Download the app and get the day’s most important stories.
Download the app and get the day’s most important stories.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is holding talks with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. It is the first official trip to Egypt by an Israeli premier for a decade. The Egyptian presidency said the two leaders would discuss bilateral and regional issues, and ways to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
A 12-year old Palestinian boy has died after being shot by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. Mohammed Allamy was a passenger in a car being driven by his father when the incident happened at the entrance to the town of Beit Ummar. The Israeli army said it was aware of claims its soldiers had killed a child and said it was investigating the circumstances of the event.
Israeli authorities have inspected the offices of the surveillance outfit NSO Group in response to the Pegasus project investigation into abuses of the company’s spyware by several government clients. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is one of the highest profile figures whose phone numbers appeared on a leaked database of 50,000 numbers that are believed to have been selected as candidates for possible surveillance by clients of NSO.
Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has told the head of Unilever that Israel will “act aggressively” against Ben & Jerry’s over the subsidiary’s decision to stop selling its ice-cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and contested East Jerusalem. Ben & Jerry’s said on Monday it had informed its longstanding licensee – responsible for manufacturing and distributing the ice cream in Israel – that it will not renew the licence agreement when it expires at the end of 2022.
Rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the world have been targeted with phone malware sold to authoritarian governments by an Israeli surveillance firm, media reports say. They are on a list of some 50,000 phone numbers of people believed to be of interest to clients of the company, NSO Group, leaked to major news outlets. NSO denies any wrongdoing.
Israel reported on Monday a decrease in the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in preventing infections and symptomatic illness but said it remained highly effective in preventing serious illness. The decline coincided with the spread of the delta variant and the end of social distancing restrictions in Israel. The vaccine was 93 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations and serious illness from the coronavirus.
The long and divisive reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, officially ended on Sunday night, as the country’s Parliament gave its vote of confidence to a precarious coalition government stitched together by widely disparate anti-Netanyahu forces. Naftali Bennett, a 49-year-old former aide to Mr. Netanyahu who opposes a Palestinian state and is considered to the right of his old ally, replaced him as prime minister after winning by just a single vote.
Israel appears to be on the brink of a new political era after an awkward coalition of parties from across the political spectrum announced it had formed a government. Taking negotiations up to the wire, opposition leader Yair Lapid informed the country’s president late on Wednesday that he had struck a power-sharing deal with a broad grouping of right, center and left-wing parties.
The far-right Israeli politician Naftali Bennett will be the country’s next prime minister under a proposed power-sharing deal intended to oust Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the opposition, Yair Lapid, has confirmed. Lapid said in a speech on Monday that his efforts to forge a coalition of ideologically opposed parties could lead to a new government within days, and with it, Netanyahu’s removal from office after 12 years in power.
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights said on Thursday that Israel’s deadly strikes on Gaza might constitute war crimes and that Islamist group Hamas had violated international humanitarian law by firing rockets into Israel. Michelle Bachelet said her office had verified the deaths of 270 Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including 68 children, during violence this month.