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According to reports, sites in Khan Younes, Rafah and Beit lahia were hit Air force hits Hamas, Islamic Jihad structures; 4 reported wounded; 2 rockets explode in Israel causing damage, hours after discovery of kidnapped teens’ bodies. The Israeli Air Force struck 34 targets in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, carrying out “precision strikes” against Hamas and Islamic Jihad structures, the IDF said in a statement early Tuesday

Armin RosenJune 30, 2014 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised a strong response to the killing of three Israeli teens abducted from a highway junction outside of the West Bank settlement of Kfar Etzion on June 12. The Israeli security cabinet is meeting to weigh possible responses to the teens' murders. Netanyahu ordered an extensive air campaign in the Gaza Strip in late 2012 in response to rocket attacks originating in the Hamas-controlled coastal area. While the campaign resulted in the deaths of several high-ranking Hamas operatives, including Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari, the campaign ceased amid international pressure...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's prime minister says the Hamas militant group will pay a heavy price for the deaths of three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped in the West Bank. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says in a statement "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay." He adds the teenagers "were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced support for Kurdish statehood on Sunday, taking a position that appeared to clash with the U.S. preference to keep sectarian war-torn Iraq united. SNIP----- "We should ... support the Kurdish aspiration for independence," Netanyahu told Tel Aviv University's INSS think-tank, after outlining what he described as the collapse of Iraq and other Middle East regions under strife between Arab Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Kurds, Netanyahu said, "are a fighting people that has proved its political commitment, political moderation, and deserves political independence".

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The three missing teens are Eyal Yifrah, 19, from Elad, Gil-Ad Shaer, 16, from Talmon and Naftali Frenkel; Hamas says Palestinians should make kidnapping a national issue, use it as leverage.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the three teenage yeshiva students missing since Thursday night were kidnapped by terrorists. In his first on-camera statement since Eyal Yifrah, 19, from Elad, Gil-Ad Shaer, 16, from Talmon and Naftali Frenkel, 16, from Nof Ayalon went missing, Netanyahu said he could not elaborate on the search, but that the kidnapping shows the real results of the Hamas-Fatah unity government, and held the...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke on Friday evening with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, following the disappearance of three yeshiva students near Hevron. During the conversation, Netanyahu told Kerry that the boys’ disappearance was directly related to the Palestinian Authority (PA) signing a reconciliation pact and forming a unity government with the Hamas terrorist group. "What is happening on the ground since Hamas was added to the government is a deterioration of the situation. This is the direct result of allowing a murderous and racist terrorist organization into the government," Netanyahu told Kerry, according to Channel 2 News. Netanyahu...

Mahmoud Abbas must be great at cards. The PLO chief has no real assets to speak of. He's physically unattractive. He has zero charisma. He's old. And no matter how hard he tries, Abbas can't do much of anything to dampen public support for Hamas or raise public support for himself. By many accounts, if elections are ever held, Hamas would win them in a walk. As for money, beyond the PLO's slush fund, all Abbas has is what outsiders give him. He is completely dependent on the Americans, the Israelis, the Europeans and the Gulf states. Without them, he...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel --- Part of the following was communicated by the Israel Prime Minister's Media Adviser to the Israel News Agency. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this afternoon (Sunday, 8 June 2014) visited the Border Police (MAGAV) Headquarters in Jerusalem and spoke with Border Police personnel and IDF soldiers who recently prevented terrorist attacks at Tapuah Junction. "We assign you difficult and complex tasks," said Netanyahu. "You are called upon to maintain security and, at the same time, allow for daily routine, and this puts you in very tough dilemmas. You have proven an amazing ability...

PM’s hostility to president is ‘endangering Israel’s security,’ claims Labor’s Isaac Herzog, in rare confirmation of long-rumored strained ties between ‘Bibi’ and ‘Barack’

PM’s hostility to president is ‘endangering Israel’s security,’ claims Labor’s Isaac Herzog, in rare confirmation of long-rumored strained ties between ‘Bibi’ and ‘Barack’Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “loathes” Barack Obama, and his hostile attitude to the US president constitutes a danger to Israel’s well-being, the head of the Israeli opposition charged on Friday night, in a highly unusual acknowledgement of the long-rumored strained personal ties between the two leaders. In a bitter verbal assault on the prime minister, Labor party chairman Isaac Herzog slammed Netanyahu for failing to listen to the international community, failing to present peace proposals of his own...

