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Handwritten notes placed between the ancient stones of the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, Nov. 14, 2018. Photo by Mendy Hechtman/Flash90.

Clearing out notes in Kotel ahead of Passover under COVID-19 conditions

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Workers at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem on Tuesday conducted the site’s customary biannual clear-out of all the notes stuck between the stones over the course of the previous six months. The notes are...
Coronavirus testing near the northern Israeli town of Katzrin in the Golan Heights, on Feb. 21, 2021. Photo by Michael Giladi/Flash90.

Israeli researchers develop cheap, rapid test for coronavirus variants

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Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev recently developed a rapid and cost-effective test to identify COVID-19’s British and South African variants within hours instead of days, enabling effective response and containment measures. Standard coronavirus-variants...
Credit: KieferPix/Shutterstock.

Israeli researchers: COVID vaccine antibodies pass from pregnant mother to newborn

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Israeli researchers have announced in a new study that antibodies produced from a COVID-19 vaccine can be passed from a pregnant mother to her baby. The study by researchers from Hadassah University Medical Center, which...

Colel Chabad ups the ante to help fight poverty in Israel

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All who are hungry, come and eat. All who are needy come and celebrate Passover.” Each year, comforted by the ancient words of the Haggadah and the fragrances of brisket, potato kugel and matzah-ball soup...
Vials of Pfizer's BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination centerl in Tzfat, on Feb. 14, 2021. Photo by David Cohen/Flash90.

Knesset Finance Committee approves $600 million more to battle pandemic

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The Knesset Finance Committee has approved the allocation of 2 billion shekels ($600 million) to Israel’s Health Ministry to help it deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, the committee announced on Tuesday. The money is to...
Jerusalemites at the Machane Yehuda Market on March 10, 2021. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90.

Israel revs up to reopen for tourism

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Bring us your tired, your down-clad and pandemic-weary souls yearning to breathe … a lungful of Israeli air. With apologies to Emma Lazarus and her poem “The New Colossus” that adorns the Statue of Liberty,...

