Category Archives: Israel

Jordan scrambles to affirm its custodianship of al-Aqsa mosque

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Amman fears warming Israel-Saudi relations may threaten its hold on holy Islamic site

Jordan is scrambling to affirm its custodianship of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem after a meeting between Israeli and Saudi leaders raised fears in Amman that the fate of one of Islam’s holiest sites could be up for grabs in a normalisation deal between the two countries.

Warming relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, capped by a weekend visit by Benjamin Netanyahu to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, have alarmed Jordanian leaders already unnerved by Riyadh’s regional posturing. They fear al-Aqsa could be in play as the Trump administration tries to secure a regional legacy in its dying weeks.

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Saudis may stall on Trump’s Middle East peace plan now he’s on the way out

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The Palestinians are hoping a Biden presidency will slow the growing rapport between Saudi Arabia and Israel

During the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the question of whether Saudi Arabia would make peace with Israel had come down to a question of when.

The terms of such a deal were more or less agreed during Trump’s tumultuous term, thrashed out between his envoy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the kingdom’s effective ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, who held a very different view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from other Saudi leaders.

Their outlook centred on Iran rather than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being the centre of the region’s dysfunction. And Israel, they agreed, could help, not hinder, progress on that score. Prince Mohammed eschewed his father and uncles’ views that a return to 1967 lines was a starting point for peace, in favour of the Kushner line that Palestinian leaders had caused talks to stagnate.

Ties warmed quickly, especially from May 2017, when Saudi Arabia received Trump as a conquering hero after he overturned the nuclear deal with Tehran and reorientated Washington’s focus to Riyadh.

The secret channels used to communicate between the kingdom and Israel were discarded. So was the need for mediators, as Saudi officials made regular visits to Tel Aviv and vice versa. Denials of such trips were replaced by hints that they had taken place. Then came peace deals with Saudi allies, the UAE and Bahrain, and now a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu to Prince Mohammed on Saudi soil that Israel didn’t bother to disguise.

Despite a flight path visible on flight tracking sites, which showed the arrival of Netanyahu’s preferred charter jet on the shores of the Red Sea city of Neom, Riyadh responded with a pro forma denial.

There to meet the Israeli prime minister on the shores of the Red Sea was outgoing US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, on a mission to finalise as much as he can before he loses his job in eight weeks. Securing a peace pact is something Pompeo, Kushner and Trump have desperately pushed for and such a deal would indeed be seismic in the Middle East, where many are nervously awaiting its impact.

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Netanyahu holds secret meeting with Saudi crown prince – reports

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Israeli PM is said to have flown to Saudi Arabia to meet Mohammed bin Salman and Mike Pompeo

Benjamin Netanyahu has made an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, according to media reports in Israel.

The Sunday night trip, if confirmed, would mark an extremely rare high-level meeting between the long-time foes, one that Israel has been pushing for in its efforts for regional acceptance. Hebrew-language reports, citing unnamed Israeli officials, said Netanyahu was accompanied by Yossi Cohen, head of the country’s Mossad spy agency.

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Netanyahu holds secret meeting with Saudi crown prince

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Israeli PM flew to Saudi Arabia to meet Mohammed bin Salman and the US’s Mike Pompeo

Benjamin Netanyahu made an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia over the weekend to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, according to an Israeli cabinet member.

The Sunday night visit would mark the first reported meeting between leaders of the long-time foes, one that Israel has been pushing for in its efforts for regional acceptance despite previously being considered a far-fetched ambition.

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Antony Blinken: Biden’s secretary of state nominee is sharp break with Trump era

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A born internationalist, Blinken will seek to soothe the frayed nerves of western allies

After reports first emerged on Sunday night that Antony Blinken would be secretary of state in the Biden administration, one interview from his past began circulating on social media.

It was a September 2016 conversation with Grover, a character from Sesame Street, on the subject of refugees, directed at American children who might have new classmates from faraway countries. “We all have something to learn and gain from one another even when it doesn’t seem at first like we have much in common,” Blinken told the fuzzy blue puppet.

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Israel strikes Hamas targets in Gaza

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Defence forces say Israel’s air force hit two rocket ammunition manufacturing sites

Israel says its military struck Hamas targets in Gaza in response to a rocket attack launched from the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli air force struck two rocket ammunition manufacturing sites, a military compound and “underground infrastructures”, the Israel Defence Forces said on Sunday.

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Spy Jonathan Pollard expected to fly to Israel after US lifts parole

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Release marks latest gesture by departing Trump administration towards the Israeli government

Jonathan Pollard, a US citizen jailed for 30 years after being convicted of spying in one of the most dramatic espionage cases of the cold war, is expected to fly to Israel after being released from parole.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, welcomed the lifting of travel restrictions, his office said in a statement on Saturday, adding that he had “consistently worked towards securing Pollard’s release”.

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Mike Pompeo makes unprecedented visit to Israeli settlement

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Trump’s top diplomat becomes first US secretary of state to officially visit a settlement

Israel’s military occupation has received a symbolic US stamp of approval after Mike Pompeo toured an archaeological dig run by a far-right settler group and visited a settlement that farms grapes on land Palestinians say was stolen from them.

The trips on Wednesday and Thursday marked the first time a US secretary of state had officially visited settlements, a deeply provocative move that previous American administrations went to lengths to avoid.

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Will Trump’s major foreign policy legacy be Israel and Palestine?

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From ‘peace’ deals to gutting aid, the US president has had a major impact on the region

Donald Trump has cast himself as an isolationist president focused on Americans. However, in one major foreign policy issue, Israel and Palestine, the US leader has possibly made more of an impact than any of his predecessors.

