Israel and the Middle East News Update

Friday, September 13

Headlines: • Election Poll: Right-Wing Bloc Grows Stronger, But Still Needs Lieberman • Ma’ariv’s Last Poll: Right-Wing Bloc—57, Center-Left Bloc—54 • Right-Wing Jews Behind Billboards Calling on Arabs Not to Vote • Netanyahu to Putin: We Won’t Allow Iranian Aggression From Syria • Security Experts Stopped Netanyahu from Annexing West Bank Immediately • Netanyahu Determined Not to Stand Trial

Commentary: • Ha’aretz: “The Nasty, Racist Campaign That Will Go Down in ’s History” − Yossi Verter • Yedioth Ahronoth: “The Day After” − By Nachum Barnea

S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 The Hon. Robert Wexler, President ● Yoni Komorov, Editor ● Yehuda Greenfield-Gilat, Associate Editor

News Excerpts September 13, 2019 Ha’aretz Poll: Right-wing Bloc Grows Stronger, but Still Needs Lieberman Kahol Lavan is set to be the largest party in the after next week's election, according to a poll released Thursday by the Kan public broadcaster. The poll gives the party led by and 33 seats, compared to 31 for Prime Minister 's . The poll also contains good news for Netanyahu – it has the far-right party passing the electoral threshold and receiving four seats, giving the right-wing bloc led by Likud 59 seats without the support of 's – close to the 61 required to create a coalition, with the center-left bloc garnering 54 seats. See also, “Five Days to Election, a Battered and Bruised Netanyahu Is Nonetheless Growing Stronger” (Ha’aretz)

Ma’ariv Ma’ariv’s Last Poll: Right-Wing Bloc—57, Center-Left Bloc—54 Ma’ariv’s final pre-election poll found that if the election were held today, the Likud would emerge the largest party, but Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu still would not be able to form a coalition without Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu. Q: If the election were held today, for which party would you vote? Likud: 33 Blue and White: 32 : 12 : 9 Yisrael Beiteinu: 9 : 8 : 7 Democratic Union: 6 Labor Party-Gesher: 4

Times of Israel Right-wing Jews Behind Billboards Calling on Arabs Not to Vote In a campaign ahead of the last elections in April, billboards went up throughout Arab communities and towns in the Galilee urging voters to boycott the polls. Many residents assumed the ads, which did not identify their funders, were an initiative of political forces in the Arab community opposed to the Jewish state and its institutions, such as the Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch. But a Channel 12 news inquiry broadcast on Thursday found that the campaign was likely commissioned and financed by right-wing Jews who hoped to suppress Arab turnout. , chairman of the predominantly Arab Joint List party, demanded a criminal probe following the Channel 12 report. “This evening it became clear that suppressing our vote is their victory,” he said in a Twitter post. “We won’t let them settle in our ballot stations. We demand a criminal investigation. Those responsible should be in prison.” He added: “The right is afraid of Arabs, but we are not afraid of the right.”

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Israel Hayom Netanyahu to Putin: We won't allow Iranian aggression from Syria Israel will not put up with Iran's growing influence in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. Netanyahu met Putin at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi to discuss the growing threat from Tehran, amidst growing tension in the region stemming from the presence of Shiites militias in Syria. During the meeting on Thursday, Putin praised military and security cooperation between Russia and Israel. Netanyahu further said Israel must be allowed to act freely against Iran. The two leaders have met more than a dozen times in recent years and the countries' militaries have been working to avoid accidental clashes in Syria, where Israel says it has carried out many strikes against Iranian targets to stop Tehran establishing a permanent military presence there.

Jerusalem Post Security Experts Stopped PM from Annexing West Bank A screaming match" occurred on Tuesday before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to annex the Jordan Valley after the elections between Netanyahu and senior security leaders. The conversation involved a difficult exchange between the prime minister and the security officials over his upcoming announcement. Netanyahu's announcement was delayed by over an hour due to the conversation. According to some sources, Netanyahu told them of his intention to announce the immediate annexation of the West Bank but changed his position due to harsh criticism from several heads of security branches, as well as legal opinions which addressed potential difficulties attendant to such an annexation as this. Netanyahu had called the security officials a short time before he was to make his speech. The security officials speaking to him, it was said, spared no words and used particularly sharp language.

