U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet in Rome with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss talks with the Palestinians and Iran.

Kerry will meet Oct. 23 with Netanyahu to “discuss ongoing final status negotiations with the Palestinians, along with Iran, Syria, and other issues of mutual concern,” the State Department said Thursday.

Kerry is urging Israelis and the Palestinians to advance to core issues in their talks, including borders, Jerusalem and the status of the descendants of Palestinian refugees.

Netanyahu will be in Rome for his first meeting with Pope Francis, who has expressed an interest in visiting the Holy Land.

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Yishai gives his analysis and then presents Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

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AIPAC joined Israel’s government and some congressional leaders in calling on the Obama administration to intensify sanctions should Iran continue its uranium enrichment during negotiations.

“To avoid any misunderstanding in Tehran, America must clearly signal that it will consider no easing of sanctions until Iran has verifiably suspended its nuclear program,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a memo sent Monday to congressmen and released to reporters. “If Iran’s nuclear activities continue, the United States and the international community should escalate sanctions and reinforce President Obama’s message that a credible military option is on the table to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”

Top Obama administration officials have asked Congress not to consider new sanctions on Iran until after talks over the country’s suspected nuclear weapons program renew later this month.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has campaigned in recent weeks for intensified sanctions should Iran continue to enrich uranium. Last week, in a meeting with the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, he found a friendly ear.

“Our resolve to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability remains unchanged and we will not hesitate from proceeding with further sanctions and other options to protect U.S. interests and ensure regional security,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said in a statement after meeting with Netanyahu on Sept. 30. “While we welcome Iran’s diplomatic engagement, it cannot be used to buy time, avoid sanctions, and continue the march toward nuclear weapons capability.”

President Obama has said he sees an opening in the ostensible moderation of Iran’s newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani, who has pledged to make transparent a nuclear program he insists is peaceful. Netanyahu says he believes Rouhani is lying.

Notably, the AIPAC statement did not embrace Netanyahu’s calls for an end to all enrichment as part of a final deal. Instead it called only for a suspension of nuclear enrichment as a predicate for negotiations, not as part of a final deal.

That posture is aligned more with Western powers, which reportedly are ready to allow a degree of enrichment to continue, than with Netanyahu.

Sderot Mayor David Buskila “celebrated” Rosh HaShanah by camping out in a protest tent next to the official residence of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem to protest budget cuts to the Gaze Belt town.

He said he intends to remain in tent until the government restores funds that were cut in the austerity budget.

Buskila claimed that the budget cuts will be the death knell for Sderot but that he faces “a wall of incomprehension.”

Last year, the mayor staged a hunger strike until the government came up with funds for Sderot, battered for years by Hamas mortar shelling and rockets, to pay off its deficit and improve its emergency services.

An Israeli right-wing activist in prison for illegal political activity has been arrested for sending a threatening letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The prisoner, who was not identified in Israeli media reports, is in a central Israel prison and is 22 years old. He has been accused of involvement in “price tag” attacks and issuing threats to left-wing leaders.

In the letter, the prisoner expressed his opposition to Netanyahu’s decision to release Palestinian Authority terrorists in order to jump-start peace talks.

“How are you releasing murderous terrorists? We’ll hurt you and the government like Rabin was hurt,” the letter to Netanyahu said, referring to assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He was arrested in prison and found to have at least one knife in his possession.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel was behind last month’s military coup in Egypt.

Erdogan told a meeting of the provincial chairs of his ruling Justice and Development, or AKP, party that he has evidence that Israel was involved in the July 3 overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the Turkish Hurriyet news service reported.

“Who is behind this? Israel. We have evidence,” the prime minister said, according to Hurriyet.

He cited as proof a statement by a French intellectual he identified as Jewish, who told the Israeli justice minister during a visit to France before Egypt’s 2011 elections, “The Muslim Brotherhood will not be in power even if they win the elections. Because democracy is not the ballot box,” Hurriyet reported.

The White House condemned Erdogan’s remarks.

“Suggesting that Israel is somehow responsible for recent events in Egypt is offensive, unsubstantiated and wrong,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters later Tuesday.

Turkey downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and later expelled Israel’s ambassador following the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in May 2010 that resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish nationals in a confrontation with Israeli Navy commandos. The ship was trying to evade Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Erdogan in March for the incident, and representatives of the countries have met for reconciliation talks. The talks reportedly are held up over the amount of compensation that Israel is to pay to the families of the Turkish casualties and how the payments are to be characterized.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to improve economic ties with politically friendly Latin American countries in order to compensate for the crippled economy of Israel’s main trading continent, Europe.

The new effort to increase Latin American trading, particularly with Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, will compliment Netanyahu’s simultaneous effort to increase economic ties with China and other East Asian countries. These four Latin American countries formed the free-trade Pacific Alliance last year and account for about 36 percent of the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP). They all trade significantly with North America.

Currently in Latin America, Brazil is Israel’s main trading partner, taking in Israeli exports at about $1.1 billion per year and importing to Israel at about $400 million per year. In June, Israeli President Shimon Peres signed a free-trade agreement with Colombia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s social media chief was reportedly suspended for making inappropriate statements on his personal Facebook page.

Daniel Seaman, the prime minister’s director for interactive media, suggested that Palestinians who commemorate the Nakba, an Arabic word referring to the “catastrophe” that is Israel’s victory in the 1948 war, may want to reflect on their “stupidity.” Seaman also wrote he was “sick” of commemorations for the victims of the nuclear bombs dropped in Japan during World War II because “you reap what you sow.”

Israeli media quoted unnamed officials Thursday as saying that Seaman was suspended from his post. A statement from the government reported in the Jerusalem Post said only that Seaman was asked to “refrain from making such statements.”