Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman made a startling announcement Thursday morning, telling the Knesset Affairs and Defense Committee that reports of Israel launching military strikes on the Mezzeh military air field near Damascus the previous day were true. He added that the strike had been carried out to prevent chemical weapons from being transferred to the Lebanese Shi’ite terror militia Hezbollah.

The Knesset bill designed to retroactively legalize close to 4,000 settlement homes passed a first reading on Wednesday with 58 MKs in favor and 51 opposed, setting the stage for the legislation to become law. “The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. We returned after 2,000 years and established a state… A nation cannot be an occupier in its own land,” MK Shuli Moalem-Refaeli (Bayit Yehudi) declared while presenting the bill, as opposition lawmakers shouted their disapproval.

International energy conglomerate Shell signed a deal with the clerical regime in Iran Wednesday to begin development of three large oil and natural gas fields in the Islamic Republic. Although it will be several years before any oil or gas is extracted from the fields, analysts noted that it is the largest crack yet to appear in the regime of sanctions on Iran following last summer’s JCPOA nuclear deal, and will likely encourage other energy companies to follow suit.

The international campaign to Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) Israel suffered another defeat on Wednesday when the Christian Democratic Union party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel passed a motion rejecting BDS and furthermore, labelling it “anti-Semitic.” “Who today under the flag of the BDS movement calls to boycott Israeli goods and services speaks the same language in which people were called to not buy from Jews. That is nothing other than coarse antisemitism,” the CDU said.

Recently, Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese media reported on a first meeting in Aleppo between Russian senior military officials and Hezbollah field commanders, whereby the two sides agreed to continue conferring on a regular basis. The timing of this meeting, prior to the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, appears to have been a calculated move, and it bears important implications for the US and Israel.