Binyamin Netanyahu as reported in Haaretz tofay

“Israel expects the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, it expects that the refugee issue be resolved outside of Israel and the implementation of effective security solutions with international guarantees – all these are conditions for the advancement of a sustainable and stable peace agreement,” Netanyahu explained.

The prime minister said furthermore that Israel was ready to relaunch peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, with Syria and with any other Arab nation with no preconditions.

“Anyone who insists on preconditions is standing in the way of peace talks,” he said.

auto-deconstruction anyone?

Today in Ha'aretz

How much would I have loved to have been on that flight

Dozens of rabbis fly over Israel praying to defeat swine flu

Dozens of rabbis and Kabbalah mystics armed with ceremonial trumpets took to the skies over Israel on Monday to battle the swine flu virus, according to local media reports.

About 50 Jewish holy men chanted prayers and blew shofars (ritual rams' horns) in an aircraft circling over the country in the hope of stopping the spread of the virus, some of those involved in Monday's venture were quoted as saying.

“The aim of the flight was to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it,” Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

We are certain that, thanks to the prayer, the danger is already behind us,” added Batzri.

Tuesday's newspaper report carried a photo showing bearded and black-clad
Orthodox Jewish men standing on the steps of an aircraft of short-haul airline Arkia.