First the first time in history, Saudi Arabia has granted permission for a commercial airline to use its airspace for flights heading to Israel, Haaretz reported. In January, Air India signed a contract with Israeli airlines El Al to launch direct flights between Delhi and Tel Aviv, the deal was awaiting Saudi to accept the passage of the aircrafts owned by the two airlines through its skies.

Israel's Channel 2 reported that a team of top Israeli police officials will seek charges of accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust.

Israel has formally begun a process to deport thousands of African asylum seekers. They have been asked to leave the Jewish-majority state or face imprisonment. In the first round, up to 20,000 illegal immigrants, mostly from war-torn Sudan and Eritrea, will receive notices.

The door to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office "is open," top Israeli official told Walmart, according to Bloomberg News

A new Polish law criminalizes blaming Poles for any wrongdoing against other nations. But the move only serves to highlight the fact that some Poles were complicit in crimes against Jews, while jeopardizing the country's relationship with its three most important allies: the US, Germany, and Ukraine.

Two authors of an op-ed in the New Zealand blog The Spinoff are reportedly being sued for their alleged role in inspiring Lorde to call off a concert in Tel Aviv. By Winston Cook-Wilson.

Following a number of foreign-policy miscalculations, Israel and its allies in the Trump administration could be setting us up for more trouble in the Middle East, warns Alastair Crooke in this analysis.

Slovenia will recognize the Palestinian Authority as an independent state, the southern European nation’s Foreign Minister told Israel Monday night, despite recent claims to the contrary by the Slovenian president. Last week, President Borut Pahor told AFP he did not expect that a proposal to recognize Palestinian statehood would pass, and expressed his opposition to such a move.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protested a bill passed by the lower house of the Polish parliament which would make it illegal to use terms such as “Polish death camps” to refer to the camps set up by the Nazis. “The law is baseless; I strongly oppose it,” Netanyahu said in a statement Saturday. “One cannot change history and the Holocaust cannot be denied. I have instructed the Israeli Ambassador to Poland to meet with the Polish Prime Minister this evening and express to him my strong position against the law.”

A new book also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation poisoning to kill Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, an act its officials have consistently denied. Poisoned toothpaste that takes a month to end its target’s life. Armed drones. Exploding cell phones. Spare tires with remote-control bombs. Assassinating enemy scientists and discovering the secret lovers of Islamic holy men...

Israeli settlers in the northern occupied West Bank have razed to the ground huge swathes of Palestinian-owned agricultural land in the town of Huwara, according to reports. The fields were set on fire by "masked settlers", Al-Resalah newspaper reports, who snuck on to the land and poured petrol on it before setting it alight. Around 100 olive trees were destroyed in the blaze, which spread as locals were prevented from attending the fire by Israeli forces.

The discovery could rewrite the migration story of our species, pushing back by about 50,000 years when Homo sapiens were thought to have first left Africa.

A three-year-old Palestinian was shot in the head during an Israeli “military training” session in the northern occupied West Bank city of Tubas. According to a statement by the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health, the child was hit in the head with live bullets. He was taken to Rafidia Surgical hospital in Nablus.

The Israeli government has issued a notice for thousands of African migrants to leave the country or face imprisonment. The migrants will be given up to $3,500 (£2,600) for leaving within the next 90 days. They will be given the option of going to their home country or third countries. If they do not leave, the Israeli authorities have threatened that they will start jailing them from April.

A class action lawsuit was filed Monday in Israel against Apple, accusing the company of breaching its duty toward users by failing to disclose that “innocent” software updates would slow the performance of older model iPhones. The $125 million lawsuit was filed in Tel Aviv and comes on the heels of at least four other lawsuits filed in the United States. The lawsuits were filed after the disclosure last week by Apple that it provided software updates that slowed the phones in order to make aging batteries last longer.

Pope Francis used his Christmas message on Monday to call for a negotiated two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after U.S. President Donald Trump stoked regional tensions with his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

President Jimmy Morales follows Donald Trump by announcing plans to relocate his country’s embassy to the disputed city

For Holy Land Christians, President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital was about as welcome as a biblical curse. For American evangelical Christians, it has been welcomed as an auspicious sign from on high. The divide reflects two diverging views of Jerusalem.

Thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday for the second consecutive week against government corruption and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under criminal investigation over allegations of abuse of office. Police estimated the number of demonstrators at about 10,000 and they followed last Saturday’s demonstration, by far the largest of ongoing weekly anti-corruption protests when an estimated 20,000 people participated.

Trump has turned away from any notion of fairness in peace negotiations and run with Israel’s ball. By Robert Fisk.