Israel costliest place to buy a home in new comparison with European countries

The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they unfolded.

Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a military post near the northern West Bank town of Yabed, the Israel Defense Forces says.

The IDF says several bullets struck the post, but no soldiers are hurt.

Troops returned fire, and are now scanning the area for the suspects, the IDF says.

During the past year, Palestinian gunmen have repeatedly targeted army posts in the West Bank, as well as settlements and civilians on the road.

An Arab Israeli man has been shot dead on a northern highway, in an apparent gangland hit.

The victim is identified as a resident of Nahf in his 30s who Hebrew media reports say served as a “money man” for the Abu Latif crime family.

He is the latest member of Israel’s Arab community to be killed in a violent crime surge that has seen homicides surge to record levels in 2023.

According to police, the man was critically wounded by gunfire from a passing vehicle while driving near the Meggido interchange. Paramedics took him to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police announce an investigation into the shooting and dispatch officers to the scene to search for suspects.

הנרצח סמוך לצומת מגידו: עבד א-לטיף זייתון, תושב נחף. הוא הנרצח ה-159 מתחילת השנה בחברה הערבית, לעומת 72 בתקופה המקבילה אשתקד@GLZRadio pic.twitter.com/PWD91HRfVE

— אדם פרג׳| Adam faraj| آدَم فَــرَج (@Adamfaraj14) August 29, 2023

According to the Abraham Initiatives, an anti-violence advocacy group, his death brings to 159 the number of Arabs violently killed in Israel since the start of the year, the vast majority of them in shootings. During the same period in 2022, 72 members of the community died in homicides.

The Prime Minister’s Office puts out a statement stressing that he does not support an effort by Minister for Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Heritage Meir Porush to help convicted sex offender Rabbi Eliezer Berland to try to beat a visa ban on entering Ukraine.

The statement from Netanyahu’s office says he “rejects the appeal” on the matter.

Porush faced demands today that he apologize for stepping in to help Berland make a pilgrimage to the city of Uman for the coming Rosh Hashanah holiday.

The Magen organization, which provides support for victims of sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community, said in a letter to Porush that it was “shocked” at reports of his assistance, which it described as a “rash and despicable” use of his position as a member of government.

Ukraine put Berland on its visa blacklist for a three-year period after he said in a speech that the country was invaded by Russia in 2022 as a punishment for Kyiv hindering members of his Shuvu Bonim sect from visiting Uman in recent years.

Two sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tell Channel 12 he was aware of Foreign Minister Eli Cohen’s meeting with Libyan counterpart Najla Mangoush when it happened last week.

The cabinet secretary, the National Security Council and others were also aware of the sit-down, official acknowledgment of which led to unrest in Tripoli, Mangoush’s ouster and intense criticism of Cohen.

Israel was the most expensive country in which to buy a home in the European region in 2022, according to a new report by financial advisory company Deloitte.

Israel joined Deloitte’s latest Property Index, published in recent days, despite not being a part of Europe, and immediately shot to the top of the priciness table, with an average cost of NIS 23,500 (€5,700 or $6,200) per square meter.

This was higher than the UK ($4,300), France ($5,000), Germany ($5,200) and Norway ($5,650) and far higher than Italy ($2,600), Spain ($2,900) and Greece ($1,450).

Meanwhile, Tel Aviv is the most expensive city in the index, at €14,740 ($16,000) per square meter on average. The runner-up is Paris at $15,900, with Munich ($12,400), London ($10,000) and Amsterdam ($8,500) far behind.

Defense Minister Gallant meets with US State Department Assistant Secretary of Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf in New York City, the Defense Ministry says.

Gallant will meet later today with the White House’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, Brett McGurk.

This morning Gallant toured the Defense Ministry mission and held a briefing on its work with the US Defense Department, his office says.

A crowd of protesters rallies outside Gallant’s hotel in Manhattan as he meets with Leaf. The Israeli activists have hounded Gallant and other ministers in the region throughout the year, leading to embarrassing incidents for ministers visiting New York, including Nir Barkat and Amichai Chikli, and MK Simcha Rothman.

