The Times of Israel liveblogged Tuesday’s events as they happened.
The State Attorney’s Office on Tuesday closes a revised investigation into the deadly car-ramming incident in Umm al-Hiran last year, saying it could not determine whether the Bedouin man who ran over and killed a police officer and was subsequently killed by other officers had done so deliberately.
The investigation, led by State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, determined that officers who fatally shot Yaqoub Mousa Abu Al-Qia’an during a January 2017 demolition of Al-Qia’an’s Negev village of Umm al-Hiran were not suspected of a criminal offense, and acted legally when they opened fire.
“After reviewing the materials and findings by the Police Internal Investigations Department, the investigation has ended with the determination that there is no suspicion of criminal offenses committed by the police officers involved in the incident,” Nitzan says in his decision.
He says the Justice Ministry was falling in line with the Shin Bet, who were unable to definitively say whether the ramming was a terror attack and declined to investigate the incident further.
Immediately after the January 2017 incident, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan asserted that Al-Qia’an was an IS-inspired terrorist who was shot at because he accelerated his vehicle toward a group of police officers, killing one.
But video footage that emerged in the hours after the incident showed the officers opened fire before Abu Al-Qia’an sped up, and that his car’s lights were on, contrary to police assertions. A Channel 10 report at the time said Abu Al-Qia’an’s autopsy further revealed that a police bullet hit him in the right knee, shattering it, which may have caused him to inadvertently hit the gas pedal instead of stopping the car.
The Israel Police welcomes the decision by Israel’s top prosecutor, State Attorney Shai Nitzan, to close the case against police officers who opened fire on a Bedouin Israeli man in January 2017 in an incident that led to his death and that of a policeman at the scene.
“The Israel Police welcomes the decision made by the State Attorney’s Office that concluded the officers of the Israel Police acted lawfully, and that no suspicion of criminality arose in the investigation,” a police statement says.
“The findings of the PIID investigation accord entirely with the findings of the preliminary inquiry carried out in the field by the Israel Police” at the time of the incident,” the statement adds.
The clearing of the officers in the case will allow the reopening of the “investigation in its intelligence aspects” and the “operational debriefing necessary to glean lessons from the event, as should happen at the conclusion of any complex operational incident.”
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan welcomes the closing of the internal affairs investigation into the deadly shooting of Yaqoub Mousa al-Qia’an in January 2017 during the demolition of the Negev Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran.
In a short statement, Erdan urges the reopening of the police’s own investigation into the incident, which was frozen when the Justice Ministry’s probe of police officers’ actions was opened last year.
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked backs the decision by State Attorney Shai Nitzan to close the case into officers who shot dead a Bedouin man in January 2017 after the man, possibly accidentally after being shot in the leg by a police officer, killed an officer by ramming his car into him.
“I support the state attorney’s decision. I know firsthand the meticulous work that went into the [investigation], both in the Police Internal Affairs Department and at the State Attorney’s Office,” Shaked says in a statement.
Housing Minister Yoav Galant, a retired IDF major general, says Israel’s dramatic seizure of what it purports to be Iran’s nuclear program archive could help deter the Islamic Republic from trying to strike Israel.
Galant tells Army Radio he suspects Trump was leaning toward nixing the deal, which could lead to growing confrontation between Israel and Iran. But he says Israel is prepared and doubts Iran would challenge Israel, given the humbling blow of the archive’s exposure.
“Anyone who saw the intelligence achievement can also understand what our military capabilities are,” he says. “I assume that everyone around us will think long and hard before they try to harm Israel.”
Trump has signaled he will pull out of the agreement by May 12 unless it is revised, but he faces intense pressure from European allies not to do so. Israeli officials said the information it gathered had been shared in advance with the Americans, in an apparent hope of influencing Trump’s decision.
— AP
Israel’s top Arab lawmaker, Joint List chair MK Ayman Odeh, slams the State Attorney’s Office for closing its probe into the police officers who shot and killed Yaqoub Abu Al-Qia’an during the demolition of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran.
“Again the [Police Internal Affairs Department] and the State Attorney’s Office abandon their pursuit of truth when the lives of Arab citizens are on the line,” he says in a statement.
“The important questions have not been answered: Why does it make sense to carry out an evacuation in pitch dark [the demolition took place in early morning hours] with loaded firearms? Why does it make sense for Yaqoub Abu Al-Qia’an to be denied medical care [shortly after the shooting]? What reason did [Police Commissioner Roni] Alsheich and [Public Security Minister Gilad] Erdan have for launching a public campaign of incitement again Al-Qia’an immediately after the incident? They’re the real culprits behind the bloodshed.”
