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ISRAEL

Norway delays Palestinian donor meet

Norway said on Tuesday that a planned meeting of an international donor group for the Palestinians had been delayed, with tensions running high after the abduction of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.

Norway delays Palestinian donor meet
A section of the wall dividing off the West Bank. Photo: Chris Junker/Flickr
The Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC), which is responsible for coordinating international support for the Palestinians and is chaired by Norway, was set to meet in Oslo on June 25.
   
But Norwegian foreign ministry spokesman Frode Andersen said: "The situation is not conducive to having an AHLC meeting at this point."
   
He told AFP by email that the decision was made in coordination with the Palestinians, the Israelis, the EU and the US.
   
He did not give a specific reason for the delay, nor say when a new meeting would be held.
   
But it comes after Israel accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of kidnapping three teenagers who went missing in the West Bank last week, triggering a huge manhunt.
   
To Israel's dismay, Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) reached a landmark reconciliation deal which led to the formation of a unity government this month.

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ISRAEL

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street

A former Israeli soldier was attacked in the German capital Berlin, police said Saturday, with one or several unknown assailants spraying him with an irritant and throwing him to the ground.

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street
Israeli soldiers on operation near the Gaza Strip. Photo: dpa | Ilia Yefimovich

The 29-year-old was wearing a top with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) logo when the attackers started harassing him on Friday about his religion, the police added, calling it “an anti-Semitic attack”.

Officers are seeking the assailants, who fled immediately after the attack, on suspicion of a politically-motivated crime.

Saturday is the second anniversary of an attack by a far-right gunman on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, who killed two in a rampage when he failed to break into the house of worship.

It was one of a string of incidents that led authorities to declare the far right and neo-Nazis Germany’s top security threat.

Also this week, a musician claimed he was turned away from a hotel in eastern city Leipzig for wearing a Star-of-David pendant.

While the allegations prompted a fierce response from a Jewish community unsettled by increasing anti-Semitic crimes, several investigations have been mounted into contradictory accounts of the incident.

In 2019, police recorded 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.

“The threat is complex and comes from different directions” from jihadists to the far right, the federal government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism Felix Klein said recently.

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