ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 373
The Times of Israel liveblogged Saturday’s events as they unfolded.
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu undergoes a procedure to have a stone removed from his bladder, according to a brief statement from his office.
The procedure, conducted at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, is a success, and Netanyahu is expected to be released within hours.
The African Union has suspended a debate on whether to withdraw Israel’s accreditation, avoiding a vote that risked creating an unprecedented rift within the 55-member bloc, diplomats tell AFP.
“The Israel question has been suspended for now and instead there will be a committee set up to study the issue,” one of the diplomats says.
Israel chooses Michael Ben David with the song I.M. for the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Turin, Italy.
Ben David is selected after winning the fourth season of the X-Factor reality show this evening.
Dozens of nationalist activists are blocking the entrance of Jerusalem, protesting the closure of a probe of police officers who were involved in a car chase more than a year ago which led to the death of a settler teen.
Police say seven demonstrators — who were demanding justice in the 2020 death of Ahuvia Sandak — have been arrested for “public disorder.”
Officers are attempting to clear the protesters to reopen the road, police say.
IGHRAN, Morocco — The Moroccan royal palace says a 5-year-old boy who was trapped in a deep well for four days has died.
Moroccan King Mohammed VI expressed his condolences to the boy’s parents in a statement released by the palace.
The boy, Rayan, was pulled out Saturday night by rescuers after a lengthy operation that captivated global attention.
The Israel Securities Authority dismisses an earlier Channel 12 report, according to which an ISA investigator apparently indicated to state’s witness Shlomo Filber that his phone had been remotely accessed with spyware.
The ISA clarifies that Filber’s phone was seized, in accordance with the law, when he was questioned as a suspect over allegations relating to the Bezeq telecommunications firm in 2017; it was not bugged or hacked.
An ISA spokesperson says the phone was seized and searched with an official warrant.
“The transcript in question [published earlier by Channel 12] relates to an investigation from July 2017 as part of the Bezeq case… There was no use of wiretapping in the case at all, and Shlomo Filber’s mobile device was confiscated and searched under the authority of a standard search warrant, as is regularly done in criminal probes,” the spokesperson says.
His phone was legally confiscated during that investigation, also known as Case 4000.
A five-year-old Moroccan boy who was trapped in a well near his home is rescued after four days.
Video from the scene shows medics rushing the boy, Rayan, to an ambulance. His condition is not immediately known.
Rescuers used a rope to send oxygen and water down to the boy as well as a camera to monitor him over the past four days.
Rayan fell into a 32-meter (105-feet) well located outside his home in the village of Ighran in Morocco’s mountainous northern Chefchaouen province on Tuesday evening.
شاهد بالفيديو.. لحظة إخراج #الطفل_ريان من البئر #أنقذوا_ريان#المغرب pic.twitter.com/xa5fZZFS7Q
— ا لـ حـ ـد ث (@AlHadath) February 5, 2022
Agencies contributed to this report.
Israel fears a new agreement between world powers and Iran will only delay Tehran from reaching the amount of material needed for a nuclear bomb by a few months, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
The report did not source which officials in Israel are worried about Iran possibly reaching its so-called breakout time earlier than originally anticipated.
The original deal had envisioned keeping Iran away from this target by a year.
American sources say “it is better to have a distance of a few months and not just weeks, as would happen if no agreement is signed,” according to the network.
Still, enough nuclear material for a bomb is not the same as having the capabilities to build the core of the weapon and to attach it to the warhead of a missile, which Iran is not believed to possess and would likely take many more months to achieve.
Talks in Vienna are expected to resume next week.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tells leaders in Beijing he expects them to allow UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet to make a “credible” visit to China, including a stop in the troubled Xinjiang region, his spokesman says.
Guterres meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics, according to a readout of their talks.
The UN chief “expressed his expectation that the contacts between the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Chinese authorities will allow for a credible visit of the High Commissioner to China, including Xinjiang,” it says.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid says he spoke tonight with his counterpart in Cyprus, Ioannis Kasoulides.
“Our bilateral relations with Cyprus & Greece are part of an important regional alliance for Israel. We’ll continue to work together to strengthen the relationship and deepen cooperation between Israel & Cyprus,” Lapid writes on Twitter.
The Cyprus Foreign Ministry says the call was “cordial and substantial.”
Cordial & substantial ☎️ of @IKasoulides with @yairlapid |
Discussed????
▶️ Key aspects of ???????????????? Strategic Partnership
▶️ Next steps in bilat. & trilat. coop ▶️ 3+1 with #Greece ???????? & #US ????????