Gallant has not made any public appearances since arriving in the US on Thursday, and is not available to the press at any point during the trip. He held a closed-door meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at UN headquarters yesterday.

Channel 12 news reports that the prime minister continues to bar his ministers from high-level meetings in Washington DC so long as he does not get his meeting with US President Joe Biden.

For this reason, the network says, administration officials have come to New York to meet Defense Minister Yoav Gallant there in recent days. Among these are the US ambassador to the UN, Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk and Blinken’s Middle East adviser Barbara Leaf.

The report says during their meeting yesterday, US envoy Thomas-Greenfield asked Gallant about the state of anti-government protests and IDF readiness and noted the imperative to maintain Israeli democracy.

A man in his 40s has drowned at an Ashkelon beach.

The man was pulled out of the water unconscious. Paramedics who arrived on the scene declared him dead after resuscitation efforts.

Around the same time, a four-year-old girl was pulled out of a pool at a Tel Aviv country club without a pulse or respiration. Paramedics managed to restore her vitals and rushed her to the city’s Ichilov Medical Center in serious condition.

During a meeting at the United Nations yesterday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield discussed regional security, Washington says.

According to a spokesperson for the US mission, Thomas-Greenfield “reaffirmed United States’ ironclad, unwavering commitment to Israel’s security, and condemned recent acts of terror against Israeli citizens.”

The two spoke of the need to deescalate the situation in the West Bank, which has seen a rise in both terror attacks and settler violence.

The ambassador said the US continues to view the two-state solution as “the best way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and achieve equal measures of security, prosperity, freedom, and democracy for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

A 127-year-old water main under New York’s Times Square gave way early Tuesday, flooding midtown streets and the city’s busiest subway station.

The 20-inch (half-meter) water main broke under 40th Street and Seventh Avenue at 3 a.m., says Rohit Aggarwala, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection.

The rushing water was only a few inches deep on the street, but videos posted on social media showed the flood cascading into the Times Square subway station down stairwells and through ventilation grates. The water turned the trenches that carry the subway tracks into mini rivers and soaked train platforms.

It took DEP crews about an hour to find the source of the leak and shut the water off, Aggarwala says.

The excavation left a big hole at the intersection of 40th Street and Seventh Avenue, where workers were digging with heavy equipment to get to the broken section of pipe.

While that intersection remained closed to car traffic, surrounding streets were open by rush hour. Subway service, however, was suspended through much of Manhattan on the 1, 2 and 3 lines, which run directly under the broken pipe.

#Breaking news: A water main break in Times Square has suspended 1 and 2 train from 14th to 96th and 3 train suspended in both directions between Manhattan and Brooklyn #nbc4ny pic.twitter.com/vAukdjTyOG

— Pei-Sze Cheng (@PeiSzeCheng4NY) August 29, 2023

Four teens have been arrested for allegedly pepper-spraying another teen in Tel Aviv in order to steal his electric scooter.

The four are suspected of assaulting the 14-year-old while wearing ski masks and running off with the vehicle, to which his cellphone was connected at the time.

Police say they suspect the four of involvement in previous robberies.

The cabinet gives its stamp of approval to the extension of some 14,000 Ukrainian refugees’ humanitarian aid.

A statement says the funds for the aid were secured by cutting 0.06% of all ministry budgets for 2023.

The aid will see the refugees’ health insurance and social assistance benefits extended until the end of the year.

The cabinet will review further extension of the measure at a later date.

The government had said Thursday it had been unable to renew aid for Ukrainian refugees due to a lack of funding, in response to a High Court petition on the matter. This came after it had vowed to extend benefits after a two-week lapse.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly criticized Israel throughout the war over its treatment of Ukrainian visitors.

A prisoner at a Beersheba prison has been taken in for questioning on suspicion of blackmailing a prison guard.

