Israel-Palestinian Conflict

When a cybersecurity firm discovered it had been hacked last year by a virus widely believed to be used by Israeli spies, it wanted to know who else was on the hit list.

CIA Director John Brennan paid a visit to Israel last week, meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top security officials to discuss the emerging agreement with Iran over its nuclear program and ways to ensure that it adheres to its terms.

The EU will launch a “diplomatic attack against Israel” in September that will surprise even the “pessimists in Jerusalem,” a senior Western diplomat told Ma’ariv, an Israeli daily newspaper.

Branding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war-minded pessimist, President Barack Obama is urging the United States to push for a United Nations vote to establish a Palestinian state.

The IDF deployed at least two Iron Dome anti-missile batteries in southern Israel on Friday, two days after three rockets were launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Since the beginning of 2014, representatives from Israel and Saudi Arabia have had five secret meetings to discuss a common foe, Iran. On Thursday, the two countries came out of the closet by revealing this covert diplomacy at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

In the event of a new conflict with Hezbollah, the IDF would seek to evacuate more than a million civilians in south Lebanon within 24 hours before proceeding to strike thousands of Hezbollah targets in some 240 villages and built-up regions, a senior military source said on Wednesday.

Israel Air Force jets struck three targets in the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Thursday, following rocket strikes on southern Israel late Wednesday night.

An Islamic preacher on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem told congregants that the Nazis burned the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust because they had been kidnapping children to use their blood in Passover bread. He also claimed that Jews worship Satan, plotted the 9/11 attacks, and control the Freemasons who sacrifice their wives and children in secret ceremonies.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Israeli television that the emerging deal between Iran and world powers is the only way to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and that “a military solution will not fix it,” the Times of Israel reported.

Israel will be briefly jolted back into last summer’s ordeal with rockets, sirens and army maneuvers beginning Sunday, as the military’s Home Front Command holds a yearly emergency drill simulating three enemies attacking the country at once.

While stopping short of fully endorsing the Arab Peace Initiative, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he welcomed the general idea behind it — a regional agreement between Israel and the moderate Arab states.

A jihadist group with Islamic State ties claimed responsibility for a Friday mortar attack at a Hamas base in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Air Force attacked four targets in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning, following an earlier rocket attack on Israeli territory.

Hezbollah fighters captured two hilltops from al-Qaida’s Syria-wing Nusra Front in areas close to the Lebanese border and have killed dozens of enemy combatants, Hezbollah-run al-Manar television reported Monday.

The United States on Friday blocked a global document aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons, saying Egypt and other states tried to “cynically manipulate” the process by setting a deadline for Israel and its neighbors to meet within months on a Middle East zone free of such weapons.

A senior Iranian military official warned on Thursday that any Israeli attack would unleash a firestorm of missiles on its cities fired by the Islamic Republic’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.