Israel and the Middle East News Update

Wednesday, May 27

Headlines:

 After Rocket Attack, Israeli Jets Strike Targets in Gaza Strip  Ya'alon: Gaza Will Pay a Heavy Price if Calm is Not Maintained  Palestinians Reject Proposal to Discuss Settlement Borders  US Says Reported 'Settlement Borders' Proposal New to its Ears  Netanyahu Embarks on Senior Civil Service 'Beheadings'  Kahlon: I Will Not Take Part in Gas-Related Decisions  A New Headache: Begin Refuses to Resign  Amnesty Report: Hamas has Committed War Crimes in Gaza

Commentary:

 Yedioth Haronoth: “The Paradox”  By  Foreign Policy: “’s Grade A Pork-Barrel Politics”  By Neri Zilber

S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 www.centerpeace.org ● Yoni Komorov, Editor

News Excerpts May 27, 2015 Times of After Rocket Attack, Israeli Jets Strike Targets in Gaza Strip The Israeli Air Force launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning, hours after a projectile fired from the coastal enclave fell in southern Israel, causing no damage. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the bombardments across the Palestinian coastal enclave. The IDF said in a statement that it targeted four sites of terror infrastructure in the southern Gaza Strip in response to the rocket fire at southern Israel on Tuesday evening. The military said it confirmed direct hits. “The reality that Hamas’s territory is used as a staging ground to attack Israel is unacceptable and intolerable and will bear consequences.”

Jerusalem Post Ya'alon: Gaza Will Pay a Heavy Price if Calm is Not Maintained Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon responded to the Tuesday night rocket fired at Israel from the Gaza strip, saying that if there isn't calm between Israel and Gaza, the Gaza Strip will pay a very heavy price, adding that Israel's response would "cause anyone that tries to challenge us to be sorry for what they did." Islamic Jihad was named as the responsible party for firing the rocket, said another senior security official. The official said the rocket was fired "as a result of internal conflicts within the organization." Still, Ya'alon maintained the position that Hamas is held responsible for anything that happens in the Strip.

Ha’aretz Palestinians Reject Proposal to Discuss Settlement Borders Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat on Tuesday called Netanyahu's proposal to discuss the borders of settlement blocs an attempt to legitimize the settlements, an issue he said that the Palestinians were not prepared to accept. Erekat, a member of the PLO's executive committee, told Ha’aretz that the Palestinian stance was very clear: West Bank settlements are not legitimate and there is therefore no place for discussion about their borders, according to international law. If Netanyahu is interested in renewing the political process, Erekat said, he must halt all construction in the settlements, implement the fourth stage of prisoner release, hold negotiations based on the 1967 lines, and end the occupation. Any other position will render the negotiations irrelevant.

Jerusalem Post US Says Reported 'Settlement Borders' Proposal New to its Ears The United States has not heard of a plan by Israel to define the settlement blocs it would be allowed to retain under a future two-state solution with the Palestinians, before resuming direct negotiations toward final agreement, a US official said on Tuesday. The official was responding to reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made the proposal to the European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, in a meeting last week. "We are aware of the press reports about what may have been discussed in a private meeting, but we have not yet heard anything directly from either side so we are not in a position to comment," State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said. 2

Ynet News Netanyahu Embarks on Senior Civil Service 'Beheadings' 10 days have passed since the 34th Israeli government was sworn in, and one can already clearly see the transformation: a string of dismissals and resignations of senior pubic officials reveal Benjamin Netanyahu is changing the order of priorities and is picking loyalists. The opposition calls this "beheadings". Yael Endoran, director-general of the Ministry of Finance, resigned her post only 10 days after the elections. Last week, during Netanyahu's first day of work as communications minister, he dismissed Communications Ministry Director-General Avi Berger over the phone. On Monday, the director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Nissim Ben-Shitrit, was added to Netanyahu's dismissal list and replaced by . Simultaneously, Antitrust Authority Commissioner David Gilo and National Insurance Institute (NII) Director General Esther Dominissini both resigned too.

