JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel risks sleepwalking into a crisis with its allies over relentless settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem unless it realizes that the international anger is genuine and adjusts its course.

The next few months may prove crucial if Israel is to avoid diplomatic disaster, with a new government forming around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama set to make his first official visit to the Holy Land in the spring.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel risks sleepwalking into a crisis with its allies over relentless settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem unless it realises that the international anger is genuine and adjusts its course.

The next few months may prove crucial if Israel is to avoid diplomatic disaster, with a new government forming around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama set to make his first official visit to the Holy Land in the spring.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lacklustre election campaign only got into top gear one hour before polling stations closed.

With bleak grassroots reports flowing into his Likud party headquarters, it was clear that Netanyahu risked being outflanked by a centrist newcomer, setting up the possibility of the biggest electoral upset in Israeli history.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A weaker-than-expected showing by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s election might limit his room for maneuver against Iran and put his hardline stance toward Palestinian statehood under renewed pressure.

However, the focus of Israeli politics in the weeks ahead is likely to be on domestic issues, such as plugging the budget deficit, tackling complaints about military draft exemptions for religious students and finding cheaper housing for the young.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israelis look set to elect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a third term with a smaller majority on Tuesday, pushing the Jewish State even further to the right, away from peace with Palestinians and towards a showdown with Iran.

Netanyahu has vowed to pursue the Jewish settlement of lands seized during the 1967 Middle East war if he stays in power, a policy that would put him at odds with Washington and deepened Israel’s international isolation.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a simple message as he seeks a third term in office – he is a strong man and a vote for him at parliamentary elections on January 22 means Israel will be a powerful nation.

The Hebrew word for strong, “hazak”, peppers the television adverts of his right-wing Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu party like a compulsive mantra and is smeared across the blue-and-white campaign posters that dominate billboards around the country.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel faces the prospect of a new Palestinian uprising because of despair over the gridlock in peacemaking, a former head of the Israeli internal intelligence agency who is standing in the January 22 election said on Tuesday.

Yaakov Peri, running for the centrist Yesh Atid party, told Reuters in an interview that the next government must make peace negotiations with the Palestinians its foreign policy priority.

HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) – Mohammad Salaymeh was killed on his 17th birthday after going to buy a cake for the family celebration, shot dead by an Israeli paramilitary policewoman just two years older than him.

The Israeli police called him a terrorist and said he had pulled a gun on guards manning a permanent checkpoint next to his house in this divided city. The gun turned out to be a child’s toy and Salaymeh never got to his party.

HEBRON, West Bank, Dec 18 (Reuters) – Mohammad Salaymeh was
killed on his 17th birthday after going to buy a cake for the
family celebration, shot dead by an Israeli paramilitary
policewoman just two years older than him.

The Israeli police called him a terrorist and said he had
pulled a gun on guards manning a permanent checkpoint next to
his house in this divided city. The gun turned out to be a
child’s toy and Salaymeh never got to his party.

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, in an uncompromising speech during his first ever visit to Gaza after decades of exile, told a mass rally on Saturday he would never recognise Israel and pledged to “free the land of Palestine inch by inch”.

A sea of flag-waving supporters filled wasteland in Gaza city to hear his fiery speech at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of his Islamist group, which has ruled Gaza – a small splinter of coastal land – since 2007.