Tag Archive for: Israel News

Drone Downed
The IDF said it shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle launched from Gaza, in southern Israel. There was no comment from Gaza. Hamas leaders are known to have developed a drone program with Iranian help. The drones are typically used for reconnaissance along the Israeli-Gaza border and it’s unclear if they have potential to carry out attacks.

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Tragic Mistake
IDF released preliminary findings from an investigation into a failed commando raid into Gaza last November that resulted in the death of a Lt. Col. and the injuring of another officer. According to the findings, the officer’s death was a result of friendly fire that took place after the commando unit was uncovered by Hamas militants.

IDF Chief of General Staff Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi said the military’s examination of the event showed there were mistakes made on the ground that led to the force being compromised. The findings show rescue forces excelled in extracting the troops and are considered for special citations.
 
The IDF Spokespersons Unit added that the lessons learned from the investigation are already being implemented and the division is currently developing a multi-year program based on these conclusions.

PM Netanyahu (who is also the Defense Minister) said, “the lessons will be learned and the recommendations will be implemented. I welcome the courage of the fighters and pilots who worked under very difficult conditions and the heroic rescue operation.”

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More Protests
Protests by the Ethiopian community are expected to continue this week in the wake of news that prosecutors will recommend against manslaughter charges for the police officer who shot and killed a 19 year old Ethiopian Israeli, Solomon Tekah in Haifa last Sunday.

The police officer, who was with his wife and children at the time, claims that he spotted Tekah and several other teens, who appeared to be intoxicated, attacking a 13-year-old boy. When he intervened and identified himself as a police officer, Tekah and the others attacked him, hurling stones at him. That’s when the officer fired a shot that ricocheted off the ground and struck Tekah, killing him.

Tekah’s family are calling the killing racially motivated. They say, “We won’t stop the protests until the situation changes.”

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Olympic Dream
Hamas officials are planning a grandiose project to build an Olympic village on the ruins of an Israeli settlement abandoned in 2005 when Israel withdrew from Gaza. The planned project on 720 acres where the settlement of Netzarim used to be, will include a state-of-the-art soccer stadium with 25,000 seats, an Olympic size swimming pool and an indoor stadium for competitions and training. The project will be built in stages, over at least 5 years.

Hamas believes is can raise the funds needed for the project internationally because their plan will benefit Gaza’s civilian population. No money has been raised yet. The area is now used for Hamas military training.

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EU Investing
The European Commission will invest up to €15 million in Israeli companies for the purposes of commercializing products, in exchange for shares. The financing will be granted under a new, eighteen-month pilot program within the Horizon 2020 research and development funding framework. The objective of pilot program is for the EU to invest in 20-40 companies using a budget of €100 million.

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Lobster Fest
Israel’s ambassador to Brazil, Yossi Sheli, posted a photo of himself at a dinner with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday. Next to him were plates with what appear to be lobster, sloppily blurred out with black paint. Bolsonaro invited Sheli to lunch at a seafood restaurant in the capital of Brasília before the two made their way to the Maracana stadium to watch Copa América Final.

It’s unclear whether Bolsonaro had the lobsters blurred out to hide his expensive tastes from his cost conscious electorate, or whether Sheli was trying to hide the fact that he was eating non kosher food, which is taboo for Israeli diplomats while in official capacity.

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Equestrians Qualify
Israel’s equestrian team has qualified for the Olympics jumping show. The team beat Poland by one point to qualify. Good luck!

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Israeli Attacks
Syrian media is reporting that Israeli warplanes attacked attacked military positions in central Syria early Monday, with a missile near the capital, Damascus, killing four civilians and wounding 21. The planes fired missiles from Lebanese airspace, and Syrian missile defense fired at the aircraft.

The Syrian London based Observatory for Human Rights reported Israeli jets and naval gunships attacked at least ten Syrian government targets among them a research facility and Hezbollah bases near the Syrian-Lebanon border and that fires broke out as a result of the attack.

Lebanese Al Mayadeen television reported one of the targets hit was the town of Al-Kiswah near Damascus which had been targeted by Israel in the past and contain weapons depot.

