Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Sunday’s developments as they unfolded.
Palestinian schools in Hebron are set to be closed Monday as snow begins to fall in the West Bank.
Flurries are reported throughout the region, though it is not immediately clear whether the snow will stick.
Snow is expected to fall in Jerusalem later this week.
The Im Tirtzu organization won’t face charges over a video accusing left-wing human rights officials of being “foreign agent moles” for other countries, Army Radio reports.
“This is a provocative and very problematic video, it would have been better had it never been aired,” the deputy state attorney says. “However, the message coming out of it is clear — to support a bill it is trying to advance, and not to be violent.”
A still from an ad accusing Israeli activists of being foreign funded ‘moles.’ (screen capture: Facebook)
Iran says Sunday it will buy 114 Airbus planes to revitalize its aging fleet, in the first major commercial deal announced since the lifting of sanctions under its nuclear agreement.
Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi says a deal on the purchase would be signed between national carrier Iran Air and Airbus during a visit to Paris this week by President Hassan Rouhani.
Rouhani will travel to Italy and France from Monday to Wednesday, on his first visit to Europe since the implementation of the deal curbing Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of punishing economic sanctions.
— AFP
Illustrative image of a Scandinavian Airlines Airbus A321 (Public Domain/Adrian Pingstone/Wikimedia Commons)
Three Arab Israeli residents of Arara are set to be indicted for helping Tel Aviv killer Nashat Milhem.
Prosecutors file a statement declaring they will indict the three, who are accused of being accomplices, within five days.
The suspects’ names are under a gag order.
Nashat Milhem, the Arab Israeli man who killed three Israelis in Tel Aviv on January 1, 2016. (Israel Police)
While Germany is still taking in around 2,000 refugees a day, it is now denying entry to about 200 others daily at its borders, the interior minister says.
The tighter border controls come after the EU’s top economy last year took in a record 1.1 million refugees and migrants, straining resources and sparking heated political debate.
“People who are fleeing war and persecution are offered security and protection in Germany,” the minister, Thomas de Maiziere, tells the newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
“But that also means that those who do not seek this protection from us are refused entry at the border.
“Anyone who doesn’t want to apply for political asylum in Germany and wants to illegally enter Germany has no right to be here.”
So far this year, federal police had rejected up to 200 people a day, he says — compared to just 400 people in all of October when border controls and registration procedures buckled under a mass influx.
— AFP
Turkish forces have detained 23 suspected Islamic State (IS) jihadists along with 21 children who were trying to illegally cross over from Syria, the army says Sunday.
The suspects, whose nationalities were not disclosed, were captured on Saturday as they tried enter the Elbeyli district of Turkey’s southern Kilis province.
“Twenty-three people suspected of being Daesh (IS) terror group members, together with 21 children, were caught,” says the army in a statement, without giving any other details.
— AFP
Left-wing activist Ezra Nawi is being released to house arrest, Channel 2 reports.
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court rules that there is no reason to keep the activist — who was documented saying he turned in Palestinian land dealers to the PA to be tortured, or to their deaths — in jail. The court gives police several hours to appeal the decision.
Left-wing Israeli activist Ezra Nawi, seen at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on January 20, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The father of the 13-year-old Palestinian girl shot dead as she attempted to stab an Israeli guard outside the West Bank settlement of Anatot says her death “helps al-Aqsa, its guardians, and Palestine,” the Walla news website reports.
According to Arabic reports, the father says the knife the girl carried “couldn’t even peel a potato.”
Israeli security forces at the scene of an attempted stabbing outside the West Bank settlement of Anatot, on January 23, 2016. (Israel Police)
Malaysian police have detained seven men suspected of being an Islamic State militant cell that was plotting attacks, authorities say Sunday.
The seven Malaysians were detained over the past three days in a follow-up operation after the January 15 detention of a man who was planning a suicide attack in Kuala Lumpur, national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar says.
Among the items seized were 30 types of bullets, jihad books and Islamic State flags and videos, he says.
“All the suspects are members of the same (terror) cell, which is responsible for planning to launch terror attacks in strategic locations across Malaysia,” Khalid says in a statement.
The suspect thought to be the cell leader is a 31-year-old assistant housekeeping manager at a hotel in southern Johor state, Khalid says. He says one of the suspects, whom he didn’t identify, received orders from Bahrom Naim, an Indonesian based in Syria who had a role in planning the Jakarta attacks.
— AP
Egypt’s president says that the anniversary of the country’s 2011 uprising should be celebrated and that the country is on the right track, although democracy will take time to develop.
