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Ahead of a meeting with ministers from Israel’s Meretz political party on Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke with the parents of two Palestinians recently killed by Israeli security forces while carrying out terrorist attacks.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Abbas called to offer his condolences to the father of Israa Khuzaimia, who was shot dead last Thursday by police as she tried to stab Israeli officers in the Old City of Jerusalem. In addition, the PA president contacted the father of Alaa Nassar Shafik Zayoud, who was a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group. Zayoud was killed last week after opening fire on IDF and Border Police officers near Jenin in the West Bank.
Later Sunday evening, Abbas met for talks with Israel’s Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz and Regional Cooperation Minister Issawi Frej from the left-wing Meretz party in Ramallah, in the second such meeting in recent months.
Thereafter, the Israeli ministers and Abbas said that they were working to keep alive the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian leader reportedly asked the Horowitz and Frej to extend personal invitations to their colleagues to meet with him.
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The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) will be central to the government’s plan to fight crime in the Arab-Israeli sector, the Ministerial Task Force to Fight Crime and Violence in Arab Society decided at its inaugural meeting on Sunday. The Justice Ministry also plans to advance bills that would impose minimum sentences for possessing and selling weapons illegally.
At the end of the meeting, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned that “violence in Arab society has reached a red line.” His remarks came a day after the 100th Israeli Arab was murdered since the beginning of 2021.
Bennett said that Arab sector leaders should stand with the police and the state, and called on Israeli Arabs to “understand that security forces are not the enemy; they are the solution.”
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Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Israel on October 10 for a farewell visit. She will hold tete-a-tetes with President Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and is expected to attend a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. Merkel is also scheduled to tour the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial, accompanied by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
The German leader will also receive an honorary doctorate from the Technion Institute and participate in a panel discussion at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Merkel’s trip comes shortly after German general elections that were won by the Social Democratic Party, whose leader, Olaf Scholz, is expected to be named the next chancellor.
Merkel, in office since 2005, has visited the Jewish state several times during her tenure and has repeatedly said that upholding Israel’s security is one of her country’s main national interests.
“The Holocaust fills us with shame. I bow to the survivors,” she told the Israeli parliament in 2008.
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A major Jewish umbrella organization has announced a $54 million campaign to develop community security initiatives amid rising antisemitism in the United States.
The Jewish Federations of North America said the funds would be used to deliver resources and information to institutions as part of the LiveSecure drive.
Details of the plan were presented at the organization’s annual general assembly, during which Israeli President Isaac Herzog gave a speech calling for the creation of “alliances with other communities that have been the targets of hate.”
“We must ensure that Jews are safe to be Jews in America and elsewhere around the world,” Herzog stated.
At the event, former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned that there is evidence of an “urgent need to protect Jewish communities,” and called rising antisemitism “proof that we are surrounded by a moral pandemic.”
The funding announcement comes as the Secure Community Network, which arranges security for Jewish institutions in the United States, said that it has opened a new command center in Chicago to monitor threats of antisemitism.
The center will collate incident reports and will be operational 24 hours a day.
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Cyprus and Israel are said to be holding discussions over the purchase of Iron Dome batteries that the divided island nation wants in order to enhance its security. According to Greek reports, Cypriot officials are said to be considering how the defense system could help fend off the “Turkish threat.”
However, any potential deal could anger Ankara, which has torpedoed relations with Jerusalem over the past decade.
Turkey is a long-standing supporter of the Palestinian cause, and in 2018 a dramatic falling-out between it and Israel led to both countries recalling their ambassadors.
Recommended Reading
- Mahmoud Abbas’ Fantasy (Jerold Auerbach, Jewish News Syndicate)
- It’s Time Israel Got Serious to Tackle the Iran Threat (Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post)
- ‘I Don’t Buy Into the ‘Israel vs. The Diaspora’ Mentality – We Are One People’ (Eliana Rudee and Jewish News Syndicate, Israel Hayom)
- Israeli Startups Raised Over $2.2b in September (Globes)
