In June 2011, officials of the Israeli city of Yehud announced they would undertake a massive construction project to replicate Lugano's old square in the center of their city, to reinvigorate commerce and tourism.

Despite having no industry and minimal commerce, as well as a population that is generally weak economically, Beitar Illit has been awarded the Israeli Interior Ministry's gold prize for a balanced budget seven years running.

* Gonen Segev ( born 1956 ), is a former Israeli member of Knesset and government minister and pediatrician who was convicted for an attempt of drug smuggling, for forgery and electronic commerce fraud

However, Chad has not recognised the State of Israel since former Chadian President François ( Ngarta ) Tombalbaye broke off relations in September 1972 as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians, and other Arabs under Israeli occupation.

Historically, control of the Israeli government has alternated between periods of rule by the right-wing Likud in coalition with several right-wing and religious parties and periods of rule by the center-left Labor in coalition with several left-wing parties.

Since the beginning of the second Intifada the DFLP has carried out a number of shooting attacks against Israeli targets, such as the 25 August 2001 attack on a military base in Gaza that killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded seven others.

The Egyptian Chief of Intelligence, General Omar Suleiman, has played a substantial role in negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian sides and is highly respected on both sides.

The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall.

* Derek Gregory ( born 1951 ), famous for writing on the Israeli, U. S. and UK actions in the Middle East after 9 / 11, influenced by Edward Said and has contributed work on imagined geographies.

Since then the Israeli economy has gradually moved to capitalism and a free market economy, partially retaining the social welfare system.

In addition to killing Israeli civilians and armed forces, Hamas has also attacked suspected Palestinian collaborators, and Fatah rivals.

In the wake of the Israeli invasion of Gaza in January 2009, Hamas has been accused of systematically rounding up, torturing and summarily executing Fatah supporters suspected of supplying information to Israel.

Syria has denied supplying these weapons and views these claims as an Israeli excuse for an attack.

American and Israeli counter-terrorism officials claim that Hezbollah has ( or had ) links to Al Qaeda, although Hezbollah's leaders deny these allegations.

According to Michel Samaha, Lebanon ’ s minister of information, Hezbollah is seen as a legitimate resistance organization that has defended its land against an Israeli occupying force and has consistently stood up to the Israeli army.

President Wahid has pursued better relations with Israel, and in August 2000 he met with former Israeli Prime Minister Peres.

The situation is further complicated by the Israeli West Bank barrier, which has separated certain parts of the West Bank such that they have become contiguous with sovereign Israel.

However, Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens in various Israeli controlled settlements in the West Bank.

According to some sources, the Reform movement has maintained that a Jew who has converted to another religion is no longer a Jew, and the Israeli Government has also taken that stance after Supreme Court cases and statutes.

The Masorti Movement's Israeli seminar also rejected a change in its view of the status of homosexual conduct, stating that " Jewish law has traditionally prohibited homosexuality.

* The commentary by Rabbi Pinhas Kehati, which is written in Modern Israeli Hebrew and based on classical and contemporary works, has become popular in the late Twentieth Century.

It has been claimed that the German authorities, under the leadership of Chancellor Willy Brandt and Minister for the Interior Hans-Dietrich Genscher, rejected Israel's offer to send an Israeli special forces unit to Germany.

Many experienced officers had left the army after the war, and the Israeli society had undergone a difficult period of impoverishment.

The Israeli Pirate radios experienced prosperity which happened in tandem with the establishment of legal regional radio stations, and to the reorganization of the military radio stations in 1993 ( the establishment of Galgalatz in tandem with the Israel Defense Forces Radio, instead of the former two stations " Army 1 " and " Army 2 ").

There were growing fearsespecially among Western, Egyptian, and Israeli intelligence agencies — that Egypt was on the brink of a Muslim fundamentalist revolution like the appalling one Iran had experienced two years earlier.

The Israeli lira, followed by the old sheqel, both experienced frequent devaluations against the US dollar and other foreign currencies starting in the early 1960s and accelerating from the mid-1970s onwards.

In 2000, Ayalon was replaced by Avi Dichter, an ex-Sayeret Matkal commando and an experienced Shabak agent, tightened the working relationship with the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli police.

In June 2012, the Toronto city council voted to condemn the phrase " Israeli apartheid ," as part of a resolution recognizing the gay Pride Toronto parade as a “ significant cultural event that strongly promotes the ideals of tolerance and diversity .” The resolution said it slams the term Israel Apartheid for undermining the values of Pride and diminishing “ the suffering experienced by individuals during the apartheid regime in South Africa .”

Schayes coached the US Maccabiah Games basketball team to a gold medal in the 1977 Maccabiah Games, beating a more experienced Israeli team in an upset win.

According to an Israeli military observer Haim ' Arev, the soldiers of the Guardians of the Cedars were the best and most experienced fighters among the militias that constituted the Lebanese Front.

