Israeli authorities implemented a full closure on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Friday, adding to a long line of punitive measures that have been carried out since Wednesday’s deadly attack in Tel Aviv. An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that all passages to the West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip would be sealed until Monday at midnight after an army “situation assessment,” with the exception of humanitarian and medical cases. However, the spokesperson said Palestinians from the West Bank with permits to attend Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem would be allowed passage. The sealing of the West Bank and Gaza is one of several punitive orders that have been implemented by the Israeli government following an attack in Tel Aviv that left four Israelis killed and another six wounded. The measure comes just one day after Israel’s decision to freeze more than 83,000 permits allowing Palestinians to enter Israel and East Jerusalem during Ramadan...

A shooting was carried out Friday near a Tel Aviv pub killing two Israelis and injuring seven, Israeli police and medics said. An Israeli police spokesperson Luba al-Samri said in a statement that the shooter opened fire on Dizengoff street before fleeing the scene. Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom said in initial reports that paramedics arrived to the scene and treated nine victims. Al-Samri confirmed that two were killed and medics reported the injured to include two in severe condition and five in moderate condition. Israeli media reported that some of those injured were hit by broken glass that shattered when the attacker opened fire. Al-Samri said that all injured were taken to Tel Aviv-area hospitals for treatment. Police were combing the area for the suspect following the attack and investigations are ongoing, adding that background information has yet to be gathered on the attack. The attack marks the first in the coastal city since Nov. 19 when two Israelis were ...

An Israeli man stabbed a Palestinian worker on a construction site north of Tel Aviv on Monday, Israeli police and media reported. The victim, a Palestinian worker for the Herzliya Municipality, told police that a man with a Russian accent shouted "Death to Arabs" before stabbing him in the shoulder. The worker was transferred to hospital for treatment. Israeli police are searching for the suspect, who fled the scene of the attack. Anti-Palestinian attacks in Israel are frequent and often involve the desecration of holy sites in addition to physical assaults. more

A Palestinian wounded at least five passengers in a stabbing rampage on a Tel Aviv bus on Wednesday, before being shot by a passing prison officer, Israeli police said. The attacker struck in the morning rush hour in the heart of Israel's largest city, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said. Five people were moderately to seriously wounded, while four were lightly injured, she said, citing emergency services at the scene. Israel's Ynet news site put the number of injured at 17. It was not immediately clear if all the casualties had been stabbed or if they included some suffering from shock. more

An Israeli soldier who was stabbed Monday in Tel Aviv has died of his injuries, Israeli media reported Monday. Almog Shiloni from Modiin, was stabbed Monday at Haganah train station in Tel Aviv, Israel's Ynet news site reported. Israeli police arrested a Palestinian suspect from Nablus in his 20s, another Israeli news site reported. A Ma'an reporter in Nablus said that the suspect was 18-year-old Nur al-Din Abu Hashya from Askar refugee camp in the city. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the victim was an Israeli soldier and said the attack was carried out by a Palestinian from the Nablus area in the northern West Bank. She said the stabbing appeared to be politically motivated. more

TEL AVIV (AFP) -- Thousands of Israeli supporters of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority to end the Gaza offensive demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Saturday. The pro-peace protest was the largest in Israel since it launched operation Protective Edge on July 8, an assault that has seen at least 1,980 Palestinian deaths and 67 on the Israeli side. It was organized by the opposition left-wing Meretz party and Peace Now, a group opposed to Jewish settlement building on occupied territory, and the communist Hadash party. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were Saturday to resume indirect talks with Egyptian mediators on reaching a more permanent ceasefire before a current truce expires at midnight on Monday. Demonstrators denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, accusing it of refusing to negotiate with Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas. more

GAZA CITY (AFP) -- The armed wing of Hamas claimed that it fired several rockets at Jerusalem and Israeli cities Tel Aviv and Haifa Tuesday. "For the first time, the Qassam Brigades strike Haifa with an R160 rocket, and strike occupied Jerusalem with four M75 rockets and Tel Aviv with four M75 rockets," a statement said. It was the first time since a major 2012 conflict that Gaza-based militants had fired rockets at the holy city, and came as Israel pressed an aerial offensive against the besieged coastal Strip. more

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Representatives from Palestinian and Israeli high-tech companies are scheduled to meet on Monday in Tel Aviv, Israeli radio reported. A joint forum entitled "Business not barriers" is due to be held in the coastal city, with Palestinian representatives from eleven high-tech companies due to attend along with Israeli and international companies, including Microsoft and Cisco, the report said. The event is organized by the Peres Center for Peace, the union of high-tech companies in Israel and the union of the chamber of commerce. President Abbas' adviser on high-tech affairs, Sabri Saydam, told Ma'an that such meetings are "unacceptable." He told Ma'an that the Palestinian Authority disapproved of the move and urged Palestinian companies to reconsider their participation and "give priority to Palestinian interests." more

Israeli right-wing protesters burn a Palestinian flag in front of Tel Aviv University during the Nakba day commemoration event last year Palestinian and Jewish activists will join together to commemorate the ethnic cleansing that led to Israel’s establishment at an event in Tel Aviv University early next week. This will be the second year that students will mark the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe,” the name given to the violence by Zionist forces in 1948 — in this way. Students will read poetry, including works by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and a refugee from Tantura, a Palestinian village destroyed by a Zionist militia in May 1948, will recount his story to the audience. more

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - An explosion hit a bus in the heart of Tel Aviv on Wednesday, wounding at least 10 people in what officials said was a terrorist attack. The blast shattered windows on the bus, which was driving on a street that runs alongside Israel's defense headquarters. Israel's ambulance service said three of the wounded were in a moderate-to-serious condition. "A bomb exploded on a bus in central Tel Aviv. This was a terrorist attack. Most of the injured suffered only mild injuries," said Ofir Gendelman, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a message on Twitter, he said police were combing the area for the person who planted the device, apparently confirming reports that it was not a suicide attack. The bombing happened on the eighth day of an Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip and threatened to complicate Egyptian-led efforts to secure a ceasefire. Celebratory gunfire rang out in Gaza City when local radio stations repor...

