Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.
One Palestinian was killed and 11 others were injured in a head-on collision between a Palestinian tow truck and an Israeli commuter bus near the West Bank settlement of Petzael.
Paramedics arrived at the scene on Route 90 at the center of the Jordan Valley to find two Palestinians trapped inside the tow truck. While they were forced to declare the death of one of them, the other was rescued and transferred via helicopter to a nearby hospital in serious condition, a spokesman for the Magen David Adom emergency service says.
Ten Israeli passengers on the Egged bus were lightly injured and were receiving treatment by first responders at the scene.
The circumstances of the crash are still being investigated, Israel Police says.
— Jacob Magid
A top Likud minister close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed rare criticism of US President Donald Trump and says he expects the government to approve more construction in settlements next week.
Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin says he is “disappointed” that Trump hasn’t fulfilled his campaign promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
“There were very clear election promises, not to the State of Israel but to the American voter, of moving the embassy and I very much regret the delay,” Elkin tells Army Radio.
He said that it’s “incorrect” to claim that relocating the embassy “will prevent peace.”
“What prevents peace … is the conduct of the Palestinian leadership that in a clear way chooses to continue to promote the atmosphere of hatred and terror against Israel,” he says.
Elkin expressed similar criticism of Trump’s policy regarding Israel in an interview yesterday.
Channel 2 TV reported last night that Israel is set to approve nearly 4,000 housing units in the West Bank. Elkin says he expects the government will greenlight construction next week.
— with AP
Police say they are on the lookout for teenagers in clown masks after fears the craze would cause violent reactions from those being frightened, with dozens already detained.
“Police operations are continuing in various areas to protect public places and prevent further incidents,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld tells AFP.
He says that about 12 youngsters, including two 14-year-olds, were detained over the past few days.
Rosenfeld says that they sought only to frighten people, not to harm them.
“There haven’t been any attacks. It’s just been people dressed up and walking around with fake axes, fake knives, etcetera,” he says.
Police have, however, warned that such pranks could go horribly wrong in a country where people are constantly on edge for fear of militant attacks and where many carry firearms.
Media reports have suggested a link between the phenomenon, which appears to have broken out around the beginning of October, and the September 14 release in Israel of Stephen King’s film “It,” featuring an evil clown who preys on teenagers.
— AFP
Turkish officials are asking the United States to reverse its decision to suspend non-immigrant visa services for Turkish citizens, saying people from both countries are suffering from the move.
The US announced it was suspending visa services yesterday following the arrest of a consulate employee last week that deepened tensions between the two NATO allies. The measure prompted Turkey to halt visa services in the US in a tit-for-tat response.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official says that the US embassy’s second-in-charge, Philip Kosnett, was called to the ministry, where officials conveyed “their expectations” for the United States to halt “the unnecessary escalation” of tensions and to reverse the decision that “victimizes” both Turkish and US citizens.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.
— AP
Moscow warns there would be “negative consequences” if US President Donald Trump fails to uphold the landmark Iran nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor.
Trump is a fierce critic of the 2015 accord, which he has called “the worst deal ever,” and US officials say he intends to tell Congress next week that Tehran is not honoring its side of the bargain.
“Obviously if one country leaves the deal, especially such a key country as the US, then that will have negative consequences,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says.
“We can only try to predict the nature of these consequences, which we are doing now,” Dmitry Peskov tells journalists.
Putin has repeatedly hailed the importance of the existing deal, he adds.
Trump is expected to announce that he is “decertifying” Iran’s compliance with the agreement it signed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
— AFP
A painting by impressionist master Camille Pissarro that was seized from its French Jewish owner during World War II is at the center of a court battle beginning tomorrow in Paris after surfacing at an exhibition.
“La Cueillette des Pois” (Picking Peas), a gouache from 1887, emerged earlier this year on display at the French capital’s Marmottan Museum, more than 70 years after being snatched from art collector Simon Bauer in Nazi-occupied France.
Tomorrow, a court will begin examining who are the rightful owners — Bauer’s descendants or an American couple who say they had no idea as to its wartime fate when they bought it at auction in 1995.
Bauer, a self-made businessman, was among the thousands of French Jews who were rounded up for deportation in 1944. He narrowly escaped being sent to the Nazi death camps due to a train drivers’ strike.
“La Cueillette des Pois” was one of 93 works that were confiscated from him before he was sent to the Drancy internment camp near Paris and sold on by an art dealer.
