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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government survived an opposition bid to dissolve parliament on Thursday, as lawmakers rejected a bill that could have paved the way for snap elections. Out of the Knesset’s 120 members, 61 voted against the proposal, with 53 in favour. The opposition had introduced the bill hoping to force elections with the help of ultra-Orthodox parties in the governing coalition angry at Netanyahu over the contentious issue of exemptions from military service for their community.While the opposition is composed mainly of centrist and leftist groups, ultra-Orthodox parties that are propping up Netanyahu’s government had earlier threatened to back the motion.The results of the vote Thursday morning, however, showed that most ultra-Orthodox lawmakers ultimately did not back the opposition bill, with just a small number voting in favour.The opposition will now have to wait six months before it can try again.Before the vote, Yuli Edelstein, a lawmaker from Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, announced that after lengthy discussions, parties had agreed on the “principles on which the draft conscription law will be based”.Edelstein, who chairs the foreign affairs and defence committee, did not specify the terms of the agreement.”As I said all along — only a real, effective bill that leads to an expansion of the (Israeli military’s) recruitment base will emerge from the committee I chair,” he wrote on social media platform X.”This is historic news, and we are on the path to real reform in Israeli society and strengthening the security of the State of Israel.”Edelstein had earlier put forward a bill aimed at increasing the number of ultra-Orthodox conscripted, and tightening the penalties for those who refuse to serve.Opposition leader Yair Lapid, meanwhile, said the government was seeing the beginning of the end.”When coalitions begin to fall apart, they fall apart. It started and this is what it looks like when a government begins to collapse,” he said.Ultra-Orthodox parties had been given a choice between losing a law on their exemption from military service, or losing their place in the government, and they chose exemption, Lapid added.”The government helped them… organise the exemption of tens of thousands of healthy young people,” he said, referring to ultra-Orthodox Israelis.Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi hit back, saying the coalition government was “moving forward” and “stronger than ever”.Earlier on Wednesday, opposition leaders had said their decision to bring the dissolution bill to the Knesset for a vote was “made unanimously and is binding on all factions”.They said that all opposition parties would freeze their lawmaking activities to focus on “the overthrow of the government”.Netanyahu’s coalition is one of the most right-wing in the country’s history. It includes two ultra-Orthodox parties — Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ).The two parties had threatened to back the motion for early elections.- ‘Existential danger’ -Military service is mandatory in Israel but, under a ruling that dates back to the country’s creation when the ultra-Orthodox were a very small community, men who devote themselves full-time to the study of Jewish scripture are given a de facto pass.Whether that should change has been a long-running issue.Efforts to scrap the exemption have intensified during the nearly 20-month war in Gaza as the military looks for extra manpower.Netanyahu is under pressure from his Likud party to draft more ultra-Orthodox men — a red line for parties such as Shas, who demand a law guaranteeing their constituents permanent exemption from military service.Ahead of the vote in the early hours of Thursday morning, Israeli media reported that officials from Netanyahu’s coalition were holding talks with ultra-Orthodox leaders hoping to find common ground.In an apparent bid to allow time for those negotiations, Netanyahu’s coalition filled the Knesset’s agenda with bills to delay the vote.Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that bringing down the government during wartime would pose “an existential danger” to Israel’s future.”History will not forgive anyone who drags the state of Israel into elections during a war,” Smotrich told parliament, adding that there was a “national and security need” for ultra-Orthodox to fight in the military.Netanyahu’s government is a coalition between his Likud party, far-right groups and ultra-Orthodox parties, whose departure would leave it without a parliamentary majority.

All is calm at Satoshi Yamazaki’s rice farm, with its freshly planted rows of vivid-green seedlings, but a row over the cost of the staple in Japan is threatening to deal the government a blow at the ballot box.Shortages of the grain caused by a supply chain snarl-up have seen prices almost double in a …

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Israel is to expel by the end of the week four French nationals held after security forces intercepted their Gaza-bound aid boat, France’s foreign minister said Wednesday, as an Israeli NGO said one of the French campaigners was briefly put in solitary confinement.The announcement came as France’s prime minister accused activists aboard the boat — who hoped to raise awareness about the humanitarian situation in war-torn Gaza — of capitalising on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for political attention.The four, who include Rima Hassan, a member of European Parliament from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party who is of Palestinian descent, will be deported on Thursday and Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X.They were among 12 people on board the Madleen sailboat which was carrying food and supplies for Gaza before it was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters off the besieged Palestinian territory on Monday.Four, including two French citizens and Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, agreed to be deported immediately.The remaining eight were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily, according to Adalah, an Israeli rights NGO representing most of the activists.All 12 of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years.Adalah said on Wednesday that Israeli authorities had placed French MEP Hassan and Brazilian activist Thiago Avila in solitary confinement, with Hassan later removed.- ‘Abandoning French prisoners’ -“Israeli authorities transferred two of the volunteers — the Brazilian volunteer Thiago Avila and the French-Palestinian European Parliament member Rima Hassan — to separate prison facilities, away from the others, and placed them in solitary confinement,” Adalah said in a statement.The NGO later said that Hassan had been moved back to Givon prison in Ramla, near Tel Aviv, while Avila remained in isolation.When asked for comment, Israel’s prison authority referred AFP to the foreign ministry, which said it was checking the reports.Adalah said Hassan was put in isolation after writing “Free Palestine” on a prison wall. The NGO said Brazilian activist Avila was placed in isolation “due to his ongoing hunger and thirst strike, which he began two days ago.””He has also been treated aggressively by prison authorities, although this has not escalated to physical assault,” it added.The leader of Hassan’s LFI party in parliament, Mathilde Panot, said France’s prime minister Francois Bayrou had failed to condemn Israel’s actions. The party’s boss, Jean-Luc Melenchon, accused Bayrou of “abandoning the French prisoners”, and called on President Emmanuel Macron to step in.”These activists obtained the effect they wanted, but it’s a form of instrumentalisation to which we should not lend ourselves,” Bayrou responded in the National Assembly.It’s “through diplomatic action, and efforts to bring together several states to pressure the Israeli government, that we can obtain the only possible solution” to the conflict, he added.Foreign Minister Barrot also rejected Panot’s criticism, saying “the admirable mobilisation” of French officials had made a rapid resolution of the situation possible “despite the harassment and defamation that they have been subjected to”.- Mounting pressure -France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a UN meeting later this month in New York on steps towards recognising a Palestinian state and reaching a so-called two-state solution to the conflict.Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, whose entire population the United Nations has warned is at risk of famine.Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz on Wednesday called on Egypt to block a hundreds-strong pro-Palestinian activist convoy from reaching Gaza, as the group arrived in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023 attacked Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the retaliatory Israeli military offensive has killed at least 55,104 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.burs-jh-acc/gv

