Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Sunday’s developments as they unfolded.
In a joint Shin Bet-IDF operation, a Hamas terror cell was busted in Hebron in November, officials announce.
The cell had purchased a variety of weapons, including an M-16 rifle, in order to carry out a terror attack on Route 35, which runs between Hebron and the coastal city of Ashkelon, according to the Shin Bet.
The head of the terror cell, Mehmad Ali Qawasmeh, is the brother of one of the terrorists responsible for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in summer 2014, the Shin Bet says.
— Judah Ari Gross
The four Hamas members arrested by the Shin Bet security agency in November for planning a shooting attack near the West Bank city of Hebron (Shin Bet)
Several thousand people gather in Paris Sunday in a low-key ceremony to mark a year since a million and half people thronged the French capital in a show of unity following jihadist attacks on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket.
Those attending the event in the Place de la Republique are searched by armed police before standing around a simple stage and a monument covered in the red, white and blue French flag.
President Francois Hollande unveils a plaque next to an oak tree planted in the square in memory of the victims of the jihadist attacks that rocked France in 2015, beginning with the shootings at Charlie Hebdo.
Veteran rocker Johnny Hallyday performs a short song and the army’s choir gives a rousing rendition of the Marseillaise.
— AFP
(From left) Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, French President Francois Hollande and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls attend a remembrance rally at Place de la Republique (Republic square) on January 10, 2016 to mark a year since 1.6 million people thronged the French capital in a show of unity after attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish supermarket.
(AFP / POOL / YOAN VALAT)
Saudi authorities on Sunday execute an Ethiopian woman convicted of murdering a Saudi female with an axe, the 50th death sentence carried out in the kingdom this year, the interior ministry says.
Jinat Farid was found guilty of killing Ghalia Eida al-Harithi by striking her repeatedly with an axe as the victim knelt to perform Muslim prayers, the ministry says in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.
After killing Harithi, Farid stole two gold rings and an unspecified amount of money, the ministry says.
She is executed in the western city of Taif.
The ministry does not specify any connection between the culprit and the victim, but the kingdom hosts large numbers of domestic workers that come from African and South Asian countries.
— AFP
Large numbers of police officers are deployed in the northern town of Arara, where on Friday night Tel Aviv killer Nashat Milhem was killed in a shootout.
Police are still searching for accomplices who aided Milhem during his week-long hideout. Several people have been detained, according to Hebrew reports.
The town has been sealed off as the police searches continue.
No Likud members have submitted their candidacy to challenge Netanyahu for the party leadership by the Sunday deadline.
As a result, the primaries for the party leadership — scheduled for February — may be called off.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads the weekly government conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, on Sunday, January 10, 2016 (Alex Kolomoisky/POOL)
French President Francois Hollande makes an unannounced visit to the main mosque in Paris on Sunday, a year after jihadist attacks in the French capital.
“The president had a short conversation and a moment of friendship and fraternity over a cup of tea,” a French presidency official says.
Earlier, Hollande attended a low-key event to mark a year since 1.5 million people thronged Paris in a show of unity following the shootings at Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish supermarket.
— AFP
(From L) French Paris’ Mayor Anne Hidalgo, French President Francois Hollande and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls attend a remembrance rally at Place de la Republique (Republic square) on January 10, 2016 to mark a year since 1.6 million people thronged the French capital in a show of unity after attacks on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish supermarket.
(AFP / POOL / YOAN VALAT)
Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas says Sunday that the shocking spate of sexual assaults during New Year festivities in Cologne was organized.
“For such a horde of people to meet and commit such crimes, it has to have been planned somehow,” he tells Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
“No one can tell me that this was not coordinated or planned. The suspicion is that a specific date and an expected crowd was picked,” he says, adding that if confirmed, that would “take on a new dimension. ”
Quoting confidential police reports, Bild am Sonntag says some North Africans had sent out calls using social networks for people to gather in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
Young men not only from Cologne, but as far as France and Belgium responded to the call to travel to the western German city, the newspaper says.
Cologne police says they have now recorded 379 cases of New Year’s Eve violence — ranging from groping to theft to two reported rapes — with asylum seekers and illegal migrants from North Africa making up the majority of suspects.
