The Times of Israel is liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.
After a deal between Israel and South Korea was inked in the early hours of the morning, a plane carrying 700,000 vaccine doses is on its way to Seoul, says Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The doses being shipped are set to expire on July 31.
The prime minister says that, in return, “they will give us back 700,000 vaccine doses” at a future date.
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked of Yamina is presenting the Palestinian family reunification law to the Knesset.
The debate on the law is expected to last at least 2 hours, with 45 lawmakers signing up to talk.
The Times of Israel has obtained the latest compromise proposal on extending the 2003 Palestinian family reunification ban.
The coalition, including Meretz, Labor and Ra’am, will vote to extend the law by six months.
In exchange, the Interior Ministry will upgrade the status of around 1,500 Palestinian families.
At the same time, the Knesset will establish a supervisory committee with representatives from the Interior Ministry, the Population, Immigration, and Borders Authority, and a parliamentarian to be named later.
The committee’s aim is to help provide social benefits to around 9,700 Palestinians residing in Israel on military-issued stay permits that are equal to those of residents.
The committee will report to the Knesset’s Interior Committee. That body has yet to be established, but Ra’am is reportedly going to lead it as part of the coalition deals.
Every month, the committee will provide the Knesset with a report. And within 90 days, the committee will provide policy alternatives to the current ban.
A meeting between Ra’am and other coalition factions did not produce a compromise agreement on extending a 2003 ban on Palestinian family unification.
“We’ve made advances in the talks, but there’s still no agreement,” says Ra’am party chief Mansour Abbas in the hallways of the Knesset.
At least one of Abbas’s party members has said he will not vote in favor of the law under any circumstances.
Abbas tells The Times of Israel in response: “Look, we’ll all sit down together and decide soon enough.”
Tayseer Khatib, an activist married to a Palestinian from the West Bank, says the thousands impacted by the law will not accept any compromise.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos steps down as CEO today, handing over the reins as the company navigates the challenges of a world fighting to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic.
Andy Jassy, who ran Amazon’s cloud-computing business, replaces Bezos, a change the company announced in February.
Bezos, Amazon’s biggest shareholder with a stake worth about $180 billion, will still hold sway over the company he started out of his Seattle garage in 1995. He takes over the role of executive chair, with plans to focus on new products and initiatives.
Jassy takes the helm of a $1.7 trillion company that benefited greatly from the pandemic, more than tripling its profits in the first quarter of 2021 and posting record revenue as customers grew ever more dependent on online shopping.
Denis Shapovalov’s impressive run at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships sees him reach the quarter-finals after he dismissed Spain’s 2019 semi-finalist and eighth seed Roberto Bautista Agut 6-1, 6-3, 7-5 today.
The 22-year-old was born in Israel and spent the first years of his life here, but the family moved to Canada when he was young.
Shapovalov — who beat Britain’s two-time champion Andy Murray in the previous round — will next face 25th seeded Karen Khachanov of Russia for a place in the last four.
A US Open quarter-finalist in 2020, Shapovalov’s best showing at Wimbledon in three previous visits was reaching the second round in 2018.
There are preliminary reports in Iran of a blast at a government warehouse in Tehran that has caused a large fire.
انفجار و آتشسوزی گسترده در یک کارخانهی تولید تسلیحات نظامی در غرب #تهران.
پ.ن: هرکی با #اسرائیل و آل اسرائیل دراُفتد، وراُفتد.????#فوری #موساد #جنگ #تهران #پالایشگاه #قطعی_برق #قطع_برق #BreakingNews #Breaking #IRGCT #israel #Iran #Mossad https://t.co/7WK8cpdJc7 pic.twitter.com/fkCHmWOEzR— ????✝عـمـو شمسی، عـمـوی دلها???????? (@Uncleshamsi) July 5, 2021
The facility is said to belong to the Organization for Collection and Sale of State-owned Properties.
There is no immediate word on what was in the facility, what may have caused the explosion, or whether there are any casualties.
The Health Ministry is planning to suggest to the cabinet to mandate quick COVID testing at the entrance to mass events, according to unsourced reports in Ynet and Walla.
