Top Israeli official welcomes new Egyptian envoy
(JNS.org) Israeli Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold on Monday met with the new Egyptian ambassador to Israel, Hazem Khairat, who arrived in Israel at the start of this month.
“Israel considers Egypt an important country in the region and relations with it are vital to Israel,” Gold said.
Khairat is the first Egyptian envoy to Israel since November 2012, when Egypt withdrew its envoy in protest of Operation Pillar of Defense, the eight-day Israeli military campaign against terrorist groups in Gaza. The decision was made by then-Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian terror group Hamas’s parent organization.
Since Morsi’s ouster in 2013 and the rise to power of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, Israel-Egypt relations have steadily improved.
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‘Islamic State is already here,’ Israeli president says
(JNS.org) “The Islamic State is already here; that is no longer a secret. I am not speaking about territories bordering the State of Israel, but within the state itself,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin warned Monday at the ninth annual conference of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).
Rivlin noted that “research studies, arrests, testimonies, and overt and covert analyses—many conducted by the INSS—clearly indicate that there is increasing support for the Islamic State group among Israeli Arabs, and some are actually joining up.”
“Anyone familiar with Arab society knows that in recent years there has been considerable radicalization in some Bedouin settlements in the south, and in Arab towns and villages in the north, on the issue of implementation of Sharia law (Islamic law). We are even seeing the influence of extremist ideas in areas and groups identifying as secular,” added Rivlin.
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Israeli authorities nab suspected Palestinian teen terrorist who murdered mother of 6
(JNS.org) Following an intensive manhunt, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security agency on Tuesday apprehended the Palestinian terrorist who murdered Dafna Meir, an Israeli mother of six, in her home in Otniel on Sunday.
Morad Bader Abdullah Adais, 16, a resident of one of the Palestinian villages in the area, was taken in for questioning.
Initial investigations revealed that one of Adais’s distant relatives was killed while trying to carry out a terrorist attack two months ago. The defense establishment is looking into the possibility that the Meir murder was a revenge attack.
“The terrorist found a breach in the fence and that is how he entered the community and carried out the murder,” said the head of the Mount Hebron Regional Council, Yochai Damari. “I trust the authorities to settle the score with him to the fullest.”
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Indian foreign minister: relations with Israel are of ‘highest importance’
(JNS.org) During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said her country “attaches the highest importance to the full development of wide-ranging ties with Israel.”
Calling India one of the world’s “greatest democracies,” Netanyahu noted that there has “been a great flowering of relationship and friendship between our two countries in recent years.”
“We are intensifying our contacts and our cooperation in so many fields—in the fields of science and technology and cyber and defense and agriculture and health—everything,” Netanyahu said.
“Our bilateral cooperation has developed well in a number of areas over the past two decades, but the potential of our relations is much more,” said Swaraj.
Israeli-Indian ties have grown under Indian President Narendra Modi, who took office in 2014. The two countries maintain close ties in defense, counter-terrorism, agriculture, renewable energy, and education. Last July, in a further sign of warming relations, India was one of five countries to abstain from a United Nations vote on an anti-Israel resolution regarding Operation Protective Edge. Modi also intends to visit Israel in the near future.
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EU foreign ministers call for multilateral solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict
(JNS.org) The European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council, which is comprised of 28 EU foreign ministers, on Monday issued a resolution calling for a multilateral solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Recalling the “spirit” of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, the European ministers called for “the establishment of an International Support Group and a further international conference are both possible ways to contribute.”
The resolution, however, also criticized Israeli policy in Judea and Samaria. Calling Israeli settlements an “obstacle to peace,” the EU said it “reiterates its strong opposition to Israel’s settlement policy and actions taken in this context, such as building the separation barrier beyond the 1967 line, demolitions, and confiscation—including of EU-funded projects—evictions, forced transfers including of Bedouins, illegal outposts, and restrictions of movement and access.”
Despite the tough language, much of the text was similar to previous EU resolutions on the subject and was apparently a toned-down version of previous draft resolutions, which had called for a “distinction” to be made between Israel and territory located beyond the 1967 lines.
Greece, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were instrumental in toning down the tougher language on Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry criticized the EU for holding Israel to a “double standard” that prevents the EU from being an “honest broker” in negotiations.
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Israeli minister reportedly holds secret meeting in Abu Dhabi over Iran threat
(JNS.org) Yuval Steinitz—Israel’s minister of national infrastructure, energy and water resources—on Monday returned from a secret visit to Abu Dhabi over the weekend.
Israel’s Channel 2 reported that Steinitz, Netanyahu’s point man on the Iran nuclear program, made the visit under “heavy security” to “share concerns” with Arab Gulf leaders and other Sunni Arab states.
The secret meeting coincided with an energy conference in Abu Dhabi that also included Iranian officials.
In a sign of warming ties between Israel and the Arab Gulf states, Israel in November announced plans to open a diplomatic mission in Abu Dhabi as part of the United Nations International Renewable Energy Agency.
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Israel aims to compel social media to combat Palestinian incitement
(JNS.org) Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan on Sunday proposed new legislation that would compel social media platforms to remove posts deemed to directly incite murder or violence.
According to Erdan, an Israeli law should be enacted in conjunction with legislation in other Western countries. In the past, various visiting government ministers have expressed interest in cooperating with Israel on such an endeavor.
Erdan said his aim is to “systematically expose the Palestinian culture of incitement among relevant audiences around the world.”
The Israeli legal advocacy group Shurat HaDin, meanwhile, is raising money on the crowdfunding website Headstart with the hope of hanging billboards across the home of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to combat incitement.
“If he doesn’t see the incitement, we will display it opposite his California home,” Shurat HaDin said in a statement.
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