Israel and the Middle East News Update Wednesday, January 16 Headlines: ​ ● PA to Bid for Full UN Membership Despite US Opposition ● Gantz Near Cementing His Election Ticket ● Kochavi Takes Reins as IDF Chief of Staff ● 5 IDF Soldiers Likely to Face Charges for Beating Detainees ● How E. Jerusalem Palestinians Are Denied Israeli Citizenship ● Gaza Landfills and Sewage Build Up Along Israeli Border ● Radical Settler Smotrich Wins National Union Primary ● Thousands of Palestinians Protest Social Security Law Commentary: ● Times of Israel: “Gantz’s Empathy for the Druze is Mainstream” − By Raphael Ahrens, Senior Columnist ● Forward: “I’m a Settler Who Opposes the Separation Barrier” − By David Haivri, Samaria Regional Council 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 ● Aaron Zucker, Associate Editor ​ ​ News Excerpts ​ January 16, 2019 Times of Israel PA to Bid for Full UN Membership Despite US Opposition The Palestinians will launch a bid to become a full member of the United Nations in the coming weeks, even though such a move will be blocked by the United States, the Palestinian foreign minister said Tuesday. The Palestinians have the status of non-member observer state at the and full membership would amount to international recognition of Palestinian statehood. Any request must first be approved by the Security Council, where the US has veto power. The Palestinians presented a request in 2011, but the application never came for a vote. Ha’aretz Gantz Near Cementing His Election Ticket Benny Gantz, former army chief of staff and leader of a new centrist party, has chosen a dozen people to top his ticket in the April 9 general election, political sources said. Three names are expected to be on the ticket: educator Chili Tropper, former Yeruham Mayor Michael Biton, and Alon Schuster, a former head of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council. If Gantz’s predecessor as chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, joins the slate, he is expected to receive the No. 2 slot. Two possible additions could be Orli Levi-Abekasis, and former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Times of Israel Kochavi Takes Reins as IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi took over Tuesday as the 22nd commander of the Israel Defense Forces, replacing outgoing chief Gadi Eisenkot, who ended his four-year term as the army’s top officer. Kochavi, until now the deputy chief of staff, takes over as Israel faces an array of challenges on its borders with Gaza and Lebanon along with an evolving campaign against Iran in Syria. Times of Israel 5 IDF Soldiers Likely to Face Charges for Beating Detainees Five IDF soldiers, including a company commander and a squad commander, are likely to be charged with serious crimes and face lengthy prison terms for allegedly beating Palestinian detainees, according to a report Tuesday night. The Palestinian suspects were arrested last week in a search for the terrorist from an attack in December. The five servicemen are suspected of beating the two Palestinian detainees as a form of revenge for their fallen comrades. 2 Ha’aretz How E. Jerusalem Palestinians Are Denied Israeli Citizenship Although in principle Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem may receive Israeli citizenship, there are many obstacles -- simply getting an appointment to present necessary documents takes three years. Then it’s another three to four years until there is a decision. Ground for rejection of applications include insufficient Hebrew, questions about loyalty to the country and suspicion of owning property in the West Bank. More than 95 percent of East Jerusalem Palestinians have residency status rather than citizenship. While the number of applications has grown from 69 in 2003 to over 1,000 today, very few receive a positive response. Ynet Gaza Landfills and Sewage Build Up Along Israeli Border The residents of Israeli communities bordering Gaza, who have been dealing with Hamas rocket attacks and incendiary airborne devices, have found themselves facing another challenge -- polluted sewage is being pumped from Gaza into the Israeli side of the border after a collapse of the local wastewater treatment plant. Due to the dire economic situation in Gaza, the wastewater plant cannot undergo needed treatments, prompting Palestinians to drain sewage into the sea, polluting the groundwater in the process. Israel’s Water Authority has recently set up a pumping station near the Erez border crossing. Before the Israeli intervention, border communities suffered from an onslaught of mosquitoes and flies. Ha’aretz Radical Settler Smotrich Wins National Union Primary Bezalel Smotrich was elected leader of the National Union party, Israel’s furthest-right faction, on Monday night by the party’s central committee. Now Smotrich, 38, is at a crossroads: his continued climb up the political ladder depends on whether