Health officials will also recommend further upping enforcement of quarantines.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas says he believes a deal to save the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran can be reached “in the coming weeks.”
“We think [the talks] can reach their goal,” he tells reporters in Madrid, after a gathering of the Stockholm Initiative, a group of 16 states working toward nuclear disarmament.
“I think we’ll get there in the coming weeks,” Maas adds, on the Iran talks that resumed in April in Vienna.
The negotiations aim to save the deal — known to diplomats as the JCPOA — between Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council member states plus Germany.
Some experts speaking to Haaretz express doubt the Health Ministry’s data, noting that it contradicts data from the UK, that showed the Pfizer vaccine was 88% effective.
One unnamed expert says: “From my experience, when there are such differences the truth is somewhere in the middle.
“There are huge methodological challenges in correctly assessing vaccine effectiveness from local outbreaks,” he adds.
An unnamed political source tells Channel 13 that the Health Ministry’s announcement on the drop in vaccine effectiveness may not have been coordinated with the political level.
The source adds that the statement could be an attempt by professionals in the ministry to create pressure on politicians to set new restrictions on the public.
Ra’am MK Mazen Ghanaim tells The Times of Israel that he will vote against renewing the 2003 ban on Palestinian family unification no matter what.
“A solution for 1,000, 2,000 families, that’s not a solution. We’re talking about tens of thousands, and this is first and foremost a humanitarian issue,” Ghanaim says.
The Ra’am MK emphasizes that there is no acceptable compromise to him on the issue.
Senior Islamic Movement official Masoud Ghanaim agrees, telling The Times of Israel: “This law must be voted against, come what may.”
Ra’am party chair Mansour Abbas has publicly sought middle ground with his right-wing partners on the law, which has become a test of the new government.
The body of an 18-year-old who went missing on Sunday has been pulled out of the water, off the coast of Hadera.
The teen arrived at a city beach with two friends and entered the water. The three were pulled in by currents. Two of the three managed to get back to shore.
Volunteers, boats, divers, and a chopper participated in searches.
Palestinian Authority security forces detain several men in Ramallah’s al-Manara Square, in advance of a planned rally condemning the death of activist Nizar Banat in PA custody, according to Palestinian media.
In videos published by Palestinian websites, PA police can be seen checking identity papers and ushering detainees into white police vans. It is not immediately clear why the men were being detained.
Banat, a prominent critic of the PA leadership, died while in the custody of PA forces in late June. His death sparked scattered protests in the West Bank cities of Hebron and Ramallah calling for an end to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s 16-year rule.
عاجل| الأجهزة الأمنية تنفذ عدة اعتقالات جديدة على دوار المنارة وسط رام الله قبيل بدء وقفة منددة باغتيال نزار بنات ورفضًا للقمع والاعتقالات. pic.twitter.com/qUVtdxqAzm
— عكس التيار (@3aks_tiar) July 5, 2021
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked and the Ra’am and Meretz parties are discussing a compromise on the reunification law that will see a six-month extension on the measure banning automatic citizenship for Palestinians who marry Israelis, while several hundred families will get improved status, Channel 12 reports.
A committee will then be formed to submit recommendations within three months, it says.
The Health Ministry says that in the past month, the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 has dropped by some 30% to 64%.
It notes the drop in effectiveness has come amid the spread of the Delta variant.
The ministry adds that the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing serious illness is at 93%.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is pushing to nix ‘Israel’s Air Force One’ and sell the ‘Wing of Zion,’ having for years opposed the project, the Ynet news site reports.
However, the defense establishment strongly opposes selling the aircraft.
The report says Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will need to rule on the matter.
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping agree there is “a window of opportunity” now for talks aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the French presidency says.
The three leaders, who spoke via videoconference earlier, agreed on the need to move negotiations forward in order to get a deal “as soon as possible” and avoid the risk of nuclear proliferation, a French top official says.
“We must do it now” in order to avoid further threats to regional stability, the official says, adding the message aims at giving a boost to negotiators after months of inconclusive talks.
