No image available
/ 19 December 2005
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered no permanent damage from a mild stroke and will be released from the hospital on Tuesday, his doctors said on Monday. Although Sharon is expected to make a full recovery, the illness raised questions about his ability to lead the country.
No image available
/ 22 November 2005
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, classified unfit for office more than two decades ago, continues to defy the political obituarists even after a divorce from his right-wing support base. Controversy has stalked Sharon, who first came to prominence as commander of the special forces’ Unit 101 in the 1950s, throughout his public life.
No image available
/ 15 November 2005
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced on Tuesday an Israeli-Palestinian deal to open critical border crossings in the Gaza Strip, capping a tense, round-the-clock burst of personal diplomacy. Rice said the two sides have resolved outstanding issues, particularly on the key Rafah terminal between Gaza and Egypt.
No image available
/ 10 November 2005
Fiery union leader Amir Peretz won a stunning victory over Shimon Peres in the leadership contest for Israel’s Labour Party, officials said on Thursday, dealing the party’s elder statesman the latest in a long line of defeats and promising to shake up the country’s political system.
No image available
/ 2 November 2005
Ten years after a Jewish extremist murdered Yitzak Rabin, the threat of another political assassination still haunts Israel as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict gets bogged down in a fifth year. A survey published ahead of the 10th anniversary of Rabin’s death shows that one in three Israelis believes a new political assassination is likely.
No image available
/ 31 October 2005
Israel vowed on Monday to carry on its offensive against militants after the army shot dead three Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank, sparking condemnation from the Palestinian Authority. The latest deaths, during shootouts with Israeli troops in Kabatiya, came shortly after an Islamic Jihad official in the Gaza Strip said the group would abide by an informal truce following a deadly week of violence.
No image available
/ 27 October 2005
Israel intensified demands on Thursday for Tehran to be expelled from the United Nations amid an international outcry over a call by Iran’s president for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map. The international community expressed outrage at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory speech.
No image available
/ 26 October 2005
At least four people were killed and dozens more wounded on Wednesday in a Palestinian bomb attack in a marketplace in northern Israel, the first inside the Jewish state since July. Responsibility for the attack in the town of Hadera was claimed by the Islamic Jihad movement.
No image available
/ 26 October 2005
Google is fierce competition for Microsoft, but the software giant does not fear the race and plans to upgrade its search technology in the next six months, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates said in remarks published on Wednesday. On his first trip to Israel, Gates praised Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel’s contributions to the global high-tech market.
No image available
/ 17 October 2005
Israel has decided to suspend all contacts with the Palestinian Authority following a shooting attack that killed three Jewish settlers in the West Bank, Israeli security sources said on Monday. Israeli and Palestinian officials had been due to hold a series of meetings in the coming days to prepare the groundwork for a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
No image available
/ 23 September 2005
Stray dogs of Jerusalem will soon be pampered in a deluxe municipal dog house complete with air-conditioned kennels, swimming pool, garden and panoramic view of the holy city, a newspaper reported on Friday. Staff will serve up three meals a day to boarders at the establishment.
No image available
/ 16 September 2005
A senior Israeli defence official on Friday challenged the Palestinian Authority to slam shut the open border between Gaza and Egypt, saying its credibility was on the line over its failure to stop the flow of gunrunners and others across the frontier. There are fears al-Qaeda terrorists will infiltrate Gaza through the open border.
No image available
/ 15 September 2005
Israel’s High Court ordered the government on Thursday to find a different route for the West Bank barrier in the region of the Alfe Menashe settlement in the northern West Bank. The unanimous ruling by the nine-judge panel effectively means the section of the fence already built in the area has to be rebuilt.
No image available
/ 12 September 2005
Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz warned on Monday that Israel will adopt a ”zero tolerance” policy to continued violence from the Gaza Strip after ending its 38-year occupation of the Palestinian territory. ”If terrorist organisations launch any kind of attacks against Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip, we will react,” Mofaz said.
No image available
/ 8 September 2005
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died from an unidentified infection that was ”highly unlikely” to have been caused by HIV/Aids or poisoning, The New York Times reported on Thursday. Citing US and Israeli medical experts, who were shown Arafat’s medical records, the paper said it remains a mystery as to what underlying infection killed the Palestinian leader.
