| Welcome to Headlines from the Holy Land, your regular look at the key stories from the Jewish State.This weekend Israel continues to reel from Friday’s terror attack which left 7 civilians dead at the hands of a Palestinian shooter in the country’s deadliest terror attack since 2008.Meanwhile, economists have rowed over the Likud-led coalition’s plans to overhaul judicial powers could damage Jerusalem’s global credit rating, as Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara urges the PM to excuse himself from the reform plans due to his ongoing criminal trial.Elsewhere US sources have pinned an attack on an Iranian weapons site on Mossad, and Israel’s Foreign Minister has landed in Sudan for normalisation talks.We hope you enjoy reading.Economists disagree over threat to Israel’s credit rating amid judicial reform row |
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| On 25 January 270 Israeli economists including Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, forwarded a letter of protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms which would allow a Knesset majority to overrule High Court decisions.They warned the plans could put a dent in the country’s credit rating and by extension its global reputation. It came less than 24 hours after the country’s vital high-tech sector held a “warning strike” over the legislative plans.Israel's tech sector heavily relies on foreign direct investment and employs over 10 per cent of salaried Israeli workers.However Former Accountant General Department officials Oren Dori and Assaf Uni said the claims were unjustified."If there was a connection between legal reforms and a country’s credit rating, then the ratings of Kuwait and Qatar would be low, and we would have seen a decline in Hong Kong after China trampled democracy there,” the pair wrote in Globes magazine on Tuesday.On Thursday Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara also wrote to the Likud leader warning him that he could not be a part of the coalition’s push for reforms due to his ongoing trial on charges of corruption and bribery.In response, Coalition party leaders including the Prime Minister cited their “unambiguous mandate” in November's elections as justification for the PM’s involvement in the plans.Israeli Foreign Minister touches down in Khartoum for normalisation talks |
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| Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen made a shock trip to Sudan to hold normalisation talks on Thursday.The trip is one among several Khartoum-Jerusalem visits as the states plan to edge toward full ties.As part of 2020’s series of US-brokered normalisation deals between the Jewish State and Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, Sudan formally agreed to work toward establishing relations with Israel. The states have never had formal ties.Sudan has been under military rule since its October 2021 coup but claims it will hand over the administration to a civilian government. |
My thanks to the Jewish Chronicle for these artilces.