Israel’s opposition leaders have rejected changes to Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial reforms announced late on Sunday night. What happened The ruling coalition proposed a mild watering down of its effort to ensure the government’s control over judicial appointments. President Isaac Herzog announced a much-awaited alternative judicial reform package last week. It was Read more…
February saw a sharp increase in the proportion of Israelis who describe the Jewish state’s overall situation as either bad or very bad, according to the Israeli Democracy Institute’s February 2023 polling. The percentage of Israelis who are optimistic about the future of Israel’s national security declined from 46 percent Read more…
Saudi Arabia has reportedly asked the United States to approve the development of a civilian nuclear programme in exchange for the kingdom normalising relations with Israel. The demand is the latest in a series of asks put to the US from Riyadh, though such a deal remains “very far off”, the Times Read more…
Iran and Saudi Arabia are to re-establish diplomatic relations, following an agreement brokered by China, which has potential implications both for the US’ role in the Middle East and Israel’s hopes of fostering an alliance to challenge Tehran’s bid for regional dominance. What happened The agreement between Iran and Saudi Read more…
Israeli president Isaac Herzog has praised a summit involving the biggest business delegation from the Gulf which “would have been pure fantasy a few years ago”. Herzog formally opened the OurCrowd summit, the biggest investor event in the Middle East for start-up companies, saying he was particularly glad to see Read more…
Reza Pahlavi, the son and heir of the exiled Shah of Iran, has claimed that proscribing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) would have the effect of “pulling out the biggest tooth the regime has”. The IRGC is Tehran’s ideological terror army, founded in 1979 to protect the Islamic republican Read more…
Recent violence in the West Bank between the IDF and Palestinian militant groups has witnessed small numbers of young Palestinian men take up arms against Israel in defiance of the Palestinian political leadership. A number of newly emerging groups, many with fluid and overlapping affiliations, have emerged which lack clear Read more…
Record numbers of Israelis took part in protests on Saturday night as opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms continues to mount. An estimated 250,000 people took to the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and over 90 other locations. Almost all the reservists in the Israeli air force’s elite Squadron Read more…
An El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Bangkok become the first Israeli airliner to cross over Oman’s airspace on Sunday night, three days after the Gulf state opened its skies to aircraft from all countries, including the Jewish state. The journey to Thailand, which would normally take 10.5 hours, Read more…
A senior Iranian general unveiled a new cruise missile with a range of 1,650km that could potentially reach Israel in an interview with state TV on Friday, in which he reiterated the Iranian regime’s desire to kill former US president Donald Trump. “Our cruise missile with a range of 1,650km Read more…
The coalition led by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu would lose nine seats and lose its majority in the Knesset if a new election was called, according to a poll released on Friday. The poll was the latest in a series of surveys indicating that the government’s efforts to overhaul Read more…
A weekend of violence in the West Bank saw two Israelis murdered in a terror attack and a deadly and unprecedented riot by settlers in the Palestinian town of Huwara. The violence came during a summit at the Jordanian port of Aqaba aimed at reducing tensions ahead of the Muslim Read more…