During six rounds of talks in Vienna, the six countries that remain parties to the agreement — Russia, China, Germany, France, Britain and Iran — have been trying to resolve issues on how the United States can rejoin and how Iran can return to compliance.
Britain’s foreign office apologizes for the department’s “misguided” ban on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people working in the diplomatic service, which was lifted in 1991.
“The ban was in place because there was a perception that LGBT people were more susceptible than their straight counterparts to blackmail and, therefore, that they posed a security risk,” says Philip Barton, the department’s chief civil servant.
“Because of this misguided view, people’s careers were ended, cut short, or stopped before they could even begin,” he adds.
“I want to apologize publicly for the ban and the impact it had on our LGBT staff and their loved ones, both here in the UK and abroad.”
Rescuers search for victims of a collapsed South Florida condo building through fresh rubble today after crews set off a string of explosives that brought down the last of the structure, allowing search efforts to resume.
Three more victims were discovered in the newly accessible pile, Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told family members, raising the death toll to 27 people. More than 115 people remain unaccounted for.
The demolition opened up a previously unreachable area for rescuers, though the chances of finding any survivors there waned, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava says on NBC’s “Today.”
“We understand that families realize the fact that time has gone by, they realize that the chances are growing all dimmer,” she said. “They are with us, they know what we’ve been doing every step of the way.”
Former Joint List MK Heba Yazbak was questioned by police this morning on suspicion of incitement and identification with terrorist acts.
The suspicions are related to Facebook posts made by Yazbak between 2013 and 2017, before she was an MK.
In one post, Yazbak uploaded a photo of terrorist Samir Kuntar and called him a martyr. In another, she praised the actions of terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.
Prime Minister Bennett has instructed the Health Ministry to promote two medical studies on vaccines, which he says will provide decision-makers with “crucial information.”
One study will examine the effectiveness of the vaccine over time in various age groups and in various states of health.
The other will examine cellular immunity (an immune response not involving antibodies) over time.
The head of public health services in the Health Ministry, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, will oversee the research.
Some 150 Israeli soldiers will travel to central Europe later this month as part of a weeklong educational trip in honor of the 100th birthday of the Hungarian-born soldier and poet Hannah Szenes, who was captured and killed by the Nazis after she parachuted into Hungary during World War II.
The commander of the Paratroopers Brigade, Col. Yuval Gaz, tells reporters that the purpose of the program, which will include a recreation of the parachute jump by Szenes and 31 other Jewish fighters, is to “deepen the connection between the participants and the Israel Defense Forces and the State of Israel.”
The delegation will be led by the head of the IDF’s Depth Corps, Maj. Gen. Itay Virov, along with Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter, who commands the IDF’s 98th Division, which contains the Paratroopers Brigade, and a number of other senior Paratroopers officers, including Gaz.
According to Gaz, the idea for the delegation was raised 16 months ago, after last year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is meant to teach soldiers about the role of Jewish partisans during World War II, he said.
A bust of outgoing President Reuven Rivlin has been installed in the Avenue of the Presidents at the President’s Residence.
The bust was created by artist Sigalit Landau out of brass.
On a plaque beneath it appears a quote from the president: “Without the ability to listen – there is no ability to learn. Without the ability to learn – there is no ability to repair.”
Rivlin thanks Landau, saying: “I can only express my pride that I have had the privilege of having my face made by her hands. Thank you, Sigalit, for being so gentle, kind and good-humored during the creative process.”
During a press conference at the Knesset earlier, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accidentally referred to his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu as “the prime minister” while discussing the upcoming vote on the Palestinian reunification law.
After one of the listeners commented on his slip, Bennett quickly amended: “The former prime minister of course — Bibi.”
Posting a clip of the gaffe on Twitter, Likud MK David Amsalem comments: “A completely understandable mistake. God willing, we’re coming back soon.”
ה'טעות' לגמרי מובנת…
חוזרים בעזרת ה', בקרוב… ???? pic.twitter.com/XTBI1HA5v4— דודי אמסלם ???????? (@dudiamsalem) July 5, 2021
Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious stash of 80-million-year-old fossilized shark teeth at a 2,900-year-old site in Jerusalem’s City of David.