Residents of southern Israel are notified by their local councils that the Egyptian military is planning to carry out “extraordinarily massive attacks” near the Egyptian-Israeli-Gazan border across from the southern edge of the Gaza Strip.
The planned Egyptian assault appears to be intended to target the Islamic State affiliate in the Sinai, which has been waging a bloody war with Cairo for years.
Egyptian tanks are also being spotted near the Gaza border.
מאז הבוקר: טנקים מצרים על גבול הרצועה. הסיבה לא ברורה pic.twitter.com/63sblFbzwC
— almog boker (@bokeralmog) May 1, 2018
“A bombardment is expected [to be heard] in our area,” the Eshkol regional council says in a message to residents.
The Israeli army confirms that it’s aware of increased Egyptian military presence in the area, but says it is an “entirely internal” matter that does not involve Israel.
— Judah Ari Gross
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledges that the United States had known about Israel’s cache of stolen documents about Iran’s nuclear program “for a while.”
Pompeo tells reporters on the airplane traveling from Jordan to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington that he had been aware of the existence of the documents, and that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had discussed them when they met in Tel Aviv on Sunday.
“I know there are people talking about these documents not being authentic,” he adds. “I can confirm for you that these documents are real; they’re authentic.”
Pompeo says the files “spell out the scope and scale of the program that they undertook there, and I think makes – I think makes very clear that, at the very least, the Iranians have continued to lie to their own people. So while you say everyone knew, the Iranians have consistently taken the position that they’ve never had a program like this. This will – this will belie any notion that there wasn’t a program like this.”
He adds that the administration would “leave that to lawyers,” when asked if there was there anything in there that suggests there’s an actual violation of the 2016 agreement.”
— JTA
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson echoes the pro-nuclear deal sentiments of other European leaders following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public revelation that Israel had obtained a massive archive of documents from Iran’s nuclear program.
He says in a statement:
The Israeli Prime Minister’s presentation on Iran’s past research into nuclear weapons technology underlines the importance of keeping the Iran nuclear deal’s constraints on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
The Iran nuclear deal is not based on trust about Iran’s intentions; rather it is based on tough verification, including measures that allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency unprecedented access to Iran’s nuclear programme.
The fact that Iran conducted sensitive research in secret until 2003 shows why we need the intrusive inspections allowed by the Iran nuclear deal today. The verification provisions in the Iran nuclear deal would make it harder for Iran to restart any such research. That is another good reason for keeping the deal while building on it in order to take account of the legitimate concerns of the US and our other allies.”
The Defense Ministry announces it is postponing a planned live-fire test of the long-range Arrow 3 missile defense system in Alaska in order to ensure “maximum readiness” of the battery.
The ministry statement offer no details of what might be required to achieve said readiness.
“Following consultation between the American Missile Defense Agency and the Israeli Defense Ministry, it was decided to postpone the test of the Arrow 3 system in Alaska — this is in order to reach maximum preparedness ahead of the test in the American [airfield],” the ministry says.
In its statement, the ministry says it is working with the MDA to schedule another time for a test of the system, which was declared operational last year.
“It should be stressed that there is no connection between this and the operational systems (Arrow 2 and Arrow 3), which are in use by the Israeli Air Force,” the ministry says.
— Judah Ari Gross
In an interview with Fox News, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reveals Israel obtained the Iranian nuclear archive in February.
“I met [US] President [Donald] Trump in early March. I described to him what we have. I said that we’ll move immediately, all this information, to the United States, which we did. So we’ve been examining it simultaneously, here in Israel, and you in America. It’s taken us a while, but I think we know what we know,” Netanyahu says.
“This regime,” he adds, “the preeminent terrorist regime of our time, which its goons chant, ‘death to America, death to Israel,’ this regime had a secret nuclear weapons program, and they’re trying, under a very bad deal, to get a nuclear arsenal. They shouldn’t get it.”
“We will analyze and assess the Israeli information in great detail,” a spokesperson for the German government in Berlin says of the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled out of Tehran by Israel and made public on Monday.
“It is clear that the international community had doubts that Iran was pursuing an exclusively peaceful nuclear program. For that reason the nuclear pact was concluded in 2015, including an unprecedentedly invasive and robust surveillance system by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” the spokesperson adds.
“This independent verification system will be necessary in the future to secure the continuing adherence of Iran to the restrictions contained in the nuclear deal, in order to guarantee the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”
The IAEA must “immediately” get familiar with the Israeli material, the spokesperson says.
— Raphael Ahren
In his interview with Fox News a short while ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to make his case for tightening the restrictions on the Iranian regime and its nuclear program.