Channel 2 News Kahlon: I Will Not Take Part in Gas-Related Decisions During the 2015 elections campaign, Kulanu Chairman was interviewed by Israel's Channel 2 News and promised the public on live television: "I will tackle the gas market crisis; every monopoly must be dismantled." Four months later, amid the resignation of the director of the Antitrust Authority, Kahlon announced on Tuesday that he intends to stay out of the annual 100 billion NIS gas market issue due to his association with Koby Maimon, one of the Tamar Gas Field owners. "Upon beginning to serve as finance minister, Kahlon announced he would not be taking part in decisions concerning the gas market issue," a statement issued by Kahlon explains. "Just like he refrained from treating any issue linked to the energy market in the past."

Yedioth Ahronoth A New Headache: Begin Refuses to Resign The addition of Gilad Erdan to the cabinet has created yet another farce in the brief term of the fourth Netanyahu government. Prime Minister Netanyahu is now stuck with a minister whom he doesn’t want to fire, and is now looking for a way to get around his refusal to resign. Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and Economy Minister are staunchly opposed to expanding the size of the cabinet to beyond 20 ministers, which has forced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to ask to resign his post in order to make room for Erdan. Yesterday, however, it became evident that Begin is unwilling to resign. Begin informed Coalition Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi that he intends to continue to serve as a cabinet minister pending a decision to the contrary.

Israel Radio News Amnesty Report: Hamas has Committed War Crimes in Gaza Amnesty International accused Hamas of war crimes against civilians in Gaza during last year’s Operation Protective Edge. The Amnesty report said that the Hamas security organizations kidnapped, tortured and murdered individuals suspected of collaborating with Israel. They were given a free hand by the leadership to commit shocking acts of violence in order to take revenge on their opponents and to instill fear amongst the residents of Gaza. The report said that some of the actions met the qualification for war crimes.

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Yedioth Ahronoth– May 27, 2015 The Jerusalem Paradox By Haim Ramon  A few days ago we celebrated Jerusalem Day. Paradoxically enough, this is a city in which two thirds of the residents are non-Zionists, and in a decade or two, the share of Zionist Jerusalemites in the city’s population will be negligible. The root of evil sprouted in 1967, when the Israeli government made one of the stupidest decisions that a government of Israel has ever made. It adopted a proposal of two overly eager high-ranking officers to annex 28 villages, refugee camps and neighborhoods populated with Palestinians to the capital, Jerusalem.  None of the annexed areas had ever belonged to Jerusalem before. Instead of making do with annexing the six square kilometers of Jordanian Jerusalem (including the Old City, the holy basin, the Mount of Olives and Mt. Scopus), the government annexed about 60 square kilometers of areas and lands that were part of Judea in the south and part of Samaria in the north, to Jewish Jerusalem.  Today about 860,000 people live in “greater” Jerusalem. About one third of its residents are Palestinians, about one third are Haredim and only about one third are Jewish Zionists. There is no other capital city in the world where most of the residents do not identify fully with their country’s national identity.  Binyamin Netanyahu, since he was first elected as prime minister, turned the Palestinian villages that were annexed, with their hundreds of thousands of Arab residents, into the “bedrock of our existence.” The Shuafat refugee camp became as sacred as the Western Wall to him; the Walaja village has become no less sacred than the Temple Mount. Unfortunately, the former finance minister, Lapid, followed suit, calling “greater” Jerusalem, with all its Palestinian villages and camps, an “idea” that must not be touched.  Not only do the Palestinian villages endanger Jerusalem’s existence as a Jewish city, the State of Israel spends NIS 2-3 billion every year in paying about 300,000 Palestinians various National Insurance allowances and funding their welfare, education and health services.  Netanyahu and Lapid were joined in the latest election campaign by the opposition leader, Herzog, who also pledged allegiance to the absurdity of “greater Jerusalem.” His Jerusalem extends from the Shuafat and Kalandiya refugee camps in the north to the Walaja village in the south, with Issawiya, Jabel Mukaber and Sur Baher in the middle. Yes, these names are familiar—the lone terrorists [who carried out attacks] in Jewish Jerusalem in the past years have originated from all these villages and camps.  For Bibi, the greater Jerusalem has been and remains not only an empty slogan, it is a slogan that covers up a disastrous reality. In fact, on his watch, the city has already been divided in practice into Jewish neighborhoods on one side and Palestinian villages and camps—the transparent Arab neighborhoods—on the other. Jerusalem has become a conflict-ridden and divided city, second to Bnei Brak in the poverty of most of its residents, abandoned by its finest sons. It is becoming increasingly right wing, nationalist and Haredi on one hand, and increasingly Palestinian on the other. Bibi is wiping out Jewish Jerusalem, and is regrettably

