Israel

Prime minister starts two-day visit to Israel

JERUSALEM -- Serbia and Israel share good bilateral ties, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic stated on Sunday upon arriving in Israel for an official visit.

He also expects his trip to produce "significant results on the political and economic level."

Israel has thwarted a planned attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Jerusalem's biggest football stadium, arresting 30 suspected militants commanded from Turkey, security services said on Nov. 27.
      

Israel has arrested four Palestinians suspected of planning to assassinate Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with an anti-tank rocket while he drove to his Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, Israeli officials say.

Two Palestinians armed with a meat cleaver and a gun killed four people in a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday before being shot dead by police, reports Reuters.

According to CNN reports, the men came from East Jerusalem and also had a handgun.

Six other people were wounded during the attack in the Har Nof area of West Jerusalem including two responding police officers.

Men of all ages will be allowed to attend the main weekly Muslim prayers Friday at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound for the first time in "months", a police spokesman said.
      
"No age limit on the Temple Mount, we're hoping things will be calm and quiet today," spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told AFP.
      

US Secretary of State John Kerry met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Jordan on Nov. 13 for talks aimed at calming a wave of violence gripping Israel and the occupied territories.
      

An Israeli planning committee on Nov. 12 approved plans to build 200 homes in a Jewish settlement neighbourhood of annexed east Jerusalem, a city councillor told AFP.

Arab east Jerusalem has been shaken by months of clashes and city councillor Yosef Pepe Alalu told AFP that plans to build in the Ramot neighbourhood would cause further tensions.

Suspected extremists torched a West Bank mosque in an apparent revenge attack Nov. 12, as the Palestinian leader and the U.S. top diplomat were to meet Jordan's King Abdullah over the spiralling violence.

Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian demonstrator in clashes in the West Bank on Nov. 11 as Israel tightened security following a pair of attacks that took two Israeli lives the day before.

Clashes erupted near the city of Hebron where about 150 Palestinian demonstrators were throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers, the army said.

A Palestinian teenager stabbed and critically wounded a young Israeli soldier on Nov. 10 as unrest which has already rocked Jerusalem and the north spread to coastal Tel Aviv.