— AFP
A woman holds up a sign reading “Sexists and racists are assholes-everywhere” while taking part in a demonstration against violence against women in front of the cathedral in Cologne, western Germany, on January 9, 2015 (Roberto Pfeil/AFP)
The Zionist Union criticizes Netanyahu for running unopposed in the Likud party leadership primaries.
“Netanyahu wants to do in Israel what he is doing in the Likud — to have no one to run against him. He can forget about it,” it says in a statement.
Political blogger Tal Schneider calls the statement “pathetic” on Twitter and says the party should not comment on internal Likud affairs, prompting Zionist Union MK Shelly Yachimovich to concur.
“When you’re right you’re right,” says Yachimovich on Twitter. “Feeling embarrassed.”
Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi accuses Tehran of “provocative acts” as top Arab diplomats meet Sunday for talks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic row with Iran.
Arabi is addressing Arab League foreign ministers gathered in Cairo for emergency talks on the dispute, which erupted after Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric.
— AFP
A group of 40 retired Brazilian diplomats sign a statement against Israel’s appointment of former settler leader Dani Dayan as ambassador in Brasilia.
The career diplomats believe that protocol was bypassed since it was not preceded by any communication with the Brazilian Foreign Ministry or any presentation of Dayan’s credentials for an agreement on the appointment.
“We consider it unacceptable. The rupture of the diplomatic practice seems to have been on purpose,” the retired diplomats write in the statement dated Friday. “We support the Brazilian Government’s position on this issue and wish that the current episode is quickly overcome, so we can, together, strengthen the bonds between the two countries.”
— JTA
Dani Dayan attending a protest against the evacuation of a West Bank outpost at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, June 5, 2012. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday accuses Saudi Arabia of using its row with Tehran to “negatively affect” peace talks on the Syrian conflict.
“Saudi Arabia’s approach is to create tension intended to negatively affect the Syrian crisis,” Zarif says in a foreign ministry statement.
“We will not allow Saudi’s actions to have a negative impact,” he says.
—AFP
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. (YouTube/Al Jazeera America)
Egypt’s first legislature in more than three years, a 596-seat chamber packed with supporters of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, holds its inaugural session on Sunday, signaling the completion of a political road map announced after the 2013 military overthrow of an elected Islamist president.
The assembly, elected in November and December, is the first elected chamber since el-Sissi, as military chief, led the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi following mass protests against the Islamist leader and his Muslim Brotherhood. The new parliament replaces one dominated by Islamists that was dissolved by a court ruling in June 2012.
The new chamber’s first task will be to ratify some 300 presidential decrees issued by el-Sissi since taking office in June 2014 and interim president Adly Mansour before him. Under the constitution, these decrees must be ratified within 15 days starting from the date of the inaugural session. Failure to do so will result in the automatic repeal of the laws.
The decrees include a law severely restricting street demonstrations and a terror law that curbs press freedoms and gives police sweeping powers.
Sunday’s session is mostly a procedural one, with lawmakers taking their oaths. The chamber is also expected to elect a speaker and two deputies. Some of the lawmakers, in a show of patriotism, hold red, black and white Egyptian flags as they take the oath.
— AP
An illustrative photo of Egypt’s People’s Assembly. (AP Photo/Ahmed Gomaa)
Lebanon arrests a suspect in connection with a pair of suicide bombings in November that killed some 50 people in a Shiite neighborhood of Beirut.
Security officials say the man, who they named as Abu Talha, was arrested in a raid at dawn Sunday in the northern city of Tripoli and belonged to a group that was also planning other attacks around the country.
The twin suicide bombings, claimed by the extremist Islamic State group, struck a crowded Shiite neighborhood south of the capital, shattering a relative calm in the country that had held for more than a year despite the civil war raging in neighboring Syria.
The officials speak on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief reporters.
—AP
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan is delaying returning the body of Tel Aviv shooter Nashat Milhem, who was scheduled to be buried in the northern town of Arara Sunday, Army Radio reports.
Nashat Milhem, the Arab Israeli man who carried out the shooting attack in Tel Aviv on January 1, 2016. (Israel Police)
Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate abducted two of the country’s most prominent media activists from a radio station in the northwestern Idlib province on Sunday, opposition officials tell AFP.
