The Times of Israel is liveblogging Monday’s events as they unfold.
Liberman: Netanyahu’s ‘state of darkness’ is trying destroy Zionist liberal Israel
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman warns that presumed incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands at the head of a “state of darkness” that is trying to destroy “Zionist, liberal Israel.”
Speaking at his party’s faction meeting at the Knesset, Liberman decries the agenda of the far-right religious parties joining with Likud in the next coalition.
“In recent weeks we have seen some disturbing phenomena — starting with an attempt to establish two states for one people and ending with an attempt to enact the override law,” Liberman says.
“Netanyahu is at the head of the state of darkness that is trying to destroy Zionist, liberal Israel,” he says.
Israeli woman hurt when car stoned in West Bank
An Israeli woman is lightly hurt when her car is stoned by Palestinians on Route 505 in the West Bank, medics say.
The Magen David Adom ambulance says the 29-year-old continued driving after the attack and met up with medics at Tapuah Junction.
She is taken to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva with injuries to her face from shrapnel, MDA says.
Sudan’s military, civilian factions sign deal seeking to end crisis
Sudan’s military and civilian leaders sign Monday an initial deal aimed at ending a deep crisis that has gripped the northeast African country since a coup a year ago.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized power in October 2021, derailing a rocky transition to civilian rule that had started after the 2019 ouster of veteran autocrat Omar al-Bashir.
The past year has seen near-weekly protests and a crackdown that pro-democracy medics say has killed at least 121, a spiraling economic crisis and a rise in ethnic violence in several remote regions.
Divisions among civilian groups have deepened since the coup, with some urging a deal with the military while others insist on “no partnership, no negotiation.”
Monday’s deal was signed by Burhan, paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and multiple civilian groups, most notably the Forces for Freedom and Change — the main civilian faction that was ousted in the coup.
The deal — based on a proposal by the Sudanese Bar Association — was negotiated in the presence of officials from the United Nations, Western diplomats as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the FFC.
A normalization deal signed between Sudan and Israel has largely been on hold since the coup.
Activists dismiss claim Iran morality police abolished
Campaigners backing Iran’s protest movement dismiss a claim that the Islamic Republic is disbanding its notorious morality police, insisting there was no change to its restrictive dress rules for women.
There are also calls on social media for a three-day strike, more than two months into the wave of civil unrest sparked by the death of Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.
Amini was accused of flouting Iran’s strict dress code demanding women wear modest clothing and the hijab headscarf, and her death sparked protests that have spiraled into the biggest challenge to the regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, in a surprise move over the weekend, was quoted as saying that the morality police units –- known as gasht-e ershad (guidance patrol) — had been closed down.
But activists are skeptical about his comments, which appeared to be an impromptu response to a question at a conference rather than a clearly signposted announcement on the morality police, which is run by the interior ministry.
Moreover, they say, the abolition would mark no change to Iran’s headscarf policy — a key ideological pillar for its clerical leadership — but rather a switch in tactics on enforcing it.
Scrapping the units would be “probably too little too late” for the protesters who now demand outright regime change, Roya Boroumand, co-founder of the US-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center rights group, tells AFP.
