Netanyahu bloc drops 4 seats as TV poll forecasts unaligned Hendel-Zelekha party will enter Knesset

Trump shows off new Air Force One, defends taking it as gift from Qatari royal family

US President Donald Trump shows off the new Air Force One and defends accepting the luxury jet from the Qatari royal family as he campaigns for Republicans in an economically struggling corner of rural Arizona.

His first substantive comments after he gets off the plane to address the airport rally describes learning that the Qataris had “the best of all the 747s.” He says he called to ask the country’s leader to borrow the aircraft before the emir offered it instead as a gift.

Trump accepted the airplane last year despite strong bipartisan criticism, including from some of his staunchest Republican supporters.

“When you’re given gifts, you take ’em, right?” Trump tells the crowd in Bullhead City. “When they give you a 747 you say two words: ‘thank you.’”

Trump is on his second day of a Western campaign swing and is headed to a Republican-leaning US House district in Montana after Arizona, continuing a midterm roadshow designed to rally the GOP. He campaigned in Alaska on Tuesday and in Ohio on Monday.

Israel said blocking US firm from breaking ground on Gaza base for international troops

Israel is holding up the construction of a military base in Gaza intended for international forces as part of the US-led Board of Peace’s plan for the coastal enclave, according to a report in the Guardian.

Citing a person with knowledge of the matter, the British newspaper says Jerusalem hasn’t authorized construction to begin on the project, two months after a US company won a tender to build an outpost for 150 troops, with contractors and trucks blocked from Gaza.

“Israel won’t open the border,” the sources is quoted as saying, lamenting that without the deployment of the International Stablization Force in Gaza, “You can’t rebuild.”

“There’s no security. There’s no deliveries of construction equipment. You can’t even start putting utilities. You can’t start putting in basic life-support facilities you know because without the ISF you can’t go in,” the source continues, adding that the Board of Peace believes Israel will give the go-ahead for the project after the Knesset elections on October 27.

Netanyahu bloc drops 4 seats in weekly TV poll as another unaligned party forecast to enter Knesset

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of right-wing factions falls by four seats in Channel 13’s weekly poll, as the non-aligned party led by former minister Yoaz Hendel and economist Yaron Zelekha is forecast to squeeze past the minimum vote threshold.

Together, Netanyahu’s Likud and its allies have 51 seats in the survey, versus 50 for the opposition bloc led by former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot, both well short of the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority. Parties unaffiliated with neither bloc — the predominantly-Arab Joint List, Islamist Ra’am and the Hendel-Zelekha alliance — pick up the remaining 19 seats, some 15% of the total in the 120-seat Knesset.

Eisenkot’s Yashar party is the largest in the poll with 20 seats, followed by Likud at 18, B’Yachad 12, Yisrael Beytenu nine, Democrats nine, Joint List nine, Otzma Yehudit eight, United Torah Judaism eight, Shas seven, Religious Zionism six, Ra’am six, People of Israel four and Hendel-Zelekha four.

The survey, which was conducted by Madad pollsters Shmuel Rosner and Noah Slepkov, included 1,018 respondents, with a 3.1% margin of error.

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Senior Iranian official: Despite talks, Iran must be prepared to ‘fight courageously’

Iran must be prepared for war even as it negotiates with the US, says the country’s parliament speaker.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says in a televised speech that his country’s main concern is preventing the United States from attacking again. But he adds that a signed agreement with Washington is no guarantee.

“They break their promises,” says Ghalibaf. As a result, Iran must be prepared to fight “against a bullying enemy,” and “we must truly fight courageously on the battlefield.”

“That is when we will have achieved sustainable deterrence,” he says. “America must be punished. America must change its behavior. It must understand that it has to come to terms with the Iranian people.”

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