Contents: Iraqi troops and tanks seen massing near Kirkuk, poised to attack Kurds; Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas announce unity agreement; Turkey’s tanks and troops cross border into Syria’s Idlib in apparent truce with HTS
Hamas and Fatah declared December 1 as the deadline for the Palestinian Authority to take over the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Contents: Palestinian reconciliation talks ignore Hamas commitment to destroy Israel; Palestinian unity talks face disagreement on Hamas’s ‘resistance weapons’
High-level Hamas and Fatah delegations are scheduled to participate in reconciliation talks in Cairo on Tuesday in a bid to start work on ending the decade-long territorial division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s domestic security agency says it has arrested two Palestinians suspected of killing an Israeli man found dead last week, in what it says was a “terror attack.”
Hamas on Thursday announced that top commander Saleh al-Arouri, who in recent years served as the terror group’s head of West Bank operations, will be appointed as the organization’s deputy political leader.
A delegation of Palestinian Authority ministers led by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah was set to travel from the West Bank to Gaza on Monday for reconciliation talks with the Islamic terror group Hamas, which rules the coastal enclave.
In a rare move, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman approved a plan to shut off the West Bank and Gaza Strip for 11 days for the Sukkot holiday and the following Shabbat, his office said Sunday.
TEL AVIV — The movements of Hamas and Fatah are continuing to prepare for the possibility of a reconciliation deal that would see Hamas ostensibly hand over of power in the Gaza Strip to the government of the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah, the movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah will travel to the Gaza Strip on October 2 as part of renewed reconciliation efforts with Hamas, which runs the enclave, his government said Monday.
The IDF announced on Tuesday that it will put in place a closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, ahead of the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, which starts Wednesday evening.
TEL AVIV – The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations slammed the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, for reportedly “blacklisting” companies with business dealings in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Contents: Hamas announces it will reconcile with the Fatah and Palestinian Authority; Egypt forces Hamas to capitulate to Fatah and reconcile.
On Thursday, the Trump administration said it will support a bill that would suspend America’s financial aid to the Palestinian Authority until it ends a longstanding practice of “pay to slay” which rewards Palestinians for killing Israelis and Americans.
TEL AVIV – Hundreds of pro-Israel Christians have raised thousands of dollars to rebuild a honey farm in the West Bank that Palestinian thieves plundered ahead of the Jewish New Year.
Israel Marathon Association accused the Association of International Marathons and Distances Races of injecting politics into sports on Thursday, by excluding an Israeli race because it passes through West Bank territory.
TEL AVIV – Human Rights Watch has charged Israeli banks with proliferating and financing construction in the West Bank and called on them to stop, adding that there is legal justification for doing so, according to a new report released by the group Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the Red Cross to assist in retrieving Israeli civilians and bodies of fallen soldiers held in Gaza by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The Palestinian Authority Preventative Security arrested Ayman Qawasmeh, the chairman of the Minbar al-Huriyya radio station, in Hebron late Sunday evening, a senior PA security official said on Monday.
TEL AVIV – Israeli forces arrested a Palestinian wedding singer on Wednesday morning after he sang a song praising the terrorist who murdered three members of the same family at their Shabbat table in the Halamish settlement last month.
US President Donald Trump’s peace envoy toured the area around the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, and called on Hamas to release the bodies of two IDF soldiers and a number of Israeli citizens the terror group is holding.
BARKAN, West Bank — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Monday that his government will never evacuate another settlement, issuing the promise days after he met with a US delegation to discuss restarting the peace process with the Palestinians.
An Israeli court on Thursday charged a firebrand Islamic cleric with incitement to terrorism in connection with deadly unrest at a Jerusalem holy site last month, the justice ministry said.
Amnesty International on Wednesday slammed the PA and Hamas for what it called a clampdown on freedom of expression in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively.
Border Police officers shot and killed a Palestinian as he tried to stab one of them at a flashpoint West Bank junction on Saturday, police and medics said. One officer was lightly wounded in the incident.
TEL AVIV – Security forces on Wednesday demolished the family home of a 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist who stabbed three Israelis in the West Bank community of Halamish in July while they were eating Shabbat dinner in their home.
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has clamped down on social media and news websites, the main outlets for debate and dissent in the West Bank, with a vaguely worded decree that critics say allows his government to jail anyone on charges of harming “national unity” or the “social fabric.”
TEL AVIV – About 1,000 Jews prayed at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus on Monday night for Tu B’Av, the Jewish holiday of love, under heavy IDF guard.
Contents: Israel announces that it will ban al-Jazeera in Israel; Al-Jazeera gives bitter, angry response to Israel’s move; BBC vs Al-Jazeera: Which is more biased?
TEL AVIV – An Israeli man just escaped with his life as a Palestinian mob attempted to lynch as he drove through the West Bank on Sunday.
Palestinian man Muhammad Harou, who confessed last week to slaying his pregnant Israeli girlfriend, 29-year-old Michal Halimi, was charged with murder on Sunday in the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court.
A one-year-old baby was lightly wounded on Sunday when Palestinians threw rocks at a bus he was traveling in with his mother in the West Bank.
A group of approximately 70 Israelis hiked into a small Palestinian village in the central West Bank on Friday and quickly found themselves pelted with rocks by local residents, the army said.
The Israel Security Agency uncovered a money-laundering scheme that transferred funds to Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank from Turkey via Hebron.
Security forces on Wednesday placed a cordon around the West Bank town of Yatta, hours after a Palestinian resident stabbed a supermarket worker in a terror attack in a central Israeli town.
The Jerusalem Post reports: The body of a missing Jewish woman from the Binyamin District of the West Bank was found by police last week after her Arab boyfriend confessed to strangling her and bashing her head with rocks in Holon to “release Palestinian prisoners.”
IDF soldiers early on Saturday raided the offices of a Palestinian media group in the West Bank city of Ramallah, seizing equipment and documents.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was discharged from hospital on Saturday evening after undergoing “routine medical checks in hospital in Ramallah,” reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon (Kulanu) is exploring the possibility of denying tax benefits to individuals or organizations that donate funds to the human rights group Amnesty International due to its recent campaign against Israel’s settlements.
Police arrested several Palestinian youths who barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque following prayers there late Thursday night, as tensions surrounding the Temple Mount persisted after nearly two weeks of bloody clashes over security measures at the site.
