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RAS KARKAR, West Bank It seemed that Khaled Nofal’s luck had finally turned. After nearly a year of separation, he was preparing to reunite with his wife and young son, who had been stranded in Jordan since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
To inaugurate the new stage in their life, Nofal, 34, a clerk in the Palestinian Authority Finance Ministry, had rented a new apartment in Ramallah and started to move in. He’d bought new clothes for the first time in years. He was preparing to travel to the Allenby Bridge border crossing to meet them and bring them back to the West Bank and then the border closed.
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IDF chief of the General Staff Aviv Kohavi is vaccinated against COVID-19, December 20, 2020 (Israel Defense Forces, via twitter)
1. Speak loudly about your big stick: The head of the Israel Defense Forces seemingly slammed military action back on the table in a speech Tuesday evening, garnering headlines, renewing tried and true saber-rattling, and raising some uncomfortable questions.
“Aviv Kohavi on Tuesday said he has directed the military to prepare fresh operational plans to strike Iran to block its nuclear program,” reports ToI’s Judah Ari Gross.
He also notes that Kohavi “warned that US President Joe Biden should not rejoin the 2015 nuclear agreement,” describing the statement as a “rare public comment on American foreign policy.”
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An Israeli healthcare worker prepares a dose of the coronavirus vaccine at a Clalit Health Services clinic in Jerusalem on January 14, 2021. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)
1. Holding steady on the cusp of disaster: The good news in Israel is that the number of new coronavirus cases no longer appears to be rising. The bad news is that the plateau is at a horrifyingly high level.
“It’s not going up, but not going down,” anchor Udi Segal told Channel 13 viewers Thursday night at the top of the nightly primetime news broadcast.
“For the fourth day running: over 9,000 cases a day,” reads the top headline on the website of the Kan news broadcaster Friday morning.