Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is the new Prime Minister-Designate of Israel.

Israel’s prime minister denied media reports that it is negotiating with the militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, but said there will be Israeli “consultations” Sunday “regarding the situation in the south.”
“Should a decision of any kind be required, it will be made only via a meeting of the Security Cabinet and after taking into account all of the new political circumstances that have been created in the wake of the recent Israeli elections,” Yanki Galanti, the media adviser for Ehud Olmert, said Saturday night in a statement.

The Arab League has condemned Israel’s seizure of a ship carrying humanitarian aid from Lebanon to the Gaza Strip.
The league’s envoy to the United Nations, Yahya Mahmassani called the interception an act of piracy and asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to intervene.
Crew members and journalists aboard the Lebanese ship say Israel’s military fired in the ship’s direction before Israeli forces boarded the vessel. The Israeli military denied it fired on the ship.
Israeli officials said the Lebanese ship was escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod, and that any aid …

Israel threatened more strikes against Hamas on Monday hours after aircraft bombed Gaza in response to new rocket fire from the Islamist-ruled enclave.
Israeli aircraft late on Sunday targeted an empty police station in central Gaza and some seven tunnels along the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt, witnesses said.
The action came two weeks after the end of an Israeli offensive that devastated the impoverished territory and left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead.

Israeli warplanes bombed a weapons production facility in Gaza on Thursday after militants fired a rocket at Israel, in violence that defied the efforts of a visiting U.S. peace envoy to reinforce a ceasefire.
There were no reports of injuries from the predawn Israeli strike in the town of Rafah, along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Witnesses and Hamas Islamists said a metal foundry was damaged.
Moments earlier, a militant group with links to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement claimed responsibility for firing a rocket at southern Israel late on Wednesday.

Israeli airstrikes have targeted the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, as part of Israel’s response to an attack on one of its frontier patrols on Tuesday.
Residents near the town of Rafah fled as missiles hit tunnels through which Israel says militants smuggle arms.
The strikes came ahead of US envoy George Mitchell’s visit to promote a permanent Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Both sides declared ceasefires on 17 and 18 January to end Israel’s three-week offensive on Gaza.

For the first time in three weeks a fragile peace prevailed in the shattered Gaza Strip yesterday, after Hamas responded to Israel’s unilateral ceasefire by announcing a week-long truce of its own.
The Palestinian group fired at least 15 rockets and mortars into southern Israel to show that it had not been crushed. It then gave Israel seven days to withdraw its forces and open Gaza’s border crossings to allow in desperately needed humanitarian aid.

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel announced late Saturday night that the Israeli military would begin a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza within hours while negotiations continued on how to stop the resupply of Hamas through smuggling from Egypt.
Mr. Olmert, who said all Israeli objectives for the war had been reached, said Israel was responding positively to a call by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt earlier in the day for an immediate cease-fire, in a clearly orchestrated move by two countries that both see the Hamas movement in …

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Israel was poised on Saturday to call a unilateral halt to its three-week-old offensive on Gaza after winning pledges from the United States and Egypt to help prevent arms smuggling into the Hamas-run enclave.
A senior government official said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet is expected to vote in favour of a proposal at a meeting Saturday night under which Israel would silence its guns even without a reciprocal agreement from the Palestinian group which has controlled Gaza since mid 2007.
Under the terms of the …

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel said it was approaching the “endgame” of its three-week offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers and scheduled a Security Cabinet vote Saturday on a truce proposed by Egypt. Under the cease-fire plan, fighting would stop immediately for 10 days, but Israeli forces would initially remain in Gaza and the border crossings into the territory would remain closed until security arrangements are made to ensure Hamas militants do not rearm.
If Israel agrees to stop shooting, Israel radio said a truce summit would be held in Cairo …