In a speech Sunday, a day before the fifth anniversary of the popular uprising that toppled longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi says that “democratic experiences don’t mature overnight, but through an accumulative and continuous process.”
He adds that: “Egypt today is not the Egypt of yesterday, we are building together a modern developed civilian state.”
El-Sissi goes on to accuse the banned Muslim Brotherhood group of trying to exploit the uprising for personal gain.
A day earlier, el-Sissi vowed to respond firmly to any unrest and to press ahead with the fight against the country’s Islamic militants.
–– AP
The United States is participating in a Moroccan government conference on protecting minorities, including Jews, in Muslim lands.
Arsalan Suleman, the State Department’s envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Knox Thames, its advisor for religious minorities in the Middle East, will attend the January 25-28 conference in Marrakesh, the State Department said on January 21. Thames will meet with the country’s Jewish community leaders during the visit.
A declaration by the Moroccan government and the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, an Abu Dhabi-based group co-sponsoring the conference, calls the recent atrocities against religious minorities carried out by Muslim extremists “a slander against God” and a “betrayal of the faith.”
“Such conditions obligate the Muslim majority to protect the minorities, their religions, their places of worship, and other rights,” the declaration says.
Morocco’s moderate Muslim kingdom is known for the protection it affords its Jewish community.
— JTA
A Turkish Airlines plane carrying more than 200 passengers is diverted to Ireland over a bomb threat.
The plane, which departed from Houston, Texas, and was heading to Istanbul, lands safely at Shannon Airport, according to CNN.
The airline is investigating.
A Turkish Airlines flight on the runway at Ben Gurion International Airport, August 3, 2013 (Moshe Shai/Flash90)
The Palestinian teenager who is accused of stabbing Israeli mother-of-six Dafna Meir to death last week was influenced by Palestinian TV, the Shin Bet national security agency says.
Prior to carrying out the deadly attack, the 15-year-old suspect watched “Palestinian television broadcasts, which portrayed Israel as ‘killing young Palestinians,'” it says.
“The difficult results of the attack indicate, once again, the severity of the threat of wild incitement against the State of Israel and the Jews on Palestinian media, which influences lone attackers to murder and carry out serious terror attacks,” the agency says.
Dafna Meir, left, with her husband Natan Meir in an undated picture posted on Facebook. (screen capture: Facebook)
Iran has arrested around 100 people over the attack on Saudi Arabia’s embassy that led to Riyadh cutting diplomatic ties with Tehran, a judiciary spokesman says Sunday.
“Since the attack, about 100 people have been arrested, of whom some have been released,” Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie is quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
The ransacking of the embassy earlier this month “has been condemned by all authorities and we have taken immediate and serious action,” he adds.
One individual was also arrested “abroad” and returned to Iran, he says.
“He had given orders to certain individuals who entered the embassy,” Ejeie adds, without providing further details.
Demonstrators stormed and burned Riyadh’s embassy in Tehran and its consulate in second city Mashhad on January 2 to protest against the execution of a prominent cleric from Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority.
— AFP
A new ministerial committee will be formed to coordinate between settlers and the security forces, in an effort that may compromise the authority of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett had demanded the committee be formed, according to Hebrew reports.
Jewish settlers stand on the roof of a building after entering two homes in the center of Hebron on January 21, 2016. (AFP/Hazem Bader)
Light snow begins to fall in the Gush Etzion region in the West Bank, the Ynet news website reports.
The first of a total of 153 Iraqi Christians who have been offered asylum in the Czech Republic have arrived in Prague.
The government approved the group’s request for help because they were threatened by the aggression of Islamic State extremists. They originally used to live near Mosul in Iraq.
Ten of them landed at Prague’s international airport on Sunday and were to be taken to a hotel near the central city of Jihlava, where they will spend a couple of months.
The government will share the expenses for their move to the Czech Republic with NGOs, and religious institutions will help them settle in the country.
They will be allowed to stay after the current conflict is over.
The Czechs oppose an EU mandatory plan to redistribute 120,000 asylum-seekers among the bloc’s 28 nations but say they want to help on a voluntary basis.
— AP
A monument commemorating the Jews of Suwalki, in northeastern Poland, is unveiled.
The monument dedicated on Friday is located on the site of the town’s synagogue destroyed in 1956.
The inscription on the monument reads, in Polish, Hebrew and English: “In the memory of some 5,500 pre-war Jewish residents of Suwalki murdered during World War II as a result of the policy of extermination of the German occupier.”
