The deadly Ebola Virus is being tackled by Israeli Researchers-[1]

Jerusalem

                                                                

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:  'May those who love you be secure.  May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels.'  For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, 'Peace be within you.'”  (Psalm 122:6–8)

  

Israel and Hamas Negotiate in Cairo

"Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness."  (James 3:18)

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held a second round of indirect talks on 12, Tuesday 2014 aimed at finding a lasting end to the five-week confrontation. Because the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel, the teams do not deal directly with one another at the headquarters of the Egyptian General Intelligence.  The proposals and counter-proposals are being shuttled between the two teams by mediators. "We are facing difficult negotiations," senior Hamas member Mousa Abu Marzouk said.  "The first truce passed without notable achievements.  This is the second and final ceasefire."  (JPost) Egypt brokered the 72-hour ceasefire that ends today (August 13, 2014).

Israel's Army Radio has reported that the five-person

Israeli team in Cairo comprises senior defense

official Amos Gilad, Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen,

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s associate

Yitzhak Molcho, Maj. Gen. Nimrod Sheffer, the head

of the IDF’s Planning Directorate, and the Coordinator

of Government Activities in the Territories Yoav

Mordechai (above).

On Sunday, 10,Agust, 2014 it was uncertain whether the Israeli negotiation team would return to Cairo after Hamas resumed firing when last week’s 72-hour ceasefire ended. Two Hamas rockets were fired into southern Israel at 3:30 a.m. Friday.  By Sunday night, the terrorist organization had lobbed another 100 rockets at Israel. Last week, reports estimated that Hamas likely had 3,500 rockets left in its arsenal. While Israel had approved extending last week's truce, Hamas officials refused, even spewing threats against Israeli civilians. "When Hamas broke the ceasefire, when Hamas launched rockets and mortar shells at Israel, they broke the premise of the talks," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.  "There will not be negotiations under fire."  (Fox News) During this week's round of talks in Cairo, Hamas’ primary demand is for Israel to lift a land and sea blockade that was imposed in 2006 after Hamas kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. It is also demanding an extension of the fishing zones, and the creation of an open seaport, an airport, the opening of border crossings into Israel and Egypt, eased travel restrictions for Gazans, and the payment of the salaries of former Hamas government clerks, among other demands. There is good reason for concern that a Gaza seaport would mean free movement of any tools—of war and otherwise—into Gaza, since 350 truckloads of imported building supplies were diverted to construct each of Hamas' terror tunnels—constructed for the murdering and kidnapping of Israelis.  (Bloomberg)

The Israeli delegation is reported to be essentially demanding a return to the understandings reached at the end of Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012.

It is offering eased access to Gaza, with Israel supervising access to Gaza from its side, and Egypt supervising access from its side.  Both Israel and Egypt would work together to prevent Hamas from rearming. As well, Egypt is apparently demanding that Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority deploy security troops to the Rafah Border Crossing between Egypt and Gaza. Izzat al-Risheq, a Hamas official in Cairo, said he was not opposed to a “partnership” with the Palestinian Authority (PA). “We have notified President Abbas and the brothers in the Palestinian Authority thatwe are ready as of now—rather than today—to hand over the Rafah terminal to President Abbas,” Risheq said. He also said that there were no objections to Abbas and the PA overseeing the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. “We support the formation of a national body headed by a clean, transparent and professional personality, to be in charge of the reconstruction,” he said.  “Everyone is facing a crisis; Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.  International and regional realities have changed and we must interact with these circumstances for the sake of our people and cause.”  (JPost)

Hamas fires rockets at Israel from a densely populated area in Gaza.

  

Meanwhile, a poll published Thursday by the Israel-based Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya, reveals that 72 percent of Gazans favor a peace agreement with Israel and 92 percent want a long-term truce with their Jewish neighbours. Although many Palestinians are silent about Hamas oppression, Gazans seem to be growing increasingly at odds with their Hamas leaders, who have cost many their security by attacking Israel from behind human shields—including homes, hospitals, schools and the people themselves. One firsthand account from a source in the IDF says that during the ground operation in Gaza, he encountered a Hamas terrorist carrying a child in one arm and shooting a gun with the other. Director of Messiah's Mandate International, Ron Cantor, writes on Facebook a reminder that while Hamas was elected to the Palestinian legislature in Gaza in 2006, 2007 saw the group seize the Strip illegally from the PA through a violent takeover. "They are not a legitimate government, but a Taliban-type group that seized power illegally.  And Israel has no reason to negotiate with them.  Nor John Kerry for that matter," Cantor writes.  "They need to be defeated and de-armed." "I will make peace your governor and well-being your ruler.  No longer will violence be heard in your land, nor ruin or destruction within your borders, but you, but you will call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise."  (Isaiah 60:17–18)

Health staff in Guinea suit up in special protective gear that prevents

human-to-human transmission of Ebola.  (Photo credit: ECHO)

Israeli Researchers Tackle the Ebola Virus

Since running its course in 1976 after its first known outbreak in Africa, a current outbreak of Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses in the world, is raging in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The virus has been recognized in 1,779 cases this year, with health workers seeing a 90 percent fatality rate in the current outbreak in West Africa.  It is the largest outbreak on record. The deadly disease, marked by painful symptoms and hemorrhagic fever, has taken the lives of 1,600 since March.  (Times of Israel) The New York Times reports that Patient Zero was a 2-year-old, whose death from Ebola on December 6 was not diagnosed until March. Going unchecked for three months in a border town of Guinea, the Ebola virus killed the child’s sister, mother, and grandmother and moved across the border into Sierra Leone and Liberia, devastating entire villages, and has penetrated certain towns in Nigeria.  (ABC) "Villagers are fleeing as if it were a civil war, which increases the spread of Ebola," said Eyal Reinich, an Israeli with Doctors Without Borders.  "They disappear into jungles and other places and become vagrants.  So we’re constantly finding the virus in places we didn’t know about."  (Haaretz)

MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders) health staff in

protective clothing are sprayed down with a disinfectant when exiting the

isolation ward.

Reinich said he has seen Ebola outbreaks four times—three in Guinea—and that "the current outbreak is the worst." “The fear in the street is terrible,” Reinich said.  “If an epileptic person falls, everyone reacts hysterically and nobody helps him.” Another Israeli, United States-born virologist and physician Leslie Lobel, has focused the last 12 years studying Ebola, traveling four times a year to Uganda to study the genetic makeup and immune responses of rare Ebola survivors. Lobel, in partnership with his co-principal investigator Dr. Victoria Yavelsky and the United States military and the Uganda Virus Research Institute is currentlydeveloping a vaccine for Ebola that would make humans immune to the virus. Lobel earned his MD and doctorate in virology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York and has served as faculty at Ben-Gurion University's Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics, since making aliyah with his family in 2002, during the Second Intifada. “I figured that I should first focus on a serious virus—and Ebola is a very serious disease, lacking a cure and fatal in the majority of cases.  It is also a biodefense threat.  I thought human antibodies could be very useful for treating this viral disease,” Lobel said.  (JPost)

 

While the World Health Organization (WHO) works to contain outbreaks,

they do not fund research to develop therapeutics.  This European Mobile

Lab unit helps with Ebola diagnoses.  (Photo credit: EMLab)