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Israel says it launched airstrikes on Syria over explosive devices at border

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Syria says three military personnel were killed in ‘Israeli aggression’ over Damascus

Israel’s military has said it launched air strikes against the Syrian army and Iran’s Quds Force in Syria on Wednesday after explosive devices were planted in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

In a statement, the Israeli military said its planes hit storage facilities, military compounds and Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries.

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US poll chaos is a boon for the enemies of democracy the whole world over

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While Democrats and Republicans squabble in Washington, injustice and violence reigns from Palestine to Mozambique

Believe it or not, the world did not stop turning on its axis because of the US election and ensuing, self-indulgent disputes in the land of the free-for-all. In the age of Donald Trump, narcissism spreads like the plague.

But the longer the wrangling in Washington continues, the greater the collateral damage to America’s global reputation – and to less fortunate states and peoples who rely on the US and the western allies to fly the flag for democracy and freedom.

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Israeli agents in Iran kill al-Qaida’s top lieutenant – report

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Abu Muhammad al-Masri was gunned down in Tehran more than three months ago, says New York Times

Al-Qaida’s second-in-command was killed in Iran in August by Israeli operatives acting at the behest of the United States, the New York Times has reported, citing intelligence officials.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle in Tehran, the NYT reported. He was accused of helping to mastermind the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa.

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Eight international peacekeepers killed in Sinai helicopter crash

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Six Americans, one Czech and one French citizen killed and only survivor in critical state

A helicopter carrying members of a multinational peacekeeping force has crashed near Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, killing six Americans, a Czech and a French citizen.

The US-led Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) said in a statement that all but one of the nine people onboard were killed when the aircraft went down “during a routine operation”.

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Saeb Erekat, veteran Palestinian peace negotiator, dies after Covid diagnosis

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Key PLO figure and advocate for two-state solution dies aged 65

Saeb Erekat, the veteran Palestinian peace negotiator and one of the most high-profile figures in its leadership since the early 1990s, has died after contracting coronavirus.

Erekat, a lawmaker from Jericho in the occupied West Bank, was a senior adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and also worked for Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat. He served as the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

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Palestinian prisoner agrees to end hunger strike after 100 days

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Maher al-Akhras, 49, who has refused to eat since being arrested in July, will be released by Israeli authorities on 26 November

A Palestinian prisoner held by Israel has agreed to end more than 100 days of hunger strike, his family and a prisoner rights’ advocate have said, claiming he had received assurances from Israeli authorities that his open-ended detention would not be extended beyond the end of November.

Maher al-Akhras, 49, has refused to eat since he was arrested in July and locked up under administrative detention, a policy Israel uses to hold Palestinians without charges on suspicion of undisclosed security offenses. These renewable detention orders have come under heavy criticism from Palestinians and human rights groups, which allege the policy violates the right to due process.

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Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin assassinated at peace rally – archive, 6 November 1995

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6 November 1995: prime minister shot at close range by 25-year-old Yigal Amir who told police ‘I acted alone on God’s orders and I have no regrets’

Israel, forced to confront its divisions by a Jewish assassin’s bullets, today buries the prime minister who promised peace, and looks ahead to a future suddenly filled with new fears of conflict.

Related: Yitzhak Rabin: ‘He never knew it was one of his people who shot him in the back’

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Israeli forces leave 41 children homeless after razing Palestinian village, UN says

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Demolitions used as a ‘key means’ to ‘coerce Palestinians to leave their homes’

Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank have razed a Palestinian village, leaving 73 people – including 41 children – homeless, in the largest forced displacement incident for years, according to the United Nations.

Excavators escorted by military vehicles were filmed approaching Khirbet Humsa and proceeding to flatten or smash up tents, shacks, animal shelters, toilets and solar panels.

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Yitzhak Rabin: ‘He never knew it was one of his people who shot him in the back’

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Twenty-five years after the death of the Israeli prime minister, those who were there recall the night two bullets altered the destiny of two nations

They wanted him to wear a bulletproof vest, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Afterwards, they wished they’d pushed him harder – they should have insisted – but he was the prime minister and his mind was made up. He refused to believe a fellow citizen might pose a mortal threat.

And so a quarter of a century ago, on the night of 4 November 1995, Yitzhak Rabin stood before a vast and grateful crowd in Tel Aviv at a peace rally, protected by nothing more than a jacket, tie and white cotton shirt. The size of the rally had surprised him: he was a shy man, awkward with attention, and he had doubted that thousands of Israelis would come out to show support for him and his attempt to make peace with the Palestinians. He told aides he feared the city’s central plaza – not yet called Rabin Square – would be empty.

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Israeli zeal for second Trump term matched by Palestinian enmity

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Netanyahu’s clear choice for US president seen as ‘extremely dangerous’ in Palestine

Anyone in any doubt about Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred candidate in the US presidential election need only visit his personal Twitter account.

Right at the top, behind the headshot of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is a banner photo of him with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, their eyes fixed on each other.

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Auction for Jerusalem museum’s treasures postponed at last minute

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Sotheby’s in London had been due to sell more than 200 items from cash-strapped museum

Among the hundreds of precious items at Jerusalem’s Museum for Islamic Art is an ostentatious helmet that may have belonged to an Ottoman sultan, a page from a nearly millennium-old Qur’an, and a 13th-century Mamluk glass bowl.

While no doubt treasured, these artefacts can no longer be considered priceless. In a controversial Sotheby’s auction previously set to take place in London on Tuesday, the bowl was estimated at £60,000-£80,000 and the helmet and Qur’an leaf at £200,000-£300,000 each.

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