Kutayer Odeh, the jailed head of a criminal organization, allegedly made demands relating to improving the conditions of his imprisonment and visitations.

He will be brought before a judge to tomorrow to determine the status of his detention, beyond his current imprisonment, in accordance with the needs of the ongoing investigation, police say.

A 73-year-old Israeli woman has been killed in Croatia after falling from a height.

The woman fell during a hike with her family at Plitvice Lakes National Park.

The Vatican tries to tamp down an uproar that erupted after Pope Francis praised Russia’s imperialist past during a video conference with Russian Catholic youths, insisting that he never intended to encourage modern-day Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, says Francis merely wanted to praise the positive aspects of Russia’s spiritual and cultural history when he exalted Russia’s imperial rulers Peter and Catherine the Great, encouraged young people to remember that past and praised their way of “being Russian.”

Francis “certainly didn’t want to exalt imperialistic logic or government personalities, who were cited to indicate certain historic periods of reference,” Bruni says in a statement.

Francis delivered a prepared text in which he encouraged the young Russians to be “artisans of peace” and to sow reconciliation “in this winter of war.” But in his off-the-cuff remarks, Francis told the young Russians to always remember their past.

“Never forget your inheritance. You are the heirs of the great Russia. The great Russia of the saints, of the kings, of the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, that great imperial Russia, cultivated, with so much culture and humanity,” Francis said, according to the video clip. “Never forget this inheritance. You are the heirs of the great Mother Russia, go forward. And thank you. Thank you for your way of being, for your way of being Russian.”

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi says the West had failed to isolate his country, while also holding out the prospect of resuming talks on reviving a nuclear deal.

“The enemy tried to follow two strategies: one was to isolate Iran from the world and the other was to discourage the Iranian nation,” Raisi says.

“It failed with both strategies. It didn’t succeed in isolating Iran,” he tells a news conference in Tehran.

Raisi is referring to sanctions imposed on Iran since the United States torpedoed the nuclear deal in 2018, as well as protests that erupted in September 2022 over a young woman’s death in custody.

The ultra-conservative president says Iran is continuing to seek “the lifting of sanctions” through negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear accord.

But he adds “we are not tying the country’s economy to the wishes” of Western countries.

A powerful German state leader orders a probe into an antisemitism scandal within his ruling coalition just weeks ahead of a key regional election.

Bavarian premier Markus Soeder, who has ambitions to also lead Germany, had earlier called crisis talks between his conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) and his junior partners, the populist Free Voters, over an affair that emerged at the weekend.

Free Voters leader Hubert Aiwanger, who is also Soeder’s deputy in the state government, allegedly produced a flyer as a teenager mocking Holocaust victims.

Witnesses told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that Aiwanger had been disciplined by his school three decades ago for the leaflet, which proposed a satirical quiz on “the biggest fatherland traitor” and offered as a prize “a free trip through the chimney in Auschwitz.”

Aiwanger has denied being behind the leaflet and over the weekend his brother assumed responsibility for the text, which Soeder now describes as “disgusting, revolting and the most ghastly Nazi jargon.”

He tells reporters after the emergency coalition talks that he is not satisfied with Aiwanger’s explanation and demanded he reply in writing to 25 questions about the affair.

“This isn’t just a foolish youth prank,” he says, adding that “even the suspicion” that Aiwanger was behind the flyer “damages the image of Bavaria.”

“There is no place for antisemitism in the Bavarian state government,” he adds.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid will travel to Washington next week for high-level meetings with top White House and State Department officials, his office says.

The meetings are noteworthy for taking place despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still not visiting the White House since reentering office late last year.

Netanyahu received an invite from US President Joe Biden to meet in the US during a recent phone call, though it remains unclear whether the two will meet at the White House.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said earlier this month that he anticipates “the president will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu sometime in the latter part of this year in the fall, and [that] it’ll be somewhere in the United States.”

