Israel and the Middle East News Update

Tuesday, January 19

Headlines:  Ambassador Shapiro: Settlements Threaten Two-State Solution  Israeli Chief of Staff Eizenkot: Iran Deal Is an Opportunity  Pregnant Israeli Woman Stabbed in West Bank Attack  Reacting to Otniel Killing, Abbas Says He Opposes Violence  Bennett: Israel’s Defense Thinking Is Deadlocked While Enemies Improving  U.S. Officials in Israel Next Week to Finalize New Military Package  EU Softens Policy, But Lays Line Between Israel, Settlements  Rivlin: The Islamic State Is Already Here, Within Israel

Commentary:  Ma’ariv: “Former Mossad Chief Pardo: There Is No Existential Threat to Israel”  By Yossi Melman, Israeli Journalist Specializing in Security, Intelligence Affairs  Yedioth Ahronoth: “Message from the White House”  By Shimon Shiffer, Senior Commentator, Yedioth Ahronoth

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

News Excerpts January 19, 2015

Ma’ariv Ambassador Shapiro: Settlements Threaten Two-State Solution US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro warned Israel that it would jeopardize the possibility of separation from the Palestinians if it were to continue to expand the settlements. Speaking at a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, Shapiro criticized the fact that Israeli authorities did not deal vigorously with acts of violence against Palestinians, and said that at times there seemed to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law in the West Bank: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians. See also, “Shaked to U.S. Envoy: Recant Claim Israel Applies Separate Laws to Jews, Arabs” (Jerusalem Post)

Ynet News Israeli Chief of Staff Eizenkot: Iran Deal Is an Opportunity IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot on Monday touched on a range of security issues affecting Israel, during his speech at a convention taking place at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Eizenkot addressed the Iran deal, which led to the lifting of sanctions, saying: "The sanctions relief and the nuclear deal with Iran represent a strategic shift that the IDF will have to tackle over the next decade…The agreement is a significant change of course for Iran. There are many risks but also opportunities. We are re-evaluating this shift in the IDF's corridors of power. See also, “Erdan: Lifting of Sanctions Ushers in 'New and Dangerous' Era” (Jerusalem Post)

BICOM Pregnant Israeli Woman Stabbed in West Bank Attack A 30-year-old Israeli woman, in the advanced stages of pregnancy, was stabbed yesterday by a Palestinian male in the West Bank settlement of Tekoa. Michal Froman was shopping at a clothing warehouse, when the attacker arrived and asked the price of an item. As she approached to help him, Froman was stabbed in the upper body and the assailant fled the scene. Froman was taken to a hospital in Jerusalem and was not seriously wounded, while her unborn child remained unharmed. The attacker, thought to be a 15-year-old Palestinian from a nearby village was shot and wounded by security personnel. Froman is the daughter-in-law of the late Rabbi Menachem Froman, the leading rabbi in Tekoa who was well-known for his coexistence work alongside local Palestinians.

Jerusalem Post Reacting to Otniel Killing, Abbas Says He Opposes Violence In his first public comments since the brutal murder of an Israeli woman in the West Bank settlement of Otniel on Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday that he was opposed to violence and killing of anyone irrespective of their ethnic or racial background. “We are concerned over every drop of blood from any person,” Abbas said. During a speech that was broadcast to Palestinians from the Church of the Nativity, Abbas vowed that “the resistance will continue through peaceful means, and we will not call for anything else.”

Times of Israel Bennett: Defense Thinking Is Deadlocked; Enemies Improving A “deadlock” in creative thinking on security threatens Israel far more than the diplomatic impasse with the Palestinians, Education Minister Naftali Bennett warned Tuesday, in a thinly veiled attack on political and defense leaders from coalition partner Likud. “The main threat to Israel’s security comes not from the north or south, not from the rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah, and not even from Iran,” he told a conference of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “Nor is diplomatic deadlock our main threat, but a deadlock in our thinking.” See also, “Never More Isolated: Bennett, Lapid Slam Netanyahu's Government” (Ynet News)

Ha’aretz US Officials in Israel Next Week to Finalize New Military Package A delegation from the United States will arrive in Israel next week to finalize the details of the U.S. military aid agreement with Israel for the next 10 years. The payout from the new aid package will start with the 2019 U.S. government fiscal year, beginning in October 2018. The upcoming round of discussions is expected to focus on technical details, says a source involved in the talks, and to be one of the last before finalization of the new aid agreement. Within the next month and a half, the two countries hope to draft a memorandum of understanding covering American funding to Israel's military over the next decade, the source added.