The editor-in-chief is Amnon Lord, an experienced Israeli journalist and writer who started his career in the left-wing Peace Now movement, editing its now-defunct weekly Koteret Rashit.

Most of the band members are experienced musicians on the Israeli music scene.

* Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Caesarea Development Corporation Ltd., the private corporation filling much of the role typically filled by a municipality for the Israeli city of Caesarea

While modern M16s and equipment are standard issue, much of the secondary equipment used by the Ghanaian military is generally older than that used in Western military forces, and Ghanaian troops frequently rely on British, Brazilian, Swiss, Swedish, Israeli, and Finnish weaponry.

However conflict with the Arab states and the Palestinians, much of whose territory was occupied by Israel during the 1967 war, continues to play a major role in Israeli ( and international ) political, social and economic life.

Also academics note that since much of what is known about Manichaeism comes from later 10th and 11th Century CE Islamic historians like Al-Biruni and especially the Shia Muslim Persian historian Ibn al-Nadim ( and his work Fihrist ); " Islamic authors ascribed to Mani the claim to be the Seal of the Prophets " This topic is discussed by an Israeli academic Guy G. Stroumsa

Subsequently, in what is known in Egypt as the Tripartite Aggression, Israeli forces, aided by Britain, and France ( which sought to reverse the nationalisation and regain control over the Suez Canal ), invaded Sinai and occupied much of the peninsula within a few days.

Rabin's assassination came as a great shock to the Israeli public and much of the rest of the world.

On the morning of 5 June, the Israeli Air Force ( IAF ) struck Egyptian air fields, destroying much of the Egyptian Air Force.

For example, the Israeli haredim are often much more isolated from general society than their Diaspora counterparts.

Foreign films where the majority of the dialogue is in English cannot qualify for the Foreign Language Film Award, and the Academy has usually applied this requirement very seriously by disqualifying films containing too much English dialogue, the most recent case being that of the Israeli film The Band's Visit ( 2007 ).

Similarly, the expansion of Israeli settlements and blockades caused the deterioration of economic conditions, and much frustration for Palestinians.

In general, as English is taught early on across all Israeli schools, most Israelis become comfortably bilingual, much like what one would see in The Netherlands or Scandinavian countries.

The first Israeli presidents were born in the former Russian Empire, which was true of much of the leadership in the early days of the state.

Peres personally led a tour of top Israeli executives through the West Bank, and told them about many new Palestinian businesses which show much growth potential.

They then fight their way back to Israeli territory, taking with them as much military equipment as they can, along with 120 – 150 prisoners.

Only 25 % of the Israeli public thought his positions on Camp David were just right as opposed to 58 % of the public that thought Barak compromised too much.

On 4 May 1948 Abdullah, as a part of the effort to seize as much of Palestine as possible, sent in the Arab Legion to attack the Israeli settlements in the Etzion Bloc.

He argued that Israel's largest labor union, the Histadrut, has so much power as to be capable of paralyzing the Israeli economy, and claimed that the main causes of unemployment are laziness and excessive benefits to the unemployed.

The development of Israeli culture was very much influenced by aliyah or immigration waves, and by Jews in the Holy Land, making modern day Israel a rich mixture of vibrant diversity.

Article 417 of the Israeli Penal code of 1977, incorporating much legislation inherited from British and Ottoman times, sets two years ' imprisonment as the punishment for " witchcraft, fortune telling, or magic for pay ".

Further in other areas such as East Jerusalem the UN in May 2009 noted that " only 13 percent of East Jerusalem land is currently zoned by the Israeli authorities for Palestinian construction, and much of that is already built up " While the settlers constitute 17 % of the residents of the West Bank ( 300, 000 out of a total population of 1. 8 million ), the built up areas in the settlements occupy just 1. 7 % of the West Bank ; and if they continue to build solely at the rate of their natural growth ( 9, 000 births per year ), they will consume over the next decade a total of just one-half of one per cent in an area already delineated as their " municipal boundaries ".

In 1979, the Antars began depositing much of this money ( hundreds of thousands of dollars ) in Israeli bank accounts.

After much debate, commissioners also voted to adopt the recommendations of the Report of the Working Group on Israel / Palestine Policy, which included a controversial boycott of products from Israeli settlements and a campaign of " encouraging members of the United Church to avoid any and all products produced in the settlements.

The 1980s were especially bleak: much of Beirut lay in ruins, as a result of the 1976 Karantina massacre carried out by the Lebanese Front ( LF ), the Syrian Army shelling of Christian neighborhoods in 1978 and 1981, and the Israeli invasion that evicted the PLO from the country.

There are no territorial claims from either side … The Israeli peace movement should support Israel's attempt at self-defense, pure and simple, as long as this operation targets mostly Hezbollah and spares, as much as possible, the lives of Lebanese civilians.