Middle East

By TOI staff President Rivlin on Sunday commuted part of the sentence of a man convicted of killing his rapist and sentenced in 2013 to 20 years in prison. Yonatan Heilo, who has long fought for early release, will be able to ask the parole board for immediate release in the next couple of weeks,

By Stuart Winer and TOI staff Twenty-two ultra-Orthodox protesters were arrested Sunday, during demonstrations that blocked key junctions in Jerusalem and other cities, after the Jaffa Military Court sentenced 12 draft dodgers to jail sentences ranging from 40 to 90 days. In response to the jail sentences, the Committee for Saving the Torah World, which

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) on Saturday urged Arab leaders to follow in the footsteps of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who visited Israel 40 years ago, and work to achieve peace agreements with Israel. Sadat became the first Arab leader to hold an official visit to Israel, when he met with then-Prime

Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz revealed on Sunday that Israel had covert ties with “many” Arab and Muslim states, but added it is obliged not to name them at the other sides’ request. “We have ties, some of them secret, with many Arab and Muslim states,” Steinitz told Army Radio. “Usually the one who wants those

The chairman of the Am Shalem movement, former Knesset Member Rabbi Chaim Amsalem, decided to resign from the Jewish Home Party and not to run for the party’s primaries. Rabbi Amsalem began his political career in the haredi Shas party, but left to found his own movement due to disagreements on conversion, army and related

By Dov Lieber Jonathan Spyer had been behind enemy lines many times before, carefully guarding his dangerous secret. But on a fine Spring day in Aleppo this year, in an area controlled by the Syrian regime, he thought his cover might have finally been blown — not by government intelligence agents or Islamist rebels, but