The 29 teeth are from animals that lived during the late dinosaur period. Researchers do not know how they came to Jerusalem, but say it is clear they were transported there by people, and may have been part of a collection.
The site where they were found dates to the time of King Solomon.
“They were probably valuable to someone, we just don’t know why,” says lead researcher Dr. Thomas Tuetken of the University of Mainz in Germany.
The City of David and the sharks' #teeth mystery @frontiersin https://t.co/AUhxCcoS4h
— Phys.org (@physorg_com) July 4, 2021
“They were not simply weathered out of the bedrock beneath the site, but were probably transported from afar, possibly from the Negev, at least 80 kilometers away, where similar fossils are found.”
During his Likud faction meeting, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu asks all faction members to wear masks.
“Five of my friends who were vaccinated were infected anyway,” he says.
With the number of serious COVID-19 cases slowly rising again — currently at 35 — Channel 12 reports that most (70% of cases in the past month) are over 60 and with various previous health issues.
However, there are also three patients who are under 18.
And some 40% of seriously ill patients were fully vaccinated against coronavirus, raising questions about the Delta variant’s ability to bypass the vaccine.
The family of a young military cadet who collapsed and died suddenly agreed to donate her organs.
Twenty-two-year-old Shylee Westland’s heart, liver, lungs and kidneys have since been transplanted into five people.
A man from the southern city of Arad has been found guilty of reckless homicide for shooting and killing an individual he said was trying to steal his car in November 2020.
Aryeh Schiff, 70, told police he saw a suspicious person trying to break into his vehicle and fired shots toward him using a gun he had in his possession.
Footage from the incident appeared to show Schiff firing directly at the suspect.
יוצא מהקראוון, קורא לחשוד לעצור ויורה. הותר לפרסום: כך נראה הירי של אריה שיף לעבר מוחמד אלעטרש שניסה לגנוב את רכבו. pic.twitter.com/qwph9UEsFf
— almog boker (@bokeralmog) January 14, 2021
Religious Zionism party chief Bezalel Smotrich claims the current law the coalition wishes to extend “has been punched full of holes by the High Court of Justice and legal advisers and provides only a partial solution.”
He calls on the coalition to work on the opposition’s proposed immigration law that he asserts will impose much tougher restrictions on those seeking citizenship through marriage.
He claims it is the coalition that is playing petty politics by refusing to discuss that proposal.
At the start of Yamina’s faction meeting at the Knesset, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett says ahead of the Knesset vote on the family reunification law that “national security is a red line.”
“We are seeing childish games [by the opposition]… but what’s needed is national responsibility. There are some things you don’t play with… The nation needs control over who comes in,” he says.
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked says that currently the bill “does not have a majority” to pass the vote but adds that she hopes it will have one by the end of the day.
“Most terror attacks carried out by Arab Israelis were ones that came from family reunifications or their descendants… I call on the heads of the opposition: Show responsibility for the security of Israeli citizens.”
Ahead of the Knesset plenum’s vote on the Palestinian family reunification law, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid says the vote is not about the government but about “behaving in a manner responsible for the country.”
If the opposition votes against it — despite being for the bill in principle — “it will prove it is more concerned with being against the government than being for the country.”
He adds that “it’s not a huge disaster even if it doesn’t pass… Government do not rise and fall on the issue.”
Lapid says he understands the opposition of the Meretz and Ra’am parties to the law, over “more than a few cases in which the law needlessly caused humanitarian harm… people who fell in love and got married and built families who were hurt without doing anything wrong.”
He says the government “will form a mechanism to try and cut such cases down to a minimum, and form a team that will review how to prevent such harm in the future.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has posted a somewhat over-the-top video of himself for the Fourth of July, surfing on an electric hydroboard while waving an American flag.
The video has been viewed nearly two million times so far, with some responses enthusiastic and others less so.
“…annnnd you just raised the bar,” one wrote.
Another said: “This is the stuff meme dreams are made of.”
And another: “On his way to spy on user’s privacy and lie to Congress.”
