KOENIG

In the letter he sent this week to Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee lays out in detail new policies from the Visa Department toward Evangelical Christian organizations.

The letter, the existence of which emerged yesterday, has been obtained by The Times of Israel.

“As of the beginning of 2025, the Visa Department arbitrarily ceased honoring the recommendations of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and has initiated an independent investigation into each of the Evangelical organizations to ascertain whether or not they should be recognized as Religious Institutions and continue receiving visas,” writes Huckabee.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified Israel’s two-pronged strategic goal in Syria on Thursday—ensuring southern Syria is demilitarized and protecting the Druze of that region.

Netanyahu defined southern Syria as an area running from the Golan Heights to Jabal al-Druze, a region encompassing nearly all of the Sweida governorate, recently the site of massacres perpetrated by regime-linked Syrian forces against the Druze community.

The Syrian regime violated both red lines, Netanyahu said. “It sent troops south of Damascus into an area that was supposed to remain demilitarized, and it began massacring Druze. That was something we could not accept under any circumstances.

Despite the decision to quit the government, the Sephardi-ultra-Orthodox party’s spiritual leadership, known as the Council of Torah Sages, stressed it will not join with the opposition to bring down the government... Rather, the council gave Netanyahu a new deadline – the beginning of the Knesset winter session on October 19 – to find a solution to the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) IDF draft issue.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced an agreement to end the fighting in Syria, after almost a whole day of hostilities between the Syrian government, Druze communities in the south of Syria, and the IDF.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the IDF had undertaken 160 aerial attacks on Syrian regime forces in and around the vicinity of Sweida in southern Syria, where Israel says the regime's forces are slaughtering Syrian-Druze.

In addition, the IDF has attacked portions of Syria's Defense Ministry and Presidential Palace in Damascus.

IDF sources said that the military is ready for a multi-day campaign to convince Syrian regime forces to withdraw from Sweida and leave the Syrian-Druze their autonomy.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and the UK agreed in a phone call on Monday to set the end of August as the de facto deadline for reaching a nuclear deal with Iran, Axios reported, citing three sources.

If no deal is reached by that deadline, the three European powers plan to trigger the "snapback" mechanism that automatically reimposes all UN Security Council sanctions that were lifted under the 2015 Iran deal, according to the Axios report. 

The four nations are reportedly looking to potentially implement the snapback measures before Russia, a critical Iranian ally, assumes the UNSC presidency.

In a press conference in the Knesset on Tuesday afternoon, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein called on haredi politicians to exhibit “national responsibility” and refrain from toppling the government over their insistence to exempt at least half of eligible haredi men from IDF service.

“This is not the time to dismantle the right-wing government. The future of the state is not a political game, especially when the security challenges we face are more serious and existential than ever,” Edelstein said.

The press conference came after haredi representatives on Monday rejected Edelstein’s proposal for a new bill, arguing that the proposal contradicted agreements that were reached on June 12, a day before Israel’s attack against Iran.

The Israel Defense Forces were instructed on Tuesday to “immediately” protect the Druze minority in Syria by striking Syrian regime forces deployed to the Sweida area of the country’s south, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz told the IDF to “immediately strike regime forces and weaponry that were brought into the Sweida area of Syria’s Jabal al-Druze [Druze Mountain] region for regime activity against the Druze,” according to the statement.

Damascus had violated “the demilitarization policy that was decided upon, which prohibits the entry of [regime] forces and arms into southern Syria that could endanger Israel,” it continued.

A slow-moving cold front approaching the East Coast on Monday is unleashing flooding and heavy rain throughout major cities along the I-95 Corridor. 

A Level 3 out of 4 risk for flash flooding has been outlined across part of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, encompassing major cities such as Baltimore, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy declared a State of Emergency for the state due to flash flooding, urging residents to stay off the roads. 

(photo: Avshalom Sassoni, The Jerusalem Post)

Israel has submitted a third map of Israeli troop deployment in Gaza throughout the period of the 60-day ceasefire, two sources told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. 

The head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, Maj.-Gen. Hassan Rashad met with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani the same day.

Rashad also reportedly held meetings with the Israeli and Hamas delegations as part of the ongoing negotiations, according to Egyptian media.