“Al-Nusra Front kidnapped at 0655 (0455 GMT) activists Hadi al-Abdallah and Raed Fares in the offices of Fresh FM where they work and live in Kafranbel,” says Soner Taleb, head of media at the Syrian National Coalition.
Fares, Fresh FM’s director, has previously been detained by Al-Nusra fighters, who disapprove of what they term the station’s “secular tendency and support of apostates,” Taleb says.
According to a statement published by Fresh FM, Al-Nusra fighters stormed the radio station and confiscated its broadcasting and technical equipment as well as its electricity generators.
“The Al-Nusra members then gathered all of the revolution flags and burned them in front of everyone,” the statement says.
— AFP
The Public Security Ministry has delayed the release of Milhem’s remains over fears his funeral would draw large crowds and devolve into “incitement,” the Walla news website reports.
“Returning the terrorist’s body was delayed after the public security minister asked police to ensure that the appropriate conditions are in place to prevent incitement at the funeral,” the ministry says.
Parts of Sweden’s Stockholm-Skavsta Airport are evacuated for several hours after traces of explosive powder were detected on a piece of luggage at the security check, police say.
“The baggage and departure halls were evacuated, which has affected departing flights but not arrivals,” police duty officer Roland Lindkvist says.
The halls are re-opened several hours later, after a bomb squad arrived from Stockholm about 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, and moved the bag to a safe area for examination.
“The bag in question belongs to an elderly lady and she is cooperating with us… She says she doesn’t know how the powder got on her bag,” Lindkvist says.
—AFP
A court in Abu Dhabi on Sunday sentences to death an Emirati convicted in absentia for having joined both the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, a newspaper reports.
The Federal Supreme Court of the United Arab Emirates also found Khalfan Sultan al-Suwaidi guilty of recruiting fighters for IS and the Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front, Gulf News reports on its website.
Suwaidi, whose current whereabouts remain unknown, would be granted a retrial if he appears in court, based on UAE law, according to the daily.
The top court in the UAE also sentences two other Emiratis, Fares Abdulaziz and Mohammed Awad, to seven years in prison each after convicting them of having joined “terror groups in Syria.”
A third defendant is handed a three-year prison sentence after being convicted on similar charges, the daily says.
— AFP
White House chief of staff Denis McDonough says President Barack Obama will not endorse a presidential candidate before the 2016 Democratic primary election.
“We’ll do exactly what has been done in the past,” McDonough reportedly tells NBC’s “Meet the Press.” According to Reuters, McDonough says the president will be “out there” to campaign once the Democratic candidate is set.
The diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia and Iran will not hurt efforts to resolve the conflict in Syria, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura says Sunday after talks in both countries.
“The Saudi foreign minister assured me that there would be no impact from their point of view…. In Iran I got the same assurance,” de Mistura tells reporters in Tehran after talks in Riyadh earlier this week and in Iran on Sunday.
— AFP
Channel 10 reports that Nashat Milhem’s funeral will be held late Sunday night.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Sunday insists his country supports efforts to resolve the Syria conflict, despite its diplomatic dispute with Iran.
“We have previously stated our support for the Syrian opposition and for efforts to find a peaceful solution in Syria,” Jubeir says at a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo.
“This is still the case, we believe in this and we fully support (the peace process) despite our differences with Iran,” he says, hours after his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif said Riyadh was using the row with Tehran to “negatively affect” peace talks on Syria.
— AFP
A firebomb is hurled at a car near the settlement of Har Gilo, outside of Jerusalem, the Ynet news website reports.
There are no injuries reported.
Arab League countries on Sunday express their full support for Saudi Arabia in dealing with the “hostile acts and provocations of Iran” amid a diplomatic dispute between the bitter rivals.
In a communique, the pan-Arab bloc’s foreign ministers meeting in Cairo condemn “hostile Iranian statements” issued in response to the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia on January 2.
— AFP
The aid group Doctors Without Borders says a projectile from an unknown source has hit a hospital it supports in Yemen’s northern Saada province, killing four and injuring 10.
The group, known as MSF, says in a statement that the Sunday attack in the Razeh district led to “the collapse of several buildings of the medical facility.”
