PA: Riyadh won’t normalize ties with Israel before Palestinian peace deal
The Palestinian Authority is pushing back against reports that its being pressured by Saudi Arabia into agreeing to accept terms for peace with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority is pushing back against reports that its being pressured by Saudi Arabia into agreeing to accept terms for peace with Israel.
Amid increased tension on both its northern and southern borders, Israel has deployed Iron Dome batteries in the Gush Dan region in central Israel, it was cleared for publication on Tuesday.
Amid increasing tensions between Israel and Islamic Jihad, the militant group has raised its state of readiness to its ‘highest level,’ according to a report in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat.
A number of Iron Dome missile defense batteries were deployed in central Israel on Monday, the military said, amid heightened tensions with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the army demolished the terrorist group’s border-crossing attack tunnel last month.
Saudi Arabia last week ordered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to either accept an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal being put together by the Trump administration, or resign, according to an Israeli report Sunday.
US President Donald Trump and his advisors have begun formulating a new peace plan that is set to surpass in scale prior Israeli-Palestinian peace-making initiatives, the New York Times reported Saturday.
The largest seen aerial exercise in Israel began on Thursday and is to continue for the next two weeks. 1,000 highly-trained fighter pilots from eight different countries opened the “Blue Flag” exercise, which includes roughly 100 of fighter jets, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is the most immense military drill to take place so far this year.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman on Wednesday about American peace efforts and reconciliation, the official PA news website Wafa reported.
Even for a country often used as a battleground by regional powers and their proxies, the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri has opened a new period of political uncertainty and fear in Lebanon.
The military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an organization that orchestrated terrorist attacks that killed scores of Israelis over the years and has been classified by both the United States and the European Union as a terrorist entity, released on Tuesday a threatening video against the Jewish state and in particular its army.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi pledged that Egypt will continue its efforts to resume peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a statement from Sisi’s office Monday.
The United Nations has earmarked some $1.3 billion to fund Palestinian legal campaigns against Israel and to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state, in what experts are calling an unprecedented act singling out the Jewish state at the world body.
A senior Israeli minister on Thursday declined to comment on reports that Israeli aircraft had struck a target in Syria the night before but repeated a threat to hit arms shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.
Israel’s air force attacked a weapons depot situated in rural areas around Hisya, south of the Syrian city of Homs, Arab media reported Wednesday night.
Hamas leaders newly returned from an official visit to Iran have hailed their restored ties with the Tehran regime, praising the Islamic Republic’s ‘making no secret’ of the ‘exceptional support’ it provides to the Palestinian terrorist organization.
Tensions continued to boil along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, with the Israel Defense Force (IDF) warning civilians in the area to keep away from the frontier after terrorist groups in the Palestinian enclave threatened retaliation following the destruction of an attack tunnel by Israeli forces on Monday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Monday hailed the IDF for destroying an attack tunnel from the Gaza Strip discovered near a kibbutz inside Israeli territory, with the two leaders attributing its discovery to Israel’s new ‘breakthrough technology.’
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon on Sunday blasted the discovery of a tunnel underneath a Gaza school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing the Hamas terror organization of using UNRWA facilities as ‘terror bases’ and Gazan children as ‘human shields.’
The Trump administration is ‘discouraging’ any further action on a controversial Israeli bill regarding the status of greater Jerusalem, fearing it would harm its peace effort toward a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian settlement, a senior administration official told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
Hezbollah is planning to withdraw its forces from Syria in 2018 in order to bolster its presence along the border with Israel, Lebanese news site Lebanon 24 reported on Tuesday.