bet

Netanyahu and Zini’s interference claims lack evidence, according to law enforcement officials quoted by Haaretz.

Israel’s Shin Bet has failed to find evidence of foreign interference in last month’s elections, despite claims from the domestic security agency’s chief, David Zini, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the newspaper Haaretz has reported.

Two senior Israeli law enforcement officials said that the investigation, which is still ongoing, has found no evidence that several hundred thousand shekels had been transferred from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to Arab-led parties in Israel, Haaretz reported on Monday.

There were no transfers from Qatar or any other Arab country being investigated. That’s despite allegations from Netanyahu’s party, Likud, that money had been transferred to boost turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel, without the party providing any tangible evidence to support its claims.

The allegations continue a long-running anti-Qatar campaign in Israel that predates the election. Haaretz has previously reported that a secret campaign involving Israeli influence expets and political advisers targeted Qatar in the weeks after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks.

Qatar has denied all the allegations of interference, and called them unsubstantiated.

The latest claims from Zini and Netanyahu intensified in the wake of the strong electoral performance by the parties, led by Palestinian citizens of Israel, in the October 27 elections. Their 19 seats, confirmed by Israel’s election authorities, mean that Jewish parties opposed to Netanyahu have enough seats in parliament to force the prime minister out, if they are willing to work with the Arab-led parties.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has tasked opposition politician Gadi Eisenkot with making the first attempt to form a government, possibly spelling the end of Netanyahu’s time as prime minister.

‘Not a criminal matter’

“[It is] certainly not a security matter, and it is highly doubtful that it is even a criminal one,” one of the officials quoted by Haaretz said.

“All there is is intelligence information without any real substantiation,” another quote attributed to one of the officials said.

Dozens of people have been questioned, but no evidence has so far been found of money being transferred. Haaretz also found that major fuel companies in Israel found no unusual activity involving fuel cards, undermining the allegation that Arab voters had been bribed with fuel cards in exchange for their votes.

Zini, who was selected by Netanyahu to lead Shin Bet last year and is regarded as an ally of the Israeli leader, has sought to investigate several leading politicians who are Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Netanyahu also questioned why Ahmad Tibi, a leading Arab politician in Israel, visited Qatar a few days ahead of the election.

Tibi explained that his trip to Doha was to appear on Al Jazeera.

Qatar has denied the unsubstantiated allegations of interference or funding of any activities aimed at influencing the Israeli election results.

“We reject the accusations made by certain Israeli politicians and their contacts in the media, who have launched yet another disinformation campaign aiming to drag Qatar into Israeli political disputes following this week’s elections,” Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Majed al-Ansari said in a social media post on October 29.

Israel’s attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara said on Sunday that she had seen no evidence from the investigation of anything that would have influenced the election results “or substantiate a claim of influence that could lead to a change in the election results”.

Israeli police and Shin Bet are expected to submit their assessments to Baharav-Miara in the next few days, the report said.

Global stock markets have climbed as investors continue to bet on bright prospects for the tech giants driving the AI boom.

In the United States, all three major stock indexes rose on Tuesday, led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which gained 1.18 percent.

The benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.6 percent, while the narrower Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 0.03 percent.

Five of the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks rose, led by Tesla, up 4.04 percent.

Amazon gained 1.61 percent, while Apple and Alphabet gained 0.93 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable public company, rose almost 1 percent after announcing a $3bn investment in Meta’s equity offering.

Meta fell 1.64 percent, while Microsoft fell 0.24 percent.

Other big movers in tech included Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom and Intel, which gained 5.45 percent, 4 percent and 3.61 percent, respectively.

Asia Pacific markets rally

Gains continued in the Asia Pacific on Wednesday, with stock markets in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia climbing.

The KOSPI in Seoul led the gains, with the benchmark index up 5.84 percent as of 03:00 GMT.

The surge came as South Korea’s SK Hynix, one of the world’s top three memory chip makers, announced blockbuster third-quarter results on Wednesday, with operating profit soaring about 630 percent year-on-year to 83.33 trillion won ($62.8bn).

SK Hynix shares listed in South Korea surged more than 8 percent following the results.

In Tokyo, the benchmark Nikkei 225 was up 1.26 percent, while the TAIEX in Taipei was up 1.32 percent.

The S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney was up 0.11 percent.

Investors are keenly anticipating upcoming earnings reports from major tech players as they try to gauge whether their massive investments in AI will pay dividends.

Microsoft and Alphabet report their latest results on Wednesday, followed by Amazon on Thursday and Apple on Monday.

On Monday, AI giant Anthropic filed paperwork for its hotly anticipated IPO, reporting a net loss of $80.7bn in the first half of 2026 on $16.3bn in revenue.

Tech firms have poured hundreds of billions of dollars each into AI infrastructure, fuelling debate over whether a speculative market bubble could be forming similar to the one that preceded the 2000 dot-com crash.

Global AI investment is forecast to hit $2.7 trillion in 2026 and $3.6 trillion in 2027, according to Gartner, a technology insights company.

Oil prices, which have been elevated since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, rose about 1 percent as Asian markets opened on Wednesday amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, including hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.

Futures for Brent crude, the global benchmark, stood at about $115 a barrel, up 59 percent from before the war began.