Of those injured at the Shiara Hospital, three are MSF staff, and two are in critical condition, it says. All staff and patients have been moved to another hospital also supported by MSF.
“The numbers of casualties could rise as there could still be people trapped in the rubble,” the group says.
“All warring parties are regularly informed of the GPS coordinates of the medical sites where MSF works,” says Raquel Ayora, the group’s director of operations. “There is no way that anyone with the capacity to carry out an airstrike or launch a rocket would not have known that the Shiara Hospital,” was an MSF-supported medical facility.
— AP
Police say Sunday the number of cases filed over violence during New Year’s festivities in Cologne had reached 516, including 40 percent relating to sexual assault.
Nineteen suspects were under investigation, police say, adding that a 19-year-old Moroccan man had been arrested on suspicion of theft.
—AFP
A Syrian refugee is among those invited to sit in first lady Michelle Obama’s visitor box to watch the State of the Union address on Tuesday.
The Obama administration has invited Refaai Hamo of Troy, Michigan, to exemplify the refugees’ plight.
The White House says a missile tore through the complex Hamo designed and where his family lived in Syria. Seven family members died in the blast. He arrived in Michigan with three daughters and a son in December.
Several veterans, the governor of Connecticut and Microsoft’s chief executive will be among the other guests. One seat representing victims of gun violence will be vacant.
—AP
An Israeli Arab was found stabbed in the West Bank, in the Har Hebron regional council. The motive is unclear.
The victim was receiving medical treatment.
Hillary Clinton is brushing off Donald Trump’s persistent swipes at her husband, the former president.
The Democratic presidential front-runner says Republicans have a history of trying to dig up dirt on the Clintons, and if they want to recycle that now, that’s their business.
As she says Sunday: “Didn’t work before, won’t work again.”
With Bill Clinton out campaigning for his wife, Trump is reminding people of the ex-president’s affair with a White House intern and the questions that have swirled around him concerning other women. Trump says on “Fox News Sunday” that some women have had their reputations destroyed and Hillary Clinton helped that happen.
Hillary Clinton says of such tactics: “I think it’s a dead end, blind alley for them.”
She spoke on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
—AP
The funeral arrangements for Tel Aviv gunman Nashat Milhem have still not been set, with Channel 2 reporting that it will likely not be held on Sunday night.
Netanyahu has ordered the Public Security Ministry and the Israel Police to submit a comprehensive plan in the coming weeks to increase law enforcement in Israeli Arab towns, Channel 2 reports.
The plans must include new police stations, stricter oversight of illegal construction, and collection of illegal firearms, the TV report says.
Seven rabbis have quit the Reconstructionist movement in the wake of an announced policy that allows rabbis to marry non-Jewish partners.
Several synagogues are also discussing potential responses to the new policy, the Forward reported over the weekend.
The policy was announced in September after the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College voted that having a non-Jewish partner would no longer bar qualified applicants from admission to the rabbinical college or from graduating as rabbis.
According to the Forward, one of the seven rabbis who has withdrawn from the movement is Rabbi Reba Carmel, who serves at a nondenominational synagogue in Warrington, Pennsylvania. She told the Forward that the policy allowing intermarried rabbis is “detrimental to the Jewish people in America.”
Carmel, a 2009 graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, said she was concerned that “ultimately we will be assimilated out of existence.”
Meanwhile, four rabbis who were ordained by Jewish seminaries of other movements have requested to join the Reconstructionist movement since the policy was announced, Rabbi Elyse Wechterman, executive director of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, told the Forward.
The Kol Haneshama synagogue in Sarasota, Florida, is openly considering leaving the movement, according to the Forward. Other synagogues discussing the new policy, the Forward reported, include the West End Synagogue in Manhattan and Bet Am Shalom in White Plains, New York.
— JTA
Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon and Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett are objecting to Netanyahu’s plan to appoint two of his Likud members to ministerial posts, Channel 2 reports.
According to the report, Netanyahu is seeking to give portfolios to Tzachi Hanegbi and Benny Begin. Kahlon, in protest, skipped two government meetings on Sunday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon at the weekly government meeting in Jerusalem, on November 15, 2015. (Emil Salman/POOL)
A Delta plane that took off from Ben Gurion Airport Friday night left debris from the aircraft scattered on the runway, Channel 2 reports.