Even “without nuclear weapons,” Iran is “gobbling up one country after another, it’s threatening to annihilate Israel, it’s started to put its army in Syria in the service of a tyrannical regime. It’s started to put precision-guided munitions in Lebanon. That means that they can fire rockets at Israel that can hit the office I’m speaking in, and everything else. They’re trying to foment terrorism in Gaza. They’re firing rockets into Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, from Yemen, which they’re also seeking to conquer,” he says in the televised interview.
“I mean, that’s what they’re doing now. And they hate America, they hate America’s guts. So I think if that’s what they’re doing without nuclear weapons, think of what will happen if they get an arsenal of nuclear weapons if this deal just goes through as is.”
He adds praise for US President Donald Trump: “So I’m very glad, I have to tell you, that President Trump has stood so firmly and so clearly on this issue, and he said that will not happen. And that is something that I fully back. And I think that’s not only in the interest of Israel and the United States — that’s obvious — it’s in the interest of the world.
“This tyrannical anti-American regime should not have nuclear weapons.”
VIENNA, Austria — The UN’s nuclear watchdog reiterates Tuesday it has “no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009,” citing its assessments from 2015.
A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says in a statement that its board of governors had “declared that its consideration of this issue was closed” after it was presented with a report in December 2015.
The statement comes a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled what he said was new “proof” that Iran’s nuclear weapons program could be reactivated at any time.
Without referring to Netanyahu’s claims directly, the IAEA spokesman says the agency “evaluates all safeguards-relevant information available to it.”
“However, it is not the practice of the IAEA to publicly discuss issues related to any such information,” he added.
Netanyahu said on Monday that he would share the material with other countries and with the IAEA.
— AFP
Seven immigrants to Israel from English-speaking countries are being recognized for making major contributions to the Jewish state.
Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that helps Diaspora Jews make aliyah, or immigrate to Israel, announces its 2017 Sylvan Adams Bonei Zion Prize winners, which are awarded to olim from English-speaking countries – including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
This year’s honorees are: Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin, founder, chancellor and rosh yeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone and chief rabbi of Efrat, in the field of education; Prof. Marcia Javitt, director of medical imaging at Rambam Healthcare Campus, in the field of science and medicine; Kalman Samuels, founder of the disabilities advocacy organization Shalva, in the field of community and non-profit; Linda Streit, founder of the Daniel Rowing Center, in the field of culture, art and sports; and Arsen Ostrovsky, an international human rights lawyer and executive director of the Israeli-Jewish Congress, in the field of Israel advocacy.
The lifetime achievement award for 2018 is awarded to Morris Kahn, 88, who made aliyah from South Africa in 1956 at the age of 26, “in recognition of his exemplary entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen which has fueled the Start-up Nation and secured Israel as a world leader in technology,” according to a statement from Nefesh B’Nefesh. Kahn, a cofounder of Amdocs, in recent years has increasingly focused his attention on philanthropy and venture philanthropy in the scientific and medical fields.
A young leadership prize is awarded to Major Keren Hajioff, head of public diplomacy in the IDF spokesperson’s unit. Hajioff made aliyah from London in 2009 soon after high school and joined the IDF a month later.
— JTA
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells CNN in an interview a short time ago that Israel does not want war with Iran.
Asked if Israel would risk a war over Netanyahu’s concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapons program, he says “nobody’s seeking that kind of development. Iran is the one that’s changing the rules in the region.”
Netanyahu was pressed repeatedly by CNN’s anchors about Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons arsenal. Unlike Iran, “Israel is not threatening the annihilation of any country,” he says in response.
Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rokon, Israel’s new top liaison to the Palestinians, says “there will be no change in Israel’s policy toward Gaza” until the bodies of two IDF soldiers killed in the 2014 war with Hamas are returned.
At his installation ceremony as COGAT, or Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Abu Rokon says: “The challenges we face are more complex than ever. Our goal here is clear. COGAT is part of the IDF system to strengthen the security of Israel.
“If we look southward, it seems that Gaza poses a real challenge. We understand the significance of the humanitarian deterioration in the Gaza Strip. We will protect our border and protect the citizens of Israel.
“Hamas understands that it must divert the frustration of the Gazans to the border with Israel, otherwise it will find itself in trouble after a decade of destruction and its failure to provide for the Gaza Strip and its inhabitants.”
— Jacob Magid
Air strikes killed at least 23 civilians including 10 children in a village held by the Islamic State group in northeastern Syria Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor says.
“We don’t know for the moment if the US-led international coalition or Iraqi forces carried out the strike” on the village of Al-Qasr in Hasakeh province, the Observatory says.
The Britain-based monitor relies on a network of sources on the ground for its information.
