Israel

29 June 2021; MEMO: Dozens of Palestinian families on Tuesday rallied in front of the Knesset (Israel's parliament) against government plans to vote on extending the family reunification law, Anadolu Agency reported.

Protesters held banners calling to save Palestinian families under the controversial law.

"Since the legislation of this racist law in 2003, we were backing this just cause for these families," Arab MK Osama Saadi said.

JERUSALEM, June 27 (Reuters) - A former president of Israel's Supreme Court was appointed on Sunday to head its state commission of inquiry into a stampede at a Jewish pilgrimage site in April that killed 45 people, among them U.S. and Canadian citizens.

Retired Chief Justice Miriam Naor will be joined on the panel by Rabbi Mordechai Karelitz, a former mayor of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish city of Bnai Brak, and retired Israeli army general Shlomo Yanai, a courts spokesman said in a statement.

JERUSALEM, June 27 (Reuters) - Israel summoned Poland's ambassador on Sunday to express its "deep disappointment" over a Polish bill that critics say will make it harder for Jews to recover property seized by the country's Nazi occupiers during World War Two and then kept by post-war communist rulers, the foreign ministry said.

Poland's lower house of parliament on Thursday passed a draft bill introducing a statute of limitations on claims for the restitution of property, drawing a furious response from Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who labelled it a "disgrace". 

JERUSALEM, Jun 25 (NNN-PNN) – Traces of the Delta COVID-19 variant have been detected in the sewer system of the southern Israel’s coastal city of Ashkelon, the Israeli Ministry of Health said yesterday.

This result raised concerns that certain residents in the city have been infected with the variant, the ministry said in a statement.

Following the detection, the ministry called on anyone suffering from fever, cough and weakness, or fearing of being infected, to take a test as soon as possible, to prevent an outbreak in the city, which has more than 140,000 residents.

25 June 2021; MEMO: Honduras has opened a new embassy in Jerusalem, Anadolu has reported. The opening ceremony was attended by President Juan Orlando Hernandez and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. This is the third country to open an embassy in the city after the US and Guatemala, even though the international community does not recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

JERUSALEM, Jun 24 (NNN-PNN) – The number of active COVID-19 cases in Israel has more than tripled, in the past two weeks, the state’s ministry of health said yesterday.

The number of active cases in Israel has reached 606, compared with 477 reported on Tuesday and 186 on Jun 9.

A total of 146 new cases were reported yesterday, raising the total caseload in the regime to 840,225.

The death toll from the virus remained unchanged at 6,428, and the number of patients in serious condition remained 26, out of 50 hospitalised patients.

24 June 2021; MEMO: Israeli Defence Minister and leader of Blue and White coalition, Benny Gantz, on Saturday called for a new investigation into Tel Aviv's purchase of submarines from Germany in a case which sees former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing charges of corruption.

23 June 2021; MEMO: Israel signed a statement presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) yesterday urging China to allow independent observers access to its western Xinjiang region, where UN experts say nearly a million Uyghurs and other minorities have been unlawfully detained in camps.

The decision, the first of its kind by Israel, came after pressure from US President Joe Biden's administration, Walla news reported.

22 June 2021; MEMO: Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz pledged on Monday that the besieged Gaza Strip, the tiny enclave that is home to more than 2 million Palestinians, will not be "economically rehabilitated" without the return of the Israelis held captive "and without security stability", AP has reported.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians and Jewish settlers hurled stones, chairs and fireworks at each other overnight in a tense Jerusalem neighborhood where settler groups are trying to evict several Palestinian families, officials said Tuesday.

The threatened evictions fueled protests and clashes in the runup to last month’s 11-day Gaza war and pose a test for Israel’s new governing coalition, which includes three pro-settler parties but is hoping to sideline the Palestinian issue to avoid internal divisions.