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Excavations in the East Jordan Land13 December 2007 This year Thomas Pola, professor for theology at TU Dortmund, and his team have continued the excavations in the East Jordan Land. With their findings on the mountain Tall adh-Dhahab (West) in the Jabbok Valley the archeologists could substantiate one assumption: everything points to the fact that the building remains from the Hellenistic and Roman era, found in 2006, were part of a yet unknown monumental building of Herod the Great (73-4 BC). This assumption is based on the floors of one of the discovered peristyle yards (yards enclosed by continuous...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel has the “full right” to annex the Jordan Valley if it chose to, even as the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court warned the country against taking the bold step. Netanyahu said his proposal to annex the strategic part of the occupied West Bank was discussed during a late-night meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He said they also agreed to move forward with plans for a joint defense treaty. The longtime Israeli leader, beleaguered by a corruption indictment and political instability at home, is promoting the two...

Security officials warn that annexing the Jordan Valley could jeopardize the peace treaty with Jordan, it was claimed tonight on Channel 12 News. In the"source's" estimation, King Abdullah will find it difficult to resist the pressure and will not be able to ignore protests and condemnations or mollify objections by returning the Jordanian ambassador from Tel Aviv. Channel 12 says some fear that a wave of protests by the "Palestinians" would also stir a storm in Jordan and the King will be forced to suspend the peace treaty with Israel signed in 1994. .....

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his speech at the UN threatened to cancel PA-Israel agreements if the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea are annexed...

MOSCOW — Russia warned on Wednesday that Benjamin Netanyahu's pledge to annex the West Bank's Jordan Valley could escalate tensions as the Israeli prime minister geared up to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was concerned over Netanyahu's plan, saying its implementation could lead to a "sharp escalation of tensions in the region (and) undermine hopes for the establishment of long-awaited peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors." Moscow pointed out that Netanyahu's pre-election pledge drew a "sharp negative reaction" in the Arab world and reiterated its call for direct talks between Israel...

Jun. 18, 2006 0:24 | Updated Jun. 18, 2006 10:4511,000-year-old grain shakes up beliefs on beginnings of agriculture By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH Bar-Ilan University researchers have found a cache of 120,000 wild oat and 260,000 wild barley grains at the Gilgal archaeological site near Jericho that date back 11,000 years - providing evidence of cultivation during the Neolithic Period. The research, performed by Drs. Ehud Weiss and Anat Hartmann of BIU's department of Land of Israel studies and Prof. Mordechai Kislev of the faculty of life sciences, appears in the June 16 edition of the prestigious journal Science. It is the...

At the Fourth Conference of Israeli Agriculture, scheduled for next week, one of the main topics of discussion will be the millions of dollars in financial damage to the Jordan Valley caused by European boycotts on Judea and Samaria.Haim Alush, editor of the monthly magazine “Agriculture Feedback,” will give figures about the delegitimization campaign against Israel at the conference, which will be held at the offices of Ben Gurion Airport. Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Alush reports that “these days we know of forces organizing in Europe against supermarkets that sell Israeli produce. The owners of the chains don’t want trouble,...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made it clear on Friday that he will not evict any Israeli communities in the Jordan Valley as part of a future agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA). “I have said it before and I repeat it today: I’m not going to evict a single community, I am not going to uproot any Israeli from his home,” Netanyahu said at a press conference following his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. […] The issue of the Jordan Valley has become a point of contention...

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation voted Sunday in favor of a bill that would annex the Jordan Valley and place it under full Israeli sovereignty. Four ministers voted in favor of the draft law, which was proposed Likud MK Miri Regev. Three opposed it. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who is in charge of “peace negotiations” with the Palestinian Authority (PA) attacked the ministers who voted for the bill, and called it “an irresponsible proposal that will harm Israel and isolate it.” "Some of those who supported the bill would have opposed it, if they had known it would pass,” she...

..... All of Israel’s “peace-in-our-time” plans (including Bibi’s Jordan Valley Plan) are entirely based on variants of the 1967 Allon Plan which, like the Maginot Line defense, are based on yesterday’s technology and yesterday’s wars. IThe plan was named after famous Israeli general Yigal Allon. However, with the Israeli interception of the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) over the Negev, there is a new highly lethal and precise terrorist military weapon which could strike from a “demilitarized” Palestinian "West Bank" State with pin-point accuracy into the heart of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Killer Terrorist UAVs. Firstly, most people think that under...

A new video released Friday shows that Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner, the commander who was dismissed from his position after an edited video showed him using force to restrain a protester, may have hit four other protesters – including women riding bicycles – during the same incident. ..... It should also be noted that the video consists of two clips filmed and edited by Palestinian Authority television, a fact which may suggest it was edited, as was the original video depicting Eisner, to remove some of the protesters’ provocations. The new video shows protesters arriving on bikes to confront Eisner...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is playing with fire. And Israel is getting burned. Over the past week, it has been widely reported that the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government are conducting secret negotiations regarding future Israeli land surrenders to the Palestinians in the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem. According to the reports, the Obama administration has presented Netanyahu with a plan whereby Israel will cede its rights to eastern Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians and then lease the areas from the Palestinians for a limited period. The reports on the length of the lease vary. Some claim...

The fact of the matter is that if Israel withdrew from the Jordan Valley and it became known among the global jihadi groups that the doors to the West Bank were open, the scale of the threat would change and the Jordanians would find it difficult to effectively halt the stream of manpower and weaponry into their territory. Clearly Jordan itself would be destabilized by this development. This is exactly what happened in 2005 when al-Qaida in Iraq set up an infrastructure in Jordan and attacked hotels and government buildings. This is also what happened during Black September in 1970,...

An Israeli citizen was lightly wounded when Palestinians shot at the vehicle he was driving near the village of Bardallah, in the north of the Jordan Valley, Friday night. Palestinian gunmen opened fire at an IDF roadblock situated on the road the man was driving down. IDF Reservists at the roadblock shot back at the assailants. The wounded man was evacuated to Ha'emek Hospital in Afula for medical treatment.

April 10, 2003 Two IDF Soldiers Killed In A Clash With Terrorists This morning (April 10, 2003), at approximately 5:00am, two terrorists wearing improvised vests cut through the fence of an IDF base in the Jordan Valley and fired at soldiers in the area. During the ensuing exchanges of fire, two IDF soldiers were killed, and nine additional IDF soldiers were wounded, two of them moderately, and the rest, lightly. One terrorist was killed by an IDF force. The second terrorist fled through the breach in the fence outside the IDF base. An IDF force initiated a chase, and killed...

Update On Jordan Valley Attack (IsraelNN.com) Following is the information permitted for publication at this time pertaining to the terror attack in the northern Jordan Valley early this morning. Terrorists opened fire at Israelis early this morning at about 5:30am in the northern Jordan Valley a few kilometers east of PA-controlled Shechem, near Moshav Beka'ot. Soldiers have neutralized two terrorists. Officials believe at least one additional terrorist remains at large. As a result, area communities remain closed, first-response units remain activated, and the manhunt continues. Dr. Tzvi Ben-Yishai of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa reports six Israelis are being...