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.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel signaled on Monday it would deport migrants from Ivory Coast as part of a crackdown on foreigners without permits that has focused on Africans who enter across the porous desert border with Egypt.

The announcement came a day after Israel launched weekly airlifts to send back South Sudanese, a small community in Israel compared to those from Sudan and Eritrea, who can more easily claim refugee status due to war and other hardships in their native lands.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel launched a high-profile deportation drive against African migrants on Sunday with an airlift of South Sudanese whose government said they would be welcomed back as economic assets.

The planned weekly repatriation flights from Tel Aviv to Juba have been played up by the Israeli government amid uncertainty as to how it might deal with much greater migrant influxes from Sudan, a hostile country, and war-ravaged Eritrea.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel believes there is no immediate risk of Syria’s chemical weapons falling into the hands of militants, a senior minister said on Tuesday, despite its growing worries about fighting there which has prompted Israeli calls for outside military intervention.

“At this stage, the Syrian regime has firm control over the chemical weapons arsenal, but there are al Qaeda elements in Syria and therefore we are maintaining close scrutiny,” Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, a former armed forces chief, said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A senior Israeli minister accused Syria on Sunday of committing genocide during its crackdown on a 15-month uprising and made the Jewish state’s most explicit call yet for military action against its Arab neighbour.

Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz urged world powers to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the same way that last year’s Western-backed campaign in Libya overthrew former strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A senior Israeli minister accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday of committing genocide during his crackdown on a 15-month uprising, in an unusually harsh censure of the Jewish state’s Arab neighbor.

Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz also criticized Russia for arming Damascus and repeated Israel’s demand for international military intervention to topple Assad, akin to last year’s campaign in Libya.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli court upheld on Thursday the planned deportation of South Sudanese deemed to have entered Israel illegally, though government pledges of wider crackdowns on African migrants remained in question.

Rejecting a petition by human rights groups that had delayed the Interior Ministry’s April 1 deportation order, Jerusalem District Court ruled the state was not obligated to extend de facto asylum to the estimated 1,500 migrants from South Sudan.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The United States is conferring with Israel about new sanctions planned against Iran should international negotiations this month fail to curb the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, a U.S. official said on Monday.

The comment offered a strong hint that Washington is continuing to apply the brakes on any plan by Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities preemptively.