Israel

A plan to set up a Mediterranean Union, which received formal backing from the European Union on Friday, could be an example for Russia, a Russian senator said Friday.

An agreement to introduce a visa-free regime between Russia and Israel could be signed in March this year, an Israeli minister said on Tuesday. Russia and Israel announced late last year that a feasibility study had been concluded canceling

A senior official of the government of Kuwait said Tuesday that the Gulf States might ask Israel as well as the United States to guarantee their security if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear power station.

A pair of suicide bombers struck in the Israeli town of Dimona yesterday -- the first strike of its kind in more than a year. Once it was all over, a bomb disposal robot removed one of the attacker's jacket, to make sure there were no more explosives on him. (His bomb failed to go off, and police shot and killed him.) Then the machine rolled over him, to double-check.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak secretly met last week with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, Israel's Channel 2 reported Sunday. The meeting lasted about an hour, during which Barak expressed his concern over the growth of radical Islam in Pakistan, The channel reports.

Flag waving is a metaphor for stirring up the public towards adopting a more nationalistic, generally hard-line stance. Indeed, "rally 'round the flag" is a venerable expression of this phenomenon.

Israel has displaced Britain as the fourth largest exporter of weapons on the world market. Israel exported over $4 billion worth of weapons this year. The U.S. is biggest customer for Israeli military gear, accounting for nearly 20 percent of Israeli exports.

The US National Intelligence Estimate's (NIE) assertion that Iran currently does not have a nuclear weapons program has caused much frustration in Israel. Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh referred to the report as a lie at a recent breakfast in New York, and Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer reportedly "doesn't buy" its findings.

A test of a missile defense system successfully intercepted a ballistic target, the U.S. military said on Saturday, constituting a boost to the development of an anti-missile shield program.

PKK Kurdish rebel group and its sister organization, PEJAK, have been receiving support from the US and Israel, an American journalist claims.