The debris was left untouched until the following morning, posing a significant risk to the five flights that took off from the runway in the interim.
No one was hurt.
Items that fell from a Delta passenger jet as it took off from Ben Gurion Airport late on January 8, 2016. The items were only discovered the following morning (screen capture: Channel 2)
A report by Channel 2 outlines a number of operational failings that led to the death of IDF soldier Yishai Rosales during an army training exercise last week.
According to the report, the shell fired during the drill landed 1,650 meters away from the intended target. Moreover, there was no safety officer present when the shell was launched. Several senior officers were just 300 meters from the blast, and the soldiers who launched the projectile failed to update the others, although they were required to.
Cpt. Yishai Rosales, who was killed during an IDF training exercise on Tuesday, January 5, 2016 (screen capture)
The Belgian jihadist suspected of planning the November terror attacks in Paris visited Britain last year despite being hunted by police, The Guardian newspaper reports on Sunday.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud’s alleged trip to Britain could add to pressure on the interior ministry, which is struggling to tighten border controls amid high-profile reports of Britons going to Syria to join the Islamic State group.
The newspaper says photos of British landmarks are found on Abaaoud’s phone after he was killed in a raid in Paris just days after the November 13 coordinated gun and bomb attacks in the French capital that killed 130 people.
The Guardian cites no sources and the interior ministry declines to comment.
Abaaoud entered Britain through a ferry port in England’s southeast, the newspaper says, giving no dates.
The Guardian says he had met several jihadists in London and in Birmingham in central England, but that it was not clear whether the photos on his phone were part of plans for an attack.
— AFP
This undated image taken from a jihadist website on Monday Nov. 16, 2015 shows Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the Paris terror attacks on November 13, smiling before dragging mutilated bodies behind his truck in Syria. (Jihadist video via AP)
A Palestinian is shot and badly injured in the West Bank by IDF fire, the Walla news website reports.
The report says the Palestinian was resisting arrest when soldiers opened fire. He is evacuated to the hospital in Petah Tikva with wounds to his stomach and arm.
A fire is raging in the offices of the left-wing NGO B’Tselem in Jerusalem.
Multiple teams of firefighters are at the scene, amid fears that people are trapped in the upper floors of the building, Ynet news reports.
The police are checking suspicions that the fire was started deliberately, Channel 2 says.
Five teams of fire fighters are battling the blaze at the Jerusalem offices of left-wing NGO B’Tselem, the capital’s fire service says.
There is a rescue operation currently underway to extract at least one person from an upper floor, Channel 2 reports.
One person was lightly hurt in the fire at B’Tslem’s offices, Army Radio says.
The person has been safely evacuated and given medical treatment and is on his way to the hospital.
Arson is being investigated, as are other possibilities, the radio report says.
It says that a study class ended in a synagogue on a higher floor of the same building a few minutes before the blaze broke out, and participants had already left the building.
The blaze is being brought under control, and there are no other people believed to be in the building.
Suspicions are growing that the fire in the Jerusalem offices of left-wing NGO B’Tselem was arson, after the discovery that the blaze appears to have started in several different locations, Channel 2 reports.
A spokesman for B’Tselem says there is no way at present to determine where the fire in the NGO’s Jerusalem offices started.
— Judah Ari Gross
Arab MK Aida Touma-Suleiman calls the fire that erupted this evening at B’Tselem’s Jerusalem office an arson attack, and blames it on “intensive incitement” against the leftist NGO.
“The arson at the B’Tselem offices is a direct result of the intensive incitement by extremist organizations such as Im Tirtzu, against anyone who swims against the stream of occupation and who tries to expose the ugly truth of it,” she said.
BT’selem issues a statement on the fire at its offices:
“When the fire broke out, there was was no one in the B’Tselem offices, but the firefighters evacuated people trapped on the upper floors, who are not B’Tselem employees. Fortunately, no one was injured,” says the statement.
“We are still awaiting the findings of the fire investigators, but if it proves to be arson, then it cannot be viewed in isolation from the wave of attacks and slander against human rights organizations.
“Of course, the damage to our offices will not prevent us from continuing our work in documenting and exposing the injustices of the occupation.”
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
