Netanyahu to Visit Bahrain ‘Soon’; Israel Accused of Strikes in Syria

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited by the crown prince of Bahrain to visit the Gulf nation, possibly as early as next week. It comes after the two leaders spoke by phone for the second time since the nations last month formally established diplomatic relations.

The news surfaced just days after Manama’s foreign minister headed the first-of-its-kind delegation from the kingdom to the Jewish state, and following Netanyahu’s reported trip on Sunday to Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu said in a statement that he spoke with Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad about “the fact that we can bring the fruits of peace to our peoples and to our countries in a very short time.”

Since September, Israel has forged normalization agreements with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan, the first Arab states to do so in over a quarter century.

Syria blamed Israel for a series of airstrikes late Tuesday night that targeted facilities south of the capital Damascus and close to the shared Golan Heights border. It was the second alleged Israeli attack in the past week in Syria, across which Jerusalem accuses Iran of establishing  permanent military infrastructure. That operation was, in turn, precipitated by the IDF’s discovery of bombs planted along the frontier reportedly at the behest of the Iranian army’s Quds Force.

In a rare move, the IDF publicly claimed responsibility, in what some analysts believe constituted a tacit message to President-elect Joe Biden. The incoming POTUS has vowed to return to – or at the very least attempt to renegotiate – the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal, which Israeli officialdom vehemently opposes.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, on Tuesday wrote a letter to the international body’s secretary general demanding that the Security Council take action against Iranian military entrenchment in Syria.

Palestinians saw a record-shattering 1,811 new confirmed coronavirus infections between Monday and Tuesday, as the pandemic worsened in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  In response, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced that tighter restrictions would soon be imposed throughout the West Bank to “break the spread of the virus.”

On Friday and Saturday, PA-controlled areas are expected to re-enter total lockdown for the first time since July; this, ahead of the implementation of a 14-day nightly curfew.

The development comes after Israel earlier this week announced its intention to transfer somewhere between three to four million coronavirus vaccines to authorities in the Palestinian territories.

Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde formally urged Iran to cancel the scheduled execution of an Iranian-Swedish professor charged with spying for Israel. Linde delivered the official protest in a call with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif.

The conversation came amid reports that Tehran was moving ahead with the plan to execute Ahmadreza Djalali, a specialist in emergency medicine who was arrested during a visit to the Islamic Republic in 2016. He was subsequently convicted of leaking information about two Iranian nuclear scientists to the Mossad, whose operatives subsequenlty allegedly assassinated them.

By contrast, Djalali has insisted that the sentence is a result of his refusal to spy for Tehran during his stay in Europe.

Diaspora and Israeli organizations around the world will participate in a mass  mourners’ prayer this Sabbath in commemoration of those Jews who died and were buried in inaccessible locations in Arab countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

The initiative will take place on the closest Sabbath to November 30,  which has been declared by Israel the Day to Commemorate the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from Arab Countries and Iran.

Thus far, over 100 organizations and communities have signed up at www.KaddishInitiative.com, including the Israeli umbrella organization for Jews from Arab countries that represents millions of people in the Jewish state.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich joined the call to recite the prayers. “A fundamental cornerstone of the Jewish tradition is our collective memory,” he asserted, adding, “by reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish and an Azkara on the Shabbat of November 28, we will stand united in solidarity, in honor of those we cannot physically pay our respects to.”