In May, a court granted Bauer’s grandson’s request to have it impounded in France pending a ruling on its on ownership.
— AFP
The husband of an Iranian-British woman serving a five-year prison sentence in Iran says she now faces new charges and the possibility of her sentence being extended by 16 years.
Richard Ratcliffe says his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe appeared in court on Sunday at Tehran’s Evin prison, where she is held. Ratcliffe says she was not allowed to have a lawyer and that the new charges would prevent her from seeking early release next month as allowed by Iranian law.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, was detained by security forces in Iran in 2016. Later, she was sentenced on security charges.
Iranian media have said Zaghari-Ratcliffe was convicted of plotting the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government.
Iran doesn’t recognize dual nationality.
— AP
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan files a complaint with the Knesset Ethics Committee against an Arab Knesset member for visiting Jerusalem’s Temple Mount complex, despite a prohibition on lawmakers visiting the holy site.
In his letter to the committee, Erdan accused Tibi of endangering public security by visiting the site “in an open and demonstrative manner” at a “sensitive and turbulent time.”
“There is no doubt that Tibi’s ascension to the Mount, of which he was aware the Ethics Committee established was prohibited, endanger public safety and security and could have incited and provoked others to carry out violent acts in response,” Erdan wrote, according to Channel 2.
“Tibi’s action should be treated with particular severity in light of the fact they were committed during at the height of the tensions and a few days after a reminder was sent by the Knesset speaker on the existence of the ban,” he added.
Erdan also called for the Knesset Ethics Committee to impose sanctions on Tibi “that fit the severity of his actions.”
Joint (Arab) List MK Ahmed Tibi’s July visit to the Temple Mount came during a period of high tensions surrounding the complex, after three Arab Israel terrorists shot dead two policemen using weapons they smuggled weapons into the site.
— Alexander Fulbright
The Belgian government will freeze all funding to the Palestinian Authority education system after one elementary school built with Belgian support took the name of a notorious Palestinian terrorist, a spokesperson for Brussels tells The Times of Israel.
Didier Vanderhasselt, a spokesperson for Belgian’s Foreign Ministry, says Brussels “will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.”
“The Belgian government unequivocally condemns the glorification of terrorist attacks. Belgium will not allow itself to be associated with the names of terrorists in any way,” Vanderhasselt says in a statement.
The Beit Awaa Elementary Girls School, located in southern West Bank’s Hebron region, was built with funds from Brussels in 2012-2013.
The school was later renamed the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School. Dalal Mughrabi took part in the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, in which she and several other Fatah terrorists landed on a beach near Tel Aviv, hijacked a bus on Israel’s Coastal Road and killed 38 civilians, 13 of them children, and wounded over 70.
— Dov Lieber
British Prime Minister Theresa May tells Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the Iran nuclear deal is essential for regional security, and that her government remains firmly behind the 2015 landmark agreement.
A Downing Street spokesperson says in a statement that May conveyed the importance of the agreement which “has neutralized the possibility of the Iranians acquiring nuclear weapons for more than a decade.”
“The Prime Minister said the UK remains firmly committed to the deal and that we believe it is vitally important for regional security,” the statement says, adding that May stressed the importance that the deal is “carefully monitored and properly enforced, and that both sides deliver on their commitments.”
The two leaders also agreed that the “international community should continue working together to push back against Iran’s destabilizing regional activity.”
The UN atomic agency chief affirms Iran’s commitment to a 2015 nuclear deal, in a statement that came as US President Donald Trump said Tehran was not living up to the “spirit” of the agreement.
“I can state that the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the (nuclear agreement) are being implemented,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano says in prepared remarks during a conference in Rome.
It adds that Iran “has not pursued the construction of the Arak… reactor” — which could give it weapons-grade plutonium — and has not enriched uranium above low purity levels.
The landmark deal was signed in July 2015 by Iran and five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States) plus Germany — establishing controls to prevent Tehran from developing an atomic bomb.
— AFP
Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi says there could be a “civil war” over the Kurdish-administered city of Kirkuk if talks over Kurdish independence are left unresolved.
Allawi, in an interview with The Associated Press, says he urges Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, as well as Iraq’s central government and its Iranian-backed militia forces, to show restraint and resolve in disputes over the oil-rich city.
Kirkuk was included in a controversial Kurdish referendum on support for independence in September. The ethnically mixed city has been administered by Kurdish forces since 2014, even though it falls outside the autonomous Kurdish region in northeast Iraq.