A tense exchange between the Israeli prime minister and the pope over Jesus’ language points to the complexity of the Middle East’s history—and suggests a way toward understanding. Apart from when Pope Francis stopped to pray at the wall that divides Israel from the West Bank, perhaps the most provocative moment in his whirlwind tour of the Holy Land happened during his interview with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew,” said Netanyahu firmly. The Pope looked unhappy, correcting the prime minister. “He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew.” Oh, dear. So what language,...

Will Israel be the first cashless society on the entire planet? A committee chaired by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff has come up with a three phase plan to “all but do away with cash transactions in Israel”. According to a study conducted by MasterCard, approximately 80 percent of all consumer transactions in the United States are now cashless. If a government can track all of your transactions, it will essentially be able to monitor everywhere you go and pretty much keep track of virtually everything that you do.

Pope Francis spent Monday in Israel visiting the Temple Mount, Yad Vashem, a terror victims’ memorial and other sites, as well as holding meetings with Israeli leaders and others. Throughout the day the pontiff prayed and urged for peace in the region. Here is the Times of Israel’s liveblog of the pontiff’s day in Jerusalem: >>SNIP<< 8:10 Francis visits Dome of the Rock Flanked by a large phalanx of men in suits, Francis arrives on the Temple Mount, where he is being taken on a tour by the grand mufti of Jerusalem. Francis enters the Dome of the Rock, at...

Pope Francis and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded words on Monday over the language spoken by Jesus two millennia ago. "Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew," Netanyahu told Francis, at a public meeting in Jerusalem in which the Israeli leader cited a strong connection between Judaism and Christianity. "Aramaic," the pope interjected. "He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," Netanyahu shot back. Like many things in the Middle East, where the pope is on the last leg of a three-day visit, modern-day discourse about Jesus is complicated and often political. A Jew, Jesus was born in...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opened his weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday by addressing disturbing statistics from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which published a survey last week proving that over 25% of the world’s population holds anti-Semitic views. “This is the result of the Palestinian Authority’s endless incitement against Israel and attempts to distort Israel’s image and the character of the Jewish people, as we know from past experience,” Netanyahu said. […] Such incitement ranges from the glorification of Nazism and the lionization of Adolf Hitler, to programs on official PA television featuring heavily-stereotyped Jews as villains (and encouraging violence against them),...

On Saturday, sources in the Prime Minister’s office said that Netanyahu has made it clear to his Minister in charge of negotiations with the Palestinians, Tzipi Livni, that at her meeting with PA Chairman Abu Mazen (Mhamoud Abbas’s nom de guerre) last Thursday in London she was not representing Israel, but herself alone.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu distanced himself from the meeting last Thursday in London, held between Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, stating that Livni represented only herself. Livni, who was chief negotiator for Israel in the talks that failed after the PA unity deal with Hamas last month, told Netanyahu about the meeting last week two days before it took place. Sources in the prime minister’s office said Saturday night that Netanyahu made it clear to Livni that she would be representing only herself, and not the Israeli government. …

Middle East envoy Martin Indyk was overheard on Thursday night, at the bar of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, D.C., bashing Israel and fully blaming it for the recent failure of peace talks with the Palestinians, the Washington Free Beacon reports, citing an individual who overheard the conversation and described it as a surprising and “nasty” 30-minute-long tirade.

Of all the petty annoyances, misdemeanors and felonies of public life, there is none that Barack Obama detests more than to have his words twisted or oversimplified. It is a big part of his frustration with the media; it is a bigger part of his disdain for the talk-show wing of the Republican Party. And so it wasnt hard to imagine smoke jetting from the Presidents ears as Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, willfully misinterpreted Obamas statement about the need to renegotiate Israels borders — in Obamas presence, in the Oval Office on May 20. The President had...