Balilty/AP President Shimon Peres visits a wounded Israeli soldier on Monday.
MCT 
Guez/Getty Israeli soldiers clean their cannon as they keep their position in the Israeli side of Israel-Gaza border on Sunday.
In the city, families cowered in their apartments, the buildings shaking from explosions that sent booms and flashes ripping across the sky.
In northern Gaza, there were reports of heavy street fighting as Israeli forces captured positions in Beit Hanoun, Zeitoun and Beit Lahiya and advanced into the crowded alleyways of the Jabalya refugee camp just north of Gaza City. "Most of the resistance that we faced was from mortar shells - not from serious Hamas fighters face to face," a senior Israeli officer told reporters. Israel confiscated all its soldiers' cell phones so they couldn't divulge their movements.
Israeli soldiers captured the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV channel and broadcast messages telling Hamas leaders to surrender.
Other Arab TV channels broadcast gruesome photos of dead Palestinian children, fueling pro-Palestinian protests in New York; Athens; London; Kabul, Afghanistan, and the West Bank.
U.S. Secretary of State Rice canceled a visit to China to monitor the Mideast. Her designated successor, Hillary Clinton, kept a low profile.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas headed to New York to beg the UN Security Council for help. The United States is blocking a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is set to arrive in Israel today to try to broker a truce.
Appearing on ABC, Peres rejected the idea, saying Israel won't cease fire while Hamas keeps firing rockets into Israel.
"We don't intend neither to occupy Gaza nor to crush Hamas, but to crush terror," Peres said.
Palestinian diplomat Saeb Erakat said military crackdowns never bring peace.
"It does not work in south Lebanon. It does not work in Iraq. It does not work in Afghanistan. It will not work in Gaza," he said, predicting instead the result will be "weakening moderates and strengthening extremists."
Hana/AP DAILY MAIL.COM
4th January 2009
By Matthew Kalman
The Israeli cabinet decision to launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip was taken over the objection of two senior ministers and dominated by the memory of Israel's failure to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon two years ago.
Mindful of the bitter recriminations that followed the ill-fated Lebanon war of 2006, Israel has set very limited objectives for phase two of 'Operation Cast Lead' in Gaza and left itself considerable room for diplomatic manouevring.
Israeli Deputy Premier Haim Ramon and Industry Minister Eli Yishai demanded that the invasion should seek to topple the regime of Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from President Mahmoud Abbas's forces in a bloody coup in June 2007 in which 400 people were brutally murdered.
Israeli infantry soldiers take up positions on the border before entering the Gaza Strip
But, aware of the exaggerated targets it set in Lebanon – and failed to achieve - the Israeli cabinet decide instead to seek more modest aims.
'The objective of this phase of the operation is to intensify the heavy blow already dealt to Hamas and to take control of the area from where most of the rocket attacks against Israel originate, in order to reduce those rocket attacks,' said Brigadier-General Avi Benayahu, the Israel army spokesman.
'Stage two of Operation Cast Lead has been launched to support our central goals which are to deal a heavy blow to the Hamas terror organisation, to strengthen Israel's deterrence, and to create a better security situation for those living around the Gaza Strip that will be maintained for the long term,' he said.
'Reducing' the rocket attacks and dealing a 'heavy blow' to Hamas are a long way from a promise to stop the attacks completely and put an end to Hamas.
A Jordanian demonstrator shouts anti-Israeli slogans and holds a picture of late Hamas leader Nizar Rayan
Israel appears to be seeking to weaken the Hamas regime and is hinting that an occasional missile breaking an eventual ceasefire will not be a deal-breaker.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has managed to marginalise the voices led by ministers Ramon and Yishai for Israel to re-occupy Gaza and depose Hamas.
By setting limited aims for the operation, Olmert has avoided many of the pitfalls that plagued the 34-day war against Hezbollah which ended with at least 1,110 people killed in Lebanon and 157 Isarelis dead.
Israeli army spokeswoman Major Avital Leibovitch made that crystal clear. 'We have no intention of conquering the Gaza Strip,' she said.