Times of Israel EU Softens Policy, But Lays Line Between Israel, Settlements The European Union reiterated Monday that it would continue to differentiate between Israel proper and the settlements, yet stopped short of explicitly calling for a “distinction.” Affirming an earlier decision to require certain products made in settlements be labeled as such, foreign ministers from the bloc’s 28 member states declared that the EU remains “committed to ensure continued, full and effective implementation of existing EU legislation and bilateral arrangements applicable to settlements products.” See also, “EU Foreign Ministers State Opposition to Israeli Settlement Policy” (Financial Times)

Arutz Sheva Rivlin: The Islamic State Is Already Here, Within Israel President Reuven Rivlin addressed on Monday the ninth annual Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference, and focused on the threat of terrorist organizations, in particular the Islamic State (ISIS), among the Israeli Arab population. "The Islamic State is already here, that is no longer a secret. I am not speaking about territories bordering the State of Israel, but within the State itself,” said the President. “Research studies, arrests, testimonies, and overt and covert analyses – many by the INSS – clearly indicate that there is increasing support for the Islamic State among Israeli Arabs, while some are actually joining ISIS.” See also, “Israel Says Islamic State Could Attack It and Jordan After Syria Setbacks” (Reuters)

Ma’ariv – January 15, 2016 Ex-Mossad Chief Pardo: There Is No Existential Threat to Israel By Yossi Melman  There is no existential threat to Israel—says outgoing Mossad Director Tamir Pardo, who retired ten days ago after 35 years in the Mossad, five as director. Pardo’s assessment, which is not pleasant to the ears of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, echoes similar statements made by his predecessor, Meir Dagan. “Everyone knows that Israel is a very strong country. This is no longer the era in which Israel, as a young state, was forced to cope with an existential threat,” said Pardo in a special interview that he gave to Mabat Malam, a periodical on intelligence and security affairs issued by the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center in Glilot, now marking 30 years to its founding.  Pardo related in the interview, “at the start of my path as Mossad director, I met with a senior official from the Arab periphery (if we rely on foreign reports on the subject, we can assume that Pardo is referring to Saudi Arabia or to one of the Persian Gulf states – YM), who asked me if we had decided to live in the Middle East, because in his opinion, we had decided not to.  When I asked him why he thought this, he asked: “How many Jews who were born in Israel know Arabic? How many of them are familiar with Arab culture? How many even want to get to know it? How do you want to understand me when you live in the Middle East and don’t know the language that hundreds of millions of people around you speak? How many of you have opened a Koran? Not in order to pray, but to try and understand what is written there—to understand the culture, to understand that we’re not all the same, and that there is a difference between an Egyptian and a Jordanian and a Palestinian and a Saudi and a Lebanese. You don’t know anything. It’s easier for you to move to live in Canada. There you’ll feel more at home than you feel here from a cultural aspect, so what the hell are you doing here? You have still not chosen to be a part of the Middle East.”  According to the outgoing Mossad director, “the greatest challenge of any organization director is to adapt that organization to reality. This reality is utterly different from the reality that was in place when I enlisted into the IDF in 1971. Our handling of the issue of early warning is completely different, because the threats are different. Hizbullah is another thing entirely, Iran has totally changed and Turkey and Saudi Arabia are not what they used to be.”  Pardo says, “the issue of early warning is undergoing a change. We must take into account the influence of events that are far from our region. We are in a region in which distance is meaningless. The fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in one region of the world is liable to cause an immediate tsunami here. It’s not enough to control your immediate surroundings, and you have to realize that it will be difficult to provide a warning of every event that will take place, but we have to know in real time when things are happening, and I have to know the ramifications on the broader level. Intelligence is different.”  Pardo also stresses the upheaval that is taking place in the world of information and the influence of the media on intelligence. “We live in a global village, in a region of one time zone. This means that distance is no longer relevant.”

