian territories’ borders with Lebanon and Syria and apparently hinged on countering guerilla warfare. Israeli TV channels showed parts of the exercises in which Israeli soldiers engaged in street battles with resistance fighters and also featured US marines participating in the drills with their Israeli counterparts. Read Article
Israel National News – Iran warns that if Israel were to invade Lebanon, it would be counter-attacked by several countries in the region. Iran’s Fars News Agency reported that Ramin Mehman-Parast, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, issued the warning yesterday, saying that while it’s unlike Israel will invade Lebanon, the “Zionist regime would be slapped hard in the face by the regional states if it dares to attack Lebanon again.” Read Article
Jerusalem Post – There is wide support in Congress for using all means to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power, “through diplomatic and economic sanctions if we possibly can, through military actions if we must,” visiting US Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said Wednesday in Jerusalem. Lieberman, flanked at a Jerusalem press conference by his senate colleagues John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), used very tough language, saying the words “military action” in regards to stopping Iran’s nuclear program. Most US officials opt to tiptoe around the subject, saying “no options are off the table.” Lieberman said that “a certain trumpet needs to sounded here for the Iranian regime to hear.” Read Article
Jerusalem Post – Israel threatened Monday to pull out of a UN inquiry into a raid on a Turkish flotilla heading for Gaza, after the UN chief said there is no agreement that the panel will refrain from calling Israeli soldiers to testify. Last week Israel agreed to participate in the UN probe into the May 31 raid, when nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed after naval commandos boarded a Turkish vessel aiming to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza. Read Article
Haaretz – The Wall Street Journal said Monday that the United States had signed on to sell dozens of F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, but that details in the final deal had been negotiated to quell Israeli concerns over the possible exchange. Read Article
Irish Times – HIZBULLAH SECRETARY general Hassan Nasrallah has accused Israel of being behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri and has backed up his charges with circumstantial evidence. In a three-hour televised press conference on Monday night, Sayyed Nasrallah presented a video clip of an alleged Israeli collaborator who said he had told Mr Hariri’s security detail that Hizbullah planned to kill him. The man, who reportedly admitted to trying to blackmail Mr Hariri, is alleged to have fled to Israel. Read Article
Ma’an News Agency – Israel’s Civil Administration began razing housing units Monday in the Ein Hilwa area of the northern Jordan Valley, campaign officials said. Save the Jordan Valley campaign coordinator Fathi Ikhdeirat said Israeli authorities, accompanied by border guards, began tearing down structures and handing down stop-work orders to residents. Read Article
Associated Press – An Israeli nuclear whistleblower who spent 18 years behind bars was released from jail Sunday after serving an additional three months for violating his release terms. Mordechai Vanunu was a technician at Israel’s top-secret nuclear reactor next to the desert town of Dimona. In 1986 he carried out of the country hundreds of pictures he took of the interior of the reactor and gave them to the London Sunday Times. Read Article
BBC – Three Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli officer have been killed in the first serious border clash since Israel’s 2006 conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah. A Lebanese journalist also died in the fighting. Lebanon says troops opened fire after Israeli troops entered its territory. Israel denied the charge. Read Article
AFP – The Israeli Parliament (Knesset) approves the deportation of 400 children and their families whom Tel Aviv considers a “tangible threat” to Israel. Those affected by the new measure fail to meet the regime’s criteria of speaking Hebrew and having lived in Israel for more than five years, AFP reported on Sunday. They have been given only 21 days to return to their homelands. The motion passed 13 to 10 after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to table an earlier proposal, which he said “is much more harsh and dramatic,” Ynetnews reported. Read Article
Press TV – US authorities and senior Israeli officials have held a meeting in Washington to discuss Iran and the latest sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic, a US official says. “As a matter of fact, this afternoon we have a meeting with the senior Israeli team to talk about Iran and to talk about sanctions,” AFP reported Robert Einhorn, a US State Department adviser, as saying on Thursday. Read Article
AFP – US President Barack Obama said in an Israeli TV interview broadcast on Thursday it is highly unlikely the Jewish state would surprise Washington with an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “It is unacceptable for Iran to posses nuclear weapons and we are going to do everything we can to prevent that happening,” Obama told Israel’s Channel 2 television in the interview taped on Wednesday. Read article
Haaretz – Israel’s Army Radio reported on Wednesday that the United States has sent Israel a secret document committing to nuclear cooperation between the two countries. According to Army Radio, the U.S. has reportedly pledged to sell Israel materials used to produce electricity, as well as nuclear technology and other supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Read article
The Guardian – An academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank. Read article
The Independent – Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed. The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land. Read article
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