The Israeli Air Force shot down a Syrian fighter jet that traveled two kilometers into Israeli airspace on Tuesday afternoon, the military said. Syrian state-run media confirmed the jet was shot down but said it was inside its own airspace.
Israel’s David’s Sling air defense system made its operational debut Monday, when an interceptor missile was launched as a precaution against ballistic missiles fired within neighboring Syria, the military said.
The Israel Air Force launched a major wave of strikes at Hamas targets across the Gaza Strip on Friday evening as a cabinet minister said Israel was preparing a massive response to Hamas’s failure to heed repeated Israeli warnings to end the violence along the Gaza border.
Israeli jets reportedly carried out a strike Sunday on a missile production facility in northwest Syria that observers say was supervised by Iranians. In the past, the site was allegedly used to produce and store chemical weapons.
Senior Advisor to US President Donald Trump Jared Kushner, Top Negotiator Jason Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman called on Hamas to stop terror, return Israeli prisoners to their families and, in exchange, receive aid to improve the situation in the Gaza Strip in a column published by the Washington Post Thursday night.
‘We enshrined in law the basic principle of our existence,’ said Netanyahu. ‘Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, which respects the individual rights of all its citizens. This is our state — the Jewish state. In recent years there have been some who have attempted to put this in doubt, to undercut the core of our being. Today we made it law: This is our nation, language and flag.’
Israel and Russia have been in talks regarding the imminent return of Syrian regime forces to the border region on the Golan Heights, reportedly with a view to reestablishing demarcation lines drawn up in 1974.
Israel’s political leadership has reportedly instructed the army to prepare for a military offensive in the Gaza Strip, to be initiated if the launching of incendiary devices from the Hamas-run coastal enclave into Israeli territory continues.
US President Donald Trump on Monday said his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday was good for Israel, seemingly referring to efforts to remove Iran-backed fighters from Syria’s Golan border.
The IDF deployed Iron Dome missile defense batteries across central Israel and reinforced the batteries in the south of the country, the military announced Sunday evening.
Israeli aircraft on Saturday attacked more than 40 targets in the Gaza Strip in the most extensive daytime assault since 2014’s Operation Protective Edge as Palestinian terror groups fired repeated salvos of rockets and mortars into Israel.
Egypt has invited senior Hamas officials to Cairo for talks on the continued tensions along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel and ways of ending the dispute between the Islamist movement and the ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that Israel will not seek to unseat Syrian dictator Bashar Assad from power, while urging Moscow to remove Iranian troops from the country, according to an Israeli official.
The IDF spokesperson confirmed in a statement early Thursday morning that Israel attacked three military posts in Syria late Wednesday night.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin Wednesday, the latest in a series of frequent summits between the two amid persistent tensions over the presence of Iran-backed fighters in Syria.
Syria on Sunday accused Israel of targeting an air base in the central Homs province known to be operated by Iranian forces, claiming that its air defenses were activated in response to the attack and hit an Israeli jet.
The Palestinians will not allow US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East to pass, and will continue paying salaries to families of Palestinian prisoners and ‘martyrs,’ Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday.
The IDF has boosted deployment of Iron Dome missile defense batteries around the Gaza Strip, according to a report Thursday night.
The Palestinian Authority strongly condemned the Knesset on Tuesday for passing into a law a bill proposal to deduct terrorists’ salaries from roughly $130 million in monthly tax revenues Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, defining the move as ‘a declaration of war on the Palestinian people.’
Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump, said Washington would announce its Middle East peace plan soon, and press on with or without Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.