JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Finance Minister Yair Lapid, whose new centrist party is the second largest in Israel’s government, said on Monday thousands of Jewish settlers would have to be removed from occupied land under any peace deal with the Palestinians.

But, echoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position, Lapid said Israel intended to hold onto major settlement blocs in the West Bank when final borders are set in the six-decade-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel said on Saturday that advanced weapons supplied by Russia to war-torn Syria could end up in the wrong hands and be used against the Jewish state.

A Russian shipment of Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria was condemned by the United States on Friday and Israel is also alarmed by the prospect of Russia supplying S-300 advanced air defense missile systems to Damascus.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel plans to declare legal four unauthorized West Bank settler outposts, a court document showed on Thursday, days before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry returns to the region to try to restart peace talks.

Israel has been sending mixed signals on its internationally condemned settlement policy as Kerry pursues efforts to revive negotiations Palestinians quit in 2010 in anger over Israeli settlement building on occupied land they seek for a state.

JERUSALEM, May 10 (Reuters) – He was once celebrated for his
vast fortune and daring deals, but when Israeli tycoon Nochi
Dankner was about to catch a break from the bank on his massive
debts, public outrage kicked in.

Under a cascade of negative media attention, Bank Leumi
, Israel’s second largest bank, abruptly cancelled its
plans to forego 150 million shekels ($42 million) – a third of
the debt owed by Dankner’s Ganden Investments.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel will not press charges over the prison suicide of a disgraced Mossad spy from Australia, despite a series of missteps by jail officials on the day of his death in 2010, the Justice Ministry said on Thursday.

Ben Zygier, 34, received “distressing news” from his wife just hours before hanging himself, but the jailer responsible for watching surveillance video from the isolation cell was away from the screen and missed the moments leading up to his death.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Syrian government forces have used chemical weapons – probably nerve gas – in their fight against rebels trying to force out President Bashar al-Assad, the Israeli military’s top intelligence analyst said on Tuesday.

The assessment met with scepticism from the United States, which has declared any use of chemical weapons in Syria’s two-year-old civil war a “red line” that could trigger intervention.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Syrian government forces have used chemical weapons – probably nerve gas – in their fight against rebels trying to force out President Bashar al-Assad, the Israeli military’s top intelligence analyst said on Tuesday.

Brigadier-General Itai Brun made the comments at a Tel Aviv security conference a day after U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on a visit to Israel that U.S. intelligence agencies were still assessing whether such weapons had been employed.

TEL HAZEKA, Golan Heights (Reuters) – The slopes of the Golan Heights, with springtime wild flowers now in full bloom, are dotted with discarded rusty tanks that are remnants of a 1973 war. For decades, the Israel-Syria front has been quiet – but not anymore.

Small Israeli military lookout posts abandoned for years have been put into action and regular military and special forces have replaced reservists at many points.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli tanks fired into Syria on Tuesday after shots were fired at troops in the occupied Golan Heights, a military spokeswoman said, in a further spillover of the Syrian civil war.

“Shots were fired at an IDF (Israel Defence Forces) patrol on the border. No injuries or damage was caused. In response, IDF forces returned precise fire at the source and reported a direct hit,” the spokeswoman said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – President Barack Obama was given a rapturous reception by Israeli students on Thursday as he made a rousing call for peace with the Palestinians, but his lofty oratory got lower marks beyond the conference hall.

Urging the younger generation to push politicians for change, Obama said a concerted effort must be made to secure an independent Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.