by Rabbi S. Weiss(IsraelNN.com) "And G-d said to Moshe: Stretch your arm over the water of the Reed Sea, and it shall split." Later, after Bnei Yisrael had crossed safely through the sea, G-d said, once again, "Stretch your hand upon the sea, and the water shall return to its original place." And so it did.
Now, I fully understand why a miracle was necessary to split the sea; but why should an "act of G-d" be necessary for the water to resume its original, natural function? Doesn't science teach us the obvious, that "water seeks its own level"? Do I need a miracle for this?
Another question: Why, inexplicably, does the Torah tell us that "Bnei Yisrael walked on dry land through the water, which formed a wall for them on each side" (14:29), after the sea had already come crashing down? The place for this pasuk is clearly before the Egyptians are drowned, while the Jews were yet passing through the Reed Sea.
I suggest that the Torah is teaching us here an important truth of the universe. The fact that the sea can go "against" nature - defying gravity to rise up in a wall - is ...   more »

Prince Turki al-Faisal, adviser to King Abdullah, says if Israel accepts Arab League plan and signs comprehensive peace, 'one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity'
Reuters
A senior Saudi royal has offered Israel a vision of broad cooperation with the Arab world and people-to-people contacts if it signs a peace treaty and withdraws from all occupied Arab territories.
In an interview with Reuters, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the United States and Britain and adviser to King Abdullah, said Israel and the Arabs could cooperate in many areas including water, agriculture, science and education.  
Asked what message he wanted to send to the Israeli public, he said: "The Arab world, by the Arab peace initiative, has crossed the Rubicon from hostility towards Israel to peace with Israel and has extended the hand of peace to Israel, and we await the Israelis picking up our hand and joining us in what inevitably will be beneficial for Israel and for the Arab world."  
The 22-nation Arab League revived at a Riyadh summit last year a Saudi peace plan first adopted in 2002 offering Israel full normalisation of relations in return for full withdrawal ...   more »

Etgar Lefkovits
Nearly 300,000 Israelis have left Jerusalem over the last decade and a half, an annual survey released Thursday showed.
The findings represent a stunning failure of Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski and his two predecessors, Ehud Olmert and Teddy Kollek as well as past and present Israeli Governments to stem the ongoing exodus of Jewish residents from the capital who are moving to the suburbs and elsewhere for better quality of life, and make the city more attractive for others.
272,300 Jerusalem residents, mostly Jews, have left the city between 1990-2006, according to the 2006 Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem put out by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.
The survey find that 17,300 Jews left Jerusalem in 2006, compared to 10,900 who moved to the city, leaving the overall annual migration level at 6,400, up from 5,800 the year before, and similar to numbers in recent years.
About half of those who left the city moved to various Jerusalem suburbs, as well as nearby West Bank settlements, while the other half relocated to central Israel, the study finds.
The statistics reflected an ongoing trend of Jewish migration from the city to the suburbs which began in the 1980's, and ...   more »