Local Christian organizations were involved in the project to build the monument. Talks to recognize the town’s pre-war Jewish population began in 2011.
The Jewish community of Suwalki was founded in 1821 and its Great Synagogue was built the same year. The synagogue was severely damaged by the Germans during the town’s Nazi occupation, and as a ruin was demolished in 1956 by local authorities.
According to various sources, Jews accounted for about one third of the population of Suwalki before they were deported by the Nazis.
— JTA
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely responds to the Shin Bet’s assessment that the Otniel killer was motivated by Palestinian television shows.
“The Shin Bet proved there is a direct connection between incitement and the atrocities and terror we have witnessed recently,” she says in a statement. “The world must be held accountable for the hundreds of millions of dollars that go to the Palestinian Authority. This money goes to incitement, this money motivates terror. This is what I tell those heads of state that funnel millions to the PA. Check where the money goes.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, July 21, 2015. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
—Raphael Ahren contributed
Polish president Andrzej Duda and Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic will attend the ceremony marking the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Polish president is an honorary patron of the commemoration which will take place on January 27; Its theme will be “Returns.”
The ceremony will be attended by dozens of survivors and their relatives. The day before the ceremony there will be a meeting with Andrzej Pilecki, the son of Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance fighter who was voluntarily imprisoned in Auschwitz. After escaping from the camp, he authored the first comprehensive Allied intelligence report on the genocide in Auschwitz and on the Holocaust. In 1948 he was sentenced to death for treason by the communist authorities.
“Remembering all the victims, in a special way, during the upcoming anniversary, we want to mention people who, despite enormous trauma, attempted to return to normal life,” says Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz Museum, in a statement.
–JTA
Zionist Union party leader Isaac Herzog hits back at MK Shelly Yachimovich, after she accuses him of a rightward shift.
“I knew it,” he writes on Facebook. “I said it from the start: the moment I present my plan to disengage from the Palestinians, the left and the right will jump up and attack me. This is exactly what happened. Shelly decided to attack me ferociously.”
Herzog last week said the two-state solution was “not realistic” for the time being and urged unilateral withdrawal from some areas.
“What do you think, Shelly, that if tomorrow you tell the Palestinians ‘hi, it’s Shelly, let’s make peace,’ they’ll jump up and warmly shake your hand and put their knives down,” he continues, mocking Yachimovich’s signature opening on her Facebook posts, “hi, it’s Shelly.”
“After all, you yourself don’t believe that. It’s all talk.”
Herzog says his party is the only one that believes in the two-state solution.
“We are the only party that is consistently advancing this solution [the two-state solution] against the messianic vision of the extreme right,” he says. “Only Bibi is afraid and Abu Mazen is afraid. Both of them are captive to their radicals and won’t dare advance the solution.”
Zionist Union party chairman MK Isaac Herzog leads a faction meeting in the Knesset, January 4, 2016 (FLASH90)
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton says former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg won’t need to run for president because she’ll win the Democratic nomination.
The former secretary of state says on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that as she understands Bloomberg’s statement, he’ll consider running if Clinton does not win the nomination. She says Sunday that she’ll “relieve” him of that decision by winning the nomination.
Clinton is locked in a competitive contest against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with a week to go until the February 1 Iowa caucuses.
People familiar with his plans say Bloomberg is taking preliminary steps toward an independent run and has set a March deadline for the decision. The sources told The Associated Press that if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, the former mayor is not likely to challenge her in a general election.
Sanders, meanwhile, says he’ll win the race for president if Bloomberg becomes an independent candidate for the White House.
The Vermont senator tells CBS’ “Face the Nation” that a battle between Bloomberg and Donald Trump, two New York billionaires, would favor Sanders’ upstart Democratic campaign in a general election.
—AP, Times of Israel staff
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets attendees after speaking at the Scott County Democrats Red, White and Blue Banquet in Davenport, Iowa, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Initial reports indicate an Israeli car was fired at in the West Bank, near Mishor Adumim. There are no reports of injuries.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Sunday warmly welcomes a mooted run for the White House by Michael Bloomberg, saying he would “love” to go up against the fellow billionaire and former New York mayor.
Trump, speaking by phone to CBS News a week before the Iowa caucuses, says: “I would love it. I know Michael very well, I’d love to compete against Michael.”
Trump, 69, a real-estate mogul and onetime reality TV star, says that Bloomberg “might very well get in the race.”
“He’s very opposite on me with guns and he’s opposite on pro-life and he’s opposite on a lot of things,” he says, speaking to the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”
“And Michael’s been a friend of mine over the years — perhaps we’re not friends anymore. You know, he’s wanted to do this for a long time and he never pulled the trigger.”
