The Israeli Cabinet this week accepted, with reservations, the Quartet's proposal for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians.

On Sunday, the Cabinet approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to accept the framework for negotiations proposed two weeks ago by the Quartet.

The proposal includes the resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians without pre-conditions.

The Palestinian Authority is furious with former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the Mideast envoy of the international Quartet, for applying diplomatic pressure on President Mahmoud Abbas not to seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN.

Daniel Taub, the new Israeli ambassador to the UK, used events organised by Conservative Friends of Israel at the Conservative Party conference to thank the coalition government for "coming through" on amending the legislation on universal jurisdiction.

An arson attack on a mosque in Israel's north this week escalated into a two-day rioting spree increasing the security services' fears of extreme right-wing violence.

The arsonists set light to the mosque in the village of Tuba Zangaria in the Upper Galilee in the early hours of Monday morning, causing major damage to the building's interior and burning hundreds of Korans and other prayer-books

Education Secretary Michael Gove has intervened to ask primary schools to pull their pupils out of a literature festival organised by pro-Palestinian campaigners.

Mr Gove wrote to headteachers after learning of the plans for youngsters to attend workshops at the Tottenham Palestine Literary Festival.

Eight schools from the north London boroughs of Islington and Haringey had signalled their i

Nobody has a crystal ball that tells them what the next year holds for Jewry, but David Passig has the next best thing - credentials as Israel's leading "futurologist".

He predicted the world economic crash, the flourishing of wireless technology and, almost a decade before 9/11, wrote that humanity should expect a terrorist attack against "a symbol of the world order".

Unsurprisingly, he is

The Middle East peace process is riddled with contradictions and paradoxes.

It is always chastening to bear in mind, for example, that a two-state solution would result in a so-called "apartheid" Israel with a significant population of Arab citizens and a supposedly "free" Palestine without Jews.

In his much-anticipated speech to the United Nations General Assembly today, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that he would be willing to return to the negotiating table with Israel with on condition that the international community recognise a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and that Israel cease all settlement building.