▶️ Affirmed standalone merit of #CY #ISR engagement in addressing Regional Challenges pic.twitter.com/5ps6NYCYKo— Cyprus MFA (@CyprusMFA) February 5, 2022
Tonight, I spoke with the Foreign Minister of Cyprus, @IKasoulides. Our bilateral relations with Cyprus & Greece are part of an important regional alliance for Israel. We’ll continue to work together to strengthen the relationship and deepen cooperation between Israel & Cyprus. pic.twitter.com/8yDFymzwCs
— יאיר לפיד – Yair Lapid???? (@yairlapid) February 5, 2022
With Israel’s COVID-19 death toll at 9,135, Prof. Eran Segal, a computational biologist, notes on Channel 12 that 1 in every 1,000 Israelis has died of COVID.
That puts Israel 47th in the world for deaths per capita, he says. In the US, the per-capita death rate is almost three times as bad.
Some 2 million Israelis have tested positive in the current Omicron wave, says Segal. About 900 people have died during the wave — which underlines that Omicron is less deadly than previous waves, with 1 fatality per 2,000 confirmed cases.
A man in his 20s dies after being stabbed in the central town of Azor, officials say.
The man had been taken by medics to Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv in critical condition.
The hospital says he succumbed to his injuries shortly after being admitted.
Police have opened an investigation.
The victim is not immediately named.
The number of patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 rises to 1,213, the highest number since the onset of the pandemic, according to new Health Ministry data.
The last time the number of serious patients was close to being this high was in late January 2021, with 1,193 serious COVID-19 cases.
The ministry also reports 37,977 new cases identified yesterday, with a positivity rate of 25.49%. Another 9,508 cases have been identified today by 7 p.m.
The death toll stands at 9,135, after 37 deaths are recorded over the weekend, the ministry says.
The rate of spread continues to fall, reaching an R-value of 0.88. The transmission rate is based on data from 10 days earlier and any value above 1 shows that the rate of infection is growing.
In quotes published by Channel 12 news, an investigator for the Israel Securities Authority appears to indicate to Shlomo Filber, a state’s witness in Netanyahu’s criminal trial, that advanced spyware capabilities may have been utilized against him.
Update: The Israel Securities Authority later clarified that Filber’s phone was seized, in accordance with the law, when he was questioned as a suspect over allegations relating to the Bezeq telecommunications firm in 2017; it was not bugged or hacked, a spokesperson for the ISA said.
Filber, the former director-general of the Communications Ministry, has been at the center of reports in recent days that his phone was drained of all its data by police investigating former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The prosecution in the Netanyahu affair has been ordered by Jerusalem District Court to provide details of any such use of spyware against Filber or others connected to the case.
“We have… software that is a generation ahead of the NSA,” the Israel Securities Authority investigator said, according to an interrogation transcription, referring to the US National Security Agency.
“I want you to understand, the knowledge I have about your world, your life… is thorough,” the investigator says according to the transcription. Filber was questioned by the Securities Authorities “many months” before police first questioned him, and long before he turned state’s witness, the TV report said.
“I can click on a person and see everything, I can see what you deleted, when you deleted, why you deleted, I can see everything,” the transcript reads.
According to Thursday reports, Filber apparently had his phone illicitly hacked by police during the investigation. Police brass reportedly told justice officials that the data was downloaded accidentally and was never given to investigators in the Netanyahu cases.
Attorneys of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former owner of the Walla news site, Shaul Elovitch, are expected to request a delay in the testimony of state’s witness Shlomo Filber in Netanyahu’s criminal trial, Channel 13 news reports.
This follows revelations that the ex-director-general of the Communications Ministry, Shlomo Filber, apparently had his phone illicitly hacked by police during the investigation.
Ayelet Shaked says she was unaware of police allegedly misusing spyware while she was serving as Justice Minister between 2015 and 2019.
“It is unthinkable in a democracy, we will amend the wiretapping law,” she vows in an interview with Channel 12.
Police have been accused of using NSO Group’s Pegasus software to hack into phones — including of those not suspected of any crime — obtaining data without prior court approval or abusing loopholes in existing laws that allow wiretapping.
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked has tested positive for COVID-19, her office says.
She was about to begin an interview with Channel 12 news, but tests positive with a personal antigen test.
“The minister is feeling well,” her office says, adding that she will conduct an additional test at an official testing station, according to Health Ministry guidelines.
MEAUX, France — Seven staff members of an ultra-orthodox Jewish religious school near Paris are charged with “aggravated violence,” prosecutors say after students are taken into care.
The Beth Yossef school in Bussieres, around 60 kilometers (35 miles) east of the capital Paris, has been hosting around 60 children aged 13-18 including “many underage American and Israeli children who do not speak French in abusive conditions,” prosecutor Laureline Peyrefitte says.