Allawi says Kirkuk could be the “flashpoint” that ignites conflict in northern Iraq.
Allawi says he opposes Kurdish independence.
— AP
Disabled protesters are blocking the roads adjacent to the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem as part of an ongoing campaign to increase their government stipends.
According to reports, around a dozen protesters are blocking the capital’s Azza Road and Balfour Street.
Some disabled protesters have rejected a deal agreed to between other disabled activists and the government last month to increase stipends and end months of sporadic traffic-halting demonstrations.
Palestinian rivals Fatah and Hamas dispatched teams to Egypt on Monday for talks in a renewed push to end their decade-long split after a key breakthrough last week.
Senior figures in terrorist organization Hamas and secular party Fatah will meet in the Egyptian capital tomorrow as they seek to end a division that has crippled Palestinian politics.
Senior Fatah figures attending the Cairo talks include intelligence chief Majed Faraj and Fayez Abu Eita, a party leader in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian official news agency Wafa says.
Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank-based Fatah of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have been at odds since they fought a near civil war in 2007.
— AFP
Turkish prosecutors have summoned a local employee working at the American consulate in Istanbul, days after the arrest of another staffer at the mission sparked a major crisis in relations, state media says.
The employee has been “invited by Istanbul prosecutors to give a statement,” the state-run Anadolu news agency says.
Turkish television, including the NTV private channel, says an earlier an arrest warrant had been issued for the employee. But this was not confirmed in the Anadolu report.
However, the employee’s wife and child, whose age was not given, have been detained in the Anatolian city of Amasya on suspicion of being key members of the group of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for last year’s failed coup.
They have been brought to Istanbul for questioning.
— AFP
Saudi police have penalized a woman filmed driving a car, a spokesman says, warning against violations of a ban on female drivers set to be lifted next June.
Authorities summoned the woman and booked her for flouting traffic regulations after she appeared in a video driving out of a luxury hotel in the capital Riyadh.
“We call on all Saudi citizens to respect the law and wait until the ban on women driving formally ends,” the police spokesman tells AFP.
He did not specify the nature of the penalty, but added that the woman filmed leaving the Ritz Carlton hotel had not been arrested.
Saudi Arabia last month said it would allow women to obtain driving permits under a royal decree to take effect in June, sparking euphoria and disbelief among activists who long fought the ban.
— AFP
Meryl Streep responds for the first time Monday to the allegations of sexual harassment against film mogul Harvey Weinstein. Streep has frequently worked in movies produced and distributed by the Weinstein Co. Here is her statement in full:
The disgraceful news about Harvey Weinstein has appalled those of us whose work he championed, and those whose good and worthy causes he supported. The intrepid women who raised their voices to expose this abuse are our heroes.
One thing can be clarified. Not everybody knew. Harvey supported the work fiercely, was exasperating but respectful with me in our working relationship, and with many others with whom he worked professionally. I didn’t know about these other offenses: I did not know about his financial settlements with actresses and colleagues; I did not know about his having meetings in his hotel room, his bathroom, or other inappropriate, coercive acts. And if everybody knew, I don’t believe that all the investigative reporters in the entertainment and the hard news media would have neglected for decades to write about it.
The behavior is inexcusable, but the abuse of power familiar. Each brave voice that is raised, heard and credited by our watchdog media will ultimately change the game.
— AP
A 29-year-old man who was seriously injured in an August car bombing in a Haifa suburb has died of his injures, the Rambam hospital says.
Police believe the man, who was known to police, was the target of a organized crime-related assassination.
Iran is reportedly set to block the navigation app Waze from being downloaded across the Islamic Republic because it was founded and developed in Israel.
The head of an Iranian cyberspace watchdog, the Committee for Determining Criminal Web Content, said Monday that a committee is working to have the Iranian Communication Ministry block the service to Iranians, according to a report in the Azerbaijan-based Trend News Agency.
Iran briefly blocked the app back in March, arguing its links to Israel “raised concerns,” before reinstating it.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expresses sadness over a decision by the US embassy to stop all regular visa services in Turkey, amid a boiling diplomatic row.
“Above all, this decision is very, very saddening. For the Ankara (US) embassy to take a decision like this, to put into practice is saddening,” Erdogan says in his first reaction to the decision, at a news conference with Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko in Kiev.
— AFP
A group of Nobel Peace Prize winners are calling for mediation in the political deadlock between Spain and Catalonia.
