Settlers hand out chametz to Arabs

For a third consecutive year, last week Israeli settlers gave their chametz to their Arab neighbours as part of an effort to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians.

Settlers from seven West Bank settlements gave their leavened bread to a group that distributed the food to Palestinian families. The bread would otherwise have been burned ahead of Passover, in keeping with tradition.

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Hamas’s ‘moderate’ face in council elections

The Hamas Shura council re-elected Khaled Mashaal in Cairo on Monday for a fourth term as head of the Islamic movement’s political bureau.

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Survey says Israelis are, Davka, happy

An international survey suggests that, far from the conventional view of Israelis as inveterate complainers, they are highly contented.

In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Better Life Index, rating aspects of quality of life in member and affiliate countries, Israel came eighth out of 36 in the category of “satisfaction.”

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This year’s Yom Hashoah theme is ‘defiance’

The tagline for this year’s International Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom Hashoah, is ‘Defiance and Rebellion during the Holocaust: 70 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’.

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Israel's Jewish population passes six million

As Jewish diaspora has shrunk, the number of Jews in Israel has passed the six million mark, making it the home of the largest number of Jews in world, according to a university report published in Yedioth Ahronoth.

The report attributes the figures to the increasing number of people who have made aliyah and Israel's rising birth rate.

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Suicide Mossad man leaked to Hizbollah

An Australian-Israeli who worked as a Mossad agent before hanging himself in a Tel Aviv prison unwittingly caused the arrest of two Hizbollah supporters who had been spying for Israel, according to Der Spiegel.

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Optimism over return of kidnap Israeli

Israeli sources said on Monday that the ordeal of Amir Hassan, an Israeli citizen kidnapped last Friday in Sinai and held by a Bedouin gang, was likely to be short.

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