Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Sunday’s events as they unfolded.
The Palestinian Authority denounces reported US attempts to undercut a UN agency that serves several million Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
The US-based Foreign Policy magazine last week reported that Jared Kushner, Mideast adviser to US President Donald Trump, called in an email this year for a “sincere effort to disrupt” the agency.
Nabil Shaath, an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, alleges that the Trump administration is “pushing to impose facts on the ground, by realizing all of Israel’s demands.”
Abbas’ office said yesterday it would “foil conspiracies to end the Palestinian cause.”
The Knesset’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation approves a government-sponsored bill that would levy fines on the clients of prostitutes.
The legislation would impose a NIS 1,500 ($420) fine on “johns.” Customers caught a second time within three years would be fined double the amount.
Offenders would have a choice to pay the fine, appeal it, or request to be tried in court. The text of the bill gives the court the authority to increase the fine to up to NIS 14,400 ($4,000) if the john is found guilty.
The offenses will not be counted toward a criminal record.
Firefighters are working to put out a fire in southern Israel that was sparked by an incendiary device flown into Israel from the Gaza Strip, officials say.
A spokesman for the Israeli Fire and Rescue Services says teams have been working to put out the blaze near Kibbutz Nir Am since this morning.
— Jacob Magid
A Taliban suicide bomber kills three NATO forces on a foot patrol in eastern Afghanistan in an attack that also wounded a US soldier and two Afghan troops, NATO saysin a statement.
The Czech military confirms that the three killed were Czech service members.
The Taliban claims the attack, which took place near Charakar, the provincial capital of the Parwan province.
— AP
The IDF defends its participation in Croatian military parade over the weekend that triggered harsh condemnation from Serbia, according to the Times of Israel.
In a statement, the army says that a number of its fighter jets are deployed in Croatia as part of a military cooperation arrangement, and that participating in the event was part of that “strategic cooperation between both countries.”
The statement also notes an impending Israeli-Croatian arms deal that is said to be worth half a billion dollars.
Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is calling on US President Donald Trump to “love all” athletes equally, after the US leader insulted NBA star LeBron James and declared his preference for Michael Jordan.
In a Tweet, Ahmadinejad tell Trump that “In my opinion everyone especially a President should love all, and not differentiate between them.” He adds that he loves both James and Jordan.
Mr. @realDonaldTrump In my opinion everyone especially a President should love all,and not differentiate between them. I love @KingJames #MichaelJordan @RaufMahmoud and all athletes, and wish them all the best.
— Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (@Ahmadinejad1956) August 5, 2018
On Friday, Trump derided James’s intelligence after the basketball player and philanthropist accused him of fueling racial divides in the United States.
“Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, (CNN presenter) Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do,” the president tweeted of the Los Angeles Lakers player,” he posted.
Trump closed his tweet saying “I like Mike! in reference to Jordan.
Trump’s comment sparked a huge reaction on Twitter from James’s backers.
The IDF is has reportedly frozen training for the Maglan unit, after two of its soldiers were injured in training exercises over the last month.
According to public broadcaster Kan, one soldier suffered irreversible damage to his back after jumping out of a jeep while observing a Maglan unit tradition. The soldier fell on his back on to a rock, and has been hospitalized since the incident.
In a separate incident, a Maglan soldier was hospitalized after he was hit in the stomach during an unauthorized Krav Maga training session. The soldier complained of the pain to his commanding officer, but he decided not to refer him for medical treatment. He was hospitalized for unspecified internal injuries a day later.
An IDF spokesperson confirmed both incidents to Kan and they were being “thoroughly investigated.” The spokesman says that all Maglan training exercises are on hold while soldiers and officers review safely procedures.
Twenty people died after a vintage World War II aircraft crashed into a Swiss mountainside, police say.
“The police have the sad certainty that the 20 people aboard perished,” police spokeswoman Anita Senti tells a news conference.
The Junker JU52 HB-HOT aircraft, built in Germany in 1939 and now a collectors’ item, crashed into the Piz Segnas mountain in the east of the country yesterday.
— AP
A major earthquake rocks Indonesia’s Lombok island, the US Geological Survey reports, just a week after a quake killed 17 people on the holiday island.
The latest quake had a magnitude of seven and struck just 10 kilometers underground, the USGS says.
Officials issue a tsunami warning and are urging people to move away from the ocean.
“Please go to a place with higher ground, while remaining calm and not panicking,” Dwikorita Karnawati, head of the agency for meteorology, climatology and geophysics, tells local TV.
— AFP
The Defense Ministry releases images showing the progress made on the underwater barrier under construction along the Gaza Strip border designed to prevent maritime infiltrations by terror groups in the coastal enclave.