Norway’s largest pension fund announces it has divested assets in 16 companies for their links to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including telecom equipment giant Motorola.
“Motorola and other companies risk complicity in international law violations in occupied Palestine,” KLP, which manages some 95 billion dollars (80 billion euros) worth of assets, says in a statement.
The divestment follows the February 2020 UN publication of a list of 112 companies with activities linked to Israeli settlements, considered illegal under international law.
Israel’s government has denounced the publication of the list — which included companies like Airbnb, Expedia, Motorola and Tripadvisor — as a “contemptible effort.”
“Divesting from Motorola Solutions was a very straightforward decision over its surveillance role in the occupied territories,” KLP says, arguing the company provides software used in border surveillance.
KLP also divests telecom operators offering services within the West Bank as they contribute to making “the settlements attractive residential areas.” These include Bezeq, Cellcom Israel and Partner Communications, and Altice Europe — which was delisted from the Amsterdam stock exchange in January.
Rising coronavirus cases in Israel offer “a preliminary signal” that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may be less effective in preventing mild illness from the Delta variant, a top expert says.
But Ran Balicer, chairman of Israel’s national expert panel on COVID-19, stresses it is “too early to precisely assess vaccine effectiveness against the variant” first identified in India in April that is surging across the globe.
That is partly due to the overall low number of cases among fully vaccinated Israelis and because those cases are not evenly distributed across the population, further complicating efforts to reach conclusions about the data.
Rising transmissions suggest “some decrease in vaccine effectiveness against mild illness — but not severe illness — is likely.”
But, he adds, experts “remain hopeful that the vaccine effectiveness against serious illness will remain as high as it was for the Alpha strain” identified for the first time in Britain in December.
Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll meets Germany’s envoy to Israel Susanne Wasum-Rainer and German parliamentarians at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
Roll thanks his guests for German support during the Gaza conflict in May, and stresses the importance of cooperation between Germany and Israel in international forums.
Egypt’s military releases a slick video of its Qader 2 exercise, taking place at the newly inaugurated 3 July Naval Base near the border with Libya.
The video, posted yesterday, shows air, land, and naval forces participating in live-fire maneuvers. The first Qader exercise took place in January 2020.
The 3 July Base was inaugurated yesterday by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, accompanied by Abu Dhabi’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.
The video stresses that the base was established to help Egypt protect its maritime resources in the Mediterranean, a clear reference to Turkey.
Turkey has been aggressive in its assertion of gas exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean, while Egypt hosts the EastMed Gas Forum that includes Turkish rivals Israel, Greece and Cyprus.
Turkey and Egypt back opposing sides in the Libya civil war, and have been holding talks designed to forge a political solution. In addition, Turkey has been putting forth a more conciliatory line toward Egypt.
The two latest military moves by Cairo — the opening of the base and the military exercise — are messages to Ankara that while Sissi is open to exploring a new relationship, Egypt will protect its red lines in Libya and in the Mediterranean.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will today unveil a plan to lift most if not all of England’s pandemic restrictions starting July 19, as he urges the public to “learn to live with” the coronavirus.
Johnson had initially aimed for a full reopening on June 21, but was forced to push back the date because of a surge in the highly contagious Delta variant.
That variant now accounts for nearly all new COVID-19 cases in Britain, and infection rates have soared — but mass vaccinations have stopped a resultant surge in hospitalizations or deaths.
The prime minister is set to outline the planned easing for England at an afternoon news conference. The UK’s other nations — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are moving at a slower pace.
“Thanks to the successful rollout of our vaccination program, we are progressing cautiously through our roadmap,” Johnson says, vowing to “restore people’s freedoms.”
“But I must stress that the pandemic is not over and that cases will continue to rise over the coming weeks,” he added.
“As we begin to learn to live with this virus, we must all continue to carefully manage the risks from COVID and exercise judgment when going about our lives.”
Pope Francis is doing well after surgery for an inflamed large colon, but the 84-year-old is expected to spend around seven days recovering in hospital, the Vatican says.
The pontiff was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital yesterday for a scheduled operation under general anaesthetic for symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon.
