With the revival of talks — which went unexpectedly well — and domestic differences arising in Israel, the odds of imminent conflict have decreased, experts and American officials say.

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Chances of Iran Strike Receding, U.S. Officials Say

The head of the Israeli military says he does not think Iran will develop nuclear weapons, partly because international pressure is bearing fruit.

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Iran ‘not building nuclear bomb’

The Israel Prison Service says more than 1,300 Palestinian prisoners remain on hunger strike, more than a week after they began their protest.

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Palestinian inmate strike ongoing

Israel decides to make legal under Israeli law three settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, drawing Palestinian condemnation.

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Israel authorises three outposts

Israeli judge says claim “does not hold water.”

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Court Orders Hebron Settlers Out

Egypt’s state-owned gas company says it has scrapped a controversial deal supplying Israel with 40% of its natural gas at lower than market prices.

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Egypt scraps gas deal with Israel

Turkey’s besting Iran in the contest for the hearts and minds of advocates of change in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa is proving to be both a blessing and a curse. With tension mounting over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the perceived window of opportunity for a military strike closing, Turkey faces increased challenges and the threat of a proxy war with Syria and the Islamic republic. This is compounded by the fact that the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia need Turkey in their effort to further corner the regime in Syria and to isolate Iran, but want to prevent a shift in regional power away from the kingdom and the Israeli state to Ankara — increasingly held up as the model of an economically successful, Islamist-led democracy.

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Turkey and Tehran: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place (JMD in Turkish Review)

Researchers have found that hyraxes’ wailing, chucking, snorting, squeaking, tweeting songs have something rarely found in mammals: syntax and geographical dialects.

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Side Effects: Hyrax Songs Have Orderly Syntax, Researchers Say

An officer who was caught on videotape hitting a Danish activist in the face with a rifle in the West Bank would be dismissed “on moral grounds,” Israeli military said.

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Israeli Officer Who Struck Protester Is Dismissed

Israel’s army said on Wednesday it had removed a senior officer from his post after he was caught on film striking a Danish pro-Palestinian activist in the face with a rifle.

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Israeli Officer Loses Post for Hitting Activist

A controversial poem by the Nobel laureate Günter Grass has struck a nerve with a German public that has been reluctant to criticize Israel in public.

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Memo From Berlin: With Günter Grass’s Poem, Germans’ Anti-Israel Whispers Grow Louder

“Iraqi Immigrants in California Town Fear a Hate Crime in a Woman’s Killing,” read a recent New York Times headline. The article reported that the murdered woman’s family had previously found a note with the words “This is my country. Go back to yours, terrorist,” taped to the door of their Orange County house. Although an ongoing police investigation has unearthed family tensions which may have led to the murder of Shaima Alawadi, the shame and the fear of violence directed at Arab and Muslim Americans is nevertheless very real. I know because I, too, am an Iraqi-American, born in Baghdad and raised here. First, some background. After graduating high school in Baghdad, my father received his medical degree from La Sorbonne in Paris. Returning to Baghdad, he founded a private hospital with an Iraqi partner also educated in Paris. My father was Jewish; his partner Shiite; their nurses Catholic nuns in the then multi-cultural, multi-ethnic Iraqi capital. Following Israel’s creation, anti-Semitism surged throughout the Arab world. My mother fled with me to Europe. Unable to get permission to legally emigrate, my father smuggled himself to Iran in a fishing boat. From there, he flew to Europe, rejoining us, and bringing us all to America. He got recertified here, and would treat thousands of patients in an office off Fifth Avenue.

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Reclaiming My Iraqi Identity

Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy serving life in prison for leaking classified US documents, has been taken to hospital, say US prison officials.

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Israeli spy Pollard in hospital

Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy serving life in prison for leaking classified US documents, has been taken to hospital, say US prison officials.

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Israeli spy Pollard in hospital

The German writer and Nobel laureate Guenter Grass is declared persona non grata by Israel over what it describes as a “mendacious poem”.

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German writer barred from Israel