The answer further pointed to a possible meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s high-level week in September, which both Netanyahu and Biden plan to attend. However, such a meeting would be one of many the US president will hold that week and ostensibly be lower profile than the Oval Office photo op that the Israeli premier likely envisions as he seeks to boost his diplomatic bona fides, which have taken a hit due to his far-right coalition partners.

Netanyahu returned to office on December 29, and it took seven months for Biden to even agree to a meeting. In late March, the president said one would not take place in the “near term” amid Washington’s disapproval of the government’s judicial overhaul.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir claimed in an Instagram live chat yesterday that there is “apartheid” against Jews in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Hebron, as “Jews can’t enter 97% of the territory,” Haaretz reports.

“Arabs can go anywhere, wherever they want and however much they want,” it quotes him as saying.

This is untrue, as Palestinians cannot enter the Jewish settlement within Hebron or the neighboring Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. The Jewish presence in an enclave in Hebron is under considerable protection by Israeli security forces, and Palestinians are heavily restricted in their access to nearby roads. They are also barred from entering Al-Shuhada Street within Palestinian territory, which leads to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and which was once home to a thriving market, with Israel citing security issues.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says in a statement on the landing of the plane from Saudi Arabia: “I am very much appreciative of the warm welcome by Saudi authorities to the Israeli passengers whose plane faced difficulties and was forced to land in Jeddah, and I’m happy that everyone is coming home.

“I very much appreciate the good neighborliness,” he says.

Nearly 2,000 people have been convicted in France over nationwide riots sparked in late June by the fatal police shooting of a teenager during a traffic stop near Paris, Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti says.

The minister had called for a “rapid, firm and systematic” response from magistrates to the worst urban violence in the country since 2005, with many courts holding fast-track trials for suspects.

Speaking to RTL radio, Dupond-Moretti says that out of 2,107 people tried, 1,989 had been found guilty and 1,789 had received prison sentences.

“I called on magistrates to be firm and they responded,” Dupond-Moretti adds. “It was a question of restoring law and order.”

The minister also says that 20 judicial facilities were vandalized during the four nights of clashes, costing the taxpayer five million euros ($5.4 million).

Four settlers are lightly hurt during a scuffle with Palestinians between the West Bank settlements of Ma’ale Michmas and Rimonim, east of Ramallah, Israeli medics say.

According to the Rescuers Without Borders emergency service, the Palestinians attacked the Israeli shepherds with stones and clubs.

Israeli settlers and Palestinians frequently clash in the West Bank amid accusations that Jewish shepherds intentionally graze their sheep on private Palestinian land to spark a confrontation.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service says it is taking the four to Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus in Jerusalem for treatment.

There are no reports of Palestinians wounded in the altercation. According to Army Radio, Israeli forces arrested three Palestinian suspects at the scene.

A flight full of Israelis lands at Ben Gurion Airport from Saudi Arabia, after being diverted to Jeddah due to technical issues yesterday.

The plane traveling from Seychelles to Tel Aviv made the unscheduled landing on Monday night due to an electrical issue. There were said to be 128 Israelis on board.

After the Israelis spent the night at an airport hotel, a replacement flight arrived in Jeddah this morning and the passengers departed.

Passengers said they had been warmly treated by the Saudis.

“The reception we got from the Saudis was very surprising,” Emmanuelle Arbel, one of the passengers, told Radio 103FM from the airport hotel. “They said to us ‘You are most welcome’ and were smiling. In truth, we were not expecting this. ”

Arbel said when they first landed in Jeddah “we were a bit stressed, we did not know what was happening.”

Some people started crying, she said.

Jeddah Airport is an alternate landing site for routes to Israel that pass over Saudi airspace and is approved in advance for such flights in case of a need for unscheduled or emergency landings.

Since last year, the kingdom has allowed flights to Israel to cross over its airspace.

As The Times of Israel’s political correspondent, I spend my days in the Knesset trenches, speaking with politicians and advisers to understand their plans, goals and motivations.

I'm proud of our coverage of this government's plans to overhaul the judiciary, including the political and social discontent that underpins the proposed changes and the intense public backlash against the shakeup.

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