Francis “is in good general condition, alert and breathing spontaneously,” spokesman Matteo Bruni says in a statement, adding that the surgery “lasted about three hours.”
A week earlier, on the eve of the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Francis seemed to hint at the upcoming operation, saying: “I ask you to pray for the pope, pray in a special way. The pope needs your prayers.”
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since Bennett took office earlier this month.
The two leaders spoke about a number of diplomatic and security issues, according to the Prime Minister’s Office, including Russian assistance in helping to free Israeli captives and those missing. Bennett and Putin have agreed to meet face-to-face soon.
Former Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On calls on the faction’s current lawmakers to oppose extending the Palestinian family reunification law.
“Meretz petitioned [the Supreme Court] twice against this racist law,” Gal-On tells Army Radio. “There cannot be a compromise here. Any compromise is a capitulation. The coalition partners need to take into account that Meretz also has an ideological view.”
Outgoing Jewish Agency chairman Isaac Herzog bids farewell to the organization two days before he is set to be sworn in as Israel’s next president.
“I promise a true partnership with you that is entirely about serving the Jewish people,” he says, “to take care of their needs and preserve their unity and future. We are a small nation of 14.5 million Jews among 7 billion people in the world.”
State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman says he will be publishing a broad report assessing Israel’s preparedness for and approach to climate change.
“The climate crisis is a matter of global importance that every country should be placing on its agenda and preparing itself for the effects of climate change,” Englman says at a conference in Eilat, where he announces that the report will arrive in the coming months. “The State of Israel must put the issue at the top of its agenda.”
The coalition fails to garner enough votes in the Knesset Arrangements Committee to send the controversial Palestinian family reunification legislation to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Amid a fiery hearing, the transfer of the legislation to the FADC has been voted down in the Arrangements Committee 17-14, with Likud and other opposition lawmakers voting against the government despite coalition hopes that some Likud MKs would side with the coalition on the vote.
The coalition had failed in an earlier attempt to move the bill to the FADC, where it presumably believes it has a better chance to control the process. Last month, Arrangements Committee chair Idit Silman (Yamina) postponed a vote on advancing the legislation to the FADC when it became clear that there was no majority to do so.
Despite all this, the contentious bill is still slated to come up for a full Knesset vote later in the day, where the coalition again hopes it will be able to muster a majority.
The law, which blocks the automatic granting of Israeli citizenship or residency for Palestinians on the basis of marriage to an Israeli, was first enacted in 2003, and must be extended annually.
It was passed after some 130,000 Palestinians entered Israel under family reunification between 1993 and 2003, Channel 12 says, including during the Second Intifada onslaught of Palestinian terrorism. While the prime concern was that some Palestinians gaining Israeli status would engage in terrorism, there was also a demographic concern: The security establishment’s assessment is that some 200,000 Palestinians would gain Israeli citizenship or residency each decade were it not for this legislation, Channel 12 says.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel has been hospitalized and is under observation “as a precautionary measure” after testing positive for COVID-19 a week earlier.
A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says there is no update early this morning after Bettel had been taken in for 24 hours of testing and medical analysis yesterday.
The 48-year-old Bettel announced his positive test just after he had attended an European Union summit with 26 other leaders from the bloc for two days. At first he experienced only mild symptoms. But on Sunday, he had to be hospitalized.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz are holding a meeting to discuss Israel’s stash of COVID vaccines.
Israel’s stockpile of Pfizer vaccines is set to expire at the end of the month, and it has been working — so far unsuccessfully — to secure a vaccine swap deal with another country in exchange for its future doses.
Bennett has held several conversations in recent days with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, and has reportedly been granted an extension by the company on a decision whether to order another million Pfizer doses for delivery in September.
Religious Zionism MK Itamar Ben-Gvir taunts Joint List MK Osama Saadi during a heated discussion in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Ben-Gvir says to the committee’s head, Yesh Atid MK Ram Ben-Barak: “Check what the Shin Bet and the Mossad have on [Saadi].”
Ben-Barak replies: “I know what they have on him and I know what they have on you.”
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