The public transportation system in Haifa is about to expand, with seven new bus lines to be added at a cost of NIS 2.6 billion.

The upgrade will make metro Haifa “the most publicly accessible” city in Israel, according to Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, who called the plan a “revolution” that would serve as “a model for other cities.”

The transit network is to be based on the current three existing Metrobus lines in the city, and on the single Carmelit subway and rail car line.

Katz said the new lines are to be facilitated by the Transportation Ministry and the Yefe-Nof company – the same company that set up the Metrobus lines – and are projected for 1.2 million trips in and around Haifa daily.

The system expansion is be facilitated via the BOT (build-operate-transfer) method – a way to finance projects in which a private entity receives the tender from the public or private sector to finance, design, build and operate a contracted system or facility. The method enables the contractor to recover the investment, operating and maintenance expenses via the project itself, which typically is a long-term endeavor.

The method is used in California, Florida, Indiana, Texas and Virginia, as well as in some other nations.

A drive by shooting on Kdoshei Damaesek Street in Haifa ended with a serious injury to a local resident, 40, who was sitting in his car. The victim was evacuated to Rambam hospital downtown. Police are investigating whether the attack was criminal or an act of terror.

Two IDF soldiers were killed and three wounded—one moderate and two light—from an exploding fragmentation grenade inside their vehicle Sunday morning, near the entrance to Mount Hermon and a military base in the Majdal Shams area. The injured soldiers were evacuated by helicopter to Maimonides Hospital in Haifa.

The two who were killed were Sergeant Shlomo Rindenau, 20, whose family lives in New Jersey; and Sergeant Hossam Tafesh, 24, from Beit Jan.

According to a preliminary report, the soldiers’ jeep stopped for an unknown reason near the Majdal Shams check post, about six feet from the wall; the driver, Tafesh, a reservist, got out of the jeep and was holding the grenade in his hand for a yet unknown reason. He surrounded the vehicle and approached the open door with the grenade, following which the grenade exploded and he and another soldier were killed.

So far, according to IDF sources, the entire event is still a mystery.

Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems Ltd. has for the first time ever, successfully tested a 12-meter-long unmanned surface vessel (USV), complete with launching a torpedo.

The system is comprised of replaceable mission modules, with two vessels capable of being operated and controlled in concert using a single Mission Control System (MCS), from manned ships or from the shore. According to Elbit the system provides “mission planning and on-line operation in known and unknown areas, including area survey, search, detection, classification, identification, neutralization and verification. It is equipped to search the entire water volume and operate underwater vehicles to identify and neutralize mines.”

The Seagull was tested in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea off Israel’s northern coastline near Haifa. The trial successfully proved the system’s ability to install, carry and launch lightweight torpedoes (underwater missiles).

“The success of this test demonstrates Seagull’s modular mission system capability, enabling a highly effective ASW (anti-submarine warfare) configuration of high-performance dipping sonar using two single tube torpedoes,” said Ofer Ben-Dov, Elbit Systems Vice President of the Naval Systems Business Line ISTAR Division.

“The test highlighted Seagull’s capacity to detect and engage submarines in addition to its ability to detect and destroy sea mines, all using the same multi-mission USV system in modular configurations.

“This new and important capability has, to date, only been available to navies through manned vehicles,” Ben-Dov explained.

The USV is to be used in unmanned maritime missions such as anti-submarine warfare, counter-mine operations, or the protection of offshore oil and gas rigs such as those currently operating in Israel’s Tamar and Leviathan gas reserves, among numerous others.

There have been numerous threats to Israel’s natural gas fields by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror organization as well as by the Lebanese government and others over the past several years.

The new Seagull USV will be a new and versatile element in the defense system employed to protect those assets, as well as defend Israel’s coastline from Iranian and other potential terrorist suppliers attempting to provide arms and other contraband to Hamas in Gaza.

An Otniel mother of six did not go down quietly earlier this year when 16-year-old Arab terrorist Morad Bader Abdullah Adais stabbed her to death in front of three of her six children.

Daphna Meir, a neurosurgical nurse at Soroka Hospital, fought her attacker for possession of the knife as he stabbed her over and over again in the kitchen of her home.

That and other details of Meir’s struggle for life on January 17, 2016 came to light in a transcript of the killer’s interrogation by Shin Bet intelligence personnel published by Walla News.

Because the killer had to work so hard to end Meir’s life, the final time he stabbed her, the knife got stuck and he was unable to remove it – saving the lives of others in the community.

“She started screaming, the children saw me and also started screaming, then I stabbed her in her upper body another three or four times. She tried to fight me and tried to take the knife from me. The two children who were there were still screaming, but she continued to resist, so I pushed her, and overpowered her.”

He didn’t stab the children, he said, because “it’s forbidden.”

