Middle East & North Africa

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel and Bahrain will open embassies soon, their foreign ministers said on Wednesday, as the two countries look to broaden cooperation that Washington has promoted as an anti-Iran alliance and potential economic bonanza.

On a first official visit by Bahraini officials to Israel, the Gulf kingdom’s foreign minister, Abdullatif Al-Zayani, said his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Asshkenazi, would visit Manama in December.

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: The Palestinian Authority will resume civil and security cooperation with Israel suspended in May over a now-frozen Israeli plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian minister said on Tuesday.

Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh wrote on Twitter that "the relationship with Israel will return to how it was" after President Mahmoud Abbas received confirmation that Israel remained committed to past agreements with the Palestinians.

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that the government will impose tighter measures to respond to surging numbers of coronavirus patients and impose partial lockdowns at weekends across the country.

"A lockdown restriction will be imposed outside the hours of 1000-2000 over the weekends in a way that will not disrupt supply and production chains," Erdogan said.

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Turkey's parliament on Tuesday approved the deployment of troops to join Russian forces at an observation post in Nagorno-Karabakh after Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a Russian-brokered ceasefire deal to end fighting over the enclave.

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iran's health minister warned on Tuesday that coronavirus deaths may more than double soon if Iranians flout rules aimed at containing the virus, as new cases surged to a record high in the Middle East's worst-hit country.

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Bahrain's first official government delegation to Israel set off on Wednesday on the first Gulf Air commercial flight to Tel Aviv, as the two countries look to broaden cooperation after establishing formal ties in September in a US-brokered accord.

Gulf Air flight GF972 – a reference to Israel's telephone country code – took off from Manama airport in the morning bound for Tel Aviv, according to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Israel said it launched airstrikes against Syrian army and Iranian Quds Force targets in Syria on Wednesday after explosive devices were planted in the Israeli-held Golan Heights.

The Syrian state news agency reported that three military personnel were killed and one was wounded in "Israeli aggression".

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran would fully implement its 2015 nuclear deal if US President-elect Joe Biden lifts sanctions on Tehran, which Zarif said could be done swiftly through "three executive orders".

18 Nov 2020; MEMO: Protests were renewed yesterday in the Tunisian governorate of Tataouine a day after the general coordinator of El Kamour sit-in, Dhaou El-Ghoul, was arrested.

The arrest of El-Ghoul came a week after the government of Hichem Mechichi signed an agreement with demonstrators in Tataouine, ending the movement which has lasted nearly four years.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli warplanes struck Iran-linked targets in Syria overnight after troops uncovered roadside bombs along the frontier in the Golan Heights, the Israeli military said Wednesday. Syrian state-media said the strikes killed three Syrian soldiers.

A Syrian war monitoring group said the strikes killed 10, including the three Syrian soldiers and at least five Iranians. The report could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from Iran.