Benjamin Netanyahu has been forced to ask for more time to form Israel’s next government amid an increasingly hostile row with the parties he is expected to include in his coalition.

The former Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an ex-nightclub bouncer who became one of the country's most powerful and controversial politicians, faces career oblivion after being charged with corruption.

The leaders of the movement are only progressive by modern-day Zionism's standards

Mr Barak's resignation could mean the departure of the most moderating influence on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Tzipi Livni, Israel's former opposition leader who crashed out of politics this year after losing her party's leadership contest, is poised to make a political comeback as head of a new party ahead of early elections in January.

The Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, has announced plans to draft thousands of Ultra-Orthodox students into the army – a move that could set him at loggerheads with the religious parties in the run-up to a general election in January.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen January 22 as the date of the next general election, but it could be some time before he discovers the identity of his main challenger.

Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the highly influential leader of the Lithuanian sect of ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews, was known for his unyielding hardline rulings on complicated elements of Jewish law. As an eminent Posek, a decider of Jewish law, a title earned not by appointment but by scholarship, reputation and communal trust built up over decades, Elyashiv applied the Torah and Talmudic law to modern times, ruling on conversion, marriage, divorce and even the legitimacy of wigs made in India.

Kadima walks out on coalition over Likud's refusal to draft ultra-orthodox Jews into military

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said last night that the United States will use "all elements of American power" to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and insisted it was on "same page" as Israel on the issue.

Israeli former leader who nearly made peace with Palestinians is acquitted of more serious charges

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has been cleared of the major charges in a corruption trial which forced him from power.

A committee has said that 80 per cent of ultra-Orthodox Jews should do national service

Yitzhak Shamir, a former Prime Minister, was buried at the national cemetery in Jerusalem yesterday.