Air raid sirens on Thursday, sent residents running for shelter in Tel Aviv, a Mediterranean city that has not been hit by a rocket since the 1991 Gulf War, when it was targeted by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.Two more rockets were fired on Tel Aviv on Friday. Although there were no specific targets in the districts of Holon and Rishon LeZion, sirens rang out loudly across the city and in Bat Yam and Bnei Brak in the south, damaging the communications networks of Cellcom wireless and Cincinnati Bell, which collapsed and affected residents in that region. Meanwhile, Al-Qassam Brigades – the armed wing of Palestinian resistance faction Hamas, which recently lost ranking member Ahmed Al-Jaabari – announced it had downed an Israeli surveillance plane with a surface-to-air missile. If true, this would indicate a marked shift in Hamas' defensive capacity. According to Hamas spokesman Mohamed Abu-Shaar, the Iranian-made Fajr-5 missile (which boasts a range of 70 kilometres), alon...

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Rockets fired from Gaza reached an Israeli city near Tel Aviv on Thursday afternoon for the first time as cross-border violence continued for a second day. Israel's army said a projectile hit an open area near Rishon Lezion, a city 12 km south of Tel Aviv. The Israeli daily Haaretz said two rockets had landed, but no casualties were reported. Israeli media reports said the rocket came down near an amusement park in sand dunes on the edge of the city. Hamas' armed wing the al-Qassam Brigades said it had fired two rockets in the vicinity of Tel Aviv. Israel's military said 245 rockets were fired at Israel since Wednesday. Resistance fighters from different factions continued to claim responsibility for rockets fire at military sites and across the border Thursday as the death toll in Gaza reached 15. A rocket fired from Gaza early Thursday struck an apartment building in southern Israel, killing three Israelis. more

Al Qassam Brigades video of launching Fajr 5 long range missile towards Tel Aviv. Israel claimed it had destroyed all these missiles in airstrikes yesterday.

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists plan to fly to Israel's Ben Gurion Airport and protest the country's policies toward the Palestinians there. Activists hope the "fly-in," scheduled for July 8, will disrupt airport operations, including departing and arriving flights. Most of the activists are from Europe, the Jerusalem Post reported. The activists plan to declare "Palestine" as their destination once they land in Israel, according to reports. They face being denied entry to Israel and deportation. They reportedly will demonstrate if denied entry. more

From the Jerusalem Post In the wake of “Nakba Day,” “Naksa Day” and an anticipated Gaza-bound flotilla later this month, pro-Palestinian activists are planning to send hundreds of Palestinians living abroad on commercial flights to Ben-Gurion Airport next month in a dramatic display of solidarity. According to a report released this week by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, an Israeli NGO, organizers believe the planned Gaza flotilla is too limited in scope, and broader action is needed to “remove the blockade from the entire land of Palestine.” Organizers said the “fly-in” would occur July 8, the date in 2004 that the UN’s International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion that Israel’s West Bank security fence is illegal by international law. After holding a protest rally at the airport, the arrivals plan to travel to the West Bank to “express solidarity” with Palestinians. Organizers said 500 people have already scheduled flights to Israel, including Palestin...

BMI joins the Gaza solidarity struggle. Oops, it was a 'logistical' mishap the airline tells us. But, more seriously, it does provide another example of the growing isolation of Israel and the widening possibilities for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. British airline BMI has deleted Israel from electronic maps that appear on its flights in order to avoid angering Muslim passengers, Army Radio reported on Thursday. Additional efforts on to appeal to Muslim customers include showing the distance and relation of the plane to Mecca, the direction to which Muslims face when they pray. In the electronic maps appearing on a BMI flight from London to Tel Aviv, for example, Israel and its cities are not marked, with the exception of Haifa, which is spelled 'Khefa,' the city's Arab name dating to before the War of Independence. BMI operates flights from England to many popular Muslim destinations, including Syria, Lebanon and Iran, but has also ...

The Sunday Times is confirming from western diplomatic sources this morning that Israel did launch an air strike inside Sudan in January on what it claimed was a suspected weapons convoy headed for Gaza via Egypt. Our report earlier in the week, spoke only of an airstrike, quoting Sudanese rebel forces, but the Sunday Times now reveals that it was in fact an Israeli drone that launched the attack. The Sunday Times says the 'Iranian' convoy was carrying Fajr3 missiles with a range of at least 40 miles would bring Tel Aviv and Israel's nuclear facilities at Damona. It is likely that the resistance has been trying to get longer range missiles and will persist in attempting to do so - a further sign of the strategic weakness at the heart of Israeli military planning: Israel used unmanned drones to attack secret Iranian convoys in Sudan that were trying to smuggle rockets into Gaza. The missiles have the range to strike Tel Aviv and Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona, defence s...