Israel did not comment.

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Pollution Solution
Last week, the Regional Committee for Planning and Building for the Western Negev gave final approval to the laying of a sewage pipeline that will divert waste coming from Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun in the north of the Gaza Strip. The pipeline will carry the waste directly to the Sderot sewage treatment plant.

Since the collapse of the Gazan sewage treatment plant, Gazans have been pouring the waste from the communities directly into Israeli territory via Hanoun River, next to Erez Border Crossing. The waste contaminates the soil and causes bad odors.

The cost of the new pipeline, which will run along the Gaza border, will likely be deducted from the monies transferred by Israel to the Palestinian Authority. Work on the pipeline will start in the coming days.

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Pilgrimage Road
After six years of extensive archaeological excavations led by the Israel Antiquities Authority, a 350-meter-long section of the 2,000 year old Pilgrimage Road was unveiled at a festive ceremony in the City of David. The project was funded by the City of David Foundation, who plan to open up the site to the general public in the near future. The ancient road was the one taken by millions of pilgrims who visited the Temple during the 3 Jewish festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.

US Ambassador David Friedman and White House special envoy Jason Greenblatt both attended the ceremony. Jordan strongly criticized Israel’s opening of the road, calling it “illegal and irresponsible” and claimed that Israel is trying to change the identity of Jerusalem.

The Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization and chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat attacked Friedman and Greenblatt for taking part in the event.

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Share the Wealth
Palestinian engineers working for Israeli chip designer Mellanox Technologies are poised to share a $3.5 million payout when the company’s takeover by U.S. chip supplier Nvidia Corp is completed. Mellanox is one a few Israeli companies using Palestinian engineers, who cost about the same as engineers in India and the Ukraine (popular tech outsourcing locations).

Mellanox, a chip maker, offered stock options to more than 100 Palestinian engineers and designers based in the West Bank and Gaza, when it hired them as independent contractors as a result of a severe shortage of engineers in Israel. They will soon be able to exercise those options after Nvidia’s $6.8 billion takeover closes at the end of 2019, and stand to collectively earn as much as $3.5 million. The median daily wage in the West Bank is $28 and just $11 in Gaza, according to the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute.

ASAL, the Palestinian company that outsources engineers from the West Bank and Gaza, also services Microsoft, Intel and Cisco. Palestinian universities produced around 3,000 engineers in 2018.

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Defense Summit
PM Netanyahu met with US National Security Advisor John Bolton and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev in Jerusalem to discuss issues related to Iran. Patrushev said Israeli air strikes on Syria were “undesirable” and condemned attempts to isolate Iran. He said the attempts to present Iran as the main threat to the region and equate it to international terrorist groups are “not acceptable,” urging Israel and the United States to show “restraint” toward the Islamic Republic. He also said, “Iran is contributing a lot to fighting terrorists on the Syrian soil and stabilizing the situation there.”

Bolton said that US suctions would push Iran to the negotiating table and that all options remain open in the event that Iran moves ahead with nuclear production. He said, “They’ll either get the point or … we will simply enhance the maximum pressure campaign further. It will be, I think, the combination of sanctions and other pressure that does bring Iran to the table.”

Netanyahu said, “All three of us would like to see a peaceful, stable and secure Syria. We also have a common objective to achieve that larger goal, and that is no foreign forces that arrived in Syria after 2011 remain in Syria. We think there are also ways to achieve this common goal, which will create a more stable Middle East. The departure of all foreign forces from Syria – will be good for Russia, good for the United States, good for Israel, and may I add, good for Syria.”

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Bahrain Meetup
Kicking off the Bahrain economic workshop yesterday, Jared Kushner said, “My direct message to the Palestinian people is that, despite what those who have let you down in the past say, President Trump and America have not given up on you. This workshop is for you.”

He said economic growth and prosperity for the Palestinians were not possible without an “enduring and fair political solution” to the conflict – one that guaranteed Israel’s security and respected the dignity of the Palestinian people. But he added that political issues would be addressed when the full peace plan is released, at a later time.

