JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Palestinian Authority agreed on Wednesday to the exhumation of Yasser Arafat’s body after new allegations that he was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium-210 in 2004.

A Swiss institute that examined clothing provided by Arafat’s widow Suha as part of an Al Jazeera expose said it found “surprisingly” high levels of polonium-210, though symptoms described in the president’s medical reports were not consistent with the radioactive agent.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Weighing risky military strikes on his country’s arch-foe, Israel’s hawkish leader sends Ehud Barak to warn the Americans in hope of getting them to step in with greater force instead.

The scenario, played out nowadays as the allies debate ways of dealing with Iran, also happened during the 1991 Gulf war when Barak, currently defense chief to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an almost monthly visitor to Washington, was deputy commander of Israel’s armed forces.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Yitzhak Shamir, the hawkish Israeli leader who balked at the vision promoted by the United States of trading occupied land for peace with the Palestinians, died on Saturday after a long illness. He was 96.

The second longest-serving prime minister after Israel’s founder David Ben-Gurion, Shamir clung to the status quo. Admirers saw strength and resolve in his position, while critics called him an intransigent naysayer who allowed Arabs to cast Israel as obstructing the road to peace.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Iranian allegations that Zionists were inciting drug trafficking and Jewish religious law called for annihilation of gentiles prompted a sharp response from Israel on Wednesday which said Iran was governed by fanatical anti-Semites.

The verbal clash highlighted festering tension in an international stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear program.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel voiced respect on Sunday for the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s presidential election, calling on the new administration in Cairo to maintain the countries’ landmark peace accord.

“Israel appreciates the democratic process in Egypt and respects its outcome,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after the Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohamed Morsy, was declared successor to the U.S.-aligned Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled last year.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel killed a Gaza militant on Wednesday as a surge of fighting across the border of the Palestinian enclave entered a third day despite what Egypt said were its efforts to broker a truce.

The militant, a Palestinian belonging to one of Gaza’s fringe Islamist Salafi networks, died and a comrade was wounded in an air strike on their motorcycle in southern Rafah, near Gaza’s frontier with the Egyptian Sinai, medical officials said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A cluster of Jewish settlers slated for eviction under an Israeli court order said on Wednesday they would go quietly, sparing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a showdown with a core constituency.

The 30 families living in five unlicensed apartment blocs in Beit El accepted a government proposal to move them, and physically relocate the buildings, while the state would also erect 300 new homes elsewhere in their West Bank settlement.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A cluster of Jewish settlers slated for eviction under an Israeli court order said on Wednesday they would go quietly, sparing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a showdown with a core constituency.

The 30 families living in five unlicensed apartment blocs in Beit El accepted a government proposal to move them, and physically relocate the buildings, while the state would also erect 300 new homes elsewhere in their West Bank settlement.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Hamas leader’s son who spied on the Palestinian Islamist movement for Israel, and then wrote about his exploits while in exile, has turned his sights on the religion of his father.

On a rare visit to Jerusalem, just a short car ride from the family that disowned him in the occupied West Bank, Mosab Hassan Yousef told journalists he was making a film about the Prophet Mohammad that would reveal his “real nature” to Muslims.