Israel News for May 24, 2016
Terrorist Neutralized
A female terrorist attempted to stab Border Police officers at a checkpoint north of Jerusalem yesterday.
According to the investigation report, at around 2:30 p.m. an Arab woman drew the suspicion of Israeli forces at the checkpoint, who called on her to stop. When she did not heed their instructions and continued approaching, officers fired in the air, as per protocol. She then drew a knife and ran towards them. Officers opened fire, fatally wounding the terrorist. Paramedics confirmed her death soon after. No officers were harmed.
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Returning Bodies
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan instructed police today to stop returning the bodies of terrorists to their families for burials. The decision comes after last night’s funeral of terrorist Alaa Abu Jamal, which turned into a pro-terror rally and incitement when 200 East Jerusalem residents crowded outside the cemetery calling out “Allahu Akbar” and “In blood and spirit we will avenge you, shahid.” Border Police prevented the crowd from entering the cemetery.
Abu Jamal had been an employee of the Bezeq phone company when he ran over pedestrians at a Jerusalem bus stop with his car, and then exited his vehicle and hit his wounded victims with an ax, killing 60 year old Rabbi Yishayahu Krishevsky.
The police had delayed the return of the bodies of East Jerusalem terrorists for six months, until the families signed agreements to hold the funerals at night with a small number of participants, in order to avoid the funeral stunning into venues of incitement.
Explaining his decision, Minister Erdan said, “I was just shown the outrageous images from the funeral last night in East Jerusalem, in which the conditions set by the police were violated and the commitments made by the families were broken. The terrorists’ families lied to the High Court of Justice. It’s a shame the High Court believed them and pressured the police to return all the bodies by Ramadan.”
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Egyptian Peace Summit
While the French are working on their peace summit that will not include the Israelis or Palestinians, the Egyptians are quietly working on their own peace initiative meant to bring both parties together.
In the last few days the Egyptians have been pushing hard to organize a summit between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who will lead the summit in Cairo.
Al-Sisi said on Egyptian television, “I say to the Israelis and ask the Israeli leadership to allow the broadcast of this speech at least once or twice. There is a real opportunity for peace even if in the short term there is no real basis given the conditions in the region.”
Maybe France should leave peace in the Middle East to the people that actually live there and understand how to get things done in that part of the world?
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Open Door
With coalition talks with Yisrael Beiteynu still in process, PM Netanyahu told the opposition, at a special Knesset meeting commemorating Theodore Herzl, that he was still open to forming a unity government with them. Responding to opposition leader Isaac Herzog’s claim that Netanyahu had closed the door on a unity government the PM said, “I haven’t closed the door. The door is open. There is still an opportunity to unite the nation. There is an opportunity for national reconciliation. I call upon you and your members not to miss this opportunity, and to join the national effort.”
The deal bringing Yisrael Beiteynu into the government was supposed be signed and sealed already, but Finance Minister Moshe Kahalon is preventing the deal from closing by refusing to commit the funds necessary to fulfill the party’s demand to increase the pensions of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Kahalon insists that he has already proposed a plan to increase pensions of the elderly across the board and that he will not discriminate by favoring any one group.
Yisrael Beiteynu leader Avigdor Liberman claims that his pension condition is a deal breaker, and that he will not join the government without it being fulfilled. But sources in Likud are saying today that Liberman has, in fact, accepted Kahalon’s proposals and that a final deal is imminent.
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Electric Road
The Tel Aviv municipality has installed a strip of “electric road” which can charge electric cars as they drive on it. The strip of road in northern Tel Aviv is part of a trial being conducted by startup ElectRoad, which has developed technology designed to power and charge vehicles by means of cordless power transfers as they drive.
Oren Ezer, the entrepreneur behind ElectRoad, said the process of turning a road into a “smart road” is relatively simple, despite the complicated-sounding nature of the technology. Grooves are carved into the asphalt and a chain of copper loops inserted. The chain is connected to a power converter at the side of the road.
Electric cars fitted with the company’s technology have contacts fitted onto their undercarriage that receive electricity when driving over the smart road. The smart road is designed to give the vehicles enough energy to power them, as well as to charge their batteries.
If the electric road works, it will mean that electric car batteries can be smaller and much less expensive, since they’ll be able to be recharged automatically, while driving.
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