An Israeli man rides a motorcycle near Kibbutz Kfar Azza during a visit to show solidarity with Israeli troops stationed on the Israel-Gaza border
The Israeli army is far better trained for this operation than it was for the fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The infantry, parachute and armoured divisions who crossed into Gaza on Saturday night have been training in urban warfare at a specially-built mock Gaza town at an Israeli army base in the Negev desert.
Israel's intelligence is also much improved compared to 2006, when Israeli special forces commandos were staggered to discover that Hezbollah was a well-trained, disciplined army and not the rag-bag of part-time gunmen they believed it to be.
The decision to invade is still a high risk gamble for the Israeli cabinet as the government faces elections in litte over five weeks.
PM Olmert, embroiled in a corruption scandal, is stepping down from any leadership role but Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - leader of the centrist Kadima party - and defence minister Ehud Barak, the Labour party chief, will have been greatly heartened by opinion polls showing the Israeli strategy has huge popular support - for now.
However, if Israeli soldiers start coming home in body bags and the offensive continues for days or weeks with no clear victory in sight they know that their jobs will be very much on the line as well as a likely hammering for their parties at the polls on February 10th.
Katib/Getty
Hams/Getty A Palestinian youth hold copies of the Koran that he found amid the debris of a mosque in Gaza City on December 31, 2008.
Thousands of Israeli troops massed on the border with the Gaza Strip Wednesday night after Israel rejected calls for a temporary truce in its Chanukah war on Hamas.
As Hamas vowed to fight "until the last breath," ordinary Palestinian citizens in Gaza City - where there is no power or water - braced for an invasion. Bread lines and funeral marches were the only signs of life in the normally crowded streets.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe sent waves of dread through Gaza when he signaled that Washington won't try to stop Israel.
"A ground offensive - it's a term that encompasses a lot of things," Johndroe said at President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex. "I think it is just part and parcel of the overall operation that Israel is undertaking to rid Hamas of its ability to fire rockets into Israel."
On the fifth day of "Operation Cast Lead," Israel's security cabinet rejected any ceasefire as the body count in Gaza climbed near 400, 50 of them children, and Hamas rockets continued to land inside Israel. Four Israelis have been killed since Saturday.
"Israel will not agree to exist beside a terror strip," said Israeli President Shimon Peres, explaining why international pleas for a humanitarian ceasefire went unheeded.
"We have to protect our children," he said. "Hamas left us no choice."
Heavy cloud cover and a driving rain hampered the warplanes, so Israeli warships took up the bombardment of Gaza from the sea. The weather is supposed to clear today.
A total of 9,000 reservists have been called up this week, and Israeli pols have been hinting at a ground invasion.
"We in Hamas are ready for all scenarios and we will fight until the last breath," senior official Mushir al-Masri told the French Press Agency. "We have prepared surprises for them."
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, unscathed when his office was bombed Wednesday, said militants will keep firing rockets until the air strikes stop and Israel lifts the blockade that began strangling the Gaza Strip in 2007.
The head of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, taunted Israel for hesitating on the border.
"What is happening in Gaza is a victory, despite all the pure blood being spilled," Nasrallah said.
If a ground invasion goes ahead, Gaza's already-strained medical services will collapse, health care officials warned.
The operation Israel calls "all out war on Hamas" began Saturday during the festive Jewish winter holiday and is named for a Chanukah poem about "a dreidel cast of solid lead."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, "Israel has shown restraint for years. She gave the truce a chance; we told ourselves 'let's try it,' but Hamas violated the truce."
Israel's supreme court ordered the military to allow journalists into Gaza to report on the air strikes. Israel has restricted reporters from entering Gaza for months.
Israeli jets leveled a Gaza City mosque that was allegedly being used to hide a cache of Hamas rockets and missiles.
Guez/Getty Smoke billows from a targeted location inside the northern Gaza Strip during an Israeli air raid Monday.
Jerusalem - Following the bloodiest attack on the Gaza Strip since it was captured by Israel from Egypt in the Six-Day War in 1967, people across the Middle East are waiting warily to learn just how far Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will press his campaign against Hamas.
Is he trying to destroy the militant group and topple its leadership, or is he trying to neutralize Hamas by obliterating its weapons, infrastructure and supply routes?
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said today the campaign was intended to strike "a hard enough blow to change the rules of the game so there won't be any action from within the Gaza Strip against Israeli citizens or soldiers."