 “For example, a lot of what happened in the Yom Kippur War is still classified, but modern wars receive broad media coverage on the internet, almost online. Since the early 21st century, everything is transparent. Everyone sees everything, all the time.”  In the interview, he defined Israel’s situation and the changing reality in the Middle East with the phrase “friendemy,” combining the words enemy and friend. According to Pardo, “we live today in a world in which everyone is both a friend and an enemy at the same time. One moment he is the enemy and the next moment, he is a friend. With each of the forces at play in the Middle East, or in the world, there are common goals along with rivalry and competition. An organization like the Mossad naturally only operates in the grey area, and for us, everyone is both a friend and an antagonist.”  Pardo did not name the countries or organizations that fit this description. But an organization like Jabhat al-Nusra (the Syrian branch of al-Qaida) comes to mind, whose members control most of the border area between Syria and Israel and who are keeping that border quiet. Jabhat al-Nusra does not do this out of friendship toward Israel, but rather because it has other enemies, such as the Assad regime and ISIS. Another example of a situation in which the enemy is also a friend with common interests in Saudi Arabia, which like Israel, considers Iran a threat.  It is generally accepted in the division of labor in the intelligence community, that the responsibility for relations with countries that do not have open relations with Israel and with espionage agencies in the world, is that of the Mossad. In the past, it was reported several times that Mossad directors as well as state leaders, such as former prime minister Ehud Olmert, met with the leaders of the Saudi intelligence and with other top officials there for an exchange of views, situation assessments and intelligence information. It should be hoped that such meetings will also continue in the term of Yossi Cohen, who replaced Pardo. Yossi Melman is an Israeli journalist and writer who specializes in security and intelligence affairs. He is a recipient of the Sokolov Prize, Israel's highest award for journalist and Nieman Fellow at Harvard. His latest book which he co-authored with CBS News Reporter Dan Raviv is "Spies Against Armageddon: inside Israel's Secret Wars.

Yedioth Ahronoth – January 19, 2016 Message from the White House By Shimon Shiffer  The statements made by US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro against the Israeli government were unusual, but they were not made unintentionally: he was following the instructions of the people who sent him.  His words carry great weight, as they were made only one day after Dafna Meir was viciously murdered in Otniel and a few hours after a pregnant woman was stabbed in Tekoa. They mean that the Obama administration will no longer put up with human rights violations by our decision-makers toward Palestinians in the West Bank. As far as the White House is concerned: enough is enough.  Behind Shapiro’s criticism is the possibility that the US, in practice, will join the EU and is liable to take similar steps and to draw a distinction between the Israel that is inside the Green Line and the territories occupied in 1967. It would not be excessive to assume that Israel will no longer be able to rely on the American veto in the UN and to enjoy the automatic support to which we have become accustomed.  Although he was careful throughout his term as ambassador not to wash dirty laundry in public and not reveal the animosity between the White House and Prime Minister Netanyahu, yesterday Shapiro changed his tune—and uttered truths that until recently were only stated in closed meetings.  The response from the Prime Minister’s Bureau joins the many populist statements coming from Netanyahu and his associates: his attempt to link the dastardly murder in Otniel and the stabbing terror attack in Tekoa to criticism of his policy—or the lack thereof—when coping with Palestinian terror attests to hysteria and loss of bearings.  The US, on the day after the nuclear agreement with Iran, is basically reminding us: it’s time to initiate new ideas to bring about a solution to the bloody conflict with the Palestinians.  It should be demanded of the prime minister that he face the Israelis and sketch a horizon with some sort of arrangement at its end. The familiar litany of Netanyahu’s responses, which promise to catch the murderers, is not enough.  It would not be fair to demand of the army commanders and the security forces to come up with solutions to the reality of terror in which we have been living for the last four months. This demand must be made to the prime minister and his cabinet ministers. Shimon Shiffer is a senior commentator for Yedioth Ahronoth.