— AFP
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Dordt College, on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, in Sioux Center, Iowa. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)
Iraq’s foreign ministry summons Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Baghdad on Sunday to protest his “interference” in the country’s internal affairs over remarks on militia forces fighting the Islamic State group.
Thamer al-Sabhan is the first Baghdad-based Saudi ambassador in a quarter century, but while full diplomatic relations are restored, there is still significant hostility to Riyadh in some quarters and there have already been calls for the envoy’s expulsion.
The foreign ministry summons Sabhan “to inform him of its official protest regarding his media statements that represented interference in Iraqi internal affairs,” it says in a statement.
Sabhan says in interview with Al-Sumaria television that the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary forces, which are dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, are not wanted in Sunni Arab and Kurdish areas as “they are not accepted by the sons of Iraqi society.”
—AFP
A British official says the government is considering whether to let unaccompanied minors settle in Britain.
International Development Secretary Justine Greening speaks Sunday as the UK faces mounting calls to do more to help migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. Greening indicates the government may decide to let several thousand child migrants into the country.
No decision has yet been made.
British charities and the leaders of opposition parties urged the government to let 3,000 more children start a new life in Britain.
Britain has said so far it will allow 20,000 Syrian refugees to settle in the next five years. In contrast, last year over 1 million asylum-seekers entered Germany.
—AP
Migrants and refugees cross the border between Greece and Macedonia near Gevgelija on November 22, 2015. (AFP PHOTO / ROBERT ATANASOVSKI / AFP / ROBERT ATANASOVSKI)
Gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a checkpoint in Egypt Sunday, killing two policemen and a bystander, security officials say on the eve of the anniversary of the 2011 uprising.
Another two policemen were wounded in the attack near the town of Fakous in the Nile Delta province of Sharkiya north of Cairo, they say.
The identities of the attackers, who fled the scene, were not immediately known but police arrested three suspects in the area.
—AFP
The teenage cousin of the 13-year-old Palestinian girl who was shot dead this morning trying to stab an Israeli guard tells Channel 2 that she had expressed in the past a desire to carry out attacks against Jews.
He says that the girl had watched the funerals of Palestinian assailants on TV and admired them.
“Everyone wants a martyr’s death. Of course I’m happy,” he says.
B’Tselem activist Nasser Nawaj’ah is approved for release by a military court.
The Palestinian activist, arrested as part of an investigation into far-left activists accused of “turning in” Arabs who sell West Bank land to Jews, is set to be freed in 24 hours.
— Judah Ari Gross
File photo of Palestinian activist Nasser Nawaja. (Leif Magne Helgesen)
An emergency team is dispatched to the home of former president Shimon Peres, who is not feeling well, Channel 2 reports.
It is not clear if the ex-president, who was in the hospital last week after suffering a minor heart attack, will be hospitalized.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, November 2, 2015 (Flash90)
Highway 98 in the Golan Heights is closed between Ein Zivan and Baron due to heavy snow, police say.
Paramedics are examining Peres and will decide shortly whether he should be hospitalized, Channel 2 says.
Rocket sirens sound in southern Israel.
Details to come.
Residents of southern Israel report hearing blasts after the rocket sirens go off, Channel 2 reports.
The army is investigating.
There are no reports of injuries.
One rocket fired from the Gaza Strip lands in an open area in southern Israel, causing no injuries, Channel 2 reports.
Peres is being evacuated to the hospital after he reports chest pains.
The 92-year-old former president is fully conscious and stable.
The IDF confirms that a rocket lands in a field, causing no injuries or damage.
Troops are searching the area to locate the projectile.
— Judah Ari Gross
Peres’s office says the ex-president will be kept overnight over “slight heartbeat irregularities.”
“His doctors decided that the ninth president will spend the night in the hospital for observation and a series of tests,” a statement says.
—Raphael Ahren contributed
A man is said lightly injured in a shooting attack in the West Bank, near the settlement of Dolev, according to initial reports.
The IDF confirms one person is injured in a shooting attack near the Dolev settlement, north of Jerusalem.
—Judah Ari Gross
The Israeli who was reported lightly injured near Dolev is being treated for shock, according to Hebrew reports.
The Magen David Adom emergency service says a man in his 50s came under fire on a West Bank road.
The man continued driving until he reached the settlement of Dolev.
He is being treated for shock, but sustained no bodily injuries, it says.
— Judah Ari Gross
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