That suggests the Israelis are pursuing the more modest goal of neutralizing Hamas. But both Arab and Israeli observers say the ferocity of the bombing risks inciting widespread and protracted reprisals against Israel from across the Palestinian territories.
"The attack on Gaza could, particularly if prolonged over weeks, as Minister of Defense Barak threatens, inflame anti-Israeli and anti-Western sentiments throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds," said Yossi Alpher, a former officer in the spy agency Mossad. "Rioting could spread across the West Bank and among Palestinian citizens of Israel."
Olmert said Israel simply had no choice but to target the source of missile attacks on its people.
"We were compelled to take action in order to halt the aggression against our citizens," Olmert told reporters Saturday night when he announced the launch of "Operation Cast Lead" against Hamas. According to a poll for Israel's Channel 10 TV on Sunday, 81 percent of Israelis agreed with him.
But as thousands of Israeli troops huddled in the pouring rain on the Gaza border tonight, poised to begin a ground invasion, many Israelis fear becoming mired in a drawn-out battle in the Gaza Strip.
Olmert had little to gain personally from launching the attack. He will retire in disgrace after February's general election, the most unpopular leader in Israel's history, his reputation sullied by a string of corruption allegations and possible criminal charges. He is still reeling from the 2006 Lebanon War, when he led Israel's forces against Hezbollah, only to be ridiculed abroad and denounced at home for what was widely regarded as a strategic failure.
Some have suggested Israel's general election on Feb. 10 may have influenced the decision to attack. Polls showed Barak, chairman of the Labor Party, running third to the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Kadima leader, Tzipi Livni, in the race for prime minister. The Channel 10 poll taken Sunday already showed that Barak's standing had improved after the attack.
Notwithstanding the political speculation, Olmert must have been reluctant to go to war again. But from an Israeli perspective, he had to act.
Since 2001, 3,984 rockets and 3,943 mortar shells have been launched at Israel from Gaza, many of them at the sleepy lower-middle-class suburb of Sderot, now reduced to a ghost town.
Egypt brokered a truce that took effect in June, but since then Palestinians still fired 223 rockets and 139 mortar shells from the Hamas-controlled enclave. Last week, as the cease-fire expired, Palestinian militants launched 80 rockets and shells in a single day and attacked the two border crossings where Israeli supply trucks were carrying desperately needed food and medicine.
The Palestinian death toll continued to climb higher today, yet Hamas still managed to pound Israeli cities like Ashdod more than 20 miles to the north with rocket fire, bringing a million Israelis within range of the fighting.
Observers are questioning the Israeli strategy.
"If the aim is to stop the attacks from Gaza, then Israel should have said, immediately after the attacks on Saturday, that we are ready for a cease-fire. There are no other targets," said Yossi Beilin, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator.
The more than 400 carefully chosen targets bombed since Saturday appear to include all of the Hamas command, control and communications infrastructure, their weapons-manufacturing factories, arms and rockets stockpiles, missile silos, smuggling tunnels and more than 250 personnel, including key military commanders.
Many analysts believe Israel must resist the temptation to re-invade the territory it quit amid much fanfare in 2005, when it removed an entire garrison and more than 5,000 stubborn settlers.
"Israelis want to see this operation as decisive, but they know that Gaza is a horror film for them with many dreadful sequels," said Matt Beynon Rees, the former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time magazine. "Ultimately, there'll be no peace - either in Gaza or for the Israelis living nearby - until a real peace deal is done between the two sides."
Another reason for Israel to call an early halt to the fighting is the fissure that has opened up in the Arab world, with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah supporting Hamas, while Egypt and Saudi Arabia tacitly blame Hamas for inciting the Israelis.
Olmert could try to exploit the split to create a new diplomatic momentum in which Hamas is marginalized, allowing the renewal of peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Fatah movement in the West Bank and the chief rival to Hamas among the Palestinian people.
Olmert can't risk the total destruction of Hamas in Gaza, lest Abbas be seen as politically profiting from the suffering in Gaza. Or, as Ramadan Shallah, secretary-general of Islamic Jihad, warned: Any Palestinian "who dares to return to the Gaza Strip aboard an Israeli tank would be condemned as a traitor."
