Israel launched airstrikes early on Saturday against three Hamas security targets in the Gaza Strip, wounding at least 17 people, Hamas medical officials said. Israel had no immediate comment on the strikes, which occurred as Gaza militants fired rockets at Israel, causing no casualties, suggesting the strikes were in retribution for the rocket fire.
More than 20 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel overnight and early Saturday morning, wounding one Israeli man moderately. The wounded man, a 50-year-old resident of Netivot, was wounded when a Qassam rocket directly hit a factory in the Sderot industrial zone. He received shrapnel wounds in his neck and was transported to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.
With rocket fire toward Israel's south continuing on Saturday, Gaza media reported that a member of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza, 25-year-old Khalid Al-Biraye, was killed in an Israel Air Force strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. The IDF spokesperson confirmed the strike.
Any attack by Israel against Iran would lead to the collapse of the Jewish state, a senior Iranian general said Saturday. "The Zionist regime cannot do the least against Iran but if the regime still considers any military attack against us, then it would cause its own end and collapse," General Mostafa Izadi, Iran's deputy chief of staff, told Fars news agency.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Saturday it was not possible to ignore the fact that Syria had shot down a Turkish fighter jet and said everything that needed to be done following the incident would be done, Turkish media reported. "It is not possible to cover over a thing like this, whatever is necessary will no doubt be done," Gul told reporters from the central Anatolian city of Kayseri.
Egyptians packed Tahrir Square in Cairo through the night on Saturday, waving flags and chanting for the end of military rule as they waited to know the name of the first president they have been free to choose. After a week of drama, in which the Muslim Brotherhood's hopes of victory in the presidential election were soured by the army dissolving the Islamist-led parliament and decreeing tight limits on the new head of state's powers, there was anxiety on the streets, but also some hope a compromise could be found.
The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is becoming the church of contention, with a bid by the Palestinians to use their position as the newest members of the UN's cultural arm to obtain World Heritage status for the iconic Christian site - and perhaps boost their own campaign for legitimacy.
The sale of Caterpillar tractors to Israel was a factor, but not the determining one, in the delisting of the company from an influential index that prioritizes good governance and human rights. The move, however, is poised to further complicate the difficult ongoing conversation about Israel taking place between American Jewish groups and the Presbyterian Church (USA).