he can make the transition from being one of Israel’s most uncompromisingly divisive figures, to one who is capable of uniting. This skill will be crucial if he is to succeed in his next goal: replacing Naftali Bennett as head of the national religious camp’s “big tent” party, Jewish Home. Ha’aretz Thousands of Palestinians Protest Social Security Law Some 2,000 Palestinians working in the private sector demonstrated Tuesday against a new social security law that went into effect after a few delays. The participants, who called the Palestinian Authority a “gang of thieves,” seemed to represent a prevailing mood of total distrust in the government. A strike called on Tuesday was observed strictly in Hebron and only partially in other places. The Palestinian Bar Association joined the strike, announcing that its members would not appear in court. 3 Times of Israel – January 15, 2019 Gantz’s Empathy for the Druze is Mainstream By Raphael Ahrens, Senior Columnist ● When a politician doesn’t know if he’s left-wing or right-wing, he’s usually a leftist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently in reference to former army chief and current election season ostensible superstar Benny Gantz. The public still doesn’t know much about Gantz’s political positions, but on Monday he offered a first glimpse, not so much of where he stands on the various issues, but at least of the way he wants to be perceived by the public: as someone who’s at home in the heart of the Israeli consensus. Sympathizing with Druze protesters who came to his home in Rosh Ha’ayin to demonstrate against the Jewish Nation-State Law, Gantz vowed that he would try to “fix” the controversial legislation. ● His promised intervention on behalf of a community whose members serve in the IDF, and who argue that the law renders them second-class citizens because it does not specify full equality for all Israeli citizens, triggered a deluge of critical comments from Netanyahu’s Likud party and New Right ministers Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked. The critics argued that the legislation needs no fixing. (Defenders of the law note that the commitment to full equality for all Israelis is enshrined in other legislation.) Gantz’s pledge to change it, they asserted, underlined what they had long suspected: that the former chief of staff is a leftist. The Likud party did not mince words. “When Gantz attacks the nation-state law and Tzipi Livni congratulates him for it, everyone knows the obvious: Gantz is left, just like [Yesh Atid head Yair] Lapid,” Netanyahu’s party said in a statement. One Likud MK, Amir Ohana, went as far as suggesting (Hebrew tweet) that Gantz had joined the camp of veteran Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi. ● But the Israeli left was also unhappy about Gantz’s first foray into political punditry. “The nation-state law does not have to be fixed” but should be scrapped entirely, carped Meretz head Tamar Zandberg. To merely propose changes to the law’s wording constituted a “true victory of the right,” she argued. Applause came from the center-left, with both Labor party chairman Avi Gabbay and Hatnua chief Livni warmly greeting the former army chief’s comments. Centrist Yesh Atid boss Lapid, too, welcomed Gantz’s statement, adding that his party has long promised to amend the law in response to the criticism by the Druze and others. ● Gantz’s attack on the Nation-State Law — which, when passed in July, was celebrated by the Israeli right as a historic achievement for modern Zionism — turned him into an easy target for his political opponents. “All surveys” indicate that a large majority of the Israeli public, “including centrists,” support the legislation, and Gantz’s first political statement might therefore turn out to have been his “first political mistake,” Hadashot TV news’s political commentator Amit Segal tweeted. ● But the opprobrium from the right notwithstanding, Gantz did not dispute the non-contentious elements of the Nation-State Law, which, among other provisions, determines that Israel is the 4 “national home of the Jewish people” and specifies what Israel’s flag looks like. He emphatically did not call for the law to be repealed. Rather, in showing solidarity with the Druze minority’s complaints about the legislation, he implied that he took issue with the law’s more controversial clauses, such as the apparent downgrading of the Arabic language and the clause stipulating that the “right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” and possibly with its failure to include phrasing about equality for all citizens. ● In this stance, Gantz joins many Israelis, including some with bona fide right-wing credentials. Likud MK Benny Begin, for instance, refused to vote for the bill, and former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo said that the law constituted an “injustice” to Israel’s non-Jewish population.