President Donald Trump said US personnel were being moved from the potentially “dangerous” Middle East on Wednesday as nuclear talks with Iran faltered and fears grew of a regional conflict.Trump also reiterated that he would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, amid mounting speculation that Israel could strike Tehran’s facilities. Iran threatened Wednesday to target US military bases in the region if conflict breaks out.A US official had earlier said that staff levels at the embassy in Iraq were being reduced over security concerns, while there were reports that personnel were also being moved from Kuwait and Bahrain.”Well they are being moved out because it could be a dangerous place,” Trump told reporters in Washington when asked about the reports of personnel being moved. “We’ve given notice to move out and we’ll see what happens.”Trump then added: “They can’t have a nuclear weapon, very simple. We’re not going to allow that.” Tehran and Washington have held five rounds of talks since April to thrash out a new nuclear deal to replace the 2015 accord that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.The two sides were due to meet again in coming days.Trump had until recently expressed optimism about the talks, but said in an interview published Wednesday that he was “less confident” about reaching a nuclear deal.Since returning to office in January, Trump has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, backing nuclear diplomacy but warning of military action if it fails.The US president says he has pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off striking Iran’s nuclear facilities to give the talks a chance, but has increasingly signaled that he is losing patience.Iran however warned it would respond to any attack.”All its bases are within our reach, we have access to them, and without hesitation we will target all of them in the host countries,” Iran’s Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said in response to US threats of military action if the talks fail.- ‘Suffer more losses’ -“God willing, things won’t reach that point, and the talks will succeed,” the minister said, adding that the US side “will suffer more losses” if it came to conflict.The United States has multiple bases in the Middle East, with the largest located in Qatar.In January 2020, Iran fired missiles at bases in Iraq housing American troops in retaliation for the US strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani days before at the Baghdad airport.Dozens of US soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries.Amid the escalating tensions, the UK Maritime Trade Operations, run by the British navy, also advised ships to transit the Gulf with caution.Iran and the United States have recently been locked in a diplomatic standoff over Iran’s uranium enrichment, with Tehran defending it as a “non-negotiable” right and Washington calling it a “red line.”Iran currently enriches uranium to 60 percent, far above the 3.67-percent limit set in the 2015 deal and close though still short of the 90 percent needed for a nuclear warhead.Western countries have long accused Iran of seeking to acquire atomic weapons, while Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.Last week, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said enrichment is “key” to Iran’s nuclear program and that Washington “cannot have a say” on the issue.During an interview with the New York Post’s podcast “Pod Force One,” which was recorded on Monday, Trump said he was losing hope a deal could be reached.”I don’t know. I did think so, and I’m getting more and more — less confident about it. They seem to be delaying and I think that’s a shame. I am less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago,” he said.Iran has said it will present a counter-proposal to the latest draft from Washington, which it had criticised for failing to offer relief from sanctions — a key demand for Tehran, which has been reeling under their weight for years.burs-dk/jgc

A former CIA analyst who leaked top secret US intelligence documents about Israeli military plans for a retaliatory strike on Iran was sentenced to 37 months in prison on Wednesday, the Justice Department said.Asif Rahman, 34, who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency since 2016 and held a top secret security clearance, was arrested by the FBI in Cambodia in November.In January, Rahman pleaded guilty at a federal courthouse in Virginia to two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information.He faced a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison.Iran unleashed a wave of close to 200 ballistic missiles on Israel on October 1 in retaliation for the killings of senior figures in the Tehran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.Israel responded with a wave of strikes on military targets in Iran in late October.According to a court filing, on October 17 Rahman printed out two top secret documents “regarding a United States foreign ally and its planned kinetic actions against a foreign adversary.”He photographed the documents and used a computer program to edit the images in “an attempt to conceal their source and delete his activity,” it said.Rahman then transmitted the documents to “multiple individuals he knew were not entitled to receive them” before shredding them at work.The documents, circulated on the Telegram app by an account called Middle East Spectator, described Israeli preparations for a possible strike on Iran but did not identify any actual targets.According to The Washington Post, the documents, generated by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, described aviation exercises and movements of munitions at an Israeli airfield. The leak led Israeli officials to delay their retaliatory strike.