The children allegedly suffered “being locked up, confiscation of their identity documents, poor conditions, acts of abuse, lack of access to education and healthcare, and no possibility of returning to their families.”
Police say they had taken 17 staff members in for questioning.
The seven were charged on Friday with various offenses relating to the mistreatment of pupils and placed under judicial supervision, Peyrefitte adds.
Site managers, teaching staff, supervisors had “generally denied the facts even if some were able to describe acts like slaps and blows,” she says.
An American boy escaped from the school in July and sought shelter at the US embassy in Paris.
Others followed, and Israeli public television has been investigating the school for months.
Some of the children have already been returned to their parents.
Amir Ohana, the Likud MK and former justice minister, says the charges against Benjamin Netanyahu must be canceled in light of police use of “doomsday weaponry” and the “extortion of state’s witnesses” to testify against the former prime minister.
Interviewed on Channel 12’s “Meet the Press” during a debate on police abuse of spyware tools to drain data from the phone of Shlomo Filber, the former Communications Ministry director-general who is a key state’s witness in the trial, Ohana says “canceling the charges is the very least that needs to be done” and calls for Netanyahu’s investigators to be investigated.
“Every day it is proved that this [investigation and indictment of Netanyahu] was a witchhunt,” Ohana says.
Micah Fetman, a former attorney for Netanyahu, says the likelihood of the charges being dropped is “not very large.”
Fetman says the prosecution and only the prosecution can decide whether Filber will testify as scheduled, but that it will fall to the judges to determine how much weight to give to his testimony.
Filber is due to begin testifying in Case 4000 in about two weeks’ time.
The Jerusalem District Court has ordered the prosecution to provide answers by Tuesday to a stream of allegations of abuse of spyware to drain data from Filber’s phone and possibly from others connected to the trial, and to update the court and the defense about what data was retrieved and what, if any, use was made of it.
During “routine security activity” earlier this evening, several Palestinian gunmen in an off-road vehicle drive by officers near Jenin and open fire, a police spokesperson says.
Border Police troops return fire, but the gunmen flee the area, police say.
Police say no injuries are caused, but the officers’ vehicle is damaged by the gunfire.
Forces are now scanning the area.
Russia sends a pair of long-range nuclear-capable bombers on patrol over its ally Belarus amid spiraling tensions over Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry says that the two Tu-22M3 bombers practiced interaction with the Belarusian air force and air defense assets during a four-hour mission. The flight followed several similar patrols over Belarus, which borders Ukraine to the north.
The mission comes as the Kremlin has moved troops from Siberia and the Far East to Belarus for sweeping joint drills. The deployment added to the Russian military buildup near Ukraine, fueling Western fears of a possible invasion.
Russia has denied plans of attacking its neighbor Ukraine, but urged the US and its allies to provide a binding pledge that they don’t accept Ukraine into NATO or deploy offensive weapons and roll back the alliance deployments to Eastern Europe. Washington and NATO have rejected the demands.
Attempts to rescue a five-year-old boy trapped in a Moroccan well stretch into a fourth day today, with unstable soil threatening the painstaking work of trying to dig him out safely. Fears grow that it may be too late.
Online messages of support and concern for the boy, Rayan, poured in from around the world as the rescue efforts dragged through the night.
Rescuers used a rope to send oxygen and water down to the boy as well as a camera to monitor him. By Saturday morning, the head of the rescue committee, Abdelhadi Temrani, said: “It is not possible to determine the child’s condition at all at this time. But we hope to God that the child is alive.”
Rayan fell into a 32-meter (105-feet) well located outside his home in the village of Ighran in Morocco’s mountainous northern Chefchaouen province on Tuesday evening. He is now trapped in a hole too narrow for rescuers to reach safely.
European parties to the nuclear talks with Iran urge it to seize the “opportunity” of the US waiving some sanctions on Iran’s civilian atomic program in an effort to entice Tehran back to the 2015 nuclear deal.
“This should facilitate technical discussions necessary to support talks on JCPOA return in Vienna,” negotiators of Britain, France and Germany say in a joint statement.
“We urge Iran to take quick advantage of this opportunity, because the timing of the waiver underscores the view we share with the US: we have very little time left to bring JCPOA talks to a successful conclusion.”
Moscow’s ambassador to the UN in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, welcomes the US waiver decision as “a move in the right direction.”
“It will help expedite restoration of #JCPOA and mutual return of #US and #Iran to compliance with 2015 deal. It also can be seen as an indication that the #ViennaTalks have entered the final stage,” he writes on Twitter.