Ha’aretz Netanyahu Determined Not to Stand Trial Immediately after the last election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined to members of his inner circle a plan to extract him from facing trial. The plan was based on obtaining immunity from the Knesset and passing legislation to prevent the High Court of Justice from removing that immunity. If his bloc wins 61 Knesset seats next week, Netanyahu will presumably resort to this rescue plan. For him it will be the Day of Judgment. “Stop being frightened. It’s time for them to be frightened,” Netanyahu told his confidants, referring to justice officials, headed by Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit and State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, who have decided to indict him in three cases, subject to a hearing. Netanyahu told his confidants why he insisted on his destructive plan, telling them he had lost all confidence in the legal system on all levels – the attorney general’s office, the state prosecutor and the court system. “They want me in prison,” he told one of his cronies, noting that if he were indicted that would indeed be the result – not because he had crossed a red line, but merely due to the jurists’ collective hostility toward him and his ideology.

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Ha’aretz – September 13, 2019 The Nasty, Racist Campaign That Will Go Down in Israel's History If there's no breakthrough in the coming days, we will find ourselves, the morning after the election, mired deep in a political and constitutional nightmare. Will it be left to the president to save the day? By Yossi Verter • Israel will go to the polls on Tuesday for the second time in less than five months. What was once considered inconceivable is happening to us. Theoretically, a third election is also possible, in early 2020. As long as Benjamin Netanyahu is the bone stuck deep in the throat of the body politic, holding its internal organs in a vice-like grip while fighting the battle of his life, the impasse that brought us to this pass is not going to go away. • It is because of the prime ministerial suspect, who sought to preempt the attorney general’s decision in his cases, that the public was dragged into the first election, in April. Because of the weightiness of the charges against him, he failed in his effort to form a government in May. His tremendous Ben-Gurion-like power, which works like a spell on his coalition allies, induced them to agree to commit group suicide for his sake. A collective coalition Stockholm syndrome led a captive public into yet another election campaign. When historians come to study this period, they will find it difficult to explain to their students what in the blazes happened to this intelligent nation – to this “special race,” in the words of Likud MK Makhlouf “Miki” Zohar. • It’s been a bizarre election season and a cruel summer. Until a week ago, the campaign was barely discernible. There were flashes of political flare-ups here and there, but the general feeling among the public was: Leave us alone already, for heaven’s sake. • There were no stars in this campaign. There was no particularly fascinating personality, like Moshe Feiglin in April, or and Yair Lapid in 2013, or even Moshe Kahlon in 2015. All the players were familiar from the last round, and looked faded and burned out. • The campaigns themselves were also pretty feeble and lacking in innovation. The whole business had the feel of a second and disappointing season of a TV series whose departure no one lamented. Those who did stand out were Avigdor Lieberman, who ran an effective campaign until a week or two ago, and Arye Dery, who again outdid himself in playing on the feelings of voters consumed with longings for the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef of blessed and sainted memory. As for Netanyahu and Likud – we’ll get to them a little later. • The latest polls paint a despairing picture. Like a bad dream that recurs nightly, they do not forecast a clear-cut decision on September 17. If no electoral breakthrough occurs in the next few days (though it usually does at this stage), we will find ourselves, the morning after, mired deep in a political and constitutional nightmare. • The task of extricating Israel from this entanglement – on the assumption that the right-wing- Haredi bloc does not win the sought-after 61 Knesset seats, which is certainly a possibility, and the center-left bloc does not make a late surge forward so that it’s in a position to assemble an obstructive bloc, which is less likely – will fall on the shoulders of one person:

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President . To say that Rivlin is aware with every fiber of his being of the gravity of the moment, has girded himself for it, is doing the calculations and mulling all manner of plans and ideas – would be an understatement. He is all that and much more. • The weeks ahead could well define Rivlin’s five years as president. In a situation of numerical deadlock between parties after the vote, the law grants him almost unlimited power to determine the identity of the next prime minister. Aware of the great sensitivity of the situation, his office has decided to maintain silence until September 18, or until the official election results are announced. • Excessive caution has never hurt anyone. Accordingly, Rivlin will avoid doing what he did as president, in the last two election campaigns: to call on the public to vote. His bureau has rejected all requests from newspaper editors and from radio and television shows for Rivlin to write an oped, record a message or appear in a video clip encouraging the public to turn out on Election Day. Why? There will always be the gadfly who will say that the president wants a high turnout to help this side, or to work against that side. He may say a couple of words when he himself votes, on Tuesday, but generally, he will hold his peace. Clear and present danger • Netanyahu is not a guy who gives up easily, especially when his personal freedom is at stake. We saw the nadir to which he and his cohorts are capable of descending in waging the nastiest, most racist campaign ever conducted here by a movement that is not Kahane Lives. The absolute low point – to date – was the alleged “junior staffer” in the campaign who sent out a message of unadulterated racism on Wednesday, via Bibi’s official Facebook account, in the name of the prime minister about “the Arabs” – not Syrians or Hezbollah, but rather Israeli citizens – “who want to annihilate us all – women, children and men.” It would be interesting to know whether the name of the junior fellow who was “reprimanded,” according to a campaign headquarters spokesman, is someone by the name of Yair. There is someone with a name like that who’s wandering around, whose status at headquarters is as high as his morality is low. • On Thursday, Facebook Israel announced that it was suspending Likud’s campaign (Netanyahu’s bot, to be more precise), because of a violation of the company’s policy barring incitement and hate messages. For 24 hours, that is. Too little, too late, as befits the slipshod media giant. The message was disseminated, reached its destination and was received; mainstream media outlets also dealt with it extensively. Which was the exactly what the Likud staffer intended. • The plunge to the bottom of the sewer, the dive into the depths of the morass that we’ve seen in the past few weeks – it has all come straight from the top. No pencil moves and no key on the keyboard is pressed without Bibi’s authorization. Of course that didn’t keep him from claiming, without even blushing, that he didn’t know about the Facebook post. • The Likud of 2019 seems like the realization of the fondest dreams of and his present-day disciples, Bentzi Gopstein and . Even Itamar Ben-Gvir, from Otzma Yehudit, doesn’t dare express himself or lie as flippantly as the prime minister of Israel. Even the Union of Right-Wing Parties’ would think twice before spewing out a vile lie like, “[Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei said he prefers Gantz.” (Not to fear, though: If

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Netanyahu has to court Kahol Lavan leader Benny Gantz afterward in order to form a coalition, he’ll apologize.) • The violent hunting expedition the premier is spearheading against Keshet television’s Channel 12 and the other free media that still exist here, the courts, the attorney general and the entire law enforcement system, as well as against the “elites,” the left and Israel’s Arab population – all this attests to the depth of his desperation, the scale of his fear and to a certain degree of loss of control. But also to a contempt for every manifestation of statesmanlike, responsible behavior. In recent days he tried to put the machine of diplomacy- security back on track but then the long-awaited but contemptible last stretch of the racist campaign came along and we were reminded of what we were dealing with. • It’s not surprising that the finest progeny of the prime minister’s movement, and – and, in previous rounds, Dan Meridor, Roni Milo, Ehud Olmert, Meir Sheetrit, and Dan Tichon – would rather cut off their hand than use it to cast a ballot for Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu. (We’ll have to wait until July 2021 to hear how the senior Herut veteran Reuven Rivlin, cast his ballot.) Begin already left once and returned, before departing for good. In a painful but detailed post that Eitan published on his Facebook page, he stated that he has never voted for any other party. Veteran, authentic Likudniks, the few who remain, will have a hard time voting for this incarnation of the party. It’s clear that Netanyahu understands this. In their place, he prefers to try to convince supporters of Otzma Yehudit to fall into his arms. For him, voters are like the money that he is so reluctant to waste. It has no smell. • Never in the 71 years of the quite successful Zionist enterprise has Israel had a leader as dangerous as Netanyahu. If he gets a renewed mandate, in both party and party-bloc terms, to form the next government – he will be able to claim, and justifiably from his perspective, that the nation has said “No!” to putting him on trial. At the same time, it’s not clear how far he is capable of going in order to try to hold onto the reins of power, in the event he doesn’t get a mandate from the public or from the president. • Rule for Bibi is not only the clout and the Balfour Street residence and life at the public’s expense, in Jerusalem or in his Caesarea villa. Being in power is parliamentary immunity and a defensive shield against indictment for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, which are very likely to be filed before the end of the year. Governance, for him, is life itself, in the most existential sense. • His strategy has three possible tiers: to create a bloc of 61-62 Knesset seats one way or another, whether with or without defectors from the other side of the river; to bring 60 MKs, a number that would be a barrier to the formation of a government not led by him and would keep him in the game; for Likud to win more than 35 seats, and thus overpower Kahol Lavan, which would probably quell the flames of rebellion against him within his own party, which are now flickering in the dark, hidden under a hermetically sealed Iron Dome. • Any result that is below these figures, such as those being predicted in the latest polls, in which Likud isn’t getting more than 31-32 seats and the whole bloc garners 57-58 at the most – would be apocalyptic for Bibi.