IsraAID sends vaccine-support team to Eswatini

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Israeli humanitarian aid agency IsraAID dispatched a medical, logistical and psychosocial team to Eswatini (Swaziland) on March 8 at the invitation of the Eswatini government to support the southern African country’s upcoming national COVID-19...
The Palestinian leadership is supplying SNL’s Michael Che with unexpected material for his Covid-19 vaccine punchlines. The Palestinian Authority, which administers limited public services in Israel’s territories, is now accused by its own people of distributing Covid-19 vaccines to the privileged at the expense of needy Palestinians. Such an allegation should make one wonder how the Palestinians will govern their own independent state. For a long time, I have been skeptical of the much-lauded two-state solution because the Palestinians have failed to provide reliable leadership. In so doing they might neglect equitable services for the average Palestinian and jeopardize Israeli security. If the new accusations are true, the leadership’s performance foreshadows what we can look forward to if a Palestinian state is ever established. Based on the authority’s track record, it should not surprise anyone that these complaints are now being aired. “There’s absolutely no justification for giving the very small number of vaccines we have to other people close to power at the expense of those who most need them,” said Hasan Ayoub, the chairman of the political science department at An Najah University in Nablus, according to The New York Times. The Times, attributing new revelations to three anonymous sources associated with the leadership, reported last Friday that the authority “has officially prioritized its senior administrative leadership and frontline health workers, as well as people who come into regular contact with the authority’s president and prime minister.” The Times article continues, “In secret, the authority has diverted some of the thousands of vaccines it has received to some senior members of the ruling party in the West Bank who have no formal role in government, according to two senior officials and a senior official from the party, Fatah. “Vaccines have also been secretly given to top figures at major news outlets run by the authority, according to one of the senior Palestinian officials and two employees at those outlets. Family members of certain government officials and Fatah leaders were also given the vaccines, the senior official and a former government official said.” These accusations come after Israel was battered by charges that it withheld its vaccines from the Palestinians, which prompted Che to quip on Saturday Night Live nearly three weeks ago: “Israel is reporting that they vaccinated half of their population, and I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.” In the more than quarter-century since Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization launched their peace process, how an independent Palestinian state would operate has not been addressed. How will the leadership ensure that it will serve all citizens equally? How will it guarantee Israeli security? If a future Palestine cannot develop a working democracy, what could be the alternative? A few ideas come to mind, and I am fully aware that they are very difficult to achieve, if not impossible. Proposals include confederations with Egypt and Jordan; Turkey annexing Gaza; and, much to anticipated chagrin, Israeli control of its territories. Palestinians might have acquired their own state now except that in summer 2000 then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected an Israeli proposal for 93 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza and east Jerusalem. At the very least, I suspect that Arafat expected that his more extremist citizens would never accept it and even attempt to assassinate Arafat. Possibly they wanted unlimited right of return into all of Israel, which would disrupt the demographic balance. Negotiations were revived and broke down again. Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested a plan that would offer the Palestinians a state with less land in the West Bank than proposed by Netanyahu’s predecessor in 2000, Ehud Barak. Why would the Palestinians accept less land after already rebuffing the more generous proposal? The most sensible prospect would be two sets of confederations – Jordan and the West Bank, and Egypt and Gaza. After all, the Palestinians share far more cultural and religious traditions with Jordan and Egypt, with Jordan located adjacent to the West Bank and Egypt next to Gaza. The size of these confederations would provide military protection, economic opportunity and diplomatic support for the West Bank and Gaza. If Gaza and the West Bank formed their own state, they would be at the mercy of larger nations that could box them in. Israel is already accused of doing that with Gaza, and Egypt has torn up part of Rafah, a city that straddles the border between Gaza and Egypt, to eliminate tunnels. An attempt to connect Jordan with the West Bank failed long ago, and the 1979 peace pact between Israel and Egypt meant returning the Sinai to Egypt, but Israel kept Gaza. I recognize that any deal for any confederation is doubtful, to risk understatement, but this proposal appears to be the most workable. Another proposal could be aptly named the Put-Erdogan’s-money-where-his-mouth-is plan. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has spent years behaving like the champion of the Palestinians and repeatedly blamed Israel for the miseries suffered by them. Why doesn’t he annex Gaza, now controlled by Hamas, and govern it? Of course, he would need to take responsibility for the Gazans’ needs and be accountable for any attacks originating from Gaza. A very unwelcome possibility: Israel annexes Gaza and the West Bank and governs these lands without allowing Palestinians in the territories to vote in national elections. As many Israelis fear, a Palestinian majority could vote in Arab rule of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. It will be a pleasant surprise if Israel and the PLO seriously negotiate a two-state solution, though at the present rate it looks as if we will be stuck with the status quo for a long time.

With New COVID Critique, How Would Palestinian Leaders Govern Their Own State?

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The Palestinian leadership is supplying SNL’s Michael Che with unexpected material for his Covid-19 vaccine punchlines. The Palestinian Authority, which administers limited public services in Israel’s territories, is now accused by its own people of...
Covid-19 vaccine, at a vaccination center in Tzfat, on February 14, 2021. Photo by David Cohen/Flash90

How the IDF’s Home Front Command shifted gears from rockets to vaccines

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The Home Front Command has played a critical role in the past year using its close cooperation with local councils to promote health instructions and assist the vaccine drive to all of Israel’s varied...
An Israeli plane delivers coronavirus vaccines to residents of the television comedy cartoon “South Park.” Source: Screenshot.

Residents of TV comedy ‘South Park’ get vaccinated for COVID, courtesy of Israel

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Just weeks after “Saturday Night Live” aired a “news” segment that said Israel was only vaccinating the “Jewish half” of the country, another comedic television program, “South Park,” is being praised for its take...