It's a difficult balancing act, and one that will only become trickier as civilian casualties rise.
"The longer the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) stays, the more it will be subject to popular resistance and international pressure to withdraw," Jeffrey White, defense fellow at the Washington Institute, argued in a policy paper. "A protracted invasion would also strain Israel's relationship with the United States, other Western nations, moderate Arab states, and the Palestinian Authority.
"Military action in Gaza is not likely to be surgical or final. Hamas' entrenched position, literally and figuratively, rules out quick and easy military solutions, while large operations carry serious complications and risks, with no guarantee of success."
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Jerusalem — As Israeli airstrikes on Hamas installations in Gaza entered a third day, two buildings at the Islamic University of Gaza were destroyed in at least six direct hits early this morning.
An Israeli army spokeswoman told The Chronicle that the buildings were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons, including Qassam rockets,” which are steel missiles filled with explosives. Israel has defended its attacks as designed to protect its citizens from rockets fired from Gaza, The New York Times and other news sources have reported.
Witnesses said the two university structures hit today were the science-laboratory block and the Ladies’ Building, where women studied in classrooms separate from those for male students. There were no casualties, as the university was evacuated when the Israeli assault began on Saturday.
“One of the structures struck housed explosives laboratories that were an inseparable part of Hamas’ research and development program, as well as places that served as storage facilities for the organization,” the army spokeswoman said. “The development of these weapons took place under the auspices of senior lecturers who are activists in Hamas.”
The spokeswoman said Qassam rockets were among the weapons developed and manufactured at the university. “Hamas has been working tirelessly to extend the range of the rockets, as has been shown during the past few days,” the spokeswoman said.
The Islamic University was established by the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and has emerged as a training ground for the political and spiritual leadership of Hamas. Many Hamas leaders who are also academics have taught at the university, but students do not have to swear affiliation to the organization.
This is not the first time that the university has been accused of hiding weapons. In February 2007, at the height of tension between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, his presidential guard stormed the university and confiscated weapons and ammunition. Palestinian TV aired footage of dozens of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, rockets, and assault rifles, as well as thousands of bullets, that Abbas’s officials said were found inside the university.
But today’s bombardment appears to have inflicted much more damage, leaving the two buildings little more than smoking shells.
University officials denied the Israeli allegations. In remarks quoted by the International Middle East Media Center, Nihad al-Sheikh Khalil, a lecturer at the university, told Al-Jazeera TV that the Israeli army shells universities, mosques, and other civilian facilities and then claims “victory.” —Matthew Kalman
Posted on Monday December 29, 2008
Star of Bethlehem: Abu Christmas announces his presence by ringing a bellThursday, December 11, 2008
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Beersheba, Israel -- When he was just 7 years old, Sacramento native Nate DeFelice was told he had Type 1 diabetes. So when he joined a diabetes research project at Ben-Gurion University here two years ago, he hoped it would be a meaningful experience.
DeFelice, 27, never dreamed that he would help discover a potential cure for his disease, see the beginning of a Federal Drug Administration-approved clinical trial in the United States and co-author a scientific paper along with seven other researchers published in October by the National Academy of Sciences.
"It's exciting," said DeFelice, who studies pediatric medicine at the university's international health program run and must inject himself with insulin six times a day and check his blood sugar levels 10 times a day. "Managing diabetes is a full-time job."
Type 1 diabetes, usually diagnosed in childhood, is caused by a failure of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas called "islets." They require daily injections of insulin, which helps break down glucose in the blood. As glucose levels rise, diabetics can suffer blindness and even death.
In Type 2 diabetes, sufferers cannot use insulin effectively but can sometimes manage their condition with lifestyle changes. Oral drugs, however, are often required - and less frequently insulin - to achieve metabolic control. Most people with diabetes have Type 2.
When Ben-Gurion University biochemistry Professor Dr. Eli Lewis asked for volunteers to participate in new research on diabetes, DeFelice jumped at the chance.
Diabetes "is something I'm constantly aware of and constantly taking care of," said DeFelice. "It's a part of me, but I'd be happy to get rid of it."
