NewsBank (Globes (Rishon LeZion, Israel))

After a long day of tense negotiations and brinkmanship, the second group of Israeli hostages in the current pause in fighting entered Israel close to Saturday midnight, accompanied by IDF forces and Shin Bet operatives. They were escorted out of Gaza to the Rafah crossing by the International Red Cross.

Second-hand apartments sold

The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will come into force at 7:00 tomorrow morning (Friday), and that at 4 pm Israel will receive the first thirteen hostages to be released by Hamas. The Mossad, Israel's intelligence and special operations agency, has been handed a list of the names of all the hostages who will be released.

In previous rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas, there was a kind of constant competition between Egypt and Qatar on successful mediation, demonstrating their importance in the Arab world and their ability to sway Israel for the benefit of Gazans and the Palestinians. Sometimes Egypt would prevail and other times Qatar, especially when large investment in the Gaza Strip was required. In...

Israel will record zero economic growth in real terms in 2023, according to an updated forecast released today by the chief economist in the Ministry of Finance, Shmuel Abramson. According to the economic review, the effect of the Iron Swords war will be to reduce economic growth to just 2%, which amounts to stagnation, taking into account the growth of the population.

The release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza has been delayed. Last night head of the National Security Council Tzachi Hanegbi announced that the first batch of the 50 hostages to be released in exchange for a pause in fighting and release of Palestinian security prisoners would not take place today as initially planned.

Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, Sam Lessin, the former Facebook VP product management and today a serial tech investor, has become an unofficial ambassador for Israel. From his point of view, the Silicon Valley based Jewish-American investor believes that Israel is on the right side of history and is defending itself against the threat of a massacre and represents western democracy in the...

In efforts to understand the implications of the hostage deal on the continued fighting and Israel's situation in northern and southern Gaza, we spoke to Meir Ben-Shabbat, who served as National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2021.

Details of the imminent release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian female and teenage security prisoners have been revealed by various reports.

Dr. Samer Haj-Yehia, until recently chairperson of Bank Leumi, is joining the board of directors of Israeli-US AI-based digital insurance company Lemonade (NYSE: LMND). Lemonade notified the New York Stock Exchange of the appointment yesterday. Finance specialist Deb Schwartz will also join the Lemonade board. The two will replace Irina Novoselsky and Silvija Martincevic, who have both taken up...

Following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Start-Up National Central initiated a new venture called No Matter What, which aims to unify all the existing assistance options being offered for Israel startups including financing. The venture was set up in collaboration with the Israel Innovation Authority, Iron Nation, and Arieli Capital.

Israeli energy company Delek Group Ltd. (TASE:DLEKG) has risen more than 4% on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) after publishing strong third quarter results. Delek, controlled by Yitzhak Tshuva and managed by CEO Idan Wallace controls (54%) east Mediterranean gas exploration and production unit NewMed Energy (TASE: NWMD), which holds 45% of the Leviathan gas field, and Ithaca Energy (89%),...

At a difficult time for Israeli companies and for young medical device companies, CartiHeal has succeeded in finding an alternative exit to the deal it signed in 2021 with US company Bioventus that did not go through. CartiHeal, developer of a medical device, Agili-C, for treating cartilage and joint surface lesions in the knee, will be sold to international medical device company Smith+Nephew...

Last May, US semiconductor giant Nvidia announced its intention of developing Israel-1, the most powerful supercomputer in Israel and the most powerful in the company worldwide. Although it was planned to be operational only at the end of the year, the first stage of development was completed earlier than expected, and the computer went into initial use today.

Updated 5.30am 22.11.23

No end to the war in the Gaza Strip is yet in sight, but this is an event that will eventually pass, and its intensity is expected to decline in the first quarter of 2024. Meanwhile, the Israeli stock market has become the cheapest in the Western world, creating investment opportunities. These are the views of Ori Keren, chief investment officer at More Provident Funds, given in a webinar for...

In the shadow of the war in the Gaza Strip, and at a time when relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel are at a sensitive point, the NGO Co-Impact, which promotes employment for Arab Israelis, held a meeting with President Isaac Herzog that was attended by thirty senior Israeli businesspeople.

Israeli AI-based cybersecurity company Dream Security has completed a $35 million financing round. The company was founded last year by former spyware company NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio, former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Gil Dolev, formerly of Adallom, NSO and the Prime Ministers Office.

After stabilizing around NIS 3.75/$ earlier in the week, the shekel is again strengthening. In early afternoon inter-bank trading, the shekel-dollar rate is 0.56% lower at NIS 3.707/$, and the shekel-euro rate is 0.33% lower at NIS 4.058/€. The shekel has reached almost NIS 3.70/$ for the first time since early August.

"I don't think we can understand at this stage the size of the event that Israeli society is undergoing and its long-term impact on the country and society," Prof. David Passig, a futurist and head of Bar-Ilan University School of Education's Virtual Reality Laboratory tells "Globes." "It is reasonable that this will develop in directions that we cannot imagine at the moment, for better or for...

Israeli generative AI company AI21 Labs has announced raising a further $53 million to complete a $208 million Series C financing round (the first $155 million was announced in August), at a valuation of $1.4 billion. Participation from additional new investors includes Intel Capital and Comcast Ventures. This latest funding brings the total amount raised by the Tel Aviv-based AI and large...

Avi Simhon, chairperson of Israel's National Economic Council, is not known for reticence. It's hard to forget his vociferous appearances during the Covid pandemic, when he was in charge of the government's compensation plan. Since October 7, however, Simhon, who is one of the people closest to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and who sits in the Prime Minister's Office, has not spoken publicly.

Israeli real estate development and construction company Hanan Mor Group (TASE: HNMR) has filed in the Tel Aviv District Court for a stay-of-proceedings. The request reveals that the company has run up heavy debts of NIS 2.7 billion.

Unemployment in Israel in October remained unchanged from September at 3.1% (seasonably adjusted), the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. This is a surprising statistic because the number of job vacancies fell sharply by 18% and mainly because of the war, which began on October 7.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich have agreed to extend the tenure of Bank of Israel Governor Prof. Amir Yaron to a second five year term. The decision will be brought to the cabinet for approval at its next meeting. Yaron himself has not yet responded on whether he accepts the extension.

The Israel-Hamas war has hit the Tel Aviv rental market. Two months ago every new ad to rent an apartment in the city, which was posted on one of the Facebook groups for rentals, would attract hundreds of responses. Today there are few responses and most are asking if there is a security room.

Bank of Israel Governor Prof. Amir Yaron's term of office is due to end on December 23. He has agreed to stay on after that as temporary Governor while the emergency situation continues.

Two weeks into the war, the Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority (IMPA) received secret intelligence information from two European countries that warned: "A large, well-known organization is raising funds for Hamas through posts on social networks, and fintech company platforms outside Israel, under the guise of donations to Gaza residents." The information included...

Second-hand apartments sold

Since the slaughter of October 7 and the deep anxiety that Israelis can find themselves catastrophically trapped in their homes, without the security forces coming to rescue them, gun ownership has been proliferating in Israel.