| 1 |
Israeli officials on Monday said that they are in advanced negotiations with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, after the company announced that clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine – known as BNT162b2 – were up to 90 percent effective.
“My goal at the moment is to do one thing – to bring vaccines to you citizens of Israel, and we will do so,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in response to the news. “I said a few days ago that I see a light at the end of the tunnel [and] I think the locomotive has already left,” he added.
Despite the development, Netanyahu nevertheless warned that his government could possibly delay lifting additional coronavirus restrictions due to moderately rising infection numbers, as well as a slight increase in the morbidity rate (that is, the percentage of COVID-19 tests that return a positive result).
“We exited from the first stage to the second stage,” the Israeli leader noted, “[but] morbidity is starting to go up; therefore, we will decide tomorrow or the day after about the third stage. If the indicators do not improve, we will not proceed,” he added.
The Shin Bet – Israel’s loose equivalent of the FBI – has accused Hamas of recruiting minors to carry out attacks on Israeli targets. The revelation followes the detainment in October of two such suspects who were found in possession of weapons, including low-grade explosives, in the West Bank.
Those arrested allegedly told interrogators that they planned to kidnap an Israeli citizen. They had also been instructed to conduct a variety of intelligence gathering missions prior to eventually perpetrating shooting attacks.
The unnamed suspects were reportedly recruited by Bilal Kardi, who serves in Hamas’s cyber unit in the Gaza Strip.
“The investigation shows the level of unrestrained efforts by Hamas to advance terror attacks and to build terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank while taking advantage of minors and harming their families,” the Shin Bet concluded.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced that it has run out of money to pay salaries to its staff across the Middle East.
UNRWA said it needs $70 million by the end of the month to pay 28,000 employees in full for November and December. The agency also issued an emergency call for donations to avoid the suspension of essential services.
UNRWA took a major hit when President Donald Trump in 2018 cut all US funding to the organization, which amounts to more than $300 million a year. The United States has long been the largest individual donor to UNRWA, contributing about one-third of the agency’s $1.1 billion annual budget.
At the time, the Trump Administration said that the agency needed to implement reforms and be more transparent. UNRWA has long been criticized for its close association with Hamas, in particular, while agency-run schools have been called out for teaching antisemitism and inciting violence against Israel.
An Israeli low-budget airline is reportedly set to launch direct flights to Bahrain starting on January 31, following the normalization agreement signed between the two countries in September.
The carrier, Israir, is expected to sell tickets for $249 and offer twice-a-week flights.
The development comes as the Jerusalem-Manama normalization agreement, which was recently ratified by the Bahraini government, was set to be approved by Israel’s legislature on Tuesday.
Relatedly, Israel plans on Sunday to send its first delegation to Sudan to firm up the countries’ US-brokered normalization deal.
Meanwhile, Saudi air traffic control guided an Israir plane headed for India through its skies after the craft was forced to reroute due to bad weather. The pilot subsequently posted to Twitter a picture of the Saudi skyline, while reinforcing that “it was really very nice” of the Saudis to help.
?? ????: ???? ??????? ?????? ????? ????”? ????? ??? ???????- ?? ???? ?? ????? ???? ????? ?’?? ???? ??????? ????@ynetalerts @DanielSal_87 pic.twitter.com/H5QK1ispri
— ???? ??????? Itay Blumental (@ItayBlumental) November 9, 2020
Saudi Arabia is not among the countries to have normalized ties with Israel as a part of the Abraham Accords, but it did decide to open its airspace to all Israeli flights traveling eastbound.
In a report due out this week, an Israeli parliamentary committee will recommend that marijuana be legalized in the Jewish state. Representatives from the Israel Police, the Public Security Ministry and Health Ministry have reportedly signed off on the initiative following a detailed review of the country’s current cannabis laws.
If recreational use of the drug is legalized, Israel is expected to become a major producer and exporter of the crop, which could fill the state’s coffers with billions of dollars annually. Domestically, authorized distributors would be able to sell cannabis to Israelis 21-years-old and above.
Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz have hinted that they support the move, saying in a joint statement earlier this year that any future legislation should outline “a responsible model that will be suited to the State of Israel and the Israeli population.”
It is estimated that nearly 30 percent of Israeli adults currently use marijuana in some form.
Kristallnacht: A Lesson in How Incitement and Propaganda Lead to Horrific Violence (VIDEO)
- Why Is It So Hard for European Governments to Defund NGOs, Even Over Terror Ties? (Olga Deutsch, Jewish News Syndicate)
- Anti-Racism Mustn’t Be Exploited to Foment Antisemitism (David J. Michaels, Newsweek)
- This Israeli Doctor Travels the World Treating People in Disasters (Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21C)
- Israel’s Russian Wave, Thirty Years Later (Matti Friedman, Mosaic)
