SECURITY/DEFENSE:

*10:40 am: An Arab was apprehended at the Bet Iba Ckpt. in Shomron with a pipe bomb.

*17:29: A mortar shell landed in S. Gaza without injuries.

POLITICS, DOMESTIC & MORE:

*Tuesday is the 25th yahrzeit of Rav Mordechai Sharabi.

*Nobel Prize laureate Eli Wiesel, 80, on Monday received an honorary doctorate from Weizmann Institute of Science in Rechovot. Wiesel arrived for 48 hours to take part in the ceremony.

*A security guard in a Jaffa Street postal building in Yerushalayim was lightly injured in a hand when his weapon discharged accidentally on Tuesday morning. He was transported to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.

*A white Volkswagen Israel Police vehicle with a two-way communications unit inside was stolen from an area in central Israel on Monday night.

*Israeli citizen 40-year-old Michael Rovnik has been identified as the diamond merchant murdered in a heist in S. Africa earlier in the week. Rovnik has been living abroad for a number of years.

*After opposition MKs amassed enough signatures, the Knesset next week will meet in special session to discuss the sharp deterioration in the situation in the south regarding rocket attacks.

*Egyptian court overrules a government decision and has canceled Egypt’s plans for a natural gas deal with Israel.

*Kadima MK Otniel Schneller has called on Ministers Livni, Barak and Dichter to hold off any forced evacuation of Bet HaShalom until after the general election in February.

*An armed Israeli was taken into custody after entering a PA (Palestinian Authority) area of Chevron on Tuesday.

*Several dozen people on Tuesday evening blocked the road near Yishuv N’vei Tzuf in Shomron in protest over the army removing a container earlier in the day which served as a makeshift outpost.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)