ROYAL MEETING Foreign Minister Yair Lapid met Bahrain’s King Hamid bin Issa al-Khalifa at the royal palace in Manama on September 30, the first public meeting between the monarch and an Israeli official. A day later, Lapid inaugurated Israel’s embassy in the United Arab Emirates, hailing it as a historic moment. “We are standing here today because we chose peace over war, cooperation over conflict, the good of our children over the bad memories of the past,” Lapid said.
ARAD MISSION Speaking at the opening of the Knesset winter session on October 4, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett revealed that the Mossad had conducted an operation in September to discover the fate of Israeli Air Force navigator Ron Arad, who was declared missing after crashing over Lebanon in 1986. “It was a complex, large-scale and daring operation,” said Bennett. The London-based Arabic website Rai al-Youm reported that Mossad agents had kidnapped an Iranian general connected to the Arad affair and taken him from Syria to an African country for interrogation.
UN ADDRESS In his maiden speech to the UN General Assembly on September 27, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned of the dangers posed by a nuclear Iran and touted the Abraham Accords, his unity government and its successful booster campaign against corona, but did not mention the Palestinian issue. Bennett upset Israeli health officials by saying that “while doctors are an important input, they cannot be the ones running the national initiative. The only person who has a good vantage point of all considerations is the national leader of any given country.”
MEETING ABBAS Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Ramallah on October 3 with Israeli cabinet ministers Nitzan Horowitz and Isawi Frej from the Meretz party in Ramallah. Horowitz, the health minister, later wrote on Twitter, “We have a common mission: to maintain the hope of a peace founded on the two-state solution.” According to Wafa, Abbas “stressed the importance of ending the Israeli occupation and achieving a just and comprehensive peace.”
JENIN CLASHES IDF soldiers and Palestinian gunmen exchanged fire in at least four towns in the West Bank in the early hours of September 26 during raids to capture members of a Hamas cell planning a terrorist attack in Israel, the army said. The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry reported five Palestinian casualties from clashes in Biddu, outside Jenin, while the IDF said a platoon commander and a soldier from the Duvdevan unit were seriously wounded in the firefight.
BABYN YAR The presidents of Ukraine, Israel and Germany on October 6 inaugurated a memorial center for the victims of the Babyn Yar massacre in Ukraine eight decades after one of the most infamous Nazi mass slaughters. “Babi Yar is the biggest mass grave of the Holocaust,” said Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the supervisory board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial center.
TRAGIC CRASH A mother and her three children were among the five victims of a traffic accident on Route 89 in the Upper Galilee on September 29 that involved a bus taking children home from a Bnei Akiva group trip for Sukkot, a van and a private car with a family of five from Ma’alot-Tarshiha. Moran Ben-Eli (35) and her three children Dekel (15), Liam (11) and Annael (5) were killed, as was bus driver Asher Basson (76), a great-grandfather from Kiryat Yam. Moran’s husband, Reuven, who was released from hospital to attend his family’s funerals the next day, was one of some 50 people injured.
EMMY AWARD The Israeli film Advocate won best documentary at the 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards on September 29. Originally produced for Hot 8 and directed by Rachel Leah Jones and Phillippe Bellaiche for PBS, the film follows the groundbreaking work of human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel, who is now 76, as she represents Palestinian political prisoners. Meanwhile, Eran Kolirin’s controversial Palestinian-Israeli drama Let It Be Morning swept the 30th Ophir Awards in Haifa on October 5, winning seven awards – including Best Picture – and becoming Israel’s entry to the Oscars for Best International Feature.