Her oldest daughter, Ra’anana, 17, provided the security forces with a description of the murderer. As a result, he was tracked down and caught within hours.

“She struggled against me… I stabbed her until I couldn’t remove the knife from her body… and [then] I saw another woman coming [so] I fled and went home and watched a Saudi Arabian movie.”

The killer told his interrogators that he committed the murder in order to help “liberate Palestine” – including cities such as Haifa, Akko, Tel Aviv and Jaffa (Yafo), Nazareth and Tiberias.

“The liberation of Palestine is in the hands of prisoners and heroic martyrs,” he declared. “We will return to Akko, to Haifa, to Tiberias, to Yafo and to Nazareth.”

He asked the interrogators why he was blocked from going to the Temple Mount. “I would go to the Al Aqsa Mosque, even if I would be killed,” he said. “And on the way, I would murder as many Zionist Jews as possible.”

He added that he himself intended to die – as a martyr, in order to attain the terrorist’s alleged promise of a bevy of beauties.

“I would have kept stabbing her and if I had seen another Jew I would have stabbed him to death too. If I had manage to withdraw the knife from her body I would have kept murdering Jews until I died a martyr’s death.

“Every Muslim hopes to die a martyr’s death,” the young terrorist explained. “I want to enter heaven and have 70 virgins.”

The Adais family home in nearby Yatta was demolished earlier this month in accordance with Israeli security protocol.

By Viva Sarah Press

In honor of Jerusalem Liberation Day, which is being celebrated on Sunday, June 5 this year (because Israeli holidays go by the Jewish calendar), the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has issued a plethora of stats about the city, gathered in the years 2014-15. So, here’s a sampling of everything you may have wanted to know about the tangible Jerusalem of this world:

Jerusalem is the largest city in Israel. By the end of 2015, there were bout 870,000 residents living in the eternal city, roughly 10% of Israel’s population.

Compare this with 2014, when Jerusalem boasted only 850,000 residents, out of whom 534,000 were Jews and others (63%) and 316,000 Arabs (37%).

Out of the Jews of Jerusalem, 32% define themselves as ultra-Orthodox, 17% are religious, 13% traditional-religious, 15% traditional but not so religious, and only 21% are secular.

Of those additional 20,000 residents, about 19,800 were added via natural reproduction, about 3,700 moved in from the rest of the country and from abroad, and about 3,500 left to other locations.

The main sources in Israel of migration to Jerusalem are the cities of Beit Shemesh, Tel Aviv, and B’nai B’rak. Jerusalemites who leave the city go to Beit Shemesh, Tel Aviv, and the enclave of Givat Ze’ev which borders Jerusalem.

The overall fertility rate (average number of children a Jerusalem woman is expected to bear in her lifetime) in Jerusalem is 3.91, far higher than the national average of 3.08.

A Jerusalem average household has 3.8 members, also larger than the national average of 3.3.

On the work front, though, Jerusalem could improve a lot: only 51% of Jerusalem residents are counted in the work force, compared with 64.1% nationwide. This does not necessarily mean folks in Jerusalem don’t work for a living, it could mean more of them fail to report.

Jerusalemites don’t like to commute: 88.4% of the city’s working residents are employed in their city, compared with 71.7% in Haifa, 62.2% in Tel Aviv, 57.2% in Ashdod, 44.4% in Petach Tikvah, and 36.2% in Rishon L’Tzion.

Jerusalem retains its residents: a full 77% of them have lived in the city for more than 20 years.

While 57% of Israelis nationwide are satisfied with the size and proportion of green spaces in their cities, only 30% of Jerusalemites believe they have enough parks.

In the school year 2014-15, 65.5% of Jerusalem students were in Haredi educational institutions, compared with 65.3% in 2013-14. This trend has continued persistently, as the number of ultra-Orthodox students is going up and secular students’ down.

In related statistics: fewer than half (48%) of 12th grade students in Hebrew education institution took the matriculation exams in 2013-14, compared with 51% the year before. This means that more than half of the city’s young people are eligible to attend college.

Also related: Jerusalem registers the lowest average annual income out of Israel’s eight largest cities: $37,944.36.

As for housing, 57.9% of Jerusalem residents own their apartment or home, 30.9% rent, and the rest live in school dormitories or rent paying a key fee (one high amount up front, followed by small monthly payments). The average price for a Jerusalem apartment is $484,026.34, the average monthly rent is $826.12.

Regarding visitors: 78% of tourists who arrived in Israel made sure to visit Jerusalem (the rest, mostly Scandinavians and Germans, presumably landed directly on Eilat’s magnificent beaches down south).

Close to 900,000 foreign visitors spent a night in Jerusalem’s hotels, marking close to 3,000,000 nights altogether.