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• (…) The past month has seen a rejuvenation of the cockpit’s campaign. Gantz is doing better in interviews. His campaign staff is being managed in orderly fashion, all in all, in the face of the frenetic hysteria of the other side, as seen in the latter’s two recent “dramatic announcements,” both of which turned out to be yet more mendacious and cynical blasts of hot air. • First, on Monday, came the photo from Israeli intelligence’s cold storage of a nuclear facility in Abadeh, Iran, that hasn’t been active for some time. The the next day, Netanyahu announced his intention to annex to the state the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea region if he’s elected. Behind him was a map of the area in question, riddled with errors. Apparently, the same above-mentioned junior staffer had managed to sneak into the most secure and heavily guarded room in the country and embarrass the prime minister. • Later that evening Bibi was forced off the stage in Ashdod. A terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip had decided to rain rockets on his parade in the seaside city, an event that was broadcast live via his Facebook account. Kahol Lavan leaped at the opportunity that came their way. Leaped too high. Sometimes it’s better to say nothing, especially when the images speak so powerfully. • The sounding of a missile alert in the middle of the prime minister’s public appearance, driving him and his audience to take refuge in a secure space, wasn’t a “national snafu,” as Naftali Bennett tweeted and as Gantz and Ashkenazi snorted. It was a personal embarrassment for a leader who promised a decade ago to eradicate terrorism, and it was a PR disaster. The real national humiliation here derives from the fact that this is what the lives of tens of thousands of people who live in communities bordering the Gaza Strip – and at times also in Sderot and further north, in Ashkelon and Ashdod – have been like for the past decade. Most of them will still probably go vote Likud. Why? “Only Bibi.” That’s why. • Gantz won’t say so aloud, but he’s running his campaign with one hand tied behind his back, and it’s killing him. The necessity to bring every central issue that comes up to the cockpit for discussion makes it hard to take quick decisions. Lapid’s insistent, childish refusal to forgo the agreement with Gantz on rotating the prime ministerial position (after two years) is a genuine drawback. “Yair is head-butting the wall,” key people in Kahol Lavan say. “He’d rather lose for a fourth time – anything but change his mind.” • This weekend the foursome will decide what to do about Labor-Gesher. Should they launch an assault on the rival party, or what’s left of it, and with what intensity? It’s a problem. It’s hard to know where the “cannibalism” should stop. Gantz and his colleagues would be happy to reduce Labor-Gesher to four seats. But with the polls only showing them with five or six, the result could be that the party won’t cross the electoral threshold, which would mean a loss of three seats for the center-left bloc (again, according to the rules of the Bader-Ofer law). In April, the final surveys published gave Labor under Avi Gabbay nine to 10 seats, and they ended up with six. • You do the math.

