KOENIG

Israelis on Tuesday evening began to mark their second Memorial Day since the October 7 Hamas massacre sparked the war in Gaza, with ceremonies across the country commemorating those who fell in the country’s wars as well as victims of terror.

Nationwide sirens at 8 p.m. brought the country to a halt, marking a minute of silence and the beginning of memorial ceremonies. At the official state memorial event at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, President Isaac Herzog pleaded for the public to put aside division and work for peace and unity across Israeli society.

He opened his speech with a message to the 59 hostages who remain captive in Gaza, telling them: “A whole nation is missing you, worrying for you, crying your cry.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pushes countries to “take irreversible action toward implementing a two-state solution” between Israel and the Palestinians ahead of an international conference in June.

“I encourage Member States to go beyond affirmations, and to think creatively about the concrete steps they will take to support a viable two-state solution before it is too late,” Guterres tells a Security Council meeting on the Middle East.

France and Saudi Arabia will co-host the conference at the United Nations in June.

Russia is expanding its military infrastructure near the border with Finland in what experts and officials say could be a preparation for a potential clash with NATO, the Wall Street Journal reported on April 28.

These efforts include expanding military bases near the Russian city of Petrozavodsk, around 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of Finland, the planned site for a new headquarters that could potentially command tens of thousands of troops, the outlet wrote.

Western military and intelligence officials are reportedly warning that these units could form the "backbone" of Russia's forces preparing to confront NATO.

Israel estimates that the negotiations between the United States and Iran are likely to conclude with an agreement, an Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

The official clarified that Israel does not yet know whether the agreement will align with its demands—namely, the complete dismantling of uranium enrichment facilities—or if it will resemble the previous nuclear deal, which Israel considers a "bad agreement."

US President Donald Trump said the nuclear talks with Iran were going “very well,” on Sunday night.

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Israel will only agree to a nuclear deal with Iran that eliminates Tehran’s capacity to enrich uranium, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the JNS International Policy Summit on Sunday.

The only way to prevent the Islamic Republic from building a nuclear weapon is to dismantle “all the infrastructure of Iran’s nuclear program,” he said, adding, “That is the deal.”

Israel, he continued, “cannot live with anything short of that—anything short of that could bring you the opposite result, because Iran will say, all right, I won’t enrich, wait, run out the clock, wait for another president, do it again.” This, he said, was “unacceptable.”

According to the prime minister, “a bad deal is worse than no deal.”

Saudi Arabia needs the war against Hamas in Gaza to conclude—and some framework for a Palestinian state to be articulated, however unrealistic—before it can finalize a normalization deal with Israel, the chairman of a nonprofit promoting Israeli-Arab diplomacy said on Sunday.

“When Saudi Arabia signs a normalization deal with Israel, that will mark the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East,” said Dan Feferman, chairman of Sharaka, speaking at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem. “At least a dozen other Arab countries will follow.”

Feferman cautioned, however, that Riyadh, as the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, cannot be seen as abandoning the Palestinian cause—even if Saudi leadership acknowledges that a two-state solution may no longer be realistic.

If the negotiations on a deal to dismantle Tehran’s nuclear program fail, the United States will lead an attack against it, President Donald Trump said on Friday.

“It’s possible we’ll have to attack, because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” the president told Time magazine in an interview conducted last week and published on Friday, marking his first 100 days in office.

Asked by the interviewer whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might drag the U.S. into war with the Islamic Republic, Trump said, “he may go into a war. But we’re not getting dragged in. … You asked if he’d drag me in, like I’d go in unwillingly. No, I may go in very willingly if we can’t get a deal. If we don’t make a deal, I’ll be leading the pack.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas named close confidant Hussein al-Sheikh as his deputy and likely successor on Saturday, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said, a step widely seen as needed to assuage international doubts over Palestinian leadership.

Abbas, 89, has headed the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) since the death of veteran leader Yasser Arafat in 2004, but he had for years resisted internal reforms, including the naming of a successor.

Sheik, born in 1960, is a veteran of Fatah, the main PLO faction which was founded by Arafat and is now headed by Abbas. He is widely viewed as a pragmatist with very close ties to Israel.

U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin for three hours in Moscow on Friday to discuss the U.S. plan to end the war in Ukraine, and Trump said the two sides were "very close to a deal," despite apparent differences in their positions.

Trump said in a social media post after Witkoff's meeting concluded that it was a good day of talks and called for a high-level meeting between Kyiv and Moscow to close a deal.

Negotiations between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program will return Saturday to the secluded sultanate of Oman, where experts on both sides will start hammering out the technical details of any possible deal.

The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions the US has imposed on the Islamic Republic, closing in on half a century of enmity.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to potentially unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s program if a deal isn’t reached.

Israel is deeply concerned that the US is closing in on a “bad deal” with Iran that will not meet Israel’s stated essential conditions for ensuring the regime cannot attain nuclear weapons, Israeli television reported Thursday.

Channel 12 news reported that Israel believes the negotiations ordered by President Donald Trump with Iran, led by envoy Steve Witkoff, are “very, very advanced,” and that the US is not sharing enough information with Israel on key specific issues. This, despite an ostensibly deep ongoing dialogue between Witkoff and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, the report said.

The TV report, which quoted unnamed diplomatic, political and security sources, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz and a senior IDF officer who cannot be named held an urgent consultation this week on the issue.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Tuesday, with the two leaders discussing “the important strategic partnership between the United States and Qatar,” according to a U.S. readout.

Rubio and Al Thani spoke about “close security and economic cooperation and shared efforts to address regional challenges in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria” and “reiterated both countries’ support for greater security and stability in the Middle East.”

Rubio also “expressed gratitude for Qatar’s efforts in securing the release of American citizens from Afghanistan.” 

Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, started at sundown on Wednesday night with the annual ceremony at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.

The official state ceremony, held under the theme “Out of the Depths: The Pain of Liberation and Growth,” included speeches by Israeli Prime

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Jerusalem Municipality is illuminating the Old City walls with the yellow patch symbol, alongside memorial candles and the words “Remember” and “Never Forget.”

An Israeli delegation is expected to depart in the coming days for talks aimed at advancing a hostage deal, a source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.

Sources informed on the matter told the Post that there has been no change in Hamas's position regarding the deal.

Hamas has made it clear to mediators from Egypt and Qatar that "we will not agree to a deal that includes a temporary [rather than permanent] ceasefire."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke via phone on Tuesday with US President Donald Trump, the American leader said, declaring that the pair “are on the same side of every issue.”

The call covered “numerous subjects including Trade, Iran, etc.,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, adding that the conversation went “very well.”

Notably, Trump did not include Gaza or the 59 hostages being held there in his list of topics discussed amid the ongoing impasse in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. However, according to a report in Axios, the pair did talk about efforts to reach a hostage release deal, with the Trump administration pushing for a breakthrough and Israel wary of any agreement that would end the war.

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - India has the full support of the United States, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday after suspected militants opened fire on tourists in India's Jammu and Kashmir territory, killing at least 20 people.

"Deeply disturbing news out of Kashmir. The United States stands strong with India against Terrorism. We pray for the souls of those lost, and for the recovery of the injured. Prime Minister Modi, and the incredible people of India, have our full support and deepest sympathies," Trump said on Truth Social.

Companies in the United States were invited to partake in lucrative business opportunities involving Iran’s plan to erect over 19 additional nuclear reactors, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday.

“American companies could explore the trillion-dollar opportunity that the Iranian economy presented,” including companies that could “help generate clean electricity from non-hydrocarbon sources,” he added.