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being joined by Buji, who is sanctifying the tragic error from 1967 and even taking pride in the error and its roots in the [Labor] party.  The only way to preserve Jewish Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is to rectify this error. We have to return the 28 villages to the West Bank and continue to build the security fence that then-prime minister began to build in Jerusalem in 2004, when he effectively excluded the Shuafat refugee camp and Kafr Aqab from Jerusalem. This fence should be continued southwards and westwards, so that villages such as Jabel Mukaber, Sur Baher and Walaja will be removed from Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries. This way Jerusalem will return to being a city with a stable Jewish majority. Of course, it will include within its boundaries all the Jewish neighborhoods that were established after 1967.  I call upon the opposition leader not to be dragged after Bibi and the ’s policy of destroying Jerusalem as a Jewish city, and to mobilize in a loud and clear voice on behalf of a Jewish, Zionist and democratic Jerusalem.

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Foreign Policy – May 26, 2015 Benjamin Netanyahu’s Grade A Pork-Barrel Politics Israel’s coalition government is a shaky mess. But Bibi’s wheeling and dealing have cemented his hold on power.

By Neri Zilber  “You founded a circus of a government,” Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog thundered at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the podium of the on May 14. Despite Herzog’s protestations, Netanyahu’s new government — his fourth — was officially sworn in last week along strict party lines, 61 votes to 59.  The incoming governing coalition has already been called many things; “a circus” is arguably the kindest. It is dominated by ultra-Orthodox and pro-settler groups, is expected to face mounting international pressure, and only enjoys a single-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The public view of Netanyahu’s political fortunes have once again undergone a dramatic swing: “King Bibi,” who won an overwhelming victory on election night after a last- ditch fear campaign, is gone. Thanks to a tortured coalition negotiation process, many are now putting forward the notion that Netanyahu is once again weak and can be toppled. It has almost become conventional wisdom that his government’s staying power will be measured in terms of months, not years.  But Bibi’s coalition will likely prove more resilient than many expect. Indeed, both parliamentary procedure as well as politics should give pause to the thesis that Netanyahu’s grip on power is beholden to the whims of one or two coalition backbenchers. Of course, survival is distinct from governing. But when it comes to simply keeping his government intact, Netanyahu has several factors working in his favor.  To begin with, the previous Netanyahu government passed a little-noticed reform bill last year that made no-confidence votes extremely difficult to pull off. The new law demands that the opposition not only win a successful majority vote in order to unseat a government, but also that it assemble a majority consensus for an alternative government. Put simply, a no- confidence vote has to name a prime ministerial choice, has to have backing for a substitute majority coalition government, and only then can an existing government be toppled — in effect, replaced. In parliamentary legalese, the new rule is called “constructive no-confidence” — the idea being that it assists the durability of any government and decreases the number of frivolous no-confidence votes brought before the Knesset.  Cobbling together an alternative government to win such a vote currently looks impossible. The opposition itself – all 59 seats – is fractured, ranging from Arab-Israeli Islamists and anti- Zionists on one side, to hard-line right-wingers like former Foreign Minister on the other. Indeed, one senior Arab parliamentarian joked last week that Lieberman “has to resign from the opposition.” Defections from the governing coalition also look unlikely, given the ideological contradictions between, say, the two ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s government (Shas and United Torah Judaism) and the opposition’s Yesh Atid party, champions of the secular middle class. The belief that members of the pro-settler Jewish Home party would defect from the government because of dissatisfaction with Netanyahu, only to join forces with the opposition’s “Peace Now” Meretz party, is pure fantasy. 6