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Yedioth Ahronoth – September 13, 2019 The Day After By Nahum Barnea • The order was given at 8:00 PM to the hotel workers at the Ramada Hotel in Hadera to remove the seats. They piled them one on top of the other, forming high stacks, and dragged them to the wall behind the metal detectors, far from the cameras. […] • The audience had been invited for 6:30 PM. By 8:00 PM, 300 people had arrived. Activists for the Likud, Feiglin and Kahlon had all received online messages, but that [turnout] was all they managed to drum up. The evening before, when Netanyahu spoke in Ashdod, the Likud was unable to fill the hall. The hall owner, a Yisrael Beiteinu supporter, gleefully reported that he had to pack up more and more seats. • That doesn’t tell us anything about the election results, nothing at all. It tells us something about the general mood. I can’t remember an election in Israel that was held in this sort of atmosphere. It isn’t apathy—it’s alienation, disgust, turning one’s back. These elections were forced on the voters by the politicians—and it is only natural that the voters are repulsed by the coercion. Few believe Netanyahu when he warns them against the establishment of a treasonous left wing government and about Arabs who want destroy us all. Even the Arabs find that hard to believe. Few believe Gantz and Barak when they say that this is the last opportunity to save democracy. • Two phenomena endanger democracies across Western world. One is the spread of anti- liberal anti-democratic ideas among large and growing swaths of public opinion; the Smotriches and the Ben Gvirs of the world have moved from the margins to the center; the second is the public’s loss of faith in the state institutions, in general, and in the democratic game rules in particular. In Israel, a country that faces existential questions, this phenomenon is particularly dangerous. That is why the question of the voter turnout next Tuesday is so important. • In the April elections, 670,000 voters in the greater Tel Aviv area alone did not bother to go to the polling stations. Bnei Brak turned out in full numbers. The people in Bnei Brak also feel alienated, but they do their civic duty obediently. The polls indicate that there will be another drop in voter turnout on Tuesday. Avigdor Lieberman checked with the Foreign Ministry on the voter turnout in the polling stations in Israeli embassies. He was told that voter turnout was ten percent lower than it had been in April. These are embassy workers and official delegations, informed people with opinions, people who are politically involved. As Gantz said, if that is what is happening there, it will be even worse in Tel Aviv. • One party leader told me this week that 100,000 Israelis have chosen to spend Election Day overseas, either as tourists or on business. Nobody has rushed to change their ticket. Nobody—aside perhaps from the Haredim—has arranged for an airlift from New York. • The greatest failure of the leaders of the large parties in the center-left bloc is that they have been unable to create the sense of emergency among their voters. They and their voters are the same. It would not be groundless to speculate that if Gantz and Barak and their colleagues

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weren’t personally running for election on Tuesday, they too would be attending business meetings overseas. Netanyahu’s Goal • […] Netanyahu’s campaign in 1999 was similar to this one. He went from city to city, from hotel to hotel. Everywhere he went he was greeted with great enthusiasm by the audience. Men kissed him on the cheek. Women kissed his hand. Ehud Barak beat him at the polling stations. Netanyahu was greatly admired by a minority, and that, more or less, is where it ended. He has changed since then, and so has his audience: his base has grown. It now is worth, in the estimate of one of his rivals in the right wing, up to 25 seats. On the other hand, there is less enthusiasm today. People are sated. With every new election, Netanyahu does his gevald campaign and then wins. And he is always there, like the sea, like the air, like day and night. Nobody will sacrifice themselves for his sake; at most they’ll be prepared to smear his rivals on Facebook. • One can’t help but admire Netanyahu’s fighting spirit. I once compared him to the frog that gets stuck in a vat of cream. Any other frog would have accepted his fate and drowned quietly, but he kicked and kicked until the cream turned into butter and he was able to climb out. • His goal is to have 61 seats [for the right-wing bloc]. In contrast to the impression that he is now trying to create now, that goal is definitely within reach. The lower voter turnout is, the better his chances. With 61 MKs who support him, Netanyahu will be able to form an immunity coalition within a matter of days. Shaked and Bennett will express their reservations about the override clause, but will take comfort in the ministerial portfolios that they are offered. Within a month he will pass the [immunity] laws, will be free of the criminal cases pending against him and will devote himself to the rest of his term. That will be the time for him to bring in Blue and White or some of its fragments: the chances that Blue and White will survive as a united party in the opposition aren’t high. That will be the time to generate a split in Yamina and to throw out Shaked and Bennett. • Politicians are sure that that is his plan.

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