— AFP
Former Mossad deputy chief Ram Ben Barak, now a candidate for the Yesh Atid party, slams Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public revelation that Israel had obtained the Iranian nuclear archive.
“This was one of the greatest achievements” of the Mossad, he tells Hadashot television in an interview, “but why publicize it? Why? Why?”
He explains: “Until now, the Iranians knew the material had been taken, but they couldn’t be sure who by. They might have thought it was the Americans, somebody else, Israel. Now they know it’s Israel. They may feel they have to react.”
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman slams Western nations for “ignoring the reality of Iran.”
“I returned from the US and did a paraphrase on the remarks of [US] Secretary of Defense [James] Mattis that Israel has three problems: Iran, Iran, Iran. Today we have four: Iran, Iran, Iran, and hypocrisy.
“Countries that years ago supported agreements like Molotov-Ribbentrop [between the Nazis and the Soviets] have put their heads in the sand and ignored the reality of Iran, which is trying to destabilize the entire region,” he says.
“An Iran that restricts freedom of expression, oppresses minorities, and opposes democratic values is the same Iran that tries to hide its weapons program that everyone is trying to ignore. Israel can not ignore the constant threats by its leaders that the Jewish state will be wiped off the map.
“We will do everything we have to do,” he concludes.
— Jacob Magid
Three American officials on Tuesday tell NBC News that Israel, using F-15 fighter jets, conducted the airstrike on an allegedly Iranian-controlled military base in northern Syria this week, in the latest bout of the increasingly public fight between Tehran and Jerusalem.
The unnamed US officials say the target of the strike was an incoming weapons shipment, including surface-to-air missiles, which was freshly delivered from Iran.
Casualty counts from the attack have varied, but most put the death toll at between 16 and 38, including many Iranians.
According to NBC, one senior US official says the Iran-Israel conflict is the most likely in the world to devolve into open clashes.
“On the list of the potentials for most likely live hostility around the world, the battle between Israel and Iran in Syria is at the top of the list right now,” the official says.
— Judah Ari Gross
One man is dead and another is seriously wounded after a vehicle exploded on Route 40 near Kfar Saba, a northeastern suburb of Tel Aviv, according to police.
There is no immediate word on the cause of the explosion.
TEHRAN, Iran — Hundreds of Iranians defy a ban on protests to mark International Labor Day, with police detaining at least six people.
The semi-official ILNA news agency says the six are arrested outside the gates to parliament on Tuesday, when protesters gathered there and at another location in the capital, Tehran.
The workers who are attending the rallies are demanding higher wages, better conditions, and more protection after retirement.
Iranians took to the streets in December and January to protest against economic hardship and corruption, with some protests escalating into calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Some 25 people were killed in the unrest and more than were 5,000 arrested.
Iran continues to struggle with high unemployment despite the lifting of international sanctions under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
— AP
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot says Palestinian terror groups have attempted to kidnap soldiers on the Gaza border.
At a ceremony marking the installation of a new top liaison to the Palestinians, Eisenkot says, “In recent weeks we’ve once again seen the complexity of the situation, when our forces found themselves facing mass protests that served as cover for terrorist actions, attacks on soldiers, attempts at kidnapping, attacks on military posts, and attempts to infiltrate [Israeli] towns.”
The IDF chief does not elaborate.
Hundreds of radical ultra-Orthodox protesters are blocking a main intersection in Jerusalem’s Haredi neighborhood of Mea Shearim in ongoing protests against the military draft law.
All roads toward the Kikar Hashabbat intersection are closed, and police are at the scene, according to an Israel Police statement.
Police say the car bomb that blew up in Kfar Saba was a gangland hit.
The man killed in the attack was part of a criminal organization who was already seriously hurt six months ago in a similar car bombing.
WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum will leave the company over conflicts with Facebook, which bought the messaging service four years ago.
Koum, a Jewish billionaire originally from Ukraine, reportedly also will leave Facebook’s board of directors, according to The Washington Post, which cites people familiar with internal discussions. His date of departure has not been set.
Facebook purchased WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014.
It is believed that Koum is leaving due to disagreement with Facebook over the privacy of user data and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, though Facebook has not confirmed this.
Koum, 42, who is worth more than $9 billion, moved to California with his grandmother and mother at the age of 16.
In a Facebook post Monday, Koum said “it is time for me to move on.”
— JTA
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives in Israel from Amman on a regional tour.
He is slated to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah tonight, then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem tomorrow morning, followed by events with Israeli and Japanese business leaders.
Abe last visited Israel in 2015, and Netanyahu visited Japan in 2014.
AP contributed to this report.
