January 17

Hizbullah threat

The IDF on Saturday located a sixth attack tunnel dug by Hizbullah from Lebanon into Israeli territory. “The tunnel was 800 metres long on its Lebanese side and infiltrated dozens of metres into Israel. The tunnel is two metres high, one metre in diameter, and approximately 55 metres deep. It’s equipped with railway tracks, steps carved into the rock, as well as electric power and lighting,” the army said.
Read article

Visiting Lebanon, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale said after meeting with the Lebanese Prime Minister-designate: “It’s unacceptable to have a militia outside the control of the state and unanswerable to all the people of Lebanon, digging attack tunnels across the Blue Line into Israel, or assembling an arsenal of over 100,000 missiles with which to threaten regional stability”
Read article

Agri-tech

Faced with unfriendly neighbours and an arid climate, Israel has had to innovate to survive. Taranis (a company that uses high-resolution imagery from drones, planes and satellites to diagnose problems in the field) is the poster child of its stunning rise in agritech. Over 500 companies operate in the field, nearly twice as many as in the better-known cyber-security sector. A third of them did not exist five years ago…Israel’s overall civilian R&D spending, measured as a share of GDP is more than that of any European country.
Read article

Flights

Virgin Atlantic is planning to fly from London to Tel Aviv. To launch the route, Virgin hopes to fly 200 fans of the Eurovision contest to Israel in May, where the final is taking place. The route will officially open from September.
Read article

New threat from Gaza

The residents of Israeli communities bordering Gaza, who for years have been dealing with Hamas rocket attacks and most recently incendiary airborne devices scorching their land, have found themselves battling another hazardous nuisance. Polluted sewage is being pumped from Gaza into the Israeli side of the border after a collapse of the local wastewater treatment plant…to stop wastewater flow and reduce the environmental damage, the Israel Water Authority has recently set up a pumping station near the Erez border crossing. In addition, massive piles of trash have accumulated in three giant landfills along the border fence, leaving Israelis to cope with a putrid and toxic smell being carried by the wind across the border. Insects and rodents that breed in the landfills then make their way across the border, infesting Israeli communities. Disease-ridden cats and dogs that feed off the landfill constantly breach the fence.

Read article

Gaza riots

The IDF said 13,000 Gazans participated in riots last Friday, throwing rocks, fire bombs and hand-grenades at Israeli troops, burning tyres and trying to breach the security fence. Throughout Friday morning, Gazans launched balloons laden with incendiary devices across the border into Israel.
Read article

On January 11 and 12, 2019, the Gaza border was again swept by a wave of violence…On the night of Saturday, January 12, a rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel. In response, the IDF attacked two underground networks in the northern part of the Gaza Strip…Hamas’ war of attrition with Israel has been going on for 42 weeks
Read article

Shooting attack

The Israeli army announced Friday it had detained the Palestinian cell responsible for a shooting attack on an Israeli town south of Jerusalem. A group of Palestinians climbed onto the roof of a building in Beit Fajjar and opened fire at Israeli houses in nearby Kibbutz Migdal Oz.
Read article

Attacks thwarted

Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen.Eisenkot told the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday that PA forces seized weapons and explosives from Hamas in the West Bank several days ago, thwarting a Hamas terrorist attack. He said the PA was acting in its own interests in thwarting Hamas activities.
Read article

A Palestinian man tried to stab soldiers at an army post near Kiryat Arba in the West Bank last Friday before he was shot.
Read article

Incitement

The Swiss government will review reports that the Palestinian school curriculum promotes violence, anti-Semitism, and other themes that undermine a solution to the conflict with Israel… The EU, UK and Finland are each currently conducting investigations into Palestinian teaching materials.
Read article

The UN

After the P.A.’s President Abbas on Tuesday told the UN that Israel was an “obstruction” to the “cohesive development of all peoples” in the Middle East, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said: “As the U.N. very well knows from all of the development work Israel does, Israel is not what undermines development but actually helps it.” “Instead, it is the Palestinian Authority that undermines its own capacity and development. The PA should stop spending 7% of its annual budget on inciting and paying terrorist salaries, and instead use it to develop its infrastructure and help its people.” The PA spent $355 million of international donors’ money in 2017 on paying salaries and other benefits to convicted or “martyred” terrorists and their families.
Read article

Technology

The drug baron El Chapo, considered the most-wanted man in the world, was captured with the help of a phone interception system known as Pegasus, created by the Israeli company NSO.
Read article

Election

Arab Israeli Dima Tayeh has announced that she is running in the Likud party’s primaries. “There is no other country in the Middle East that respects its citizens and gives them as much equality as possible and democracy for all,” she said.
Read article

Tourism

The “newly accessible” resort town of Eilat was rated one of 2019’s top travel destinations by The New York Times, which featured Israel for the first time ever in its annual list of recommended places to visit. The annual published last week placed Eilat in sixth place, highlighting Eilat’s coral reef diving opportunities and luxury hotels.
Read article

Israel is number 5 in Vinepair’s top 10 wine destinations for 2019.
Read article

Entertainment

John Cleese arrives in Israel as part of his “Last Time to See Me Before I Die” tour, with a performance on September 1, 2019, at Tel Aviv’s Charles Bronfman Auditorium.
Read article

Comment & opinion

Matti Friedman: To someone here in Israel, there isn’t an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the way that many outsiders seem to think. In the Israeli view, no peacemaker can bring the two sides together because there aren’t just two sides. There are many, many sides…many in Israel believe that an agreement signed by a Western-backed Palestinian leader in the West Bank won’t end the conflict, because it will wind up creating a power vacuum destined to be filled by intra-Muslim chaos or Iranian proxies. That’s exactly what has happened around us in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
Read article

Ron Ben-Yishai: Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot confirmed that the Israeli army has attacked thousands of targets in Syria… Israel wants to make sure that the Iranian leadership is fully aware of the losses and damage they are suffering in Syria under Qassem Suleimani – the head of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards – and of the resources they have expended in vain trying to entrench themselves there. Israel has an interest in making Iranians understand that these efforts by Suleimani – which Israel has foiled in recent years – cost huge sums. Israel decided that it was time to end its policy of ambiguity.
Read article

Sander Gerber and Yossi Kuperwasser: Characterizing payments for terror as social welfare is a deception. The Palestinian system governing payments to terrorists is far superior to the regular needs-based welfare system…Prisoners receive 1,400-12,000 shekels, paid monthly. Families of those killed perpetrating terror attacks receive 6,000 shekels immediately, then a minimum of 1,400 shekels monthly for life. Social welfare recipients are only eligible based on need, and they receive only 250-600 shekels per month, paid quarterly. The maximum welfare payment is 57% less than the minimum pay-for-slay salary.
Read article

Stephen M. Flatow: The latest “Israeli racism” allegation is a highway called Route 4370, northeast of Jerusalem. There is a physical barrier down the middle of the highway. Israeli traffic goes on one side, Palestinian Arab traffic on the other. Is that apartheid? Of course not. On the Israeli side, Israeli Jews, Muslims and Christians are all permitted to drive. There is a good reason for the separation because on roads in the West Bank, there have been numerous drive-by shootings or stonings from passing cars by Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinian Authority has, for the past 25 years, fed its citizens a daily diet of anti-Jewish hatred and glorification of anti-Jewish violence, producing hostile and violent people. Why in the world would Israel expose its citizens to such dangers on its roads? The fact that Israel spends millions of shekels building roads for Palestinian Arabs is a remarkable act of unreciprocated generosity…It’s a division based on citizenship… Every country in the world has different rules for citizens and non-citizens
Read article