By Avi Issacharoff, 
Tags: Police, PA, Israel, West Bank 
Israel told the Palestinian Authority on Friday that it agrees to the reopening of 20 police stations under Palestinian control across the West Bank, as part of a security drive aimed at bolstering peace negotiations, officials said.
This is the first time Israel has approved such a measure since 2001.
According to Hussein al-Sheikh, head of the PA's Civil Affairs Ministry, the police stations were abandoned after clashes erupted in September 2000.
The stations are located in the West Bank's Area B, where under 1993 interim peace accords, Israel retains the right to deploy troops against suspected militants.
The Palestinian police will be authorized to engage in law enforcement activities, chiefly in Palestinian villages such as Tufah, which is near Nablus, Sarir, which is near Hebron, and Tekoa, which is near Bethlehem.
The agreement was reached at the end of a meeting between Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, the head of the Civil Administration, and al-Sheikh.
"This move aims to enhance security and impose law and order under the Abbas security plan," al-Sheikh told Reuters.
Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry's civil affairs wing, said officials from both sides would ...   more »

by Maayana Miskin(IsraelNN.com) Dozens of young men and women hiked through Samaria recently, walking in areas that Jews usually avoid.  One group walked through the hostile Arab village of Huwarra on its way to Tapuach Junction.  Soldiers arrested 30 of the hikers.
Land of Israel activist Meir Bertler explained that the hike was meant to restore a Jewish presence in areas where Jews had not set foot for decades.  Walking freely in the area is the first step towards establishing new Jewish communities, he said.
In the above video, dozens of young hikers take to the hills and valleys of Samaria, confronting Arabs and soldiers along the way.
Original Source
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By Shmuel Rosner and Yoav Stern, 
Tags: nuclear, Condoleezza Rice  
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on Thursday that "Syria is most certainly an issue in proliferation."
Responding to reporters' questions, Rice spoke at length about the talks between the U.S. and North Korea, which also addressed the issue of North Korea's relations with Syria. The U.S. is demanding that North Korea reveal all past activity relating to nuclear proliferation, including its ties to Syria. These came to light following September's airstrike in Syria, which foreign reports have attributed to Israel.
Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan reported on Thursday that Syrian technical teams are in Russia to take delivery of an advanced antiaircraft missile system, the Pantsyr-S1. This is part of a large Syrian-Russian deal, paid for by Iran, to supply new missile defense systems to the Syrian army.  
As part of the conclusions the Syrian army drew from the Second Lebanon War, Damascus decided to procure cutting-edge surface-to-surface missiles and antiaircraft missiles. To that end, major deals were signed with Russia, some of which are being funded by Iran.
Some of the Persian Gulf states also requested similar systems. Russia failed to meet delivery schedules, but ...   more »

By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — Israel’s public debate shifted this week from Hamas to hametz. But it remained no less heated.
Hametz is bread and other leavened products that many Jews do not eat for the eight days of Passover, which starts Saturday night. The Bible says that when God freed the Jews from enslavement in Egypt, they left in such a hurry that there was no time for their bread to rise, and to mark that circumstance, consuming leavened bread during the holiday is forbidden.
The focus of the debate here is a ruling by a Jerusalem municipal judge overturning the convictions of four shops and restaurants for having sold pizzas and rolls during the holiday last year despite a law that many thought prohibited businesses from doing so. The judge said the law barred only the public display of hametz, not its sale inside shops.
While most debates about the painstakingly negotiated public role of religion in Israel line up along predictable lines of observant versus secular, this discussion has been different. And it speaks to a palpable anxiety over the need to define and defend the Jewish nature of the state, even as Israel’s 60th anniversary approaches ...   more »