Middle East

By TOI staff American and Israeli officials on Saturday night quickly dismissed an Israeli TV report that claimed the Trump administration is ready to recognize a Palestinian state as a central element of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, that the US will not insist on the evacuation of any settlements or settlers under a permanent accord,

Representatives of Morocco’s religious minorities on Saturday urged the government to clarify the law on freedom of worship in Morocco, where Islam is the state religion. Their statement came after an unprecedented meeting in the capital Rabat. “The Moroccan state still places barriers when it comes to legal reforms concerning minorities,” Jawad el Hamidi, the

By TOI staff Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be questioned Sunday for a sixth time in a pair of criminal investigations involving suspicions he received illegal gifts and favors from businessman for advancing their business interests. Netanyahu will be confronted with fresh testimony garnered by police, Hadashot news (formerly channel 2 TV) reported Saturday. Last

By TOI staff Yigal Amir, who is serving a life sentence for the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, is preparing to request a retrial, his wife said on Saturday. Larissa Trimbobler announced in a Facebook post that a legal defense team was being set up in preparation for filing the request. She

By TOI staff Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday urged moderate Arab nations to make peace with Israel in order to better confront the threat posed by Iran. “After Daesh, Iran,” Liberman tweeted on Saturday, referring to the Islamic State by its Arabic name. “[Late Egyptian President] Anwar Sadat was a brave leader, who went

Egypt opened its largely sealed border with Gaza on Saturday for the first time since a reconciliation agreement saw the Palestinian Authority take control of the crossing from Hamas. A Palestinian official at the Rafah crossing said it had opened at 0700 GMT and was expected to stay open for three days. “Egypt will open

Its “caliphate” has imploded, its de facto capitals in Iraq and Syria have fallen, and hundreds of its fighters have either surrendered or fled. The Islamic State jihadist group may not be dead yet but its dream of statehood has already been buried, analysts say. No one in IS “will now think of imposing ‘the

By TOI staff Israeli security forces on Saturday raided the home of a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist who carried out a car-ramming attack in the central West Bank a day earlier, Hadashot news (formerly Channel 2) reported. Forces searched the home of the attacker who rammed his car into two people in Gush Etzion south of

By TOI staff Veteran Army Radio reporter Hadas Shtaif on Saturday accused former prime minister Ehud Olmert of sexually harassing her some years ago. Shtaif said that upon leaving the Channel 1 studio, Olmert pressed her up against the wall and “whispered in my ear.” He then allegedly touched her ear “with his disgusting tongue.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who arrived in Paris from Riyadh on Saturday, has told President Michel Aoun in a phonecall that he plans to return to Beirut by Wednesday, for the Independence Day celebrations, state-run media reported. Hariri resigned as Lebanon’s prime minister earlier this month while in Saudi Arabia. He and his wife

By Dov Lieber and Video by Luke Tress BEERSHEBA — When Fatma was forcefully married to her cousin at age 19, she became his second wife. He drank and beat her. Her own father, who had married her off to her cousin, did not believe her story of abuse, dismissing them as the complaints of