Israeli law enforcement, including police and border police, are deployed throughout East Jerusalem and the Old City as security precaution some 135,000 Muslim worshipers travel from the West Bank and throughout Israel to attend prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque for the first Friday of Ramadan.
Some streets in East Jerusalem have been shut down to accommodate traffic to the conflict-embroiled area at the Har Habayis compound.
Police warned that they would “act decisively against anyone who tries to disrupt the peace,” and encouraged worshipers to adhere to police orders.
Read more at i24NEWS.

Israel is set to begin easing restrictions in place on the Gaza Strip on Friday, in a test of the fragile calm on the border a week after a deadly escalation that nearly brought the sides to the brink of an all-out war.
A statement from COGAT, the defense ministry liaison responsible for affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that a 12-nautical mile fishing zone off Gaza’s coast would be re-opened Friday.
Border crossings in and out of the Strip were re-opened at midnight, at the end of Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day. Such closures are standard around Israeli public holidays.
Read more at i24NEWS.

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Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, celebrated Independence Day on Thursday with what appears to be a enigmatic riddle.
An image posted on the agency’s Facebook page showed blurry rows of Mossad logos, some only partially visible. It is fashioned like a screenshot from a videotape, with the word “play” in the upper left corner and the time stamp 00:01:11.
Also shown is the date of Israel’s Independence Day — May 14, 1948. Included in the post is the website name “r-u-ready-4.it.”
According to Israeli news site Mako, the image may be a recruiting tool. Those who succeed in solving the riddle may be given information on how to contact the agency.

The founding of the State of Israel was “one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview on Wednesday.
Speaking with Robert Costa of The Washington Post, the 17-term Democratic congresswoman from California called the Jewish state “our most serious friend in the Middle East.”
“Israel’s security is very, very important to us,” she emphasized.

Police in Berlin were facing criticism over their handling of antisemitic hate crimes on Thursday, after a prominent local politician claimed that officers were assigning right-wing extremist motives to a large number of offenders without sufficient evidence.
Marcel Luthe — a member of Berlin’s state parliament for the liberal FDP Party — disclosed earlier this week that up to 60 percent of antisemitic offenses had been incorrectly blamed on the far right, thereby diminishing the role played by Muslim extremists and militant anti-Zionists in attacking Jewish targets.
Luthe said that government figures for 2018 showed there had been 324 antisemitic acts recorded in Berlin, of which 253 were classified as having come from the extreme right.

Two dozen Spanish city councils are facing legal action for promoting “antisemitic discrimination” by endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, a Madrid-based group behind the lawsuits said this week.
ACOM said the city councils in questions have approved measures describing themselves a “Space Free of Israeli Apartheid,” in support of BDS. The declarations amount to discrimination “for reasons of race, religion, beliefs or national origin,” in violation of the Spanish constitution, according to the group.

 
As Israel turned 71 on Thursday, an ex-top defense official gave his assessment of the evolution of the country’s security doctrine.
Speaking with Israel’s Channel 13, a former head of the National Security Council, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, said, “On a strategic level, Israel has always been defensive, a policy according to which you live with the current situation and do not initiate a war to change it.”
This led Israel to adopt a policy of only fighting a “war of no choice.” That is, a war in which the very existence of the state was threatened by the enemy.
In the 1956 Sinai Campaign and the 1967 Six-Day War, Eiland noted, “we fired the first shot, but it was out of a sense of no choice, because of the actions of the other side.”