Lewis, DeFelice and the other researchers have focused their investigations on islet transplantation. In 2000, doctors at more than 50 research sites in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan transplanted healthy islets into diabetes patients, hoping the newly grafted cells would secrete insulin and effectively cure the disease.
But the cells were rejected, and patients resumed insulin injections after a few months.
The Israeli team then opted for a new approach, ignoring the rejection of the grafted cells and focusing instead on inflammation caused by the transplant itself. Lewis grafted healthy islets into diabetic mice and treated them with an anti-inflammatory drug called alpha-1-antitrypsin, or AAT. Within months, they discovered three encouraging results:
-- AAT enabled the newly grafted islets to survive indefinitely, successfully secreting insulin to control glucose levels like healthy pancreas cells.
-- The researchers stopped administering AAT and the islets continued to function. "We withdrew the therapy. That is something that is unique in transplant today," Lewis explained. "There is no approach today that is able to provide a limited amount of therapy. If a patient stops the current protocol therapy, any graft will be rejected: kidney, heart, lungs - including islets."
-- The third result surprised even the scientists. They found that even after transplant and halting therapies, the mice's immune systems remained intact and were able to reject additional grafts while the original transplant continued to function. Doctors call this state "tolerance," which means the immune system remains intact and able to attack foreign bodies while protecting the inserted graft.
"We were able to cure a mouse from diabetes by supplying the healthy cells and the mouse's immune system still functioned," Lewis said. "This is the closest thing that we can consider to cure diabetes."
If healthy islets that secrete insulin and control the body's glucose levels can be successfully transplanted, diabetics would be cured of diabetes, Lewis said. By using AAT, the researchers cured diabetes in mice and are hopeful they can do the same for humans. It is not yet clear what the transplant procedure would mean for sufferers of Type 2 diabetes.
The Israeli team's findings have caused much excitement among medical experts.
"The results of this study are really impressive," said Marc Donath of the Clinic of Endocrinology and Diabetes at the University Hospital in Zurich. "This study is a realistic hope not only for islet transplantation, but also for other organ transplantation."
Thomas Mandrup-Poulsen, chief physician of the Steno Diabetes Center and Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Copenhagen, says the Israeli team is "at the frontier of islet research."
In the next year or so, the Israeli team will work with colleagues at Harvard University and other U.S. centers in FDA-approved clinical trials.
"Our study is ongoing," said Lewis.
Meanwhile, DeFelice says he prefers to wait for the results before breaking out the bubbly.
"Mice models are very different to human models," said DeFelice. "It's a black box."
This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle
By Matthew Kalman
Israel is preparing to go it alone in a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, it was reported yesterday.
Officials in the Israeli Defence Ministry told the Jerusalem Post that while they prefer to act in consultation with the U.S., they were preparing plans that would allow them to act in isolation.
'It is always better to coordinate,' a senior Defence Ministry official told the newspaper. 'But we are also preparing options that do not include coordination.'
X-band radars, installed by the US at a military facility in Israel to counter a perceived missile threat from Iran, go operational this month
His comments came after President Bush refused to promise U.S. assistance in an attack, which would need to cross Iraqi airspace that is currently controlled by America.
According to the newspaper, Israeli military strategists are drawing up plans for an air strike against the emerging nuclear weapons programme in Iran, which experts believe is just three years away from becoming operational.
Israeli leaders fear that an Iranian regime armed with nuclear weapons will carry out Tehran's cold-blooded threat to destroy the Jewish state and destabilise the West.
At a military parade in Tehran in the summer, banners adorning six Shehab-3 missiles declared: 'Israel must be wiped off the map' and 'We will crush America under our feet.'
'While its preference is to co-ordinate with the U.S., defence officials have said Israel is preparing a wide range of options for such an operation,' the Post reported.
'Israeli officials have said it would be difficult, but not impossible, to launch a strike against Iran without receiving codes from the U.S. Air Force, which controls Iraqi airspace,' the report added.
Iran's atomic chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh says thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges are already in operation
Earlier this year, there were reports that Israel was holding major exercises along the length of the Mediterranean – about the same distance as the 1,000-mile flight to Iran – in what was seen as a dry-run for a possible attack.