In a statement, the Defense Ministry says that at its completion, the maritime barrier will be 200 meters long and 50 meters wide with a 6-meter-high fence along the top.
The barrier was approved after an attempted infiltration by Hamas operatives during the 2014 Gaza war. The assailants managed to swim onto Israeli shores north of the Strip before they were targeted by an airstrike.
In the statement Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman praises the “impressively fast” pace of construction, and says that “Israel’s counterterrorism capabilities around Gaza are increasing every day.”
The barrier is expected to be completed this year, but in its statement today, the Defense Ministry not say whether the project would be completed on schedule.
A Czech tourist was killed by a shark while swimming in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt, authorities say.
The man died 20 kilometers north of Marsa Alam city as “a result of an attack by a shark,” city council chairman General Atef Wagdy tells AFP.
He says the health ministry is coordinating handing over the body to the Czech embassy, and that a committee has been set up to investigate the death.
Local media reported on Friday that human remains were found on a beach in Marsa Alam.
— AFP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting members of his security cabinet to discuss a possible Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas.
Hamas leaders have been meeting in Gaza over the weekend but no details of their talks have emerged. Reports over the weekend indicated the Gaza terrorist group would be willing to sign the long-term ceasefire with Israel on the condition that Israeli and Egyptian restrictions on the its border crossings be eased.
Israeli officials have said that they will not accept any agreement with Hamas that does not include the return of the Israeli citizens and remains of IDF soldiers being held in Gaza.
US national security adviser John Bolton says that there was “no US government involvement” in the reported attack Saturday during a Caracas military parade attended by the Venezuelan president.
Bolton, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” says the incident could be “a pretext set up by the regime itself” of President Nicolas Maduro “or something else.” While denying any US role, he says that if Venezuela had “hard information” of a potential violation of US law, “we will take a serious look at it.”
— AFP
A Supreme Court Justice orders the state to return jewelry that was confiscated from Shaul and Iris Elovitch that was taken from their home without a court order during a police search earlier this year.
Justice Yitzhak Amit determined that the jewelry — worth some NIS 600,000 — was seized illegally and must be returned to the couple.
Elovitch’s home was searched in February as part of a corruption investigation called Case 4,000, that involves suspicions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advanced regulatory decisions benefiting Elovitch in exchange for flattering coverage from his news site.
In his decision, Amit criticizes the state for its handling of the case, saying the insistence on seizing the jewelry the couple was wearing at the time of the search — including their wedding rings — was an effort to “another level of humiliation.”
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is vowing to rebuild trust with the Jewish community as he tries to calm a storm over alleged anti-Semitism in the left-of-center party.
Claims of anti-Jewish prejudice within Labour have grown since Corbyn, a longtime critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, was elected leader in 2015. Jewish groups have accused Corbyn of failing to expel party members who express anti-Semitic views.
In a video released Sunday, Corbyn says the party has “a real problem of anti-Semitism.”
There is no place for antisemitism in the Labour Party. We must drive it out of our movement for good. pic.twitter.com/V1voY75yz4
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 5, 2018
He says “driving anti-Semitism out of the party for good and working with the Jewish community to rebuild trust are vital priorities.”
The video is released after Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, said yesterday that the party faced “eternal shame and embarrassment” if it did not confront the problem.
— AP
US President Donald Trump is renewing his attacks on two of his favorite targets: the special counsel Russia probe and the news media.
Trump, who is on a working vacation at his New Jersey golf club, begins the day with a series of searing tweets.
He defends calling the media “The Enemy of the People,” and says journalists “purposely cause great division & distrust” and can “cause War!”
Trump then goes after recent reporting about Robert Mueller’s probe into possible links between his campaign and Russian officials, particularly stories on how he may be concerned about his eldest son’s legal exposure.
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
And Trump once again defends the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in which his son met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, saying it was “totally legal” and that he didn’t know about it.
— AP
Representatives of the Bedouin community have filed a petition to the High court of Justice, demanding the recently passed nation-state law be changed or repealed entirely, according to a Hadashot news report.
“The State of Israel was established in a joint effort, in blood, sweat and tears of the Jewish people, the Bedouins and Druze, along with other minorities,” the petition to court says.
The Bedouin say the law “destroys the most beautiful values in Judaism.”
The Jewish state law passed by the Knesset last month has sparked widespread criticism from Israel’s minorities and opposition, the international community, and Jewish groups abroad.
It has prompted particular outrage from the Druze community, whose members say its provisions render them second-class citizens.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency is reporting that Saudi Arabia has agreed to issue visas to the head of Iran’s Saudi Arabian Interests Section and its staff.
Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran in January 2016 after Iranian protesters attacked its embassy and consulate in Tehran over the execution of top Saudi opposition cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr
Today’s report quotes an unnamed source as saying that Saudi Arabia agreed to issue the visas.
Saudi state media did not immediately acknowledge the report.
Tensions have spiked between the mostly Sunni kingdom and the Shiite power Iran after Yemen’s Iran-backed rebels, known as Houthis, fired a missile that was intercepted outside Riyadh.
Iran has welcomed Arab countries’ offers for mediation between Tehran and Riyadh.
— AP
Firefighters are working to extinguish a fire in the Kissufim Forest in southern Israel that was sparked by an incendiary balloon flown over the border from the Gaza Strip.
A Israeli Fire and Rescue Services spokesman says that throughout the day, firefighters have responded to six fires in southern Israel that were sparked by the balloons.
Earlier, the IDF said it fired on Gazan operatives launching the balloons into Israel, as well as at a vehicle used by a second cell.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry said four people were injured in the Israeli strike.
The mother of a fallen IDF soldier whose remains are believed to be held by Hamas slams Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for considering a ceasefire agreement with Gaza’s rulers without first securing the release of her son’s body.
Leah Goldin slams Netanyahu in a Hadashot news interview while the prime minister met with his security cabinet to discuss the Egypt-brokered true.
She says the same cabinet that decided to send her son to Gaza four years ago during a truce with Hamas, when he was kidnapped and killed.
“These cabinet ministers out of some kind of unbearable chutzpah, are going to discuss this ceasefire? They haven’t even solved the first ceasefire yet, the one in which my son was kidnapped,” she tells the TV station.
She adds that Netanyahu is betraying the IDF and the country.
A major earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok on Sunday killed at least 19 people, injured dozens and damaged buildings, officials say.
“The latest data we have is that 19 people are dead at Tanjung Hospital (North Lombok),” Agus Hendra Sanjaya, Mataram search and rescue spokesman, tells AFP.
Among the dead were a 1-year-old and a 72-year-old, he adds.
— AFP
The Interior Ministry has annulled the municipal bylaws passed by a number of Israeli cities in a bid to circumvent a law banning mini-markets from operating on Shabbat.
The ministry told the municipalities of Modi’in, Rishon Letzion, Holon, Givatayim and Herzliya that they failed to give convincing reasons why opening mini-markets on the Jewish day of rest was necessary, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
The Knesset passed a law granting the interior minister the power to override city bylaws allowing mini-markets to open on the Jewish day of rest. Critics of the legislation decried it as religious coercion, but its proponents said it was necessary in order to maintain the longstanding status quo in Israel regarding businesses operating on Shabbat.
The security cabinet meeting convened to discuss the terms of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement is over, a statement from the cabinet says.
“The IDF Chief of Staff updated the security cabinet on the situation regarding Gaza,” it says. “The IDF is prepared for any scenario.”
The Iranian central bank’s top foreign exchange official has been arrested, the judiciary says, a day after he was sacked.
Ahmad Araqchi, a vice governor at the bank whose portfolio covered forex, was arrested along with several other unnamed individuals including a government official and four currency speculators, says judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejeie in a televised statement, according to state news agency IRIB.
Araghchi, the nephew of deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, was fired by the new governor of the central bank yesterday, apparently over his handling of the currency crisis.
Iran’s rial has lost more than half its value since April, in part over fears of renewed sanctions by the United States.
An ill-judged attempt to fix the value of the rial in April triggered widespread black-market speculation and accusations of rampant corruption by those with access to cheaper government currency rates.
— AFP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, reportedly scolded Leah Goldin, after she discovered that Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was invited to a memorial service for her son two years ago.
According to a report in Channel 10 news, Sara Netanyahu told Goldin that she and her husband were “ungrateful,” and their “connection to my husband’s opponents could harm the prime minister’s efforts to bring him back from Hamas.”
The TV station says Sara Netanyahu called the Goldin family to protest that Shaked was invited to the memorial.
Sara Netanyahu denied the report, saying, “No such phone call ever took place.”
Reports in Palestinian media say three Gazans are injured by IDF fire after they tried to move barbed wire on the security fence, east of El-Bureij in the center of the Strip.
Media site Palestine Info says the son of senior Hamas military commander Marwan Issa was shot in the foot by Israeli troops.
A number of Israeli cities say they plan to appeal the Interior Ministry’s decision to annul their municipal bylaws, in a bid to circumvent the a law banning mini-markets from operating on Shabbat.
Modi’in Mayor Haim Bibas says the decision by Interior Minister Aryeh Deri was an effort to shore up political support among his base and the cities would take the matter to the High Court of Justice, “in order to protect all of the citizens of Israel.”
