Click refresh to see new updates during the day
- Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert postponed for 24 hours a special cabinet session on Gilad Shalit in order to give negotiators an extra day to finalize a deal for his release.
- Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu signed a draft coalition agreement, according to which Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman will be appointed foreign minister.
- US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, warned that an Israeli attack on Iran would not be a good thing.
- The EU continued to butt in to internal Israeli affairs.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
9:12PM: Drats, I wish I had sent this link and this link to Hamas before George Galloway’s visit. Because I’m sure images like this..
..would give way to images like this:
(thanks to SNN for the inspiration behind this posting)
4:45PM: Introducing the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East: Zionist Government of Death.TM
As Israel and Hamas leaders are discussing the fate of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit in Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul Gheit expressed concern over the establishment of an “extreme right” government in Israel.
Aboul Gheit, in Brussels for a Euro-Mediterranean Partnership meeting, made these statements after a coalition agreement was signed between Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, making Avigdor Lieberman Israel’s next foreign minister.
According to the Egyptian minister, “We are standing before a negative factor that is likely to damage the peace process.”
Aboul Gheit refrained from making any direct references to Lieberman, but said that “if the members of the future government act in accordance with the declarations made in recent years, we will be faced with serious hardships and extreme circumstances.”
Amazing. The Middle East (not to mention the world) has been gripped by Islamic terrorism and the Egyptians think the composition of the new Israeli government is the main impediment to peace.
3:45PM: Some Israeli Arabs are showing that being loyal citizens to the state is not particularly high on their agenda.
A number of Israeli Arab political figures have asked Hamas to demand that Israel release security prisoners from their community as part of a deal for abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
“This is not an internal Israeli issue. These prisoners are in jail because of the occupation and because they are Palestinian. We are sons of one nation, whether they want this or not,” said Mahmoud Kna’aneh, head of the Bnei Hakfar (Sons of the Village) Israeli Arab political movement.
3:42PM: Here are the two police offer victims of yesterday’s terror attack: Yehezkel Ramzarkar (R) and David Rabinowitz (picture courtesy of Israel Police)
10:52AM: The “Imad Mughniyeh Group” has now claimed responsibility for yesterday’s terror attack, for which Fatah had already claimed responsibility.
10:22AM: The two police officers murdered yesterday by palestinian terrorists were Yechezkel (Hezi) Ramzarkar, 50, of Ma’ale Ephraim and David Rabinowitz, 42, of Rosh Ha’ayin.
May their blood be avenged.
5:48AM: Here is Charles Freeman, who resigned from his new post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, trying to sound reasonable in his blaming of the “Israel lobby” for his downfall.
Not to mention 9-11 and global terrorism.
He also manages to refute charges of antisemitism with the “some of my best family members are Jewish” line, and says he has respect for Israel.
5:37AM: On Friday, a security camera caught a man spitting twice on the monument marking the site of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. The same man, identified as a former municipal employee, also spray-painted “Yitzhak Rabin = Hitler” on a nearby wall.
Here’s the footage:
He later admitted to the act, which he said was committed to avenge the June 1948 attack on the ship Altalena, upon which his brother was aboard when it was attacked by IDF forces commanded by Rabin.
Talk about longstanding grudges.