But many experts believe a military strike against Iran is impossible without U.S. assistance, since many of the Iranian facilities are underground. Without American permission to fly over Iraq, and access to advanced U.S. intelligence, an Israeli strike is unlikely to succeed.
Last week, Iran's nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh revealed that thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges were already in operation at its nuclear plant in Natanz.
'At this point, more than 5,000 centrifuges are operating in Natanz,' said Mr Aghazadeh.
There were only 4,000 in operation in August.
Iran has been testing its upgraded Shehab-3 inter-continental ballistic missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead 1,242 miles – more than enough to hit Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile western diplomats said that UN sanctions and other diplomatic pressure were proving ineffective in persuading Iran to give up its Russian-backed nuclear programme.
'I do not belong to the optimistic camp which believes there is a solution for the Iranian nuclear issue,' NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels today.
In September, US troops deployed an advanced radar system in Israel designed to help protect the country against a ballistic missile attack from Iran.
The Forward Based X-Band Transportable Radar system can detect an Iranian ballistic missile half-way into its 11-minute flight to Israel.
The X-Band radar is being linked to US satellite tracking stations and Israel's own Arrow II defensive rocket system, enabling them to detect and destroy an incoming Iranian missile before it enters Israeli airspace.
Abraham Katzir Dr. David Simhon carrying out a laser soldering procedure on the abdomen of a young woman
Scientists at Tel Aviv University are testing use of laser beams to seal surgical incisions, allowing skin and internal tissue to heal more quickly after operations and accidents.
"The technique of sewing the human body with needle and thread is an old one that has existed for thousand of years," said Prof. Abraham Katzir.
Ambulance medics may be able to use the new technique to close wounds quickly and safely at the scene of accidents.
The new method leaves less scarring than traditional stitches and helps give the wound better protection against infection.
"Sutures or stitches are not watertight, and blood or urine can pass through cuts, causing severe infection," Katzir said.
The use of lasers to heal surgical wounds was first proposed decades ago, but the early prototypes burned the skin and the tests were abandoned.
Katzir's new technique of skin welding avoids that problem because it uses a smart laser that corrects its own temperature as it works.
The new device has already been tested successfully in clinical trials on patients undergoing gall bladder operations in Israel.
Researchers believe it could be especially useful for plastic surgery and for sealing battlefield wounds on contact.
"It could allow soldiers to heal each other on contact with a laser wand," Katzir said.
The laser skin welding uses a special biological glue smeared on the two sides of the incision.
A laser warms it to the correct temperature to make the glue thicken and create a hard shell that protects the wound and allows it to heal while blocking germs.
The site recently uncovered by Professor Yosef Garfinkel could be the biblical town of Sha'arayim. (David Blumenfeld / Special to The Chronicle)DAILY MAIL
6 November 2008
By Matthew Kalman
British experts have been called in to identify a mystery disease sweeping across stables in Israel which is being blamed for the death of several horses.
Experts are a at a loss to explain the disease which has left hundreds of horses with high temperatures, listlessness and no appetite.
At least 30 stables have been affected and the entire country has been placed under equine quarantine.
British scientists have been called to investigate what is causing a mystery illness affecting horses across Israel. File photo
All public horse meetings and shows have been cancelled until scientists at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey, can pinpoint the cause.
'It's very unusual and although we are working round the clock testing samples from many horses, we still don't know the cause of this outbreak,' said Dr Boris Yakobson, director of the Kimron Veterinary Institute in Rishon Le Zion.
'We have placed all the horses in the country under quarantine and restricted the movement of all horses in Israel for the next 96 hours, until we get the results of the tests back from our colleagues in England.'
He added that he had never seen an outbreak such as this and that the horses seemed to be depressed.
'They are behaving strangely, they seem unhappy and they are off their food,' he said.
'We have heard reports of horses dying, but so far none of them have been brought to our lab for post-mortem examination, so we cannot confirm that this disease is fatal.'
In a nationwide alert sent out today, the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the quarantine.
But the government assured people that the disease did not affect humans and could not be transmitted by contact between horses and people.
When the illness was first noticed last week, the ministry clamped a quarantine on several areas of the country.
But the outbreak continued to spread, prompting the dramatic decision to halt all movement of horses in Israel.