The comments come in a letter on the eve of a Catalan parliamentary meeting in which separatist leaders want to press ahead with secession for the northeastern region.
Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams tells The Associated Press the letter has so far been signed by seven more awardees, including Mairead Maguire, Rigoberta Menchu and Shirin Ebadi.
The letter says “no side is free of errors” in this process, but calls for “mediation and negotiations toward a peaceful resolution of the current standoff.”
Williams says the letter would be posted later today on the Nobel Women’s Initiative website.
— AP
A US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal would be a new affront to the United Nations — 14 years after the invasion of Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix warns.
US President Donald Trump is a fierce critic of the 2015 accord, calling it “the worst deal ever,” and he is expected to announce this week that he is “decertifying” Iran’s compliance with it.
“If Mr Trump cares for the authority of the United Nations then he cannot pull back unilaterally from that agreement,” Blix says in Paris.
Blix was speaking on the sidelines of a two-day International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe that started in Paris today.
“I am a bit puzzled by Trump’s lonely attitude…because the president has voiced his great disapproval” of the Iran deal in the face of “almost the unanimous international community standing in favour of it,” he said.
The Swedish former diplomat headed the inspection team that found no proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002-03, as the United States was poised to invade the country.
— AFP
US government-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty says that Russia has warned of possible restrictions on some of its operations.
The broadcaster said that the Russian Justice Ministry warned its Russian service, known as Radio Svoboda, the Russian-language Current Time television and Idel Realii, a Russian-language website run by the broadcaster’s Tatar-Bashkir service, that their operations fall under a Russian law on foreign agents and could be restricted.
The move follows the Kremlin’s warning that Moscow could respond if Washington restricts the operations of Russian state-funded RT television network and Sputnik news agency in the US.
The US intelligence agencies allege that RT and Sputnik served as tools for the Kremlin to meddle in the US presidential election. Russia has denied any interference with the vote.
RT said it faces a US demand to register as a foreign agent and provide detailed personal data for its staff, a request it said amounts to an attempt to push it out of the US.
Current Time Director Daisy Sindelar said that “we have no concrete information about any moves being taken against RT in the United States, and have no reason to expect reciprocal action.”
Current Time is run by Prague-based RFE/RL with help from Washington-based Voice of America.
“Current Time, Radio Svoboda, and Idel Realii are journalistic organizations. We trust we will be able to continue our work,” RFE/RL Vice President and Editor in Chief Nenad Pejic said in a statement.
— AP
Israel’s Ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama-Hacohen laments the upcoming vote to elect a new leader of the cultural organization.
In a statement to The Times of Israel, Shama-Hacohen says the vote is “bad news for the organization and unfortunately also for Israel.”
Arab countries have long wanted to lead the organization, and in the current race, former Egyptian government minister Moushira Khattab and Qatar’s former culture minister Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari are leading contenders.
Israel has condemned UNESCO over what it says is an ingrained anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, where its allies are far outnumbered by Arab countries and their supporters.
In his statement, Shama-Hacohen notes that today marked the first round of voting, and that “anything can happen.”
A person with knowledge of the decision says The Weinstein Co. will rename itself following the firing of co-chairman Harvey Weinstein over sexual harassment allegations.
The person, who was not authorized to speak publicly, says the name change is expected to take some time, but “it will happen.”
The Weinstein Co. is also moving to pull Weinstein’s name from the credits of several upcoming television series, including “Waco” and “Yellowstone.”
Weinstein and his brother, Bob co-founded The Weinstein Co. in 2005. The brothers previously founded the film company Miramax, which was named after their parents, Miriam and Max.
Yesterday, the Weinstein Co. board of directors fired Weinstein, after an expose detailed decades of sexual harassment.
Weinstein has not yet responded publicly to his ouster, but last week apologized for the pain his past behavior has caused.
— AP
A brother and sister of Ahmed Hanachi, who stabbed two young women to death in the French city of Marseille this month, have been detained in Tunisia, authorities say.
The two were detained on Friday and have been questioned by anti-terror investigators, prosecution spokesman Sofiene Sliti said.
“They appeared before an investigating judge…who decided to transfer the case to the national guard,” in Aouina, northeastern Tunis, he says.
A source close to the family named the siblings as Moez and Amina Hanachi, who both live in Tunisia.
Their brother Ahmed Hanachi, 29, attacked two women at Marseille’s Saint-Charles train station on October 1, before being shot dead by troops.
— AFP
