Israel Active

The IDF is issuing thousands of entry permits to allow Palestinian Christians to travel between Israel, Gaza, Judea and Samaria for the entire holiday season.

Israel’s Alpine soldiers this year again took Palestinian Arab children suffering with cancer on a trip to Mount Hermon.

The Negev and Galilee Regional Development Ministry will contribute NIS 6 million to the total NIS 22m cost of project Project Wadi Attir – a future ecological community that combines Bedouin values with modern renewable technology and farming expertise.

Representatives from both countries plus Indonesia, Bangladesh and Tunisia visited the KKL-JNF booth at UN’s Climate Change conference in Durban. Others included Brazil, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Peru, Togo and eleven African states.

Google has launched its voice search for Apple's iPhones and Android in Hebrew and Arabic. The upgrade is significant; until now voice identification software could not handle Hebrew, and had to cope with Hebrew-accented English. Users will be able to search the internet by talking directly into their phones.

A delegation of Israeli mohels (ritual circumcisors) has just returned from a two-week trip to Africa. They prepared the UN medical team UNAIDS for their five-year program to circumcise an estimated 20 million African men in order to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus.

Hideo Sato first came to Israel in 1977 as a student at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. He addressed Israeli President Shimon Peres in fluent, flawless Hebrew, correctly pronouncing the letter “resh,” which many Japanese find difficult. New envoys from South Korea, Myanmar (Burma), Macedonia and Paraguay also presented their credentials. Korea’s Kim Il Soo said his predecessor had impressed upon him that he was going to a very important nation.

Minister of National Infrastructures Dr. Uzi Landau announced that Israel and Cyprus were in advanced discussions about linking their electricity grids in order to provide mutual backups in the event of a supply failure in either country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu awarded the Prize for Initiative and Innovation at the Hebrew University to Israeli scientists and entrepreneurs. The winners included two non-profit organizations, a high-tech Arab company and a company dedicated to uncovering old land mines.

The initiative, making agricultural technologies more accessible to under-developed nations, could have been passed automatically, but the Arab bloc demanded a vote. One hundred and thirty-three nations voted in favour of the Israeli proposal, while 35 mainly Arab countries abstained.