An interim security deal with Syria is in reach but there is still a long way to go to normalization, Benny Gantz, a past member of Israel’s War Cabinet and a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, told JNS on Monday.

“I think that we can achieve some kind of temporary agreements with Syria based on security issues,” Gantz, who leads the opposition Blue and White Party, told JNS during a faction meeting at the Knesset.

After a security deal, “We can drill down the road and hopefully come to a better situation with them, including normalization,” said Gantz, speaking in English. “But that’s, I think, still [far] away from us.”

This handout picture released by the Palestinian Authority's press office (PPO) shows President Mahmoud Abbas (R) meeting with Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair in Amman, Jordan, on July 13, 2025. (photo: Thaer Ghanaim, PPO / AFP)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged Hamas to release the hostages it is holding and hand over its weapons to the PA, stressing that the terror group “will not rule the Gaza Strip” after the war there ends.

In a meeting in Amman on Sunday with British former prime minister Tony Blair, Abbas also called for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and unhindered entry of humanitarian aid to the Strip, according to the PA’s official news agency WAFA.

Abbas also called for the PA to be given control of the enclave, a notion long rejected by Israel. He further stressed the need to implement a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the Arab Peace Initiative and called for an international peace conference to be held in New York, the report said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa are expected to meet at the White House ahead of the UN General Assembly in September, i24NEWS reported on Tuesday, citing a Syrian source close to Sharaa.

During the meeting, Netanyahu and Sharaa are slated to sign a security agreement "under the patronage" of US President Donald Trump, the report stated.

Such a meeting would be a major step towards a normalization agreement between Israel and Syria.

Iran’s president was injured in an Israeli air strike targeting a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council, Tehran has revealed. Masoud Pezeshkian was wounded in the leg and forced to escape through an emergency hatch after Israel struck the meeting in Tehran with six missiles during the 12-day war in June.

On the eve of a decisive meeting of the Israeli cabinet on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to persuade right-wing ministers in his government to accept a new ceasefire plan with Hamas.

This proposal, which includes a 60-day truce, has generating strong internal tensions, particularly around the partial military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the management of humanitarian aid.

On Saturday, having just returned from Washington, DC, Netanyahu met with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Despite several previous telephone exchanges, this meeting aimed to defuse Smotrich's opposition, as he is fiercely hostile to any agreement he would see as abandoning the war objective of dismantling Hamas. He demands that fighting resume immediately after the hostages are released.

Israel plans to submit its own proposal Sunday to resolve the outstanding issues in the negotiations with the terrorist organization Hamas, after Hamas rejected a US-brokered proposal delivered Saturday. According to Arab sources familiar with the talks, Israel's proposal will include three key elements, with the primary one being the Israel Defense Forces' redeployment lines during the cease-fire.

The focal point of contention is the southern Gaza Strip, specifically the Morag Corridor and Rafah. The Israeli proposal outlines new lines of redeployment and a different timetable for IDF withdrawals, contingent on progress in negotiations over a permanent arrangement.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa is attending at least one meeting with Israeli officials in Azerbaijan today, despite sources in Damascus claiming he wasn’t attending, a Syrian source close to President Al-Sharaa tells i24NEWS.

The Syrian source stated that this is a series of two or three meetings between the sides, with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani also in attendance, along with Ahmed Al-Dalati, the Syrian government’s liaison for security meetings with Israel. 

Former defense minister Yoav Gallant sent Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a letter urging him to abandon his war against Israel on Thursday.

“We have never met, but I trust we know a great deal about one another,” Gallant began, explaining that he had watched Khamenei for nearly 30 years as he rose to power.

“As defense minister, I was responsible for turning decades of Israeli intelligence, air force capabilities, and strategic doctrine into a single, coordinated military plan. The plan that cut through your 'Ring of Fire' like a hot knife through butter and ultimately caused it to collapse,” he said.

France and Saudi Arabia will convene a conference to promote the two-state solution by the end of July, a source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post on Friday.

The conference, scheduled to take place in New York, was initially planned for last month but was postponed due to the conflict between Israel and Iran.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were [scheduled] to co-chair the conference in June, focused on advancing the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Lebanon has no plans to have normal relations with Israel at the present time, and Beirut’s main aim is to reach a “state of no war” with its southern neighbor, the country’s president said Friday.