Israel

Israel's president on Tuesday handed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the difficult task of trying to form a government from the country's splintered parliament, giving the embattled leader a chance to prolong his lengthy term in office. At the same time, he stands trial on corruption charges.

President Reuven Rivlin acknowledged that no party leader had the necessary support to form a majority coalition in the 120-seat Knesset. He also stated many believe Netanyahu is unfit to serve as prime minister in light of his legal problems.

Israelis began voting on Tuesday in the country’s fourth parliamentary election in two years — a highly charged referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's divisive rule.

Opinion polls forecast a tight race between those who support Israel’s longest-serving premier and those who want “anyone but Bibi,” as he is widely known.

No one party is expected to win a majority of seats in the Knesset. Instead, Israel's president must choose a candidate to negotiate with other parties to form a majority coalition.

According to an initial study, the vaccine from BioNtech and its US partner Pfizer apparently largely prevents the transmission of the coronavirus. This is the result of a large observational study conducted jointly with the Israeli Ministry of Health. The study found that the vaccine was 89.4 percent effective in preventing Sars-CoV-2 infections.

The study is based on data from 1.1775 million vaccinated Israelis. Vaccinated people are thus not only protected from disease but also appear to have a high probability of no longer infecting other people.

According to the data, the vaccine also has an efficancy of nearly 96 percent after two doses of vaccination. According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, two weeks after the second dose of vaccine, 95.8 percent fewer infections were found in vaccinated people than in unvaccinated people. One week after the second dose, efficacy is 91.9 percent, according to the report.

Former White House senior advisor and Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his deputy Avi Berkowitz have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize by for their involvement in negotiating the "Abraham Accords" – a series of four normalisation deals between Arab nations and Israel.

The nomination was submitted by American attorney Alan Dershowitz, who is among thousands of people eligible to nominate candidates.

The proposed Ax-1 mission will use a SpaceX rocket to put three paying customers - American Larry Connor, Canadian Mark Pathy and Israeli Eytan Stibbe - into low-Earth orbit on the space station. Stibbe plans to do experiments for Israeli researchers, working with the Ramon Foundation and Israel's space agency. The crew will be led by former NASA astronaut and space station commander Michael López-Alegría.

Axiom hopes to arrange up to two trips per year, and the company also wants to build its own privately funded space station.

Fewer than 0.01% of people who received Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine have contracted the virus more than a week after receiving the second dose, a leading Israeli healthcare provider said on Monday. The preliminary results shared by Israeli HMO Maccabi showed that only 20 people out of some 128,600 who received both shots have since been infected with the COVID-19 virus. Israel is a world leader with its rapid vaccine rollout, though the data also comes during a nationwide lockdown that has been helping to stem contagion. All patients experienced a mild illness with symptoms including headaches, cough, weakness or fatigue.

The earthquake of magnitude 5.1 on the Richter scale could be felt in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan according to first reports.

The Israeli Health Minister Juli Edelstein announced that around 1.8 million Israelis had received the first vaccination dose. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also received his second vaccination against the coronavirus on Saturday evening. Israel is currently in its third Corona lockdown, as infection numbers had risen significantly again by the end of the year.

Over a million people in Israel have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, the highest amount for a country globally. This results in 11.55 in 100 people being vaccinated, compared to 1.47 in 100 people in the UK. Israel started vaccinations on December 19th with a rate of 150,000 vaccinations per day.

Four cases of the new potent Coronavirus strain have been detected in Israel, the country's health ministry reported Wednesday. Three of the cases had just returned from England. They are isolating at a hotel that is used as a coronavirus quarantine facility. The new strain has first emerged in the United Kingdom.

After the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, Morocco now also wants to normalize relations with Israel. U.S. President Donald Trump declared via Twitter that the two states had agreed to establish "full diplomatic relations." Liaison offices were to be opened immediately in Rabat and Tel Aviv, and ultimately there would also be the opening of reciprocal embassies.

A leading Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near the capital Tehran on Friday, Iran's Defense Ministry announced on state television. Iran's state media reports that the scientist died during an attack in the Absard area of the province of Damavand, about 60 kilometres east of Tehran.

Western officials and experts believe Fakhrizadeh played a pivotal role in suspected Iranian work in the past to develop the means to assemble a nuclear warhead behind the facade of a declared civilian uranium enrichment programme.

In 2018, Netanyahu gave a presentation in which he unveiled what he described as material stolen by Israel from an Iranian nuclear archive and showed a photograph of Fakhrizadeh.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has toured a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank - the first such visit by a top US official.

Israel’s military occupation has received a symbolic US stamp of approval after Mike Pompeo toured an archaeological dig run by a far-right settler group and visited a settlement that farms grapes on land Palestinians say was stolen from them.

On Sunday, thousands of demonstrators gathered outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in central Jerusalem to demand his resignation. Protests have been happening throughout the summer. Netanyahu is currently on trial for corruption charges.

People were protesting even though Israel has been under a strict nationwide lockdown since Friday.

The Justice Department ordered AJ+, an Al Jazeera online news platform based in the US, to register as a foreign agent Monday. The DOJ declared the outlet is "an agent of the Government of Qatar" and "engages in “political activities.”

Al Jazeera suggested the move was related to the agreement signed by the United Arab Emirates with Israel, a deal brokered by the Trump administration. The Emirates ambassador to the United States said that was not true.

The Israeli government agreed to impose a three-week nationwide lockdown that would go into effect on Friday at 11:00 UTC, on the eve of Rosh Hashana holiday. The country will be the first to reimpose restrictions on a national scale.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in a press briefing that warnings by health officials led to the government's decision, which would restrict Israelis to a 500-meter radius of their residence.

With the country already hit by a deep, pandemic-induced recession, the decision to reinstate lockdown has divided the government and the nation.

With 4.038 newly reported Covid-19 cases on Thursday, Israel has reached the highest one-day value of new cases in the country since the beginning of the pandemic for the fourth consecutive day.

The Covid-19 cabinet has now decided in favor of a new two-week lockdown, pending the approval of the government. Israelis would then be only allowed to move up to 500 meters away from their home. Schools, restaurants and shops would be closed.

In Israel, thousands of demonstrators again demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening. According to the police, twelve demonstrators were arrested in Jerusalem. Some demonstrators had blocked an intersection and refused to clear it. This was the 11th week in a row that people took part in rallies against the head of government.

Based on data from South Korea, the United States and Israel analyzing the infections and spread of the coronavirus through children, researchers now believe that children can contract Covid-19 and easily spread it.

A group of 26 researchers from Sweden wrote that "Because children are contagious, can become seriously ill, and it is unclear today how a mild infection affects their future health, we should already at the start of school take measures to keep the infection down".

They recommend sport only outdoors, eating meals seperated in classes, avoiding group tasks and that masks should be worn at all times.

On Saturday night and Sunday morning, thousands of protestors have demonstrated and called for the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister. He is facing allegations of corruption and criticism for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Demonstrators have protested outside of his residence and all of Israel for the eighth consecutive week.

According to the newspaper Haaretz, an estimated number of 50,000 people across all of Israel have demonstrated against Netanyahu on Saturday. There have been no reports of detained protestors.