 In any parliamentary democracy, being part of the ruling coalition brings with it ministerial positions and perks that are difficult to throw away. And Netanyahu lavishly handed out these sweeteners during the recent coalition formation process: The prime minister was seen to be extorted by those outside his Likud Party, cutting one bad deal after the next with his erstwhile partners — the appointment of Justice Minister , a 39-year-old neophyte from the Jewish Home party, being only his last and most exorbitant concession.  However, as one veteran Israeli journalist put it to me, the result is that all the coalition partners are “well fed.” It would be madness for them to surrender their hard-earned spoils for the uncertainty of another prime minister, and less satiating ministerial packages.  The new government can survive, but will it be able to govern? It will, going forward, assuredly lose votes in the Knesset — arguably a relief for many in the world concerned about its narrow, right-wing makeup. Key members of the government intend to pursue an agenda targeting the Supreme Court, the media, left-wing NGOs, as well as the controversial “nationality bill” aimed at giving primacy to Israel’s Jewish character.  Moshe Kahlon, the head of the centrist Kulanu party and the new finance minister, has already said that his party won’t support such legislation — a request Netanyahu reportedly agreed to. However, Kahlon does intend to pursue an ambitious socio-economic agenda focused on lowering the cost of living, including in the real estate, banking, and food sectors. The former Likud minister’s moderation relative to the rest of the government is a recipe for constant coalition crises — yet Kahlon, too, would face difficulties in toppling a right-wing government and joining forces with the Israeli left.  But it might never come to that, as the coalition may find that it needs Kahlon more than Kahlon needs the coalition. His reforms enjoy overwhelming support, not only among the Israeli public but also, probably, across the aisle. Former Labor Party Chairwoman Shelly Yachimovich has already publicly stated her intention to support much of the Netanyahu government’s economic agenda. “There are several ministerial appointments that are quite good,” Yachimovich wrote to her supporters, “and to be completely honest, with some of them I have a lot more in common than with many elements in the opposition.”  Yachimovich, who still commands a powerful following inside the Labor party and remains Herzog’s main competitor for the top spot, is likely not alone in her thinking. A surprising number of opposition parliamentarians may break ranks and vote for key pieces of the government’s economic legislation.  To be sure, this new Israeli government can, and likely will, cause a great deal of harm. Ministers will trumpet one paranoid, ultranationalist initiative after another; settlements will likely grow; and the peace process will continue to be an empty vessel. Increased international pressure on Israel is expected, up to and perhaps including U.N. Security Council resolutions and further European boycott efforts. Because of this, some politicians — including Netanyahu — are holding to the idea that Herzog and his Zionist Union will join the coalition at some point in the future, creating a strong and more moderate national unity government.  While not out of the realm of possibility, this may be a bridge too far for Herzog. He is up for re-election as Labor chairman in the coming year. His base, it’s believed, simply doesn’t want to countenance “saving” Netanyahu from what the prime minister refers to as his “natural 7

partners” on the right. “The era of the [centrist] fig leaf” for Netanyahu, one person close to Herzog recently told me, “is over.”  It is worth recalling that Netanyahu brought all this on himself. It was the prime minister who manufactured a coalition crisis last fall, dissolving his own government and heading to early elections — precisely because he was afraid of being outflanked on his right. After an election campaign in which he pandered to the worst impulses in Israeli society, Netanyahu is now reaping what he sowed. It will be a bumpy road ahead for his new government, with every vote carrying at least the implied threat of crisis. It will, indeed, be a circus. But Netanyahu will remain the ringmaster, and his government will most likely endure. Which is, for Netanyahu, probably the whole point.

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