No image available
/ 6 September 2005
Four Arab Israelis shot dead by a soldier opposed to the closure of the Gaza Strip settlements are not victims of ”terror” because their killer was Jewish, Israel’s Defence Ministry has ruled, and so their families are not entitled to the usual compensation for life.
No image available
/ 2 September 2005
Israel has frozen a controversial project to link its largest West Bank settlement to annexed east Jerusalem, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a newspaper interview published on Friday. The plans to build 3 500 new housing units near Maale Adumim defied the Middle East road-map peace plan.
Former Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu is to announce formally on Tuesday that he is challenging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the leadership of the right-wing Likud party, public radio reported. Netanyahu quit his post as finance minister in protest at the plan to pull settlers out of the Gaza Strip and West Bank enclaves.
Israel said on Wednesday all its soldiers will be out of the Gaza Strip within a month, ending four decades of occupation after the historic pull-out of Jewish settlers from the Palestinian territory. Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz said it is too soon to expect further evacuations in the occupied West Bank.
An Israeli woman suffered serious burns on Wednesday after setting fire to herself and running towards a police checkpoint to protest against the historic pull-out of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, police said. The 54-year-old Russian was an immigrant settler from the northern West Bank.
Israel’s military on Thursday banned visitors from Gaza Strip settlements to try to stop the influx of pull-out protesters who plan to reinforce settler resistance to their evacuation. Police estimate that 2 000 opponents have sneaked into Gaza to back the 8 500 settlers, but settler leaders put the number at 5 000.
A week before Israel’s upcoming withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came under attack on Wednesday from one of his strongest rivals, who polls show could challenge him for the leadership of the ruling Likud party. Former finance minister Benjamin Natanyahu called on legislators to block the pull-out.
The Israeli government is considering moving up its mid-August withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, senior government officials said on Thursday, after a three-day mass protest against the pull-out tied up tens of thousands of security forces. The evacuation originally was to have begun in mid-July.
Israel looked on Monday to international support for its pull-out from the Gaza Strip, requesting a multibillion-dollar aid package from the United States and lobbying for European Union backing from visiting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. The pull-out operation is to begin in mid-August.
Israel was not warned about possible terror attacks in London before at least six blasts ripped through the city, Minister of Foreign Affairs Silvan Shalom said on Thursday. A foreign ministry official had said earlier that British police warned the Israeli embassy in London of possible terror attacks minutes before the first explosion.
Israel is to build an underwater security barrier on the coastal border with the Gaza Strip in a bid to prevent any infiltrations from the sea by would-be Palestinian attackers, security sources said on Friday. The navy-built barrier is expected to stretch nearly one kilometre out into the Mediterranean sea.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw this week told Palestinian leaders in Ramallah that the creation of a Palestinian state was in their own hands, whatever the intentions of the Israeli government. Straw brushed aside a growing belief among Palestinian politicians that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has no desire to return to peace negotiations.
Haim Yavin, a revered anchor of Israel’s Channel One news programme for more than three decades, has made a documentary in which he concludes that Jewish settlements are endangering the country and that the occupation of Palestinian land is a crime.
Israeli lawmakers have drafted a Bill designed to make English translations of Israeli road signs more comprehensible and consistent, the Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday. Legislator Amnon Cohen of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, who initiated the Bill, called the lack of uniformity ”embarrassing” and ”disgraceful”.
Nearly all Gaza Strip settlers have agreed to move to Israel as a group following this summer’s withdrawal, a spokesperson said on Thursday, signalling the collapse of what was once wall-to-wall resistance to the government’s plan to evacuate the coastal area.
To suffer Palestinian flags strung up in victory from abandoned Jewish homes or incur global wrath for dynamiting the legacy of a 38-year occupation. That is what Israel must decide when uprooting settlers from nearly 2 000 homes in the Gaza Strip this summer.
Israel on Thursday threatened tougher military action against militants in the occupied Gaza Strip should Palestinians continue to open fire against Jewish settlements and Israeli territory. On Wednesday, Israel launched its first air strike since January against militants in the Gaza Strip.