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Right Wing Block
Far-right Otzma Yehudit member Itamar Ben-Gvir announced his party is pulling out of the agreement reached with the United Right Party,  before the April 2019 elections, uniting political parties to the right of the ruling Likud in order to garner the maximum amount of right-wing votes. Ben-Gvir claims that he was not given a Knesset seat as promised in the original agreement.

Election Reversal
During the past few days, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein has been examining a move that would eliminate the dispersion of the 21st Knesset and the elections to the 22nd Knesset The first stage of the process is the convening of the Knesset Presidium by the speaker and the annulment of the Knesset’s election recess.

The second stage is the formulation of new legislation that will create a legal basis for canceling the dispersion of the Knesset, a basis that does not yet exist today. The legislation must be passed by a majority of at least 80 Knesset members, so it is contingent on the formation of a broad coalition that will allow it.

PM Netanyahu is apparently fully behind the proposal.

The Attorney General has reportedly told politicians privately that there is no feasible way to cancel the elections.

Ehud Barak, who is in the process of setting up a new party to run in the September elections tweeted that canceling the elections would be ‘corruption Netanyahu-style.’

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Chilean Visit
Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera is in Israel for a 3 day visit. He has already visited the Western Wall and Had Vashem. Pinera is also scheduled to meet with President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Tuesday and Wednesday. In 2011, Chile recognized Palestine as an independent state.

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Rwanda Air
Rwanda Air, Rwanda’s national airline, launched its inaugural direct flight to Israel on Monday.

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Graveyard Searches
Syrian sources are reporting that Syrian and Russian personnel are searching for missing Israelis in a cemetery in the Damascus area, where the bones of Zachary Baumel, which were brought to Israel two months ago, were also allegedly located.

Journalist Roi Kais reported on Thursday on Kan 11 News that the cemetery in question is a cemetery for “shaheeds” in the Al-Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus. The cemetery has been shut down for the searches and authorities are not permitting anyone to get close to it.

A source in the Syrian opposition estimates that the Russians are asking the Assad regime to step up searches for the missing Israelis.

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Election Update
Israel’s Arab parties – Balad, Hadash, Ra’am and Ta’al, have announced that they will run together in a joint list in the upcoming election.

In the April elections, the four parties ran as two lists – Ra’am with Balad and Hadash with Ta’al. Both lists won enough seats to enter the Knesset, but the Ra’am-Balad list narrowly squeaked past the threshold with four seats. Hadash-Ta’al got six seats, bringing the total number of Knesset members for the Arab community to 10. In the 2015 elections, however, the joint list of all four parties won 13 seats.

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More Updates

Blue and White number 2 Yair Lapid tweeted against deferments and demanded that Israel be a state for all of its citizens. The tweets come as his party is reportedly trying to woo the Haredi parties to join with them in a future potential government.

Avigdor Lieberman, head of Yisrael Beytenu, said that he will not join a narrow left-wing government. He will only join a unity government that includes both Likud and Blue and White.

Rafi Peretz, head of the United Right-Wing parties, has offered Ayelet Shaked the second slot on the right-wing list if she joins. But Shaked wants the number 1 spot, claiming that only she can unite the right-wing voters and win the maximum number of seats for the list.

Electric Plane
Eviation Aircraft Ltd., an Israeli aviation company, displayed the Eviation Alice, an entirely electric commuter plane, at the Paris Air Show this week.

The Alice, which can seat nine passengers and two pilots, can fly at 273 miles per hour for up to 621 miles on one battery charge, at a cost of $200 per hour of flight. The battery comprises 65% of the plane’s weight. The plane’s unusual and modern look, which Eviation CEO Omar Bar-Yohay described as “whale-shaped,” is due to its aerodynamic efficiency.

Eviation already has orders for a “double-digit” number of airplanes from US regional carrier Cape Air, with which Eviation signed its first deal. Each plane will carry a $4 million price tag.

“Operating at a fraction of the costs of conventional jetliners, our Alice will redefine how people travel regionally and usher in a new era of flying that is quieter, cleaner, and cost-effective,” Bar-Yohay said.

The company is expecting Alice to be ready for commercial use by 2022.

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