Israel News for 2-2-2022
News Update
A large force of 150 Border Police entered the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem to seal the home of Fadi Abu Shkhayda, the terrorist who killed Eliyahu Kay and wounded two others, in a shooting attack in the Old City last November. Some clashes with local Palestinians broke out.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the need for reform in the Palestinian Authority in a phone call yesterday with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. They also discussed “the need to improve quality of life for the Palestinian people in tangible ways.”
PM Naftali Bennett says that within a year the IDF will introduce a system for intercepting missiles and drones using lasers. Bennett said that the system would make it possible to surround Israel with a laser wall that would protect it against missiles, rockets, drones, and other threats. To read more, click here.
Amnesty International, in a new 211 page report, accused Israel of subjecting Palestinians to a system of apartheid founded on policies of “segregation, dispossession and exclusion” that it said amounted to crimes against humanity. Israel said the report was filled with lies. In a statement, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said “Israel is not perfect, but it is a democracy committed to international law and open to scrutiny with a free press and a strong Supreme Court. I hate to use the argument that if Israel were not a Jewish state, nobody in Amnesty would dare argue against it, but in this case, there is no other possibility.” To read more, click here.
The IDF dismissed two officers and reprimanded a battalion commander over the death of an elderly Palestinian man after he was detained by troops searching for terrorists in his village. The man was also a US citizen. To read more, click here.
An international group of Israeli and American researchers has discovered a vertebra from a hominin species dated to 1.5 million years ago that lived in the Jordan Valley. The bone was from a child aged 6-12 and is the most ancient evidence of a human presence in today’s Israel, as well as the second oldest human remain found outside of Africa. To read more, click here.
The water level in the Kinneret rose by 2 cm in the last 24 hours, reaching 210.26 meters below sea level. The lake is now just 146 cm from capacity.
