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An Israeli commercial plane for the first time in history took off from Ben-Gurion International Airport and landed in the United Arab Emirates. The historic flight carried a US peace team headed by senior Trump administration adviser Jared Kushner and an Israeli delegation. It came just weeks after Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi agreed to a Washington-mediated normalization agreement.
Notably, the aircraft flew through Saudi Arabian airspace, in another first-known occurrence.
The upcoming talks will seek ways to implement the so-called Abraham Accords by boosting Israeli-Emirati cooperation in fields including aviation, tourism, trade, health, energy and, eventually, security.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that Israel is currently holding secret negotiations with several other Arab states with a view to forging official bilateral relations. “Today’s breakthrough [with the UAE] will become tomorrow’s norm,” the Israeli leader predicted.
Netanyahu also emphasized that the deal with the UAE had effectively ended the “Palestinian veto” on the pursuit of peace between the Jewish state and the Arab world.
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Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to murder an IDF soldier in response to the killing of a member of the Iranian-backed terrorist organization in an alleged Israeli airstrike earlier this summer in Syria .”If you kill one of our men, we kill one of your soldiers. That’s the equation,” Nasrallah said in televised remarks.
The Israeli military over the past weeks has prevented at least three attempts by Hezbollah to infiltrate Israeli territory. Last Tuesday, Israeli forces came under cross-border fire, prompting the IDF to conduct aerial attacks on Hezbollah targets for the first time since the 2006 war.
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Qatar’s envoy to Gaza has reportedly made progress in indirect cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. Mohammed al-Emadi said in a statement that he has been in touch with “all sides” and that a framework for a truce agreement was in place but that certain details still needed to be hashed out.
The report came as Gaza-based terrorist factions resumed their campaign of launching incendiary balloons into southern Israel. Tensions along the shared border have skyrocketed, leading to almost daily tit-for-tat military exchanges.
Meanwhile, the families of three Israeli teenage boys who were abducted and murdered by Hamas in June 2014 — an act that precipitated the war that summer — have filed a lawsuit against the terrorist group that seeks damages of $155 million. The purpose of the initiative is to stop the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority from transferring some $50-$100 monthly to Hamas in Gaza.
A notorious Islamist preacher who was convicted on 11 terrorism-related charges, including inciting the murder of Jews, has filed a lawsuit in the US because he is allegedly, among other things, being forced to eat kosher food.
Abu Hamza, the former leader of the Finsbury Park Mosque in London, was accused of hostage taking, collaborating with Al Qaeda and supporting jihad. He was was extradited to the US, where he is currently incarcerated in Colorado.
His lawsuit claims that the removal of his infamous hooks has forced him to tear open food packages with his teeth, causing them to decay. As such, Hamza claims that he cannot eat halal meals and is forced to eat kosher food, which he describes as “religiously stressful.”
Electricity consumption in Israel on Sunday hit an all-time record, with 14,089 megawatts consumed. It topped the previous high set this past May. Israel is currently experiencing a countrywide heatwave, with the Israel Meteorological Service having registered temperatures of 42°C (107.6°F) in Eilat, 38°C (100.4°F) in Jerusalem, 47°C (116.6°F) in Tiberias and 33°C (91.4°F) in Haifa.
The Health Ministry nevertheless issued a statement calling on the public to continue wearing face masks while adhering to social distancing guidelines.
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Following an outcry from international rights groups, Jordanian authorities on Sunday released a prominent cartoonist who had been detained for publishing a drawing critical of the Israel-UAE normalization deal.
However, Emad Hajjaj, who was arrested last Wednesday and charged with “undermining relations with a friendly country,” will still stand trial for “slander and libel.” The initial charge carried a sentence of up to five years in jail. If found guilty, he now faces a prison sentence between six months and two years. The cartoon deemed “offensive” by the Jordanian prosecutor was titled, “Israel asks America not to sell F-35 planes to the Emirates.”
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An Israeli delegation departed for California to assist in combating a massive outbreak of wildfires. The group includes 10 members of Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority in addition to experts and a foreign ministry official.
“The departure of a relief mission to the United States, and Israel’s rapid mobilization to assist its friend the United States, is representative of the close friendship between our nations and of the excellent relations our two countries share across a wide range of areas,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said.
On August 15, lightning set off hundreds of fires across northern and central California, killing five people. Sixteen fires are currently listed as “active incidents,” with officials saying that “mega fires” could burn for weeks. In total, more than 1.2 million acres of land have been charred, leading California to declare a state of emergency.
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